when the tide goes out little water world becomes quiet and lovely
It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef.
But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely.
The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals.
Crabs rush from frond to frond of the waving algae.
Starfish squat over mussels and limpets, attach their million little suckers and then slowly lift with incredible power until the prey is broken from the rock.
And then the starfish stomach comes out and envelops its food.
Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers.
And black eels poke their heads out of crevices and wait for prey.
The snapping shrimps with their trigger claws pop loudly.
The lovely, colored world is glassed over.
Hermit crabs like frantic children scamper on the bottom sand.
And now one, finding an empty snail shell he likes better than his own, creeps out, exposing his soft body to the enemy for a moment, and then pops into the new shell.
A wave breaks over the barrier, and chums.
From Cannery row by John Steinbeck (Viking, New York, 1945)
wrong, nonsensical entrenched ideas among accepted beliefs
Scientific truth is very difficult to discover.
There are two reasons for this.
The first is that nature is, with all its complexity, very obscure.
Secondly, there is the number of wrong, nonsensical yet deeply entrenched ideas that exist among currently accepted beliefs.
For example, even after the centuries long belief in the usefulness of drawing blood as a therapeutic measure had been found to be groundless, belief of almost as long duration sprang up in the healing virtues of castor oil.
When I was a boy, almost every complaint from fever to gastroenteritis was treated with castor oil. Measles, scarlet fever, mumps and the flu — all were treated indiscriminately with the same specific.
Two short generations have passed and today castor oil is hardly ever seen and the health of children and adults alike is not a whit the worse.
From the book, Butter side up!, or, The delights of science by Magnus Pyke, J. Murray, London, 1976.
1976!!
According to Wikipedia … Magnus Alfred Pyke OBE FRSE FRIC (29 December 1908 – 19 October 1992) was an English nutritional scientist, governmental scientific adviser, writer and presenter. He worked for the UK Ministry of Food, the post-war Allied Commission for Austria, and different food manufacturers. He wrote prolifically and became famous as a TV and radio personality, and was featured on Thomas Dolby’s 1982 synth-pop hit, “She Blinded Me with Science”.
due to the rising theme over sustained chords that begins the quartet
No. 4 (“Sunrise”) The Quartet No. 63 in B♭ major, Op. 76, No. 4, is nicknamed Sunrise due to the rising theme over sustained chords that begins the quartet.
The opening of the movement begins in a way that seemingly contradicts the allegro con spirito marking. Violin II, viola, and cello sustain a tonic chord while the first violin plays the melody (the “sunrise” motif) on top. In measure 7, the same instruments sustain a dominant seventh chord while the first violin again plays a rising solo on top. In measure 22, all instruments reach forte, and allegro con spirito character is apparent through the sixteenth-note movement and lively staccato eighth notes trading off between the parts. In measure 37, the opening sunrise theme returns, this time with the solo in the cello and the sustained chords in the violins and viola. The lively sixteenth-note section returns in measure 50, beginning with sixteenth notes in the cello which move to the viola, and finally, the violins. In measure 60, all instruments drop to piano for a six-measure staccato eighth-note section before jumping to an all sixteenth-note fortissimo in measure 66 to finish off the exposition.
people with song mouths connecting song hearts; people who must sing or die
For Labor Day, 2025.
Adapted from Work Gangs by Carl Sandburg as published in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, by Carl Sandburg, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1950.
Work Gangs
Box cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes: I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line. I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered my boards. I came from Detroit heavy with a load of flivvers. I carried apples from the Hood river last year and this year bunches of bananas from Florida; they look for me with watermelons from Mississippi next year.
Hammers and shovels of work gangs sleep in shop corners when the dark stars come on the sky and the night watchmen walk and look.
Then the hammer heads talk to the handles, then the scoops of the shovels talk, how the day’s work nicked and trimmed them, how they swung and lifted all day, how the hands of the work gangs smelled of hope. In the night of the dark stars when the curve of the sky is a work gang handle, in the night on the mile long sidetracks, in the night where the hammers and shovels sleep in corners, the night watchmen stuff their pipes with dreams— and sometimes they doze and don’t care for nothin’, and sometimes they search their heads for meanings, stories, stars. The stuff of it runs like this: A long way we come; a long way to go; long rests and long deep sniffs for our lungs on the way. Sleep is a belonging of all; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman’s lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all.
People singing; people with song mouths connecting with song hearts; people who must sing or die; people whose song hearts break if there is no song mouth; these are my people.
I went looking for a quote about Labor in the back of my mind that memory said was in Harry Truman’s address in Philadelphia accepting the nomination of the Democratic National Convention. I found ” … labor never had but one friend in politics, and that is the Democratic Party and Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
But what I also came across was this:
The United States has to accept its full responsibility for leadership in international affairs.
We have been the backers and the people who organized and started the United Nations, first started under that great Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson, as the League of Nations. The League was sabotaged by the Republicans in 1920.
And we must see that the United Nations continues a strong and growing body, so we can have everlasting peace in the world.
We removed trade barriers in the world, which is the best asset we can have for peace.
Those trade barriers must not be put back into operation again.
Harry had some wild ideas back then.
Raise minimum wage.
Universal Health Care.
This was the famous Give’em Hell Harry speech.
Mr. Truman later said all he did was tell the truth … which made the Republican’s feel like they were in hell.
No Haiku For You 