Marie

I meant to write this back in May when I actually took the pictures, but better late than never.

If you were in New York around that time, you probably saw a lot of Marie.


















Marie is from the Bronx, and as you can see, she has had about 20 amputations.

Sometimes Marie is very small:



















Sometimes Marie is very big:

















Anti-smoking campaigns are surely a worthy cause, but this one bothered me. How often does Marie's situation actually occur? To treat a rare worst-case scenario as the inevitable consequence of smoking is a troublesome tactic.

By the time I left New York in August, the 'Marie' campaign had ended. The pictures are from the Union Square subway station, a very big station and one which was nothing but wall-to-wall Marie for a good month. This station was part of my daily commute so I got a good long look at Marie twice a day. If I ever start smoking, I will certainly consider quitting.

Robert Pattinson

Wednesday and Thursday are my days off from work. I came back today to learn that Robert Pattinson - whom you may remember as the dreamy, angst-ridden vampire in "Twilight" or the dreamy but angst-free wizard in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" - was in the store yesterday filming "Remember Me." On the way out, he was mobbed by fans and then clipped on the hip by a taxi.

This provides the backdrop for the following phone call, which I received not long ago:

Me: Hello, Strand Books.
Caller (female, sounds about 16): Hi, I heard that Robert Pattinson was in the store yesterday?
Me: Yes he was.
Caller: Is he still there?
(pause)
Me: No.
Caller: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
Caller: Do you know where he went?
Me: Home, maybe?
Caller: Oh. So he's not there anymore?
Me: That's correct.


She wanted to be absolutely sure he had not camped at the bookstore overnight.

Konrad & Geese

Konrad Lorenz is a favorite writer of mine. In the early part of the last century he pioneered the field of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior.

Today I began Lorenz's The Year of the Greylag Goose (which I was given for Christmas and have shamefully failed to read until now). This is a large, illustrated volume on the birds that were the focus of his life's work. The following passage from the book's opening pages caught my attention.

Even after having seen it so many times, I always find it utterly enthralling to witness free-flying birds moving toward me from a long distance away. After all, most poor (or perhaps wicked) souls never see wild animals except from behind! In all the lands of the earth where man has come in contact with wild animals, he is recognized as the most dangerous and merciless predator of all. There is hardly an animal, no matter how big and how strong or how effective its weapons, that will not flee when it sees a human being approach. Only in places where man is unknown will the local animals approach him with complete trust, although usually this is utterly misplaced. One must travel to the Galapagos Islands or Antarctica to find animals that can be approached to within a few feet without being provoked to run or fly away.

Anyone who comes upon a large mammal in a wood will be greeted for a fraction of a second by a terrified animal face. Almost all its surface is taken up by sense organs: large, erect ears, widely staring eyes, and flaring nostrils. An instant later there is usually nothing to see but swaying branches, or at the most a rapidly disappearing view of the animal's rear. Birds, particularly the larger kinds, such as raptors, members of the crow family, and water birds, are if anything even shyer than mammals in the wild. In order to see them close up - and take photographs - one must make use of the cunning techniques of the hunters, either approaching very stealthily or constructing a well-camouflaged hide in a suitable place.

Man regards himself as Lord of the Earth, and so he is, though regrettably so in the sense just indicated, and then only on dry land. I remember quite clearly an occasion when I naively tried to chase off a barracuda, which simply adopted a threat posture and bared its teeth. That gave me the opportunity to find out just how fast one can swim backward with flippers!

Apart from such unwelcome exceptions, man cannot closely approach free-living animals without causing them to take flight. He has been exiled from the paradise of peaceful coexistence with his fellow creatures. That is why, when free-living animals approach me from a long distance away, not because they have failed to notice me but for the very reason that they have seen me and have heard me, it is as if this exile from paradise had been lifted.

This is the type of writing that makes one want to study animals!

An Invitation

Today I received a letter from my congressman, Charles Rangel, inviting me to Obama's inauguration.



How thoughtful. I think I will invite him to my eighteenth birthday.

Interview

Here is the interview:

In January I submitted a composition to the Interactive Ives contest at Wesleyan. The contest was to finish an unfinished song of Charles Ives', entitled 'smoke' - a musical setting of a poem by Henry David Thoreau. At the link, you can look at Ives' sketches for the piece. My song was performed in the 'Vocal Marathon' concert series.

I will interviewed about the concert and contest tomorrow (Wednesday) at 9:15 EST on the Long Island University radio station (WLIU). If you'd like to listen, Their website is here.

Political Memoirs

Political memoirs have the most boring titles ever. You could randomly switch their titles around and no one would notice. The most high-profile example at the moment would probably be a pair of books by Barack Obama and John McCain:

Setting aside pluralization and preposition choice, the only distinction is between "dreams" and "faith". In the end, America decisively rejected faith in favor of dreams. This most likely marks the end of faith's presidential hopes.


Jim Webb and Wesley Clark apparently disagree about what time it is:





Next we have what seems to be a disagreement over whether to move towards or away from power.



Note that Senator Brownback has called his own life a "remarkable journey of faith and compassion". I have another book I think you should read, Sam:



As a bonus, it may help you find true love.