6. A poem by Carl Sandburg

Busy day today, so I will just offer a poem—one of the prompt poems from this afternoon's generative session. The prompt being grass. Along with a photo I made eleven years ago at Gettysburg.

Grass

by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
                                                   I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
                                                   What place is this
                                                   Where are we now?

                                                   I am the grass.
                                                   Let me work.

(The poem I came up with was also about a grave, but the bulk of it was a bit more cheerful than this one by Sandburg.)

Book Report: The Man in the Empty Boat

8. Mark Salzman, The Man in the Empty Boat (2012) (4/30/25)

Another nice short book (151 pages), by an author I've long admired. Also memoir, like the one I reported on the other day, and like Salzman's own best-seller Iron and Silk, about teaching English and studying martial arts in China as a young man, and Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia, both of which I've read. I'm pretty sure. It's been a while, though. I did remember Salzman as being self-deprecatingly funny, a way of coping with his anxieties—and this book, the last one he's published, thirteen years ago now, is in the same vein, but with a strong current of seriousness as well. 

The title comes from a Taoist parable (which you can also see a video version of here). As Salzman retells it:

If a man in a boat is crossing a river and an empty boat drifts along and bumps into his, he won't get angry. But if there is someone in the other boat, then the man will shout out directions to move. If his directions go unheeded, he will shout again, and then a third time, followed by a stream of curse words.
     If a man could make himself empty, and pass like that through the world, then who could harm him?

Salzman begins with a few chapters describing his childhood, all framed by the fact that he grew up in a family of "twitching rabbits," beset by fears and regrets and unfulfilled yearnings. He then writes about getting married, to film director, editor, writer etc. Jessica Yu, and, ten years on, starting a family as two daughters, Ava and Esme, enter the picture. That's all background to what is arguably the meat of the book: his struggles with writing; a period of full-blown panic attacks; the death of his sister—unexpected, tragic; and the acquisition (very much against his wishes) of a dog, Bowie. As the back cover puts it, the book is an "account of a skeptic's spiritual quest," and that sums it up pretty well. 

Toward the end of the book, Salzman encounters the 1979 film Koyaanisqatsi, wordless, plotless, given emotional shape with a score by the minimalist Philip Glass. In fact, he encounters it twice, in very different circumstances, first at the Hollywood Bowl with Jessica, a live performance of the score by Glass himself, and then, just a few weeks later, on a DVD in a cabin in a remote valley in Idaho, alone with Bowie. On the first occasion, at the climax of the film, depicting a rocket powering its way skyward, "a perfect, flaming spear" that is then "overwhelmed by its own power," its fury catching up with and it and consuming it before it explodes, he—finally—bursts into tears with all the pent-up emotion of the past month at the hospital bedside of his sister, helping take care of her two daughters, being there for his brother, his father, his brother-in-law. It is then that Jessica suggests he take a break, go stay in the Idaho guest house of a friend. 

He embraces the idea with relief. And "believe it or not—I offered to take the dog with me." 

It was my idea, not Jessica's or anybody else's, proving once and for all that I'm a moron. I thought that maybe, if I wasn't having to be a stay-at-home parent and grieving brother and panicked writer all at the same time, I might bond with the dog the way curmudgeons always do in heartwarming movies and bestselling books. I wanted that to happen. I didn't enjoy feeling the way I felt; I didn't want my kids to think that their daddy didn't love their new best friend. I was determined to turn things around. If I bring her to Idaho, I told myself, she'll lie at my feet and keep me company while I read and eat and nap and jot things down in my notebook. We'll take walks together every day. By the time we return to Los Angeles, we'll be inseparable.
     When I take charge of things, they never unfold according to my wishes.

And yes, the dog (and her farting, which was presaged on page 2) does figure into the unfolding spiritual awakening. As does Koyaanisqatsi and that rocket, on re-viewing. I was going to quote the epiphany, but I'll just say it involves realizations of illusion, the matrix of physical laws, impersonality and spontaneity, human consciousness and the cosmos, and the conclusion that "we do what we must as we fall through time, which means—this is the feel-good part again—that we are doing the best we can, always."

I wonder what Salzman has been up to these last thirteen years. Maybe he's just now polishing the novel he was stuck on way back then, set in Lin'an, the capital of Song dynasty China, on the eve of the Mongol invasion in 1276. I'll certainly read it if so.

There's a really good profile of Salzman (who is also a cellist and friend of Yo-Yo Ma's) by Lawrence Weschler in the New Yorker here, from 2000, shortly after the release of his novel about a nun who experiences visions. It's worth reading. And here's an interview with him from 2003. He's funny and wise. I think it'd be rewarding to know him in person.

 

5. Rachael Durkan, glass artist

Just some images today of beautiful works by British fused-glass artist Rachael Durkan. She takes her inspiration from nature—in particular, plant and tree cells—and her pieces are like stained glass, but taken to a new level. Simply gorgeous.

I like to imagine their creation: how, after visualizing a pattern, Rachael chooses the perfect colors (which she sources from Bullseye Glass) and cuts them into pieces, perhaps grinding the edges for cleaner lines; she then carefully lays the small chunks of glass in the form (which see below), layering them in to create complexity. Finally, she shoves the piece into a kiln heated to 1350–1550°F. It's a delicate process, with a schedule that involves heating to bubble squeeze—where the glass begins to soften and trapped gases are able to escape—then process—full fusion—temperature, followed by cooling, first to annealing hold and finally to room temperature. Firing itself may take 40–90 minutes, followed by an hour-plus for cooling. It must be a pleasant experience, to finally view the finished work, fused by fire. The whole process strikes me as meditative, transformative.

A piece in progress, showing how it's assembled.
The finished work is the third one above.

Rachael herself, with the start of a new work.

Book Report: Memorial Days

7. Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days (2025) (4/27/25)

On the morning of Memorial Day 2019, author Geraldine Brooks received a phone call telling her that her husband, Tony Horwitz, who was on a book tour for his recently published Spying on the South: An Odyssey across the American Divide, had collapsed in Washington, DC, and died. Three years later, Brooks, who is Australian, took herself to a wild, relatively unpopulated island off the coast of Tasmania, to, finally, grieve his death. A process that included writing this book. 

I read her masterful Horse a couple of years ago, and I've read two of Horwitz's books—Baghdad without a Map, and Other Misadventures in Arabia, about being an itinerant journalist in that region, and Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, in which he retraces the final voyage of explorer James Cook—both of which I enjoyed very much (I read those before I started doing book reports). I did not know (or had forgotten) that the two were married—for thirty-five years. 

I am in the market lately for books on grieving, given my husband's cancer diagnosis. He's fine now, and hopefully will remain so, with treatment, for a while. Still, when a friend mentioned reading this short book and finding it moving, I rushed out to get a copy. 

It is a very easy read. Brooks is a wonderful observer and writer. The chapters are short, and alternate between the ongoing story of the days following Tony's death—rushing from their home on Martha's Vineyard to Washington, speaking with doctors, seeing his body, receiving condolences, dealing with the will and canceled credit cards, arranging memorial services, and the ever-returning jolt of, day after day, remembering that he's gone—and her weeks on Flinders Island, walking the beaches, swimming, observing the changing light and natural world around her, reading Tony's journals, and letting herself mourn. This is memoir, so we also hear some about Brooks's background—how she and Tony met, some of her early hopes (in which Flinders Island figures), the life they settled into as writers, partners, and parents, their happiness together. The rhythm of the telling is lovely. 

In one of the Flinders chapters, she begins by describing the Cape Barren goose, which nests on the island and which she encounters on her walks: "social, monogamous, partial migrant, semiaquatic, congregatory"—adjectives that "might have described Tony." 

These geese travel in large groups that have been given evocative names: gaggle, plump, skein, wedge, team. In my solitude I appreciate their sociability. 
     Tony was always much better in a gaggle than I. Though I managed to overcome my shyness by the time I finished my degree at Sydney Uni, I was never—will never be—the extrovert he was. I hid behind his outgoing social nature, clinging to him limpet-like at parties. When we had people over, I enjoyed making the food while he carried the conversation; a warmhearted, enthusiastic host.
     He could never have settled on a place as small as Flinders Island. His personality demanded a larger canvas. Martha's Vineyard had worked for him because its influx of summer residents was so large and diverse, swelling our small year-round pod of friends with others from across the world. Tony made connections easily; his genuine curiosity, his willingness to ask the unguarded question, to sometimes go out on precarious conversational limbs, disarmed people used to cautious deference. The longer we lived on the island, the wider this circle of friends became, until summer's social obligations sometimes seemed overwhelming. My more introverted nature occasionally yearned for the days when we'd known no one and spent our island beachcombing or rambling in the woods.
     In the summers since Tony died, I have found myself straining to retain the level of sociability of our old life together. The Cape Barren geese in their gaggles remind me how much I miss Tony's talent for hosting. Remembering how I used to enjoy feeding a big mob of people around my table, I have tried to continue.
     But without him, the gaggles will never be the same.

After a final swim during which she finally allows herself to howl her grief, she includes an afterword: "I have written this because I needed to do it," she says. "Part of the treatment for 'complicated grief' is to relive the trauma of the death, returning to the moments again and again, striving each time to recall more detail. That's what I've tried to do." It is also an opportunity to celebrate Tony, to keep him alive in her thoughts, and in the thoughts of people around her—including us readers. Now back home, she continues to make time for beauty, as she did on Flinders Island, and to do her work, to make "the life I have as vivid and consequential as I can." She allows space for melancholy, "what Victor Huge described as the happiness of being sad." She also offers a bit of practical advice: "Jot down all the tasks you don't bother to mention that keep the household afloat, the set of torches that only you have learned to juggle. All the little things your partner didn't expect to need to know, until the day they never expected to happen." 

And finally in whatever way works for you, tell your story.
     Write it down, speak it to a therapist, share it with your friends. Take control of this essential moment in the narrative of your life. . . .
     The story of a death is the story that dominates my life. Here I have retold it, rethought it. But I can't change it. Tony is dead. Present tense. He will be dead, in the present, in my present, for as long as I am alive. I cannot change that story. I can only change myself.

 

P.S. This is the fourth book this month. Granted, two of them were short. But hey, it feels good to be reading again—to be able to focus. 

4. Ladybugs

This post began life as "82 of 100" back in December, but never progressed past a few photos I culled from the web and so never got published. Which means two things: there is no "82 of 100" in my previous postings; and it's finally time to share these beautiful creatures, variously known as ladybugs, ladybirds, and lady beetles. 

Strictly speaking, these are not bugs, because they lack sucking, beak-like mouthparts and because they have a larval stage on their road from egg to nymph to adult. As so often with common names, "ladybug" is a misnomer. "Lady beetles," however, is quite appropriate, as evidenced by their hard wing coverings. Scientifically, they are in the Coccinellidae family of the beetle (Coleoptera) family (the name Coccinellidae coming from the Latin word coccineus, meaning scarlet; Coleoptera from the Greek koleos + ptera, meaning sheathed wings).

But why "lady" birds, bugs, beetles? Turns out, they are named for the Virgin Mary—perhaps because farmers in times past prayed to Mary to protect their crops from voracious insects, and in return she sent these little beetles dressed in her signature red cloak. Because of course, ladybugs eat not plants, but insects (think, voracious aphids): they are natural pest controls par excellence. (They do also eat pollen.) The pattern on the most common European species, Coccinella septempunctata, or seven-spot ladybird, is said to depict Mary's seven joys and seven sorrows.

It's not just in English that ladybugs are linked to the divine. In Germany, for example, they are called Marienkäfer (Mary beetle); in France, la bête à bon Dieu (God's animal), in addition to their simpler name of coccinelle; and in Russia, божья коровка (bozh'ya korovka), or "God's little cow," a reference to the beetle's spots (and indeed, an early term in English was ladycow). The earliest English appearance of "ladybird" was in 1674 in a southern English dictionary. 

As I mentioned, the life cycle is four-part: eggs, laid in rows on the underside of leaves, hatch after 3–10 days into larvae, which in turn transform into pupae after about a month; some two weeks later, the pupae metamorphose into the adults we know, which live up to a year. Both the larvae and the adults are what home gardeners covet to keep such garden pests as aphids, mealybugs, scales, and mites under control. The larvae can eat up to 400 of these soft-bodied creatures a day.

In the United States alone there are some 500 species of ladybugs, and an astonishing 4,500–6,000 worldwide, in 360 genera. Their coloring, known as "aposematic," is a warning to potential predators that they taste bad, though they do fall prey to some creatures, such as assassin bugs and stink bugs, dragonflies, spiders, tree frogs, and such birds as swallows and crows.

Here is a video that depicts how they fold up their flying apparatus into "tidy origami packages" (which you can read more about here):

And finally, because who can resist an electron microscope close-up of pretty much anything, here is an adorable ladybug face. 

3. Paying attention

I just now went back and retroactively numbered the last two posts here, from yesterday and the day before—because two days, that's a trend, right?—1 and 2. And now I'm at 3. And I should damn well be able to find something interesting, inspiring, beautiful, or maybe infuriating to write about every day. (Infuriating for sure, but it's hard to put fury into comprehensible words. And I'd rather focus on the positive.)

So today, I'm just going to make a few notes about my day yesterday, Friday: things I paid attention to, things I enjoyed. May not be interesting, inspiring, or beautiful, but I'm pretty sure it won't be infuriating either.

I started the day with a ripe-Camembert-smeared everything bagel. And coffee, of course. While perusing the headlines. The pleasure outcompeting the disgust.  

At 10, I met a Oaxacan friend at the library for English tutoring. She's been in this country for 30 years, and she wants to get better at English so she can gain citizenship. We've been meeting for a few months now, and I don't know how much better she is at English—she only works on it for this one hour each week—but we enjoy getting together, chatting, looking things up in the dictionary, on Google Translate. Taking an hour out of our normal reality to read about the practice book's Jack and Billy and puzzle out fill-in-the-word exercises. To share a bit of friendship. I hope she doesn't become a victim of ICE.

Back home, I corresponded with an editor at Yale University Press about a potential job, a book about tubers. I bit—it looks well written, and I might learn something. I've got various jobs coming in in the next few months, which I'm glad about. It will help give some structure to my day. Earn me a bit of money (which I've already earmarked for a trip to Australia, Tasmania and Queensland, in September 2026, woot!).

Our afternoon walk with the dog took us to the Highway 218 construction site, where the building of an underpass is basically complete; now, they have to build the bike path up and out of the underpass and, on the other side, build an approach. It's been fun to inspect the construction every week, see the progress. I look forward to the entire project being complete. In another year or so. (Patience.)

We then walked (sans chien)  to the local Safeway to pick up some things for dinner—the key ingredient being rhubarb, which they had! 

And then I cooked said dinner, sweet Italian sausages with a rhubarb–Swiss chard, not sauce—it wasn't thin. I'm not sure just what to call it. There's probably a French word. I'll do some research. In any case, it was delicious. 

As I cooked, I listened to a podcast: the New York Times's Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat in conversation. Ezra being liberal, Ross Christian conservative. I don't like reading Douthat's columns—I'm not persuaded by him in writing—but I did enjoy listening to these two talk. They shifted my perspective a bit on the awfulness that currently prevails. As in, put it all in a bigger perspective. I still think what's going on here is awful, but I am beginning to understand a bit better how all of this resides in history writ large. There really was nothing "normal" about the world I was born into. Or grew up in. Or have taken for granted. History occurs in tides.

Still doesn't mean there's anything whatsoever good about Trump. 

We finished the evening as we always do: in front of the TV. Tonight, a silly British mystery, Ludwig (silly is awfully salutary right now), and the last two episodes of The Pitt. I hate finishing up an excellent series, and The Pitt was definitely excellent. But what's done is done, and tonight I'll have to find a new series to help me forget the awfulness of our reality. A friend recommended The Terror, about the search for the Northwest Passage. Okay, a 180-degree turn from ER emergencies, but I'm sure there's plenty to get engaged in, up there in the icy arctic. 

There: a day in the life. (I left out my bad habit of playing Free Cell on my phone.) Does this even count as a blog post? Maybe later today I'll encounter something that encourages me to erase this, and post something really interesting. I can only hope.

2. A Modern Major General

N.B. If you are even remotely interested in watching any of these videos, I wouldn't do them all in one sitting. A good selection would be either of the first two (the actual song), the Minions rendition, and Randy Rainbow's take. But they're all worth viewing on separate occasions. And if you're interested in following along, you can find the lyrics here.

There was a fun article the other day in the Washington Post about the Gilbert and Sullivan patter song "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" (from The Pirates of Penzance), and I enjoyed all the references so much that I thought I'd be lazy and simply link them here. The article was inspired, I gather, by the Broadway revival of Pirates! The Penzance Musical starring, interestingly, David Hyde Pierce. Here's the tune, as performed in 1983 in the film featuring Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt (who knew?):

I grew up hearing G&S, and in particular D'Oyly Carte Opera performances (on LPs) featuring the inimitable Martyn Green. Here's his version of the song (with a very young Alistair Cooke as emcee):

It's challenge enough to catch all the lyrics, never mind sing them (which I manage to do up through "beings animalculous" on a good day). Here they are written out. Sing along!

But enough of the straight stuff. What about the Minions? This delightful nonsense rendition is sung by the French director and voice actor Pierre Coffin. 

In a similar vein, there's the Reboot version, recapping season 3. 

The National Park Service got in the spirit for its 1916 Centennial celebration, with "The Modern Major Park Ranger":

And wouldn't you know that the equally inimitable Randy Rainbow also had his way with it?

Finally, for your reading pleasure from August 1981, also in the WaPo, "I Am the Very Model of a Reaganite American."

Oh, but finally finally—and speaking of David Hyde Pierce: here he is doing the opening monologue to Saturday Night Live eleven years ago with a silly patter song (so apparently having nothing to do with his current Pirates! leading role—but eerily prescient):

The song that keeps on giving.

Finally finally finally, here's a CBS Sunday Morning profile of David Hyde Pierce from just a few days ago, which, yes, does feature this new role of his, but also more—it's great to see, if you're a fan of DHP, which I certainly am:

One of these days I might do a post on The Mikado. If there's a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta I love and know well, that's it.