Hourglass Society
Thursday, June 30, 2005
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Thursday, June 23, 2005
You know, sometimes, T.S. Eliot can be a pompous ass.
"...so that every individual shall in due course take his place at the highest cultural level for which his natural aptitudes qualify him." --Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, pp.23-24.
I adore Eliot, of course, but sometimes he is just a little over the top. I wonder how he'd fare in our PoMo world? Imagine chatting online with Eliot. Sounds a little like the name of a poem, I should give it a go.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Muppets take Manhattan is not synecdochically correct, but Muppets take New York City doesn't sound right and is still not a synecdoche. I do like Muppets, however. Especially Kermit.
Monday, June 20, 2005
I am pleased to report that Lucie Moore, as our honorary Hourglass Society member, has now officially been added to this blogspot.
Lucie, we welcome you, even though American waiters never understand you when you ask for water.
Friday, June 17, 2005
For all you recent converts...
... Queen Elizabeth is rawkin’ the palace on her new iPod. -- via Engadget
Thursday, June 16, 2005
I have been reading David Wagoner, my poetry teacher from UW. His new book of poems, Good Morning and Good Night is full of wonder. Many of the poems are about childhood experiences, either his or those of his children, but looking through the eyes of a child really allows for seeing things differently than the usual. He takes a situation out of the common and makes it uncommon.
"The Message"
David Wagoner
Something was in the sky. It was even bigger
Than our house and painted gray, and people were running
Along our alley to see it and pointing at it,
And all our neighbors were int their yards like me,
And the firemen had all come running our of their station,
And all the teachers and children at the school
Were our as if for recess, and it was flying
Lower and lower over the hospital,
And the sick people and nurses with white hats
Were standing out on the lawn. It was so big,
I couldn't understand how it could float
and turn around and come still lower and closer,
And there was a man in the cabin under it
Who was leaning out of a window, waving at me,
And my father was beside me, waving back,
And knew the man's name, He hadn't always been
Up there. He'd gone to work where my father went
Almost every moring. Suddenly something
Was falling and glittereing like peices of tinfoil,
And one was white and quicker. It fell on our grass.
I picked it up and opened the crumpled paper
From around a stone. My father could read it
And even I could read it. It said my name.
Monday, June 13, 2005
This is from a post I made on June 30th, 2003, and I think it bears repeating:
Fooz snap per raffle putty
In dem wannempeg jutty;
Notim calp uberflap
Jot snarf fortsnap
Complanix.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Let's walk to the moon.
Google ...
claims that they've indexed 8,058,044,651 Web pages. Let's assume that the average Web document, when printed, uses two sheets of paper. Using a 10-page-per-minute printer, it would take 3,066 years to print the entire Web. A stack of 500 sheets of paper is 2 inches high. Therefore, the stack of pages representing the printed Web would be 1,017 miles high. If you laid these pages end to end (assuming 11-inch pages), they would stretch 2,797,932 miles -- enough to go to the Moon and back six times., or enough to wrap around the Earth 112 times.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
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I drove by a Catholic school the other day, and they were having some kind of a festival. They blocked off an entire street in my neighborhood with bouncy blow-ups, tables, tents and the like. Half of the playground was fenced off for two cows, who sat serenely chewing the cud. It was one of those orange plastic fences that wouldn't seem to do much good should one of the bovine captives decide to test its limitations. Adults and children alike were pressed up against the fence--indeed, nearly knocking it over--to have a look at the cows.
And for one brief moment, I saw life from the cows' point of view, or perhaps the perspective of an outsider or an alien. It seemed that the humans were the ones confined, while the cows sat enjoying their wide open playground. The people, it seemed, were the lesser species, while the cows were royalty, indifferently disregarding the pleas of the tiny bipeds trying to break free from their overcrowded pen.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Somedays I find the adventure that I long for cannot be found in books.
“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what come through them was longing.” –C.S. Lewis; The Weight of Glory
But maybe that's the point. To keep us in that tension of waiting, hoping and longing for that which we cannot have. The stories, the poems, become our hope, but trust must remain in that Other. In the one place we cannot reach. Yet.
Soon.
It's really more beautiful this way.
I have tried to capture my thoughts about this in a poem.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
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Friday, June 03, 2005
A potential site for a future Hourglass meeting...
...Classic American author Ernest Hemingway's beloved house in Cuba joined former homes of U.S. presidents and King Island in Alaska on an annual list issued Thursday of "America's Most Endangered Historic Places."
The crumbling 9-acre estate on a hill just east of Havana was left to the Cuban people after Hemingway's death from suicide in 1961 and is now a museum, housing books and manuscripts of the famed American novelist. Hemingway lived at Finca Vigia (Lookout Farm) from 1939 to 1960 and it was there he wrote "The Old Man and the Sea"...
Reuters
Thursday, June 02, 2005
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
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