Monday, November 2, 2009

Kindles for Kindling: A Dangerous Fire

I cannot imagine owning a Kindle, a Nook, or whatever the next Not Book might be. Then again, I was a late adapter of the microwave, so I should talk. While I do not miss the physical card catalog in the library, and love ordering books on line, empty bookshelves in my home would be a sad sight. Worse, what if those shelves started filling up with ceramic elves, fake plants or Webkins? No real legacy there.

But you might enjoy this send up of
The Early Help Desk.

I hope we don't forget actual reading in books, that we can pass along in favor of renting words.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Frog Joy

Frog Joy


Now that it's May, we are safe.

Each year New England winter seems to last into spring, insulting the calendar and our need to get rid of the gloom. It's impossible for me to predict when to celebrate Frog Joy Day. Every once in awhile it will appear in mid-March. Usually, it's sometime in April.

Some years, due to quirky meteorological manifestations that would make a weather prognosticator weep, a late snow in what should be spring, postpones the party.
The wood frogs have come to the swamp to mate and in their quacking frenzy, they sound like mini mallards in a terrible, wonderful sex crazed heat. Stand there and smile because it’s really, really spring now. In fact, if you are out for a drive in the rural night, pull the car over and listen to the peepers. They are tiny, but the song is spectacularly huge.


Don't say anything. Close your eyes and picture what all is going on out there.

Studies show there is indeed a syndrome called S.A.D. An acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder, people who suffer depression during the winter months need special lamps and warmth to shake off long weeks of depression.


I feel as though I can introduce myself as brand new in spring because the winter me is beastly and because even I wouldn’t want to know me then—crabbing about the grayness and whether the plow guy will show up on time. No one wants to hear me uselessly prattling about how January second through April Fool’s Day should be recalculated out of existence even though we all know there is a perverse correctness to that time chunk being there. I just don’t want to be anywhere in it, unless of course I could be in Brisbane or Sydney.

Living ten years in the American South helped. Camellias can skip past Thanksgiving. Lenten roses (Hellebore) appear in late January. Did you know that some trees start blossoming in February? It makes a girl giddy.


But, on the day in New England, when the frogs begin their roiling in the swamp, I laugh purely with no snide irony, no snickering cynicism or gloomy snort. Spring finally showed its candy-assed face and I can be me once more: the one who is profoundly hopeful, even though they still won’t give us a raise; the one who feels like cavorting, skipping a few steps in the back yard, even though the pasta and devil dog indulgences show more each year; the one who runs out immediately and buys charcoal, even though it might be two months before we can start to cook supper outside
Take a minute to think about the moments and ceremonies you use to mark the passage of time, and the seasonal things that create personal glee.


No matter what, I am more me than I’ve been in months, on the day the frogs start fornicating.



Friday, March 20, 2009

The Real March Madness


If you live in New England, this is the month that can make you crazy. I should say, to be accurate, it makes me crazy. Snow, maybe. Freezing rain, sure. Potholes. A teaser sunny day? Of course. Mud. Potholes. Harsh winds that seem to be leftover from New Years. And potholes.


The only thing to do is find yourself the nearest bulb show and head there. In this case, the photos come from Smith College two days before official spring, the vernal equinox, promises that soon, out in the real world that is not under glass, blooms will happen.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Crime and Punishment

Creative Sentencing

During the first week of October, 2001, only nine years ago, Georgia finally declared the use of the electric chair to be “cruel and unusual punishment.”

A state that moved from the Hanging Solution to the Wonders of Electricity now uses lethal injection to carry out capital punishment.

FYI, lethal injection was first used in the state of Texas in the early 1980s. Since then, Texas has executed more people than any other state in the union. No correlation is implied here between the method and the madness. It’s just a fact.

Regardless of what your position is on the death penalty, evidence of uneven sentencing for all manner of crimes and misdemeanors befuddles even the most fair minded of people.

What a fair penalty for___Crime To Be Designated Later__is, varies from county to county, state to state, school system to school system, and politics in general.

Sentencing varies dependent on

• who the sitting judge might be

• how good one’s lawyer is

• how jury selection is handled

• how high profile the case is

• the mood of the nation

• whether a vice principal is more sympathetic to one student’s circumstances, as opposed to another.

• myriad other complications.

All we have to do is point to OJ Simpson, who is finally off the golf course, to convince someone serving time for non-violent behavior that Life is Just Not Fair. Even in the justice system.

Zero tolerance seems to indicate a bottom line. While all absolutes have inherent problems involved for particular cases, zero tolerance itself is a questionable stance, and often undermined by the terminally literal mind.

EX: A six grade girl is suspended for two weeks for having a Tweety Bird key chain on her backpack. In her school, the new code of conduct banned “chain possession” under their weapons definition. No warning, no personal letter home to the folks saying, “I know it seems silly, but in our efforts to be consistent, would you please help us by find a different key chain for Amanda?”

Creative Sentencing

1. I was reading the newspaper about a young man in Ohio. Only coincidentally was the the driver named Law. Anyway, he was busted for driving through town with his windows down and speakers turned up so high to some kind thudding sounds that small animals were having seizures.

His punishment for this noise offense was to listen to polka music turned up high for four hours. The judge probably safely assumed that Mr. Law would not find the songs catchy. The horror, the horror.

2. In Knoxville, TN a seventeen year old boy pled no contest to vehicular homicide. Part of the plea agreement for Pelham McMurry includes planning his own funeral. He must meet with a funeral director, write his own obituary, choose the clothes he would wear to be buried in. Many other appropriate restrictions are included in the year long probation—200 hours of community service, mandated counseling, random drug and alcohol testing. The victim’s father was profoundly dissatisfied with the judge’s decision to keep the case in juvenile court.

Which brings us to the concern of the day.

Let’s forget ‘an eye for an eye’ as in the Old Testament, or lopping off the hand of a thief, as in the Queran (Koran). No tit for tat (whatever that means).

Let’s think of some creative ways to punish non-violent offenders so that the punishment really fits the crime in some delightful, ironic, or useful fashion, and clears out the jails of the country who has the highest population of incarcerated individuals in the world..

Let’s really consider Poetic Justice.

Not everyone deserves the slammer. Or detention. Or a fine. Or humiliation.

-0-