Let's Enjamb

PARVUM OPUS

Number 236

July 26, 2007

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THE BILL BOARD

Bill R. sent this from The Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s also linked to writer Evan Eisenberg’s site where there’s a lot of amusing stuff. So for all you English majors, engineers, mechanics, and wordsmiths, here I go flouting copyright again:

Poetic License Exam

By Evan Eisenberg (author of The Ecology of Eden and The Recording Angel)

1. According to Code, spaces between stanzas must be

a. no greater than two inches

b. no less than one yawp

c. provided with a vermin-proof cap

d. filled with fine sand

3. To prevent leakage, the lower end of a stanza of ottava rima (e.g. Byron's "Don Juan") should be sealed with

a. a couplet

b. a doublet

c. a stainless-steel cap and rubber gasket sleeve

d. duct tape

4. Enjambment is permitted when

a. space does not allow installation of a fixture on one line

b. a long-sweep 1/4 bend is used to connect the lines

c. a relief yoke vent is installed to vent overflow

d. a variance is granted by the Prosody Department

6. According to Code, internal rhyme may not be used unless

a. it is installed at least six inches below grade

b. assonance is limited by local ordinance

c. metrical fittings are clearly labeled

d. a schematic is filed in the building superintendent's office

7. Which of the following types of rhymes or rhyme schemes does not meet Code?

a. macaronic

b. Hudibrastic

c. ABCB

d. PVC

8. To couple a line of iambic trimeter to a line of dactylic hexameter, the poet should use a

a. spondee

b. trochee

c. flange, gasket, and locknut

d. anapest, amphibrach, and 5/8-inch compression fitting

10. The purpose of the trap in a canto drain line is to

a. hold water

b. form a barrier to sewer gases

c. insulate individual talent from the Tradition

d. prevent afflatus from escaping into the living area

Correspondence

I told Bill I love the word “spondee” then he took off:

Bill: I think it's the "other woman" in a divorce case. Or maybe that's "respondee"

Moi: Correspondee. The man is a correspondude.

Bill: So a younger woman would be a correspondette?

Moi: I think so. A pro is the corresponsored. But I have to go to work now.

Zhongni

Bill appends this quote to his e-mail:

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

--Zhongni, Analects

Zhongni (Master Kong) is known as Confucius in the west. Zhongni is also the name of a “conceptware project aiming to build a computer-aided translation (CAT) environment with prototype tools and working models” (at a company in Taiwan). Anyway, the quotation is what the PO is about.

On the other hand, what I’m all about is what Miss Marple said in one of the BBC productions (with the late great Joan Hickson): “Oh, my dear, you mustn’t believe what people tell you! I haven’t for years.”

NEW YORK LITERARY WORLD MEETS TODAY’S COLLEGE GRADS

Overheard in New York is a web site where people send in snippets of conversation they hear in New York. (There’s a book too.) It’s surprising how much of it is obscene, and how very obscene it is, and also how ignorant. But there are gems of obscenity and gems of ignorance, like this one:

And Even Then, Only Cereal Boxes

Male suit: So, you're a literary agent? That's so cool. How's it going?

Lady suit: I just sold my first book! And the movie rights were optioned the same day!

Male suit: Totally exciting. What's the book about?

Lady suit: Oh, I don't know. I haven't actually read it.

Male suit: That's cool. I didn't really read much until I started college.

--Overheard on a train (or the A Train?)

--Overheard by: Max Perkins Is Rolling in His Grave

(Max Perkins was the famous Scribner’s editor who worked with Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and more.)

Here’s another piece of NY conversation:

Kid: Mom, where you at?

Mom: I'm right here, baby, and it's not where you at, it's where you is.

The web site has headline contests for the entries (like “And Even Then, Only Cereal Boxes” above), in case you’d like to contribute, and you can also submit overhearings (could we make that be a word?) to Overheard In the Office, On the Beach, and Everywhere. There’s also Celebrity “Wit” (sardonic quotation marks added by me).

LA, BOB ~ AL!

Weird Al Yankovich, who does all those great parodies of popular songs, parodied Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, both song and film, using only palindromes (phrases that read the same backward and forward). “Bob” can be found on YouTube. I’d never heard of most of the palindromes he used. Here are a few:

Senile felines

Was it a car or a cat I saw?

Rise to vote, Sir.

Do geese see God?

A dog, a panic in a pagoda

We panic in a pew.

Won’t lovers revolt now?

Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo

If you like parodies, here are a few limerick parodies of famous poems.

FASTCORE

My young Japanese student, who plays drums in a rock and roll band back home, calls his music “fastcore” ~ very fast, short spurts of punk music.

HIT AND RUNS

||| Keeping up with media buzz words: The right calls the major TV companies and newspapers the “drive-by” media. The left often calls people “arch-conservative” but never “arch-liberal” (“arch” meaning chief), which always sounds like the arch-enemy in a super-hero comic book.

||| On the education front, as noted in Radical Teacher magazine #78: College students raising organic food for poor people study agriculture and read an article by Jared Diamond that calls agriculture “The Worst Mistake in Human History”. They also read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, who won a half-million dollar prize for this “series of Socratic dialogues between a telepathic gorilla and his eager human student, another scathing critique of the last 10,000 years of humanity’s experiment with manipulating nature.” I’d call it a scathing critique of education too, if we’re to be learning from Socratic-dialogue wielding gorillas. After digging for three hours with hand tools, the students decided they could accomplish more with power tools. One of the things the students might have learned is that the low-income people they labored for apparently have already decided for themselves that agriculture is a big mistake, since they did not choose the life of the soil themselves. As one of my uncles, who grew up on a farm, put it: “Nothing but back-breaking work from dawn to dark just to put food on the table.” Nuts and wild raspberries, anyone?

||| In “Read It and Weep” (The Weekly Standard, July 16, 2007), Charlotte Allen reports on the “whole language” method of teaching reading that disastrously replaced the traditional phonemics system. The whole language theory is that children don’t have to be taught to learn to read, they will absorb it automatically, like speech. They don’t need to and in fact should not learn the alphabet and English language patterns. It turns out there’s been an analogous theory about teaching math ~ “fuzzy math”. (So why haven’t I absorbed physics or the ability to play a musical instrument? I’ve listened to plenty of music and I’m absolutely surrounded by physics.)

I detect a pattern here: Agriculture classes teach that agriculture is bad, English teachers avoid the alphabet, and we are to be instructed by gorillas. My adult foreign students who want to learn English wouldn’t pay for this educational theory. They expect the teacher to know something and to tell them what it is.

Hari Kari

PARVUM OPUS

Number 235

July 19, 2007

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HARI KARI

For an outsider, there are always going to be hazards associated with trying to explain America to Americans .... The formula is by now so well established that Garrison Keillor not so long ago derided Bernard-Henri Levy’s account of his journey in Tocqueville’s footsteps, American Vertigo, as yet another example of “the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists.”

~ Louis Theroux in The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures

Apropos of American Freaks and Fanatics, Mike Sykes referred me to an article by Johann HariIndependent UK, “Neocons on a Cruise: What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren't Listening.” Mike said that something I wrote made him think it was relevant, but he didn’t specify what it was I said. He wrote, of

This reminded me of the horror I felt when, at the time when American hostages were being held by Iran, a taxi driver taking me to Philadelphia airport suggested that the US should nuke Teheran ~ That'd show 'em!

He thinks perhaps all the decent Americans (by his “somewhat liberal standards”) are atypical. I don’t know if I’m in his decent category or not. I like to think I’m fairly decent, and I wouldn’t call myself a neocon or anything else, being a registered independent. I’m not for nuking Teheran (unless they start it), but the bombing of the World Trade Centers horrified me more than the taxi driver’s verbal recklessness. Iran building nuclear bombs horrifies me, along with their stated goal of annihilating Israel. Mike and I have different horror triggers.

Anyway, Johann Hari went on a cruise sponsored by the National Review magazine. I myself wonder what kind of people spend big bucks on a cruise with a political theme, when they’re not making a living off it as does Hari. Apparently everyone he talked to was horrifying, or else an idiot, although it’s important to note that two of the major speakers on the cruise had major political differences. Read the article, and let me know which of those people on the cruise I most resemble. Here are a few highlights, but you have to read the original for all the incriminating quotes.

/// In his first sentence Hari referred to “the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans” yet they were all a bit starchy, which was a good thing since everyone seems to have been old and/or ugly; he frequently referred to their unattractive physical features. (Sometimes I go in for polite chit-chat.)

/// The cruise ship was staffed by Filipinos who worked hard while “wealthy white folk are gliding onto its polished boards with pale sun parasols dangling off their arms.” Do people still use sun parasols? So 19th-century Empire of them. How would Hari’s ideal cruise be staffed? (I have a Filipino carry my parasol for me.)

/// At the cocktail reception he found “a tableau from Gone With the Wind” gone grey, by which he meant old women were talking ~ “flirting” he said ~ with old men, but it was starchy, only handshakes and pecks on the cheek. Yet imagine his horror if these saggy old people had been more effusive! Ick. (If it weren’t for Fred, I’d flirt with younger men, but in a starchy way.)

/// Hari asked a Canadian judge, who founded Canadians Against Suicide Bombing, if there would be many members of Canadians for Suicide Bombing. The judge suggested there would be. And in fact, according to recent surveys, lots of people in Canada and the U.S. (let’s not assume they’re Muslims) do think it’s a good idea. (I’m against it.)

/// Everyone, including Hari, asked why liberals hate America. When the others couldn’t answer readily, Hari concluded, “I have asked them to peer into the minds of cartoons and they are suddenly, reluctantly confronted with the hollowness of their creation.” ( I find the people he described to be cartoon-like. But we’ll have no fatwahs for unflattering cartoons.)

/// Hari asked editor William Buckley if he felt like a parent whose children all grew up to be serial killers (that is, all the readers of the National Review over its 50 years of publication). (I guess ... fighting a war is like being a serial killer?)

/// Hari said the one black person there, Ward Connerly, was “shilling” for the magazine “that declared at the height of the civil rights movement that black people ‘tend to revert to savagery’, and should be given the vote only ‘when they stop eating each other’.” Can it be true that the National Review published that? (It wasn’t me.) A Google search for these quotes turned up only bloggers quoting Hari’s article, except for a June 2007 article referring to the savagery of Palestine’s Fatah (Arabic for “sudden death” spelled backward). Also, this black man was a dubious character because he expressed empathy even for KKK members. Connerly led an anti-affirmative action campaign in Michigan. Hari did not discuss the pros and cons of affirmative action.

/// He did not discuss immigration policy either, but assumed that the cruisers hate Latinos (except as service-providers on their vacations). When they docked in Puerto Vallarta, Hari wanted to walk around to see the “real Mexico”, meaning the barrios ~ the poor people who are more real than the upper-class Mexicans whose policies create the economic desperation of millions. (How did The Velveteen Rabbit become real? Not through being loved, but through being poor and oppressed. One does not hate everyone who is not in the U.S. legally, just as universities do not hate everyone who’s not admitted, employers don’t hate everyone they don’t hire, and so on.)

/// Hari said writer Mark Steyn looked like a pimp because he was dressed like a tourist, and was not as starchy as the others (the “apostles of colostomy conservatism” ~ doesn’t that remind you of Spiro Agnew’s famous epithet for the left, “nattering nabobs of negativism”, the alliteration, the repeated vowels, the meter?). (I often wear Hawaiian shirts.)

/// Finally, Hari watched “these tireless champions of the overdog” say their starchy goodbyes. “Overdog” was clever, don’t know if it’s his originally, but I wonder if he considers himself an under or over. Judging from his photo, he’s an under. (I’m neither.)

TEACHING ENGLISH

A quote of the day from Garner’s Word of the Day:

A teacher of English would be well advised . . . to regard himself more of a logician than a grammarian, and to cherish the belief that his pupil cannot think clearly unless he can express himself clearly; and conversely, that he cannot express himself clearly unless he can think clearly.

~ Philip Boswood Ballard, Teaching and Testing English ix (1939).

BRAKES

Several guys wrote about the “No Engine Brakes” sign and explained it all in detail, and I tried to do some-cross-connecting, but mechanics is not my beat. I’m now posting PO on my Café Lit blog, so people can enter long technical explanations in Comments. I still want you to write directly to me, though.

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

NEW SHOP: Scot Tartans. NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: "If you're so smart why aren't you me?"; "If you build it they won't come"; Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?; Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse; PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag; "I am here" T-shirt; "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"; "I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron; new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears as a Townhall blog (http://parvumopus.townhall.com/) and at http://cafelit.blogspot.com/. It is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

GET COMFORTABLE! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

NEED SOMEONE TO ORGANIZE A MEETING OR CONFERENCE? CALL KEITHOPS.

Go to Babelfish to translate this page into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, or Spanish!

Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

Typo Blood

PARVUM OPUS

Number 234

July 13, 2007

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EARRORS

Got an e-mail from someone (not a PO reader!) who wrote: “This is a nice sediment...” She meant sentiment. Probably not a typo. (By the way, I have type O blood. Moreover, it’s type O negative. Coincidence? Perhaps.) Sediment seems like the kind of mistake caused by someone who does not read much and who’s misheard the word. Maybe everyone she’s ever known who used the word sentiment suffered from nasal congestion. Fred and I started riffing on it: “Gonna Take a Sedimental Journey” ~ “Getting Sedimental Over You” ~

Elsewhere I read: “I must apologize for the parsity of the blog recently.” The writer meant “paucity” and also had probably always misheard the word and never read it. It’s a slippery slope. I can see it going from parsity to parsley.

FUEL EFFICIENCY

From an ad: “Keep your furnace running fuel-efficient.” We would say, correctly, “running efficiently” but once you create the phrase “fuel-efficient” you can’t really use the technically correct adverb (“running fuel-efficiently”). It would sound clunky and pretentious. We might call this a necessary grammatical mistake.

FREE SPEECH REPORT

I was once kicked off an editing/proofreading listcom (or mailserve, what did we used to call those chats?) because the list owner was displeased with me. It was unacceptable to go off-topic, of course, but if you hit the wrong send button for a private comment to an individual, it was easy to send an off-topic comment to the whole list. I had a few off-topic conversations and maybe twice hit the wrong button. Nothing offensive; one conversation was about herbal medicine and one was about a gospel music concert. But I was summarily exiled. A few years later, another member, a very precise, gentlemanly editor, was kicked off the same list, although I don’t know the details. When I was kicked off, one member, who had different political opinions than I (at the time, his were more conservative but I think I’ve caught up with him by now), wrote me (on the side) to say that he supported my right to speak freely. I was impressed by his generosity. (And how did I know his political slant, anyway?)

Well, a private listserve (?) is private. The owner can do what he wants, and there are plenty of other venues on the Net, although I never joined another such list so I don’t know where to go to discuss, for example, the differences among “ensure”, “insure”, and “assure”. But free speech, which is free thought, is one of those freedoms that seems to require constant vigilance. It’s in the news all the time. Here are a few recent examples.

/// At Marquette University in Wisconsin, a professor got in trouble for posting this Dave Barry quip on his office door: "As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government." Professors always have stuff on their doors, cartoons, quotes, pictures, bumper stickers. Why this one caught flak, I don't know. It may be just the word "enemy" that people find too sensitive. All those professorial ex-hippies usually think of the government as the enemy.

/// Legal language: Judges decided (2-1 in Fourth Circuit Court) to define Al Qaeda terrorists operating in the US as civilians, not “enemy combatants". If they're citizens, they could be defined as traitors, I should think. If they're not citizens, they could be tourist enemy combatants.

/// “Jungle” has largely been replaced by “rain forest”. “Jungle” has acquired many metaphorical connotations ~ “it’s a jungle out there” ~ but it has an exotic, mysterious feel too, and a sense of the lushest part of nature. Is “rain forest” more scientific? I think it’s worthwhile to retain the feelings people express about nature through language.

/// There have been objectives to the use of black as a metaphor, since it refers to race, and to black as a term for race, since many metaphors using black are negative. But you can’t have light without dark.

/// The British Parliament are not allowed to say the word Muslim when talking about terrorists. I suppose they’re allowed to be precise about all those Church of England terrorists they’re dealing with. What will happen to a MOP if he says “Islamic terrorist”?

/// Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, closed down one TV station (refused to renew its license) for supposedly technical infractions, but actually because it carried criticism of him. Now, I hear from one of my Venezuelan students, Chavez is threatening another station because someone said something he claims incited assassination. As another of my Venezuelan students said, “That bastard!” This is real government censorship, unlike the decisions made by individual citizens and business owners, such as the station that fired Don Imus for saying rude things.

/// There’s talk about resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine to “balance” talk radio, which is largely conservative politically. It is more than balanced already by almost all TV (both news and entertainment), movies, music (which often has political content), and the Internet. The idea is that one hour of political programming must be “balanced” by an equal amount of time given to the opposite view. But talk radio isn’t as monolithic as people believe. And are there only two sides to every question? Can an individual be expected not to have a “one-sided” opinion ~ can you believe two opposite things at the same time? The Fairness Doctrine came into being in 1949, before the TV era, to prevent leftist programming from monopolizing the airwaves. Now there’s a lot of bias against conservative speech ~ and thought. The jackboot is now on the other foot but the principle of free speech remains the same.

/// On the other hand ... in "Watch Your Language" by Bill Murchison, writing about standards of public speech, he notes that coarseness of speech is nearly always belligerent. Should our harshest, crudest, or angriest tones be the baseline on TV or in music? Is that "keeping it real"? This applies to sex in the media and lots of skin on the street as well. Is the extreme, or the extremely private, the only level of reality that counts? By analogy, we can apply this reasoning to political discourse. What some call the "proctologist's view" of American history is not the only history. Idealistic or idealized human standards are also real, but have to be kept alive by intentional use.

LATE BRAKING NEWS

Remember the sign I questioned last month, “No engine brake” ~ Dea (at least I think it was him, I neglected to make a note) sent this explanation:

My guess is that some sign fool inappropriately shortened “braking”. Engine braking is the VERY loud practice of downshifting as a way of slowing a vehicle. It's typically done on big heavy trucks because it saves a ton of wear on the actual brakes and is much less likely to cause a skid. In either method all that mechanical work (slowing the truck) gets absorbed somewhere, and in the case of engine braking, it gets absorbed by forcing the engine to run faster, which of course makes it very much louder all of a sudden.

CREEP LABS

Herb sent this last month:

I didn't know if this was a serious question about "creep" in physics, but was astonished to find when I pulled up the "web" definitions to find that they were generally just wrong, not even close. [This URL] is the best I saw looking around.

In the early years that I worked at Battelle Memorial Institute, the Institute's world renowned Creep Labs were still in operation. The tour guides touring guests around always had to deal with little giggles when they went past those labs with CREEP LAB signs on the doors.

ANGLO-SCOTTO-AMERICAN

We get lots of PR from African-Americans and other hyphenated Americans, but do you ever hear about Anglo-Americans? Scottish-Americans? Anyway, as an aimlessly proud Scot-American, I’ve built a new online store with tartan T-shirts and other items, at www.cafepress.com/scottartans ~ for those occasions when a kilt is just too much.

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Tiki Talk

PARVUM OPUS

Number 233

July 5, 2007

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TIKI

My son Jude had a Tiki barbecue on the 4th. Tikis are the wood or stone carvings of Polynesian gods, but Tiki is also a current installment in nostalgia. When I was quite young, I remember fads in recalling the Roaring 20s, and then a revival of World War II jitterbug. If you look at movies from the 40s, though, you’ll find a number of nostalgic period pieces set in the turn of the century. The ‘50s is hot among those who didn’t live during that period, and Tiki culture is one aspect of the ‘50s retro scene. According to Wikipedia, in the early 20th century a couple of men opened bars in California with Polynesian themes, and soldiers returning from the South Pacific after WWII brought their own souvenirs. Hawaiian or Polynesian style was popular in food (pineapple kebabs) and cocktails (with pineapple juice) and music. And of course we have Tiki culture to thank for Hawaiian shirts. I’m wearing one right now as I type, my favorite shirt.

My dad was in the South Pacific during the war, but I don’t remember my parents’ having much Tiki stuff, although living in Florida, how could you tell? It was a tiki world. They did have an exotic pair of bedroom lamps, male and female ceramic figures, but they were wearing harem pants. They also had some gorgeous bark cloth living drapes, black with a tropical frond print, which would qualify as tiki.

My mother also had a wonderful recording of “Quiet Village”; check out this old live performance filmed in Hawaii on YouTube. (For some reason it reminds me of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” performed by the Tokens, who sound as good on YouTube as in the original recording.) Sit back, have an umbrella drink, and listen.

Bonus word: “Tiki” also means the tip end of a piece of salami.

THE WASTING AWAY OF THE WORLD

It’s been years since I read The Friendly Persuasion (Jessamyn West, 1940), about Civil War-era Quaker farmers, but I seem to remember a passage where Jess Birdwell installs newly invented gas lights in his house. All his neighbors came to witness the amazing illumination, but one of them grumbled about “the wasting away of the world” because of the fuel used up. I don’t know if gas light uses more fuel than candle light or oil light or wood fire light. Jessamyn West was on to something, either a 1940s proto-environmental panic or a 19th century mood of fear; perhaps it was a story she heard growing up in Indiana. I always remembered that phrase, in any case, and this is the first time I’ve pulled it out of the hat: the wasting away of the world.

T-SHIRTS

The other day at the health food store a little woman was waiting in line for her B-12 shot wearing a T-shirt with what looked like a movie poster of something called Decapitated: Too Hot for Code Red, with a photo of a line-up of masked terrorists in black and a kneeling captive in front of them, not yet decapitated. It seemed incongruous with the neatly dressed, middle-ageish woman, although her well pedicured feet had different shades of red polish on each toe, symmetrically arrayed on each foot, so that could have been a tip-off. But even if it had been a teenage boy wearing the shirt, I wouldn't be sure of its political import ~ pro-war? anti-war? media satire? or what?

I've never been one to put bumper stickers on my car or wear T-shirts with meaningful text in public, though at least you can change them, unlike a tattoo, for instance. I don't like the idea of one phrase or slogan identifying me or my opinions. I don't want people to think that because they might know one opinion I have, they therefore know the entire corpus of my political, philosophical, emotional, experiential, intellectual, educational, or literary baggage. The Decapitated shirt lady has retained her mystery.

Nevertheless, now I've produced my own political T-shirts. Christopher Hitchens, among others, has noticed that a certain face keeps showing up in photos of various demonstrations in Kashmir. When I saw the photos of this man, who may or may not be a paid demonstrator, I was immediately reminded of another face, and shortly dredged it up from the silty floor of my brain: Bat Boy of Weekly World News fame. I was so excited that I made a T-shirt comparing the photos. (Can you spot the difference?) There's probably some copyright violation involved but until I get caught, this fabulous T-shirt (sure to be a collector's item!) is available in my CafePress store. Got another new T-shirt there too: If you build it, they won't come. And (non-politically), If you’re so smart why aren’t you me? T-shirts are good for small bad-girl ideas.

HAPPY 2nd, 4th, AND 5th OF JULY

The Continental Congress actually approved a resolution on independence on July 2, 1776, but the final wording as written by Thomas Jefferson was signed July 4th. John Adams wrote this to his wife Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha [sic] in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not...

It may be the will of Heaven that America will suffer calamities still more wasting, and distress yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor and destroy us. The furnace of afflication [sic] produces refinement, in States as well as individuals... But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.

I read the opening and the end of the Declaration of Independence to my students as a listening and comprehension practice (got to have pedagogical rationale!), as history, and as explanation. I hadn’t read it for a long time. Now I’m less cynical than I used to be and appreciate it more.

And here are a few lighter items for your post-4th contemplation:

>>> Good news in time for Independence Day: The bald eagle is now off the endangered species list. The name comes from “piebald” meaning marked with white.

>>> Jan sent a link to this cheery presidential version of the Star Spangled Banner.

>>> A couple of weeks ago I was channel surfing and paused for a moment on Jerry Springer because everyone in the studio was singing the National Anthem with hands on heart. A few people obviously didn't know any of the lyrics, but they put their hands over their hearts anyway. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to have a transformative effect on everyone. Their faces didn't look like the usual Springer tribe. The value of thinking about something greater than yourself is inestimable.

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Link here to look for books on Amazon.com!

NEW STUFF AT Parvum Opus CafePress shop: "If you're so smart why aren't you me?"; "If you build it they won't come"; Rage Boy/Bat Boy: Can you spot the difference?; Akron U. Alma Mater: The Lost Verse; PWE (Protestant Work Ethic) tote bag; "I am here" T-shirt; "Someone went to Heaven and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"; "I eat dead things" doggy shirt and BBQ apron; new kids’ things, mouse pad, teddy bear, stein, and more!

ELSEWHERE

Parvum Opus now appears as a Townhall blog: http://parvumopus.townhall.com/

and is also carried by the Hur Herald, a web newspaper from Calhoun County, West Virginia. See Editor Bob Weaver's interview with me (February 10, 2007 entry), and the PO every week in Columns.

NEW! SHORT ORDER

Short Order is a new series of my short stories in 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet format. The first two are available now for $5 each (includes mailing).

/// In Carl Kriegbaum Sleeps with the Corn, a young computer guy who dreams of becoming a big-time gambler sets up web sites for his role model, a real big-time gambler, Stockyard Stan of Kansas City. But when Carl comes up short on his gambling debts, he finds himself wearing concrete boots in the middle of a Kansas cornfield. 26 pages.

/// Still Ridge is about what happens when the old-time moonshine business meets up with a predatory modern bottled water corporation. How far will Kate, a newcomer to the mountains, go to protect the water supply? 22 pages.

GET COMFORTABLE! For women who get massage or chiropractic treatment, who sleep on their stomachs, or have implants, try Rhonda's original Breast Cushion to take the pressure off. Go to www.keithops.us/cushion.

WHEN SONNY GETS BLUE! Check out the video clips of Sonny Robertson and the Howard Street Blues Band at http://www.sonnyrobertson.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/rondaria, with his new original song, "A Different Shade of Blue".

SEARCH IT OUT ON AMAZON : "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter." Proverbs 25:2; "Get wisdom! Even if it costs you everything, get understanding!" Proverbs 4:7:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is not composed of atoms, but stories. The physicist Werner Heisenberg said the universe is not made of matter, but music.

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Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Back issues may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with "unsubscribe," "quit," "enough," or something like that in the subject line, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2007. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.