... in Will's class. Dooly and the Snortsnoot, an old favorite, in which the kid-eating monster is run out of town by a very small giant who quickly becomes a big one through a large act of bravery.
It didn't take long for Will to figure out who the mystery reader was. Costume, put together in almost no time, by Mimi.
Actually a little snow last night, enough to require a light shovel this morning. Not enough for a snowblower, although I am anxious to try the big two-stage donated by neighbor Kathy. But also not enough, one might hope, to crust up what remains of ice on local lakes. I'm predicting a regatta—not this weekend, but the one following.
As an alternative to news I've been looking over Shakespeare's sonnets, and being astonished, once again, at the skill of the Bard. Sonnets are hard to write. Would it not it be fun to hang out with William for a week or two, looking over his shoulder as he was writing—writing something like this:
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
One bit of fun is to try reading this out loud. It's not easy, especially the amazing line 10. After that, another bit of fun is reading it along with a skilled reader, like this:
...trying to be snow, but mostly failing. Slick walks melting down to bare pavement, but otherwise dismal outdoors.
The Socratic method can be defined as cooperative argumentative dialog. And that leads me to this:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Socratic
H. D.
"They cut it in squares,
sometimes it comes
in little jars"
"O—?"
"Under the trees—"
"Where?"
"By his sheep-pen."
"Whose?"
"The man
who brings eggs:
he put it
in a basket with moss."
"What?"
"Why,
the little jar."
"What for?"
Why,
to carry it over—"
"Over where?"
"The field to Io's house."
"Then?"
"Her mother took it out
of the moss,
and opened it—"
"What?"
"The little jar."
"And then?"
"We each had some."
"What?"
"Why the thing
in the little jar
they got
from the straw huts."
"What huts?"
"Why,
the little huts
under the apple-trees
where they live—"
"Who live?"
"Why,
the bees."
And Mr. Paine also said, "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered."
A number of these signs have popped up around town. I don't know who's behind them.
We as a country are in a difficult position right now. As Andres Rondon says in the article excerpt below, contempt, disdain, and ridicule of Trump voters (the unwashed middle) just strengthens their hand by giving them an enemy to hate.
However, it is essential that a slide into fascism (alternative facts, faked news, scapegoating, etc.) be resisted. As Sarah Bakewell points out in her book (excerpt below), even intellectuals can find themselves sinking into totalitarian quicksand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"How to Culture Jam a Populist in Four Easy Steps"
Andres Miguel Rondon
Caracas Chronicles, January 20, 2017
Don’t waste your time trying to prove that this ism is better than that ism. Ditch all the big words. Why? Because, again, the problem is not the message but the messenger. It’s not that Trump supporters are too stupid to see right from wrong, it’s that you’re much more valuable to them as an enemy than as a compatriot.
The problem is tribal. Your challenge is to prove that you belong in the same tribe as them: that you are American in exactly the same way they are.
In Venezuela, we fell into the abstraction trap in a bad way. We wrote again and again about principles, about the separation of powers, about civil liberties, about the role of the military in politics, about corruption and economic policy. But it took our leaders ten years to figure out they needed to actually go to the slums and to the countryside. And not for a speech, or a rally, but for game of dominoes or to dance salsa – to show they were Venezuelans too, that they had tumbao and could hit a baseball, could tell a joke that landed. That they could break the tribal divide, come down off the billboards and show they were real. And no, this is not populism by other means. It is the only way of establishing your standing. It’s deciding not to live in an echo chamber. To press pause on the siren song of polarization.
You will not find that pause button in the cities or the university’s campuses. You will find it precisely where you’re not expected.
Only then will your message land.
There’s no point sugar coating: the road ahead is tough and the pitfalls are many. It’s way easier to get this wrong than to get this right, and the chances are the people getting it wrong will drown out those getting it right.
But if you want to be part of the solution, the road ahead is clear: Recognize you’re the enemy they need; show concern, not contempt, for the wounds of those that brought Trump to power; by all means be patient with democracy and struggle relentlessly to free yourself from the shackles of the caricature the populists have drawn of you.
It’s a tall order. But the alternative is worse. Believe me, I know: I’m from Venezuela.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the Existentialist Cafe
Sarah Bakewell
Then came Sartre’s year in Berlin, but for most of it he was so absorbed in his reading of Husserl and others that at first he barely noticed the outside world. He drank with his classmates and went for long walks. ‘I rediscovered irresponsibility’, he recalled later in a notebook. As the academic year went on, the red-and-black banners, the SA rallies and the regular outbreaks of violence became more disturbing. In February 1934, Beauvoir visited him for the first time, and was struck mainly by how normal Germany seemed. But when she went again in June and travelled back with him from Berlin through Dresden, Munich and the Nazis’ favourite city of Nuremberg, the military marches and half-glimpsed brutal scenes on the streets made them both eager to get out of the country for good. By this time, Sartre was having nightmares about rioting towns and blood splattering over bowls of mayonnaise.
The mixture of anxiety and unreality that Sartre and Beauvoir felt was not unusual. Many Germans felt a similar combination, except for those who were Nazi converts, or else who were firm opponents or direct targets. The country was steeped in the sensation that Heidegger called ‘uncanniness’.
Sometimes the best-educated people were those least inclined to take the Nazis seriously, dismissing them as too absurd to last. Karl Jaspers was one of those who made this mistake, as he later recalled, and Beauvoir observed similar dismissive attitudes among the French students in Berlin. In any case, most of those who disagreed with Hitler’s ideology soon learned to keep their view to themselves. If a Nazi parade passed on the street, they would either slip out of view or give the obligatory salute like everyone else, telling themselves that the gesture meant nothing if they did not believe in it. As the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim later wrote of this period, few people will risk their life for such a small thing as raising an arm —yet that is how one’s powers of resistance are eroded away, and eventually one’s responsibility and integrity go with them.
The journalist Sebastian Haffner, a law student at the time, also used the word ‘uncanny’ in his diary, adding, ‘Everything takes place under a kind of anaesthesia. Objectively dreadful events produce a thin, puny emotional response. Murders are committed like schoolboy pranks. Humiliation and moral decay are accepted like minor incidents.’ Haffner thought modernity itself was partly to blame: people had become yoked to their habits and to mass media, forgetting to stop and think, or to disrupt their routines long enough to question what was going on.
Heidegger’s former lover and student Hannah Arendt would argue, in her 1951 study The Origins of Totalitarianism, that totalitarian movements thrived at least partly because of this fragmentation in modern lives, which made people more vulnerable to being swept away by demagogues. Elsewhere, she coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to describe the most extreme failures of personal moral awareness. The phrase attracted criticism, mainly because she applied it to the actively genocidal Adolf Eichmann, organiser of the Holocaust, who was guilty of a lot more than a failure to take responsibility. Yet she stuck by her analysis: for Arendt, if you do not respond adequately when the times demand it, you show a lack of imagination and attention that is as dangerous as deliberately committing an abuse. It amounts to disobeying the one command she had absorbed from Heidegger in those Marburg days: Think!
Some ice breakup on the Bark River. Pax and I watched several floes revolve slowly and crunch together in an ineffective effort to move downstream.
Skies remain gray and the temperature is slowly slipping back toward freezing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's something special about brief poems, and this one, consisting of two tercets, is rather fun to puzzle over.
As Bad as a Mile
Philip Larkin
Watching the shied core
Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
Shows less and less of luck, and more and more
Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
The apple unbitten in the palm.
By noon we were already two hours behind schedule, even though we didn't have one. And then, the hurried-er we went, the behind-er we got.
Dampness dominates. Even yesterday, during the brief bit of sunshine, all was damp. This is when the desert beckons.
Attendance is down at the bird-feeder. This might be because all the snow is gone and more natural forage is available. Or, possibly the avians (like me) like their seeds crisp rather than soggy. Or, possibly, it's because of a big, old, sharp-shinned hawk, possibly the one who has struck terror here in previous years. Yesterday I saw an ominous, slope-shouldered shape high in a tree several back-yards away. The binoculars revealed a sharp-shinned. Today, as Pax and I were walking along the creek we noticed a troop of noisy crows mobbing an ominous, slope-shouldered shape high in a tree. Yes, a predator prowls.
And, yesterday I killed one. Driving along a country road I saw what appeared to be a road-killed 'possum dead ahead. I steered to center over it without a touch, when I suddenly saw a raptor right on top of it. Before I could react the bird was forcibly removed from the carcass, and turned into one itself. I'm still feeling bad about that, but figure the little ones at the feeder outside the kitchen window don't really mind.
Last night we went for dinner and some old fashioned folk music at Cafe Carpe--with our flag-waving neighbors across the street.
Noting like a protest rally to get the day off to a good start...
...in Fort Atkinson, in the morning fog. An estimate of 250 on the bridge in this small Wisconsin town.
(The Janowiec family attended the big rally in Madison, where Abby reports the crowd extended the length of State Street from Bascom Hill to the Capitol.)
Heartening to see all the other protests around the country and around the world.
And, on that bright note the sun came out and the thermometer rose into the upper 50s. Good for car washing and some time on two wheels. But worrisome for ice.
Video of the Fort Atkinson protest from the local paper:
All day drizzle.
Our good neighbors across the street, obviously in great distress.
It is my intent to never say two certain words in the same sentence. One of them is president....
And the end of an era, with hope we are not entering a new dark age.
Dinner and a movie (Hidden Figures) with Irene.
Fine afternoon in Fox Point hanging out with Will and Katy. Since Will is in school only a half day, more time with him—time to go for lunch, to visit a hardware store, and for a bike ride, on which we found a ditch and a culvert, through which we launched a flotilla of spruce cones.
Too preoccupied splashing around in icy water to take photos.
Dark and damp, but with the temp above freezing all last night and all day today. Heading out for our mid-morning walk, I decided that enough melting had occurred to render creepers unnecessary. That turned out to be an erroneous decision. Crossing a steep driveway, very carefully, I found an area completely devoid of traction, and went down flat, somewhat surprising both Pax and me. At this point I am saying that no permanent damage was done.
Here is an amazing natural phenomenon, although and unpleasant one. An ash tree, infected with EAB, Emerald Ash Borer. Through some process unknown to me, the dying trees shed their bark—eject their bark—leaving trunks looking like someone had gone at them with a spoke-shave. Close inspection reveals that beneath the shed bark are multitudinous D-shaped holes, the sad signature of EAB.
Wet and slick.
The driveway a slipway. Creepers needed to get around the block. Steady rain all day, freezing when making contact with the hard-frozen ground.
Spalding departure about 3:00, on way back to Fermilab, and eventually Colorado.
...with friends.
Another leisurely breakfast (waffles again, by popular demand). Then over to Pewaukee, where Bri had one of the boats set up, but where there was not the least bit of wind. So, a quick teardown, and then a lively lunch at the Sports Dock.
Drive through the Kettle Moraine on the way home, capped by a climb to the top of Bald Knob.
Leisurely breakfast (my home made buttermilk/buckwheat waffles), then off with Spaldings to Delevan, and then Fontana. It just happened to fall into place (se tombe bien, as they say in France) that we got a private tour of the Yerkes Observatory telescope. Then we walked around George Williams campus and along the Geneva shore for a good way. Then a late lunch at Chuck's, oddly strange with no iceboats out front.
Ice along the Lake Geneva shore, but open farther out. And no wind. Bri did set up on Pewaukee and got in a surprisingly good ride. Maybe wind on Pewaukee tomorow.
Groceries. Cleaning. Some pre-cooking—pickled beets, pastel de elote, tourtiere.
And, making a new squirrel baffle. The one in place the past few weeks was breached yesterday. One particular squirrel made up his mind that he could get over the disc blocking his way up the pole; and with that knowledge, he was able to do it. Of course, word soon got around. The new disc is nearly twice the previous diameter, and we'll see if the power of positive thinking can surmount the insurmountable.
Still cold, and the baro is now way up high, with the needle almost pegged at the top end.
(And everywhere else, too)
A skim of frozen rain overlaid by a dusting of snow, and all that on top of remnant ice sheets. Creepers required.
Visitors are scheduled to arrive tomorrow so we have suddenly noticed all the little things about the house that need attention (and we are attending to them). I believe there is a generalization lurking here, something like: "Guests are the best insurance against squalor," or, "An open door clears the cobwebs." Or something like that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The World Is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon
--William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on the pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Today walking was a mix of art and science.
Nothing if not nuts.
With the temperature slowly rising above freezing the sidewalks were treacherous—sheets of ice in low spots, and mini glaciers sliding down from higher elevations. Even cutting across open ground was difficult—the terra very firma and very rough, with frost-made knobs and protrusions trying hard to turn an ankle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January —John Updike
The days are short,
The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.
Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor.
Milk bottles burst
Outside the door.
The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees of lace.
The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.
Snow only the beginning.
Half pipe, flowing.
Shoveling the one inch or so that fell overnight proved ineffective. But then a roaring south wind driving heavy rain on a rising thermometer took over where we left off, and we were down to bare pavement.
Pax and I walked a truncated loop today, stopping by the post office on our way. I had on my waterproof coat, hat, and gloves; Pax went more au naturel. Arriving home eventually (due to still slippery walking conditions) I remained dry except for my jeans, while Pax, poor fellow, was a dripping, soggy, semi-frozen mass. Fortunately, after a good toweling followed by a good nap in the easy chair by the fake wood-burning stove, he was right as rain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's excerpt from a marvelous poem: Tennyson's Ulysses. Great at any time, but increasing in value the older one gets.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ULYSSES
It little profits that an idle king...
..............................
...There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me
—That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs:
the deep moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
— One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
...and at least one hole, there are ice fishers and geese.
Even here, in little, shallow Cravath Lake, in Whitewater. Today, as Pax and I were making our big loop (chilly, but perfectly bearable, at last) we noted five fishermen and about a thousand geese. The fishermen were silent, the geese loud.
I know where these geese come from (or more precisely, where they no longer go), but what about these guys, and on a Monday? Retired? At leisure? Something worse?
I do believe that if one were to observe any patch of ice bigger than a breadbox, at any time and anywhere that ice had formed, one would find ice fishers and noisy geese. It's in the genes of both species.
And now, as I'm writing this, snow is falling.
To iceboat or not to iceboat, that is the question.
Not here; this is just Whitewater creek.
Not here; this is just Whitewater creek.
One of those typical winter days when you think you should go iceboating but you are pretty sure doing so would be a waste of time. Is the ice good enough, is the temp warm enough (has to be over 10) is there enough wind, etcetera? Today Bri ad I went back an forth for hours but finally decided not to bother—ice not very good, wind very light, and still way too cold.
Old Man Winter is not an easy guy to live with, and is seldom willing to provide decent ice along with bearable temperatures and a modicum of wind. But hope winters eternal. Warmer and windier tomorrow— but with snow, of course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
In January it's so nice,
While slipping on the sliding ice,
To sip hot chicken soup with rice....
—Maurice Sendak