BEING IN TOUCH

We received an e-mail from a friend in Australia. One of her students was having a serious problem with cyber-bullying. Suddenly it seems the obvious solution to this; pushing the off button, going off line, not opening e-mail has become impossible. The weapon has become a necessity for the victim's generation..

About Being In Touch

Reading the work of others so familiar

with foreign places aware

of the latest fads films music celebrities real

or self-assumed should I

feel abashed by my inexperience which seems

to be almost ignorance

that not only have I not seen but have no desire

to see Venice (not that I want to die

sooner of course) but should I retire to my thicket

of bushes and erratic boulders

where my actual vista is as restricted as my

experience for how can I be

in touch with society humanity my national

family in touch with what

they call reality to share the feeling of all

those people out there who

surely have souls too if I had never seen

the twin towers before

they died on TV and if instead of new towers

I'd recommend a simple

circular park with a central fountain for

the new bull's eye (although I

hope I will not have to visit New York City again

before I die) then they'd

all cry he doesn't understand the cost of real-estate

but I'm not retiring for

I'm beginning to find not doing things not facing

facebook uneatable blackberries or

a telephone smarter than I am that not doing

many things is rewarding

as editing what they call reality is a happening

fewer and fewer enjoy may  

Invention Necessities mother forgive me.

The Science Side

Something From The Science Side

Something from the science side of the scientificpoet this time.  In 1971 Harper and Row published Environmental Insight, a collection of articles dealing with environmental issues and problems which I had selected, edited and prefaced with a brief essay. Each of the six sections had quotation or a poem as a prolog. The poems of course were mine. The section on population was titled The Fateful Exponent, followed by this poem. Looking back after 34 years I'm not sure why I chose that poem.

Genesis

(and God be directed

          to cast one vote...)

God made Heaven and Earth

and all its murderous

mountainous features

With all its crawling

and squirming creatures —

equipped them with wings

and musical screeches.

And then he made man

in His image

and man said, "I move

the nominations be closed..."

I'm sure Harper and Row made no money from the book I certainly didn't make enough to pay for ten percent of the labor, but they gave me an advance, I took a year's leave and wrote an introductory biology book that was published in 1976. I tried my best to get them to give it a title that would give a fair clue to the fact that it was not a conventional introductory text. It was a vision of a different way to teach introductory biology: there were six sections or topics, each developed a topic from molecular-cellular level to population-social concerns. I wanted the title to be something like Six Introductions To Biology. The editors, in their wisdom were adventurous and titled it An Introduction To Biology. So everyone who ordered an inspection copy didn't get what they were looking for, a conventional introductory textbook. It got good review and I received come very pleasing letters. It was soon remaindered.

Each section sported a sub-title page, some with a poem or a collage (mine of course). Despite its commercial failure (no teachers wanted to alter their entire lesson plan for a radically new arrangement of content) I still receive a hundred dollars or so in royalty after 29 years. Someone in England is using photocopy material from the book every year. If you are really curious there are still a few used copies listed through Amazon--really cheap!

THE ICE IS OUT

I grew up on a 150 acre farmstead my father had converted to an American Plan summer resort on the shore of 9 mile long lake (Long Lake) connected by the very short Chute River to another lake (Brandy Pond) which was connected by the Songo River to Sebago Lake which was connected by yet another river to Casco Bay and the Atlantic. My wife and I were married by a gazebo near the shore of Long Lake at her grandmother's summer home. Since that event we have lived, among other places, on the shore of that lake and three others in Maine. I had intended, in this post, to say something rude about the ever increasingly intrusive digital technology which so clearly proves again that invention is the mother of necessities, but when you live, as we have, and as we do now, with a lake, the day of ice out is just too important to ignore. As Thoreau might say, the lake or pond is earth's eye and it's open again to view the heavens.

In the thirties when I was growing up by Long Lake we got our news from evening radio commentators. I remember especially H. V. Karltenborn (he came first, I think) and then Lowell Thomas (sponsored by Seth Thomas Clocks) and every spring (I am sure it was Karltenborn's measured voice) would announce to the national audience that the ice was out of Lake Sebago. Would that we were blessed with such announcements on the evening news. 

I'll add a poem (publish here) a poem anticipating ice out — and could sign off as Lowell Thomas did — with "So long until tomorrow" but it will be at least a week.

Spring Became Official At 4:39 AM,

    The Earliest Advent Since 1847

Winter's had it. The red-wing blackbirds

are replacing red-polls at the feeder.

The first pair of golden-eyes bob and shine

like newly pained buoys in the open narrows

where the secret current that flows from

upper to middle pond licks the softening ice

into submission and spring slowly opens

its wet legs beyond the outlet bridge.

As Unaccustomed As I Am To Blogging

Not only have I never had  a blog before I have never contributed as much as a comment to anyone else's, having visited my son's and daughter-in-law's only to see what they looked like. As a raw beginner at age 85 it may take a while for me to decide what to do with this device now that it seems to function as expected. Since the name of St. Thoreau has been included in the home page (is that what they call it?) and since the title suggests I'm a poet, a poem about Thoreau and technology might do for a start.

Henry Sails The Web

When Henry finally strung the wire 

from the highway through the wood lot, 

over the bean field, raising it higher 

to reach the cabin, neighbors thought 

he’d changed, forgetting his romance 

with trains, his odes composed to the 

telegraph lyre. Could he forgo the chance 

to download rare Hindu Veda? He 

almost laughed out loud at e-mail notes 

from Waldo’s Aunt Mary Moody who 

taught him to launch his cyber boat 

and sail the web. He never failed to 

find  new cargo: more to deny than he’d 

dreamed of: so much not to need.