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In 1977 I did a paper for my Human Factors in Engineering class; its title was “Work’s End.” In it I predicted that, given the advent of industrial robots and the mundanity and ignobility of conventional blue-collar toil, manual labor and “work” in the conventional sense would not last the century. The instructor, University of Arizona professor Russell Ferrell, annotated the B grade he gave my paper with his impression that though my premise was interesting, he didn’t think we’d get all the bugs out of “the Problem of Production” by my deadline.

And here it is, 2013, and part of my current job is folding napkins for an independent-living retirement community, and I am glad I was wrong. Of the many ways to render aid and comfort to the aged, hand-folding napkins to enhance their dining experience is seemingly trifling, but circumstantial evidence that they are special. I feel privileged to fold those hundred per night. They are a lovely purple, which also connotes the specialness of royalty. (I’ve color-enhanced my drawing to make it match that hue as close as I can.)

I imagine some readers smiling and thinking how pathetic this particular napkin-folder must be, trying to make such a drab endeavor out to be noble. I stand by my notion.

Here are the words to the acrostic, changing the spelling of UFO to its phonetic pronunciation to avoid confusion:

Nimble Jack, be deft–don’t goof
As e l u s i v e as an Oof-O
Perfect crease ain’t taught in school
Knappa: foe from Chester Gould
If i n e p t i t u d e ‘ s severe
Nab some cloth & dry a tear

NOTE: Chester Gould was the cartoonist who created Dick Tracy. He also created a multitude of bizarre characters–see the Warren Beatty movie Dick Tracy for samples. Here I’ve imagined Knappa, a villain who employs napkins in the binding of his kidnapping victims.

I hope the subtext of my page and these notes comes across, but I’m not proud: let me explicate. We are all headed for old age, if we’re lucky. We all need taking care of, and we get it, if we’re lucky. Part of being taken care of is life’s assurance that we deserve attention and dignity. The little touches of assurance may loom as large as the big ones, especially for people facing mortality.

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Hiking here in the Verde Valley is usually quite civilized. Many of the trails are marked by cairns of red (and sometimes not-so-red) rock in a containment matrix of baling (or not-so-baling) wire. From any cairn but the first and last, a hiker will be able to see the cairn preceding and the cairn ahead. Life would be more navigable if there were decision-cairns and opportunity-cairns. Come to think of it, there are, if the astute observer looks and listens.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

Climbing guide is brac-a-bric
An auspicious rock piled trick–O
If we gain a mountain’s top
R I S E with summitry & pop, I
Now sing kudos chop chop choppa

Trivia: “kudos” means “praise.” It is singular. “Kudos” is also the name of the Arts supplement of the Red Rock News, a local publication.

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Once upon a time I was an Administrative Vice President of a multi-million-dollar corporation. Once upon another time I was an Office Administrator for the second largest sportsmarketing firm in the United States. Once upon yet another time I was an Administrative Coordinator for a major hospital system. And once upon last night I was a Clerk. Such is life.

Here are the words to the apical double acrostic:

Apply for admission
Edit curriculum vitae
Remit acceptance fee
Oblige supplemental demanders
Demand forensic accounting
Yelp if overwhelmed
Nod passively appropriately
Anticipate critical junctures
Moderate riled debates
Irritate naysaying fatalists
Complicate tired traditions
Initiate decisive strategems
Start successor search
Take a vacation

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I was graduated from Glendale High School deep in a previous century, but I still remember the fight song (“Fight on, Cards, for dear old Glendale/We know you will not fail/Show [other team] what we’re here for/And make them sad and sore…” On reflection, a bit mean-spirited, eh?). I only remember the first two lines of the Alma Mater, which smacked suspiciously of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: “All praise to thee, O Glendale High/To you our voices raise…”

About three and a half weeks ago I had a blog entry featuring a quick sketch of me and some of my classmates. It went over well, especially with my classmates, one of whom encouraged me to do more; so this is more.

Last time I identified everyone, This time we’ll see who knows who, although I did identify one of us…

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Good Gosh, I had great fun indeed
Lost time regained & guaranteed–a
Eucharist gives one stray soul
Not blandishments but odd parole

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There is plenty to worry about in this twenty-first century. But some of us are hard-wired to worry no matter what; and at some point the Worry mechanism robs a soul of the ability to do something about what is causing the Worry in the first place. Such has been my lot since 1961 when, as a second-grade student in Miss Wolf’s class, I failed to finish an assignment about what kind of questions might be asked around Thanksgiving (example: “May I have some more turkey, please?”) because I worried that I might not come up with the ten Miss Wolf required. You’d think the Apocalypse had started, the way that got to me.

Fifty-one years later, I am more mellow, less apocalyptic, more productive, and less dire-predictive. Either I gained wisdom or I gave up.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

WOE betides the Worry-Wart from cradle to estate
OMINOUS are Signs&Portents–onerousness great
Rigor Mortis–Nostradamus–yes, the end is nigh
Richilieus & Looky-Lous will hit you in the I
Yet the fine print indicates there is no need to panic
Yggdrasil & Gilgamesh prove Doom is merely Manic

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This page is about Sainthood–Sainthood in my book, anyway. The prime criterion for Sainthood, seems to me, is Kindness. So I surround my four modest acrosticized lines with eight of the Kindest people I know, and I draw two of them.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

O Saints who call Urchins ma cher/mon petit
No matter if helping O. Twist or Pu Yi
Come teach us a lesson on living a Dream
Enfolded in Kindness with Love as its theme

Here are the people I’ve listed:

Judy Green-Davis
Jack Evans
Charlene Sims
Dick Wilkinson
Diane Norrbom
Cary Stoneman
Barbara Mills
Brian Bowers

Judy, either about to be ordained or just ordained, is married to Jack, “the Godfather of Phoenix poetry,” who’s been a volunteer at an assisted living center and who hosts both poetry events and movie viewings. Charlene, also known as Starry Bright, taught me an important lesson in empathy with her blog post about the three gatekeepers we need before we say anything. Dick Wilkinson is a ninety-two-years-young philosopher and raconteur, gentle and wise. Diane Norrbom is one of our family matriarchs and a goddess of nurturing. Cary stood by me and calmed my nervousness on my wedding day, December 10, 1988, and has given of himself to family and friends numberless times before and since. Barbara, also known as Hobbit, has made a career of elementary-school teaching, and her poetry reveals extraordinary depths of wisdom and caring. Brian, my brother both biologically and spiritually, nursed our grandfather in the last months of his life, comforting a dying man in great pain as no other could. Whatever I can do to honor these fine people, it’s not enough.

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Yesterday was as bouncearound as a pinball machine. It was my daughter’s birthday, so Denise and I left Sedona before 7am, joining daughter Kate; her mother, my former wife Joni; my mother; and her husband, my stepfather Marty, for a 9am breakfast at Coco’s in central Phoenix. Denise and I went straight from breakfast back to Sedona, I caught an hour’s sleep, then I worked a five-hour shift at the Village Gallery, where dwell certain ceramica of mine. Home by seven-thirty p.m., quick dinner crafted by Denise, viewing an episode of CRACKER, which stars Robbie Coltrane, known the world over as Hagrid of the Harry Potter series, another hour’s sleep, than off to my nighttime day job, working 11pm to 7am. Somehow before I left for work I did this page.

Here are the words to the acrostic:

The right words can make a career
Hold demons at bay with no fear
Empower; ennoble, help steer
Some phrases turn jelly to stone
Assist an ascension; enthrone
Usurp human will unto drone
Remonstrances may cure the lax
Upenders oft thrill to the max
Still–ACTION lets hearts and moons wax

As Mark Twain says, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.” ‘Nuff said!

From top to bottom, and left to right:

First there is a sandwich. “Home is where the Cardioid is” is the bread, and that heart-shaped function dubbed the Cardioid is the meat. Then is the classic, simple equation f=ma: Force equals Mass times Acceleration. To its immediate right is the example of a gun firing a bullet. When a bullet is stopped, it accelerates its mass of lead from, say, 1000 ft/sec to 0 ft/sec in very little time–a forceful wallop indeed.

Next is the Math Thematics acrostic:

Mapping reality calls 4 sum thought
Minds hear the challenge [congruent-] equals flame 4 a moth

Antwerp, Armenia, Cannes, Chillicothe

Tackrooms & classrms & Batcaves by Gotham
Teach us Utopia–give us Golgotha

Here be the dragons of all & of naught
Here asymptotes may be deadly as Gotti
Half-solved equations turn sum cyanotic
Heroes’ resolve gives us answers by lots

Under the first acrostic is a gap described (and, ironically, filled) [discontinuity]. One example of a discontinuity is when the curve of a graph shoots upward to infinity and then an infinitesimal smidge to the right comes up from the depths of negative infinity.

Under the ungap is a Mathematical quadruple acrostic:

Menthol-vaporic
Arrangements–a
Testimonial thrill

Menthol-Vaporic doesn’t quite rhyme with Euphoric, so it becomes the best phrase I can come up with to describe the frustrating ecstasy Mathematical matters have provided me over the years.

To the acrostic’s right is a graphicrepresentation of the square root of minus one, also known as i. To its right is a pirate intoning “i, lad!”

Under the second acrostic is an imagined bumper sticker that reads “Σ: That sums it up.” Σ, the Greek alphabet letter known as Sigma, is the mathematical symbol for summation.

To the bumper sticker’s right (and the pirate’s left) is an equation which reads Infinity divided by Zero does not equal Anything. And, indeed, Anything, including Zero AND Infinity, divided by Zero is what the mathematics realm deems Undefined. However, I vaguely recall from second-semester Calculus taken about thirty-six years ago that there’s something called L’Hôpital’s Rule which allows us to skate around such obstacles in special cases. (Interested parties may do a search on YouTube; I just discovered, in obtaining via search the proper circumflex-and-all spelling of “L’Hôpital,” that there’s an introductory video in YouTubeVille.)

Under the equation is the final, fudgy triple acrostic “Math Them At[t]ics”:

Millennia dictate melancholia
As a threshold means an entrant
The quad takes the quadratic
Humanity’s limits are curves

Finally, at bottom is my signature and date.

I leave meaning-derivation as an exercise for the student. Good luck with that, Friend!

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I have known Jack Suda since early grade school. He was the first Asian person I ever saw, live; and my unknowing kid-brain thought there was something terribly wrong with him, just as it thought the air had been let out of my ninety-year-old great-grandmother’s breasts the first time I saw her. But back to Jack. He was a raconteur before his teens, which seems impossible; he could talk about the most pedestrian thing and infuse it with storytelling magic. Several times I had the privilege of sitting in the afternoon at Glendale High School, waiting for the late bus to come, listening spellbound to Jack spin the tapestry of recent days. And all I can clearly remember of all that talk, forty years later, is the phrase “Coke bottle.”

The photo source of this page is from shots taken at a mini-high-school-reunion a couple of weeks ago. Since we last saw each other Jack has been a bodybuilder and a resort-level chef. His vitality, and his face a little, reminds me of Keye Luke in the classic TV series KUNG FU.