blog (December, 2004)
sol's t'ice
Day is done
Gone the sun
From the lakes
From the hills
From the sky
All is well
Safely rest
God is nigh
i like to be here when i can
Home in Rawkchester a piece of the weekend for tomorrow's Act 1 ("Brunch") of the Annual Family Holiday Pig-Out. Don we now our extra layers...
'Tis the seasoning.
librarians and libertarians
I recently set first foot in the local Rocky River Public Library for a Spanish group, then browsed their stellarly-stocked shelves for dessert take-out.
RRPL is independent and, while affiliated with the county system, wouldn't accept my Cleveland Public Library card. I had to sign up for some new plastic to thicken the wallet, and will have to update my script to scrape borrowed items from their page (as well as CPL's) to my library account loanlist -- which, James tells me, helps Ashcroft do his near-former job.
Dropping by their site to check my account, I noticed the boasted 9th Best Public Library in the USA status, and clicked through to discover Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings, where Ohio is ranked #1 in the country this year and last!
The Cuyahoga County Public Library is first of 77 libraries in the highest population category. Ohio (particularly Cleveland-area) libraries are smeared all over the charts, with top ten spots (--accounting for seven in one category!--) in the seven largest population groups (see Top Ten Libraries in Each Population Category). My Cleveland/University Heights hangout is a very respectable 8th in the 50k category.
Thanks to Christine, the NexGen Librarian, for her email reminder:
CLEVNET has a world-class collection. Some libraries are adopting the "buy only what's popular" philosophy, which neglects a lot of independent, specialty items. Please keep in mind how lucky you are, and tell all your friends to use the library!
Right on. Check it all out!
Cleve Blog Meet
Cleveland Weblogger Meetup last night...
Joined mostly by men who care deeply about this region and count their website traffic.
Tried to define blog for the two that showed up unaware of the meeting topic, but not everyone agreed; where blur the boundaries of personal and public? Articulate articles, past particples, chronology, links thoughtspace discussion. What's the rootword of journalism?
Href links to those i met (from somethink a sinking ship -- even George let me slip!)
- Steve FitzGerald : Lakewood Life
- Craig Lyndall: FilteringCraig.com
- Chas Rich: SardonicViews
- George Nemeth: Brewed Fresh Daily
- Will Kessel: Collision Bend
- Bill Callahan: Callahan's Cleveland Diary
- Chris Seper: Chat Room Live
- Kevin Leeson: Cuyahoga County Planning Commission Weblog
detest tube
You can be dying of intestinal parasites in some hut in the Amazon, and if your felt quality of immediate experience is superior, then you're superior to the guy who's being chauffeured around in an air conditioned limousine in some urban center somewhere. Our whole cultural delivery system denies this, you know?
So we have the concept of entertainment, and of drugs -- I mean, to my mind, television is a far more insidious drug than heroin, and that they're very comprable; they're cousins. The difference between heroin and television is that at least on heroin you can think your own thoughts.
-- Terence McKenna, Global perspectives and psychedelic poetics (speech at Esalen seminar)
(my transcription and punctuation)
The Old Woman and her Tea
Saturday afternoon, the way home from Phoenix: big snowflakes drop-kicking me in the eyes,
zooming and wanting to punctuate this then, while still abuzz aglow --
rather than now, when it's faded and I'm tired bored slightly hung --
but, home, I dry-cleaned lubed my cycle and joined in, a bit belatedly, to X-mas party prep.
SO rewind to Phoenix Coffee, over two large dark and rich, finishing The Old Man and the Sea. Brew and book both beautiful.
And pain does not matter to a man.
...
Besides they do not bleed much. There is nothing cut that means anything.
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Not stoic nor heroic, but both. He Persists. I admire his rejection of hunger, his hermitage in old age and sea.
Finished, and about making my way out of the caf� I was stopped by Old Woman and her Tea, who saw my helmet and commended me for riding in such weather. Said she cycles a lot herself, but not in this.
We chatted about our machines and where we ride them. I gestured a few blocks away to my judy, straplocked to a post. Complained of the constipated traffic and consternated population drivers potholes chuckholes phone poles car horns road block.
A sandwich was toasted and delivered to her, standing, and she invited I join. We found her table, sat across it and talked over her Tea.
Introductions. Her name sounds just like verily and I loved with how much sweet sincerity she spilled "I say unto thee" for what must've been the thousandth time in her (I'd guess) seventy years.
Her mouth pedaled and she spoke me on a wonderful bike ride -- I took notes on the route and can't wait until spring for the ravines, waterfalls, wells, the perfect picnic and place for postcards. Twenty-five miles through my Cleveland eastside backyard. She painted words around everything I'll see: a bridge with flowerboxes, a Mediterranean house and its owner, the rolling hills and history of the picnic-place land.
She's a Carmelite nun in a monastery just down the road, and how lucky, I, to share near an hour of her day off.
She told me she praises while she rides. She drips love and language, making tough finding herself time between paragraphs to nibble at her portabella and turkey toasted.
Conversation wandered to her life as nun, inspired by St. Therese of Lisieux, her peers and idols, theology and Catholicism, and God as personality, personal God. Her additions to my read list: works by St. John of the Cross and Thomas Merton.
I promised I'd come soon to Sunday Mass at the monastery and visit.
Verily, I look forward!
content men
In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals?
...
But whereas most men in their search for contentment destroy themselves and fall wearily short of their targets, Mack and his friends approached contentment casually, quietly, and absorbed it gently.
-- John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
staccato signals of constant information
wettub wino, wild windy, westside, wise words, worky welcomed freewheelin Weekend
...koyaanisqatsi...
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny invisible loving human forces that work from the individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride.
-- William James
