Zelda's Inferno exercise: write from a wordlist on the theme "water": non-electrified harbor soft sprinkled erosion frozen effervescent infusion blood crystallize fall living

the frozen blood begins to melt
as warm weather arrives
the rains fall down and ground goes soft
the living green revives

again we turn our hemisphere
toward the distant sun
which infuses heat and light
and now spring has begun

hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! for spring!
we all can give a cheer
but, without the winter's chill,
we would not hold spring dear

You may have heard about Ty making the Obama kids into Beanie Babies. (Ty, of course, claims the names are just a coincidence.)

My first reaction was amazed disgust. But Ruth Marcus makes an excellent point:

...It's impossible to read about "Sweet Sasha" and "Marvelous Malia" without being reminded of the famous psychology experiment cited in Brown v. Board of Education. Offered dolls of differing skin tones, black children overwhelmingly chose to play with the white doll; they picked the white doll when asked to identify the "nice" doll and selected the brown doll when asked which was the "bad" doll.

...

When a high school student named Kiri Davis repeated Clark's experiment with 4- and 5-year-olds at a Harlem child-care center for her 2005 documentary, "A Girl Like Me," she found heartbreakingly similar results.

In the video, a little girl in a lavender sweatshirt identifies the "bad" and "nice" dolls. "Why does that look bad?" Davis asks. "Because it's black," the girl replies. "And why do you think that's a nice doll?" "Because she's white."

Then comes the real gut punch. "Can you give me the doll that looks like you?" The girl touches the white doll. Her hand lingers on it for a few seconds. Slowly, she slides the dark-skinned doll across the table.

...

Then again, if hawking "Sweet Sasha" and "Marvelous Malia" encourages children of any hue to want an African American doll, or to admire two African American girls whose father just happens to be president, maybe that's not such a bad trade-off.

At the Ohio State Department of Psychology, Gary Wenk and Yannic Marchalant have done a study showing that a low dosage of a certain cannabinoid reverses reverses memory loss in rats. (Not an endorsement of research on animals - but, I have to admit, giving rats cannabis is very far from the worst sort of experimentation.)

And Finnish and and Swedish researchers have found evidence that moderate coffer drinkers have a reduced risks of developing Alzheimer's disease.

But, drinking too much coffee - seven cups of instant or three cups of the real thing - greatly increases the likehood of experiencing hallucinations. Whether that's a benefit or a risk is up to you...

Zelda's Inferno exercise: writing from a list of theme words. I choose "book", which connected with what i wanted to write about anyway.

I fell in love with a librarian again today -
it's not the first time

twenty years, since that elementary school platonic crush
on the woman who kept that safe and quiet space of knowledge
and let me take her books home

and when I finally learned to ride a 10-speed bike
there was the Rosedale libary
and I, too shy to speak
would sometimes hang around reading boring magazines
just to watch a girl who worked there shelving books

and high school, mornings when it snowed and schools opened late
my father would have to drive me in before he went to work
and I'd have an hour or two to wait
I'd spend it in the school libray
just the librarian and me, homey,
almost a 50s sitcom scene, me sitting reading the newspaper, she hustling around

once driving through Connecticut
lost hundreds of miles from any place I knew
I stopped in a library to get directions
I could think of nowhere better

Alexandria, I would have died for you

So this pretty girl today - I didn't even get her name
but she renewed my library card and
let me take her books home

and these days, I tend to buy books
feed my specialzed knowledge-hungers with the exotic beyond library fare
but
I'm already thinking up excuses to go back during her shift

LiveScience reports that researchers at the Scripps Research Institute have created molecules that bump right up against the boundaries of what we consider "alive". They synthesized RNA enzymes that replicate, mutate, and evolve:

Lincoln's advisor, professor Gerald Joyce, reiterated that while the self-replicating RNA enzyme systems share certain characteristics of life, they are not life as we know it.

"What we've found could be relevant to how life begins, at that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts," Joyce said in a statement.

Joyce's restraint, clear also on an NPR report of the finding, has to be appreciated. He allows that some scientists familiar with the work have argued that this is life. Another scientist said that what the researchers did is equivalent to recreating a scenario that might have led to the origin of life.

Joyce insists he and Lincoln have not created life: "We're knocking on that door," he says, "but of course we haven't achieved that."

After John Roberts screwed up the administration of the oath at Obama's inauguration, some people suggested - some jokingly, some seriously - that Obama wasn't legitimately president. Well, now there's no doubt (discarding wacko conspiracy theories about how Obama was really born in Kenya or on Mars or something) because they went back and did it again:

The decision to repeat the oath was taken out of an abundance of caution, an official said.

But Mr Obama joked: "We decided it was so much fun...." before adding: "We're going to do it very slowly."

...

"We believe the oath of office was administered effectively and that the president was sworn in appropriately," said White House counsel Greg Craig.

"Out of the abundance of caution, because there was one word out of sequence, Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the oath a second time."

Two other presidents, Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur, have had to repeat the oath because of similar problems.

This is why I love Osaka. I can't understand a word of what they're saying, but you don't have to. Osaka has a quirkyness all its own; I doubt you'd get this reaction in Tokyo. In a lot of American cities, of course, someone might pull out a real gun if you did this...

If all goes well, in a few hours we will see the return of a democratically elected President to the United States for the first time in eight years. Hooray! That's something to celebrate regardless of your opinion of Obama.

And as for him...after the Rick Warren fiasco, I was with with those who called for an furor to be raised. And that seems to have had at least some impact.

Obama just might be teachable - besides the symbolic gesture of inviting Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal bishop, to deliver the invocation at a concert at the Lincoln Memorial we've seen the nomination of several LGBT folks to positions in the Administration.

We're still hearing promises - though vague ones - to end the travesty of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Just not immediately - as if it would take a long time for him to issue an executive order, in his role as Commander in Chief, stating that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will not be tolerated in the armed forces of the United States.

Of course I'm not expecting any radical change. But let's face it, it wouldn't take much for Obama to be the best president to hold office so far during my life.

So: I'm setting my inauguration response to "hooray for the return of democratic governance, with a slight and cautious optimism as to the anticipated quality of that governance".

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem using some lines in iambic pentameter, on the theme of beginnings or commencement

and so the new year rolls around again
bringing thoughts of reflection to mind

where have I been? what have I done?

and has it been enough to satisfy
that longing deep inside to mark the world
with proof that I once walked here for a time?

words I've written - will they be remembered?
the things I've seen - are they just fading dreams?
and those I've loved - will that love be requited?

as I look back at life as lived so far
at years I've traded for experience
and knowledge sought - both outside and within
the things I've seen and done appear to me
as if a montage on a movie screen:

"Previously, in the life of Tom Swiss..."

it all seems prelude to what's yet to come

so now the stage is set, the players prepared
the characters have introduced themselves
the setting sketched and mapped in time and place
preliminaries all have been dealt with

we're ready now -
     the story starts to roll...