Back in school again so I decided to go up to 209 Randall again, I’m not sure why. It was night and guess who was lying on bed asleep? James’s first roommate, Robert Richards. He was last seen in New York, since he figured he could just read the 100 Great books on his own time. I would have thought he’d be in jail by now.

Do you know how The Peloponnesian War ends? "He [Tissaphernes] therefore decided to go and see them at the Hellespont in order to protest against what had happenned at Antandros and to clear himself as best he could from what they had to say against him with regard to the Phoenician fleet and other matters. He went first to Ephesus where he made a sacrifice to Artemis..." that is to say, it doesn't end at all. As Firestone said, Kafka didn't finish The Castle so I don't see why I should. But there is a surprise ending: in the last book Athens becomes an oligarchy. All that Pericles's funeral oration stuff about a democracy creating the best soldiers because they understand what they're fighting for and Athen's freedoms being a beacon to the world are out the window when they start seriously losing battles. Once the empire's in danger, it's the power of the strong over the weak. Same as ever, but it's still sad.

Crescent crescendo

While at band practice yesterday, executing a lovely crescendo, it suddenly occurred to me that the word “crescendo” is probably related to the word “crescent”. Crescendo= sound that is building or getting louder, crescent = the shape of the moon while it’s getting fuller. Sure enough, there’s a Latin word cresco, crescere, crevi, cretum meaning to grow or swell, present participle crescens, crescentis. But what about a moon that’s going from a half moon to a new moon? It’s still crescent in shape, but it’s not growing, it’s shrinking. My dictionary has the word decrescent as an adjective, meaning waning, but not as a noun. And if memory serves, the moon waxes on the right and wanes on the left, but usually when you see a crescent (such as on the Turkish flag) it’s on the left, meaning it’s really a decrescent, or would be if that were a word. Maybe the delightful flaky French roll should really be called a “decroissant”.

Another good bit in Thucydides I found in Book VII.44, when the Athenians wanted to attack Epipolae in Syracuse. (I believe that's in Sicily; the Penguin edition has such poorly drawn maps as to actually be more useless than no maps at all.) They found they couldn't breach the line by day so they decided to attack at night. However it was a complete failure, a terrible rout, because there was a lot of confusion in the darkness. "But it was the singing of the paean which did them as much, or even more harm than anything, because of the uncertainty caused by having much the same paean sung on both sides. Thus when the Argives and Corcyraeans and other Dorian elements in the army started singing their paean they produced as much panic among the Athenians as the enemy did." I had thought that a paean was a hymn of praise, but it's clearly a battle song here.

Out of Thin Air

Alright, here's a song I wrote over the weekend for Homeland Security and the hostages at RISD:

You know out of sight is never out of mind
Wherever I look, whatever I find
Whatever I see it's what you're just behind
All that I see has rendered me blind

You're hiding you're hiding
I'll find you ma chere
I'll find you I'll get you
Right out of thin air

You say I can't see you, you say it's forbidden
I no longer care if you did or you didn't
You said that you wouldn't, I thought you were kidding
Once I have found you, you'll still remain hidden

You're hiding you're hiding
I'll find you ma chere
I'll find you I'll get you
Right out of thin air

Tough Row

Oh wait, I get it now: "You're getting killed by what you don't know (= yourself)". I'll sharpen my pencil and tune my ukulele and see if I can write a song for Homeland Security this weekend. It's too bad Tom Ridge isn't the Secretary any more: his name rhymes with bridge and smidge and ligitig (-inous). I'm not sure what you can do with "Michael Chertoff".

So cool!

Not only is the NSA tapping any and all overseas phone calls, but apparently Homeland Security can open any packages sent through the mail. You know that Tom Ridge must've been, like, the biggest Brothers Twain fan in the whole world!

New Year's Greetings

Just got John Cale's new "Black Acetate" from a friend in Zurich. Very nice at first listen. Very frisky, like he was in concert two summers ago.
Do the hucklebuck

Wow, I just heard one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard on the radio: Odetta singing "Home on the Range".

First interesting thing in Thucydides

400 pages in, and I finally got to the first piece of information I found genuinely interesting in Book Five, Section 71 of the Peloponnesian War:

"It is true of all armies that, when they are moving into action, the right wing tends to get unduly extended and each side overlaps the enemy’s left with its own right. This is because fear makes every man do his best to find protection for his unarmed side in the shield of the man next to him on the right, thinking that the more closely the shields are locked together, the safer he will be. The fault comes originally from the man on the extreme right of the front line, who is always trying to keep his unarmed side away from the enemy, and his fear spreads to the others who follow his example."

JC in Woodland

We were out walking Norm and I thought I saw Jimmy Claus drive by in a white pick-up truck with no muffler. Sure enough, when I got home my Phil Spector Christmas album was warped. Creep.

Happy Xmas. War is over (if you want it).

“It’s the sound of the days, falling down like rain on Christmas” was how I misheard the first line of a Stephin Merritt song, and it sounded like the dreariest thing in the world to me. But Juliana told me that as a child she always wanted rain on Christmas, and a brief survey of my California-born co-workers has led me to the conclusion that in California there are sunny Christmas people and rainy Christmas people. The pro-sunny arguments are: you can go outside, you can play with your new toys, if you are an adult you can get away from your family and some people just always like sunny days better. The pro-rainy arguments are: rain is more like snow, you can build a fire and watch movies, you can wear your new winter clothes outside and rain is just more Chrismas-y. It appears that this year the rainy Christmas people will have their way.

Cinema de Minuit

Am I the only one who puts on the French subtitles when watching old black-&-white movies in order to call up the gap-toothed, head-waggling spirit of Freddy Mitterand?

Santa Ana Winds

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge..."

--Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

Test

Tried to "publish" something to this Blog spot earlier today, but it didn't work -- lost somewhere in cyberspace. It'll turn up somewhere sometime perhaps. Or maybe not ... there was something heretical about it.
Anyway, I don't give up that easily and will try again with this little ditty that I wrote earlier this year and which is looking, itself, for a home.

Valerie Malaval
Never travels à cheval
Riding backwards on a mule
She recites the golden rule
Perched upon her trusty ass
She's the vicar's favorite lass

Spartan Bar

Next time you're at church

Here's a Christmasy quotation of seasonal relevance from Jakob Burkhardt (the man on the 50 Swiss franc note) from his "The Age of Constantine the Great":

And Eusebius, though all historians have followed him, has been proven guilty of so many distortions, dissimulations, and inventions that he has forfeited all claim to figure as a decisive source. It is a melancholy but very understandable fact that none of the other spokesmen of the Church, as far as we know, revealed Constantine's true position, that they uttered no word of displeasure against the murderous egoist who possessed the great merit of having conceived of Christianity as a world power and of having acted accordingly. We can easily imagine the joy of the Christians in having finally obtained a firm guarantee against persecution, but we are not obliged to share that elation after a millenium and a half.

My New Accordion

I bought an accordion. It's white with sparkly gold keys, not entirely unlike the old Spartans accordion. I gave that one away about ten years ago, when buttons were falling out and not all the keys worked but since playing in polka and klezmer bands I've been wanting a new one. I had wanted to get a little shrill-voiced one without too many buttons, like maybe a chromatic concertina (if they even make them) but I had borrowed this one from Maggie of Mad same, when Ned Stone came to visit in August and sort of got seduced into getting a bigger accordion than I'd intended. It has a sweet but mellow sound with nice bass notes, not small and shrill at all. I can play most of the Fast Fun duotonic book (though not "Sweet Lycette" yet--it's the jump to F# on "Don't know what the world's coming to" that's still too hard) and am trying to learn the Simple Songs I wrote on the ukulele.

Today is Jimmy's birthday, so here's a little poem for him:

Today is Jimmy's birthday
The party's in Mumbai
He is the sort of sterling friend
Who's very hard to come by.

Happy birthday Jymn. We created it, let's take it over.