Month: February 2007

Be Back Soon

I’m almost afraid to drive our new Prius to California after my experiences the last few days with modern technology.

First, I’ve been seriously considering buying a new Macbook to replace my aging iBook. I finally talked myself into purchasing one, even though financially it’s not the best time to do so, but when I went to configure mine with 2GB of memory, it suddenly said it would take 1-3 days to ship, too long to get here before we left on our trip. So I called up the local Apple Store a few miles up the road and discovered that they would upgrade the memory, but they would also charge for both the new and the old memory. No thanks, Apple already charges too much for memory upgrades. So I guess I won’t be taking a computer to California with me.

Even worse, I’ve been trying to add the line “Powered by Wordform” to the bottom of the page to give proper credit to my blogging tools, but in order to do so I had to change the permissions at the unix level.

It’s only now that I’m recalling the last time I ran into permissions was when I used an old ftp program to install Movable Type and it automatically changed all the permissions. As a result Movable Type wouldn’t run, and I ended up paying Ben Trott to install the program for me after days of struggling.

I still do not, DO NOT, understand permissions and what all the numbers mean and how check boxes and unchecked boxes actually change permissions. I managed to actually change the file I wanted to, at least I could download it with my ftp program and it showed the changes, but it would not show up on my site.

I got so mad that I managed to give myself a splitting headache. Now I remember why I chose early retirement from teaching several years ago. I haven’t been this mad, and that’s saying quite alot since I’m often heard muttering to myself about our President and his cronies, not to mention those who seem unable to comprehend that their actions might actually have an effect upon the environment, for at least six years.

Luckily, saintly powers rescued me from my own stupidity and my site still seems to be functioning.

I’m truly thankful that I can usually limit my technological skills to Photoshopping pictures and learning how to use some of the functions on my camera that I still generally ignore.

Despite it all, we’re going to risk driving to California. Since I won’t have a computer of my own with me to process photos or type blog entries, things may be quiet around here for a week.

Meanwhile, we’ll leave this guy in charge of the bird feeder since he seems to have taken up occupancy in the tree where the feeder hangs:

Patchen’s “Nobody is a Long Time”

I’ve finally finished Patchen’s Selected Poems. The poems in the last third of the book generally seem less strident than many of the earlier poems. My favorite poems actually seem to have been written to be read with jazz music, which may explain why I’m fond of them.

I was a little surprised to discover that my two favorites from this section follow exactly the same format, though they seem to represent two opposite sides of Patchen’s personality.

Many critics insist on comparing Patchen to Walt Whitman, though I personally see few similarities. This poem, however, does convey some of the same optimism that permeates most of Whitman’s poetry:

WHAT THERE IS

In this my green world
Flowers birds are hands
They hold me
I am loved all day

All this pleases me

I am amused
I have to laugh from crying
Trees mountains are arms
I am loved all day

Children grass are tears

I cry
I am loved all day
Everything
Pompous makes me laugh
I am amused often enough
In this
My beautiful green world

There’s love all day

Of course, I like this because it’s often how I feel when I’m out enjoying nature and avoiding problems that otherwise might confront me. Though I don’t really feel like “I am loved all day” when I’m out walking, I do feel like I love most of what I behold out there, and loving something doesn’t seem too awfully different from being loved.

Perhaps my favorite poem in the whole collection is this one:

LONESOME BOY BLUES

Oh nobody’s a long time
Nowhere’s a big pocket
To put little
Pieces of nice things that

Have never really happened

To anyone except
Those people who were lucky enough
Not to get born
Oh lonesome’s a bad place

To get crowded into

With only
Yourself riding back and forth
On
A blind white horse
Along an empty road meeting
All your
Pals face to face

Nobody’s a long time

I guess I’ll have to see if there’s a recording of this out there somewhere. These are some of the best blues lyrics I’ve ever heard, and I’ve listened to a lot of blues in my time, though the lack of rhyme would probably suggest a jazz song rather than a traditional blues song.

Nobody is, indeed, a long time.

Back to Nisqually, Again

It’s supposed to be rainy most of the week here in the Pacific Northwest, so I decided that Tuesday was my best chance to walk around the 5-mile loop at Nisqually Wildlife Refuge in the next few weeks since we’re going to California next week.

As it turned out, it was more cloudy than sunny, and we even got rained on a little at the end of the walk. Despite the fact that it was generally a gray, overcast day, I enjoyed the long walk, the opportunity to see some ducks I haven’t seen for awhile, and some good company.

Even as gray day in a wild area has its charm, as shown by this Ring-Necked Duck

I also saw a remarkable number of Pintail Ducks,

one of the most elegant ducks I’ve seen, though I’m sure that says more about my taste than about the duck itself.

I think I also sighted a Canvasback duck for the first time, but it was so far away and it was so dark that the picture was too poor to really confirm the sighting.

Patchen’s “The Orange Bears”

I’ve finished the middle third of Patchen’s Selected Poems, and generally I find that I react very much the way I reacted to the first third of the book. I don’t like most of the poems, but I continue to read because I find a few poems that I like very much.

Here’s an example of the kind of poem that I generally don’t like, though this is actually my favorite of this genre:

THE LIONS OF FIRE SHALL HAVE THEIR HUNTING

The lions of fire
Shall have their hunting in this black land

Their teeth shall tear at your soft throats
Their claws kill

O the lions of fire shall awake
And the valleys steam with their fury

Because you are sick with the dirt of your money
Because you are pigs rooting in the swill of your war
Because you are mean and sly and full of the pus of your pious murder
Because you have turned your faces from God
Because you have spread your filth everywhere

O the lions of fire
Wait in the crawling shadows of your world
And their terrible eyes are watching you.

I don’t really disagree with much of what Patchen says; I agree that money, greed, too often seems the root of our problems rather than the answer to them. You know I’m tired of pious wars. Right? That should be a given by now.

I suppose what I object to most is the tying of God to the “Lions of Fire” and the general apocalyptic tone of the poem. Filth and pus strike me as far too hysterical to be effective.

And this is the best of these types of poems. Many lack even the restraint shown here, and are reminiscent of Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

About the time that you decide you really don’t need to read any further, you find a gem like this one:

THE ORANGE BEARS

The Orange bears with soft friendly eyes

Who played with me when I was ten,

Christ, before I’d left home they’d had

Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs

Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting

Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped

Out, and I went down through the woods

To the smelly crick with Whitman

In the Haldeman-Julius edition,

And I just sat there worrying my thumbnail

Into the cover—What did he know about

Orange bears with their coats all stunk up with soft coal

And the National Guard coming over

From Wheeling to stand in front of the millgates

With drawn bayonets jeering at the strikers?

I remember you would put daisies

On the windowsill at night and in

The morning they’d be so covered with soot

You couldn’t tell what they were anymore.

A hell of a fat chance my orange bears had!

The anger’s obviously still there, but here it’s been channeled better, and the ideas driven home by their very understatement. What a beautiful contrast between Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and a world where the daisies are covered in soot in a single night.

What kind of world do we live in where the gentlest people are crushed by an economic system that puts profit before lives?