daily weblogs
books
reference
about
Lots of foot traffic outdoors this evening. People are taking back the night like they never lost it in the first place. I finished Mary Anne Weaver's book on Pakistan, and I will say this. It certainly has changed the way I look at Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even the United States. There's a very surprising chapter, you might almost say astonishing, about an unusual and crafty bird, the Houbara Bustard. I'll tell you more about it when I write up a complete review, but I went looking for the bird on the internet, and here is what I found. Go look at these links, and please trust me, the bird is of great geopolitical importance.
The European Union maintains a page on the bird, which is about the size of a chicken, including a good picture,which you may reproduce. I'm encouraging you to look up this information, and get a good sense of the bird, which is endangered, before I reveal in my next installment why it is not too surprising that it is an endangered species. You will also get a good sense of why the book is as expensive as it is. I promise!
pools=XML, Blog, Ruby
On the first circumnavigation of my one-mile circuit, I saw the yellow school bus that picks up wheelchair-based students. I've seen it before, but don't remember having quite the same good feeling about it.
Sometimes it's hard to get out and walk in the morning, but last night I went for a walk during the World Series (of baseball) game between the Angels and the Giants of California. It was an exciting game, as evidenced by shouts, claps and cheers from the neighborhood. The vets with nothing to do but party on their balcony were enthusiastic (as always), but the overall level of enthusiasm displayed was nowhere near what it would have been if the Dodgers or Lakers (two more-local teams) had been playing.
I'm proud to say that Christy Day and another one of my college classmates came up with the phrase at the HR'71 Boston area monthly lunch gathering on October 4 2002. It was put into service on a sign at a demonstration in Manchester NH, where (US President) George W. Bush was offering people a chance to take his photo for $5000 a shot. Perhaps they were also to be in the photo themselves? No matter. Either way, outside the ambit of crony capitalism, it still wouldn't fall into the category of 'money well spent.'
Here's something that perhaps does fall into that category: the value of a Deerfield education. The headmaster of Deerfield Academy writes (to me and presumably to all other alumni as well) that he travelled to Jordan this past summer "to discuss with His Majesty King Abdullah II, Deerfield Class of 1980, his plan to establish a school exactly like Deerfield in Amman." This is something that he "would want to do in any case, simply because his own experience at Deerfield had been so strong and had prepared him so well for the offices of life, including that of a ruling monarch." Is there not a touch of royalty in the tone of this very weblog? Noblesse oblige. Of course, since 1980 Deerfield has become coeducational. We hope His Majesty's plan includes educating the women of Jordan, too.
I took the dog around the usual circuit, concentrating only on my breathing, and breathing deeply. Eight steps in eight steps out, ten steps in ten steps out, and so forth.
Later in the day I stopped off at the bookstore and picked up a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room, a book of poems by Billy Collins. The only poem I read in the bookstore was "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House"; the merest glimpse of it caused me to buy the book. In fact, if you visit amazon you can glimpse it yourself, it is sample page 15 of 18. The next sample page has "Walking Across the Atlantic", you can really see why Billy Collins is poet laureate of the United States. Wow, this is great, free poetry!
pools=XML, Blog, RubyIn the morning when the grass is wet from morning dew, and of course automatic sprinkler systems, even the trash from fast food restaurants has a certain beauty. It would be too much to call it shimmering and pure, but it has a certain attractiveness in spite of the fact that it would be better if it were not there in the first place. I take my camera on my morning walk, but as I saw a discarded paper cup on its emerald frame (the grass) I swore that this time I wouldn't take a photo of it.
This resolve was borne of the fact that I already had taken a bunch of snapshots of trash on the lawn (digital photos don't cost anything to develop) and then found to my astonishment that not only were most of them branded, but many of them had phone numbers and websites on them.
What can I say? I was richly rewarded beyond my expectations. Today must be my lucky day, I ought to run out and buy a lottery ticket. 
pools=XML, Blog, Ruby
Last night I was reminded by a reader that you can roast coffee beans in a hot air popcorn popper. Not only that, but complete instructions on how to do it are right here on the www.thedailychannel.com website, including which kind of hot air popcorn popper to use.
In the meantime, on my morning walk I noticed a school bus stopped for children. All the red lights were flashing, and in addition a red stop sign had extended from the left side (street side for my UK readers) of the bus, and the stop sign too sported red flashing lights. It made me think, in the context of design, how difficult it is to get someone to read something. Of course, the presence of the red flashing lights on the stop sign is also a consequence of the lack of infrastructure. It used to be that people were trained to stop at school busses, and you could count on them learning that for their drivers' license exam. No longer.
Lying in bed with a raging fever of 97.6 (36.4 for my Centigradean readers, wherever you may be), and having paid off a handsome amount of my sleep debt, dramatic events on the morning walk seemed unlikely. Soon, though, I would have my arm halfway up to the elbow down a dog's throat, extracting the second half of a chicken bone from her hungry and extremely slimy maw.
As it turns out, there is quite a bit of food garbage strewn about along with the trash in our residential neighborhood of apartment houses. Since it was a Sunday morning there was the usual additional grace note: small flotillas of empty beer bottles on the green strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. People park and people party. What a fine time they must have, drinking and chatting happily in their cars. Occasionally they are considerate enough to leave the empties in their six-pack cartons, once again nestled down in the plastic bag they were born in and first left the mother convenience store.
Not much happened on today's morning walk, but two Sundays ago I saw a couple of cops giving 2 homeless guys a ticket. That was my interpretation anyway. What I actually saw was a police car pulled over into the alley, and a woman in a police uniform writing and writing on her ticket pad. She was talking to a homeless man I have often seen in the neighborhood with his grocery cart. Several times he turned, pulled down his belt, and pointed to his partially bared left buttock. Not everyone gets an opportunity with a good-looking blonde in uniform! Another hobo-like man stood by. When another woman got out of the police car, I continued on my morning ramble, shambling along to an appointment with pneumonia.
The cop is from the marketing department, specifying the software and the schedule. The homeless guy is the director of engineering. "Here are the features we need, and when we need it by," she says. "No way," he says, "you can write all you want, I really got burned last time. Let me show you the tattoo to prove it. XXX my A, babe."
I know they are practicing agile development, because when I come around the block again, everyone is gone.
More police action on the morning walk. An individual had sustained damage to his own car, apparently parked right there in his own driveway. A reminder not to park facing out. I had a thought that a slideshow of all the trash in the neighborhood would be something the neighborhood watch police might enjoy, littering being a crime as it is.
Sad to say the dog got 4 walks today: all short. In the very first one I didn't have my eyeglasses. I wanted to find them, too, so I was in a big rush to get back and make my tea.
Grabbing a banana to take with my meds ("Take with Food"), I leashed up the dog and pushed out for my first walk since I came down with pneumonia a week and a half ago. It was foggy outside and I was a little dizzy. I decided to take it slow and just see what happened.
Upon my return, the door-replacement team was just backing up their trailer to unload some tools. It's beginning to look like I've survived another disease.
After tottering along hospital hallways bearing sheafs of paper marked "stat" with little orange stick-ons, I found myself seated in a basement lab, waiting for number 37 to be called.
She gave me a quiet grin and a cool 'thumbs up'. I smiled, pretending that I had been giving her a wink. It made both of us feel better.
If you like what you read, click here to sign up for our mailing list and we'll notify you when we post new book reviews
all text and images
© Copyright 1997-2003 George D. Girton.
All Rights Reserved.