Hanna running

Here is Hanna running at top speed. You gotta love those ears.

New mallet

I made a mallet today to be used by the left hand. It doesn't fit the right hand, and is even a bit uncomfortable used that way. In the left hand, however, it fits like a glove.

The length is about nine inches and it is made entirely of Live Oak (Quercus virginiana), a very dense wood with a specific gravity of 0.88 (water being 1.0). The mallet is finished with several coats of Linseed oil and furniture wax.

What we do to our own heritage

John Steinbeck's immortal character Doc from the book Cannery Row lived and worked in a small building on Cannery Row. Doc was modeled after Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, and often it was hard to see where Ricketts and Doc differed.

My point is this. The picture on the left is of Doc's lab much as it would have looked in the 1930s. The picture on the right is how it looks as of about a year ago. We are one of the few societies, and certainly the only first world society that goes out of its way to fuck up its own heritage. By the way, down the way from Doc's lab and the big ass condo is a Bubba Gumps's Shrimp resturant. I wonder how many of the people that just slugged down the Bubba platter and now need a Gump pump even know who Steinbeck was. They certainly will not get any idea from visiting Cannery today.

Senior Alex Thompson

This past November we had to have our fourteen year old Golden Retriever euthanized; there were no other options, and although we all knew that, it was a day that remains dim for our family.

Thompson was my friend; he liked everyone he came across as well as all those who came across him.

I remember a bit of a poem I heard many years ago, but I can not reference it properly. To its author, I apologies, but it has provided me solace.

“Old dog, old dog, come and lay your head upon my knee.

Dear God, Dear God, let this poor dog go and live in peace.”

Newton

My big yellow dog holds the key to my heart.

She’s good through and through, although not very smart.

She taught us all lessons of courage and love, and she’s still keeping watch on us from far, far above.

Our boy asked me on day, “Why’s she always that way? When I give her my love, she just gives it away.”

“She can’t help the fact that her heart’s made of gold.”

“I know” he said sadly, “Dad, don’t let her get old.”

Our big yellow dog had to leave us one day, but she’s here deep inside, where for good she will stay.

15 October 2001: A buddy of mine at work had to put his Yellow Lab down. His dear dog, Newton, was fourteen and a true friend to all who met her. According to my friend, she was not the brightest dog to ever sit around the house all day, but to him and his family she was a great blond.

thank you

Most of us live out what is expected of us, some live more, many less; it is usually upon level ground.

At times, we know where we are upon this vast level of our lives; we are free to travel in most any direction.

It is only when someone marks this level ground, and raises a perpendicular to it, and then declares, “This is what is right, and straight, and headed for God” that the boundaries of our travels are defined.

You set these marks upon this ground, and you raise these lines for us.
You exclaim their need, their worth, and their righteousness.

You plumb this level ground upon which we walk; you mark our many paths with clear and focused wisdom.

You help us choose our path to God.

new measures

You and I measure time differently now.

We’re past the need for clocks or weeks or sand.

The way we track our time now, after all of our time, is with our hearts.

Our hearts and our time are stable and strong and sound; they are everlasting.

Our hearts and our time are the substance by which we will be remembered.

Together we’ve come this far in time with our hearts, but I’ve come this far in time because of you.

13 October 2001: I can’t wait until the second of this coming January. That’s when my employer on this work and his wife will have their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It’s also when he gives her this little jewel. I advised him to take back the candy, cars and furs; these six lines were all he needed to ensure another twenty-five years of bliss.

none got you

God gave some folks humps, and others got lumps.

Some got one arm too short and the other just right.

While some folks got bigger, almost overnight.

Some got pretty, some just so.

Most got fingers, and ten or so toes.

But what you got, He really gave me, ‘cause you’re just about perfect the way I see.

You make me laugh, and you make me cry, and I’ll love you always past the day that I die.

13 October 2001: I wrote this for a man to give to his wife. He often told her that she didn’t need any make-up, or anything other than her natural beauty; she never believed him. I’m sure now, with professional poetry on his side, he can convince her of her foolishness. I tell ya, it’s a great feeling to save a marriage with just a few cleverly arranged words.

Severed in twain
Richard Anderson

From his bowels to his black hair, he sits atop a filthy board and readies his fetid shell for another dance among our cars; we are temporarily halted at the light.

His once white shirt is forever stained with the ink of all that hovers a foot or less above the streets de la ciudad.

During his dance, in the time it takes the light to change, he wins three pesos discarded near his cup.

An empty cup, a tattered shirt, a splintered plank, he has nothing; he has no name, no past, no role, nothing; he is nada.

He is half a load of useless bricks lashed upon a homeless hod; he is half of nothing; he is invisible to all of us – even those of us who throw him coins.

His coins become chits of chaff the moment the idea of their departure crosses our minds; I give nothing; he gains nothing; nada se hace con nada; nothing comes from doing nothing.

His hands are his legs as he swings beneath the sight and souls of everyone; we glance down, but do not see him, as we cannot stand to let our eyes and minds and hearts commit and render real to us the fear of nothingness we cannot bring to bare.

He is now the empty void that grows in all of us who see him; by the growth of this new nada we become less, as does he.

His only satisfaction may be his knowledge that the void we cultivate within ourselves far surpasses his.

He adds us to his list of nada with his every dance through traffic, and with our thoughts of every coin, tossed or not, near his absent lap.

We now live a little closer to the very ground he slaps with every swing of his bowel-laden board; we join him and his nada on the streets de la cuiadad.

We do not talk, or blink or look away for each of us believes there is nothing beside us, but it will become something by our acknowledgement.

So with the changing light we drive ahead while the nada we think we leave behind us trails us, and finds us, and becomes us; it adds to our growing nothingness with every click we run.

11 July 2003
Mexico City

I recently had the opportunity to meet with one of my students on the Jumeirah Beach in Dubai, U.A.E.
We discussed how certain marine life lived in, and created, the carbonate sediments of that part of the world.
She questioned everything I told her. She did this not because she did not believe me; it is the way she learns.
She is very smart.
She said she wished I could be her mentor; I didn't know what to say as no one had ever said that to me.

dead thing house

Stop to ask why before you move along.

If you do not agree with what you hear,
or if you want to change why something is what it is purported to be,
then at least you have thought about it more than most have, even if you are wrong.

Some call a shell washed up on the beach
(a beach of ground grains of older shells that support us now)
a dead thing house.

While the name of hers will likely be lost to time for most,
the lesson to me, as well as its teacher, will stay with me forever.


13 May 2003
Dubai


“I don’t like the name fossil, I prefer to call it a dead thing house.”


“We are always influenced by our past, but now it seems we are also supported by it.”

- J. M. my mentoree




Later I showed her two shells I found on another beach; one was small the other large. I told her that if I was going to be her mentor, we had to have something in common to connect us. I suggested the two shells as our nexus. I told her the one of us who is going to do the majority of the teaching should have the large shell and the one who is going to do the majority of the learning should have the small one – I gave her the large one.

I met a amazing man some time ago.
He has neither a negative cell in his body, nor a negative thought in his mind.

When you ask, "How are you today?" his reply is always .....

fine as usual

You have lived a life others where I come from cannot imagine.
To us, your life lacked what we seemed to require and relish.
To us you had every hardship and every chance to fail, yet you remain strong and steadfast.
You see hope, and good, and praise, and grace where others of your ilk,
and we as well, see despair, and doom, and failure.
You are ebullient, and enlivening, and exhilaratory; you are my hero.

For most of us life is the constant battle and balance of positive with negative,
right with wrong, good with bad, winning with losing, twisted and aligned.
With you, my friend, there is only the positive; you cannot see the negative in this world.

Although I fail to touch and see and understand the world in which you live,
I admire, perhaps more than you will ever know, your ability to sail and steer clearly in that world.
Yours is a world without regret, and without gloom, and without predigest, and without guile.

You see the world today as most only hope to see it in eternity.
While here, you inspire us all so we can arrive there a bit prepared.


19 May 2003
Dubai

Today is my wife’s birthday.
She and I have known each other for a long time, and for a long time I have been trying to put my feelings for her into words. Over the years I have written well-intended words to her (some better than others), but most of them really didn’t convey my true feelings; they failed to speak me about her.

Recently I found some words that someone else wrote decades ago. They were written in reference to someone other than my wife, but they struck me as better words to speak me about her than words I had ever put together. So I figured, why not use their wonderful words; they have been around a long time, they are well known, they sound good, and best of all they really do speak me about her.

You Are My Sunshine
my only sunshine.
You make me happy
when skies are grey.
You'll never know, dear,
how much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.


You Are My Sunshine ® 1940 and 1977 by Peer International Corporation
Written by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell

A friend of mine is getting married; I wrote this for her in order to get out of having to buy an expensive gift.


You must

You two must fly for all the ages

You mustn't simply try or take a stab or give it your fair shake

You must set your sights high and
run your race together and later
tell your young your glorious tales

You must never give up the course
because it is your course

You think of flight and you dream of
birds or planes or spirits or
of all the air above you now

You must however reach and think of more

You must also think in terms of time

You must recall the giants that flew
the skies before you that were
the masters of what you two must
now combine to do

You must lose your fetters and become
the sky

You seldom hear “fly like the dinosaurs” for it seems odd and out of place
yet among those stunning tenants of our world gone by flew kings
they slipped between the ground and God
they were neither bird
nor brute
nor monster
they were graceful gracious and gaunt
they were the biggest beings aloft
they owned their planet
as must you

You two must scale the stars and stay aloft

You must fill the air with
your desire
your portents
your surprise
your laughter and
your own blend of yourselves

You two together must take this charge

You must never give in
never give in
never

The White and the Black

Two worlds make two cultures
that make two countries
that make two people

You and I are those two people
for all that has gone on in our worlds before us
we are now as different as we can be

Yet if you scrape that pallid skin of difference from us
set its essence aside
then we are the same
we are kin

Today as two bulls - one white one black
fret and prance and set their stage for war
we say they are different
but not to a blind bull

For as long as it is necessary
may we all be just a bit blind

For it is often only in our blindness
that we can clearly see into our precious little world

COPYRIGHT © 2003 - Richard Anderson


Richard Anderson
17 March 2003
Kuala Lumpur

I have been to five score cities around the world; Paris will remain for me the one.