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Upper Rubber Boot prompt 18: spokesman

My copy of Jim Ottaviani's Suspended in Language is on loan to a friend, so you get this instead:



Sir Mark Oliphant, in Ann Mozley Moyal's Portraits in Science:

I was a member of a group that was led by Niels Bohr, after the test in Alamogordo, that was very much against the use of this new weapon on civilian cities. Niels Bohr, who was our spokesman -- which was a pity in some ways, because his English wasn't good and [laughs] his wife told me his Danish was almost as bad -- but he became our spokesman and was very very good and persistent in his approach.



Related:

Wikipedia's Pauli effect entry, which links to my sonnet about same

A Particular Truth--1941 - on Bohr and Heisenberg

At Teaching Resources, which obtained it via Moving Poems, which features Nic Sebastian's take as well: Othniel Smith's video remix of "Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost"

Upper Rubber Boot Prompt 16: instruments

Recently reading poems about Madam CJ Walker and A'Lelia Walker has me itching to resume contributing to the African American National Biography project (for which I wrote entries on Frederick Asbury Cullen, Rose Leary Love, and Gertrude Rush some years ago).

But there are existing commitments to honor first, including learning Paul Winter et al.'s Missa Gaia, which a friend last night joked has become "The Unitarian Universalist Messiah (which, yes, my church has performed multiple times in the past twenty years, but this November's Music Sunday will be the first one I'm available for).

You know you're in for something different when the credited composers include wolves and whales:



I am reminded that I really do live in an amazing town -- the saxophone soloist for Music Sunday will be Jeff Coffin, and some other Sunday I'll get myself to one of Acme's jazz or soul brunches, and some other time I'll hit the clubs and workshops on the list. But first, there is work to do and there are friends to see. In the meantime: Madam CJ Walker and John Coltrane, at a now-closed doll museum in North Carolina...

Prompt: poems



In the photo:
If I Had Wheels or Love - Vassar Miller
Collected Poems - Lynda Hull
In Advance of All Parting - Ansie Baird
A Year in Poetry - edited by Thomas E. Foster and Elizabeth C. Guthrie
Staying Alive - edited by Neil Astley

I'll probably spend part of tonight with one of these books. But first I will be finishing up the assembling of tonight's dinner (a variation of Bittman's chickpea tagine with chicken and apricots), and looking at other chicken recipes for tomorrow night. It will likely be pot pie if I feel I have time; if not, chicken salad sandwiches with leftover mashed potatoes on the side. The focus on chicken is thanks to a manager's special Saturday that resulted in me stewing a crockpot full of thighs; some of the chicken jelly was ladled onto the dog's kibble tonight, and oh, such rejoicing and gobbling there was by the auld girl.

Prompt: "friends are so cute"



During my first visit to Paris, in 2009, my friend E good-humoredly took me manga-shopping, as I was on a quest for French-language editions of Sanami Matoh's FAKE. (Two years later, E would present me with two volumes she'd found. The friendships I've formed and the keepsakes I've been given through fandom are a source of both wonder and pleasure to me.) One of the bookstores had characters from Totoro on its front, including the Catbus.

[About the challenge: http://upperrubberboot.tumblr.com/post/123904555213]

Prompt 7: playing



The book was likely given to me by one of my grade school piano teachers, though none of its pieces were formally assigned. There are a handful of notes on alternate titles and verses -- my hymn-nerd tendencies apparently go WAY back.

What I mainly remember is playing and singing from it year round -- then, as now, for solace and discovery (how will this sound an octave up? if I play it cross-handed? ...).

The piano in the photo was a gift from the calligraphy teacher mentioned in the previous entry. Years later, I learned it had been a gift to her from her father.

That moment in By the Shores of Silver Lake when Laura realizes she must be a grown up because [...] is gone? My mind flies to those pages when I think about when, in the process of getting my mother's house ready to sell, I realized that I would not be moving my childhood piano from Kentucky to Tennessee, for a host of practical reasons. It is not a decision I lose sleep over, but it's embedded in my history as This Is What Grown-Ups Do moment: I like being an adult most of the time, but it does at times require making choices I didn't foresee -- choices that carry the gut-punch of saying farewell to things I'd thought I'd always want in my life.

[Prompted by Upper Rubber Boot's #100untimedbooks photo challenge // http://upperrubberboot.tumblr.com/post/123904555213; subject line from Ahrens and Flaherty's "Streets of Dublin"]

The subject line is from Francis Cabrel's L'encre de tes yeux, which just popped into my head.



In France, whole arenafuls of fans know the lyrics to this and other Cabrel classics by heart. I think of people on this side of the planet singing along to James Taylor and the like. It's disconcerting and wonderful how someone so embedded in the musical culture of a country just seven time zones away is so

Then again, I had no idea he had performed in Chicago in March 2014. How did I miss that? ... oh, yeah. That was the winter after the BYM's encounter with a Dodge Journey. I was a little preoccupied. Then again, I don't even pretend to keep tabs on who-all is playing wherever on any given night in Nashville. That said, I have been to Third and Lindsley on at least two Wednesday nights. Wooten Brothers, y'all, with Louis Winfield twirling his sticks without missing a beat.

I went for a walk earlier tonight. On the way to the library, I passed a couple singing riffs to each other as they bustled toward their destination. They weren't quite in sync and didn't sound like session folk, but in this town you never know. Two streets over, the bars were crowded and I could hear what sounded like a live band from one storefront.

On the way back, I noticed a bus stop where someone had crammed a beer can within a brown paper bag into the back seam of a bench. That wasn't surprising, but what about the thin pastel ribbons still looped around a couple of the bench's legs and one of its arms? Was there a birthday with balloons, or a bored child, or ...?

So many mysteries within a mile of my mint patch.

[The prompt: 5 - planets. The challenge: http://upperrubberboot.tumblr.com/post/123904555213. The other book in the photograph is a collection of science fiction poetry. ]

The challenge: http://upperrubberboot.tumblr.com/post/123904555213

Prompt 3: animals



The book is Carol Lerner's My Backyard Garden, a 1998 children's book featuring two different veggie garden schemes. Miss Abby is fond of snacking on both the plants in my own back yard and on scraps as I cook (especially green bean and asparagus tips), so the pairing immediately came to mind when I saw the prompt.

Explanation: http://upperrubberboot.tumblr.com/post/123904555213

Item: 1. self-portrait



The book is An English-Speaking Hymnal Guide, first compiled by Erik Routley and later edited and expanded by Peter W. Cutts. It was a birthday gift from Aunt Louise three years ago. The ring I am wearing on my pinky is one she used to own.

A book in the background is Helen Keller's Light in Darkness, which someone at the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge recently sent to me after reading "Wearing Persistence," a poem from Measured Extravagance that I'd put on the card I used to order a copy of Missing Rachel's The Thundered Word, having loved the sample I'd heard of "I Am That Great and Fiery Force," which is from a UU hymnal and which I'd sung in my own church a couple of months ago.

I believe my father-in-law (Louise's brother) selected the hymns for her service, which was held at an Anglican church in Ontario last week. The printed melody for "Rock of Ages" in the hymnal did not match the standard tune, which the organist played and the congregation sang; it was fine, but the disconnect had me sympathizing for once with those singers with perfect pitch ho get twitchy when a piece gets transposed to a different key than on the page. The other hymns were "Holy, Holy, Holy" and a five-verse "Abide with Me" (Routley/Cutts tells me that Lyte wrote eight stanzas, with 3 through 5 commonly omitted. Thank you once more, Aunt Louise).