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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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Alas, my streak of consecutive blog-posting days is over and out. I started on December 3, 2012 and posted at least once a day through April 14, 2013. I missed posting yesterday.

Ironically, the reason I missed yesterday was through engrossment in the above page, which took me till 10:35 PM to finish–and I had to report for work by 11 PM…

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Determined, relentless–society
Dismisses some needs–undeniably
Declares & denotes–impropriety
Denudes us at R A N D O M–inviolably

If let, preconditioned conformity
Inculcates Indulgent austerity
If FREE WILL exists, there’s enormity
In acting when viewing with clarity
Ill Fate–as the Void yawns so terribly
Intrinsic with grappling so wearily

Gigantic distresses unbearably
Gain ground with emotions shown tearily
GRACE gives us redemption felt helically
Grants warrant to forge Fate angelically

Before I tackled the acrostic, I talked to Denise about dignity, and asked her if Jesus on the cross saying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was an example of dignity. She made a good case for a Yes answer, since it was a question and not a cursing of God.

The illustration and calligraphy that provide the backdrop for the acrostic are dignity-oriented. I have Jesus speaking French as a tip of the hat to my Canadian friend Michel Lamontagne. Hope I got it right, Michel!

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Our days of living in Sedona are numbered, and, the last day being May 31st, the number is 47. Near-ironically, we are going to see a movie whose title is the number 42. It’s playing at the Harkins Sedona 6. It is about Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in major league baseball, and whose number, 42, has been universally retired, to honor the game-changing event and the sterling character of the man who made it possible, meanwhile enduring slings, arrows, epithets and death threats with his head held high.

Moving from one dwelling place to another is a different kind of tribulation. In the early 21st Century it involves Internet shopping, real estate agent finding, location scouting, offer making, lender finding, contract writing, termite inspection, everything-else inspection, appraisal, contract rewriting, electronic signature filing, and a myriad of other devilish details, including a ton of hurry-up-and-wait. Finally it is all transferred/payment-booked, and key-conferred–and then the REAL work begins: the conversion of the diamond in the rough to the fulfillment of the owner’s dream. (Well, some percentage of the dream, anyway.)

Here are the words to the triple acrostic:

Modern ways to migrate may dismay
An agony of details over escrow’s imbroglio
Keybox removal brings vast relief & you
Enjoy ower/owner’s onus with expanse of sweat-equity’s labor

There’s also a hidden word-acrostic in the middle: Migrate Over Vast Expanse.

Moving right along…

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As I type, it’s early Saturday morning, and third-round action of the 2013 Masters tournament has not yet begun. Presently, Tiger Woods is three under, tying him for 7th place. Everyone is focused on him for several reasons, among them 1) he’s been playing phenomenal golf lately, winning his most recent tournament, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, for which he (or, more accurately, his team) received more than a million dollars, plus a big emotional hug from Arnie (not his team–just him); 2) his recent reattainment of his #1 world ranking represents a years-long struggle in the wake of his marriage-ending contretemps with his now-former wife, Elin Nordegren, whose marriage settlement according to the New York Daily News was in excess of one hundred ten million dollars; 3) a shot to the green Mr. Woods made on the 15th hole yesterday was so good, it hit the flagstick, and then richocheted squarely backward, ending up in a pond and changing a probable birdie to a bogie–a bogie that could have been much worse but for incredible skill on the part of Mr. Woods.

If you’re not familiar with golf, much of the above is gibberish. Since Gibberish is the clandestine topic of this post, it’s appropriate that I dish out some.

Why Gibberish? Because Golf IS Gibberish, metaphorically speaking. It is a game in which a carefully-crafted ball is hammered repeatedly by carefully-crafted sticks wielded by imperfectly-crafted human beings, who strive, following rules that are convoluted beyond belief, to eventually roll the ball into eighteen different holes. A substantial portion of the world’s wealth is affected by this activity, directly or indirectly. Migration patterns and habitat changes are directly attributable to its environs. It is one awe-inspiring work of performance art that I would entitle THE ABSURDITY OF HUMAN BEINGS IN THE PERVERSION OF THEIR DRIVES, since even at my most serious I cannot resist a pun.

If there’s anyone still reading, thanks so much for your attention. Here are the words to the quadruple, two-pairs-of-allotropic-words acrostic:

Surf, silliness, & Realtors rake in the megabucks
To climb & claw atop a peak with Taurus near a cusp
Respondents take a helicopter canyon to arroyo
Or jet on to Hawaii for the LPBA tour
Persnickety flaccidity persists; now back to Curt

RIP Curt Gowdy, for whom I had both respect and (misplaced; I was young) amused contempt.

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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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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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