Go Yankees!
I’m posting this just in case. (See post re Talismans and Yankees.) But it may take more than a picture tonight.
If you’re too nervous to watch the Yankees in a jam, try 1 Mississippi, by Karin Gustafson, at link above.
Posted tagged ‘manicddaily’
Just in Case – Go Yankees!
October 17, 2009Who Needs Water? Drilling the Marcellus Shale
October 17, 2009Ten Reasons (That Anyone Can Understand) Why New York Should Say No to Upstate Natural Gas Drilling.
1. You need water to make beer.
2. Even a cold bath is better than one that leaves you with boils.
3. Casino-Resorts without (a) hot tubs (that don’t leave you with boils), or (b) good beer (I’ve heard Adirondack is infinitely superior to Coors) tend to go bust.
4. Milk is good for your teeth.
5. Mountains are good for your soul.
6. When the animals go, we’re next.
7. It’s hard to create jobs in a place where you can’t drink, bathe, feed animals, or wash clothes in the water.
8. It’s hard to keep jobs downstream of a place where you can’t—oops! Correction. It’s hard to keep jobs in a place whose reservoirs hold water that can’t be drunk, bathed in, or used for any human or animal purpose.
9. Wyoming was once a beautiful state.
10. And I haven’t heard that it’s become the jobs capital of the country.
Six Reasons Why New York Should Say Yes to Natural Gas Drilling
1. I can take my one-time drilling lease payment and rent a trailer (maybe) somewhere a whole lot warmer than Upstate New York.
2. Those stupid dairy cows really build up a stench.
3. Coors is okay by me. (Better not drill in Colorado.)
4. Mountains make me carsick.
5. Those stupid, rich, New Yorkers—don’t they just buy bottled water?
6. They don’t use water to make diet soda, do they? Regular?
Go Yankees! (Hoping for Luck)
October 16, 2009Go Yankees!
Yes, I’ve posted this picture before, but it was lucky last time.
Yes, the Yankees are overpaid.
But they are the Yankees. And I am from New York.
And they are the Yankees.
Friday – Weekend Projects (The Creative Ones You Put Off) – Don’t Put Them Off
October 16, 2009Friday! Finally. The boy not in the balloon is safe and Where The Wild Things Are is primarily in movie theaters.
For those of you who like to do creative projects (write, paint, write some more), and have limited freedom and focus, now is the time to get going. (School has started, Halloween is not yet here, Thanksgiving/Christmas are still genuinely still far away.)
My primary immediate advice: take the time. Make an appointment with yourself, for yourself, time for your work. Schedule a slot in what may otherwise seem an inpenetrable weekend—10-1, Saturday–your work time. Don’t just pencil it in; write it in indelible ink. Then, don’t allow a conflict; don’t take on a chore; don’t slip into an accidental cancellation, don’t cut yourself short. (It may be best not to tell others what that Saturday appointment is for. You may also need to turn off your internet access.)
My secondary advice, before starting and before turning off your internet: check out the series of posts I wrote in July and August about writer’s block. Although these were specifically about “blocking writer’s block”, many of them can apply to other types of creative blocks as well, particularly those aspects related to taking yourself seriously. (These posts can be found by clicking the “category” on the side called Writer’s Block: some of the ones categorized under Stress may also apply, especially to less writerly blocks.)
If you have writer’s block (or some other creative block), I can’t guarantee that these will help you. But you may find something useful. Reading them may also give you that one more little justifiable delay (ha ha!), which (it is to be hoped) may serve as a springboard into a wellspring of creative flow.
Good luck!
(If none of that works, you can always go to Where the Wild Things Are, or check out another children’s animal book, 1 Mississippi, by Karin Gustafson, at the link to the side.)
The Twilight Amorality of Edward Cullen – What Does It Mean?
October 15, 2009Maybe it’s the stress of the bad news (that horrible moment when the balloon landed and the first responders realized that the six-year old boy was not in it), or relief at the good news (the wonderful moment when it was discovered that the little boy wasn’t ever in the balloon, that he had been hiding in a box in the garage)—
Or maybe it’s the fact that the Dow’s close above 10,000 and Goldman Sachs’ good earnings report have been called by some at Fox, the “Bush” recovery, and by others as no recovery at all (apparently Goldman would have done better if it had simply invested in an index fund and the economy is certainly not out of the woods yet)—
Whatever—it’s all made me decide to write about Twilight again, the phenomenally successful series of books by Stephanie Meyer – 70 million sold and counting.
Specifically, I want to write about the amorality of Twilight, and to wonder what this amorality, or really, the audience’s acceptance of this amorality, may mean.
First, for those who don’t know the series, the Twilight saga, written by Mormon Meyer (a graduate of Brigham Young University), has typically been considered to be an anachronistically moralistic series of books. This characterization has resulted primarily from the fact (spoiler alert) that the sexual consummation of the passionate love affair between vampire Edward Cullen and human Bella Swan (even full frontal nudity) is pointedly delayed until marriage. Then (double spoiler alert), once they do get married, Bella nearly instantly becomes extremely pregnant. (It was a good thing they waited!)
Edward is repeatedly characterized in the last three books, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn¸ as a “perversely moral vampire” with very old-fashioned ideas. His “family” is also characterized as amazingly moral because, by and large, they feed only on the blood of wild animals. And, although they do seem to take particular pleasure in certain endangered carnivores, they try to avoid having an unduly negative impact on the environment. (At least it’s not Aunt Susie.)
A closer look at the books (which I must confess I’ve taken, repeatedly) shows the vampires’ morality to be very one-sided, i.e. it’s all about sex and very little about money. (Yes, the vampires, who are rich due to prophesy of stock market trends, do give their old clothes to the werewolves, but even they admit that they only wear things once.)
Not only are the vampires amoral, they are also incredibly solipsistic: they (Edward in particular) only care about their own (Bella.)
In scene after scene, mayhem occurs just offstage. In New Moon (the movie about to come out), a large tourist group is fodder for the “Voluturi”, the vampire leaders. Edward hurries Bella away so she won’t be upset by the sounds of the mass slaughter, but makes no effort to save even one tourist. (Okay, they’re tourists….)
Similarly, when vampire mayhem stalks Seattle (of all places) in Eclipse, Edward’s main concern seems to be the negative attention the slaughter may bring. In a hypothetical plane crash in that book, he talks, hypothetically, of reaching out to save only Bella from certain death. (Doesn’t he have two hands?)
In the fourth book, Edward and Bella even stand passively (if uncomfortably) by as their vampire guests roam the countryside feeding on humans (granted, the guests go out of State.)
I know, I know. There’s only so much a person…errr. ..vampire… can do. Maybe Edward is right to focus his energies. But what’s amazing to me is is the shift this represents from the classic romantic hero.
When did Superman even abandon a kitten up a tree to save only Lois Lane? In nearly every opera you can think of (Aida, Il Travatore, the Magic Flute), the hero must part from his love for the sake of Truth, Duty to family, society, or gypsy clan, and some really heart-wrenching singing. Romeo (yes, a hothead) forsakes Juliet to avenge Mercutio. Even Harry Potter (who is a classic, if modern hero) leaves Ginny to save Hogwarts.
Edward’s solipsism is especially misplaced since he is supposed to be a World War I kind of guy. It’s hard to imagine another generation so bound by duty.
So what does Edward’s amorality, and more importantly, fan inattention to it, say about modern culture? (And please don’t get me wrong, I still love both him and his portrayer, Robert Pattinson.)
Certainly, we live in a country with a lot of fellow feeling. I think about all the wonderful first responders who chased down the balloon today in which the little six-year old was, thankfully, not lodged; I think of all the millions of Americans who undoubtedly hoped and prayed for that little boy’s safety.
But then I also think of the health care debate, the intense furor over the “public option”.
And, forgive me, but I also think of the outrage over Obama’s comments to “Joe the Plumber”; the casual ‘spreading wealth around’ remark that drew so much ire and concern, and that were raised with such anger (and comparisons to Stalinism) by my taxi driver in Florida. (See earlier post re incredulity in Florida.)
Goldman Sachs’ outsized bonuses also somehow come to mind.
Hmmm…..
After the Sestinas–Why Bother?
October 14, 2009As I wrote down the rules for a sestina in the last couple of posts, I have to confess that the question “why bother?” went through my head with the regularity of the six repeating “end words” of that form.
Why bother writing formal poetry? (Much less blogging about it?)
Seriously, isn’t poetry supposed to be about free expression?
So why bother with all the restraints and requirements of a poetic form? Why not just write free verse all the time?
Ten reasons:
1. Writing formal poetry limits your choices. (If your form requires rhymes, you are limited to words that rhyme.) This is a big help if you don’t know exactly what you want to say (and if it doesn’t involve oranges.)
2. Writing formal poetry defines your choices (i.e. once you decide to write a villanelle, you know your poem will have two repeating lines that have to work as a couplet at some point, and will probably not end in “orange”.)
3. Writing formal poetry terminates your choices. (If you write a sonnet, you’ll be done by line fourteen.)
4. Poetic forms provide inherent music and, if you can manage it, rhythm. This is great if you don’t have a good ear; even greater, if you do.
5. Sometimes the music of a poetic form, and the cleverness of its dance, can substitute for profundity (which is wonderful if you never found out what exactly you wanted to say.)
6. Writing formal poetry is fun; there is a game-like quality to it. (It has rules!)
7. Even failing at the chosen form makes you more conscious of language, and, it is to be hoped, a more musical and adventurous writer. (Oh Orange!)
8. Even bare success at the chosen form puts you in the company of some of the greatest poets of all time. You, like Shakespeare, will have written a sonnet; like Dylan Thomas, a villanelle; like Elizabeth Bishop, a sestina. This sense of camaraderie, and the understanding that arises from even a brief turn in the trenches of prosody, will make you a more appreciative and attentive reader.
9. Finally, it must be understood, and grudgingly accepted, that a good sonnet, sestina, villanelle or pantoum is not good because it follows the rules, but because it’s a good poem. That said, it’s hard to write a good poem. Maybe you don’t have it in you one day, maybe not any day. However, if you follow the rules, which can be done by simple diligence (if not always inspiration), you can write what qualifies as a sonnet, or one of the other forms. You may not have achieved a good poem, but you will have achieved a sonnet, a sestina, villanelle or pantoum, which itself deserves a modicum of pride.
10. “Orange” is supposed to be one of the few words that, allegedly, has no perfect rhyme in English. But it works just fine in a sestina (or mid-line.) And, if you do manage to rhyme it, well….
If you prefer counting elephants to counting syllables, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above.
First Sestina (Posted as Encouragement) – “Vacuum”
October 13, 2009In this morning’s post, I explained the rules of writing a sestina, a fairly complicated 39-line poem, which involves six repeating “end words” in a rotating/interlocking stanza form. I also posted what I consider to be my best sestina. (See, post re “Changing Gears – a Sestina – “Pink” both for the better sestina and an explanation of the intricacies of the form. )
As encouragement to beginning sestina writers, I’m now posting the first sestina I ever wrote (and definitely not my “best” one.) Although the poem follows the form, you can see the compromises I made – choosing generic words – “talked, over, up, mother, vacuum, when” as my “end words” so that I’d be able to easily repeat them in accordance with sestina rules. (The two posted sestinas are on different subject matters, but I wrote them one after the other, so there is a kind of relationship.)
A tip here: if you are ever doing a writing or poetic exercise, and need to choose a prompt, and you’re feeling dried out, burned up, and stumped for inspiration, try something like “mother” or “father”. Believe me, the words will flow.
As always, pause only where punctuated.
Vacuum
When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out. She only smoked when
her sister came, then she became like a teenager when
folks are away; her gestures sullen, she talked
with a thoughtless sneer, the kind that filled the vacuum
of her youth, a time she thought she’d never get over
all the obstacles they’d set up, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.
She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there. Farm life. Especially then, when
owning land was something but not, like her mother
thought, everything. You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum,
nor nice clothes, nice furniture, nice rugs to vacuum.
Though the time they remembered that night when they stayed up
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm, a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land; and they talked
of joining him, but only when their grandmother, my mother’s mother,
was stronger. She was a favorite of my mother,
and favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the one who talked
in such maddening ways, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.
They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care, my aunt, my own grandmother, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked suddenly, “when
she died?” My mother thinking, “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that. I pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother, smoking hard as she talked.
“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.” But slowly my mother spoke, the smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.
(All rights reserved. Karin Gustafson)
Changing Gears – The Sestina – “Pink”
October 13, 2009I am retreating from the world of politics today to the more ordered world of formal poetry. The sestina is an extremely “ordered” form of poem with a strict line structure that focuses on six repeating “end words,” (that is, the last word in each line.) Thankfully, these end words do not have to rhyme.
There are six six-line stanzas, and six repeating end words. At the end of the six six-line stanzas, there is a three-line stanza (the “envoie”), in which the six repeating words are used again, two per line.
The hard part is not just repeating the six words, but repeating them in the right order; each stanza turns itself partly inside out for the next one. The music of the poem comes from the shifting, and sometimes surprising, echo of the repeating words. If the meaning and tone of the words can also shift through the poem, a kind of irony can be found.
Here’s how the form works:
For notation purposes, I’ll assign each end word a number – 123456. That is the order of the first stanza.
The second is 615243. The third is 364125, the fourth 532614, fifth 451362, and finally 246531. You’ll notice that the last line of each stanza becomes the first of the next, the second- to-last line, the third, etc. It helps to think of the stanzas as interlocking or clasped hands, with the clasp between the fingers moving up the hands with each stanza. (I guess they’d have to be Anne Boleyn-style hands – six fingers.)
There are different forms for the order of the words in the last three-line stanza; my favorite puts the words in reverse of their original order, meaning 65,43,21.
The form is hard, yes. A tip: once you’ve decided on your repeating words, write them down in the prescribed order for the entire poem. (This means that you’ll have a nearly blank page or so, with just a column of numbers and words on one side.) This list will not only help you keep your focus; it will also avoid the frustration of having a nearly finished poem that, you suddenly realize, did not quite follow the rules. (If it’s a great poem as is, terrific. But if you wanted to write a great sestina, this can be upsetting.)
It is useful to pick end words with flexible meanings and usage (meaning words that can be either nouns or verbs, even homonyms). Commonplace words are easier, but less interesting.
I have to confess I have only written a couple of sestinas. They are long poems; beginning one is a big commitment. But a completed one is really quite satisfying. Here’s one of mine:
(As always, keep in mind that pauses are intended to be taken only at punctuation breaks, not at line or stanza breaks, unless punctuated. )
Pink
Trees full of blossom, the night smells pink
though it’s black, a thick summer darkness
barely held back by window screen.
I hear dishes in the sink, a familiar clatter,
and think of the summer kitchen
of my youth (my grandma’s), where the women wiped
the dishes, too many for the rack, wiped
the oilclothed table too; the men, skin pink
from glossy food, escaped the kitchen
glare, slinking into the darkness
of the den, the chatty t.v. clatter
a sound fluorescence against the dim screen.
There too, we were protected by a screen
from bites, buzz, wing, and the wind that wiped
that stretched-flat land, a soft clatter
of night and grass and damp that blew towards the pink
edge of dawn, an engine of chill darkness
that was only truly blocked by the glow of kitchen
yellow. I watched one aunt in the kitchen,
amazed that she never even tried to screen
her keen sense of life’s darkness.
When she looked at my grandmother, she often wiped
her eyes, and sniffing, face too pink,
cleaned with a banging clatter.
Though she was always a center of clatter,
that aunt. She had a kind of two-walled kitchen
in her own house, open; and wore hot pink,
played jokes, charades, a half-hearted screen
of despondency, still, the good housewife, she wiped
the smallest speck from her counters. Her own darkness
seeming inevitable, it was a darkness
she hurried towards, smoking, drinking hard, the clatter
of uncertainty (as to timing) wiped
her out. In the meantime, she cleaned-—my grandma’s kitchen
after her death, and, at the Funeral Home, made a quick screen
of the corpse. “That lipstick’s way too pink,”
she hissed, then wiped my grandma’s lips like a kitchen
stain. Despite the clatter in my brain, I served as screen,
a guard in the blossomed darkness, as she rubbed off pink.
(All rights reserved. Karin Gustafson)
Food Rules – Not Quite Michael Pollan’s
October 11, 2009I have long been a careful eater. Some might call me picky. This isn’t really fair, because my refusal to eat certain foods has never arisen from finicky taste buds, but from strong ideas about health, morality and the environment. I won’t burden you with these here, partly because it would take too long, and partly because, unlike the classic picky eater, I try to stay fairly quiet about my no-no foods, and to graze among the acceptable possibilities.
This pickiness, combined with the wish not to be a pain (especially when a guest), has sometimes exposed me to hunger. And ridicule. For years, for example, I was the subject of jokes among office mates due to my bringing carrot sticks and plain yogurt to a Yankees’ baseball outing. (I have recently learned that the new Yankees’ stadium actually serves hummous and carrot sticks as one of its standard offerings. Which just goes to show that my eating habits were not ridiculous but simply ahead of the curve.)
Last week, The New York Times published twenty rules for healthy eating chosen by Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food. These were rules that Pollan had gleaned from readers, promoting among other things, the eating of apples when hungry, and the un-multi-tasked meal.
I’m not sure I’m capable of eating the un-multi-tasked meal on a regular basis, though I do love apples. Still, after reading these, I came up with ten eating rules of my own:
1. Avoid foods that are fire engine red, flame orange, any kind of blue, or electric green, unless they are unadulterated products of the vegetable kingdom. In other words, yes fruit, nix Loops.
2. Learn to say no to anything deep fried. (This is relatively easy for me since I was raised by a mother who made all around her peel the skin off fried chicken, even her own 88-year old mother who used to groan “but that’s the good part.”) If you have to have something deep fried, get your dining partner to order it, then sneak the occasional bite off of his or her plate.
3. Ditto with dessert. Get your partner to order it, and then sneak spoonfuls. If you have dessert at home, refuse it at the meal, and then have small careful wedges standing at a counter or in front of the open fridge. (Such wedges, eaten at midnight and intended to “even out” the dessert’s edges, have the advantage of being absolutely calorie-free.)
4. Don’t buy things you can’t resist. You will not be able to resist them.
5. Don’t buy baked goods that come in packages that are easily stacked. Actually, it’s probably advisable to generally avoid stackable food, especially if raw. I make an exception here for crates of clementines (even though they are probably horribly sprayed) and those plastic cartons of organic salad (which are environmentally awful, but awfully convenient.) (I would avoid non-organic salad mixes if stackable.) This rule does not apply to cooked or dried foods – i.e. cans of beans, cases of plain yogurt (yes, yogurt has been heated), and any kind of whole grain.
6. As a cook and mother, you basically have two choices: either give in to the urge to taste constantly while you are cooking, serving, and cleaning up, and don’t eat anything during the actual meal; or steel yourself to taste absolutely nothing (not even that bit that will go to waste otherwise), and sit down and eat from your plate with the rest of your family.
7. Here’s a couple of travel rules, learned, thankfully, not from my own experience, but from watching a husband: when traveling, pay attention to the cues of waiter or waitress: i.e. (i) do not order the “meat sandwich” in India, if the waiter tells you at first that they are out of it, and (ii) do not order a dish, even a “regional specialty,” if the waitress, shaking her head, keeps trying to dissuade you.
8. Learn to like vegetables in all forms and varieties. (I make an exception here for okra.)
9. There are two fairly unadulterated, high antioxidant, foods that are (either one or the other) generally available in almost any establishment: (i) tea; (ii) red wine. (White, if not red, though lower in reservatrol). In situations where the food is either doubtful or deep-fried, stick to one of these. Unless–
10. Unless, you are really really starving, already jittery and/or tipsy, and not in hummous-filled Yankee Stadium. In that case, go for the scrambled eggs.
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