The Continuum International Publishing Group - 33 1/3 series... via lime tree ... looks good

a very pretty day in most places round abouts... but up here on the second floor it's been kind of toasty... even with all windows open & a breeze blowing through... the cat & i are feeling a bit wilted... efforts to read are met with a sudden undeniable impulse to drowse... so i've been drowsing all day... but it may be as much school's end weariness as the weather...

this is a big old white elephant of a building... and we learned the other day that our a/c unit is in serious trouble... not that i enjoy or approve much of a/c... but it does sometimes make a useful difference... for the cat & i...

tomorrow i'll enter my final grades, upload to edline, & be done with it... at least that's the plan... summertime!

yeah... been feeling a might clunky ... for a while

j rothenberg ... Harold Bloom: The Critic as Exterminating Angel ... via fait accompli

The previous war in Vietnam and the current war in Iraq have nothing to do with democracy, weapons of mass destruction or keeping Americans safe from terrorists, communists or the boogeyman for that matter. It's all about business.

just finished now with the sophomore exams... they were pretty good & even surprising in some cases... hinting the work of the year was not in vain... & now this empty spot... very quiet... knowing something very big is done for a while... don't rush to fill it too quickly... let it be

c h a n d r a s u t r a: The Blogger's blogger An interview with Stuart Heath of Giornale Nuovo ... straight from the lips of mr. h himself...

Little Emerson ... crazy critical notion... worth watching... via texfiles

Immaculate Destruction - New York Times...
FOR some time now the Air Force has been pressing the White House for a new national-security directive that would permit the deployment of space weaponry. ... madness

Radical Druid: Questions for Jonathan Mayhew (and others) ... via fait accompli

ENN: Less-Toxic Gardening and Landscaping

My Copyright Policy... by Peter Saint-Andre ... i kinda like this

Creative Commons

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries ... should one bother to make a case for the notion that a book ain't never harmed no one... unless it falls from a very high shelf onto a very soft head... untold millions were not killed or enslaved because someone read a book... give me a break... OR as bob g on the new-poetry list says, "They should have just stated the obvious: all books are harmful."

... a woman-writ epic might be ... seems an intriguing question ... & one most worthy of suzanne's fine attention ...

A Song of Summer...
Some have argued that the wood thrush's close relative, the hermit thrush, is the better singer, but the hermit thrush's ethereal song strikes me as too heavenly. The voice of the wood thrush, touched by earthly matters, resonates more powerfully with the human condition.

The Thrush Family (Turdidae)...
The thrush family includes the Robin, Blackbird, Mistle Thrush, Song Thrush, Fieldfare and Redwing. ... ha ... never knew that...

Turdus philomelos ... ha ... he said ...

i amaze myself sometimes... yesterday a good chunk of my electronical world crashed down around my head & i could only sit back in wonder... sure... i muttered, o hell... but then Whatever is Happening & is Going to Happen just takes over... like that moment when you know the car is going to keep spinning for a while on the icy road & there's nothing you can do about it... so enjoy the ride...

ezboard crashed bad yesterday & virtually every post made throughout the year (and, most sadly, this last quarter) was lost... and may not be retrievable for quite some time... here's my message to the class:

Dear American Lit Sophomores,

As the Wheel of Fate spins and comes for the moment to rest, it sometimes happens that the worst possible outcome arives at the worst possible time.

UH-OH

As you may have noticed if you recently visited the class discussion board on or after 31 May, virtually all of our posts have disappeared. Robert Labatt, CEO of ezboard (our discussion board company), tells us,

On Tuesday May 31 ezboard's systems were the victim of a very precise and malicious internet attack. This attack resulted in the loss of a significant amount of current and historical board postings and interrupted services across all systems.

Can your posts be restored?

This is very hard to answer at this moment. Mr. Labatt says,

We are working to restore board data from our back-up systems. This will take some time, and complete data restoration may not be possible, but it is what we are working towards. What we know now is that the attacker deleted current board and back-up data. We are taking the fastest route to restore data, but it may take up to 48 hours to get data back to approximately 9,000 boards. A more manual method requiring upwards of seven to ten days is required to restore data to the other boards that lost data. Regrettably we may not be able to restore data to all boards that lost data.

Because of the impending grade deadline, I think it is best that I proceed as if these posts are lost for good.

What about your grade?

As of 31 May, I had counted all of the Poetry and Short Fiction forums, more than half of The Great Gatsby forum, and none of The Catcher in the Rye forum.

As luck would have it, I believe I have sufficient data to arrive at a fair score for the discussion board portion of your quarter grade. I have:

1) your self-reported total from your dboard evaluation (completed in class on 31 May),
2) all counted posts from two and a half of four forums,
3) your post counts and grades from the previous three quarters (to indicate & support a pattern of posting)

In order to determine the discussion board portion of your quarter grade, I will lean most heavily on your self-reported number of posts. I have no reason to doubt that you reported it to the best of your ability. I will also take into consideration your past posting record and the number of posts I have actually counted so far (particularly as they may indicate a tendency to improve during this last quarter).

If you have other questions or concerns, please see me as soon as possible at school or [[click here]] to send me an electronic message.

i've just created an xml feed via blogger & feedburner for fyp... i have no actual idea what this is or does... and i'm guessing that because it ain't rss suzanne may not be able to use it... but i couldn't get the rss to work via bloglines... though i will keep an eye out for ways to do that...

happy birthday, walt!

from 1855 Leaves of Grass...

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies . . . . but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships---the freshness and candor of their physiognomy---the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom---their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean---the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states---the fierceness of their roused resentment--- their curiosity and welcome of novelty---their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy---their susceptibility to a slight---the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors---the fluency of their speech---their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness---the terrible significance of their elections---the President's taking off his hat to them not they to him---these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.

just recently finished with the last big pile of quarter four grade ten papers... & just put the final touches on their semester exam: eight brief essay questions from which they will choose five... this coming friday... and then i'll have my final big pile of paper to process... and then... summer... imagine that

some (& increasingly many more) blogs like MiPOesias Blogisimo are becoming unreadable via my antique IE 5... i get the skinniest thread of words down the right-hand side... so these blog entries become little mousey-tailed poems... that ask too much of me... of course you say it's time to upload a more recent blog-friendly browser... but the dial-up makes that a monumental a herculean a sisyphean task... so i will let it slide until it slides so far i can no longer read some of my most favorite blogs... & then i will consider my options...

sorely missing fresh Eeksy-Peeksy... hope malcolm (along with all loved ones) is well & just really busy doing good work elsewhere

Now that doesn't only apply on the race issue, it applies on the class question. You know, sometimes a class system can be as vicious and evil as a system based on racial injustice. (Yes, sir) When we say, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,' and when we live it out, we know as I say so often that the 'no D.' is as significant as the 'Ph.D.' ... I submit to you this morning (Yes) that there is dignity in all work (Have mercy) when we learn to pay people decent wages. Whoever cooks in your house, whoever sweeps the floor in your house is just as significant as anybody who lives in that house. (Amen) And everybody that we call a maid is serving God in a significant way. (Preach it) And I love the maids, I love the people who have been ignored, and I want to see them get the kind of wages that they need. And their job is no longer a menial job, (No, sir) for you come to see its worth and its dignity.