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Not strong enough to keep me from running off to Boston
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asakiyume has just sent me a black-and-white ink painting of my poem "The Description of a Wish," the Arlecchino/Dottore poem which will appear in the next issue of Mythic Delirium. She tells me it falls short of her imaginings, but I still think I will flatten it out—the folded canvas paper has a heavy, official feel—and frame it. And hope she took a picture first, because time_shark needs to see it.
2. Yesterday was . . . surprisingly intense. There had been a flyby of relatives while I was in Providence this weekend and a combination of travel snafu that prevented my now eight-year-old cousin Tristen from seeing me before his family drove up to Portland on Sunday, so he was turned loose into my care for the day while his mother and grandparents visited my grandfather. I took him to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, where I think he liked best the Kronosaurus and the new permanent exhibit on New England forests; he asked me questions about the glass flowers and taxidermy and for a gift, he picked a caramel-colored sea urchin out of a bowl of small, polished fossils. And then we left the museum to find him a snack and I think Cambridge happened to us. There was a farmer's market going on outside the Science Center: Tristen wanted a brioche and the guys from When Pigs Fly (who had driven down that morning from York, Maine) gave us half a loaf of chocolate bread for free, even before I had decided that it was morally incumbent upon me to purchase the mango pineapple sesame ginger bread. We stepped into Harvard Yard: a group of MIT students with all sorts of recording equipment asked if they could interview me about extraterrestrial life, and when I warned them that I was neither a Harvard student nor otherwise affiliated with the university, they assured me that was perfect—they were looking for the opinions of people on the street—and I felt like a total ringer, especially when I heard myself saying things like well, SETI, of course, but I've been out of touch with radio astronomy for years and chemosynthetic bacteria, probably and alluding to Wayne Barlowe, the frozen oceans of Europa, and the serious unlikelihood of sexy mammalian bipeds, especially blue-skinned ones on a planet where everything else breathes through spiracles and has more than four limbs. (They couldn't promise my footage would be used in the eventual exhibit, but it is supposed to open somewhere at MIT in August and I'll be curious just to see what the results were.) There was ice cream from Lizzy's and a chocolate penguin from Burdick's and a logical progression between these two. I hadn't even known of the existence of Kofuku, but Tristen spotted a Totoro poster in their stairwell as we were walking toward Mass. Ave. and insisted on going downstairs to look at the rest of the shop, where I had a very nice conversation with the proprietor and Tristen decided that he wants to see Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). He had Japan on the brain after that, so I took him for chicken katsu-don at Tampopo in the Porter Exchange, with extra seaweed on the side. We walked about a third of the way home. Probably the real miracle is that he wasn't sick. Everyone else was having pizza from Za when we got back; and after much discussion of the next visit (I have threatened Tristen with the Museum of Bad Art), eventually left around ten at night. I fell over. This is a blurry summary, but you get the idea. My aunt Cheryl thinks the MIT students were aliens, but I think that would be too reasonable.
3. I am nonetheless looking forward to the arrival ofgaudior and rushthatspeaks later today, partly because we are planning on dinner at Asmara—I think I've been in kitfo withdrawal since about 2006—and mostly because I haven't seen both of them together since last July. It will be nice to get some time to hang out before Readercon hits.
4. I am always interested in which aspects of a book or a film stick with me and which, for their own curious reasons, do not: like the fact that I never remember that Kipling's Kim isn't mixed-race, or that time last spring when I re-read The Grey King (1975) for the first time in years and realized I had completely, bizarrely forgotten Owen Davies. In a similar vein, I don't remember noticing him terribly when we were shown the film in eighth grade, but the last two times I've watched 1776 (1972) I've found myself paying attention to John Dickinson, the Pennsylvania delegate who famously advocated reconciliation with England rather than revolution against her, even to refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence, knowing it would finish him in the Continental Congress. (He chose nonetheless to serve in the Continental Army, fighting in the defense of what he believed was a lost and misguided cause; an all the more impressive dedication when one remembers that Dickinson was brought up Quaker. Eventually he ended up President of Delaware and Pennsylvania, but no one could have predicted that.) Consequently he figures in the musical as Adams' primary antagonist, our hero's equal and opposite in principle, obstinacy, and intelligence, although there's a silkiness and a self-assurance to Dickinson that sits less well with a contemporary audience than the monumental abrasiveness of John Adams, especially when joined with the Pennsylvanian's investment in the status quo. We say this game's not of our choosing, Dickinson encourages his allies in "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men," the number that Nixon ordered not only deleted from the master print of the film, but the negatives destroyed—saved only through the grace of the editor's assistant, who made copies and stored them somewhere nearly as implausible as a broom closet in Argentina—Why should we risk losing? He's played by Donald Madden, a slender, greying chestnut-curled Shakespearean with a sardonic cat's mouth that draws wryly when it smiles and a lazy curl to his voice; we see him out of countenance only three times, once when it's funny, once when it's frightening, and once when it's unexpectedly moving. He's nothing to touch Paul Hecht (who originated the role onstage) as a singer, but what he lacks in sonority he makes up for in ironic wire and he looks splendid in a coat of moss-green brocade. It's the actor's only feature film—he died in 1983 of lung cancer, saith IMDb, or AIDS-related complications, saith other sources on the internet, aged either forty-nine or fifty-four. I should like to have seen more of him. And John Dickinson is an admirable record to leave behind; I'm just intrigued that it took me years to notice him. I knew I loved William Daniels' John Adams straight off.
5. I should go do some more Nokia. The rest of this week: not going to be conducive to work. I am already so damn tired.
asakiyume has just sent me a black-and-white ink painting of my poem "The Description of a Wish," the Arlecchino/Dottore poem which will appear in the next issue of Mythic Delirium. She tells me it falls short of her imaginings, but I still think I will flatten it out—the folded canvas paper has a heavy, official feel—and frame it. And hope she took a picture first, because time_shark needs to see it.2. Yesterday was . . . surprisingly intense. There had been a flyby of relatives while I was in Providence this weekend and a combination of travel snafu that prevented my now eight-year-old cousin Tristen from seeing me before his family drove up to Portland on Sunday, so he was turned loose into my care for the day while his mother and grandparents visited my grandfather. I took him to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, where I think he liked best the Kronosaurus and the new permanent exhibit on New England forests; he asked me questions about the glass flowers and taxidermy and for a gift, he picked a caramel-colored sea urchin out of a bowl of small, polished fossils. And then we left the museum to find him a snack and I think Cambridge happened to us. There was a farmer's market going on outside the Science Center: Tristen wanted a brioche and the guys from When Pigs Fly (who had driven down that morning from York, Maine) gave us half a loaf of chocolate bread for free, even before I had decided that it was morally incumbent upon me to purchase the mango pineapple sesame ginger bread. We stepped into Harvard Yard: a group of MIT students with all sorts of recording equipment asked if they could interview me about extraterrestrial life, and when I warned them that I was neither a Harvard student nor otherwise affiliated with the university, they assured me that was perfect—they were looking for the opinions of people on the street—and I felt like a total ringer, especially when I heard myself saying things like well, SETI, of course, but I've been out of touch with radio astronomy for years and chemosynthetic bacteria, probably and alluding to Wayne Barlowe, the frozen oceans of Europa, and the serious unlikelihood of sexy mammalian bipeds, especially blue-skinned ones on a planet where everything else breathes through spiracles and has more than four limbs. (They couldn't promise my footage would be used in the eventual exhibit, but it is supposed to open somewhere at MIT in August and I'll be curious just to see what the results were.) There was ice cream from Lizzy's and a chocolate penguin from Burdick's and a logical progression between these two. I hadn't even known of the existence of Kofuku, but Tristen spotted a Totoro poster in their stairwell as we were walking toward Mass. Ave. and insisted on going downstairs to look at the rest of the shop, where I had a very nice conversation with the proprietor and Tristen decided that he wants to see Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984). He had Japan on the brain after that, so I took him for chicken katsu-don at Tampopo in the Porter Exchange, with extra seaweed on the side. We walked about a third of the way home. Probably the real miracle is that he wasn't sick. Everyone else was having pizza from Za when we got back; and after much discussion of the next visit (I have threatened Tristen with the Museum of Bad Art), eventually left around ten at night. I fell over. This is a blurry summary, but you get the idea. My aunt Cheryl thinks the MIT students were aliens, but I think that would be too reasonable.
3. I am nonetheless looking forward to the arrival of
gaudior and rushthatspeaks later today, partly because we are planning on dinner at Asmara—I think I've been in kitfo withdrawal since about 2006—and mostly because I haven't seen both of them together since last July. It will be nice to get some time to hang out before Readercon hits.4. I am always interested in which aspects of a book or a film stick with me and which, for their own curious reasons, do not: like the fact that I never remember that Kipling's Kim isn't mixed-race, or that time last spring when I re-read The Grey King (1975) for the first time in years and realized I had completely, bizarrely forgotten Owen Davies. In a similar vein, I don't remember noticing him terribly when we were shown the film in eighth grade, but the last two times I've watched 1776 (1972) I've found myself paying attention to John Dickinson, the Pennsylvania delegate who famously advocated reconciliation with England rather than revolution against her, even to refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence, knowing it would finish him in the Continental Congress. (He chose nonetheless to serve in the Continental Army, fighting in the defense of what he believed was a lost and misguided cause; an all the more impressive dedication when one remembers that Dickinson was brought up Quaker. Eventually he ended up President of Delaware and Pennsylvania, but no one could have predicted that.) Consequently he figures in the musical as Adams' primary antagonist, our hero's equal and opposite in principle, obstinacy, and intelligence, although there's a silkiness and a self-assurance to Dickinson that sits less well with a contemporary audience than the monumental abrasiveness of John Adams, especially when joined with the Pennsylvanian's investment in the status quo. We say this game's not of our choosing, Dickinson encourages his allies in "Cool, Cool, Considerate Men," the number that Nixon ordered not only deleted from the master print of the film, but the negatives destroyed—saved only through the grace of the editor's assistant, who made copies and stored them somewhere nearly as implausible as a broom closet in Argentina—Why should we risk losing? He's played by Donald Madden, a slender, greying chestnut-curled Shakespearean with a sardonic cat's mouth that draws wryly when it smiles and a lazy curl to his voice; we see him out of countenance only three times, once when it's funny, once when it's frightening, and once when it's unexpectedly moving. He's nothing to touch Paul Hecht (who originated the role onstage) as a singer, but what he lacks in sonority he makes up for in ironic wire and he looks splendid in a coat of moss-green brocade. It's the actor's only feature film—he died in 1983 of lung cancer, saith IMDb, or AIDS-related complications, saith other sources on the internet, aged either forty-nine or fifty-four. I should like to have seen more of him. And John Dickinson is an admirable record to leave behind; I'm just intrigued that it took me years to notice him. I knew I loved William Daniels' John Adams straight off.
5. I should go do some more Nokia. The rest of this week: not going to be conducive to work. I am already so damn tired.
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I do have a scanner here, too, so that was really stupid of me. I was in full must-post-this-now-or-I-likely-never-will mode, and was hasty.
I hope Tristen likes Nausicaa. I love that movie.
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Right; I'll see what I can do with a camera.
I hope Tristen likes Nausicaa. I love that movie.
He loved Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro, so I am thinking the chances are good. I've never seen it myself; my introduction to Miyazaki has been very scattershot.
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Indeed!
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Right; there could be much better photographs of this painting, but this is the one you get tonight.
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See? Help me convince
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Well done,
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And speaking of awesomosity, I am so madly looking foward to
Nine
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Also, WAND, TCHEW, FREE has in fact been achieved on a cognitive level. With blueberries. She needed all FREE of them.
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Give the mathematician a hug for me.
Thank you.
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Have fun at Readercon.
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We got there around six-thirty and left . . . probably forty-five minutes later? If so, I'm sorry I didn't see you!
Have fun at Readercon.
Working on it!
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I'm in Boston until the 23rd, so if you are in town next week, it would be great to see you.
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That's really neat. What is known about him now?
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I'm glad for all the lovely things, the visits and the brilliant person-on-the-street interview, which I very much hope gets shown in the exhibit, even if it does make folk think you a ringer.
I'm sorry you're already tired. (I came into Irish Arts Week already tired, myself. I hope you can get more rest than I've managed.)
Last night I was at a singing session with Tony Roberts. He's apparently a friend of various folk with whom I'm friendly. A lot of folk whom I'd wish to have heard didn't get a chance to sing, and neither did I myself, but I'm very glad to have heard him sing in person and from two places away. He sang "Jim Jones," or at least I think that's the title--an English transportation ballad.
Cos I'm an eejit, and also can't edit
Make that
TonyJohn Roberts.He's so associated in my mind with Tony Barrand, and it seems I can't do much right. Mea culpa.