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About ten years ago I read John Steinbeck’s TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY IN SEARCH OF AMERICA. Mr. Steinbeck and his dog, a “standard” (tall) French poodle, lived the gypsy life in a beat-up camper, years before Charles Kuralt went “On the Road” for CBS. I remember vividly Mr. Steinbeck’s description of bigotry in a group he called “the cheerleaders;” the rest is a vague blur. But the idea of traveling with a dog appeals to me. I would want to do it on foot, though.

The man and dog in my drawing are not meant to represent Steinbeck and Charley, nor the late great William Doglas Bowers and me. They’re an invented guy and his invented dog, pedestrianing out in the countryside near a highway.

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Hit a road with a non-mangy mutt
Arcs & souls & butterfly flutter
Velvet glades & gusto to have
End the angst: the hinterland salve’ll

It’s been almost four years since Bill skipped town (Earth). I so miss him.

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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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Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Eco-logic tells us we owe Life to melt & flow
Vessels for libations are best fill’d with aitch-two-oh
Each & every droplet put in free fall is a sphere
Raise the temp to have a steamy scene with one held dear
Yet when iced it turns a thirst to Gratitude sincere

And above all that, and below “Snow cone” and “Fog bound” and “Rain man” and “Cloud Nine” and “Hail bop” and “Ice scream,” in tiny letters, I wrote “NOT PICTURED: AL SLEET, THE HIPPY DIPPY WEATHERMAN.” This is, of course, a tip of the hat to the late, great, lamented GEORGE CARLIN, whose spaced-out meteorologist once caused Johnny Carson to nearly laugh himself out of his chair. That clip is easily findable on YouTube, and if you haven’t seen it, and need a good belly laugh, please check it out!

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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From A, Awake in the Dark, his wonderful collection of film essays, to Z, Z-Man, the unforgettable character in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which screenplay Roger co-wrote with the equally unforgettable Russ Meyer–Roger Ebert lived an exemplary life. Much of that is thanks to C for Chaz, his other half. Yesterday Chaz described his passing as a Transition. Roger, I so hope it suits you. Farewell!

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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.

 

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This is not a page decrying Protest, but a particular category of Protester. Genuine Protest–as practiced by Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi, Cesar Chavez, and other fine folks who put themselves at risk for a greater good–makes the world go round. But the “protester” who wouldn’t have anything to show John Lennon when he sings “We’d all love to see the plan”–stop wasting your time and ours, is my advice.

The other side of Protest’s coin is Advocacy. It’s fine to Naysay, IF you can Yeasay as well.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get down from my ivory soapbox–and Actually Do Something. Thanks for listening!

It has been fun and frenzied, Friends. But today I decided that enough was enough, and that the one-time-a-day posting would end today. Hail, Farewell, and Goodby to that.

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(NOT April Fool! in the traditional sense. I ended the one-time-a-day posting by posting TWICE, for the first time, today. Ain’t I a Stinker.)

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Instrument/Expression

Ideas love to live–give them de Luxe
Nestiferous environments for flux
Suspend your mind in trans-galactic soup
To raise it from a flattened-worldly stupor
Refect, reflect, refract, rephrase, re-lase
Usurp a surface with that scribe which flays
Mount bold campaigns upon a sturdy chassis
Elongate meatafours unto kolbassi
Nu AveNews WILL, O PEN, up a rho
Tend rouse of crabbage till your crop is grown

Notes: “Kolbassi” is much better known as Kielbasa. Nu and Rho are letters of the Greek alphabet. Ave is Latin for Hail. A Google search of “nestiferous” yielded 23 results this morning, while “pestiferous” clocked in at over 136,000. “Crabbage” is in the Urban Dictionary.

Since the subject was Instrument/Expression, I threw in a whimsical review of two pencils I used recently. One is the Staples store brand, the other the Dixon Ticonderoga (Yellow in this case; I prefer Black, though, just because it looks more Darth Vaderish). The two cats and their surrounds are drawn by the pencils they’re labeled with.