Spring approaches, disclosing flaws

MENDING (WALL)

BY FROST, ROB'T

SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a (wall), or a delaminating plywood table-top

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,

But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”

..........but, what if it's a................GIRL?

Having received a book of poetry copy-written in fateful 1936, I turned at random to this ode entitled TO MY UNBORN SON. The certainty of the pending child being a boy reminded me of Gordon MacRae's character in the musical Carousel, who sang the briefly famous Rogers and Hammerstein's song, My Boy, Bill. As the song progresses, MacRae comes to the sudden realization that the baby might be.........a girl!

In the days before ultra-sound, the poet's certainty of having a boy puts a heavyload to deliver the male goods on the mother's womb, and heart. So life has gone. (And, there' an epitaph for you........)

To enlarge the poem, click on it.

another cat makes the news today

Brother Steve (actual and fellow-Pythian)

presents the SRN Ed. with the above birthday card on the way to lodge last night.

Inside it reads: Do you know how fast you were going over that hill?

Then "Ho Ho Ho

Steve-O

362 days early"

That seems worthy of inclusion in the News. The very first birthday card of 2009.

Chapterless and verseless with MONA

Mona the cat is now 17 years of age, and has gotten in the habit of uttering poems that appear above her head in wispy cartoon balloons, like fog. [The News could not catch her in such a moment in time for our press deadline.] It is known that many creatures become more religious, in a foxhole, or sewer sort of way if they're raccoons, as they face the otherwise vague prospect of curtain-city.

Therefore, Mona insists on our keeping the old toilet plunger at the side of her radiator repose. Her world, we surmise, consists of the experiences she has garnered at this address. Thus her prayers reflect life as she has known it.

Raccoondite Prayer (abstruse)

..............Thy rod and thy distressed toilet plunger

shall comfort me;

Shirley the push-reel lawn mover,

M-m-m-m Good-ness and, yea

Mousey Mercy

When not in use

Will stay in the garage

Otherwise will follow me

All the days of my life


And I shall dwell

Atop the The Big Bathroom Radiator

Forever



[Mona stic 3-4-08]

Learn to resolve issues without guns..............(no. 5)

A Declaration of Dependence
from John Cleese

To the citizens of the United States of America:


In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.
To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.
2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour', 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise'. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').
3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell- checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.
4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.
6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
7. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
8. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
9. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
10. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
11. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.
12. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.
13. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.
14. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
15. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).
16. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God save the Queen.

FRENZY-ed birthday with Erin

Over the past weekend, the birthday-celebrating Sewer Raccoon News editor was feted by daughter Erin to a wind ensemble concert at Lawrence University's Memorial Chapel, where Erin is a senior, a clarinetist. Under the brilliant direction of Dr. Andrew Mast, (pictured) it had to be the best concert the normally peacable raccoon booster ever attended! The finale was Andrew Boysen Jr.'s Frenzy, an intricate blur of head re-arranging percussion and complex instrumentation artistry. If the chapel could have lifted its roof in a hat-doffing gesture to the conductor and players, it surely would have. It was a hurricane of sound. Your choicely-seated, balconied editor nearly beat his head against a nearby pillar, and had no recourse but to get out his Indian drum and beat that mercilessly the next day when he got home. Something like that needs to be kept going with whatever is at hand, for long and long.

Before the concert, Erin presented her birthday card with a twinkle in her eye, I think because she knew what the very old drummer & raccoonteur was in for, and very shortly. Afterwards, when the players were off-stage packing up their instruments, Erin said she asked the conductor if he could still hear ? (after FRENZY)

His reply: "Yes, I'm still here."

The wind ensemble plans to offer that same concert soon in Omaha. Look out! They're in for a thrill!

a matter of perspective/ true bio

WING-WALKERS

Of The World

Residents of the sleepy town of Waukesha in 1966 - those who were looking up - witnessed the daring solo flight of the future editor of the Sewer Raccoon News, piloting a Cessna 150 from Crites Field. Dix recently said it was the most adventurous event of his long life. Flying instructor Sam James told him that day to taxi over to the terminal and said "OK, this is it," and got out of the little airplane leaving Dix at the controls, alone.

They had done a series of sufficiently-executed touch-downs and take-offs, and the future editor suspected this could happen anytime now. The instructors never told you when. They determine the when of it and they do not give any overture, presumable to keep students cool.

.................

On another later day, Dix flew down to Chicago and landed at Meigs Field. It was windy in the Windy City, and the prevailing westeries blew strongly and accelerated through the skyscrapers at the immediate right of the field, situated on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Dix flew in from the north, from Waukesha, past the planetarium, at a requisite "crab angle" into the wind, straightening out at the last second before touch-down. It had to be done that way.

He had flown down to Chicago on a buying trip for his business, a home furnishings venture called The Decoratory. It was also a lark, involving Old-Town where the Time Machine he'd commissioned from an antiques store operator was late in coming. A mantle-piece-sized object, it involved rolling balls and a kind of near-perpetual motion, making eyes watch in wonder, as engendered by the finished display machine.

The Time Machine had a mystical hold on your editor's mind. The store was known as Fly-By-Night. The genius operator designed his business card as a black fly on the dark gray stock. The maker of the time machines was a friend, who became terminally ill. Though having been given a substantial down-payment, the stalled fellow soon thereafter died, and Dix never received anything for his investment except the schematic sketch of the future machine. (Now framed in reverence, and on display at the sewer raccoon headquarters.)

Remembering more of that episode, Dix recalled that when he was told that the chap was dying in a veterans hospital, he flew down again, and, dressed as a priest in a collar, made a verifying visit to the failing patient who was allowed no visitors except for family and clergy.

On one of his rented-plane flights, Dix left his treasured "Amelia Earhart" leather flying jacket on the back seat, and never recovered it. Things were not going well. He ran out of money for rented airplanes, and through mis-managed funds, lost his business and more. (See cartoon lifted from yesterday's The New Yorker.)

Years later, as a Realtor, Dix was having a discussion with a potential real estate client, an eldery widow who was studying his confguration curiously as they spoke. She said he was just the size of her late husband, and she had something she wanted to give him.

She brought out a cordovan leather jacket with a buckled belt. It was the exact image of the lost flying coat! Dix accepted it gladly. It was a little snug, but some more years later he underwent open heart surgery and a 100 pound weight loss, so that now he wears it a trifle baggedly but delightedly. Shown above right, the SR editor wears it at Christmas 2007 when he flew to Maryland with wife and son. He awaited his flight in the Mitchell Field terminal when his son Leland snapped the shutter.

On commercial flights Dix always feels at the semi-mercy of the seemingly unruffled pilots, and carries a hand-held compass that he refers to throughout any flights.

And now you know why the Van Loon aeroplane illustration is tilted upside down. And why the Bon-Ton wrist watch with the 360 degree second hand is reminiscent of a wing-walking dream as yet unrealized.

All things are connected for your editor, currently focused on the below-ground movements of raccoons.