Bob Sellars
communicated by Email yesterday
a piece of technical information
he wanted to share
because he was truly amazed by it.
It has to do with the modern VW plant
in Dresden, Germany.
Bob, no longer able to facilely operate
his typing fingers
due to his degenerative muscular problem,
has a willing caretaker
who types what Bob asks him to.
A scientist by profession
Bob has for his lifetime shared
info on what amazes him.
(He once told us how raccoons
if pursued by dogs in water
will, when it comes right down to survival,
turn and bitingly attach a dog over his snout
and hold the attacker under the water
until it drowns.
And many other intriguing
and useful facts have been imparted
by Bob.)
We welcome Bob's return to
his keyboard, with the help of
a hired aide. His faithful wife Libby
is heartened too by the
continuation of Bob's word-smithery.
Yesterday's video was
Bob's Email read as follows:
This is one amazing emails we’ve seen in sometime. We thought you will enjoy
watching this.
I have watched a number of advertisements about the new
developments of VW. If you are ever in Dresden
Love, Libby and Bob.
Received this from Bob. Marshall, whom some of
you know.
Subject: FW: A Factory Like You've Never Seen
Before
Only the Germans can do this.
INCREDIBLE
Want to see why the Germans have a positive trade
balance, in
spite of paying workers some of the highest wages in the
world? Watch this: It is truly incredible.
............
Lt. Les Dix on maneuvers preparatory to landing on D Day in WW II
The below poem arrived 1-30-12 from THE WRITERS ALMANAC:
Letter Home
I love you forever
my father's letter tells her
for forty-nine pages,
from the troopship crossing the Atlantic
before they'd ever heard of Anzio.
He misses her, the letter says,
counting out days of boredom, seasickness,
and changing weather,
poker games played for matches
when cash and cigarettes ran out,
a Red Cross package—soap,
cards, a mystery book he traded away
for The Rubaiyyat a bunkmate didn't want.
He stood night watch and thought
of her. Don't forget the payment
for insurance, he says.
My mother waits at home with me,
waits for the letter he writes day by day
moving farther across the ravenous ocean.
She will get it in three months and
her fingers will smooth the Army stationery
to suede.
He will come home, stand
beside her in the photograph, leaning
on crutches, holding
me against the rough wool
of his jacket. He will sit
alone and listen to Aïda
and they will pick up their
interrupted lives. Years later,
she will show her grandchildren
a yellow envelope with
forty-nine wilted pages telling her
of shimmering sequins on the water,
the moonlight catching sudden phosphorescence,
the churned wake that stretched a silver trail.
my father's letter tells her
for forty-nine pages,
from the troopship crossing the Atlantic
before they'd ever heard of Anzio.
He misses her, the letter says,
counting out days of boredom, seasickness,
and changing weather,
poker games played for matches
when cash and cigarettes ran out,
a Red Cross package—soap,
cards, a mystery book he traded away
for The Rubaiyyat a bunkmate didn't want.
He stood night watch and thought
of her. Don't forget the payment
for insurance, he says.
My mother waits at home with me,
waits for the letter he writes day by day
moving farther across the ravenous ocean.
She will get it in three months and
her fingers will smooth the Army stationery
to suede.
He will come home, stand
beside her in the photograph, leaning
on crutches, holding
me against the rough wool
of his jacket. He will sit
alone and listen to Aïda
and they will pick up their
interrupted lives. Years later,
she will show her grandchildren
a yellow envelope with
forty-nine wilted pages telling her
of shimmering sequins on the water,
the moonlight catching sudden phosphorescence,
the churned wake that stretched a silver trail.
Backwards In the Sun
A man loathe to give up the manual typewriter
To bow to the age of
computers
Who liked push reel
lawn mowers
Wringer washers
And treadle sewing
machines:
I announce that
Something good
happened here to mitigate
My reluctant
accessions adopting the new over the old
While sitting as a
machinist
Marveling at what my word processor
And color printer can
do;
I like to correspond with fountain pen
And then hang the
letter backwards in a sunny window
For a while before
sending
To study the line
without the ability to read text
As though the right
or wrong will show
And save me from
mistake or unmeant innuendo
Hand script, even
supposedly horrible hand script
Sometimes dangerous
from the front side
Takes on a loveliness
when viewed backwards
And this is
interesting when one thinks
Of evaluations
involving all angles and facets
Rather than merely
the most obvious surface
(How often have I
sent letters not so carefully inspected)
The thinner the paper for this sunlit viewing
The better:
I remembered a box of
old onion skin typing paper
I had from when
thinner meant more copies
Yielded by
typewriters and carbon paper
Before clicks and
double clicks and infinite production
I got this dusty box down and opened the lid
To find nearly a full
box of crispy thin sheets
Audibly-crinkling
onion skin paper
Talking paper very
loud to the touch
After all that time
being cooped up
Like a presumed useless ugly duckling
Or love-starved oldster getting dryer
It leaps to respond
to the slightest tactility
And you cannot buy it
anymore
Who needs it?
On the word processor so novel to me
I can practically put
cardboard through
And obtain
glorious-looking pages
But they don't talk
when I handle them
They are dead except
for the images on them
Not so with onion
skin
It says something
You must be of an age to appreciate V Mail
From World War II
when loved ones communicated
Across seas on
government-mandated crackling tissue paper
To keep the weight of
transport down
And to reduce bulk
It was a practical and beautiful medium
I inspected my
father's letters then on the flip side to the light
After I had digested
all from the most obvious facade
I knew there must be
more from him than that
Which showed on just
one surface;
I was only six years old
I searched side-ways
both sides and between the lines
I became familiar with the look, feel and
sound of onion skin
My one contact with
Dad and so much preferred
To the dreaded
telegram on dead yellow paper;
That bad paper never
wanted never came here
And to find a whole
box of lively paper fifty years after
Those haunting hungry
scrutinies was a blessing
I had it among my high basement cobwebs
Must have known it
had value
It had escaped years
of throwing out
In silent peace like
a covered bird
Intact a perfectly good box of now off-white
paper
Backwards fountain-penned sheets in sunny
windows
Will vibrate while
this irreplaceable and
Obsolete box lasts
It will last long this new lost art
Because there are so
many dry leaves fitted in the old box
Like memories they
are so very thin
But strong
Tearing such gossamer is not
as easy as you'd suppose
In my cyberspacial kingdom there are many
color images
In my computer's
memory favorite old snapshots
And vivid drawings
I've committed to that realm
And my fountain pen
will not quit till I do
A way is pointed to a blending
Validating procedures
and leanings in the doing,
Printing
computer-generated transparencies
On talking paper -
with penned script -
And
backlighting these marriages not on an electric monitor
But in the window
backwards in the sun
(DD CIRCA 2000]
(When Dee helped June Bjorklund move last year, June gave her a partial box of rare onion skin paper for me)
