Tuesday, January 09, 2007

 
 
 
 
Cold Spring 2006 Hudson River Posted by Picasa
  Posted by Picasa
  Posted by Picasa
  Posted by Picasa
  Posted by Picasa Every morning is different and the possiblilities extend to the horizon.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Ok so what happened was I knew that he was a senior, and the younger brother or cousin or something of a really good wrestler and he was bigger than I was, so I didn't want him to think I was a pushover so right off the whistle I tied up with him and gave him a good head butt, like I usually do, and then a head snap. I could tell that I had accomplished my goal because he made a noise like "ohh." Then I forget what happened I'm pretty sure I shot a bad shot, but at least I'm trying my shots now, and then I let him get behind me. I know that I'm good on bottom and I wanted to see how good he was so I balled up and tried to let him work a move so I could reverse it. He tried unsuccessfully to break me down so I took a couple of scoots forward and hit a decent hip roll but then turned to the legs, which was stupid, and then he turned to his stomach and I was on top. He worked his way up to a base and I put up a mild effort to break him down but I knew that once he was on his feet I would be able to pick him up and throw him back to the ground, which I did. Once he was on the ground I'm pretty sure, although I can't really remember, I ran a half nelson I think he squirmed his way out again, then I got tired of wrestling him so I ran an arm bar, turned him to his back, put my knee to his head, and didn't let him up. At that point he made another one of those noises, "ohhh," after a little while of being on his back and not being able to get out. Once the reff finally declared that he was pinned, I jumped up and while he was still on the ground said " good match" then we walked to the center, we shook hands, again I said "good match," even though it wasn't that great, and the reff raised my hand. We each walked to the opposite coaches' corners and shook their hands. On the way back to our side of the mat, while we were passing, I said "good match" again, at which point he didn't say anything. I think he was a little mad at being pinned by a sophomore but what can I say.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Inflation Rate Horace Mann tuition. 1955 ($917)thru 2006 ($30,000).

So? Mathematicians: If you still have your slipsticks, what is the average
> annual HM tuition inflation rate anyway?

Well, the current tool of choice is a spreadsheet...

> $917 in 1955, and $30,000, in 2006?

Inflation rate is generally based on a single step. According to http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/InflationCalculator.asp,
the inflation rate from September, 1955 to September, 2006 was 654.28%.
That would mean that the 2006 tuition should be $6,916.75. Thus HM tuition has risen much faster than inflation -- in fact, the inflation rate for HM tuition alone is 3171.54%.

It is well-known that tuition for tertiary education rises much faster than inflation, so one shouldn't be surprised that the same holds true for secondary education. One reason given for this anomalous rise is that one cannot increase the productivity of educators as fast as one can increase the productivity of workers in other fields. In fact, there are good reasons to assume that the productivity of educators cannot be increased at all, simply due to the nature of education.

But you asked for the AVERAGE ANNUAL HM tuition inflation rate. Although the concept of an average is a bit out of place in this context, we could argue that what you're asking for is a single yearly inflation rate that would increase the $917 to $30,000 over the 51-year period from 1955 to 2006. That's the same as asking for the compound interest rate that would result in a $917 investment in 1955 being worth $30,000 in 2006. The answer is very close to 7.0782%.

This is probably more than you wanted to know, but when you ask a professor a question that's the usual result. Happy New Year!
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Inflation Rate Horace Mann tuition. 1955 ($917)thru 2006 ($30,000).

So? Mathematicians: If you still have your slipsticks, what is the average
> annual HM tuition inflation rate anyway?

Well, the current tool of choice is a spreadsheet...

> $917 in 1955, and $30,000, in 2006?

Inflation rate is generally based on a single step. According to http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/InflationCalculator.asp,
the inflation rate from September, 1955 to September, 2006 was 654.28%.
That would mean that the 2006 tuition should be $6,916.75. Thus HM tuition has risen much faster than inflation -- in fact, the inflation rate for HM tuition alone is 3171.54%.

It is well-known that tuition for tertiary education rises much faster than inflation, so one shouldn't be surprised that the same holds true for secondary education. One reason given for this anomalous rise is that one cannot increase the productivity of educators as fast as one can increase the productivity of workers in other fields. In fact, there are good reasons to assume that the productivity of educators cannot be increased at all, simply due to the nature of education.

But you asked for the AVERAGE ANNUAL HM tuition inflation rate. Although the concept of an average is a bit out of place in this context, we could argue that what you're asking for is a single yearly inflation rate that would increase the $917 to $30,000 over the 51-year period from 1955 to 2006. That's the same as asking for the compound interest rate that would result in a $917 investment in 1955 being worth $30,000 in 2006. The answer is very close to 7.0782%.

This is probably more than you wanted to know, but when you ask a professor a question that's the usual result. Happy New Year!

Monday, December 04, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Coincidence happens more than chance would allow.

..........Geoff Goodstein.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

.................MUSIC...............

Music creates a pleasure so sensual and abstract, translates into vibrating air a nonlinguistic-nonlanguage whose meanings are forever just beyond reach, suspended tantalizingly at a point where emotion and intellect fuse.


paraphrased from Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Passionate striving. And for what? Money. Respect. Immortality. A way of denying the randomness that spawned us and of holding off the fear of death. Endeavor seemed pointless.

Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Who lives within a family living fragmented lives, too far, and barriers to communication.

Money has a role on an individual's confidence, social standing and expectations. But it just cannot buy happiness. We have unfulfilled yearning for connectedness.

Understand, do not deny, we live in a state of perpetual decay.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I was born condemned to be one of those who sees all sides of a a question. When you're damned like that, the questions multiply for you until in the end it's all question and no answer.

Larry Slade
The Iceman Cometh

Saturday, October 21, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"You can't go neither forwards nor backwards in your Daddy's time, nor into your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any redemption, look there, and if you expect any judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time, and in your body, and where in your body can they be."

"Two things I can't stand. A man who doesn't know what's true, and a man who mocks what is."
Flannery O'Conner, Wise Blood.

Friday, October 20, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Assumption: that men, when hearing the Truth, will recognize it and act accordingly.

mek

Assumption: That man values Truth.

mek
 
 
 
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Friday, October 06, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Stanley Ketchel was shot in the back and killed by the common law husband of the woman who had been cooking his breakfast."

Ring Lardner, 1910.

Ketchel is considered by many to be the greatest middle-weight who ever fought. He liked women.

Lardner's lead is likely the greatest lead ever written.
mek
 


Cold Spring, NY Posted by Picasa
 
 


Remi and Grandpa Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Billie Holiday was singing parlando, one of the late songs when she had lost her voice and had only her nerve in reserve. She was back on her sailboat in the middle of the Sound, maybe, in the moonlight, her voice filled with regret and desire; revenge would be the furthest thing from her mind. Successful revenge requires the cramped disipline of the accountant and she preferred the unruly emotions of the spendthrift. She needed protection, but there was none and so she sang. The song, imitated everywhere but never equaled. It would be a good thing if presidents were required to listen to the blues and a good thing also if they were require to drink while listening. The blues would give them an idea of the limits of human ambition and the consequences of righteous action, an appreciation of grief and ecstasy and inscrutable providence and the certainty of betrayal, along with the impression of memory and often its loss altogether. Truth and falsehood were next of kin. That was what Lincoln knew. " Ward Just Forgetfulness.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Anyone who can give approximate date and location of photo below, based on clothing worn by revelers,and interior of the unknown night club will get five gold stars...
  Posted by Picasa
"It was. It will never be again. Remember."

"The Book of Memory," Paul Auster
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Ce n'est pas ce qui est criminel qui coute le plus a dire,
cest ce qui est ridicule et honteux."

It is not what is criminal that is hardest to acknowledge; but rather what is ridiculous or shameful.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Saturday, September 30, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Stanley Ketchel was shot in the back and killed by the common law husband of the woman who had been cooking his breakfast."

Ring Lardner, 1910.

Ketchel is considered by many to be the greatest middle-weight who ever fought. He liked women.

Lardner's lead is likely the greatest lead ever written.

mek

Monday, September 25, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

cacozelia

ka-ko-zeel'-i-a


A stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned.
Bad taste in words or selection of metaphor, either to make the facts appear worse or to disgust the auditors.
Example


This is an adultery against the state, to have sex under the trophies of Miltiades. —Seneca

Thursday, September 21, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Inscription found in an old copy of the Forty Days of Musa DaghTo Lynn, Aug 3rd 1946

The years have gone to dust, and all we weigh
The days when love was full and always true.
They withered to the ground, and yet the ray
Shines on the fruits of Mornings from the dew.

We grow from dawn to darkness and the day
In flowing streams, an filled with with mournful rue,
Falls on the stranger’s calm and lovely way,
Desiring only peace, a solitary peace.

And yet when dawn doth bring the softest rain,
And hope, with fellowship delight of love,
Arises from the soul, and floats above,
With love no earthly creature can sustain,

Then do I know the sight of my eyes behold,
Tis you, my sweet, my aching eyes enfold.

Marcel
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Inscription found in an old copy of the Forty Days of Musa Dagh

To Lynn, Aug 3rd 1946

The years have gone to dust, and all we weigh
The days when love was full and always true.
They withered to the ground, and yet the ray
Shines on the fruits of mornings from the dew.

We grow from dawn to darkness and the day
In flowing streams, and filled with with mournful rue,
Falls on the stranger’s calm and lovely way,
Desiring only peace, a solitary pew.

And yet when dawn doth bring the softest rain,
And hope, with flourishing delight of love,
Arises from the soul, and floats above,
With love no earthly creature can sustain,

Then do I know the sight of my eyes behold,
Tis you, my sweet, my aching eyes enfold.

Marcel
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Albert Einstein

There was a young lady named bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way,
And returned home the previous night.

Arthur Buller, Punch, 19 DEC 1933

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Socratic Wisdom

In ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for hiswisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to himexcitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one ofyour students?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the 'Test of Three'." "Three?" "That's right, "Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student,let's take a moment to test what you're going to say.

The first test is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me istrue?" "No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it." "All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not.

Now let's try the second test, the test of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?" "No, on the contrary..." "So," Socrates interrupted, "you want to tell me something bad about him even though you're not certain it's true?" The man shrugged, a little embarrassed.

Socrates continued. "You may still pass though, because there is a third test - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about mystudent going to be useful to me?" "No, not really..."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True, nor Good, nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?" The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was such a great philosopher, and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why he never found out that Plato was banging his wife.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I have thought about inherent value for many years-- especially when it concerns art. There is a story, which I believe to be true, about a dinner party in the South of France, attended by Picasso. While at dinner, he needed to use the rest room and was told that it was on the second floor. He went to the guest bathroom and notice one of his drawings on the wall.

When he returned to dinner he remarked to the hostess that he had noticed his drawing upstairs in the bathroom. She contradicted him, and said that she had been told that it was only a reproduction that she had inherited from her late husband.

"Oh, no!" Picasso replied, "it is definitely an original drawing and my signature on the bottom is real."

The hostess jumped from the table, and ran upstairs. Moments later she carried the framed drawing downstairs, took a painting down from the mantle piece, and replaced it with the original Picasso drawing.

Picasso asked whether the picture had changed since she learned that it was the original and not a reproduction.

"What," he asked, "made it deserving of the place of honor in the hostess' home?" He wanted to know "why it shouldn't remain in the bathroom," and whether, "it was a different piece of art."


mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

It doesn't exactly mean what I thought:


improvident \im-PROV-uh-duhnt; -dent\, adjective:Lacking foresight or forethought; not foreseeing or providing for the future; negligent or thoughtless.

Elizabeth's husband . . . had been a reckless, improvident man, who left many debts behind him when he died suddenly of a consumption in September 1704.-- David Nokes, Jane Austen: A Life
Lily is spoiled, pleasure-loving, and has one of those society mothers who are as improvident as a tornado.-- Elizabeth Hardwick, Sight-Readings: American Fictions
He called the decision "an exercise in raw judicial power" that was "improvident and extravagant."-- Linda Greenhouse, "White Announces He'll Step Down From High Court", New York Times, March 20, 1993
Improvident derives from Latin improvidens, improvident-, from im- (for in-), "not" + providens, provident-, present participle of providere, "to see beforehand, to provide for," from pro-, "before, forward" + videre, "to see."

Monday, September 18, 2006

My father loved stories. I loved to hear them.  Posted by Picasa
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Buster Stronghart is my nom de plume and, perhaps, my alter-ego. I write a blog under that name and use it for an occasional original remark, more often very short quotations -- my latest being from Dr. Johnson, " In memorial disquisitions no man is on his oath." The blog may be found at www.BusterStronghart.blogspot.com -- my own original remarks are initialed, "mek," quotations from others (real writers or philosophers) are always identified.

A short, morose autobiographical poem may be found at Aug 24, and a friend's "counter-poem" answering my maudlin whining may be found in boldface just under it.

The photos are something new reflecting the fact that I have purchased a new camera and am trying to learn to post photos and to take them.

An explanation about Harry and "his last shoot in Texas," is in order, for those of us, like me, who have missed fifty years of installments.

The books, the books, oh the books...I am divesting myself of over fifty years of accumulated books (about 2000) --I wouldn't call it a "collection" it's really an "accumulation." Serious literature, history, philosophy (mostly only partly read), a lot of poetry, and of course many of the classics so resented by feminists in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. I am so glad that they are getting over their hatred of dead white men.

Buster and I consider ourselves to be pro-woman; in fact we have loved women overly much during the testosterone years, but we have never understood feminist criticism. Well, actually, we understand very little of any lit crit...

--I have told my boys, Aaron and Max, that they should feel worse for me now during the dispersion of my books, than they should when I am dying. It is bad. I have sold a few, and given many to Patti's children who have room, but my boys have no room, although Max would really like to have some--the remainder will go to the Garrison Library to be put up for sale next September. They have given me about twenty-five feet by eight rows of library shelving in their store room for the books. I think that they will just about fit there. It's nice seeing them all laid out together and in order. I'll take pictures with my new camera.

Cutting work back is fine but don't stop working until they measure you for the long, six-sided box. It's a mistake to do so. What work are you doing? The last I heard you were managing a ballet company, I think, which would be great because at about that time another woman whom I knew as a girl was managing the New York Ballet, Patty Avedon, niece of Richard Avedon. Of course, I haven't seen her since 1955, if then, so I have no idea where she is now.

I stopped (accosted) Richard Avedon on the street one day, just a month before he died, to ask about Patty, Michael and Keith, the three Avedons that Patti and I (and maybe you too) knew from 69th Avenue. He told me that Keith had died, Patty was "out west," and Michael had disappeared.

Anyway, with the 65% free time you have made for yourself take a look at www.BusterStronghart.blogspot.com , Don't forget what I said above about August 24.


mek

Sunday, September 17, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

My sister and wife have each objected to the photos I choose to place on the blog. They each believe that I am better looking. I believe that I have worked 68 years to earn that face and that's the one I'll show and that's the one of which I'll be proud.

mek

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


Understand, do not deny, from the very beginning, we live in a state of perpetual decay.


mek

Monday, September 04, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

I am a Jew, born outside the tribe. My mother was a Ruth, named Grace, who followed her husband. So one side of me comes from Norwegian stock.

But I am a Jew. I am not licensed to be a Jew. I do not join the rituals. I doubt that there is a God. But I am there. Here I am, God.

Remember: Ben Gurion insited that anyone who declares himself to be a Jew is a Jew. And Sartre asserted that if anyone points at you and shouts "Jew," then you are a Jew.

I qualify on both counts.

mek

Sunday, September 03, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool,
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Robert Frost...Two tramps at Mudtime
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A pox on all steps but big ones.

Thou'rt my son in any case and I could wish a better, you too might wish a better father.

Neither Thought nor Talk pays the Toll.

...............John Barth, The Sot Weed Factor

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Living with Pessimism

Every rose has its' thorns--but not every thorn has a rose.

Shopenhauer

Monday, August 28, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or senator and remain fit for anything else."

"Life is a narrow valley, and the roads run close together."

.........Henry Adams

I doubt all by habit; and always distrust my own judgment.

.................mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

It is possible for some people to miss their lives as some people miss a plane or train. How can it happen that one day you are young, then another day you come to yourself and your life has passed like a dream?

But how can it be that only with death and dying does the sharp sense of life return?

What is the word for a state which is neither life nor death--a death in life?

I thought that books could tell me how to live, but they did not.

Why is it that without death one misses his life?

........Walker Percy

Sunday, August 27, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

We live and learn-- but do we get smarter?

Ulotrichan: member of the wooly haired or crisp hair division of mankind.

Leiotrichi: the smooth haired

Friday, August 25, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

the author's edited version

before the convex mirror
the image magnified
pores, craters ; defects, bigsize.
no knowledge of the sweet, the kind
no forgiveness for the sane. No points
for moderation.

whole life is no insurance plan
but made of error, laugh and pain
Exceptions there are few but as a poet
you can stand on the mighty riverbank
and scream the verses of your closeted refrain.

ss
Bobby Berman, died 1956 in an automobile accident before entering Harvard. Posted by Picasa
This is Harry A, Moody; a downeaster, a biology teacher and a very funny man who departed the planet many years ago. Posted by Picasa One of my favorites. mek

Thursday, August 24, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

SS (St Eve) answers this poem from BusterStronghart, Wednesday, August 23, 2006, below:

In the false terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.

The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.

A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may.
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.

Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,

A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Under a blanket of adultery and of theft,
Somewhere on a stinking sea of convention,

His lonely, sinking craft.

mek

Before the convex mirror the image magnifies
Pores, craters, defects bigsize.

No knowledge of the sweet,
The kind. No forgiveness for the sane.
No points for moderation.

Whole life is no insurance plan
but made of error, laugh and pain.

Exceptions there are few
but as a poet you can stand on the mighty riverbank
and scream the the verses of your closeted refrain.

ss (St Eve)

Editor's comment:

My father would be pleased--my mother would believe it.

mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Each man has his own batch of poems.

Herzog, Sol Bellow

My usual mistake is my greatest one: fearing to make one.


mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

"Date a jock and all they talk about is sports and sex and sports and sex; date a freak and all they talk about is pot and sex, pot and sex. "

three teenaged girls at the pool.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Philanthropia


Love of Mankind.

Does it exist?
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com



"Understand that a man would have to act as the land where he was born had trained him to do. "

"It's because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change."

Wm. Faulkner, Light in August

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


In the false terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.

The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.

A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may.
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.

Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,

A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Under a blanket of adultery and of theft,
Somewhere on a stinking sea of convention,
His lonely, sinking craft.

mek

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

In the terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.

The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.

A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.

Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,

A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Somewhere on a sea of convention,
A stinking, sinking craft.

mek







Friday, August 11, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Found on a memorial plate in St. Phillips cemetery, Garrison, NY

----Catherine Heuston Ghiselin----

O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend
For thee the no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumphs and no labor and no lust,
Only dead yew leaves and a little dust.
Sleep and have sleep for light.
Are the fruits gray like dust, or red like blood?
Are there flowers
At all, or any fruit?
.
1911-1980
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

from a TLS review by William Logan, describing the poetry describing the apprentice poetry of Lawrence Durrell: --" lyrical afflatus of a blowhard."
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


I am a champion balancing act of the world and can now feel the cosmic conflict pulling part of me into the imaginal and spiritual realm as another part of me crashes into the side of the mountain and must deal with the very real parameters of the physical world. Although I may idealize the situation, yet it is important for me to try to see things as they truly are.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The best you can expect in life is to avoid the worst.

I exist in the cemetery of spent and lost hours.

Everything we say is a continuation of what has been said before.

Italo Calvino

Friday, July 28, 2006

OCT 25 IS OKAY WITH ME, BUT IS NOT OCT 25 THE DATE OF EVENT 50?

I am certainly in favor of dedicating the night to the dead and missing and would like to hear lengthy toasts to each lost member of the class, and should a member have been not well known by any one of us we could have a guest toaster, say Ed Sullivan, make the toast in our stead. An alternative might be to invite a member of the class who was familiar with the dead member. For instance, was any one of us friends with Frank Briggs? We could have someone from the class especially invited, perhaps only to make the toast honoring Frank.

As capacities have shrunk, and as there will be numerous members to remember, may I suggest that we toast with water or grape juice -- and in small glasses at that.

Some of you may want to honor past wives, past girl friends, or past lives. That is also okay with me, though I would draw the line at Margot von Vanderwort, a skinny girl whom I am very glad that none of you had the misfortune of meeting during the short time that I was embroiled with her. That she went to Smith and became a State Department official and at one time Ambassadress to Belgium, does not make up for the night we spent in my car in front of the Spry sign across the Hudson.

I didn't like her father either, who was President of the Corn and Merchants National Bank and who refused to pay compound interest until deposits were held by the bank for ninety days. Where was Eliot Spitzer when we needed him? In the First Form, I suppose. Margot's mother, however, was a charming, diminutive woman who often handicapped horses under my father's watchful tutelage.

I would like to dedicate the entire evening to the very great, and much missed, Stick Shift Bergavoy, ace driving instructor.

mek

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Word tennis


Katz emerges from the electronic shadows
And loudly announces his return with 3 short calls.
Then in the course of his day he strolls
Energetically down the quiet main street to the banks
Of the Mighty River.
There with a broad sweeping gesture of his arm
He intones the first lines of "we are strangers met in
Friendship...." as a memorial to the lost boys of HM.
Oh Dick oh Danny oh Peter we remember your not so
Heroic lives.



At river's edge I memorialize the living too,
O Prince Hal, Mike, Malcolm, and St Eve,
Come now to the verge of the shadowy wood,
Where the mighty Hudson merely trickles,
And leave the Holy Rood,
And dip a toe, to make it tickle.


Cool feet and praise for the living,
But the dead ones murmur the future silence
The ceased flow of the mighty river,
The thinklessness of nada
Peter knows;
Richie though surprised has come to realize.
And Danny smiles.

A collaboration, SS & mek, cold spring, ny, July 2006

Thursday, July 06, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his bellican
He can take in his beak
Food enogh for a week,
But I'm damned if I can see how the hellican.

Dixon Lanier Merritt

Sunday, July 02, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Devil Wears Prada

Streep: 15 stars out of ten-- film 8 out of 10,
Streep plays a boss who lives for her work. She loves her work and becomes the best in the Cosmos at it. She can't tolerate fools gladly--and if she did she would be taking away from the energy she gives solely to her company. It's all for the company. She needs what she needs NOW and not later and expects to get it NOW!

Underlings don't understand; and some of them hate her for it, others merely fear her. None understand that her genius requires, deserves the instant gratification that Miranda (Streep) demands. Streep masters this part; as an actor she starts at the top and rises still higher.

But, except for Stanley Tucci, everyone else in the cast is just coasting. Anne Hathaway is miscast as Andrea, the second assistant, --she doesn't look or fit the part; she's weak, mooney, and her boyfriend, Nate, Adrian Grienier, is just a pretty face playing a sous chef, (well, Woody Allen sees something in him, as he's in one of his films but, I don't know. I kept wishing that he'd leave the sixties and get a haircut. We've seen his act already in a thousand pictures from the sixties.)

Stanley Tuccci is fine as a gay guy in the company. Loyal to Miranda, helpful to Andrea, he dances though the film and adds to every scene they give him. Besides the comedy, film goers will note there's a serious theme in the film too.

mek

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

There is just a shallow truth in facts. Otherwise, the telephone book would be the book of books.

Werner Herzog
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

:"You should say everything that comes into your head."

S. Freud. "On Initiating Treatment."


"I think that psychoanalysis is one of the great evils of civilization, even worse than the Spanish Inquisition. At least the Inquisition was about keeping something together. Analysis is only about taking someone apart."

Werner Herzog.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

My father was learned in pharmacy, of course, but also in race horses, boxing, baseball, gangsters, headwaiters, cards, good scotch, and fine women, of whom I assumed (wrongly) that my mother was only one.

There was a Saturday afternoon game high in the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West. Sometimes I was left on my own to play in Central Park, but my predilection was to sit quiet in a corner while cards and cash passed back and forth across green felt tables. Stories usually accompanied the sound of shuffling card decks and always my ears were perked to catch his voice flowing over the table telling a river of endless stories.

Clouds of cigar smoke hovered over the players, almost always men, though there was one woman, who occasionally came from Miami to play with her equals -- and she was recognized as such. Ann Baumwall was a squinty eyed woman with bleached blond hair and strings of pearls hanging from her neck. She liked to win from the boys, and she was the type that nobody minded losing to.

My father was modest and liked to say only that he "held his own" at the table, but the truth was that it was usual he that left with his pockets full.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema
"LESSONS OF DARKNESS"

1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.

2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.

3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.

7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.

8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."

9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.

10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn´t call, doesn´t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life.

11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999
Werner Herzog