From a Nfocus profile of Ben Page, a Nashville landscape architect (by Christine Kreyling). Emphasis mine:

A different client type has a passion for raising crops that sport polished coats, aristocratic pedigrees and high price tags - the Thoroughbred horse. And the site of cultivation is planned with the attention to detail Philippe Starck devotees to a powder room. "It's function first, but because buyers are brought to the farm to see the stock, the owners are very concerned with aesthetics," Ben explains. "Everything evolves around the mechanics of nurturing these animals."

Stabling them, moving them from one place to another, is studied with exquisite care. The Thoroughbred leg and hoof is fragile, "so farm managers want a two-percent grade in the stalls to keep them away from walls and corners." A soft walking surface surface is de rigueur. "We use crushed brick on the paths, and a brick with a rolled edge to line them because you can't have any sharp angles." Ben has also become expert on the turning radius for goose-necked trailers. "Successful horse farm design means resolving issues you never see."

From the "Past the Limits of Caffeine" Department:

* realized that, after taking out my deposit receipts, I'd driven away from the bank drive-thru with the pneumatic tube-canister on the floor of my car instead of putting it back into its holder. *facepalm*
* thinking I'd left my lunch on the living room sofa, only to discover (after leaving the office) I'd left it on the back seat of my car. *double facepalm*

From the "More Good Things" Outpost:

* at least I had to drive only around the block and back to return the darn thing
* just received my copy of The Sexual Self (worked on the book as a copyeditor)
* the lunch I'd packed consisted of cherries and cherry tomatoes (which I'm noshing on now)
* Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: Good customer service.
* Haydn and cake break tonight

Onwards!

Writing . . . is a license to be curious. I, for example, am interested in how things work, in how a creative movie deal is structured, how a conglomerate is formed. How a tooth is reconstructed or an aorta patched. How a geologist pinpoints a possible oil strike, how an immunologist isolates a virus. How a fire investigator knows when a fire is an accident and when because of the pattern of smoke stains in the burnt-out shell and the sponginess of the floor it is arson. How a pathologist knows that the prostate is the last male organ and the uterus the last female organ destroyed in a fire, how carbon granules in the bronchial passages indicate the victim was alive when the fire started and fat globules in the lung mean that the victim was attacked before the fire. How Fernando Valenzuela throws a screwball, how the air currents and the speed of the projectile and the angle of the wrist at the point of release conspire to make a pitch man was not intended to throw nor his elbow to endure.

- John Gregory Dunne; quoted in Jonathan Yardley's tribute to him

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Tired and fretful chez mechaieh at the moment - we just found out a neighbor passed away several days ago, and the wordcount, it incheth toward Byzantium like a leaky schooner. We'll get there, my lovelies, but be warned it may be a few days before I respond to comments and notes (quote-spam notwithstanding) - some I want to mull over for a bit, and others I'd rather save for a more mellow, less splintery mood. (There's a part of me that's still all aglow over my (ongoing) bestest birthday to date, and I've got half a pint of mango soup left, and all sorts of other happy things within easy reach. But I've also intermittent brain-cramps and terminal fussbudgetry to fight off (and/or appease with sleep) so I can get things done, and that's making me grouchy and stompety and querulous and way too self-absorbed to provide any semblance of rational company for the next 72 hours or so. *grousestompwhineflop*)

Up betimes taking notes:

Another part of the contract with readers involves content and the ability to deal with massive amounts of information. Park Honan, biographer of Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, and Robert Browning, says, for instance, that "ten or twelve revisions of a chapter may not be enough: I once wrote one biographical paragraph more than seventy times," and Paul Mariani casually admits that "each biography is rewritten four-five-six-seven-eight times." The occasion for Honan's rewriting was "to do exact justice to an excessive amount of material" (xi). [p. 13]

- Paula R. Backscheider, Reflections on Biography (Oxford 1999).

Little wonder matociquala digs the guy. :-)

"Aging is weird, but what's the alternative?" - Patricia Durkin

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"A man who has not money to gratify passions does right to govern them, but he who can indulge them, is better off." - John Wilkes

"His powers of conversation survived his other bodily faculties. I have dined in company with him not long before his decease, when he was extenuated and enfeebled to a great degree, but his tongue retained all its former activity, and seemed to have outlived his other organs." - Nathaniel Wraxall on Wilkes

Both of these quotes are from Arthur Cash's John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, which was a runner-up for this year's Pulitzer Prize in Biography. I'm ambivalent about its tone -- sometimes it strikes me as hilariously direct, and other times as defensively condescending -- but either way, it's entertaining and engrossing.

Here is its opening:

If you know why you should read about John Wilkes, you may skip this paragraph. If you think that John Wilkes shot Abraham Lincoln, you may not. If you think voters have always been represented by people whom they have elected, read on. If you think a violent street mob cannot contribute to civil liberty or that a nobleman in a carriage drawn by four horses cannot be part of a protest march this story may surprise you. If you think that sexual politics is a modern invention, you may learn something here. If you think newspapers always have been free to report what goes on in government, you need this book. If you think the founding fathers of America had no support from England, this is required reading. If you believe dirty books should be burned, pause to think before you continue. If you think that blue-collar workers should not be allowed to vote, this book is not for you. If you think the police have the right to arrest forty-nine people when they are looking for three, shut it now. If you think that people should be imprisoned for writing essays against the government, I have nothing to say to you.

There are no imaginary characters, events, or conversations in this book.

A morning miscellany:

* Ran a keyword search for "self-improvement" on a library catalog. It asked, "Did you mean 'slipover'?"

* The NYT approves of Eliot Spitzer's plan to legalize gay marriage in New York.

* From letters to the Times:

To the Editor:

Re "A Sharp Turn for the Supreme Court on Abortion" (letters, April 20):

I am a rheumatologist caring for a patient whose lupus nephritis is flaring. Her creatinine is rising as her platelet count falls, and she has failed to improve with pulse methylprednisolone and intravenous cyclophosphamide. I am contemplating using rituximab. I would like to refer this case to the United States Supreme Court for its guidance.

Richard Zweig, M.D.
Santa Rosa, Calif., April 20, 2007

* Also from the Times: Kathryn Shattuck's account of an Edward Albee masterclass, which includes mention of the time he showed up on W.H.'s doorstep, his suspicion that Thornton Wilder suggested playwriting to him "to save poetry from me," and some amusing snark ('"...people are generally better at one thing than another," Mr. Albee said, ticking off a list of offenders. "Henry James was a great novelist but a rotten playwright. Arthur Miller wrote a novel. Don’t go near it."')

[Apologies if it feels like I'm spamming you, folks -- it's "use my LJs as Pensieves" week chez moi...]

Title of this entry comes from Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves, OR, What You Are You Are," which she reads with much relish on Poetry Speaks to Children, a book-CD anthology I just borrowed from the library. [Link is to an NPR feature on the piece, which includes Brooks's reading.] Very lively illustrations and terrific selection of poems. Karla Kuskin's Knitted Things made me think of a bunch of you ("There was witch who kitted things: Elephants and playground swings..."). James Stevenson's poem "Why?" is cute. The CD includes Naomi Shihab Nye explaining how she came to write "How to Paint a Donkey" (her art teacher used to single her work out as an example of what not to do...) and Basil Rathbone reading "The Raven." James Berry's "Okay, Brown Girl, Okay" (also on the NPR clip) is moving.

From the "Not Your Grandmama's South" department, #5: Panties for Peace (profiled in last weekend's Nashville Rage)

From the "Totally Your Grandmama's South" department: my favorite title of the week? Somebody Is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn't Catch That Bouquet: The Official Southern Ladies' Guide to Hosting the Perfect Wedding. (Still haven't gotten around to Being Dead Is No Excuse, but I've heard a smart Alabama woman recommend it to a Massachusetts transplant suffering from culture shock.)

From the "Shit, That Didn't Take Long" department: was stuck behind a Jeep this morning that had the bumper sticker "Ban Illegal Aliens, Not Guns." *sigh*

Was stuck behind an Outlander this afternoon, but its bumper sticker read, "Make levees, not war."

From the obituary page of today's New York Times: "Conrad Spizz, 90, an Opera-Loving Master of Smoked Fish." The final sentence? "He loved Italian opera best of all. Puccini and Verdi, Mr. Spizz found, were superb to smoke fish to."

This is the sermon I delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville this past Sunday. The assigned theme was "Unitarian Universalist Moral Responsibility in our Local Community." The worship chair read Raising the Roof as the "Story for All Ages," and before I spoke, I put on four long, gaudy strands of beads:

( Seven years ago, I celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans. )

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( ...from deep despair and perished things... )

matociquala: All you can do as an artist is, when it's your turn, do your damnedest to tear the cord out of the motherfucking wall.

Today's tally:
* one sermon finished and delivered
* one story revised and submitted
* three new poems drafted

Also one bunch each of asparagus and baby beets roasted, a delightful coffee-break with a friend, and another friend treating me to the Panda Garden buffet in Cookeville.

Breakfast was a slice left over from last night's outing to Pizzereal. Good stuff. (One of the poems I drafted tonight was about retsina.) Maybe I simply failed to notice the combination elsewhere, but the fact that my neighborhood now has two combination pizza/Greek/Middle Eastern joints just seems way cool to me. (One of them, Italia, has become a major hangout for the precinct's cops -- there are usually several officers eating there when I pass by.)

Also, Pizzereal has beautiful wood floors and a gas fire (last night's weather was wet and dreary) and great service.

Tomorrow is not likely to be as much fun -- umpteen billable hours to crunch through, heaps of miscellaneous but must-do paperwork, and an appointment to deal with a fractured tooth. But it all can wait until I log in a good night's sleep. The better to fence with, at, and through all the double-damned ever-moving ever-maddening funhouse walls... Onwards!