Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

Getting warmer, getting warmer, already warm:

Following up on this post’s top link, NASA's Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth after 4 nail-biting months of gibberish. (via)

Graph of date of peak cherry blossoms in Kyoto from 812 CE to today. The warmer average temperatures means earlier blooming. (via)

Zoomable map of all hotsprings in the United States, with temperatures. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from Naming of Parts, Henry Reed.

For Poetry Monday:

The Painted Hills of Arizona, Edwin Curran

The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills,
The red dawns scattered on their colored sills;
These hills have caught the lightning in its flight,
Caught colors from the skies of day and night
And shine with shattered stars and suns they hold
Dyed yellow, red and purple, blue and gold.

Red roses seem within their marble blown
A painted garden chiseled in the stone;
The rose and violet trickling through their veins,
Where they drop their bright curtain to the plains—
A ramp of rock and granite, jeweled and brightening,
Like some great colored wall of lightning!


I can’t find much about the author, aside from he was born in Ohio in 1892 and published three collections of poetry between 1917 and 1921.

---L.

Subject quote from Above Salerno, Ada Foster Murray.

For Poetry Monday:

Twilight (Tucson), Sara Teasdale

Aloof as aged kings,
Wearing like them the purple,
The mountains ring the mesa
Crowned with a dusky light;
Many a time I watched
That coming-on of darkness
Till stars burned through the heavens
Intolerably bright.

It was not long I lived there,
But I became a woman
Under those vehement stars,
For it was there I heard
For the first time my spirit
Forging an iron rule for me,
As though with slow cold hammers
Beating out word by word:

“Take love when love is given,
But never think to find it
A sure escape from sorrow
Or a complete repose;
Only yourself can heal you,
Only yourself can lead you
Up the hard road to heaven
That ends where no one knows.”


More Teasdale, again. First published in 1922, the first of a set of four poems under the title “Places.” NB: There are no mesas in the immediate vicinity of Tucson, only mountains.

---L.

Subject quote from Measure Me, Sky, Leonora Speyer.

For Poetry Monday:

“Some for a little while do love, and some for long,” Countee Cullen

Some for a little while do love, and some for long;
And some rare few forever and for aye;
Some for the measure of a poet’s song,
And some the ribbon width of a summer’s day.
Some on a golden crucifix do swear,
And some in blood to plight a fickle troth;
Some struck divinely mad may only stare,
And out of silence weave an iron oath.

So many ways love has none may appear
The bitter best, and none the sweetest worst;
Strange food the hungry have been known to bear,
And brackish water slakes an utter thirst.
It is a rare and tantalizing fruit
Our hands reach for, but nothing absolute.


Cullen (1903-1946) was a poet, novelist, and playwright of the Harlem Renaissance. This is from his 1935 collection The Medea and Some Other Poems, which is headlined by a translation of Euripedes.

---L.

Subject quote from Lauriger Horatius, Anonymous tr. John Addington Symonds (original).

A few beautiful links:

Take Five, solo guitar transcription by Lucas Brar. (via)

Mars in 4K. CW: voiceover. Still worth watching on your best and largest screen. (via)

Superb Owl Sunday VIII. (via janni)

(I actually watched the Super Bowl for the first time in several decades—Eaglet plays flag-football as well as soccer-football, and wanted to see it. Spoiler: they skipped the game’s middle third because football is more boring to watch than play plus “who the heck is Usher?” Confession: I spent a lot of the game scrolling through r/SuperbOwl. As far as plague is concerned, we’re all negative now: Eaglet is back in school this week, though they skipped soccer-football practice yesterday because still tired, and I’m back at work, though not working full days, and janni still hasn’t caught it.)

---L.

Subject quote from Elizabeth, George Brandon Saul.

The paxlovid aftertaste is as yucky as everyone says.

So, yeah, I’m down for round two of Covid. Fortunately much milder than the first time, which had me flat on my back for two weeks. But still.

Eaglet is on day 5 since symptoms began, and has felt fine since yesterday. Well, Tuesday, really. I started feeling it Monday evening, but didn’t test positive till yesterday morning. janni feels like she’s fighting something off, but still testing negative.

Both other kids from Eaglet’s playdate last Thursday have it, btw, and are also still home. Eaglet is gaming with them now.

And Imma rest in this here bed for a while.

—L.

For Poetry Monday:

The Sin of Omission, Margaret Sangster

It isn’t the thing you do, dear;
    It’s the thing you leave undone,
That gives you a bit of heartache
    At setting of the sun.
The tender word forgotten,
    The letter you did not write,
The flowers you did not send, dear,
    Are your haunting ghosts to-night.

The stone you might have lifted
    Out of a brother’s way,
The bit of heartsome counsel
    You were hurried too much to say;
The loving touch of the hand, dear,
    The gentle and winsome tone,
Which you had no time nor thought for,
    With troubles enough of your own.

Those little acts of kindness,
    So easily out of mind;
Those chances to be angels
    Which every one may find—
They come in night and silence—
    Each chill, reproachful wraith—
When hope is faint and flagging
    And a blight has dropped on faith.

For life is all too short, dear,
    And sorrow is all too great;
To suffer our slow compassion
    That tarries until too late;
And it’s not the thing you do, dear,
    It’s the thing you leave undone,
Which gives you a bit of heartache
    At the setting of the sun.


Sangster (1838-1912) was a prolific author for children and Christian families as well as editor of several periodicals, mostly for that audience but also, surprisingly, of fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, which she helmed during the 1890s.

---L.

Subject quote from A Ballad of Sir John Franklin, George Henry Boker.

I went into Not a Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough by Kyle Tran Myhre (who also raps as Guante) expecting a collection of poems, like his first book, A Love Song, a Death Rattle, a Battle Cry. Instead, it’s a work of anthropological science fiction set on a prison world, called Moon, where all transportees were memory-wiped, with the last arriving two generations ago and there’s no communication with the home World. The bulk of the book is documents (poems, speeches, folktales, transcripts of conversations) relating to a famous itinerant robot poet, Gyre—or rather, that are supposed to relate to them, but what the folklorists collected are mostly about their apprentice, a human named Nazy.

Although this is clearly a pandemic project,* the strongest threads relate to what artists, especially those who use words as their medium, can do with their art to work against authoritarianism and other oppressions. This is on-brand for Myhre/Guante, whose songs are very often in activist modes.

There’s not much plot but there is definitely story, told indirectly, and even something of a(n open) resolution. Recommended, as it’s otherwise not getting much attention in SFF circles, that I can see, and it's part of that conversation.**


* Best evidence: the prose-poem “Ten Responses to the Proposal to Overcome the Current Plague by Challenging It to a Duel.”

** The short list of works he found helpful, in the back, include Parable of the Sower and How Long ‘til Black Future Month?.

---L.

Subject quote from “The Light We Make,” from Not a Lot of Reasons to Sing, But Enough, Kyle Tran Myhre.

For Poetry Monday—on an actual Monday this time:

To Sleep, William Wordsworth

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky;
I’ve thought of all by turns; and still I lie
Sleepless; and soon the small birds’ melodies
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees;
And the first Cuckoo’s melancholy cry.
Even thus last night, and two nights more, I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep! by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away:
Without Thee what is all the morning’s wealth?
Come, blessed barrier betwixt day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!


I know, I know, Wordsworth of all poets—but this one hit home. In his 1807 Poems, this is the second of group of three sonnets about insomnia.

---L.

Subject quote from 25 or 6 to 4, Chicago.

Link, vaguely united in theme with the post subject:

Star Wars Episode IV: the infographic adaptation. (via)

You’re not imagining it: Google search results really are getting worse, researchers find. Original paper. (via)

A new study suggests it’s not blue light that keeps you awake, but ANY light. (via)

---L.

Subject quote from In Memoriam A.H.H., section 106, Alfred the Tennyson.