This is Sparta!
A couple years ago I saw this sign on Suomenlinna, a fortress island offshore from Helsinki. While it may not have been original, it made me laugh. The sign, meant to convey a fall hazard, featured a Sharpie marker addition of a kicking foot and a dialogue bubble proclaiming, “This is Sparta!.” If you don’t get this reference, you should see the movie 300. [Or, better yet, watch the clip below.]
Everyone sends an email or leaves a note on occasion that makes perfect sense to the writer, but which could mean any of a dozen things to the reader. That’s the price of doing business in a hectic world. However, if your job is making signs, it seems to me like cutting through the ambiguity would be important. Take the sign below, whose intended meaning is completely unclear to me.
Taken in Helsinki
A few of the possible meanings that sprang to mind were:
– “Give a girl a fist bump!”
– Pedophile-friendly zone
– Go Zone (i.e. they are walking away, so from that point you may only “go” and never “come”)
– Take Your Dad to School Day
– Midget Dating Allowed
Below is one that I think I comprehend, but you may disagree.
Taken in Phnom Penh
I’m pretty sure that it means, “Limbo dancing will be punished by God.” Granted I’m illiterate with respect to the squiggly language used in the caption and so maybe it says, “Watch out for falling snakes.”
Some signs seem to make perfect sense, but the context throws one a monkey-wrench. The sign below was seen on a little door of about 6X6 inches on the side of a tour-bus.
Seen on a bus in Helsinki
Now, obviously, this sign means, “Moose Fornication Zone.” However, how would you get the moose through that six-inch square portal?
Sometimes sign-makers add verbiage to reduce the ambiguity. This inevitably succeeds in making the sign more confusing than ever. I saw the sign below in a restaurant on Rue Sherbrooke in Montreal.
Taken in Montreal
Now, seeing the photo, I was jonesing for some fatty, spicy pork product. However, every hetero male knows that you don’t ever want to be caught at a sausage fest.
I had a similar problem trying to decide whether to go into this gift shop at the Ming Tombs in China. The store bore this sign:
Taken at the Ming Tombs near Beijing, China
While I favor economic liberty, I’m willing to shop at a store that is state operated. However, it occurred to me that it could be the souvenirs that are state operated. What if they supplied a balding civil servant to operate the music box I bought there? That possibility was too creepy to consider.
Some signs are clear both pictorially and verbally, but, at the risk of digressing, one has to wonder if the sign is necessary.
Taken in Budapest
If there’s a completely opaque film of diarrhea floating on the water, do you really need to tell people not to go for a swim?
It’s true that some times ambiguity is strategic. Who would go through a door, if they saw the sign below posted on it?
Taken in Xian, China
Well, people do go into the DMV, so I realize there are some sadists who might be into being clubbed, starved, burnt, or being subjected to particularly fierce animal–such as an ill-tempered gerbil.
As I try live my life in a positive manner, I’ll leave you with an example of a sign-maker who got it right.
Taken in Arequipa, Peru
Now this is a sign that is completely unambiguous. Clearly, this sign was located at a Baptist church, and it means, “Boys and girls doing the twist in the same room will go to hell.”
101 Great American Poems by The American Poetry and Literacy Project
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a collection of 101 poems by 39 different American poets. It begins with a poem by Anne Bradstreet in the 17th century and proceeds through to a work by W.H. Auden of the 20th century. In between are many poets that one would expect, such as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Sandburg, and Cummings. There are others that might be unexpected such as Abraham Lincoln, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane. While the poems aren’t all jingoistic in nature, there is a recurring theme of celebration of America.
Most of the poems in this tiny anthology will be familiar to poetry readers. This is a $1 Kindle e-book of a Dover Thrift Edition, and so one won’t find living poets represented, or poems that tap into the zeitgeist du jour— at the risk of mixing loan words. However, most of these poems deserve to be read and reread.
A few of my favorites are below with title, author, and a fragment.
The Builders by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
O Captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done,
the ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
I’m nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickenson
I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us–don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
“Give my your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…
Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone
War is Kind by Stephen Crane
Do no weep, maiden, for war is kind
Sence You Wend Away by James Weldon Johnson
Seems lak to me de stars don’t shine so bright,
Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
Fire and Ice by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Chicago by Carl Sandburg
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
Fog by Carl Sandburg
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird;
The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
The Love Songs of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
it gives a lovely light.
Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish
A poem should not mean
But be
I, Too by Langston Hughes
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
Little Old Letter by Langston Hughes
You don’t need no gun nor knife–
A little old letter
Can take a person’s life.
Nothing struck me as conspicuously absent from this collection, but I’d be curious what poems people feel should (or shouldn’t) be in such a collection.
The pointy-topped building is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests
The Temple of Heaven is a complex of buildings used for Heaven worship. It was built in the 15th century, and is a Taoist temple (Heaven worship predates Taoism–though the Temple doesn’t.) The most distinctive building, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests–shown only partially in the picture–was built without any nails or spikes.
It’s located in a beautiful park south of central Beijing. The park has a rose garden and is a popular hangout for people doing tai chi, playing instruments, and dancing.
Classic Haiku: A Master’s Selection by Yuzuru Miura
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Classic Haiku is a collection of 106 poems by masters such as Matsuo Bashō, Kobayashi Issa, and Yosa Buson. It’s logically arranged into five sections: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and New Year’s Day. While haiku has come to be thought of as any poem in a 5-7-5 syllable arrangement, those familiar with traditional haiku know that there are other requirements that are at least as fundamental as the syllabic arrangement. One of these is that the poem be pure observation devoid of exposition. Another criteria is that it be rooted in nature. A final criteria, historically, has been that the poem indicate the season, if not giving an explicit seasonal word or phrase. This makes the season an optimal organizational unit for the book.
One nice feature of this book is that it includes the English translation, the Japanese romaji version (i.e. the way it would be spoken in Japanese but using roman alphabet characters), and the version using the Japanese system of writing. Granted, for those who aren’t fluent in Japanese, these features might not seem to add much. However, sound can be evocative itself in poetry, and so it can be interesting to read the Japanese for that reason. Furthermore, there are those who argue that 5-7-5 syllables is not the closest facsimile to Japanese haiku for haiku written in English. Because of the average length of syllables, some say that a 2-3-2 accented syllable pattern for English haiku is closer to the original Japanese form. Reading the Japanese, gives one an idea of the sound characteristics of Japanese haiku.
[Furthermore, if one loves a haiku enough to want to get it tattooed in Japanese on one’s body, one can double-check the characters before one gets it done at a Chinatown tattoo parlor only to find that what one really has tattooed on one’s butt is, “Syphilitic nightmare – Ketchup bottle mayhem day – Rides the goat to school”]
Here’s a sampling my favorites:
the raftsman’s straw cape
brocaded with
the storm-strewn cherry blossoms
– Yosa Buson
calm and serene
the sound of cicada
penetrates the rock
– Matsuo Bashō
in summer grasses
are now buried
glorious dreams of ancient warriors
– Matsuo Bashō
oh, cricket
act as grave keeper
after I’m gone
– Kobayashi Issa
Pensive macaque reflects on a monkey’s life
Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory by Stacy Horn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For 50 years a laboratory operated at Duke University that studied extra-sensory perception (ESP), ghosts, and other paranormal events. Today one can’t imagine an academic laboratory devoted to paranormal activity surviving, especially at such a prestigious university. Horn’s book takes one through the life of this lab. It describes phenomena debunked as either fraud or poor methodology, but it also discusses events and outcomes that have remained unexplained.
The central character in the book is J.B. Rhine, Director of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory. Rhine was a botanist by training, but he developed an interest in parapsychology– eventually becoming the foremost expert in the, albeit dwarf, field.
When the lab opened in 1930, the universe of unknowns was much greater than when it closed in 1980. This was exemplified by Albert Einstein’s correspondence with Rhine, and the author of relativity’s attendance at a séance on one occasion. By 1980, having recorded some unexplained phenomenon, but having produced neither well-validated results nor explanations, the lab was looking increasingly like a boondoggle.
The phenomena studied included some that could be systematically studied in the laboratory, as well as others that could only be observed in the field. The former being exemplified by the use of cards with shapes on them to study telepathy (as depicted by Bill Murray’s character in Ghostbusters.) The latter included the study of poltergeists or interviews of children about the lives of people who lived before their time (e.g. as Tibetan lamas are selected).
One of the questions confronting the investigators was whether those phenomena that could be studied in the lab were best studied there. While telepathy studies sometimes showed a weak but positive result, some thought that more robust results could only be attained under real world conditions.
In the 60’s, Timothy Leary came to call on Rhine. Leary, of course, thought hallucinogens were the key to unlocking the hidden powers of the mind. Rhine apparently took LSD on a couple of occasions before concluding that there was nothing but vivid chaos coming out of the experience. Still, there remained adherents to the notion that mind-altering drugs might unlock hidden potentials. Horn devotes several pages to the work of Sidney Gottlieb, the head of the CIA parapsychology program. It should be noted that the government programs were not stopped until the mid-90’s, fifteen years after Duke’s Parapsychology Lab shut down.
The last gasp of parapsychology was an attempt to determine if quantum entanglement might have any ramifications for ESP. Quantum entanglement is the situation in which two particles separated at great distance can influence each other instantaneously. Could the particles in two minds behave accordingly, and, if so, to what result?
It started as a plow furrow, seriously.
Whenever an organization is built around an idea or set of values, that idea or set of values shrinks dwarf-like into the background. What looms large is the imperative to protect and expand the organization.
The organization is an organism, but one whose only growth governor is the attractiveness of its ideas. You think those ideas are the organization’s genes, but they aren’t. They aren’t the codes by which the organization lives. They aren’t its DNA. They are its skin. But even the loveliest beauty queen can be a gloppy, cancerous mess on the inside. No, the code that your organization lives by is the same viral code by which all organizations live.
Step 1: Preserve the organization.
Step 2: Grow the organization.
Step 3: Annihilate competitors.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1 through 3 until you’ve consumed the world.
You say that I’m not a loyal Party man. Guilty. I cannot be loyal to Party without being disloyal to my own mind. If one’s views mirror those of the Party, how likely is it that one didn’t twist one’s ledger into line? Not likely, I’d say. My thoughts are not static. They evolve. I learn. I will no more subordinate my belief s to a Party then I will chain my neck to a rock.
Your Company doesn’t make widgets, it makes Company.
You say I don’t believe in God. I see God in every leaf. I see him in the new fallen snow. I see him in the confident aerial leap of a nervous squirrel. I feel the pulse of him in my hand when it holds another hand. No, what I don’t believe in is religion. They say the problems of religion are the fault of flawed individuals. I say they have it exactly backwards. There wasn’t an evil cell in Hitler’s body, but together they formed an evil seed. Yet, one man cannot make a holocaust. Ever increasing numbers had to fall in love with a skin-deep mirage of an idea, and ignore the ugliness inside. A man can only be as evil as the world lets him, but a government? a church? Those, my friend, can consume worlds.
A fine Hungarian poet who Wrote with and without rhyme
it’s my cross, my curse
this rhyme in my verse
rhymers aren’t taken seriously
and are berated furiously
“Oh, your poem is so cutsie,
like little baby bootsies.”
call it banal or call it niche
but “cutsie?”, please!, step off bitch
just because my verse ain’t free
don’t act like I’m a perp to slavery
I spare my words the sting of the rod
they’ve never tasted a cattle prod
I’ve never waterboarded my “ands” or “buts”
or kicked a pronoun square in the nuts
I don’t whip my adjectives to get ’em in line
I stand waiting patiently holding a sign
Why steer my words like some stern brigadier?
because it scratches an itch somewhere in my ear
I know my rhymes sometimes lack cachet
because they’re little too Ogden Nash-ay
but from the hilltops I sing
like that guy Rodney King
hear the words of my song
“Can’t the poets all just get along!”
