This link sent today by pesky godson.

Hi Michael,

All this talk about grammar on the blog reminded me of this column I read in the New Yorker. I didn’t realize how clever it was until the very end. Can you see it?

pesky godson

I think that you, Ed, and a lot of other people on Mainecourse would find this program really fun: The best part is that it is completely platform-agnostic.

pesky godson

A clip from a circus I went to last night put on by UChicago students.

PeskyGodson

Pesky Godson is darn unpredictable, and both his mother and I agree, way too laid back about how often he posts, but he’s always worth reading.

Submitted by PeskyGodson

Bad Astronomy

Pesky sent me this website

Last spring, my application was accepted to go on a study abroad trip to Oaxaca Mexico for the winter term this year (January through mid-March). I would live with a family, take three classes in Latin American Civilisations (fulfilling a graduation requirement for civilisations studies), take a Spanish class, live with a Mexican family, do a bit of traveling, and maybe take some cultural (cooking, weaving, dancing) classes available at the language school in the city.

As you may or may not know, there has been a spot of civil unrest in Oaxaca. Continue

But you can’t post this unless you tell us how many of these items apply to you.

Charlie

Michael’s answers:

10. No. But if the stats were in plain English like pesky godson has checked your blog 79,5 times in the last two days instead of 71.199.090.12 blah blah, I would.

9. Not an issue. She also has a love affair with the blog.

8. Well duh! How else would it get fed?

7. Not to mention my mother’s prolonged agonizing passing. Should I be locked up?

6. Nope. I’m flattered when one person posts a comment even if it is just a question.

5. Rarely. I really try to control myself because I’m deathly afraid that rakkity (retired) will stop
contributing.

4. The blog is self-selecting. I used to have more real friends.

3. No, because answering the blog’s “Feed Me!” command is so much easier than grabbing a paint brush when my house screams “Paint Me!.”

2. My lunch hour is my time to check on the relative success of my (and that includes my long list of contributors) morning’s post.

1. No, I ask, ” Do you mind if I post our conversation on my blog?” I’ve only been turned down once and that was by two female musicians I met on the banks of the Ohio River.

No, no writing yet. But a poem which I would be interested to see people’s interpretations of. My senior-year English teacher had an interpretation of this one that he was pretty certain of, but reading it again a year-and-a-half later, I’m not able to tease the same meaning out of these sparse lines.

My Papa’s Waltz
by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I’ll offer my teacher’s interpretation in a couple of days, after
everyone has had a chance to scratch their heads a bit and share their
own opinions.

Pesky Godson