A week-end of 1040 fun

It’s not holiday time. It’s tax time! Last year I asked one of the professors who teaches Tax here, which computer program he uses to file his returns. He said “the simple one called ‘pencil and eraser.’” Me too.

But I’m still a week away and the temptation each day is to push this odious chore to another moment.
Today, for instance, I could not possibly work on taxes. I am distracted by the following email received from a reader:

Greetings from Montana.
Although my head is full of keeping calves alive and planting cottonwoods right now, I will be back in Madison next week.

What is more interesting than gathering the requisite papers for tax work? The above. I wish I were keeping calves alive and planting cottonwoods this week-end (btw, what are cottonwoods*? Futons?).

*name of store in High Point Plaza

It’s Easter week-end, isn’t it?

My family never did anything about Easter as I was growing up. There was no reason to make a holiday of it: in Poland, Easter was a supremely religious celebration (my family was not Catholic). I don’t remember there being bunnies or chicks or Easter bonnets – just crowds pouring out of church, and then, in the late post-dinner afternoon, crowds in parks, as families went for the weekly ‘promenade.’

But the painting of Easter eggs for Easter transcended the holiday itself. We learned early on how to get the egg out of the shell and preserve the shell itself. And we learned to love the designs that we repeatedly saw reproduced on eggs sold in craft shops.

I'm including a few photos here, perhaps to remind myself of their loveliness.

It’s final: a pyramid over a crate

I didn’t read this week’s NYT science article (here) until today. I once fancied myself as being mathematically-inclined (it seems, in retrospect, that I have fancied myself inclined in very many ways over the years…hmmmm..) and so I read the article with greater care than I normally would read a piece from under the “science” rubric.

It appears that one of the oldest problems of math has been conclusively solved (as demonstrated by the acceptance of the proof by a leading mathematics journal). No, don’t stop reading! You may want to know, even if you have no interest in math. The problem is all about the most efficient ways to pack oranges (originally stated as a problem of stacking cannonballs): the pyramid holds more than the crate. Why? The Times gives this simple layperson’s explanation: “(the pyramid) allows each layer of oranges to sit lower, in the hollows of the layer below, and take up less space than if the oranges sat directly on top of each other.”

The article explains how the computer-assisted proof initially raised eyebrows (checking issues arose). It is a fascinating story of how mathematics can no longer rely on the human brain to solve its remaining puzzles (but neither can it simply feed the problems to the computer, for understandable reasons). But I am still stuck on this very basic truth: pyramid over crate. So easy, so logical, but I would have never guessed.

Confession of a weary gardener

It’s not all fun and games out there in the mud. Nor is it all smiles in the blogger community in reaction to my Spring Updates. Two comments from yesterday are especially telling:

Reader number one wrote the following:

“I'm glad to see that you are not blogging about Spring and gardening today. Though I enjoy the pictures of the flowers, you were making me feel guilty because I have no interest whatsoever in doing yard work or getting my hands dirty.”

Conclusion number one: Spring Updates inspire guilt rather than pleasure.

Reader number two commented:

”Call me old fashioned, but I like to see grass as the dominant plant-life of a lawn. It seems that if you sprinkle turkey droppings and only turkey droppings to sustain it, you’re likely to have weeds, weeds and more weeds. In fact I distinctly remember seeing weeds last year in your front yard.”

I remember an exchange that I had with someone about lawns a few years back. When I recounted to this person that I had just spent a morning picking out the particularly noxious spreading weeds, she had said “in my yard, if it’s green it stays.”

Conclusion number two: people feel strongly about lawn care (or lack thereof).

I am all for balance, so I promise, Spring Updates will appear at intervals so great that you wont even remember when you last saw one. As for weeds – I will continue to dig by hand. For those used to greener pastures – I’m sorry, but I can’t even stand to take walks through the neighborhood when the Chemlawn truck has passed through and left its dirty trail. The stench takes all the pleasure out of walking. In my mind, this is one of the most avoidable chemical addictions that suburbanites continue to support. I can understand smoking better than I can understand spraying your yard repeatedly so that it will look like Astroturf.