Geothermal Anyone?

And we thought it would take 2 days. A week later, it's in! Our new heating and cooling system . . . They hit rock, sandstone gunk (evidently some sandstone is worse than other sandstone, and we had the worst kind). Six holes in our front yard, 175 feet down . . . Haven't done much writing--just watching the drills going has been my latest pastime.

The Split Brain Theory

"Read the one about the split brain. It's my favorite"
"It's not really a poem, Mom. It's just silly"
"What do you mean? I like it. Read it. But do you think the decade is over?"

The Split Brain Theory

from Midlife Crisis with Dick and Jane

"If split-brain patients are given such tests, the left hemisphere generates many false reports. But the right brain does not; it provides a much more veridical account." Michael S. Gazzaniga and John W. Karapelon; "The Split Brain Revisited;" Scientific American; July 1, 1998

Years later it would be postulated that the President had only half a brain. Something had happened to his right hemisphere, which impaired his sense of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, God and the Devil. When trying to say, think, or do one thing, he always accomplished the reverse. This loss of brainpower proved highly contagious. For a decade the entire nation could not successfully pass a true-false test.

About Translations

I love translations. I love looking at foreign words and wondering . . . what they sound like, feel like, think like . . . I love making up meanings, guessing meaning, writing mis-meanings or mean meanings or fun meanings or . . . I love the idiomatic phrases, the different ways of saying things . . . the ways that words make up another world somewhere somehow . . .

Le style, c'est l'homme.

1) The stylo is the man
2) The style, it is all the hum.
3) The steely man is the man who hums.
4) Pretensions are all we are.

Il y a du monde au balcon

1) There is a balcony to the world.
2) He is there, at the edge of the world, preparing to fly . . .
3) Or maybe it is she who is his balcony of the world.
4) Ah, he says, it is she.
5) His balcony to the world, the Frenchman explains, is a large-breasted woman . . .

Il me manque

1) I miss him.
2) He is missing from me
3) He and I, we are the missing . . .
4) We are there, together, with all that is missing from our lives . . .
5) There at the balcony of the world . . .

Cool News on Dear Professor

Eric Mazur (Harvard) was awarded the Millikan prize this year, and I stole this blog post (or rather, I excerpted this from sciencegirl.wordpress.com--check it out on my sidebar because all her posts are terrific). Her post offers a detailed account of the marvelous keynote lecture he gave for the occasion. You can download the entire presentation on his website, and I recommend that you do so, because, well, it was marvelous!

The AAPT Press release on the award has this to say:

“Professor Eric Mazur’s Peer Instruction technique has altered the landscape of physics teaching. Numerous teachers have adopted Peer Instruction, enlivening their classes by turning passive students into active learners. AAPT’s Robert A. Millikan Medal recognizes Eric Mazur’s outstanding scholarly contributions to physics education,” says Harvey S. Leff, Chair, AAPT Awards Chair, as well as the 2008 AAPT Past President, and Professor Emeritus of Physics, California State Polytechnic University.

Here’s the content of the lecture.

He opened up with this poem from the “Dear Professor” collection of poems based on emails sent to a real live physics professor and compiled by his wife, Nin Andrews.

Dear Professor,
I still don’t believe heavy
and light things fall at the same speed.
A feather and a stone, for example.
You kept saying I’d get it
if I lived in a vacuum.
Do you live in a vacuum?

The Poet Packs Her Suitcase

When a poet packs a suitcase, she makes a list first. White sunhat, striped sundress, sunglasses, sun tan lotion, pink sweater, flip flops, Spanish dictionary, etc... Then she folds her clothes into her rolling suitcase (carefully selected and marked with a purple ribbon so that it stand out as HER suitcase), and when they don't fit, she begins weeding out the unnecessary outfits. (But I need at LEAST 14 pairs of underwear, she worries, but maybe only one pair of nylons. On second thought, who needs these repulsive Hanes flesh-colored things.)

This process can take days, weeks. And endless quantities of angst . . .

When the fiction writer packs a suitcase . . .

he empties the entire laundry basket into a duffel bag. Who needs lists? Whatever he has worn in the last week is what he will wear in the coming week. Plus a swim suit. He’ll borrow the lotion or buy it there. And the towel. The past, after all, is often repeated in the future. This should work except for a few details like changes in geography, and the fact that most of the clothes belong to his mother, his sister, or his father (who is the same height but 3 sizes wider). Which adds a nice twist to the plot. And there's that evening out --wearing his sister’s tiny pink T-shirt . . .

Hasta Luego El Salvador!

Adios

It is a good word, rolling off the tongue
no matter what language you are born with.
Use it. Learn where it begins,
the small alphabet of departure . . .

--Naomi Shihab Nye

Peace Corps Projects in El Salvador

So what does a Peace Corps volunteer do?

These are just a few photos of some of Suzanne's projects, which include stove building, teaching, composting, writing grants (for computers in the school. Also, five kids went to the university from her village! Okay, that isn't in the photos), a recycling project . . . And more.

Also not pictured is her work of translating for doctors: volunteer doctors who don't speak Spanish, who come from the U.S. to her village, expecting perhaps a nice little doc-in-the-box kind of facility. What they find is a room with no running water, no AC (of course-but the rooms get hotter and hotter as the day goes on) and a long line of women who haven't seen a doctor for ages (some never) . . . Of course the person who gets an earful of the doctors' anger and frustration is the translator . . .

People always ask about the Peace Corps. I don't like to answer.

But there are a lot of jokes about the Peace Corps for sure. And stories. Like the one about the electrician who was sent to a village with no electricity. (He played Frisbee for 2 years. Had a great time.) The one about the woman who asked that she NOT be asked to work with children. Yeah, she taught kids. Or the woman who was sent to Benin and arrived at her site, only to find out no one knew she was coming. They all gathered around her, wondering what this strange white woman was doing in their midst.

Speaking about El Salvador

On our last day in El Salvador, we stayed in the Sheraton in San Salvador. (The Sheraton, according to our research, is in the safest part of El Salvador. And it's upscale. It has everything you could ask for--even a workout room -- I was in bliss!) Working out in the morning, I sweated away next to a man who is a human rights activist and works for an NGO (the name I can't recall), who told me how he suspects the ARENA party (the right wing party) might rig the next election, that he suspects them of all kinds of corruption and worse, that he wonders what will happen next, now that the FLMN (the left wing party) has a viable candidate . . . He went on to tell me how many people in El Salvador have no hope, no jobs, no way out of poverty . . . How when the economy is bad in the U.S., it's many many times worse in El Salvador. He kept talking and talking.

He asked me about the Peace Corps, and when I said that the Peace Corps doesn't allow the volunteers to be involved in the politics of El Salvador, he made a few jokes about the P.C..

Listening to him talk, I suddenly noticed I wasn't feeling well at all. I spent the rest of my day making trips to the bathroom, feeling eternally grateful I wasn't in one of the latrines at my daughter's Peace Corps village. I wasn't sure whether it was the overwhelm of worry I felt when I listened to this man talk-or if I had somehow managed to drink some of the water. (Politics, I do think, is sickening-here, there, everywhere.)

After a day or so, I realized it was the latter. Thank goodness for Cipro.

Men with Guns

On my first trip to visit my daughter in El Salvador, I was terrified of the men with guns. Like the nun in the post below, I saw them everywhere. I didn't want to look at them for fear . . .

On my second trip to El Salvador, I didn't notice them so much. Patrona, my daughter's friend, explained that joining the police force is one good way to get a job. And it's an ideal job at that. She talked of one of Suzanne's "brothers" (one of the sons of the family she was then living with) who got a visa to the U.S. easily after being on the police force.

On my third trip to El Salvador, I would see men with guns and think--Oh, maybe that's the driveway for the hotel. Or- a Walmart (they aren't called Walmarts in El Salvador). Or the place that Patrona stops and buys food for her pigs . . .

(But no, in answer to questions I've received, I don't expect I'll ever get used to seeing so many men with guns.)

Speaking about El Salvador

I was speaking with a nun the other day about El Salvador. She told me how she had been there a few years ago to commemorate the three nuns and the missionary who were raped and murdered by soldiers in 1980. She commented on the military presence in the country. You get off the plane, she said, and there are men with guns everywhere.

I thought about it. These cases which remain in the minds of Americans, which everyone remembers whenever I say the name, El Salvador. People think of Oscar Romero who was shot while serving mass, and of the bomb explosion and mass panic of mourners at his funeral. It doesn't seem long ago that I was listening to NPR talk of how there are still questions in these cases.

I began to wonder, as well, whether Romero is a saint yet. I think he is still being beatified. He is considered one of the few martyrs of the 20th century.

The Spanish Language and a Note on Translation

I love the sound of the language . . . It's so much more musical, dreamy, like waves washing over me. It doesn't have the urgency of English--the staccato, the sense of --I have to say it fast and now. I have to rush, or I might miss my life, which is a feeling I carry with me most of my days . . .

It's that feeling Ann Sexton described as having a rat inside her.

I am reminded of the translations of Whitman I once read --into Spanish--
How the word, urge, lost all its intensity, its passion, when written as urgencio or impulso.

"Urge and urge and urge,
always the procreant urge of the world,"

Neruda translated this as:

"Impulso, impulso, impulso,
siempre el procreador impulso del mundo."

Reading that, I can't help laughing. Impulso del mundo. It sounds like some cumbersome sea creature, washing ashore, slowly but surely.

Odes

I love odes. Today I am thinking of Neruda's wonderful "Ode to Laziness"

Yesterday I felt this ode
would not get off the floor.
It was time, I ought
at least
show a green leaf . . .
Then,
on the pine peaks,
laziness
appeared in the nude,
she led me dazzled
and sleepy,
she showed me upon the sand
small broken bits
of ocean substance,
wood, algae, pebbles,
feathers of sea birds. (translated by William Carlos Williams)

Things That surprise me about El Salvador

If I had to choose between the beach in El Salvador and Mexico, I'd choose the former. But I hate the built-up tourist-beach scenes. I don't know what we're doing in this picture. We seem to be standing next to a house that has been damaged by a hurricane, holding up coconut shells as if to offer a toast, grinning like idiots. Hmm. I suppose this is one for the--can you think of a caption for this-- contest.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

10. One day Don Daniel couldn't find his phone, so he had his son call it. This loud ringing came from the top of a coconut tree. So Don Daniel just walked up the tree (basically-- and retrieved his phone). He's over 60. His friend laughed and said to me--all Salvadorian men and boys can climb coconut trees. Yeah, I asked him. All of them? Can you? Claro.

Things That surprise me about El Salvador

9. The first time I went to El Salvador, I sat next to a businessman who was completely terrified. He'd never been there before. He said his company (a computer co.) had warned him--not to look flashy, not to go out after dark, not to rent a car (the car thieves wait outside the airport --along the road--and then stop you and steal your car, he said), not to hike, not to act like a tourist, not to go anywhere alone, not to look lost, not to dress in a suit (he was wearing a white polo shirt and khakis), not to . . . He had read and reread and even printed out the U.S. State Dept. warnings to travelers (you probably don't want to read these on the flight in) -and was full of info on gangs, car jacking, thieves, etc.. He said at least he knew some Spanish, and he was reviewing his verb tenses. Oh, those Spanish verbs!

The second time I went to El Salvador, I sat next to a businessman (who was dressed in a very nice suit) who goes to San Salvador every week, flying in on Monday and leaving on Friday. He seemed to know everyone on the plane. San Sal? He said, as if talking about a girlfriend. It's no worse than Miami. In both cities, you have to know your way. But me? I wouldn't mind retiring in El Salvador. I can afford whatever I can dream there. El Salvador has everything: beaches, mountains, rivers, city life . . . But I do need to learn Spanish.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

8. The Pineapples! I thought I knew what a pineapple tasted like, but whatever those things are they sell in Giant Eagle are but a distant relative of these . . .

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

7. The children. They are beautiful. And sweet. I know that's a gross generalization. So forgive me for it. But I did have the luxury of teaching a poetry writing class one day last November (with Suzanne translating), and I was so impressed. I won't bore you with my gushing. But I will post again a poem written by a 10 year old girl. (First in Spanish, then in English.)

El sol y la luna y los girasoles
by Kendy de Lourdes Cerón, 10 años

Todas las noches
los girasoles despiertan…

Para aprender lo que
La luna en lo alto de las nubes enseñaba
Pero la luna solo les enseñaba la vocal "o".

Los girasoles ya estaban
Aburridos de la vocal
Un día aunque no había luna
Apareció el sol que les dijo
Yo les enseñare y les enseño
Todas las vocales.
Un girasol le pregunto
¿De que palabra viene la
Letra "e"? y respondió la letra
Viene de la palabra tierra.


The sun and the moon and the sunflowers

Every night
The sunflowers awoke…

In order to learn what the moon
In the height of the clouds would teach them
But the moon only taught them the vowel "o"
The sunflowers grew bored
Of the letter.

One day although there was no moon
The sun appeared and told them
I will teach you and then taught them
All of the vowels.
One of the sunflowers asked:
What word does the letter "e" come from?
And the sun answered: The letter "e"
Comes from the word earth.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

6. I don't like to think about the darker side. The things that make me worry. But, as the mother of a hiker well . . . I don't like this fact (which comes up when I read about the country on U.S.sites about El Salvador):
Mine-removal efforts have ceased, but land mines and unexploded ordnance in backcountry regions still pose a threat to off-road tourists, backpackers and campers.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

5. The school teachers work double shifts. 8-12. 1-5. No, they don't get paid much, and there's a lot of rote learning. The classrooms are hot. And there are so many kids!!! Here they are doing a little environmental play-in connection with Suzanne's work on environmental education. Save the trees!

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

4. People will pay over $100 bucks just to try to get a visa to the U.S.. They will take the bus to San Salvador, wait in long line for hours, then turn their application in, only to be turned down immediately. The reason? They might want to stay in the U.S.. This photo is of Don Daniel who has tried several times to get a visa to see his grandchildren.

(Okay, I had that figure wrong. I just looked it up on the U.S. Embassy site, and below is posted what one must have to get a visa. What's so odd to me is that you have to pay the money, even if it's denied. ?? It's confusing.)

Immigrant Visa Fees

At the time of the interview, each immigrant visa applicant must pay a $400 visa processing fee, effective January 1, 2008 . For applicants whose files have all of the required documents during the interview and who have a qualifying sponsor in the U.S., an immigrant visa will be issued.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

3. They say adios instead of hello when they don't have time to chat. I wish we had a way of doing that in this country.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

2. Women don't wear shorts. Or swim suits. (Though they do wear shorts to swim in.) At least the don't wear them in S's site. And they don't run. Suzanne and I went running together, and I wore these giant shorts-
I mean huge. Everyone was staring, but not because of my shorts (I mean, I don't think so anyhow). They were all saying,
Suzanne's mother is here.

Things that surprise me about El Salvador

1. How our government deports people there.

This is a recent case. I think it shows the extremes of the sentiment: send them back to where they came from. Suzanne met a guy who experienced similar treatment.

Burglary conviction leads to deportation

www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20080720-9999-1m20deport.html

By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 20, 2008
A man adopted by a U.S. couple when he was 6 months old has been deported to El Salvador after spending five years in immigration detention in Otay Mesa while he appealed his case.

(You can click on the link above to read the whole story.)

In the Hills of El Salvador

Getting from the beach to Suzanne's Peace Corps site in the hills of El Salvador (the closest town is Santa Maria Ostuma, which you can see on the next hill over in this pic) is quite a trek. It's probably not that far, but the narrow dirt roads are so washed out from the heavy rains, it's a long, slow drive. We hired a taxi-driver who seemed happy for the work. I was worried he'd complain when we hit the rutted roads (I was afraid that they'd take the shocks right out of the car), but he seemed right at home, bouncing along with us. When we asked if he'd mind stopping at the Supermarket, he said he wasn't in a rush. (He didn't charge extra for the stop. The entire trip, which was maybe 1 and 1/2 hours was $50 plus a tip) No one was in much of a rush.

The Earthquake in El Salvador

The entire village where my daughter now lives was destroyed by an earthquake in January, 2001. A few structures, like this one, still remain.

Just as happened in our last visits, many conversations turn to the subject of the earthquake. Everyone has a story. A common question between villagers:
Where were you when the earthquake hit.

The earth moved like water beneath our feet, a mother says. The people were running one moment, and they were gone the next. One of her 9 daughters was killed when trying to save a child. Just as she handed the child to another woman, the dirt swallowed her.

Do the folks in the USA know about our earthquake, a man asks?

Yes, I assure him. People know about the earthquake in El Salvador. (I don't have the heart to say otherwise.)

The Beach in El Salvador

Working at the Ice Cream Shop or a tiny story about life in El Salvador

I asked Suzanne’s friend, Patrona, about this five dollar an hour wage. She didn't answer my question, but she and Suzanne started talking in Spanish about F. who got a job working at an ice cream shop in San Salvador. ( I think I understood the most of this story, though my Spanish isn't even close to up to snuff.) Her mom was really excited because it's hard to get a job in an ice cream shop in San Salvador if you are from a tiny village in the hills. Everyone wants a job like that, but no one can afford a place in San Salvador. So the woman who owned the shop let F. stay in her home. What could be more perfect?

Plus F. was starting to see a guy who was 25 and in the police academy too, a guy who was going to be able to make a good living some day. She invited him to a big fiesta she was planning for her 18th birthday, and the plan was that he would ask her father then if he could have permission to date F. (Already her father approved.) This is a big event, the asking to date the daughter event, and usually the young suitor is terrified. Everyone was talking and giggling and asking in suspense.

But then she learned the boyfriend was seeing a 14 year old girl, too. And the woman who owned the ice cream shop stopped paying F.. She kept saying she would, but that times were hard. She had F. working full time and was asking her to do other things, like clean her house. One day F. ran away. (She had to run away? I asked, wondering if she couldn't just have said, I'm not doing this. They nodded and looked at me, as if to say, don't you get it?)

Shortly after her return, C., an old man in the village died, so her eighteenth birthday party (that she'd been planning for weeks with Suzanne ordering the cake, and her mother worrying about the dress . . . and we were all planning to attend) was canceled because you can't have a party when someone in the village has just died. Instead there were seven days of funeral rites with everyone singing and praying into the nights.

Advice from a Tourist Guide to El Salvador

On our first days there, we chose to stay at a Salvadorian hotel on the beach because of the nice write-up in our tourist guide, a book which is completely outdated because, well, maybe no one wants to be a tourist in El Salvador. I imagine Peace Corps parents are the only folks who buy this book. Then I start wondering, are there tourist guides for every country? Your Vacation Guide to Chechnya? Or Benin? Or Libya? Or Papau, New Guinea?
Not to compare El Salvador with those places . . .

To be fair, last time we stayed at a budget hotel, El Salvadorian style, and it was the best. Just not the one the guide book bragged about.

$5 a Day?

Do they really pay $5/day to factory workers in El Salvador? Which U.S. companies?

I think the first guy who told me about the $5/day wage (though he wasn't the only one)
was from Reebok/Adidas. Reebok, btw, doesn't like to disclose its factory locations. Like Nike, it doesn't have the best human rights record.

Lacoste has its major U.S. operation in El Salvador. I spent a long time talking to a businessman who works for Lacoste, but he talked mostly about the beautiful women in El Salvador (verdad!). Esp. his girlfriend who has a home in the mountains, a home on the beach, a home in San Salvador with many servants and . . .

Water

Why is there a bathing cubicle in the kitchen-dining area in your daughter's house in El Salvador? a friend asks.

Because that's where the water is--the water for cooking, drinking, cleaning, and bathing.
There is no indoor plumbing in the houses in her village.
Water is turned on every other day by whomever it is that owns the water, and it runs for an hour into the hoses that fill the troughs. (The hoses are always turned on.)
People who can't afford water walk down a very steep hill to the river, then bathe, wash their clothes, chat with the other women who are bathing and doing laundry, and then carry their drinking water in pitchers--on their heads--back to their homes. The river is thick with mud at this time of year because it's the rainy season, and the hills are so steep, the rainwater washes the dirt away, dirt which is heavily fertilized by the farmers . . .

Is the water that runs into the houses treated?

I don't know. It's clear. But it's not safe for me to drink. The last time I was there, mosquitoes had laid their eggs in the trough. There were little red worms in the water. The women tossed in some white powder to kill the worms.

Do people get sick a lot?

Yes. Some Peace Corps volunteers get sick. Others, like my daughter, don't get sick any more than folks do in this country . . .

Americans Bathe Too Much?

Maybe it depends on what country you're comparing us too.

There's no hot water in the home where Suzanne lives, but everyone takes bucket baths at least once a day. Often twice. They ar every clean.

The women do laugh at how Suzanne takes bucket baths every day after running. Did you know you can get arthritis from taking cold baths when you're still sweating? You are supposed to wait until you've cooled down (which is something that rarely happens in my case).

A bucket bath, btw, is when you take what looks like a dog bowl, dip it in the water (which is kept in what looks like a big trough) and then throw it over yourself. This is the standard bathing method. And there isn't a lot of privacy. In her current house, the bathing unit is a little cubicle in the kitchen, which isn't exactly a kitchen. It's sort of like an open-air room or porch where the people, dogs, and chickens eat.

The Terrible French -and other national stereotypes

On the way back from El Salvador, I asked the flight attendant --a guy who said he flies all over the world:

So what is it about the French?

He answered that every nationality has its reputation. Or stereotype. And he laughed, adding, they live up to them. Really they do.

The Russians, he said, drink too much and never smile.

The Chinese complain about the food, esp. pasta. Orientals dislike pasta and ice. So the flight always runs out of juice, pop, and water. (And it's true. You really should NOT have ice in your drinks on airplanes.)

The Americans have huge suitcases and bathe too much.

The Japanese are the ones who will sometimes wear face masks for fear of diseases. And they don't want to be touched by accident.

The French? Oh, the terrible French. It's so true. You never want to try to serve a Frenchman.

What Is It about the French?

Do people speak English to you in El Salvador?

No, at least not in the places I was.

Although they did at the Sheraton in San Salvador.

And sometimes, when they did speak English to me, I would have a moment of panic, trying to figure it out. The first question I have to answer is:

Was that Spanish? Or English?

Do they speak other languages?

English is the language most people want to learn. Many might want to come to the U.S.. But there was one man at the Sheraton in San Salvador who spoke French as well as English, and he told me how he hated the French. Shoot, even the school director in Suzanne's tiny village hates the French. When I asked him why, he answered that he had been to Spain. As if that answered it.

What is it about the French?

A link to a list of literary reviews

www.poetrylinks.net/index.html

Let's Go to the Beach in El Salvador

So what was the beach like?

Costa del Sol is about an hour from the airport in San Salvador. A hot, hot drive. No one (not even the taxis) uses A.C.. (Gas is about $5 bucks a gallon.) And it's 90 plus humid degrees. As my daughter puts it, just be happy you aren't on one of the buses. Yeah, most people get around in buses--or they pack into the backs of trucks.

But about the beach.

It's beautiful. White sand, aqua skies, surf. Except for the lack of people (I think we saw 4 people on the beach), the packs of wild dogs that napped in the sand, growled and barked, and sometimes dove into the waves to cool off, and the herd of cattle strolling on the sand, the beach could have been just about anywhere . . .

Animation, Eye to Eye

I am posting this animation by Jimmy and co. again. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

www.leocov.com/pages/thickboxes/eyeToEye.html?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=620&width=845

from Notes on Writing

Sometimes when I write a poem on my computer, I think,
Okay. That sounds decent.

When I print it out, I find all kinds problems.

It's as if somehow the computer screen shows me only the dream of the poem.

Happy Fourth of July!

Things I am happy about:

1. I am home from El Salvador! ( Yes, I love this country. I do. And I will love it more when Obama is president.)
2. Indoor plumbing
3. Refrigeration
4. Hot showers
5. Water that is safe drink
6. Food I can digest. (I can't wait to feel well again! I always get sick in El Salvador. )

7. My daughter will be home in 5 months!
8. Her idealism, her spirit, her desire to help others . . . ( and The Peace Corps, which I think should be better run, but the idea of it, the wish behind it, and of those who join it, I admire so . . .)

9. And this ( which has nothing to do with the fourth). A little animation my son did at CMU with some other students.
It's really, really short. It's fantastic. (Okay, I know I shouldn't brag so about my kids. Sorry.) It will make you smile.

www.leocov.com/pages/thickboxes/eyeToEye.html?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=620&width=845

Things I Have Heard at Buddhist Teachings

1. There is a flower that grows in the Himalayas and only blooms once every 100 years. It is a rare person who ever sees it, even in passing, but even she rarely stops to realize its beauty.

2. In one moment of anger you can destroy a lifetime of good karma.

3. The myth of the western hero, replayed in popular films in the west, is of a hero who conquers evil by war and/or violence. But modern warfare is just a funeral pyre on which we heap the bodies of loved ones. (This was the topic of a talk by the Dalai Lama in NYC in --I think- 1996.)

4. Teachings on anger are like the texts on fire management read by forest rangers. There is always a lot of debate about the question of controlled burns.

5. Certain Buddhist masters, it is said, are magicians. They can levitate, manifest in two places at once, walk on water, and leave fingerprints in stone. Some of the greatest still fail to accomplish the most important feat of all: to leave an imprint on another’s heart.

6. The heart has a door which must be opened if one is to become a buddha. The door can only be opened by another human. Never by oneself.

7. A buddha is simply one who is awake. Everyone wakes up--if only for a second before s/he begins to dream again. Ah, what dreams! What nightmares . . . . We must keep our eyes shut tight to see what happens next . . .

8. But this is my question. Are the poems and stories only in the dream state? Would one be able to write if one woke up? Or would there be, as I have also been taught, no words for what/where/how one is then . . .

The Fastest Literary Reviews and the Slowest . . .

Okay, in my last post I mentioned reviews that take a really long time to respond (up to a year and often longer). I'd also like a list of the reviews that are the fastest, the ones that run like well-oiled machines. These reviews often give you a yes or no in less than 2 months. Happily, I think it's probably a long list. I'll add to it as I go along . . . I'd love some help with this!

On the fast list so far, I've heard from friends the following names.

Michigan Quarterly Review, Agni, Gargoyle, DMQ, The Barn Owl Review, Muse, Diagram, The Cincinnati Review, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Mipoesias, Zyzzyva, New England Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, 2River View, Beloit Poetry Journal

The slow list:

Rougarou, Rockhurst Review, I-70, Pegasus, North American Review, Kalliope, Artful Dodge, APR, New Letters, Cutthroat

Ah-Mary showed me this! Amazing!

www.jefferybahr.com/Publications/RptSubTimes.asp

And thanks Jeannine for this:
duotrope.com/RTstats.aspx?report=Top25&pubtype=S

A list of literary reviews that . . .

I was out to lunch with S and other writer friends a while back, and S suggested we writers should make a list of literary reviews that take over a year to respond (or never do). She mentioned APR, Cutthroat, New Letters, Artful Dodge (I love Artful Dodge) and some others that never responded to her queries though she sent SASEs.

Is there such a list? It isn't that I would not send to these places. But it would be nice to know that I might never hear . . .

Summer

Summer at last. Sigh. Long days. And travel.

Suzanne, my daughter, will be home this week from El Salvador, and we will visit my 91 year old mom in Virginia. 91 years. Phew.

Then we'll fly together back to El Salvador. S. will be done with the Peace Corps in November. I can't wait to have her living in the same country.

Next, there's IMAGINATION in Cleveland . . . The second week of July. Probably my last time teaching there. It's always different, always fun, always inspiring. I hope I am back to feeling like writing by then . . .

I've been spinning my wheels lately. Though I am such a bad judge of my own work, I've realized that often when I think I'm writing well, I really stink. And vice versa . . .

But lately my critic has been on full volume. Change this, fix that . . .

I wish someone would teach me how to turn the volume down.

Teaching Physics, Physics Humor, and the Perfect Excuse

Is there such a thing as physics humor? S asked me the other day.

I don't know. I hope so. I mean, I did write a book of physics humor.

And if I were teaching physics, I'd need a sense of humor. And a lot of compassion.

Students (and not just physics students), btw, make up the most wonderful excuses.

I have been wondering lately if there is such a thing as a perfect excuse.

If so, there should be a prize for it. Every year. A national competition.

But the perfect excuse would have to be subtle. And convincing.

Like a lover. It should convince you it is telling the truth, that it has nothing else to offer.

If it comes on too strong, you won’t believe it. Or if it is too weak, too vague, who would listen to it? Or forgive it for all its trespasses . . .

No, the perfect excuse has to be just the right size and shape and temperature. And it must move at the right speed and rhythm . . .

so that you move with it into an alternate universe where all answers are yes. Yes! Yes! Yes!

And all endings are happy.

Dear Professor Do You Live in a Vacuum?

can now be ordered on Amazon. It's a collection of poems based on emails, comments, and notes students sent to my husband, a professor of physics.

When I first started collecting these, I sent a few to Lawrence Krauss at Case Western Reserve University, and he encouraged me to put them together in a book. I had this fantasy then of a mini-book of physics humor--and if it ever took off, I'd use it to promote science education . . . (Oh, such fantasies I have from time to time . . . )


Here's a sample:

Dear Professor,

You gave us that problem
about driving down the freeway at 60 MPH
in a VW bug and hitting a truck
that was driving at 75 MPH,
and you wanted to know what happened next . . .
I figured the answer was simple.
Drive a truck from now on.

Writing about the Past and Dairy Farming and rBST and r BGH and . . .

I've been writing a little about my past. Not a lot. It bums me out, writing too much about my childhood. Not sure why. But once I start, I hear my mother's voice in my sleep. A dairy farmer, she loved to lecture about milk, cows, organic food, CAFOs, you name it. I wake up sometimes, mid-lecture . . .

She was like a fact machine. You couldn't just sit back and relax, once she got started.

Here's the kind of thing she would say to anyone who happened to visit . . .about cows and milk and . . .

In case a person wanted to know about such things:


Grass-fed cows produce less milk than grain-fed, but it’s sweeter milk, as long as they don’t get into the onion grass.
Grain-fed cows gain weight and grow faster, but not as fast as those hormone-dosed cows.
But everyone knows. Hormones aren’t good for women or cows. In the case of cows, the hormones, rBST and rBGH, can increase milk production by 15%.
But these hormones are banned in Europe and Canada.
And if it weren't for Monsanto, they'd be banned here, too.
They make the cows sick. A cow isn't designed to be producing but so much milk. And who wants to drink the milk of a sick cow?
The farmers in the States inject the cows with antibiotics, and it’s hard to say just how much of the antibiotics get into the milk we sell. And into the ground water.
Some suspect rBST and rBGH increase the risk of reproductive cancers in humans.
Of course there’s always the others who say everything’s safe.
Go ahead, eat, drink, and be merry.

Random Things I've Been Thinking about

1. If we don’t elect a D in November, the Supreme Court will become even more conservative. McCain has promised to anoint another Alito or Roberts . . . Or how about another Scalia . . .

2. Grist is still the best source of on-line news.

3. I wish Hillary would stop wearing pantsuits. If she wants to wear a suit, why not a nice Italian men’s suit, 3-piece (navy or black or pin-striped) with a tie. And a hat. I like men’s suits and hats. They compliment every body type, and so far as I know, they don't usually come in yellow and aqua.

4. I think certain chain restaurants should be banned. They remind me of CAFOs, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. CAFOs, in case you don't know, fatten animals up on hormones and grains, esp. corn. If you eat steer (or steaks) from CAFOs, you consume lots of hormones and bad karma.

5. My mom used to rant and rave against CAFOs. And my dad said he felt sorry for each and every steer. "But if I were a bull with no balls," he added, "I’d want to eat all day, too. I'd be just as happy then at CAFO. Or a Pondersa."

6. On the farm, where I grew up, the term "corn-fed" was synonymous with fat. "She's just corn-fed, that's all. You just need to give her a little time in the pasture . . . "

Magic

After reading the entry below on bio notes, my friend, S, pointed out that I always write about disappearing.

She says I disappear all the time anyway. it's true.

(Like Bilbo or Golem, I, too, am possessed by the ring.)

In The Book of Orgasms, in one poem, S. reminded me, I became a blonde guru who could disappear at precisely 3:30 every day. Why 3:30?

Because it’s the perfect time to vanish. Between 3:30 and 5:00. (And at cocktail parties, graduations, weddings, and wakes.)

I would disappear into the ley lines. S pointed out that I redefined ley lines. But then, she, like me, is one of the few who knows about ley lines. And who enters them and vanishes at will.

She even recognized the people who lived in these ley lines, an ancient tribe of cosmic men whose penises grow one inch each year. And become more enduring. Of course they only exist between 3:00 and 5:00 and can only be accessed through certain portals.

Houdini, of course, is among them. Which is one of the reasons I wrote Sleeping with Houdini.

I still remember the first time I saw invisible men and women. It was a game I played as a girl.


The invisible, I learned, are right between here and there, one breath and the next, one thought and another. (Sometimes here is more here than others, of course, just as there is more there and less there, depending.)

If I could be really quiet, I could see them.

But one word, and they were gone.

Poems are like that. And some stories, too. Just as they start to show up, someone can interrupt them. A phone call, a knock on the door.

And they are gone. If I don’t follow them to the other side, they vanish, never to be seen again.