AdamSmith

Maybe this is just a defensive deflection of Lucky's on-point rejoinder. But another exquisitely odd Bishop gem... Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying. In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals, please come flying, to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums descending out of the mackerel sky over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water, please come flying. Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags rising and falling like birds all over the harbor. Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing countless little pellucid jellies in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains. The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged. The waves are running in verses this fine morning. Please come flying. Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe trailing a sapphire highlight, with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots, with heaven knows how many angels all riding on the broad black brim of your hat, please come flying. Bearing a musical inaudible abacus, a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons, please come flying. Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan is all awash with morals this fine morning, so please come flying. Mounting the sky with natural heroism, above the accidents, above the malignant movies, the taxicabs and injustices at large, while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears that simultaneously listen to a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer, please come flying. For whom the grim museums will behave like courteous male bower-birds, for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait on the steps of the Public Library, eager to rise and follow through the doors up into the reading rooms, please come flying. We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping, or play at a game of constantly being wrong with a priceless set of vocabularies, or we can bravely deplore, but please please come flying. With dynasties of negative constructions darkening and dying around you, with grammar that suddenly turns and shines like flocks of sandpipers flying, please come flying. Come like a light in the white mackerel sky, come like a daytime comet with a long unnebulous train of words, from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning, please come flying.

Ach! Thank you. Beautiful. I admit I fall into living as Bishop describes. How really could one hew to Hacker's good sense? (We have had this discussion before, around Himself, and will continue to do.)

The other day I spent time with someone whom I should probably spend either more time with, or less. More verse, but in (maybe) a lighter key than last time. One Art Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

To a Senate witness offering contradictory testimony, Sen. Sam Ervin told of a Carolina justice of the peace confronted with a difficult civil suit: "After hearing the plaintiff, the justice of the peace turned to the defendant and said, 'I would appreciate it very much if you would not present your case because when I hear both sides it gets me confused, and I have trouble making up my mind who's right.'"

...and cleaning my opera glasses!

On the Other Message Forum, the (apparently now banned) poster RockHard described doing some forensics on the purported Radcliffe pic you referenced: namely, pulling it into Photoshop, enlarging it, and thus detecting several rows of blurred pixels just where the join would be between Radcliffe's lower abdomen and another model's privates. I have not troubled to check his work, but FWIW I believe RockHard about this. In any event, next year we dwellers on this side of the Great Water can see for ourselves. http://www.ticketnews.com/Radcliffe-Coming...Broadway0090507

Call me Hester Prynne.

Thanks. If we have to choose, then staying with integrated messaging, as currently implemented, would be my vote. But, now that we no longer have the ability to access/manage our avatars, if the 3rd-party site hosting my avatar makes a change, I cannot respond and will just have a red X next to my posts, I think. (Or will the site sw just ignore the dead link?) Signature line is even less important, to me. I was just going to play with it.

OK, back around July 4 I found one way to link to your avatar using the new forum software. It involved clicking the "Members" button in the light-brown bar above. (That action also exposed a link to the board's messaging function, which was the main thing I was hunting for at the time.) However, once the site technicians switched access to the site's messaging function over to the "My Membership" button (in the dark pink menu bar nearer the top of the page), several useful functions formerly accessible through the aforesaid "Members" button became inaccessible... Specifically, the ability to link to an avatar went back into hiding, far as I can tell. That now-inaccessible panel also contained, if I recall right (my memory may be faulty here), the ability to auto-insert a signature into each post. Is there currently any way to access the avatar function, and (if it exists) the auto-signature function?

Not exactly Southern Decadence or B&B but something to take our minds off it who aren't there... The 50 Worst Cars of All Time http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/art...1657662,00.html

Here's a dangerously addictive resource: www.thesaurus.com

Maybe the following is a distinction without a difference. But in addition to orientation, there was also the difference that, once the evidence came out, Vitter at least owned up to it. To be sure, Vitter committed the lie of omission, at least to the voting public if not to his wife (assuming one believes his claim that he had earlier confessed to her). Huckabee's observation on Craig seemed apt -- "voters will forgive us for being sinners, but not for being hypocrites."

Good lord. ("Lords," I guess, given the Roman pantheon.) I am having to suppress all manner of tasteless jokes about Vesuvian eruptions.

After Janet Reno sent the stormtroopers for Elian Gonzales I thought Clinton might actually find a way to inch toward some opening to Cuba. Has always seemed to me that one way to deal with Castro would be to moot him by opening the floodgates -- remove each and every U.S.-imposed sanction against Cuba. But too many find Castro a useful enemy, it seems.

Just read the funniest thing about this so far. In an article "Conservative Blogs Not Defending Craig," one reader responded: "just do a group outing---get it over with---no more drip-drip-drip" http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/200.../28/335909.aspx

For no good reason I recall reading that organists are disciplined to keep their knees together no matter how far apart the feet must travel in playing the pedals. And we know about organists...the prodigiously procreative J.S. Bach being the notable exception.

You are giving me an image of Gene's twinkletoes keeping it up even while their owner was on the porcelain throne.

Seconding TY's reply... Not cheap -- high-value!

Well, as Sam Ervin said to Maurice Stans, "You know, there has been murder and larceny in every generation, but that hasn't made murder meritorious or larceny legal."

Google turns up a couple that aren't exactly on point, but close. “If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.†“Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other.â€

OK, another blatantly political thread. Sorry in advance. But should be interesting to watch unfold: Lane Hudson, the lefty blogger who outed Foley, has filed a complaint with the FCC alleging that Fred Thompson has violated the "testing the waters" provisions of federal election law. http://newsfortheleft.blogspot.com/2007/08...ainst-fred.html

Hear, hear. I hope he finds the same kindness in jail that his dogs found in the fight pens.

One more from the Sage of Hartford. By way of thanks to an esteemed poster here, for squiring a certain escort to Boston last winter! Earthy Anecdote Stevens Every time the bucks went clattering Over Oklahoma A firecat bristled in the way. Wherever they went, They went clattering, Until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the right, because of the firecat. Or until they swerved In a swift, circular line To the left, Because of the firecat. The bucks clattered. The firecat went leaping, To the right, to the left, And Bristled in the way. Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes And slept. ...although I can't imagine our firecat69 doing anything to discourage the bucks from approaching!

I admit I've never picked up a habit with quite the same verve as Grandier. My view of him is based not on Wikipedia's brutally clear-eyed report but rather the humanizing portrait by Aldous Huxley in The Devils of Loudon and Ken Russell's lionizing portrayal in "The Devils." If you only know Russell from "Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill" and the like, rent "The Devils" sometime. This over-the-top writeup nails it: http://members.aol.com/streettb/krussell/devils.htm

In contrast to escorts and clients who gush and then get clammy.