7:30pm: Pilgrim's Progress

In an unsigned, undated letter from Pilgrim to Trout Fishing In America, c/o Nelson Algren, the following reply was posted:

un/da/te (d)

To: Trout Fishing In America
c/o Nelson Algren
Chicago

Dear Mr. Algren:

In all fairness the ball was right at me; it was not a perfect spiral but few of them are these days, the jet stream, the ozone depletion, and the simultaneous resurgence of both the corner deli and the dot.com economy have pushed us reluctantly into the era of the flutterball. But this was not a flutterball, it was a good ball, and right at me. It was a little off the spiral, but still eminently catchable. Problem was I had forgotten to soak my wombat with Gatorade, and my fingers were dry. Knowing this, I jumped a bit to take the throw with my arms, but must have forgotten to soak my arms with Gatorade as well, as they did little to coral the throw, and it pummelled me mercilessly in the ribs and bounced harmlessly to the ground, a sad moment in the annals of my receiving career. And in retrospect I should have know it would happen, as my elbows had been thirsty.

Even after this ignominous and inauspicious beginning, my day was going to get worse before it got better. I dropped another good first down throw, and even the interception which turned my fortunes was more fortuitous than skillful, for it was a flutterball by the other team's QB that Mikey tipped at the line and came at me end-over-end. I waved at it, reached for it, but was no closer to catching it than I was to deciphering the Riddle of the Spinks (which asks What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports Leon was thinking when he agreed to that rematch!) when the thing went through my fumbling hands and struck me unceremoniously in the kisser; only a reflex action by my arms caused me to wind up catching it.

In conslusion, there is not really any excuse for dropping the extra point; and had I caught it we would have been up 7-0 instead of 6-0, and the game would have been tied when they scored the TD and extra point later on in the second half. These items weigh heavily on my conscience, and will no doubt eat at my mental and physical well-being, and greatly hasten my demise.

Finally, there is no truth to the idle speculation and fantastic rumor that Idiot and I are one and the same individual, an absurd notion if ever there was one. I can not even imagine Idiot in one of my frisbee-golf outfits, and he would not fit into a telephone booth. No, 'tisn't so, that's my story and I'm sticking with it. Also, no comment.

And lastly, I am not a trout stream. I don't believe I have ever been a trout stream, although there was a brief period when I aspired to trout streaming in America, but that was before I discovered my affinity.

unsigned
(although I was scouted in college)

The Reply of Trout Fishing In America:

The same thing once happened to me. I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.
"Excuse me," I said, "I thought you were a trout stream."
"I'm not," she said.

(Reply of Trout Fishing In America from "Trout Fishing In America" by Richard Brautigan.)

3:30pm: You Win Some, You Lose Some...

Slice and Dog at the bottom of the dale defining the 11th fairway, as Barnes approaches, looking distraught.

SLICE: Barnes, you don't look very well, what's the matter.
BARNES: I'll tell you what's the matter; last two regular season games and we've got five guys there, ready to play a double-header against all odds. Luckily Shorty showed at the last minute, turns out he had to make a pit stop and drain his oil.
SLICE: That so.
BARNES: Apparently so. In any event, now we've got the requisite six guys, and we go up 6-0 on a nice deflected grab by the only one of our guys with any real football pedigree.
SLICE: Is that right, which guy is that?
BARNES: Remember Max McGee, the guy who caught like 7 balls and 2 touchdowns in Stupid Bowl I for the Packers against the Chiefs, after breaking curfew and staying out all night til 7:30am the morning of the game. Well this guy's his grand-nephew's elevator operator's ex- cell-mate, name of Mullet McGee. My big brother Barnes Barnett tipped a ball in the end-zone and Mullet McGee stuck up a hand and it stuck, just like his namesake in that Stupid Bowl. Amazing.
SLICE: So, what's the problem.
BARNES: Problem? The problem is the extra-point. We run our usual extra point play and the guy with the long hair is open in the corner of the end zone. Our QB Germy throws a perfect strike to him, hits him in the numbers, and the guy drops it!
SLICE: Who, Mullet McGee?
BARNES: No, not Mullet, the other guy with long hair, the old guy with the pony tail!
DOG: Arf!
SLICE: Well, what's his problem.
BARNES: I don't know, he dropped a couple today, must be he got plenty of sleep and he's been on the wagon too long. Usually he's okay, you know. Must be he needs a drink.

Idiot meanders over from the clubhouse, looking dejected.

SLICE: Boy, everybody looks sad today.
IDIOT: Well, we could have gone to seven and five, but we lost the first game and finished even at six and six.
SLICE: That's not so bad.
IDIOT: Well, we made the playoffs, anyway, but it would have been nice to win them both. Isn't somebody going to tell that guy we're not in the 60's even if he is. A, his hair is longer than Methuselah's, and B, he's older than Methuselah.
SLICE: Can't you do anything about that old guy with the pony tail?
BARNES: Nah, it's his football.
SLICE: Shirley you can get another football.
BARNES: He would still show up; and don't call me surely.
SLICE: Well, if I say it tentatively you might not catch my meaning.
BARNES: Hey, we're talking about the old guy, I can catch just fine.
SLICE: Well, I can take up a petition right here if you like.
BARNES: You won't get away with it.
SLICE: Why on earth not?
BARNES: It's his website, he'll write you out of the script.
SLICE: I see your point. Let's stay with that guy, he's gonna help us down the road, here.
BARNES: Yes, Barnes.
SLICE: Er, you're Barnes.
BARNES: Well, I'm blind, I can't see who the hell is who, you know.

-CURTAIN-

Heard from off stage:

SLICE: Ever notice, Barnes, you never see Pilgrim and Idiot together at the same time?
BARNES: Yo, Slice, I'm blind over here, I never see anyone together with anyone at the same time or any other time, Barnes.
SLICE: Still, it raises intriguing possibilities.
BARNES: Well, I always just assumed he was an idiot. I mean, it seemed rather obvious...

Midnite: Just Beautiful

WHERE: Great Sand Dunes National Monument, Colorado
WHEN: 1997
PHOTOGRAPHER: Peter Essick

“We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity. . . .”
—Wallace Stegner
From National Geographic

Mitnite: The Cathedral of Notre Dame

Worked a double today, happy hour plus live blues in the Havana Room, even played a little blues harp with the band, but not a lot of time to blog. However, I did come across this photo in the Times on Sunday, and found a nice web site with a nice History & More Gargoyles. Ghastly little creatures, but really they're drains; CLICK HERE to check out the site, enjoy, and I'll be back tomorrow.

Midnite: Gregory Colbert, Photographer

Photo by Gregory Colbert
from "Ashes and Snow"
 

From The New York Times, 4/23/02:
"Until now (Click for Full NYTimes Article) Gregory Colbert has been that rare artist who goes out of his way not to be noticed. He was represented by no gallery, he held no exhibitions for a decade, and he gave no interviews. He was in a sense a secret artist, though the secret was shared by a small group of wealthy private collectors who, through acquisitions and sheer enthusiasm, helped to finance his work.

Photo by Gregory Colbert
From N.Y.Times

He needed this help. In his quest to photograph the mystical relationship between humans and animals, he made 27 lengthy trips to distant corners of the world over nine years. He was usually accompanied by a support team, supplies and equipment. He even rented oceangoing vessels for months on end. In brief, it was both costly and complicated to produce images of great simplicity.

Photo by Gregory Colbert, From Tiscali Arte
 

Now, in the vast and sober space of the Arsenale, the Renaissance-era shipyard owned by the Venice Biennale, Mr. Colbert, 42, is for the first time exhibiting the fruits of these voyages. And as he might have hoped, the result is a discovery not only of this Canadian artist but also of an ageless realm in which elephants and whales as well as manatees, royal eagles, sacred ibis, cranes and falcons cohabit and communicate with humans. Comprising 200 images and a 58-minute documentary, the show, "Ashes and Snow," runs here through July 6..." (From The New York Times, 4/24/02)

To all who wish further links to Gregory Colbert's work:
I have edited the entry by physically labelling the links that each photo represents: one to the Times article, one to the Colbert Gallery, and one to the Slide Show for "Ashes and Snow." These are the only links I have to Colbert and his work, and hopefully this will help you. Please do not post comments asking for further contacts, I do not have them. Thank-you all for visiting and sharing this wonderful work-
g.d.
a pilgrim in paradise

Midnite: Some Ado About Muchthing

William Shakespeare
born: Apr 23, 1564
died: Apr 23, 1616

SOME ADO ABOUT MUCH-THINGY
by Wllm. Shakealeg

(Heard from offstage, the voice of Slice, reciting...)

SLICE: Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by and idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Pilgrim and Idiot are putting out at the 11th green.

PILGRIM: Hear that, they're talking about you, buddy. You telling tall tales again?
IDIOT: I didn't tell it, I don't know what idiot he's talking about.
PILGRIM: Well, what I'm wondering is whether to use the Zephyr or the XD.
BARNES: Tough choice for this shot, brother.

Enter Slice, above stage left, observing the frisbee golfers.

SLICE: Fris-be, or not fris-be: that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The flings and sorrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of water-hazards,
And by avoiding, end them. The lie: too steep;
No, more! and, by too steep to say we end
The headache and the thousand natural blonds
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. The lie, too steep;
Too steep? Perchance to scream! Ay, there's the rub;
For in that steeper death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffl'd off this mortal soil,
Must give us paws. (Meow!)

Pilgrim and Idiot pause to ponder these utterances of Slice.

PILGRIM: Paws? Yo, Slice, you can't play frisbee with paws, there, Jaws.
SLICE: It's Shakespeare, good fellows, and today is the anniversary of his death.
IDIOT: Death, death, always with the death. Can we not celebrate life for a change. Let's table this celebration until the good fellow's birthday.
SLICE: Very well, this we shall. In which case, lift your goblets, good fellows, today is Shakespeare's birthday.
PILGRIM: His birthday?
BARNES: Whose birthday?
SLICE: Shakespeare's, good people; born on this date.
IDIOT: You just said he died on this date.
SLICE: Just so.
PILGRIM: Born and died on the same day?
BARNES: Wait, he wrote all that junk in one day!
SLICE: Hardly, Barnes, and you blaspheme to refer thusly to his body of work. He was born April 23, 1564, and died on his birthday, April 23, 1616--after blowing out 52 candles, one might surmise.
IDIOT: Oh, it was a surmise party, great!
PILGRIM: Are you mad?
SLICE: That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pity; And pity 'tis 'tis true.
BARNES: Wha...!?*#?
SLICE: Hamlet.
IDIOT: Well, now that you mention it I am hungry, I could use an omelet.
PILGRIM: Away, you scullion! (to Slice) Henry the Fourth!
IDIOT: Yes, a nice western omelet, with scullions.
SLICE: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. (to Pilgrim) Julius Caesar.
IDIOT: Yes, and a nice Caesar salad on the side.
PILGRIM: Maybe your'e right, we probably ought to eat, all this talking is making me hungry. We can finish our round tomorrow.
SLICE: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by and idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
IDIOT: Pilgrim, he's talking about me again.
PILGRIM: Oh shut up and shoot.
-CURTAIN-

Midnite: This Reminds Me Of Something Else...

WHERE: Lisse, Netherlands
WHEN: 1999
PHOTOGRAPHER: Sisse Brimberg

“A man helps tend six million tulips at Keukenhof in the Netherlands. ‘We are the display window of the bulb industry,’ says designer Henk Koster.”
—From “Flower Trade,” April 2001, National Geographic magazine.
From NationalGeographic.com

That beautiful photo of the tulips at Keukenhof reminded me of a much less beautiful but similarly layered unsigned original from a few years back:

horizon
oil on canvas
1986, 18" x 24"

Midnite: Beckot revisitot (avec Mojot)...

Pilgrim is standing outside the clubhouse, waiting for the rest of his six-some so they can tee off.

PILGRIM: (To himself, as he is a half-wit.) Well, it is just only nine a.m., and although no one has yet arrived, we have a nine forty-five tee time and I'm certain my friends will duly arrive, as they are consciensious and caring, and only Pueblo and Prod-Man transmitted electronic mail thingys advising that they would not be able to attend.

He begins stretching his lower proximity as Barnes strides prominently around the corner, his frisbee-golf disc bag thingy slung properly over one shoulder, and the promise of victory etched across his bewildered face.

BARNES: Jesus, what day is it?

Pilgrim turns back and forth, looking for the Messiah.

PILGRIM: Is he here? Are we playing a round with Jesus? Oh, man, I brought the sandwedge but no wine, you know I'm on the wagon.
BARNES: No, not Jesus, not Jesus! I just mean, you know, Christ, it's so early it feels like yesterday.
PILGRIM: Yesterday? Is it yesterday? You mean I'm early? (Thinking) Hey, isn't Christ the same as Jesus?
BARNES: Pilgrim, it's still today. I just mean it feels like yesterday.
PILGRIM: Well, it does; it does at that. Maybe it's the daylight saving time, does that effect the day or only the week? And what about this, even if it is today, is our game today? Or was it yesterday? I'm losing track. Who knows these things?
BARNES: I'm sure it's today, I wouldn't be here otherwise.
PILGRIM: True-dat. But where is everyone else? Surely they can't all be wrong.
BARNES: Not wrong, just late. (And don't call me Shirley.)

Barnes pulls cellophane from his backpack, dials Rear-Den.

BARNES: (Into the cellophane) Rear-Den, where are you? (Pause, as Rear-Den Rear-sponds.) Home in bed? Back still out of whack? Okay, if we need one you'll show? Great. Go back to sleep, I'll call if we need you.
PILGRIM: Who was that?
BARNES: Rear-Den. Home in bed. Back's still out of whack. If we need one he'll show. He's going back to sleep. We'll call if we need him.

Slice arrives from the coffee arcade across the street, bearing a tall container of Java, which he drinks from when motivated by thirst or indecision.

SLICE: Hey guys.
PILGRIM: Yo, Slice. Hey, is it today or yesterday by your watch? If its not too late we might be early.
BARNES: We're not early, everyone else is late.
PILGRIM: I hope not, otherwise we might not make our tee-time.
SLICE: Oh, well, no tea for me, I brought coffee.
BARNES: What about Germy, is he coming?
SLICE: I don't think so, he's between relationships.
PILGRIM: Yeah, he'll be here, I'm sure he checked with the Web Psych, else he would have called me for the tee time.
BARNES: Maybe he's meeting us at the first tee?
PILGRIM: Nah, he said it's easier to meet here, something about Masked Bandit leaving him closer to the clubhouse than to the tee.
SLICE: Those super heroes are everywhere these days.
BARNES: I think he meant mass transit, Barnes.
SLICE: Wait, whose Barnes, me or you?
PILGRIM: Well, you can't lump in Batman with Superman. Superman didn't wear a mask.
SLICE: But what about Shorty, he's coming, right?
PILGRIM: Nah, Shorty's not coming.
BARNES: No show?
SLICE: Not coming?
PILGRIM: Not coming, no Shorty, no Mojot, no show Joe.

Barnes reaches for his cellophane but thinks better of it.

BARNES: Don't know about Shorty.
PILGRIM: Come to think, he HAS to be coming, he sent an e-thingy saying he was in for the greens fees.
SLICE: He said he was in, he didn't say for which week.
BARNES: That's true.
PILGRIM: Yeah, he ain't coming.
SLICE: What about Freddy Flintstone?
PILGRIM: He'll be here, he's dependable.
BARNES: He is, but he called this morning, couldn't get a babysitter for Pebbles & Bam-Bam.
SLICE: Oh Man! What about his friend Irec-Shin?
PILGRIM: That's Would-He, Barnes.
BARNES: I'm Barnes, he's Slice. And Would-He won't be. Sprained his erect shin playing round-ball.
SLICE: (with sideways glance and clenched teeth: New-Man!)
PILGRIM: (checking his watch) Well, it's too late now, it's past the forfeit time.
BARNES: I wonder if the other team showed?
PILGRIM: That puts the kaibosh on our winning record.
SLICE: Kai-bosh?
PILGRIM: No thanks, I'm trying to quit.
BARNES: Yeah, I just wish those guys would have told us they weren't gonna show, I could have stayed in bed.
SLICE: Not to mention my girl got up and left because I had this game.
PILGRIM: Yeah, me too, I had to step away from my computer screen for this. Jesus, people are gonna think I have half a life.
BARNES: What's the half-life of half a life?
PILGRIM: What's the shelf-life of a shelf?
SLICE: Let's not be so shelfish?
PILGRIM: I'm allergic to crustaceons.
BARNES: We'd better go.
SLICE: Yeah, let's leave.
PILGRIM: That's it, we're outta here.

They do not move.

-CURTAIN-

(Heard from off-stage:)

BARNES: Do we know what time next week's game is?
PILGRIM: I won't know till Thursday morning.
SLICE: That's not too long to wait.
BARNES: Long as it doesn't rain.
PILGRIM: Forecast calls for showers.
BARNES: Yeah, but they're never right...

Fade to black...

(Heard from the blackness:)

SLICE: (Well, at least we're still in the playoffs...)

Roll Debits...

Midnite: A Great Artist

"The Spanish artist Joan Miró was one of the leading exponents of Surrealism. His drawing The Kerosene Lamp is an early attempt to create a personal Surrealist language. With characteristic wit, the artist combined a Cubist still life and a lamp with cartoonlike symbols. Many interpretations, mostly autobiographical, have been offered for Miró's quirky images, but the elements of his work are intended to be suggestive rather than specific in meaning." (From The Art Institute of Chicago)

p.s. As a parenthetical aside, I was first introduced to Miró's work by Jazz great Dave Brubeck, whose inspirational 1961 album Time Further Out, Miró Reflections, was a blues suite, each reflection in the form of a 12 bar blues or variation thereof, incorporating time signatures ranging from 3/4 through an unbelievable 7/4 (!) and 8/8 and 9/8, all designed to reflect upon the relationship between painting and music. The cover painting is Miró's Painting, 1925, and in Brubeck's liner notes he pondered the piece's "abstract forms, suggesting human figures moving in a visual rhythm which could be interpreted as a jazz quartet." Note further the numbers on the painting, which Brubeck incorporated into his work as time signatures. If you like jazz this album is a must; and if you don't like jazz you'll like this album.

Midnight: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Lobster, Barnes?

YES, BARNES!

At the top of a hill on the 9th fairway, Pilgrim and Idiot are preparing to launch their second shots.

IDIOT: No birthdays today? No landmark dates? What gives?
PILGRIM: Nah, you know what, there's so many landmark anniversaries today it would be impossible to choose from among them. Besides, they all involve war or terrorism and bloodshed, very depressing stuff according to me.
IDIOT: True that, Pilgrim; true that. Er, which ones are they, just for the record you know?
PILGRIM: Well, for starters, there's the shot heard 'round the world.
IDIOT: Oh, yeah? Bobby Thompson hit that home run off Ralph Branca on this date?
PILGRIM: Not that shot, you Idiot, the original shot, the one in Lexington, Massachusetts that started the Revolutionary War.
IDIOT: Hmm, are those guys in the Hall of Fame, too?
PILGRIM: Not exactly, but neither are the other two. Anyway, there's also the first blood drawn in the Civil War, that happened on this date in 1861. And the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943. You want more?
IDIOT: Go ahead, I'm taking notes.
PILGRIM: Waco Texas, the Branch Davidian inferno in 1993, not to mention the sequel, the Oklahoma City Federal Building in '95, the date chosen because of the Waco debacle.
IDIOT: Jesus!
PILGRIM: Nope, Easter Sunday was March, but he didn't get any better treatment if you have to know. Let's just shoot.
IDIOT: Shoot! Wait a minute, I didn't join that cult?
PILGRIM: Poor choice of words, the frisbees, Barnes, the discs.
IDIOT: Oh, the discs! (I knew that.)

Slice and Barnes approach from the clubhouse, Slice with a telescope and Barnes carrying live lobsters in both hands.

SLICE: Pilgrim, Pilgrim, the planets are aligning, we must have a look?
BARNES: The clubhouse is eighty-six lobsters, but I got us some replacements.
PILGRIM: Wait a sec, you don't look so blind to me, here, Barnes.
BARNES: No, not when the planets are aligned. Which way to the kitchen, I need to get these bad boys into a pot.
IDIOT: They look a little green around the gills there, Barnes. Where'd you get those.
SLICE: He dug them up in the water hazard at the 17th hole. (Plus about a dozen runaway discs.)
PILGRIM: Didn't find a yellow Cobra in there, did you, Barnes?
IDIOT: What's all this about the planets being aligned?
SLICE: Oh, that, well every so often this happens; the five naked-eye planets are converging in one part of the sky, so we can see them all.
BARNES: Naked-eye planets? Should I be concerned with this?
IDIOT: If I were you I'd be more worried about the swamp-water you pulled those cockroaches with claws out of; your shots up to date there, partner?
BARNES: Nonsense, I turn a blind eye to all such idle speculation.
SLICE: Ouch!
PILGRIM: Step off, Barnes, I'm shooting here.
BARNES: All right, just point me toward a pot.
IDIOT: I haven't got a pot to piss in.
BARNES: That'll do just fine. Now, how many for everyone?
PILGRIM: (throwing his disc toward the pin) Fore!
BARNES: Okay, that's four for him. Yo, Slice, how many you want?
SLICE: Five of them, just think, all in a row.
BARNES: Jesus, that already makes nine.
PILGRIM: Wrong month, March.
BARNES: I'm going, I'm going, I gotta get more anyway. You Idiot, toss these into that pot of your, would you? I'll be back...
IDIOT: Jesus...
PILGRIM: Wrong month--
IDIOT: I know, I know, March.
BARNES: I said I'm going, what do you want from a blind sheep?
SLICE: Just another day in Paradise.
-CURTAIN-

AND IN A RELATED STORY...
Special to the AP(PP) [A Pilgrim in Paradise Press]:

PARADISE, Apr 19 - Pilgrim held a brief news conference today to announce that if the Chinese do not re-launch their Space Kettle, he will book passage home on Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki raft, now that Heyerdahl has moved on.

"Hey, I don't want to step on anyone's sandals," Pilgrim was quoted as saying, "but Thor's gone off to explore the great unknown and we might as well get some use out of this thing. If it still floats."

No word yet on whether Pilgrim's theory will hold water.

"And you can tell those 2 Idiots In A Boat," Pilgrim added, "that this is the way to do it."

No word yet from 2 Idiots In A Boat, who are reportedly seeking offshore diaper delivery services to accomodate Idiot #2's new avocation (see A NEW PILGRIM IN PARADISE). Idiot #1 agrees with Gillian that there are no offshore laundry services, and says he's "washing his hands" of the whole affair.

And from the Pot Calling The Kettle Black Department, Pilgrim's frisbee-golf partner Idiot was quoted as saying: "Those two are bigger idiots than I thought."

(Thor Heyerdahl died in Italy yesterday at the age of 87. The Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer whose imagination and vigor brought him acclaim navigating the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to advance his controversial theories of ancient seafaring migrations, was 87. In 1947 he and five others crossed a broad stretch of the Pacific in the balsa-log raft Kon-Tiki, seeking to prove that the Polynesian islands could have been settled by prehistoric South American people.)

12:02am: The Shot Heard 'Round The World

A great pestilence is on the land, a plague of hatred and war. Tuesday was the anniversary of Lenin's return to Petrograd (now Leningrad, go figure) in 1917 to lead the Bolshevik party in overthrowing the Czarist regime (Nicholas, Alexandria & Anastasia et. al.) - the Russian Revolution - but I chose to go with a birthday tribute to Charlie Chaplin, knowing that today would mark the birth of another revolution, our own nation's. It is an editorial judgment call, not a judgment about ideologies, as we are well aware a wise pilgrim never discusses politics or religion. Nevertheless, it is perhaps meaningful, given the state of world affairs, to remember our own nation's turbulent struggle for independence.

On April 18, 1775, British troops marched out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the Patriot arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Patriot minutemen...

Midnight Ride of Paul Revere by Grant Wood

Paul Revere's Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

When Paul Revere first began selling his color prints of "The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street" in Boston, he was doing what any like-minded patriot with his talents in 1770 would have done. Only, Paul Revere did it faster and more expeditiously than anyone else, including two other artist-engravers who also issued prints of the Massacre that year.

Twenty-one days before-- on the night of March 5, 1770-- five men had been shot to death in Boston town by British soldiers. Precipitating the event known as the Boston Massacre was a mob of men and boys taunting a sentry standing guard at the city's customs house. When other British soldiers came to the sentry's support, a free-for-all ensued and shots were fired into the crowd.

Four died on the spot and a fifth died after four days. Six others were wounded.

Paul Revere's Account of His Midnight Ride to Lexington

I, PAUL REVERE, of Boston, in the colony of the Massachusetts Bay in New England; of lawful age, do testify and say; that I was sent for by Dr. Joseph Warren, of said Boston, on the evening of the 18th of April, about 10 o'clock; when he desired me, ''to go to Lexington, and inform Mr. Samuel Adams, and the Hon. John Hancock Esq. that there was a number of soldiers, composed of light troops, and grenadiers, marching to the bottom of the common, where there was a number of boats to receive them; it was supposed that they were going to Lexington, by the way of Cambridge River, to take them, or go to Concord, to destroy the colony stores.''

I proceeded immediately, and was put across Charles River and landed near Charlestown Battery; went in town, and there got a horse. While in Charlestown, I was informed by Richard Devens Esq. that he met that evening, after sunset, nine officers of the ministerial army, mounted on good horses, and armed, going towards Concord...

Posted by cronish at 12:19 AM

11:30pm: This Is What We Can Do

"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (April 16, 2002 7:47 p.m. EDT) - NASA's most experienced spacewalker and his rookie partner concluded work on the international space station's new 44-foot girder Tuesday and hung powerful floodlights outside the orbiting outpost.

It was the fourth and final spacewalk for the visiting astronauts of space shuttle Atlantis, who are due to leave on Wednesday...

...The spacewalkers attached a 14-foot guide rail and smaller handholds to the girder and put shock absorbers on the railcar that rides a track on the beam. They also set up a radiation monitor outside the space station as well as a gas-sniffing gauge to detect any ammonia coolant leaks.

The framework will extend more than 350 feet by 2004 as more and more girders are added to the one delivered last week by Atlantis.

Ross and Morin, along with fellow spacewalkers Steven Smith and Rex Walheim, spent nearly 30 hours outside during their weeklong station visit. Almost all their work was with the $790 million girder and railcar." (By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press)

I watch as "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Star Wars" become a reality, not to mention "1984" and "Brave New World." And I don't want to complain, here, but we can do this, and at the same same time our guys are up there reinventing the galaxy my teammates and I are driving home from our football game on Saturday in Rod-Man's S.U.V., it's 76-degrees out, there's a thermometer on the dashboard, and we listen as the weatherman announces--not forecasts, just announces--the current Central Park temperature as 66-degrees. I mean we're 4 blocks from Central Park and it's 76-degrees. Forget about an accurate forcast, which we haven't had in light years; can we at least get an accurate reading on the thermometer?

Amazing. But I'm not one to complain, so you ain't heard it here...

2:06pm: Charlie Chaplin

CHARLIE CHAPLIN
born: Apr 16, 1889
died: Dec 25, 1977

In his autobiography, he wrote, “There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”

Charlie Chaplin’s life was a work of art and it began on this day in 1889 in London, England. He started on his acting career as a young child, performing on stage, then touring with Fred Karno’s company as a teenager. When he was twenty-four, Chaplin joined Mack Sennett’s Keystone company where he made over thirty films. These films were the making of the cane-twirling clown with the baggy pants. The character of the little tramp came to fulfillment in the 1915 film, The Tramp.

Four years later, he formed United Artists Corporation with other film artists, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith, and produced many independent films including The Gold Rush in 1925, City Lights in 1931 and Modern Times in 1936. His first talkie was The Great Dictator in 1940. And one of his most remembered films was made in 1952, Limelight.

Ostracized from the American film community and denied reentry after a trip abroad, because of his refusal to become an American citizen, his left-wing causes and his marriages to several teenagers, Chaplin lived in Switzerland from 1952 until 1972 with his fourth wife, Oona, the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill.

In 1972, he returned to the United States (this time he was permitted entry) to accept a special award at the Annual Academy Awards. And, in 1975 he was knighted by the Queen of England. Two years later, on Christmas Day, the little tramp died at his home in Vevey, Switzerland.

Many have imitated or attempted to become the next Charlie Chaplin. However, as Max Sennett once said, Chaplin is the “greatest artist who ever lived.” (from Those Were The Days)

Double shift last night, double again today so a short but informative and happy birthday tribute to the little tramp, Charlie Chaplin. My favorite Chaplin flik: The Gold Rush, 1925.

12:43pm: There Is Really Only One...

Click here for a nice analysis of Vitruvian Man [shown above] (c. 1492) by Leonardo da Vinci, which was named after the Roman architect Vitruvius. The secret concerns a geometric algorithm in human form. In this unity, Leonardo saw the solution to the problem known as squaring the circle. Leonardo's man is an algorithm!

?tfel ot thgir morf etirw odranoeL did yhW

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy. The definitive Renaissance Man, da Vinci is perhaps the greatest genius the world has ever known. His contributions in art, science, engineering and philosophy have earned his place at the forefront of the most prolific geniuses in history. He was one of the most important artists of the Italian Renaissance, a period when the arts and sciences flourished.

Each image above is a link to another da Vinci source: Home page & Bio, Drawings, and Paintings. See also the links to his Vitruvian Man, and his Right-to-Left writings.

Quote: "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."

He was born on this date in 1452.

Nuff'said.

3:33pm: Second Verse, Same As The First...

SCROLL DOWN TO YESTERDAY'S POST FOR ACT I

WAITING FOR BECKOT
ACT II

Next Day. Same time.

Same place.

10th Green: Pilgrim's frisbee golf gloves front center, palms together, fingers splayed. Barnes' bucket hat in same place. [All characters wear bucket hats] The tree has four or five leaves. Enter Idiot agitatedly. He halts, looks at tree, then moves feverishly about the green. He stops, picks up one of Pilgrim's gloves, examines it, sniffs it, manifests disgust, puts it back carefully, comes and goes. Enter Pilgrim, barehanded and bowed. Idiot turns and sees him.

IDIOT: You again!
PILGRIM: Blah, blah. You're here, you're gone. What good are you?
IDIOT: Did I ever leave you?
PILGRIM: You let me go.
(They embrace)
IDIOT: They beat you again? Who beat you? Tell me.
PILGRIM: You couldn't have stopped them.
IDIOT: Why not.
PILGRIM: There were ten of them.
IDIOT: Before that, I would have stopped you from whatever you were doing.
PILGRIM: I was doing nothing!
IDIOT: Then why did they beat you?
PILGRIM: No one knows. I wasn't doing anything.
IDIOT: Maybe not, but it is the way you don't do it that counts, if you want to go on living.
PILGRIM: It might not be in the cards.
IDIOT: You must be happy, too, deep down, in your misery, you must find joy.
PILGRIM: About what?
IDIOT: To be reunited with me!
PILGRIM: You would say so?
IDIOT: Say it, even if it's not true.
PILGRIM: What am I to say?
IDIOT: Say I am happy.
PILGRIM: You are happy.
IDIOT: And you.
PILGRIM: And you.
IDIOT: Oh well, it will have to suffixe.
PILGRIM: What do we do now, now that we are suffixiently happy.
IDIOT: Wait for Beckot. (Pilgrim groans.) Things have changed here since yesterday.
PILGRIM: And if he doesn't come?
IDIOT: We'll see when the time comes. I was saying, things have changed here since yesterday.
PILGRIM: Looks the same to me.
IDIOT: Look at the tree.
PILGRIM: You call that a tree! It's not even a bush!
IDIOT: Well, it was there yesterday, we nearly hanged ourselves from it, but you wouldn't, don't you remember?
PILGRIM: You dreamt it.
IDIOT: Is it possible you've already forgotten?
PILGRIM: Well, if it was written by this idiot it couldn't have been very memorable.
IDIOT: And Slice and Barnes, have you forgotten them as well?
PILGRIM: I remember a swine who kicked me in the balls and then played the fool!
IDIOT: That was Barnes.
PILGRIM: Yes, Barnes.
IDIOT: And his keeper, do you not remember him as well.
PILGRIM: He gave me a bone.
IDIOT: Yes, that was Slice.
PILGRIM: And all that was yesterday, you suggest?
IDIOT: Certainly it was yesterday.
PILGRIM: And here, where we are now?
IDIOT: Where else do you think? Do you not recognize the place?
PILGRIM: What is there to recognize! I'm drowning here and you ask me to describe the water!
IDIOT: Oh, yes, Nicholson, a nice touch, Barnes!
PILGRIM: I hope you can not now be mistaking me for that stinking sheep!
IDIOT: Nicholson? Well it's true he's put on a few pounds, but sheep? No, I don't think we can categorize him that way, Barnes.

PILGRIM: Best thing would be to kill me altogether, like that other.
IDIOT: What other?
PILGRIM: Like all the rest of the others.
IDIOT: To every man his cross to bear. Until he dies, and is forgotten.
PILGRIM: I guess we are incapable of remaining silent.
IDIOT: You're right, we're inexhaustible.
PILGRIM: It's so we won't think.
IDIOT: We never think.
PILGRIM: So we won't hear.
IDIOT: Wha'd you say?
PILGRIM: Etcetera and so forth. And now? What should we do?
IDIOT: Wait for Beckot.
PILGRIM: Ah!
IDIOT: We are cursed with thought.
PILGRIM: From the beginning. Let's go.
IDIOT: We can't. We're waiting.
PILGRIM: For what?
IDIOT: We're waiting for Beckot.
PILGRIM: Ah! What'll we do?
IDIOT: Nothing to be done.
PILGRIM: Where are my gloves?
IDIOT: Where did you put them?
PILGRIM: I don't remember.
IDIOT: (spies them on the green) There they are, on the green.
PILGRIM: (seeing the gloves) There's only one, and those are yellow; mine were white.
IDIOT: The other one is behind the shed, beside the fence. Someone has taken yours and left these in their place.
PILGRIM: But why?
IDIOT: Too loose.
PILGRIM: No, too tight.
IDIOT: Not yours, his. Maybe these will fit just fine.
PILGRIM: We'll try. (Tries them on) Too tight, don't fit.
IDIOT: Well, they can't convict you now.
PILGRIM: Wha...?!
IDIOT: Football term, the Prevent Defense.
PILGRIM: What-ever. Let's go.
IDIOT: We can't.
PILGRIM: Why not?
IDIOT: We're waiting for Beckot. (Spying Barnes' hat.) Lo, what's this, Barnes' hat.

Here Idiot hands Pilgrim the bucket hat off his own head and puts on Barnes' bucket hat; Pilgrim takes off his own bucket hat and puts on Idiot's hat, and hands his hat to Idiot, who takes off Barnes' and puts Pilgrim's on, handing Barnes' hat to Pilgrim, who takes off Idiot's and puts on Barnes,' handing Idiot's back to Idiot, and so on in this fashion for several rounds.

PILGRIM: Which one am I wearing?
IDIOT: Dunno. Me?
PILGRIM: Dunno?
IDIOT: Let's play Slice and Barnes.
PILGRIM: Never heard of it.
IDIOT: I'll be Barnes, you be Slice. (He imitates Barnes, sagging under the weight of his baggage.) Go on.
PILGRIM: What do I do?
IDIOT: Curse me!
PILGRIM: Asshole.
IDIOT: Stronger!
PILGRIM: Lawyer!
IDIOT: Oh, we're play-acting, you don't have to be cruel.

Enter Slice and Barnes. Slice is blind. Barnes, burdened as before. At sight of Pilgrim and Idiot Barnes stops short. Slice, continuing on his way, bumps into him.

SLICE: What is it? Who is it? (Barnes falls, drops everything and brings down Slice with him. They lie helpless among the scattered baggage.)
PILGRIM: Is it Beckot?
IDIOT: At last!
SLICE: Help!
PILGRIM: Is it Beckot?
IDIOT: We're no longer alone, waiting for the night, waiting for Beckot, waiting for...waiting. All evening we have struggled, unassisted. Now it's over. It's already tomorrow.
SLICE: Help!
IDIOT: Time flows again already. The sun will set, the moon rise, and we away...from here.
SLICE: Pity!
IDIOT: Poor Slice.
PILGRIM: I knew it was him.
IDIOT: Who?
PILGRIM: Beckot.
IDIOT: But it's not Beckot.
PILGRIM: It's not Beckot?
IDIOT: It's not Beckot.
PILGRIM: Then who is it?
IDIOT: It's Slice.
SLICE: Help me help me help me!
IDIOT: He can't get up.
PILGRIM: Let's go.
IDIOT: We can't.
PILGRIM: Why not?
IDIOT: We're waiting for Beckot.
PILGRIM: Ah!
IDIOT: He might have another bone for you.
PILGRIM: Bone?
IDIOT: Chicken. Yesterday's lunch, do you not remember?
PILGRIM: It was him?
IDIOT: Him.
PILGRIM: Ask him.
IDIOT: Perhaps we should help him first.
PILGRIM: To do what?
IDIOT: To get up.
PILGRIM: He can't get up?
IDIOT: He wants to get up.
PILGRIM: Then let him get up.
IDIOT: He can not.
PILGRIM: Why not?
IDIOT: I don't know.
PILGRIM: Let's get the bone first; if he refuses we'll leave him there.
IDIOT: You mean we have him at our mercy?
PILGRIM: Certainly.
IDIOT: And we should subordinate our good offices to certain conditions? But then I worry about Barnes.
PILGRIM: Barnes?
IDIOT: The one who kicked you.
PILGRIM: There were ten of them.
IDIOT: No, before them, the one who kicked you in the nuts.
PILGRIM: He here?
IDIOT: In the flesh.
PILGRIM: We could jump him.
IDIOT: Ambush?
PILGRIM: A sheep in wolf's clothing is worth two in ambush...
IDIOT: Oh dear...Still, we ought to help the man.

Pilgrim and Idiot attempt to help Slice get up, but fall themselves, and wallow for what seems an eternity in the chasm of chaos and self-pity. They right themselves, and help Slice to his feet. Slice counsels them in abusing Barnes, the better to pass the time. They kick Barnes but hurt their feet, and Slice gathers himself to depart with Barnes.

IDIOT: Can you have Barnes give us a song before you leave?
SLICE: But he is dumb.
IDIOT: Dumb? Since when?
SLICE: Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for your, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (He leaves with Barnes.)
IDIOT: (to Pilgrim) I'm not sure he's really blind. Seems like he saw us.
PILGRIM: You're sure it wasn't him?
IDIOT: Who?
PILGRIM: Beckot?
IDIOT: (Considering) Hmmm, not at all. Not sure at all! It might have been Beckot! And what will we tell people, that we were waiting for Beckot and Slice came, and spoke to us! (Looking at Pilgrim) He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the beating he's taken and I'll give him a carrot.
Enter A Dog, holding a letter in his mough.
A DOG: Arf!
IDIOT: Ah, another note. (To A Dog.) From Beckot?
A DOG: (Nodding) Arf!
PILGRIM: What's it say?
IDIOT: (Reading the note) So, it says he won't come this evening, but he'll come tomorrow.
A DOG: Arf! (Lifts his leg upon Pilgrim's trousers.) Arf!
PILGRIM: Oh, not again. We ought to hang ourselves.
IDIOT: Have you got a bit of rope?
PILGRIM: No, no rope, radio.
IDIOT: We'll just have to wait.
PILGRIM: For what?
IDIOT: Beckot.
PILGRIM: And if he shows?
IDIOT: We'll be saved.
PILGRIM: We'll never be saved. He's not coming. I'm going.
IDIOT: You're right. Let's go.
PILGRIM: Shall we go?
IDIOT: Yes, let's go.
PILGRIM: Okay, we're going.
IDIOT: We're outta here.
PILGRIM: Adios.
IDIOT: Adieu.
PILGRIM: Twenty-three skidoo.
IDIOT: Vamanos!
They do not move.

-CURTAIN-

6:54pm: Expected To Arrive...This Date, 1906

SAMUEL BECKETT
born: APRIL 13, 1906
died: DECEMBER 22, 1989

WAITING FOR BECKOT
A Comitragedy In Two Acts

Pilgrim, a touring frisbee golf pro
Idiot, his caddy
Barnes, a blind sheep
Slice, a local clairvoyant
A Dog, a dog

Act I

A country tree. A road.
Mourning, and early afteryawn.

Pilgrim, sitting on a lump, is trying to take off his frisbee disc-golf gloves. He pries at them with both feet, with his teeth, panting (with his slacks?). He gives up, exhausted, rests, and tries again. As before.
Enter Idiot.

PILGRIM: (giving up again) Nothing to be done.
IDIOT: (advancing) I'm beginning to agree. Then I begin to think I haven't yet tried everything. And I resume the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Pilgrim.) So there you are again.
PILGRIM: Am I?
IDIOT: It would appear. Glad you're back, thought you were a goner.
PILGRIM: Me, too.
IDIOT: Where on earth have you been?
PILGRIM: Just a round of frisbee golf, whither else?
IDIOT: And didn't they beat you?
PILGRIM: Certainly they beat me. Same crowd, you know.
IDIOT: Yes, I'm aware. I can't imagine where you'd be all these years without me.
PILGRIM: Will you stop blathering and help me off with these bloody things.
IDIOT: (helping him) There's man for you, blaming his gloves for the faults of his hands. Well, one of the thieves was saved; not an unreasonable percentage.
PILGRIM: Wha...?!
IDIOT: PiPi, suppose we repented.
PILGRIM: Repented what?
IDIOT: (reflecting) Oh, we needn't concern ourselves with the details...
PILGRIM: Our being born?
IDIOT: (begins a belly-laugh, then stifles it.) Well, we can't even laugh anymore.
PILGRIM: Dreadful privation.
IDIOT: Only smile. (Smiles ear to ear.) No, it's not the same thing. Nothing to be done. Do you remember your bible studies, the Gospels.
PILGRIM: Well, only the New Testicle: John, Paul, George & Richard.
IDIOT: Yes, a shame about that nickname, they could have been famous. But no matter, the two thieves, remember, crucified at the same time as our Saviour. One...
PILGRIM: Our wha...?!
IDIOT: Saviour. Two thieves. One was supposed to have been saved and the other...(searching for its opposite)...damned.
PILGRIM: Saved from what?
IDIOT: I don't know, damnation...law school I guess? Point being, only one of the Gospels speaks of the thief being saved...
PILGRIM: When?
IDIOT: His solo Gospel, you remember, "Give Thief A Chance."
PILGRIM: Oh, that. Hey, I'm leaving. He does not move.

IDIOT: How is it they were all there, but only one of them speaks of the thief being saved. One out of four. The other three, two don't mention him at all, and the third said both abused him, and anyway that one never had any solo hits.
PILGRIM: Yes he did, he was one for four with a walk and an RBI in the All-Gospel game at the Granny Rewards.
IDIOT: What-ever.
PILGRIM: What's this all about? Abused Who?
IDIOT: The Saviour.
PILGRIM: Why?
IDIOT: Because he wouldn't save them.
PILGRIM: From what? The rock-pile: the discount bin?
IDIOT: Idiot! From death.
PILGRIM: I thought you said hell (or law school, which is the same thing, isn't it?)
IDIOT: From death, from death.
PILGRIM: And?
IDIOT: Then the two of them must have been damned. But one of the fab-four says that one of the two was saved.
PILGRIM: They just disagree. So what?
IDIOT: But all four were there, and only one speaks of a thief being saved. Why believe him rather than the others.
PILGRIM: Who believes him?
IDIOT: Everybody, since it was remastered and released as a box-set, it's the only version they know.
PILGRIM: Well, people are bloody ignorant apes, and there's an end on it. Now I'm for getting out of here. Let's go.
IDIOT: We can't.
PILGRIM: Why on earth not?
IDIOT: We're waiting for Beckot.
PILGRIM: The writer?
IDIOT: Certainly not; the musician. You know, “I'm a loser, so why don't you kill me.”
PILGRIM: I thought that was Beck.
IDIOT: Nah, suffix it to say the suffix is suffixient.
PILGRIM: Easy for you to say. Are you sure it was here?
IDIOT: What?
PILGRIM: That we were to meet.
IDIOT: He did say 'by the tree.' You see any other trees?
PILGRIM: Well, there's nothing on this one, no leave.
IDIOT: Right, no leave; wait.
PILGRIM: What?
IDIOT: Wait.
PILGRIM: Wait? What Wait, John Waite?
IDIOT: Certainly not, I'm not missing him at all. Tom.
PILGRIM: Tom Who?
IDIOT: Tom Waits.
PILGRIM: For What?
IDIOT: Who?
PILGRIM: Tom?
IDIOT: What?
PILGRIM: Waits?
IDIOT: Oh, for Frank’s Wild Years, and Beckot.
PILGRIM: Are you mad?
IDIOT: Not in the least. With your handicap we still finished in the money, why would I be mad?
PILGRIM: He should be here.
IDIOT: He didn't say for sure he'd come.
PILGRIM: And if he doesn't show?
IDIOT: We'll come back tomorrow.
PILGRIM: And then the day after?
IDIOT: Possibly.
PILGRIM: And so on.
IDIOT: The point is--
PILGRIM: Until he comes.
IDIOT: You're merciless.
PILGRIM: You're certain it was today?
IDIOT: He said Saturday. (Pause) I think.
PILGRIM: You think.
IDIOT: I'm sure I made a note. Check your scorecard.
PILGRIM: But which Saturday. And is it Saturday. Is it not rather Sunday. (Pause) Or Monday. (Pause) Or Friday?
IDIOT: What shall we do?
PILGRIM: If he came yesterday and we weren't here you may be sure he won't come again today.
IDIOT: But you say you were here yesterday.
PILGRIM: I may have been mistaken.
IDIOT: Whatever shall we do now!
PILGRIM: What about hanging ourselves?
IDIOT: Hmm, we'd get erections.
PILGRIM: I'm for that.
IDIOT: With all that follows, did you know that where it falls, that's where mandrakes grow? That's why they shriek when you pull them.
PILGRIM: Now I'm confused. Let's hang ourselves immediately.
IDIOT: But from this tree? I wouldn't trust it.
PILGRIM: Let's try.
IDIOT: Go ahead, then.
PILGRIM: After you.
IDIOT: No, no, you first.
PILGRIM: Why me?
IDIOT: You're lighter than I.
PILGRIM: Precisely!
IDIOT: What?
PILGRIM: Use your noggin, Bloggin!
IDIOT: I am an idiot.
PILGRIM: Certainly. GiGi light--bough not break--GiGi dead. DiDi heavy--bough break--DiDi alone.
IDIOT: I had not thought of that.
PILGRIM: If it hangs you it'll hang anything.
IDIOT: Well, what should we do?
PILGRIM: Let's do nothing. It's safer.
IDIOT: Let's wait and see what he says.
PILGRIM: Who?
IDIOT: Beckot.
PILGRIM: Good idea.
IDIOT: Let's wait till we know exactly where we stand.
PILGRIM: On the other hand it might be well to strike the iron before it freezes.
IDIOT: I'm curious to hear his offer; then we'll take it or leave it.
PILGRIM: What exactly did we ask him for?
IDIOT: Were you not there?
PILGRIM: I can't have been listening.
IDIOT: Well, nothing definite.
PILGRIM: A kind of prayer?
IDIOT: Precisely.
PILGRIM: And his reply?
IDIOT: He said he'd see.
PILGRIM: Couldn't promise anything.
IDIOT: He'd have to think it over.
PILGRIM: Nothing to be done.

Enter Slice and Barnes. Slice drives Barnes by means of a Golden Tee track-ball, pepper spray, and optional joystick (in reality a stun-gun). Barnes is first to enter, followed by the stun-gun wires, long enough to let him reach the middle of the green before Slice appears. Barnes carries a heavy bag, a speed bag, a folding stool, a stool sample, a pic-a-nic basket, a greatcoat and a not-so-greatcoat. Slice a megaphone and calculator.

SLICE: (Off, through Megaphone [hereafter Meg]) On! (Barnes crosses past Pilgrim and Idiot, and exit as Slice crosses toward the two, and stops.) [Meg] Halt! (Barnes falls with a clatter among all his stuff. Pilgrim takes a step toward him but Idiot holds him back.)
PILGRIM: Let me go!
IDIOT: Don't even move.
SLICE: Careful, he's dangerous.
PILGRIM: (to Barnes) Are you dangerous, Barnes?
BARNES: Ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a.
IDIOT: How sheepworthy.
PILGRIM: Is that him?
IDIOT: Who?
PILGRIM: Er...
IDIOT: Beckot?
PILGRIM: Yes.
SLICE: I present myself. Slice.
IDIOT: (to Pilgrim) Not at all!
PILGRIM: (to Slice) You're not Beckot, Sir?
SLICE: I am Slice! Slice! Does that name mean nothing to you? (Pilgrim and Idiot look at each other questioningly.)
PILGRIM: We're not from these parts, sir.
SLICE: You're human beings none the less. (Dons his glasses.) As far as I can see. (Takes them off.) Of the same species as myself. (Belly laugh) Of the same species as Slice! Made in God's image!
IDIOT: Well, you see...
SLICE: Who is Beckot?
PILGRIM: Beckot?
SLICE: You took me for Beckot.
IDIOT: Oh no, Sir, not for a moment, Sir.
SLICE: Who is he?
IDIOT: Oh he's a...a kind of acquaintance.
PILGRIM: Nothing of the kind, we hardly know him.
IDIOT: True, not very well...
PILGRIM: I wouldn't even know him if I saw him.
SLICE: You took me for him.
PILGRIM: That's to say, you see, the light, the fog, waiting...I imagined, just for a second...
SLICE: Waiting? So you were waiting for him?
IDIOT: Well, you see--
SLICE: Here? On my land?
IDIOT: We didn't intend any harm.
PILGRIM: We meant well.
SLICE: The road is free to all.
IDIOT: That's how we looked at it.
SLICE: It's a disgrace. But there you are.
PILGRIM: Nothing to be done.
SLICE: (magnanimously) Let's say no more about it. (He shocks Barnes with the stun-gun.) Up, swine! (pause) Every time he drops he falls asleep. (Gestures with the joystick) Up Sheep! (Barnes arises.) Back! (Barnes backs up.) Stop! (Barnes stops.) Turn! (Barnes turns.) (To Pilgrim and Idiot) Gentlemen, I am happy to have met you; the road seems long when one journeys all alone for...(consults watch)...what seems an eternity, and never a soul in sight. (To Barnes.) Coat! (Barnes puts down the bags, advances, gives Slice the coat, goes back to his place, takes up the bags.) Hold that! (Slice holds out the stun-gun and pepper spray; Barnes advances and, his hands occupied, takes the stun-gun and pepper spray in his mouth, and returns to his place.) Coat! (Barnes puts down the bag, basket and stools, helps Slice on with his coat, and returns, and there is more of the same for what seems an eternity, culminating in Barnes delivering the pic-a-nic basket to Slice, who proceeds to eat his lunch from it.)

Pilgrim and Idiot begin to circle about Barnes, inspecting him up and down.

SLICE: Careful, he'll pull the wool over your eyes.
PILGRIM: I'll see which end is up.
IDIOT: I'd throw a mid-range driver, PiPi.
PILGRIM: I've got my XD ready, DiDi. (approaches Barnes, cautiously.)
IDIOT: But why does he follow you like this?
SLICE: He wants to impress me, so that I'll keep him.
PILGRIM: What?
SLICE: Perhaps that's not quite it. He wants to mollify me, so that I'll give up the idea of parting with him. No, that's not exactly it either.
IDIOT: You want to get rid of him?
SLICE: He wants to con me, but he won't.
IDIOT: You want to get rid of him?
SLICE: He imagines that when I see how well he carries I'll be tempted to keep him on in that capacity.
PILGRIM: You've had enough of him?
SLICE: In reality he's not much of a carrier. It's not his job.
IDIOT: You want to get rid of him?
SLICE: He imagines that when I see him untiring I will regret my decision. That is his scheme. As if I were short of servants.
IDIOT: You want to get rid of him?
SLICE: Remark that I might just as well have been in his shoes and he in mine. If chance had not willed otherwise. To each one his due.
IDIOT: You want to get rid of him?
SLICE: I do. But rather than drive him away as I could have, in the goodness of my heart I am bringing him to JazzJest, where I hope to get a good price for him from the minions who populate that depraved affair. Truth be told you can't drive such creatures away. Best would be to kill them. (Barnes brays.)
PILGRIM: He's crying!
SLICE: Old sheep have more dignity. (Holds out his hanky.) Comfort him, since you pity him. He'll feel less forsaken. (As Pilgrim does so, Barnes rears up and kicks him in the groin.)
PILGRIM: Oh, the swine! (Grabbing his crotch.) He's crippled me!
SLICE: I told you he didn't like strangers.
PILGRIM: I may never walk again.
IDIOT: I'll carry you if I have to.
SLICE: Oh, the Hollies, verranice. And see, he's stopped crying. (To Pilgrim) You have replaced him as it were. The tears of the world in constant flux: for each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. Same thing for the laugh. And it was my Barnes there who taught me all of this!
IDIOT: And after all his service you want to crucify him like this? Really!
PILGRIM: Does he want to replace him?
SLICE: He can perform if you like.
IDIOT: What does he do?
SLICE: Sing, dance, calculations, metaphors...
PILGRIM: Let's have an allegory!
SLICE: Oh, sorry, that's beyond his abilities. (Barnes collapses to the ground) See, he'll be wanting a new contract any minute now. Union wages, benefits, there's no end. It's the paid crowds, they're swelling his head. We'd better go before he gets an agent. (Slice and Barnes exit, with Slice applying pepper spray and stun-gun, shouting instructions through Meg, driving with the track-ball and steering with the joystick.)
Enter A Dog, carrying a letter in his mouth.
A DOG: Arf!
PILGRIM: Have you come from Beckot?
A DOG: (nodding, offers up the letter.) Arf!
IDIOT: Well, what's it say?
PILGRIM: Says here Beckot's on tour, won't be here today. Definitely make it tomorrow, though.
A DOG: (Sniffs, then lifts his leg on Pilgrim's trousers.) Arf!
PILGRIM: Hey!
A DOG: (tail wagging) Arf!
IDIOT: Well, we can't wait, you've got the tourney to finish.
PILGRIM: True, can't wait. Let's go.
IDIOT: Let's go.
PILGRIM: We're gone.
IDIOT: We're history.
PILGRIM: We're outta here.
IDIOT: Vamoos!
They do not move.

-CURTAIN-

(WAIT HERE FOR ACT II [II BE POSTED IIMORROW])

11:33pm: We'll Go Somewhere Nice...

I don't care to comment on today's developments, and Pilgrim never discusses politics or religion, so we're boycotting today's news. As an alternative, here's somewhere nice to visit, courtesy of the wonderful lens of Sam Abell:

WHERE: Somerset, England
WHEN: 1992
PHOTOGRAPHER: Sam Abell

“‘Uncheckt shadows of green brown and gray,’ poet John Clare wrote of the moors, land that ‘never felt the rage of blundering plough.’ On Exmoor, hedge banks faintly trace the far hill. Supporters hope they won’t vanish over the horizon of time.”
—From “Britain’s Hedgerows,” September 1993, National Geographic magazine

Another great shot from Sam Abell and the Photo Of The Day archive from NationalGeographic.com.

Maybe tomorrow something good will happen in the real world...

1:57pm: Nah, I'll Cab It...

LOS ANGELES, April 10 - In response to reduced ticket sales and reservations, heightened airport security, skittish metal detectors and general malaise, American Airlines today cancelled all flights in favor of its new service utilizing the nations roadways. An airline spokesman said "We'll stay on free interstates until we get the EZ-Passes we ordered." When reminded that the skies are also free, the spokesman said "Hey, this is a lot safer than flying; geez, I don't know what in the world we were thinking." When a reporter noted that air travel was, in fact, statistically safer than driving, the spokesman replied: "Oh yeah, I'll put one of our 767's up against any Tractor-Trailer you can name, and we'll see who walks away from that pileup."

Noting lagging ticket sales, one reporter suggested that with flights limited to ground service, most people would find cheaper alternatives. "Well, they won't be getting those little bags of peanuts," the spokesman said. When reminded that trains, cars, cabs, buses, and many mopeds go a lot faster than taxiing planes, the spokesman replied: "Most of our jets can taxi up to twenty miles per hour." He added: "And, we are now offering unlimited cell phone usage."

The airline said food service will also be improved with the new service, taking advantage of available food supplies. A spokesman elaborated: "It's common knowledge we've always used road-kill for our meals, and now we won't have to wait for shipments."

Bus and subway transfers are in the planning stages, and will be issued to all passangers using Metro Cards.

11:46pm: In...Where Else...Australia

WHERE: Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia
WHEN: 1995
Photographer Sam Abell:

“My Australian friend Kerry Trapnell and I called this secluded, silent place on Fraser Island the ‘Zen Garden’ because of its almost empty, austere beauty.

We camped here several days trying to render, photographically, the power of the place. That power was in the skeletal trees, remnants of an ancient forest that had been buried centuries ago by shifting sand dunes. Over time the sands shifted again, revealing this scene. But just behind the trees an almost vertical dune was advancing to rebury them. The trees seemed to be elemental calligraphy spelling out that story.”

—From the National Geographic book Seeing Gardens, 2000
--From National Geographic's Photo of the Day Archive.

PILGRIM, SLICE, and BARNES, are at the top of the hill at the 8th tee, overlooking the entire frisbee golf course.

PILGRIM: What a course.
SLICE: More like a battlefield, Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: Battlefield?
BARNES: Yes, a place where wars are fought, usually out in the open, but it can be used to describe a religious homeland.
PILGRIM: I know what a battlefield is, Barnes, I’m just wondering why you would describe our course this way, Slice?
SLICE: Well, Pilgrim, you have been waging war of a different stripe on this terrain, and winning, it would appear. But too, it is the anniversary of a very famous date in our history, the end of a brutal war, fought on a battlefield of its own soil, with its own children as soldiers.
PILGRIM: That sounds like what is going on across the way over there right now.
SLICE: Oh no, Pilgrim, that is not one people fighting with each other, that is different people refusing to share one land because of differing beliefs. But this historic war I am referring to was neighbor fighting against neighbor, in some instances brother against brother.
PILGRIM: It is, which war was that?
BARNES: Oh, that would be the Civil War, wouldn’t it, Slice?
SLICE: Yes, Barnes, that is correct. Today is the anniversary of the date when Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army, some 28,000 strong, to the Union Army under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, later to grace the currency of this nation in some circles, Barnes.
BARNES: Yes, I do believe I’ve seen him on a fifty dollar bill.
PILGRIM: Barnes, you are blind as a bat.
BARNES: Well, but this a printed medium, Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: Wha...!?
SLICE: The Civil War, Pilgrim, fought between the North and the South
BARNES: Oh, the Senior Bowl! I’ve seen that game...
SLICE: Before there was a Senior Bowl, Barnes.
PILGRIM: There you go again, Barnes.
BARNES: Well, I must have read about it, then...
SLICE: Same problem, Barnes. But Pilgrim, this was a war that freed the slaves...you may not believe this but there used to be states in our union in which it was legal for one human being to own another, and force him to work at manual labor. They kidnapped Africans and brought them to this continent to be sold into slavery.
PILGRIM: What do you mean I might not believe it, I from the looks of things not that much has really changed.
SLICE: Whatever do you mean, Pilgrim?
PILGRIM: Well, I have seen the way African-Americans are treated over here; you told me yourself that until Halle Berry won that odd little trophy no African-American woman had ever won one for that category. And you said that Denzel was only the second African-American male to win one. And what about the workplace, upper management, and sports--head coaching and general manager’s jobs. Was Al Campanis speaking for everyone? And according to the records, that was over a dozen years ago.
BARNES: I’m blind, Slice, and even I can see that what he is saying is true.
SLICE: Well, Barnes, I suppose you can legislate people’s actions, and ban certain behaviors and practices; but you can not legislate people’s beliefs.
PILGRIM: In that case, how different are you really over here than those people over there who are killing eachother because they do not want to share the same land.
SLICE: It’s a good thing we never discuss politics or religion in this forum, pilgrim, otherwise I might have to answer that...
-CURTAIN-

11:30am: And A Great Book Was Written

On April 8, 563 B.C. Gautama Buddha was born. Although scholars have disagreed on the exact date and century of his birth and life, there is no dispute that he was the founder of Buddhism, and an enlightened ascetic.

According to Buddhism, there are "four noble truths": (1) existence is suffering; (2) this suffering is caused by human craving; (3) there is a cessation of the suffering, which is nirvana; and (4) nirvana can be achieved, in this or future lives, though the "eightfold path" of right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Right on!

And one of literature's masterpieces was written about Buddha, it is Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. A brief description from the back flap: "In the novel, Siddhartha, a young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life -- the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom."

My favorite quotes from Siddhartha:

"I can think, I can wait, I can fast."

"He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new."

"Have you also learned that secret from the river, that there is no such thing as time?"
"Yes, Siddhartha...Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?"

One of the great masterpieces of literature and a very short read, only about 150 pages (depending on which edition you grab). Siddhartha contains the secret of life. Give it a read.

2:54pm: (But I Think It's The Red Cross Dragon...)

Oxfordshire's White Horse of Uffington

From The Associated Press Sunday, April 7, 2002:
Uffington, England — Galloping across the Berkshire Downs, yet never getting anywhere, the White Horse of Uffington is one of the great mysteries of the English countryside.

The stylized figure, some 360 feet long, was gouged from the white chalk bedrock some 3,000 years ago. But why and by whom remains an enigma.

"The latest theory is that it was dedicated to the Celtic goddess Epona who represented the triumph of good over evil," says Sharon Smith, curator of a small museum behind the village church in Uffington.

Over the centuries, legends and folklore have gathered around the horse. Historians in the 18th century argued the elegant design was ordered by King Alfred to celebrate his victory over the pagan Danes in 871.

Others say the design was cut by Hengist, the leader of Anglo Saxon hordes in the 5th century, in the image of the horse on his standard. Folklore also claims the chalk carving is not a horse at all, but the dragon killed by St. George, England's patron saint.

"None of these myths can tell us who made the horse or why," says David Miles, chief archaeologist at English Heritage. "But we can say when it was made and how."

Miles surveyed the site in the 1990s and discovered the horse was made by digging trenches 3 feet deep and filling it with rammed chalk.

Using a process called Optical Stimulated Luminescence, Miles and his team from the Oxford Archaeological Unit determined the lower levels of chalk were last exposed to sunlight in the late Bronze Age, some 3,000 years ago. "Which makes it by far the oldest chalk hill figure in England," Miles said.

Well, that the AP's take. Here's mine: I think it's the dragon slayed by St. George (Spenser's Red Cross Knight). Edmund Spenser wrote The Faerie Queen, an historical allegory of good versus evil, between 1580 and 1590. Spenser drew heavily on the historic pictoral legend of the soldier-saint, St. George (England's patron saint), and on the rich pictoral history embodying the legend, in particular the cornerstone depiction of St. George Slaying The Dragon, by Renaissance master Vittore Carpaccio.

St. George Slaying The Dragon

In their introduction to Books I and II of The Faerie Queene, (Odyssey Press, 1965) Robert Kellogg and Oliver Steele discuss the detail of the Carpaccio’s painting in relation to Spenser’s work:

“In the foreground of Carpaccio’s picture are the central figures of the combat. On the right is St. George mounted and fully armed as a medieval knight. His lance has just pierced the dragon through the throat and has broken. On the left the great winged dragon is poised to strike. The ground on which the combat takes place is littered with the mutilated bodies and the dried bones of the dragon’s victims, and the dragon’s tiny offspring run about. Behind St. George at the extreme right is the princess standing in prayer, and behind her is a rocky hill whose narrow winding paths lead to a domed church at the top. At the extreme left behind the dragon is a marsh full of skulls and a skeleton. Behind this is a great walled city lying on a plain. Its most prominent structure a three-tiered tower upon whose baconies crowds stand watching the combat. In the background between the two central figures is a tree. The limbs growing to the left are withered while those that grow to the right are green with leaves. Although Carpaccio’s St. George is generally faithful to the legend of literary tradition, still the background is richly allegorical. And it is this quality which makes the picture so close in intention to Book I of The Faerie Queene.

The art historian Erwin Panofsky has noted that the division “of landscape background into two halves of symbolically contrasting character” is common in late-medieval and renaissance religious painting.6 The low plain at the left in Carpaccio’s picture represents what Panofsky calls the aera sub lege, mankind bound to the old law of Moses and thus subject to sin, death, and hell. The high rocky ground on the right represents the aera sub gratia, man under the new dispensation, redeemed from sin and death by Christ’s sacrifice and his grace. The tree behind the central figures is a symbol of the same opposition between grace and damnation. The barren and withered limbs on the left represent not only the sterility of life under the old law; they are also symbolic of the origin of man’s bondage to sin and death, for they represent that tree in paradise whose fruit condemned Adam and, in Adam, all mankind to death. The living branches on the right represent the death-dealing tree of knowledge transformed into the tree of life by Christ, the new Adam. By his death on the cross, man is rescued from death and offered eternal life.”
6Studies in Iconology, Harper Torchbooks, 1962, p. 64.

Well, it’s a little heady here, that's true, and a little over the top on the religious end. But that was the Renaissance, can't change that; and the explication is relevant and accurate, and appreciative of the art and literature of these wonderful Renaissance masters. Red Cross Knight--now there's a pilgrim in paradise...

10:30am: Open Letter Of Introduction To A New Pilgrim In Paradise

Indigo McCambridge Williams

7 Apr ‘02
To Indigo upon her miraculous arrival-
A brief note of introduction from your godfather (supplemental to our first meeting, in January, when I held and fed you, one of my fondest personal memories):
I was born in New York City on July 15, 1953, (fifteen years – to the day – before your father’s arrival) of English, German (Pennsylvania Dutch), and Armenian descent, and grew up on Long Island, in Maine, and upstate New York during my early years. After the obligatory secondary, university and graduate education I returned to New York City and opened a trial law practice, which I maintained for 10 years while pursuing the fine arts during my spare time. These included writing (which I have done since childhood), music (as well), and painting. I wrote during early morning and late evening hours, working on my first novel, which I had begun after completing law school in 1978. On weeknights I sang and played acoustic guitar in the speakeasies and folk cafes in Greenwich Village and elsewhere in the city, making the rounds with my good friends Bob Duncan (hereafter “Dunc”) and Bob Mello (hereafter “Mello”), both of whom you will meet and who, together with your father and me, make up the four-headed beast loosely known as the G.D.B.R. Co., Los Quatros Amigos, and Barnes & Co. (formerly Barnes, Barnes, Barnes & Barnes, Ltd.). Because my burgeoning law practice was making spare time sparse, after 10 years I finally acceded to the plans my personal interests, happiness and destiny had apparently otherwise arranged for me and abandoned the practice of law, returning to the literature that had always shaped – and continues to shape – my life. Since 1989 I have been writing full-time, and bartending part-time, and have never looked back. And I must say it’s a good thing I chose bartending to pay the rent, or it might have taken longer for fate and her muses to draw your father and me together, for certainly we were destined to meet in this life. We have become fast friends, and from this friendship sprang the dream to sail around the world, a dream which brought together your very special father, Rand, and your beautiful and lovely mother, Gillian, and isn’t that the splendor of this life: the circle is unbroken, and you are the miracle it has brought forth.
It is a crazy world you have been born into, filled with magic and wonder, and also – at times – heartbreak and ruin. But we make of it what we will, and I have no doubt you will find your true course, and the path that will fulfill your life, and enrich you with happiness and contentment. I will be here watching you grow into yourself, sharing whatever I have to share of my own life in order to help you with yours, in any way I am able. All you need know is that I will always be here for you – and wherever I happen to be is “here” for your purposes – and you may call on me at any time for any thing, and if it is in my power it will be so. And so concluding this brief introduction I welcome you – Indigo McCambridge Williams – another pilgrim in paradise, to this brave new world, to explore it at your leisure and as you will, and flourish.
Eternally yours-
Your godfather-
G.D. Peters

[*And to the rest of you curious few, this is more than you have gotten from me in all these years, and all that you are going to get!]

7:15am: It Never Happened, But If It Did It Wasn't True...
CARLSBAD, N.M., April 5 - The New York Times reported today (All Fiction, and All-Clear) that New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson had issued a statement prior to NBC's Wednesday night broadcast of "The West Wing" to reassure residents that the episode, which depicted the crash of a truck carrying uranium fuel rods in an Idaho highway tunnel, was purely fictitious. The statement said the transportation of radioactive material is "well planned between state and federal agencies," and that officials were "trained to deal with any possible problems."

In a sidebar, members of the governor's staff were huddled with FCC advisors late Wednesday to ascertain whether a broadcast involving radioactive materials would have any known side effects when carried over television airwaves. "I don't think so," an FCC spokesman said. "They have separate ratings."

After hearing of the episode, Officials from the Department of Education dispatched three fifth graders to New Mexico with a truckload of Maps of the United States for state officials. When asked if they knew where Idaho was, a governor's spokesman replied "Of course we do, that's the one with the face." Another shipment was being scheduled for the state's public schools.

In a related story, the state of Montana lodged a protest on Thursday morning, complaining about being mistaken for Idaho. "We're the one with the face!" it read.

The Department of State issued this response to the protest: "Well, there is no Idaho, really; there never has been. We don't know how it got on the map. A commission is being formed to look into it."

10:52pm: Let's Play Two...
PILGRIM: [Packing up his discs at the 18th hole] Okay fellas, I gotta run.
BARNES: Run, it's still light out, we can get another round in, no?
PILGRIM: Nah, I gotta go, double-header in the morning. [Pauses] Hold a sec... you're blind; how do you know it's light out?
BARNES: Oh, that: Daylight Savings Time.
PILGRIM: Daylight savings? What in the name of the rose is that?
SLICE: What's a double-header?
BARNES: Daylight savings, you know, you set your clocks ahead an hour in the fall and back an hour in the spring.
PILGRIM: Double-header, two games instead of one; you know, like that gum. It's a tradition where I come from.
SLICE: Hang on a second there, Barnes, you've got it bass ackwards there, don't you know.
BARNES: That's right, you did say something about baseball season starting up again this week.
PILGRIM: Oh, but this is football.
SLICE: It's spring ahead and fall back...
BARNES: [Not paying attention] What gum? So baseball season didn't start?
PILGRIM: Oh, no, it did. But I have a football double-header tomorrow.
SLICE: They have those in football, too?
PILGRIM: Not really, but I'm in a touch league.
BARNES: Now this I gotta see.
SLICE: This is getting confusing, Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: There you go again, Barnes.
BARNES: That's gotta be rough, two football games; do you get a few hours to rest between games?
PILGRIM: Not even a few minutes, Barnes, we finish one and start right up again. Anyway, I gotta run. [Sets his watch back an hour as he runs, calling back over his shoulder] Thanks for the advice on Daytime Lifesavers, I would have would have lost an hour's sleep!
SLICE: Oh dear, but he's got it wrong, Barnes.
BARNES: Yo, Slice, whatever do you mean?
SLICE: It's spring ahead, and fall back, Barnes. This is springtime, the clocks go ahead, not back.
BARNES: Oh well, it's too late now.
SLICE: Yes, Barnes, two hours too late, which is what he will be in the morning.
[They look in the direction of Pilgrim's progress.]
BARNES: Well, only one, really, it doesn't even take effect until tomorrow night.
SLICE: Oh dear, what a mess. You don't suppose there's any chance he's from Indiana...
-CURTAIN-

[*In case you've ever wondered where the *#!? Daylight Savings Time came from and why we still adhere to it, here is Won Sight adhere is An Other that describe the origin and use of Daylight Savings Time.]

10:25am: (And He Said It In 1651!)

Hobbes’ interest in science and Euclidean Geometry led him to surmise it must be possible "to extend such deductive certainty to a comprehensive science of man and society." He therefore set out to write a comprehensive treatise on the origin and ends of government, and wrote “Leviathan” in 1651 (link is to full text of Leviathan). It has been called the sole masterpiece of political philosophy in the English language. (See this link for a good summary of Hobbes’ philosophy, his bio and some prominent quotes.)

Germane in light of current events in the Middle East is Hobbes’ chilling account of Pre-Social Man, without the restraints of civilization, society, and government to control his natural aggressions:

“Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. For war consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war, as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is peace.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Leviathan, see Chapter XIII)

A final note of interest, Hobbes’ last words: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

10:30pm: Remembering Martin Luther King

"I Have a Dream" speech, Aug. 28, 1963.

Many of you were not yet born, so it is not a fair question; maybe you were not even yet born when John Lennon was shot in front of his home at The Dakota, here on West 72nd Street. I went there that night, Dec. 8 of '80, was one of the earliest to arrive at what would become an all-night vigil as we gathered at the gate where he was shot, singing "Give Peace A Chance" and hoping for news that it was all a mistake, that somehow he had survived the senseless shooting by a crazed lunatic. But he had not. Yet it was necessary, even after the announcement of his death during a radio broadcast of Monday Night Football, to be there. I was not the only one, there were hundreds of us, we are there even still, and you can see the tears whenever a news station hauls out the videos of that dreadful night to revisit the painful past.

I was not in Memphis in April, 1968, although if I had lived close enough it is possible I would have found a way to get there. I was not yet grown, a green 14 year-old high school freshman in Falmouth, Maine, still trying to feel my way through the labyrinth of life, playing with the band at Friday night dances (a lot of Beatles songs, too). The news hit me quite hard, even at that young age, for in '68 the John Lennon that would one day personify peace, love and understanding had not yet crystallized, while in Martin Luther King it had long before taken full flower. They say the '60s really spanned the time from Kennedy's assassination to the end of the Vietnam War, the decade from '63 to '73, but it's roots can more probably be traced to the August '63 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King, and highlighted by his keynote "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It was not by accident that spoke that day in the shadow of the Great Emancipator, as Lincoln has been called, a historic reference to his Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves and ended hundreds of years of legalized inhumanity, mistreatment and degradation.

Of course, these social diseases flourished well into the '60s, and even in quasi-legal form. The 1896Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the state-sanctioned segregation of railroad cars in Louisiana. This doctrine of "separate but equal" was soon expanded to other public places, including restaurants, rest rooms, theatres, hotels, public schools, and professional sports. The lone dissenting vote on that Court was Justice John Harlan, whose dissenting opinion forsaw a change in the judicial landscape, though it would be sixty years before Brown v. Board of Education would declare "separate but equal" unconstitutional.

I watched the living history of the civil rights movement as it was being written and rewritten on a daily basis by Martin Luther King and his followers. What prevailed most upon the sensibilities of a young boy was his devotion to nonviolence in a time when friends and neighbors were coming home from Southeast Asia in body bags every week. Violence was running rampant, both at home and abroad: the Vietnam War was being waged on the six o'clock news for everyone to watch in all its horror, the Watts riots in Los Angeles in '65, the '68 Chicago Democratic National Convention, the Stones concert at Altamont Speedway outside San Francisco in '69, the Black Panthers, the killing of Black Panther Fred Hampton by Chicago Police in Dec. '69, and on and on. People remember the flower children of the '60s, but it was a violent period which included the assassinations of J.F.K. in '63, and Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy within 2 months of each other in '68, and ending with the killing of four youths by the National Guard at Kent State University in May of '70. Martin Luther King was himself the victim of countless acts of violence, both official and otherwise. He was arrested, assaulted, harrassed and abused by officials of every jurisdiction in which he appeared to help further the civil rights movement. He was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and made the subject of unlawful wiretaps and surveillance. He was punched, kicked, handcuffed, and stoned, and never once wavered in his belief in nonviolent demonstration.

The Civil Rights Movement made great strides during the turbulent '60s, including the signing by Lyndon Johnson of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, L.B.J.'s greatest legacy. But there is still so much hatred and bigotry in the world, still so much inhumanity and mistreatment and degradation. It seems there was so much progress made with Martin Luther King at the helm. Everyone lost a hero that night in Memphis, including a boy in Falmouth, Maine, who was getting his first taste of how mean the world was going to be.

2:15am: A Sad Day In Memphis

Memphis, Tenn., April 4, 1968, 6pm: Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. The civil rights leader, in Memphis supporting a sanitation workers' strike, was on his way to dinner when a bullet severed his spinal cord. He was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital.

A day earlier, in his last sermon, he said: "We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now, I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

Martin Luther King was 39 years old.

In his keynote "I Have A Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

He preached nonviolence and demonstrated for civil rights and humanity, and was the youngest Nobel Peace Prize Laureate at age 35 in 1964. His birthday, January 15, is now a national holiday celebrated on the third monday in January.

11:30pm: JazzJestFineWithMe...
a.s. (ante script): I can't believe she just said that. Raquel Welch to James Stewart in "Bandolero!" after just having crossed the Rio Grand into Mexico: "It is the first time I have been in my country since I left." Sheesh, if they were gonna write dialogue like that they should have type-cast Yogi Berra, I mean at least he sounded like he was making sense when he said "If people don't want to come to the ballpark nobody's gonna stop 'em."
p.a.s. I'm aware; but a guy's gotta do something when the serious writing is done for the day and he's heaving around this drivel...

Well, Pilgrim may not make it to JazzFest this year with finances being what they are of late, but let that not cast a pall over the spirit of the celebration, we've come up with alternative plans: we're gonna start a new tradition, the first annual JazzJest, a faux JazzFest, somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains, at a cabin on a lake. Rand's idea, and he comes up with some good ones sometimes, for an idiot, anyway. (c.f., 2 Idiots In A Boat, reference his last major brain hemorage: "G., let's sail around the world.") But hey, that one worked out okay, looks like he may be onto something with this one too.

Here's the skinny: we're gonna gather the usual JazzFest suspects (Rand, Duncan, and Yours etc.) and instead of flyin' down to N'arlens for the actual, authetic JazzFest (which we haven't missed since '98) we're gonna converge on said lakeside manor and celebrate the JazzNess of the Mountains. We'll bring plenty of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 Premium Blend Sour Mash Whiskey, probably 3 1.75's and a half bottle of Diet Coke for mixer (wait, we're going for 4 days, a quarter-bottle should do), plenty of cd's of the usual JazzFest performers, to wit The Funky Meters, Gallactic, Macio Parker and the J.B.'s, The Neville Bros., Dr. John, Carlos Santana, Lenny Kravitz, Ray Charles, Buckwheat Zydeco, etc. & so forth, and boot up all the computers and laptops to WWOZ FM and listen to the simulcasts every day and nite, make hot & spicy N'arlens Bloodies every morning before toothpaste (wait, we're not bringing toothpaste, we brush with Jack), cook us up some genuine N'arlens cuisine, including crawfish, hush puppies, softshell crab po'boys, etc. & so forth, wear our JazzFest chapeaux, purchased, borrowed, purloined, or otherwise panhandled at prior JazzPasts, and generally Jazz up the entire 4-day weekend with Nuttin' But Jazz, James, and correct me if I'm wrong. Now I don't wanna mislead the Mr. and Missus Leadworthy, there's only one genuine New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and it's in N'arlens every year, last week in April/first week of May. But, if you can't make the real McCoy, may as well grow some funk of your own, right Barnes? JazzJest, a new tradition, coming soon to a weblog near you; oh yeah, I'll be posting daily from JazzJest, photos, QuickTime video clips, Frisbee Golf handicaps and daily scores, and results of the First Annual JazzJest Frisbee Tournament. What the hell; Yogi didn't say 'if you can't beat 'em, find another game,' but he should have...

12:06pm: But Where's The Rest Of It?

This is an actual photo of a living creature, but if you can figure out where the food goes in or how it works you're a better cryptologist than I. (The answer appears at the end of todays post, right-side up.)

(A phalarope, a small shorebird, feeds in the water. This one was photographed from below, so its belly and lobed feet are mirrored on the underside of the surface. That's the official party line, and if you look at it long enough you can figure it out [the top feet are the reflection], but to me it still looks like one of those battlebots from "The Empire Strikes Back.")

2:00pm: One Way Out

China today retrieved this unmanned teakettle it had mistakenly launched into orbit around the earth. The Chairman of China's fledgling Space Ministry was quoted as saying "We make big mistake." The teakettle, spirited from the kitchen of a local farmer on the outskirts of northern Gansu province, was manned by dummy astronauts, and apparently launched with supplies exceeding weightless limits for earth's atmosphere (after correcting for the absence of measurable ozone). Upon further inspection the spacekettle was found to have sixteen gallons of milk on board, further violating the Sacred Cow Alliance of Eastern Asia, and well-established global standards on good taste. When interviewed after the recovery, the astronauts had no comment. A Ministry of Tea official said "We don't use milk in tea! Turn camera off!" A new launch date has yet to be announced.

In other news, Pilgrim cut short his early-morning round of frisbee-golf in Paradise today to call a brief press conference, where he made the following announcement in his country's native tongue of Mostly Jibberish: "I don't have a ticket home," Pilgrim opined. "But if they send that teakettle back up I plan to be on it." Sources are trying to determine whether he will pass safely through the spacekettle's culturally-skewed caffeine detector, as he has reportedly been mainlining java since the age of three.

12:33pm: Two Birds With One...
[PILGRIM steps on his mark and takes aim at the pin, a young Maple at the top of a small rise. He throws his Cobra--a short-range driver but a disc he feels comfortable with at this distance--and lands it within twenty feet of the pin.]
BARNES: Nice shot, Pilgrim.
PILGRIM: Yes, Barnes, thank-you Barnes. Wait a minute, you’re blind, how do you know it was a nice shot.
BARNES: I smelled it.
SLICE: That wasn’t his shot you smelled, Barnes, that was the smell of carnage, another suicide bombing in the quarter.
PILGRIM: You know, someone told me this morning the Netherlands just legalized euthanasia. Jesus, I’m glad I didn’t sign up for that package, they might have mistaken my handicap for a sign I was suffering and offed me. But the brochures on Amsterdam looked pretty rockin.’
BARNES: Don’t say that too loud, Pilgrim, you never know who’s listening.
SLICE: What handicap, Barnes is the blind one.
PILGRIM: Say what, Barnes?
BARNES: “Jesus,” people say he was famous around here at one time, they might get the wrong idea.
PILGRIM: My frisbee-golf handicap, Slice, I’m not very good and they might take it as a sign of early expiration. And speaking of early expiration, if the Dutch want the right to off their tired, their hungry, their poor, why’nt they just ship them over here. Maybe they can get reservations in some of those shops the suicide bombers like so much. Send those innocent people home, they don't wanna die. Put in the freebies, kill two birds with one…er, well, you get the picture.
SLICE: Yes, but it doesn’t matter anymore, both sides have just agreed to put aside their differences and live together in peace and harmony.
BARNES: It’s a miracle, really!
SLICE: No, Barnes, not really. April Fool’s, Barnes.
PILGRIM: [preparing to putt out the hole] Oh Slice, that’s just wrong…
-CURTAIN-