I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
December 07, 2011 - 10:20 a.m.
Why can't I start writing by 9 AM like I plan to every day? My preferred schedule is up at 8 AM, write at 9, eat breakfast at 10, and leave at 11. I rarely manage that. Usually I shower the night before but didn't last night so that has to be fit in too. It's 9:20, lets' see if I can finish this in forty minutes.
I better start by recreating something I wrote yesterday that disappeared from the entry, what I wrote about Jim Colbert. He opened for Pesky J. Nixon on Sunday. Jim's in my world because he's a friend and favorite of two of my favorite house concerts series, Lois & Greg's, and Gene & Isabel's. I first met him at the former, aka, deepest darkest New Jersey, he's been there as both a performance and an audience member. I'll always talk to him, we have lots in common, baseball, teaching, music, and general weirdness. He lives in central PA and I was surprised when he showed up at Gene and Isabel's on the Island the first time. I didn't know how he entered their world. Gene had met him through the Richard Shindell list. The internet does some great things. It can bring kindred spirits together.
I never actually discussed songwriting with Jim but it feels like he uses a method that I use when writing. When he gets stuck on how to say something he just goes out and says it. What made this so clear was his cheese song. One of Sharon Goldman's put up one of her songwriting challenges on Songwriting Scene, "write a song about cheese." Jim couldn't so he wrote a song about not being able to write a song about cheese. That's pure Jim. He lets you see the scaffolding he used in building the song.
I mentioned baseball; he grew up a Pirate fan. That was one of the first tags I put on him in my head. He has a Roberto Clemente song that he performed on Sunday. First off Roberto deserves a song. He's one of the few players that I'd pay to watch catch and throw a baseball. They weren't separate things, it was one movement. One second the ball is in the air, the next it' was in the catcher's mitt well ahead of the runner. But that's Roberto. Jim gave me an inspiration. I want to get a baseball and get it autographed by songwriters that do baseball songs. I'd really love to have the players sign them too but that's pretty much impossible.
Hey that helped. I didn't have to start from scratch in the writing. I had thought that all out before. Of course I first thought it out at the show.
Yesterday I went to get bagels. As always I called ahead and ordered a dozen salt bagels for 1 PM. I took the bus there and it was drizzling so it took a bit of an effort. When I got there I found out that they never actually wrote down my order. I'm a regular and they know me so they believed me. I was told I could wait a half an hour. The guy at the counter knows me and is very nice and apologized but couldn't help. I thought that if I�m going to have to wait around after they made the mistake they should do something to make it up to me; give me an extra half dozen bagels or something. I'm pretty sure most businesses would do something like that. Of course the guy at the counter couldn't approve that called over the manager.
She might know me but is never nice. She conveys that attitude that the customer should be grateful that she's willing to take their money and if it were up to her she wouldn't let them in the store. She did not apologize. She just looked at me coldly and said the order was taken and there was nothing they could do. She brought over the seven salt bagels that weren't fresh out of the oven and put them in front of me and said, "You can have these, it's all we have." I was not happy with that. I told her that I went out in the rain and paid for the bus and I'd like some sort of make good. She said, "you can have these." I then asked, "you mean without paying for them?" She didn't say yes just nodded and walked away. At least I thought she nodded yes. It's how I took it. I also took the bagels. She has no idea how to deal with people. It's an odd place where the low level workers recognize how to deal with the public better than the manager.
I did some cooking experimentation yesterday. When I made my omelet I put some Mrs Dash and hot sauce in the eggs before I cooked them. I liked the way it came out. I want to start using my spices when I cook. I need to figure out what I like.
For dinner I did more exploring the world of garlic. I wasn't fully satisfied with how the garlic roasted potatoes came out last time, they weren't garlicy enough. This time I put some olive oil in a Tupperware container and pressed some garlic in it then nuked it for 20 second. I then tossed the potatoes in the container. That came out much better. The garlic flavor was stronger. I had a steak with that and I marinated he steak in what was left of the garlic and oil and poured the remainder on the steak when I was done. That worked out great. I didn't eat it with steak sauce like usually do because I wanted to judge it without distraction. It passed judgment. I'll make it again.
My apartment was cold last night and I made myself a treat. Hot chocolate made with real milk in the blender. You have to try that. Heat the water in the microwave and put it and the mix in the blender. After it's blended nuke it again as the blending cools it down. It comes out incredibly creamy.
I finished grading the retest of my calculus 2 test and the median grade jumped by more than 30 points. I'm now afraid that they'll get complacent. They still don�t understand the material and if I had changed the questions just a little they would not have been able to answer them. Some just came up with answers without doing the work. I don't know if they cheated or just memorized the answers. If they did that and made any mistake I took off full credit. Perhaps despite the fact that I told them not to they did the work where I couldn't see it. Students often have no idea how to communicate. They don't even see that it's important to communicate. I try to explain but too often not thinking communicating is important extends to listening.
OK this has taken me an hour to write so I better get going and make my breakfast. And it actually took a bit less than an hour since I also entered the test grades into my spreadsheet.
I hear my breakfast calling my name.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile December 07, 2011
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