Just Because: 'Accomplishments'

Courtesy, once again, of Poem-a-Day, this verse seems right for the start of a new year. And somehow, poet Michael Chitwood's explanation of his process here makes it even better. "The first stanza came to me just as it is on an afternoon walk," he said. "It took me more than a year to get the other three to go with it."




What you have not done
is without error. What you
have not said is beyond contradiction.

What you understand of God
was yesterday. Today a bicycle
waits, chained to a bench.

The success of this afternoon's nap
is the dream of lifting seven boxes,
your week, sealed with clear tape.

They stack, three to a column,
with the seventh like a capstone.
What you do not know they contain.

A Celebratory Comet

Gerald Rhemann

When you look up to the skies for fireworks this New Year's Eve, keep an eye out for Comet Lovejoy. The celestial body, this one with a greenish tail, is showing up earlier than expected to illuminate the holidays. Now about 30 degrees south of Orion, it has brightened to the point where it can be seen with binoculars: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141230-starstruck-comet-lovejoy-new-year-astronomy/#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=-&at_pos=2&at_tot=4&at_si=54a3dacacb568635

Tiny Bubbles

In those long hours before midnight, when everyone's starting to droop, you can pull out this interesting factoid and get the conversation humming again. That famed old Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon did not invent champagne, and his colorful quote about drinking the stars may have been nothing more than a clever marketing tool by one Dom Groussard, who was the monastery's cellar master two centuries later. In fact, it seems pretty certain that much, if not most, of the credit for the bubbly libation belongs not to the French at all, but to the English: http://www.francetoday.com/articles/2013/03/14/dom_perignon_a_look_at_a_legend.html

Back to the USSR

Soviet leaders Lenin, left, and Stalin

On December 30, 1922, the two documents forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were confirmed by the Congress of Soviets and signed by the heads of the delegations. A major restructuring of the country's economy, industry, and politics had already begun, after the revolution three years earlier. The government was based on one-party rule by the Communist Party, with the understanding that Democratic Centralism was the only way to ensure that the people's will was represented: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Soviet+Union

The Art of Poverty

"Maid in London," by Banksy

Here's an interesting musing on art in the 21st century. Essentially, it's bringing up the question of art's role in the world, but it's doing so by asking a provocative question: Where are the poor in art today?: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/dec/30/art-and-poverty-where-are-poor-in-art-today

Pictures Lovely As a Tree

"Rilke's Banyon"                                                       Beth Moon

Trees bring us beauty, oxygen, and a peaceful feeling. We climb them, swing from them, cull fruits and nuts from them, and sit in and under them. But for every tree-centered thing we do, most of us have never seen trees like the ones San Francisco photographer Beth Moon has seen in her 14-year search for the rarest and oldest trees on Earth (story, lots of pix): http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/12/ancient-trees-beth-moon/

Underground Cappadocia

There's more to Cappadocia than its cave dwellings.

Cappadocia, Turkey, is an almost unbelievable area in and of itself, but a recent find has made it even more so. Archaeologists have discovered an immense 5,000-year-old city under a fortress there. It's not the area's first underground city, but it's definitely the most spectacular, with churches, escape galleries, and 3.5 miles (7 kilometers) of tunnels. In fact, archaeologists believe it may end up being the largest underground city in the world: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/massive-5000-year-old-underground-city-uncovered-cappadocia-turkey-002507

Print Your Car

Local Motors' Strati

Can travel get much greener than this (short of just walking)? Arizona-based Local Motors is working on 3D printed cars and already rolled one out in September, at Chicago's International Manufacturing Technology Show. The Strati is an electric sports-type car that can be printed in two days. Meanwhile, Elio Motors has the gasoline-powered three-wheeled cyclecar, with an estimated highway rating of 84 mpg: http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20141223-most-fascinating-green-car-of-2014-local-motors-strati

Joust As We Expected

This tidbit from wisegeek.com is in the category of things that may come in handy some day but probably won't but are still possibly worth knowing, maybe:

In 1962, Maryland became the first state to adopt an official sport when it named jousting, in which two competitors on horseback try to remove one another with the use of a pole weapon, as its state sport. Maryland holds jousting tournaments for six months of the year from May through October. Jousting has its roots in Medieval Europe, and Maryland’s jousting tournament competitors often incorporate medieval costumes. Maryland’s history of jousting dates back to the late 1700s and became more common after the Civil War. It is a sport in which men, women, and children can all compete and is often a generational family sport.

Taking It to the Street

Google

Google's self-driving car ~ which comes without a steering wheel or pedals (as in, they can't possibly do a worse job than humans!) ~ is set to be out on the streets soon. What's it like to ride in one? What are the chances everyone will want one? Can they coexist with the more traditional methods of transportation? One lucky soul who got a ticket to ride shares insights and lessons learned (thanks, Brooke!): http://theoatmeal.com/blog/google_self_driving_car

Capote's Christmas

Here's a very special holiday treat, a lovely excerpt courtesy of delanceyplace.com:

In today's encore excerpt -- from A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote.  Seven-year-old Truman Capote, abandoned by his divorced parents, is taken in by depression-poor cousins in the rural South. One of these cousins, a distant, elderly cousin, becomes his closest friend and only refuge -- but she is only in his life for two more short years. As Christmas approaches, they make fruitcakes as presents for people they barely know:

"Imagine a morning in late November. A coming-of-winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

Young Truman Capote Sook, 1930's

"A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable -- not unlike Lin­coln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. 'Oh my,' she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, 'it's fruitcake weather!'

 

"The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something. We are cousins, very dis­tant ones, and we have lived together -- well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, rela­tives; and though they have power over us, and fre­quently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was for­merly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child. ...

"The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweet­ens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one

Feed a Cold, Starve a Cold?

As it's getting to be that cold-and-flu time of the year again, this information may come in handy, courtesy of our friends at wisegeek.com:

People should not really feed a cold and starve a fever. Research has indicated that eating is helpful in both cases. The origins of the myth are thought to date back to 1574, when a dictionary entry by lexicographer John Withals stated that not eating would help cool down a high temperature because the act of eating generates heat. Researchers now believe eating is helpful for the body to lower a fever because the increase in body temperature is a response of the immune system to fight illness, which in turn makes the body require more energy.

More about the cold and fever:

• Sleeping eight hours a night makes a person three times less likely to catch a cold, according to a Carnegie Mellon University study.


• Chicken soup has been touted as a cure for cold and fever; however, it is actually the calories and liquid the meal contains that are thought to help

The Day NORAD Found Santa

If you think the fact that the North American Aerospace Defense Command has a Santa tracker is kind of charming, wait till you read the story of how it all started. Spoiler Alert: It has to do with a typo, a Sears Roebuck ad, and a straight-laced military guy with a big heart (story, link to audio version): http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport

Don't Know Who

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when ... " So, who were all those people singing along with Stephen Colbert for his show's grand finale? (video): http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/19/colbert_report_finale_annotated_list_of_everyone_who_appeared_in_sing_along.html
   The song "We'll Meet Again," btw, is from 1939, the first year of World War II. It was sung by Dame Vera Lynn (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Tw16dNyJs

A World Beyond Walls

screen shot

"At this border, each person has a problem," says one of the women highlighted in a short documentary about the Spain/Morocco border at Ceuta. "No one comes because they like it." Her story and others are part of an interactive website called Connected Walls, which attempts to build understanding and connections between people worldwide despite the 41 walls that currently divide countries (website): https://www.connectedwalls.com/en/intro

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Bright Makes Right

one year at the Richards house                                                                              AP/Alan Porritt

There's no accounting for taste and there's no limit to humans' competitive excesses. That said, agreed on, and out of the way, we can now sit back and enjoy this story about a modern-age, holiday-themed Hatfield-vs.-McCoy-type rivalry between the Richards family of Canberra, Australia, and the Gay family of LaGrangeville, New York. Never again will you complain about the bother of stripping your tree of its lights after the holidays! (story, video): http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-intense-competition-to-be-the-worlds-most-decorated-house/383858/#disqus_thread

365,000 Words

screen shot

Approximately once a month, nationalgeographic.com gives its "Your Shot community" a new assignment. Some of the more recent were The Story of Hunger and Hope (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-story-of-hunger.html), First Light, and The Walk. Those who care to, then upload one or more pictures in response. From among these and others, a Photo of the Day is selected, and at year's end (i.e., now), all these are collected into a kind of visual retrospective (video): http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/18/photo-of-the-day-a-year-of-images-in-30-seconds/

It's the 'ou' Thing

from Open Library

Accents, colloquialisms, and certain rules of punctuation aside (well, OK, and the use of certain words, like "lorry" vs. "truck"), we do speak more or less the same language as our brethren across the Atlantic. Why, then, the differences in spelling? Their "ou"s where we have just "o"s, for example, or the "s"s where we have "z"s? Apparently, we have Noah Webster to blame (or thank) for much of it. And speaking of blame, you won't believe how old Teddy Roosevelt wanted to change our orthography. (Of course, there's nothing quite like a typo in an article about spelling or grammar, especially when there's one in the very last line!): http://io9.com/americanize-anglicise-why-do-brits-and-yanks-spell-wo-1671334487

Just Because: 'Try To Praise the Mutilated World'

Zagajewski                                                                                       Michał Sosna

Just when I was starting to think I should post another poem, a dear friend noted this one. It is, I think, as profoundly perfect for today as it was when the New Yorker ran it after 9/11, though it was not written for that time. In explaining how the poem came about, the poet, Adam Zagajewski, said that it "reflects a philosophical conviction more than an event."

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together

Tide Is High, Moving On

Chris Carlsson

Alcatraz, now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area but once a federal penitentiary, was nicknamed The Rock. (Its name actually comes from La Isla de los Alcatraces, or The Island of the Pelicans, the name given to the island by Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala.) It was also called inescapable, due in large part to its location in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, but that doesn't mean there weren't attempts. One of the more ingenious involved three prisoners who made a raft of raincoats, not unlike that used by Papillon in the film of the same name. It was generally believed that the escapees could not have survived, but a new scientific study indicates that, if the currents were just right, it is possible that they could have made it to the mainland (story, videos): http://www.livescience.com/49134-alcatraz-escaped-prisoners-could-have-survived.html
   The audio tour of Alcatraz is fantastic, btw. If you want to learn more about the island's history and the prison's more famous, or infamous, inmates but can't take the tour, check out this site (story, videos): http://www.history.com/topics/alcatraz