The Friday Poem: Summons, by Robert Francis

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


Summons, by Robert Francis

Keep me from going to sleep too soon
Or if I go to sleep too soon
Come wake me up. Come any hour
Of night. Come whistling up the road.
Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door.
Make me get out of bed and come
And let you in and light a light.
Tell me the northern lights are on
And make me look. Or tell me clouds
Are doing something to the moon
They never did before, and show me.
See that I see. Talk to me till
I'm half as wide awake as you
And start to dress wondering why
I ever went to bed at all.
Tell me the walking is superb.
Not only tell me but persuade me.
You know I'm not too hard persuaded.

British teenage boys are sweaty, fashionable.

There's a 95% chance that wherever you are reading this in the world your body is slowly devolving into a gelatinous puddle from the summer of 2016. Teenage boys in Great Britain feel you. Or they would, that is, if they didn't feel like they were going to keel over from heatstroke first.

Uniforms are required at the Longhill High School in Rottingdean, East Sussex, which led to nearly twenty boys swapping out their long, heavy pants for their school gym shorts after a recent heat wave.

This is England though, where a love of elderly women wearing tiaras is only matched by a national sense of schadenfreude--so the shorts-adorned boys were told to wear pants, sent home, or kept in isolation all day at school.

According to the BBC, the boys were told that they needed to "wear any part of the agreed school uniform." In a genius move, four boys came to school the next day wearing the school approved skirts for girls, which flummoxed Kate Williams, the head teacher. She allowed it. As a result, ten additional boys joined in wearing the school approved skirt the following day in an act of solidarity and/or cooled gams.

The Argus, a local newspaper, quotes Williams' subtle displeasure. "Students have access to water in order to keep themselves hydrated," she said. "We have made reasonable steps to ensure that classrooms are as comfortable as possible."

Hydration = Least enthusiastic air conditioning method ever. Remember that, kids. Don't start asking for ice now or whatnot. This isn't France.

Well, that's one way to woo a voting constituency...

How can you further annoy a voting constituency that you're already offending? By finding subtle ways to butcher their language!

Case in point:

RNC botches grammar on Spanish sign claiming Hispanics support Trump: https://t.co/tpUZ9xfvBa pic.twitter.com/5nEpx2y9A9

— The Hill (@thehill) July 22, 2016

The issue is two-fold. It's not "para" but "por" they want to have that sign say. They also forgot to translate "Hispanics" into "Hispanos." This would take two seconds on Google Translate to figure out--but, admittedly, we've all been burned by an online translator at some point.

The Huffington Post dove deeper and asked New York University lecturer Félix Manuel Burgos, who who holds a Ph.D in Hispanic Linguistics, to really get at the specifics:


If you want to express support for someone with your vote, it should be “por.” That is the preposition that goes with the verb “votar.”

“Para” doesn’t make sense in that context, unless you work for him, that is the preposition that goes with “trabajar.” ... [But] actually the best option would have been “con,” that expresses general support. “Latinos con Trump.” But I don’t think they will print many of those signs. 


Subtle digs are the best digs.

Good thing Red found it when he did: The 'Shawshank' tree is no more.

Hurry up, Red. That tree isn't going to last forever, man.

Stephen King wrote The Shawshank Redemption as a slice of the Maine prison system, and the movie adaptation played along and pretended it was rural Maine as well.

Except the movie's producers probably realized you never want to visit rural Maine under any circumstances, so they used a great deal of Ohio as a stand-in.

This included the area where Red (played in the movie by Morgan Freeman), once released from prison, seeks out a tree that his former prison mate, Andy (played by Tim Robbins), told him about. The tree was where Andy proposed to his wife--and buried at the base of the tree would be a tin with information and money for Red to come join in a new life with him.

In the book and in the movie, the tree is symbolic of hope and love and redemption.

Alas, Mother Nature doesn't care about your feels and doesn't care about Stephen King stories. Lightning struck the tree in 2011, badly damaging large portions of it. Then, yesterday, not one to wait around for the inevitable, Mother Nature drew up a fury of high winds which caused the tree to keel over.

Which sort of makes you wonder what Red would have done if the tree actually tipped over years before he ever found it in the book or the movie. Andy didn't think this through, did he? He can figure out how to chisel through prison walls and overthrow a corrupt warden--but the man never had a backup plan if Mother Nature went on a tear.

That was the really lackluster alternative ending Stephen King never wanted you to read.

Political plagiarism as a teachable moment.

By now we all know Melania Trump channeled her inner 14-year old high school freshman and played a little verbal Freddy Fast Fingers with her speech at the Republican National Convention the other night.

In it, Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama's Democratic National Convention speech eight years earlier. Words and phrases like hard work, American dream, values--yada, yada, yada--the sort of political speech making where nothing but white noise is said, but it's an easy sell. Americans love a good fairy tale, regardless of political affiliation.

Which leads us to the teachable moment that has American teachers giddy with excitement. They can teach popularized plagiarism! The BBC reached out to various teachers, including Brad Francis, an English teacher at Davis Middle School in Evanston, Wyoming.

"Melania's speech is probably the most blatant example that I have ever seen," Francis told the BBC. "Eighth grade students need very literal examples, and her speech is basically verbatim to Michelle Obama's. It will help them learn absolutely what not to do in their writing."

Admittedly, Francis might need to learn a little bit of nuance. The speech is absolutely a case of plagiarism, but the entire thing isn't "basically verbatim." Francis would get a C+ grade for such hyperbole and exaggeration in his argument.

"I have students who try to copy and paste material from the internet all the time to pass it off as their own," Francis continued telling the BBC. "That speech was Michelle Obama's intellectual property."

The real disappointing angle that's falling through the cracks with all of this is that two different political parties actually wanted to claim that feeble and uninspired speech as either intellectual or property.

The Beatdown in Brunswick: Malcolm Gladwell vs. Bowdoin College

Not Sideshow Bob.

Famous writer--and occasional Sideshow Bob doppelganger--Malcolm Gladwell has infuriated the powerful masses at Bowdoin College by claiming the elite liberal arts school's penchant for high end cuisine for its students comes at the cost of admitting fewer low-income students.

Earlier this year, the Princeton Review named the Brunswick, Maine, school as having the best cuisine of any college or university in America. Yet, at the same time, Bowdoin's acceptance rate heavily skews toward wealthier students. This, Gladwell argues on his podcast Revisionist History, is partly due to the fact that Bowdoin chooses to invest money in fine dining and not aid that could go toward poorer applicants.

As Business Insider points out, Bowdoin did not take kindly to such an assertion, and released a lengthy statement that starts off as such:


"Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History” (aptly named) takes a manipulative and disingenuous shot at Bowdoin College that is filled with false assumptions, anecdotal evidence, and incorrect conclusions."

Bowdoin's thin-skinned alarmist claim is based off their being one of the very few colleges or universities in the United States that provides need-blind assistance, and includes aid packages that never involve loans, only grants.

Likewise, Bowdoin claims that Gladwell's podcast producer emailed the school to ask about the food, never admissions or aid, so that he "focused only on Bowdoin’s food in a manner that was disingenuous, dishonest, and manipulative."

This is the kind of two-snaps-and-a-twist First World drama you usually see on Bravo or E!, except more nebbish and scholarly--with a complete lack of Christian Louboutin heels.

Gladwell wasn't pleased with the reaction he was receiving from Bowdoin or the school's alumni online--so he fired back on Twitter:

In retrospect this week's episode of https://t.co/2Mqc5Dwr4V should have included a trigger warning for Bowdoin grads.

— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) July 14, 2016

Trigger warning zingers! Looks like Gladwell decided to dig into the amateur mic night material he saves for The Chuckle Hut.

In the end, the high society verbal slapfest continues between the two sides, with no winner declared in this squabble. No winner, that is, except us.

Saturday Morning PSA of The Week: The sweet, sweet golf swings of Bing Crosby.

Today's public service announcements are all information and no imagination--but yesteryear's? Those were full of drama, plot lines, and cameos from B-grade celebrities, all wedged into one minute of absolute fantasticness.

Consider this a trip back in time to when PSAs were sometimes worth watching more than the Saturday morning cartoons.

Today:  Pony up some cash so Bing can tee it up, okay?





Random Thoughts and Questions:
1.)  "I play like a cow with a musket."  Well, that's better than a pig with a Bowie knife, I guess.
2.)  "A touch of arthritis." Remember back in the day when every ailment or disease was "a touch of" something? "Oh, I have a touch of Ebola, but nothing I can't shake."
3.)  What's up with Bing Crosby's sweater? Collars and lapels on a hefty cardigan? Did he steal that from the Mr. Roger's Winter Collection?
4.)  So, wait--new arthritis research made sure Bing could go back to playing this weak golf game? So our donations are making a difference, I see.

The Friday Poem: Remember, by Christina Georgina Rossetti

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


Remember, by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

That's not God calling. That's the student debt collector.

Twenty-eight year old Alida Taylor said she felt the call of God to enter a vocational life. As a result, she tried to join the New York City's Sisters of Life Convent on the Upper West Side.

Except the convent wouldn't allow Taylor to study to become a nun. Was it because they felt Taylor's soul tingling with the spirit of the Devil? Nah. It's because Taylor still owed $18,000 in student loan debt.

"Religious life is a full-time job, so to speak, so she wouldn't be able to work and enter into religious life," Sr. Mariae Agnus Dei told CBS2 in New York.

Jesus is on-call 24/7, amiright, Sister??

Under Roman Catholic canon law, one cannot join a life of religious study if they have a debt that would otherwise be impossible to pay. That $20,000 in credit card debt you have for all your designer clothes? Surprisingly not helpful when trying to get tight with Jesus.

Alas, prayers were answered. Taylor started a GoFundMe page to raise $12,000 of that debt, and donations flew in, including an anonymous $4,505 donation.

Meaning God might be the biggest debt relief agency going.

91-year old museum visitor fills in crossword puzzle that's actually a piece of modern art.

The wave of criminal shenanigans by elderly people has hit the museum world.

Case in point: An elderly 91-year old German woman recently visiting Nuremberg’s Neues Museum saw a blank crossword puzzle on a wall, beside it which had a sign saying "Insert words."

Maybe it was age talking or a stunning susceptibility to do as signs command, but the 91-year old threw caution to the wind and proceeded to fill in the crossword puzzle with an abundance of words. The small problem was that the crossword puzzle was actually modern artist Arthur Köpcke's 1977 creation "Reading work-piece," valued at everyday affordable price of $90,000.

"The lady told us she had taken the notes as an invitation to complete the crossword," a police spokesman said, according to The Telegraph. True. You can't deny the allure of a good crossword puzzle invitation. It's like Tinder for the elderly.

The Telegaph also added, "If the museum didn’t want people to follow the artist’s instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear, she told police."

Grade-A sass from a 91-year old grandma who gives no you-know-whats at this point. She's thisclose to doodling all over Picasso's Guernica any day now.

Famous Writers Shirtless: Robert Graves

Writers are never known as the studliest or sexiest of people, but that doesn't stop them from showing some skin for the camera once in awhile.

So, occasionally we'll post some literary beefcake for your perusal.


Today: Robert Graves

Some of the best parenting occurs when you ship your kid out on a dinghy into the open ocean and roll the dice. Buck up, kid!

Meanwhile, Graves shows off the surprisingly  ripped  shredded  hot  sensible physique of a man whose job forces him to sit at a desk ten hours a day.

There's a level of minimal back fat here rarely seen in the literary world.

Iran is in the process of building the world's largest ever bookstore.

484,376 square feet.

That's how big of a bookstore Iran--that beacon of freedom of speech you all know and love--is looking to build.

For perspective, The Guinness Book of World Records says the largest bookstore ever known was, of all things, a Barnes & Noble flagship store on New York City's 5th Avenue that measured in at 154,250 square feet. Even that couldn't survive and closed down in 2014.

Iran's desire to follow through with the bookstore is even more strange when, as Holly Dagres at Aeon notes, some publishers barely print 300 copies of a book in Iran these days--and that's if they're allowed to publish the book at all.

Will the bookstore survive? Will it work? Will it inspire a different kind of Iranian revolution? Or, perhaps, will Iran be able to say their stores are no different than a Manhattan Barnes & Noble and close up shop?

Because down deep, you'd be surprised how much Tehran channels its inner midtown Manhattan on a daily basis.

When Writers Go Weird: That time Samuel Beckett wanted to sue over...well...God knows what.

Are writers ever normal? No, otherwise they'd be productive members of society. 'When Writers Go Weird' is when we remember writers acting strange, odd, off, or--yeah--just plain weird. Also known as Tuesday to them.


Today:  That time Samuel Beckett wanted to sue over some water, Phillip Glass, and black people.


Samuel Beckett always had the resting grouch face of a moody human being. But unlike some innocent people with such an issue, Beckett actually followed through with such petulant behavior.

Everyone loves a good ego stroke. Hollywood, Wall Street, and Washington wouldn't exist if ego stroking wasn't a critical part to the process. But before the tender sensibilities of a real Donald Trump or a fake Gordon Gecko, there was the infallibility of pride in the form of Nobel Prize winners such as Samuel Beckett.

That's the face of unabashed enthusiasm right there.

Lawsuits (or the threat of one) from Beckett almost became a midweek pastime, a hobby with the frequency and randomness he doled them out. Not for some egregious action, like plagiarism, profit, or libel regarding him or his work--but threats simply because Beckett didn't like the way something in a play of his was going to be interpreted.

Most notable of all cases occurred in 1984, when Boston's American Repertory Theatre (ART) decided to put on a version of Beckett's 'Endgame.' The play, directed by award winning JoAnne Akalaitis, kept the play's dialogue verbatim, but simply tweaked other areas, like the set and music. Beckett's original play had a plain room with two windows as the setting--nothing else. Akalaitis moved the play into a derelict, abandoned subway tunnel. She added some water (Why? It's a Beckett play--everything's a why?), and had an orchestral movement by famed composer Philip Glass included before the play started.

And Beckett was not happy.

____________________________________________________________________________

"Beckett believes the version..."totally distorts" his play by...casting black actors."

____________________________________________________________________________


"He doesn't like it. He's disgusted by it," said Beckett's attorney, Martin Garbus, at the time. "But he doesn't have funds to take on [...] all the other people at the American Repertory Theatre. He feels he doesn't have any choice."

The Associated Press added, "Beckett believes the version by the highly acclaimed theater company "totally distorts" his play by changing the locale, adding music and casting black actors in key roles, Garbus said."

That's right. The scourge of skin pigment. Samuel Beckett lost perspective enough to think that a play where characters sit in trash cans (seriously--if you haven't read/watched his work--two characters channel their inner Oscar the Grouch and live entirely in a trash can) couldn't have someone other than a white actor participate.

"I have never heard him so angry," said another acquaintance of Beckett's to the AP.

_____________________________________________________________________________

"Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this."

_____________________________________________________________________________


Beckett initially attempted legal action against ART, yet stopped at some point. Whether it was common sense that he'd lose in a court of law or ART's desire to sweep the matter under the rug, one wonders. Both sides agreed to a disclaimer being added to the play's program, and both agreed to allow Beckett a direct response to the attendee:

"Any production of Endgame which ignores my stage directions is completely unacceptable to me. My play requires an empty room and two small windows. The American Repertory Theater production which dismisses my directions is a complete parody of the play as conceived by me. Anybody who cares for the work couldn't fail to be disgusted by this."

Perspective in life requires a sort of intellectual nuance, something Beckett clearly struggled to gather. Once you've lost your two windows, you might have lost your two cents. Beckett never mentioned the water or black actors matter again, for reasons unknown. The brouhaha over Beckett versus the ART in Boston was such a sensation at the time it led The New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow to review the play in 1984. Aside from the aforementioned music and scenery, Gussow said "the alterations are minimal."

"The director has not only respected the meaning of the dialogue," wrote Gussow, but "she has been attentive to the author's pauses, silences and intonations." Moreover, he said, "[T]his is a valid representation of the spirit of the original work."

Was it really a matter of two windows? The mellifluous music of Philip Glass? Black actors being used? In the end, no one quite understood Beckett's fuss, but it was quite clear no one had a reason to be disgusted. That is, perhaps, except Beckett in himself.

The Friday Poem: Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia, by Elizabeth Alexander

As another week concludes, we end with a random poem. Famous poets, obscure poets, amateur poets, whatever poets--just a poem to cap off the week.

Like this one:


Preliminary Sketches: Philadelphia, by Elizabeth Alexander

"I saw a friend from growing up who's been 
living in L.A. for about twenty years, and I 
heard him say, ‘I'm from L.A.,' and I said, 
‘No, man, you from Philly. We don't give 
nobody up.'" 
—Khan Jamal 
jazz vibraphonist

Fish-man comes with trout and fresh crabs:
"Live! They live crabs! They live crabs!"
Bars called "Watutsi." "Pony-Tail."

A dark green suit, a banded hat.
The gentleman buys pig's feet and
papaya juice. He looks like church.

Another man, down Spruce Street, says,
"Yeah, California's beautiful,
but I ain't got no people there,

so I came back. I raised a racehorse.
Trainer says he's mean, but I say
naw, naw. That horse just alive."

Which way to walk down these tree streets
and find home cooking, boundless love?
Double-dutching on front porches,

men in sleeveless undershirts.
I'm listening for the Philly sound—
Brother brother brotherly love.

Rare Thomas Jefferson letter is historic, mildly sassy.

You've heard similar stories before. Someone's rummaging around in an attic, finds some old, forgotten boxes, and discovers a piece of history worth $325,000. This inspires you to immediately run to your attic or basement where hopes of wonderful riches are quickly dismissed upon learning you only have old musty sweaters, 8-track cassettes, and dashed dreams. Que sera, sera.

And so the story goes again. A family is Mississippi recently discovered a letter in their attic that was written by Thomas Jefferson shortly after the War of 1812. Jefferson wrote the letter to then-U.S. Ambassador to France William Crawford, a relative of the modern Mississippi family.

In the letter, up for sale by The Raab Collection, Jefferson remarks about the Treaty of Ghent, which effectively ended the war and which was written in his Monticello home. The letter also offers Jefferson's thoughts on Napoleon--who had just lost his own war with Britain occurring the same time in Europe as the War of 1812 was raging in North America. According to Jefferson, Napoleon's "downfall was illy timed for us. It gave to England an opportunity to turn full handed on us, when we were unprepared. No matter. We can beat her on our own soil…"

Oooh, sassy passive aggression! Jefferson doing a little chest puffing and dismissive hand waving at both the British and Napoleon in one sentence.

All of Jefferson's sass can be yours for the sale price of $325,000.

But double-check your basement first. Just in case.

Library cat is rehired by Texas town after initially being fired.

In a shocking twist, Browser realizes he's illiterate.

After six years of dutifully performing his job as the local library's mascot and resident mouse hunter, Browser the cat was fired by the city council of White Settlement, Texas, by a vote of 2-1 in a scandal that nearly brought the fundamentals of American government grinding to a halt.

Initially, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported the news:

"Declaring that 'City Hall and city businesses are no place for animals,' Councilman Elzie Clements led what Browser's fans call a sneak attack ..."

Clements called for the council vote. Admittedly, Browser has a shoddy work ethic. Described by the library as an "ornery kitten" when they first found him, The Dallas Morning News said that Browser "spends a good deal of time napping, lounging and sneaking out the door." Typical government employee shenanigans!

Yet, White Settlement mayor, Ron White, says he believed the vote developed after a city worker was denied bringing their puppy to city hall.

Considering how America as a nation doesn't trust Texas to be left alone with itself, petitions were created to stop Browser the cat from being fired. Over 1,000 messages from around the globe poured into the small town, asking to keep the library layabout on the job.

The city council blinked. By a unanimous vote, Browser was told he won't get a pink slip.

When reached for comment, Browser yawned and dozed back off to sleep (probably).




Photo: AP, via The Daily Mail


If you're sitting there wondering if the name "White Settlement" is as racist-y as it sounds, you'd be correct! It turns out there used to be two settlements nearby one another--one of white people and one of Native Americans. Being Texas, the welcoming white people decided to formerly name themselves the blatantly obvious and officially call their community White Settlement so no one would ever mistake them as otherwise. The city was incorporated in 1941. By 2005, a proposal was brought forth to change the name to West Settlement. You know, because it's the 21st century and whatnot. And in a city-wide vote, the proposal was voted down 2388 to 219, proving once and for all that Texas has its fingers on the pulse of the 1820s.

If alive today, Emily Dickinson would've been a homeowner on HGTV.

Lover of a good garden.

"I just love to entertain," Emily Dickinson would say, head tilted back, hand to chest, a lilt in her voice. "Having guests by, a great meal, some wine while sitting in the garden--it's what I love."

Emily Dickinson was born in the wrong century for HGTV fame though, otherwise she'd be a regular at Pier One and Crate and Barrel. And while not a socialite on the scene in her day, guests often visited Dickinson's family home in Amherst, MA, where an extensive garden once covered 14-acres. Now, the Emily Dickinson Homestead, in conjunction with archaeologists from the University of Massachusetts, are working to recreate the grounds at the reclusive writer's home as they were in the mid-19th century.

Already in the works is the rebuilding of a glass conservatory that once existed at the home. According to NPR, archaeologists are digging for old plant stems and seed remnants in order to have a concrete idea of what sort of flowers and vegetables existed on the property. The hope is that in a year's time visitors to the museum can feel as if they've been transported to a different era that inspired the poet.

"[V]isitors may be able to roam among varieties of asparagus, corn and beans that made up the original Dickinson vegetable garden," they say.

And if Dickinson was on the ball, this would all come full circle and she'd make a bean and corn salsa over some roasted asparagus for her guests while entertaining.

Elie Wiesel: 1928-2016

The Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1986 and author on a variety of works on the Holocaust died today at the age of 87.

And so the night grows a little darker this evening.