Poetry Sunday: Two poems

Robert Louis Stevenson was one of the most popular writers of his time, the Victorian Age, and he is still often quoted today. 

Stevenson was a rather sickly person and, apparently, the thought of death was much on his mind. Several years before his death, he wrote this famous poem, part of which was eventually used as his epitaph.

Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die,     And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea,     And the hunter home from the hill. Curiously, when the poem is quoted today, the person who is quoting it will often remember it as "Home is the sailor, home from THE sea." But in fact, in the original poem, Stevenson did not use the definite article to describe the place from which the sailor had returned. Later, the English poet, A.E. Housman wrote a poem in tribute to Stevenson and his Requiem. It, too, is often quoted, and people sometimes mistakenly think that the lines which he reuses here originated with him. Home Is the Sailor by A. E. Housman Home is the sailor, home from sea: Her far-borne canvas furled The ship pours shining on the quay The plunder of the world. Home is the hunter from the hill: Fast in the boundless snare All flesh lies taken at his will And every fowl of air. 'Tis evening on the moorland free, The starlit wave is still: Home is the sailor from the sea, The hunter from the hill.

Are you ready for some football?

Okay, I'm not really a football fan. I'm more inclined to watch the Puppy Bowl than the Super Bowl, but I confess I love this.

It seems that two of our long-time favorite Sirs, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart are ready for some football - in all its forms. Sir Ian seems to be pulling for a Broncos victory and Sir Patrick is hoping for the Seahawks to win.

Patrick Stewart        ✔

You gotta love those expressions!

And even though I'm not really a football fan, as I've mentioned here before, I am a Manning family fan, so I'll be hoping that Peyton can prevail. One more time.

Happy Year of the Horse!

It is New Year's Day of the year 4712 in the Chinese calendar. It is the beginning of the Year of the Horse. So happy New Year!

The Chinese calendar is an interesting way of perceiving and reckoning the passage of time. The month is determined by the phases of the moon. Each month begins with a New Moon, the darkest time of the moon's passage. Last night saw a New Moon and so today begins the New Year.

Chinese New Year festivities are not just a one day or one night affair. They start on the first day of the month and last until the fifteenth, when the moon is full and at its brightest. Traditionally, the Chinese people might take weeks to prepare for and celebrate this holiday, and, in some places, they still do.

One of the most interesting things - to me - about the Chinese calendar is the concept of naming each year after an animal and attributing to people born in that year the supposed characteristics of that animal. Those born in one of the Years of the Horse, for example, are supposed to be good with their hands, witty, perceptive, skillful with money, and cheerful.

There are twelve animal years in the Chinese zodiac and, of course, there is a legend behind that.

The legend is that, in ancient times, the Buddha invited all the animals to meet him on the first day of the New Year. Twelve of the animals came and the Buddha honored them by naming a year after each one and stating that those born in each animal's year would share some of the characteristics of that animal's personality.

The zodiac occurs within a regular twelve year cycle, beginning with the Year of the Rat and ending with the Year of the Pig. Here is that cycle along with some of the traits which people born in those years supposedly share.

Animal Personality Traits

• Rat: quick-witted, smart, charming, and persuasive

• Ox: patient, kind, stubborn, and conservative

• Tiger: authoritative, emotional, courageous, and intense

• Rabbit: popular, compassionate, and sincere

• Dragon: energetic, fearless, warm-hearted, and charismatic

• Snake: charming, gregarious, introverted, generous, and smart

• Horse: energetic, independent, impatient, and enjoy traveling

• Sheep: mild-mannered, shy, kind, and peace-loving

• Monkey: fun, energetic, and active

• Rooster: independent, practical, hard-working, and observant

• Dog: patient, diligent, generous, faithful, and kind

• Pig: loving, tolerant, honest, and appreciative of luxury

Looking at my own family, I have two roosters and I, myself, am a monkey.  But my older daughter is a horse, so this is her year. Energetic, independent, impatient, and happy traveler that she is, I can only hope that the year 4712 is an especially good one for her.

And for you, too. Happy Year of the Horse!

  

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly: A review

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This third entry in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series begins as a courtroom thriller. Four years before, Harry had killed a man believed to be the Dollmaker, a serial killer of women. Now the man's wife is suing  Harry for wrongful death in the case. She is being represented by one of the premier civil rights lawyers in Los Angeles, a woman who is not used to losing. Harry is being represented by a city attorney who is not in the same league with her. His chances do not look good.

At the time Harry had killed the man, it was believed that he was responsible for the murders of eleven women, but at the beginning of his civil trial, evidence becomes known that seems to indicate that two of the later victims may actually have been killed by someone else. And now a third body has been found that follows the pattern of the other murders - a woman who was killed at least two years after the death of the Dollmaker. The inevitable conclusion is that there's a serial killer still out there, one who is copying the work of the Dollmaker.

The action in the court was fascinating and I thought Connelly was particularly adept at his sketching of the characters and personalities of the various people who were involved. The court case takes up about three-fourths of the book, during which Harry's attention is divided between what is happening there and the investigation of the newly discovered serial killings. The whole purpose of his life is to put bad guys away and so he is obsessed with this new investigation, to the point of giving very little concern or attention to the outcome of his trial.

In the latter part of the book, both sides in the case have rested and Harry is able to join the task force investigating the killings full time. Then the book's action begins to pick up speed.

Throughout all of this, we get to learn a bit more of Bosch's back story and also his present relationship with Sylvia, the widow of a cop whose alleged suicide he had investigated in the last book. That relationship has intensified and it seems that Sylvia may be a keeper. If Harry can manage to keep from pushing her away.

Finding the copycat killer, known as the Follower, is a daunting task. There are so many possible suspects. The killer has to have been someone with intimate knowledge of the Dollmaker murders. Could it be a cop? Someone from the Medical Examiner's office?  A reporter who wrote about the cases? A psychologist who studied the cases and advised the police, helping to create a profile of the potential murderer?

In addition to the overwhelming number of possible suspects, there is the fact that time has passed while the perpetrator went undetected. Time that may have destroyed clues. It's impossible to even know how many victims there might be. Are there more than three?

Harry puts his analytical mind to finding answers to all of these questions and, relatively soon, comes up with someone who fits the profile and who just might be their killer. The reader soon suspects that he is barking up the wrong tree and, through the skillful use of various red herrings, we are led to believe that we have solved the case and that we know the true murderer. But it turns out we are just as misled as Harry, and the ending, after another particularly brutal killing, comes as a surprise.

I felt the plotting and the character development in The Concrete Blonde were especially strong, more so than in the two previous books. This has to be my favorite in the series so far.      


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Climatologists explain it all

Some parts of the country continue to be hit by some pretty freaky cold winter weather. How can this be happening if global warming is for real and not a hoax as the right-wing deniers claim? Well, very easily actually.

Here's a short film that was put together with input from several meteorologists that explains it all rather succinctly.

Pity the poor billionaire

There has been a lot of comment about the letter from billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins that the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal thought was important enough to give space in their newspaper recently.

Oh, you haven't heard about this? Well, in his letter, Perkins compared today's "progressive radicalism," by which he apparently means having the richest one-percent among us pay a fair share in taxes, to Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews.  Specifically, he made reference to the Nazis' attack on Jews and Jewish businesses known as Kristallnacht. The final paragraph of his letter seems to sum up his thought processes:

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?  

Of all the comments that I have seen on this, I think it is best answered by Jen Sorensen in a cartoon in today's Daily Kos. (A cartoon does seem the most appropriate way to answer him.)



And on a related subject, have you noticed how people of a certain line of political thought are always comparing everything they don't approve of to Naziism? Either that or Communism - and sometimes both in the same sentence. It's evident that they have no understanding of the meaning of either philosophy, or else - what is more likely - they simply have no concern for the truth. These are the same kind of people who compare the Duck Dynasty guy to Rosa Parks or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or who say that something like offering all Americans a chance at getting health care is just like slavery!

Truly, at times I do despair for this country.

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley: A review

The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Alan Bradley's eleven-year-old (almost twelve, as she constantly reminds us) budding chemist/detective, Flavia de Luce, is a charming creation in one of the most innovative of recent cozy mystery series. In the sixth entry of the series, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, Flavia is still charming, but the plot seems a bit contrived and strained, and by halfway through the book, I just wanted to get it over with.  Overall, I still rather enjoyed it - if I could give it two-and-a-half stars, I would, but since I can't, I'll opt for the more generous three stars - but it definitely was not one of my favorites.

There are two related mysteries for Flavia to solve this time. First, who pushed the man under the wheels of the moving train in the English village of Bishop's Lacey? Or was he pushed? Did he simply stumble and fall?

Second, the reason that all the village had turned out at the train station to meet the train was that Flavia's mother was coming home on it.

Actually, Flavia's mother's body was being sent home on it. Flavia's mother had died in a fall in the Himalayas ten years earlier and her body had just recently been found. The question now is, was her fall an accident or was she pushed?

It becomes evident that the sainted Harriet, Flavia's mother, was a spy for England and that she was on a mission at the time that she died. It seems very likely that her death was no accident, but how will Flavia ever prove that or find the person responsible for her death?

A few minutes before the death of the man at the railway station, he had whispered a cryptic message into Flavia's ear. Winston Churchill is also at the train station and he, too, speaks to Flavia using words that make no sense at the time. Later, when she finds some old film and develops it, it reveals her mother mouthing to the camera the same phrase used by Churchill. What is the connection? What is the meaning of that cryptic phrase?

Flavia, of course, is intrigued and must get to the bottom of the mystery, but meantime, she hatches a plan that she hopes will resurrect her dead mother who has been encased in ice for ten years. Yes, this eleven-year-old girl is convinced that she knows how to raise the dead, and she is determined to do it in order to put a smile on the face of her dour, tragically unhappy, and much-loved father. As I said, it all seems just a bit contrived and a stretch even for so imaginative a creature as Flavia.  

In this book, we meet the same characters that we've come to know in previous series entries. The wonderful and mysterious (at least to Flavia) Dogger, the family's general factotum. Aunt Felicity, Flavia's father's sister, who it seems also had a role to play in the intelligence service of her country during World War II. Mrs. Mullet, the housekeeper/cook who keeps the family going through all manner of trials and tragedies. And, of course, the two older hated/loved sisters, Daphne (Daffy) and Ophelia (Feely), and all the villagers that Flavia regularly comes in contact with.

But here we also get introduced to a couple of new de Luce family members, cousin Lena and her young daughter, Undine. Undine seems a very precocious child in the same mold as Flavia and I suspect we will be seeing much more of her in future books.    


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