Without Lifting A Finger

An old poem of mine that my AI kicked up tonight (from my book Matman & Testudo): "Surface Tension." I had almost forgotten it. LAUSD was "restructuring" and my principal said, "Don't worry, you'll land somewhere. You're a good teacher." I landed somewhere, then somewhere else. Etc. Stressful but fun -- exploring many places I had no idea about, even teaching some simple science. Anyway, here's the poem (inspired by my drive in the morning, over the two bridges to and through San Pedro CA). Surface Tension If the paperclip doesn’t float on the water’s surface, first lay a thin piece of paper on the water, then lay the clip gently on the paper * He’s not drowning. The nearest body of water is the bottle of water in the back of the car, wedged between two Blue Ice Blocks in his Igloo. Still, he sits behind the wheel taking in little fish gulps, as though staving off the big gulp that would take him under  *  The way to his new job takes h...

From Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two classes…at least no…truer to say: there are women and there are…I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same." "But the Magdalen?" "Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. However, I'm not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You're afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you've not made a study of spiders and don't know their character; and so it is with me." Note: The pope who wrongly identified Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was Pope Gregory I (also known as Gregory the Great) in the year 59...

The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to Makovkina's neighbour, but Makovkina herself sat motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. 'Always the same and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars! The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. But I can't. It bores me. I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down. Suppose it happened to us as to those people--at Saratov was it?--who kept on driving and froze to death. . . . What would our people do? How would they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act...

His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but he replied that he felt God's call which transcended all other considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he, understood him. She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those who considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him correctly. By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had formerly envied. . . . But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvara supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him something else--a sincere religious feeling which Varvara did not know, which intertwined itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for pre-eminence, and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had thought of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong that they broug...

Hard to feed a Family of Four these Days. Spent the morning with four Peregrine Chicks @ Pointe Vicente (Palos Verdes CA) -- hungry as wolves with wings.💗 #rlswihart13  #palosverdescalifornia  #peregrinechicks  #purepoetry  #readmorepoetry2026💕

It is idiotic to write out in one's own hand (in the evenings by candlelight) things already in print. Why not use scissors to cut out items that are worth remembering and deserve a place on the wall? Geiser is surprised that he did not think of this before. There are scissors in the house; all he has to do is find them. Quite apart from the fact that print is easier to read than an old man's handwriting—though he has taken the trouble to use block letters—no one has that much time.  Geological formations, layers that are clearly distinguished from the stratifications beneath and above them by the petrified animals and plants (see Characteristic Fossils) within them and that represent a (stratigraphic) unit. Among these belong the igneous rocks, which evolved at the same time. Related G. F. evolving successively are bracketed together in formation groups. Formations and formation groups reflect periods of the earth's history and are in consequence used as descriptions of ti...