Article: 636 of alt.etext Path: news.cic.net!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!udel!news2.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!redstone.interpath.net!mercury.interpath.net!not-for-mail From: ctporter@mercury.interpath.net (Personal Account) Newsgroups: alt.etext,alt.zines,rec.arts.books Subject: (news)letter 1:14 Date: 9 May 1994 07:07:57 -0400 Organization: Interpath -- Public Access UNIX for North Carolina Lines: 334 Message-ID: <2ql5id$dvg@mercury.interpath.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: mercury.interpath.net Xref: news.cic.net alt.etext:636 alt.zines:3625 rec.arts.books:94252 (news)letter "Say the thing with which you labor." Thoreau from the porter micro.press Volume 1, Number 14 May 4, 1994 _________________________________________________________________ Thanks to Bob for pointing out my error in the last issue: Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, not 1973. Thanks to everyone else for not razzing me about it... Please send suggestions and submissions. To get on the mailing list, send your name and address to: CTPorter 117-A S. Mendenhall St. Greensboro, NC 27403 or e-mail ctporter@mercury.interpath.net Your input is appreciated. Leafing through the current New England Review (Winter 1994) I came across poems by Claudia Emerson Andrews, a UNCG MFA graduate with whom I used to laugh a lot. I'll ever associate her poetry with Robert Frost, not only because she gave a fine presentation on Frost's poetry in our Modern American Poetry class several years ago, but her verse can sound just as if it's spoken by someone on the street, the rhythms are natural, spoken rhythms, not artificial poetic rhythms. The first lines of "The Rapture" (22), shows this quality well: My brother Nat was good at what lay flat for him to stroke, and if he stroked it just so, it gave the sweetest sound. Yes, he was good at what possessed a cinched waist, a curly head, and dark clefts. He said, "Draw a long, tight bow slow across a tense, tender gut, and rock it." . . . Robert Frost might have made it rhyme, though the reader might not notice the rhymes (not in the best Frost, anyway). The more I read of these three poems the more I enjoyed them, and I liked them plenty the first time. Now this really happened: after reading her poems in the library I had the thought that this was why poets should give the audience copies of the poetry they read. It can give the audience a greater appreciation of the poet's craft. The next night I went to see Seamus Heaney read, and during the reading I had the same thought -- not having been exposed to his poetry, I was interested in how he broke up the lines, what his poetry "looked" like. Then, leaving, who should be there saying "hello" but Claudia, who drove all the way from VA for the Heaney show. We talked for a bit and I asked about her husband and she told me that he wished poets would give copies of their poems so he could read them while they were being recited. And that's the way it happened, Scout's Honor. And that's why I write a (news)letter: life so often fits nicely together like that. One poem that needs to be seen to be more appreciated is Charles H. Webb's "The Shape of History" in the current Michigan Quarterly Review (Spring 1994, page 374). This poem takes as its epilogue Yeats' line of "Turning and turning in the widening gyre..." and the poem is shaped like a gyre, or a funnel. One of the problems of poems that depend on their typographical layout is that the shape can dominate the poetry. In Webb's case there are a couple of lines I thought were filler, but all told he works the content well with the shape. The wide part, of course is "now," and the lines get shorter and shorter as we go back through history (because, after all, how much do we know about the years 700-800, for example?), and pre-history, finally to the Big Bang. But the poem isn't quite over (after all, there had to be something to go "bang," right?): . . . Then, for trillions of years, nothing at all. To have that "all" solo at the end (i.e., the beginning) provokes serious thought. A fitting end to a poem about history: that "all" is at the font of everything else, everything we could each of us ever know only works within, or through, that "all." From the Net I received some electronic magazines in the past couple of weeks that I thought I'd mention. Arthur D. Hlavaty sent me some samples of his work, including "Discordia Revisited 1," and "Derogatory Reference 77." One part of the former that I really liked was his discussion of explanations of Why Nothing Works (for example the Peter Principle, which states that "In any hierarchy, the individual rises until he reaches his level of incompetence"). Hlavaty gives his own rule, The Offensive Holding Principle: "The rules of any sufficiently complex organization, if fairly and consistently applied, will bring that organization to a dead stop." This is named for the rule in football that seems to be applied arbitrarily: if the referees would call every offensive holding infraction then they would call it on every play and the game would hardly get underway, let alone end. "Derogatory Reference," is in the form of journal entries as opposed to 'articles,' and it worked so well I'm wondering how I might best adapt the concept in the (news)letter. Hlavaty sent these issues in an envelope that was graced by the wonderful stamps you can find reproduced elsewhere in this issue. Alan Eyzaguirre's "Depth Probe" has several features: a piece on the Whole Life Expo with reactions to a Timothy Leary lecture, reviews of books, movies, an art review, and a few thoughts about trends. I was thrilled to find the review on William Poundstone's Labyrinth of Reason. I discovered Poundstone's works while looking in the library for Richard Powers' Prisoner's Dilemma. Poundstone has a book with the same title, and in looking at it as well as his other works, I found that he covered some topics that I was particularly interested in, including John Conway's Game of Life, which is covered in his Recursive Universe. This is a game which explores the diversity of cellular automata, in which there are three basic rules which affect each cell (the rules, in this case, are based on the number of "live" neighbors), and the lengths to which some computer whizzes have taken the game can boggle the mind. Someone even discovered a formation that recreates itself. Poundstone is a skilled popularizer of science -- that is, he explains concepts very clearly -- and I'm surprised his books aren't more popularly known, though maybe his tangents are a bit esoteric. "Essential Unity is as Pleasant as Port..." Speaking of cellular automata, and explaining science well for that matter, Janet Stites has an article in this month's Omni magazine about the Santa Fe Institute, "Complexity" (42-52). Janet visited SFI, a collection of scientific folk who are pursuing their ideas "with the conviction that complex systems share similar behavior, so that what you learn from one system, like the immune system, you can apply to another, like the economy" (44). Janet covers a lot of territory in this article including Complex Systems and their bookish cousins, the Complex Adaptive Systems, cellular automata, genetic algorithms, and the computer programs that try to predict real-world behaviors. But the aura of the Santa Fe Institute is enough to strike envy in any of us who have wanted the "perfect" environment in which to work: privately- , and well-, funded, stocked chock full of some of the sharpest brains in the country with a heavy stress on the interdisciplinary approach, SFI is "an unusual combination of urgency and patience, eagerness and caution, as everyone goes about their two to three dozen individual tasks and waits for the answers" (52). These people want to change not only the way the sciences are taught, they aim "ultimately, at policymakers on a national and international level -- those who can make a single decision and affect millions of people." I don't hold out much hope for that last goal: if powerful politicians could be influenced by the smart scientists, I think we would have to redefine the term "politician" as we know it. Breaking Up is Hard to Do The theme of the current issue of Granta is "Crime," and Peregrine Hodson's "Foreign Bodies" (205-214) is certainly about that. A couple visiting Morocco are on the last legs of their relationship, they're just drifting apart. The night they realize it, they are out on the beach with a friend when they realize that they're surrounded by folks who mean to do them harm. The story of this assault is chilling and I find myself feeling really sorry for the couple because the circumstances might just keep them together longer than they would want. Who could break up after something like this? But that's what will happen. The woman is raped and the man can do nothing but take a beating: "Just stay alive," he tells her. How awkward life has suddenly become for them in this strange country, far away from home. This plight reminded me of a story in last month's Harper's magazine, Bernard Cooper's "Truth Serum" (83-90). The narrator has been wondering for a long time if he is gay and when he realizes that he is, he is on a trip with his live-in girlfriend. He breaks up with her in the airport as they await a flight: "we were sitting side by side at Kennedy Airport, waiting to board a plane back to Los Angeles after a vacation in New York City" (89). You're faced with this upheaval in your life -- the status quo is destroyed in one swift kick to the butt, or in one look the person you've grown accustomed to decides you're no longer the one -- and you still have to get home together. Does anybody besides me find this situation oppressive? I'd rather have a pot-tossing argument in the privacy of home, get the anger over with, rather than have to force civility in consideration of the folks around, for "convention." I don't mean to belittle the crimes in the Hodson story: I can't speak for what each has been through, so I won't even try. It just seems that breaking up during a voyage is harsh. Lose Your Life for Our Sake >From the May Harper's I read Ron Carlson's "Zanduce at Second" (71-80). The hero of this story is introduced as a killer: "Eddie Zanduce had killed eleven people and had a reputation for it, was famous, actually, for killing people..." A picture shows a baseball player wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap and it's quite a while before we find out that Eddie Zanduce has killed people with foul balls that he has hit. He's become quite a legend and the parks fill up every time the Orioles are in town because the folks want to see if Eddie will notch up another victim. Eddie's such a nice guy, he can't help it if people die, and his life is really wretched because he can't get over killing one person, let alone eleven. There is a hope for Eddie, though, in the question asked him by a young escort he's hired for the day: Why don't you try to kill somebody? Of course he can't kill someone when he's trying, so he finds out that these deaths really have nothing to do with him personally, they are a twist of fate that he cannot control. Maybe now, if he tries to kill someone every time he comes to the plate, he'll kill no more and begin to heal. Money Squared Equals Arrogance In the Monday New York Times I found an article entitled "CBS Toys with Idea Of a New League." CBS, you might or might not care, lost the television rights to NFL games to the Fox Network and is now scrambling to fill a Sunday afternoon void that looks now to feature "movies and figure skating" (maybe Tonya Harding can get a job!). The new idea behind this league would be corporate sponsorships of teams instead of "private ownership," or however you might classify the existing situation in the professional leagues. One of the planners at this early stage (the league as proposed would start in 1995) is Federal Express, and their team would be located in Memphis. The Anheuser-Busch team would play their games out of St. Louis. Can you imagine the money that would be thrown into such a venture? One of the NFL folks that commented on it, Joe Browne, a vice-president of communications, said, "If the organization has enough money and a willingness to spend it, then maybe they'll be able to make a go of it." One of the drawbacks would be that if the Budweiser team was playing, would the Miller people want to advertise? I can see it now, though, you'd have two teams playing ball, the company teams made up of millionaire spokesmen/players, and when the game is televised, the league wouldn't let the camera leave the stadium. The commercial break would be redefined because the companies would just advertise from the huddle. Some tailback runs 83 yards for a touchdown, the play stops for an official's time out and instead of going to a commercial, the tailback would be interviewed and he would brag about the merits of "his" company and how without them star halfback would never have run his eighty yards. The teams might fight not only for the win -- and the very concept of "winning" would then be redefined -- but for the advertising opportunities. A local sportscaster had the best advice for CBS: create a new niche instead of trying to force your way into an old, overcrowded one. Horatio Alger Meets Jethro Some passages I come across in books and I can visualize them so strongly and they appeal to me so much. I've been reading Stewart H. Holbrook's The Age of the Moguls and came across this image of perseverance. A maverick prospector, Andy Lucas, worked so hard all of his life to strike it rich. He and his wife were living in a shack in Texas while Andy, who had given up on gold, sunk all of his money and time drilling into the Texas earth to see what he might bring up. Came to a point where Andy didn't have any more money so he turned to a couple of strangers he only knew by reputation, they being mining specialists and so could appreciate Andy's efforts. So these guys, Colonel Guffey and John Galey, gave Andy some good money to keep the effort going, and everyone seems happy. But then Andy hit the mother lode: On January 9, 1901, Lucas felt the ground tremble and heard a deep rumbling. He fled to safety just an instant before a vast torrent of oil and mud roared up from the depths, ramming ahead of it some eight hundred feet of steel pipe as though it were a straw. The gusher crested two hundred feet above the ground, a black geyser that started blowing nearly one hundred thousand barrels a day. (220) Here's a guy out grubstaking and he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams -- they had to hire hundreds of men to help dig dikes to keep the lake of oil from getting away, but then it caught on fire because some goofball dropped a match or something. The two financial backers were then overwhelmed -- there was nothing to compare in the world and they had no way of dealing with so much oil. So they called W.L. Mellon, a Pittsburgh tycoon, and he advances them three million dollars and takes a majority interest in the company, which soon becomes Gulf Oil. By that time, though, the originals were gone: Colonel Guffey was, in his words, "throwed out" after six years as president of the company, and the prospector, Andy Lucas, was bought out for $400,000. For some reason I just love that image, it makes Jed Clampett's "bubblin' crude" absolutely wimpy, and look how well those hillbillies did! Can you imagine the thrill that must have been for Andy Lucas? And the mess? The most miserable job I ever had was cleaning an oil tank, and being oil-soaked makes you miserable. Your body doesn't like it much either -- you walk around emitting fumes I was always afraid were flammable. Quote of the Week The Omni Interview in this month's issue features Margie Profet, a biologist who refuses to let the vagaries of the academic life slow down her scholarship. The way you judge your own life and the way you will be judged is by the work. When you die, who's going to care what credentials you accumulate. If you spend your youth getting credentials and you're not excited about what you're doing, you're missing the great time for science. I defied all the supposed rules; I have zero credentials in my field. I have no Ph.D. in anything. I don't dress or look like a professor. I don't give talks. I'm hermitlike. I don't do those normal things, but my stuff gets published. And she received a $250,000 MacArthur grant to further her studies. She's my new hero this week.