Not Accredited

Upon the occasion of a significant botanical discovery by self (scientist-without-credentials), a friend sent this touching acknowledgement:

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

--George Eliot, Middlemarch

Thoity Poiple Boids

I finally found the version of this poem which I heard when I was young. Original author unknown, I repeat it here as printed in The Optimist (Abilene, Texas), Vol. 30, No. 10, Ed. 1 on Friday, Nov. 20, 1942:
Thoity poiple boids a-sittin' on the coib
A-choipin' and a-boipin' and a-eatin' doity woims
Along comes Boit and a squoit called Goit
Who woiked in a shoit factory in Joisey;
When Boit and the squoit Goit saw the thoity poiple boids
A-sittin' on the coib
A-choipin' and a-boipin' and a-eatin' doity woims,
Boy, was they pertoibed!

Poetry: A Paradigm

Poetry, that deep and vast repository
Wherein all writers put,
Forthwith and forsooth,
All their ideas, good and bad;
Their philosophies, their ardors,
And even so (as always)
Find space for more expressions,
Bold or bland, to endure.

In poetry expressed, the author's words
Are set apart as ornaments
To meter, to form, and to scansion;
Wider here, narrower there,
With each semantic import
(Weighted heavily, of course)
Adapted to the moment,
Reflective of the mood.

Within these strictured lines, fenced and boxed,
Lies each bit which their English teachers
Once forbade, forevermore and always,
As sins too great for penance,
Piety notwithstanding;
And which, for lack of better spots
In fable and parable (parenthetically),
Went unused, excesses;
In poetry, as in no other civilized domain,
Rest the extraneous commas, colons, ellipses and semicolons
Once excised (with force, of course)
From the writer's better prose.

In honor of Robert Burns, I relate this story, passed down to me by me auld mither:

It was during some battle or other, the name of which eludes me at the moment, that a British commander sent a battalion of his men over the top of McPhee's Hill to slaughter the Scots. He expected the battle to be brief, yet as he stood gazing in anticipation of his men's return, he was disappointed. Not a single man came back from the foray.

Again he sent out his soldiers, two full battalions this time. Dust from the foray lifted above the green slopes of McPhee's Hill, but once again, the commander waited vainly. Not a single survivor returned.

Thinking that by now the Scots must have been exhausted with fighting, but still uncertain of victory, the commander again sent out men: five battalions! His reputation was at stake, and the Queen's honor and such.

Sounds of battle filled the air. The sky darkened with the dust of war. The commander waited...and waited...and at long last, one lone soldier crawled back into camp, bleeding and battered and near death. With his last breath as he lay at his commander's feet, he voiced these words: "There...there are...TWO of them!"

You have to laugh.

When I cancelled my dinosaurian dial-up service a month ago, I was just a couple of hours into the new billing cycle, so yesterday I got my final bill: $0.64. It took two sheets of paper to spell it all out, plus an envelope, plus the postage, just to bill me for $0.64. Strangely, this phenomenal sum was not automatically withdrawn from my bank account as my monthly bills had been, theoretically because it was not equal to the exact amount I had previously authorized.

So what's to do? Do I write them a check, stick it in an envelope, put a $0.44 cent stamp on it? No, I decided I'd call them in the hopes of either authorizing a draft from my bank account, or maybe...just maybe!...they'd write it off.

The gal on the other end had a good laugh and wrote it off without my suggesting it. We chuckled over the amount of paper and time involved, and then she said,

"You'll probably get another statement in February showing a zero balance."

OMG. What strange times these are!

Y'see, it wasn't so much that I wanted or needed a nap. It was that the Boy needed a cuddle, and his favorite position is curled up on my chest. Not in my lap like a normal cat, no...laying on my chest with one of my arms making a bend and my hand holding his rump and the other hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Obviously, this is not a position conducive to any other project like, say, reading a book or doing beadwork. There's just so much staying-awake you can do when both of your hands are occupied and something is radiating delta waves at you.

With the Big Kitty, it's different. She likes to sleep with her fanny in my lap and the rest of the cat spread out long with the head down at my knees as I rest my feet on the footstool. Because she is rather large and rather broad, this is similar to being under a 102° electric blanket. Once again, there is the issue of delta-wave radiation, and of course being under a warm, furry (albeit heavy) blanket doesn't contribute to a general state of wakefulness. The stormy season has its secret joys, and naps with friends are among them.

I have just come in from digging your classic American hole.

As we all know, the Crow cannot grow vegetables. The Crow flunked both zucchini and radishes. They are vegetables, therefore they will not grow in Crow's garden. Last year and the year before, I fooled some tomatoes into thinking they were flowers by virtue of sticking them in a giant flowerpot sunk to its waist in the flowerbed. Tomatoes never were too long on brains, so the ruse worked.

Vegetables are foodstuffs. On this matter, we must surely agree. One would not refer to a fir tree as a vegetable, nor to your grandmother's rhododendron in such a wise, and surely even nasturtiums (although edible) are never referred to as being of the vegetable persuasion. A gourd is not edible. No matter how long you cook them, gourds remain as inedible as the day you picked them off the vine.

I have tried to grow gourds before, but they had apparently been keeping company with some vegetables and had heard rumors about Crow's garden. Rather than go against the trend, they simply did in Rome as Romans do and refused...flatly...to grow.

Given this history, you would wonder why the Crow would spend $1.49 on a package of mixed gourd seeds. It's because of global warming.

You see, I have the idea that I might be able to convince these rather decorative plants ("plants," mind you...not vegetables) that they have sufficient warmth and nutrients to be quite comfortable until maturity with their feet in the hole with which I began this tale. Yes, I will have to add more dirt to the hole because at present, it qualifies more as a pit than a plot of land, but the mole has been rather busy of late and I have no dearth of dirt. I just wish the little bugger would sift the rocks out, but never mind. He's doing the best he can with limited equipment.

Thus, the next phase is to build a gourd tower. I wish to provide well for my tenants. But that's a project for another day. Presently, I am content to admire in all its hopeful promise the hole where once stood a ragamuffin, wretchedly unlovely rose.