Walking

Today, the April breezes and skies and trees were so stirring that I took no fewer than TWO long walks, though the first one was better than the second for reasons (among others) of increased wind velocity and decreased interest in the enterprise the second time around. But I did want to note that walking in Madison, especially during three out of the four seasons, is just about the best thing you can do here. I mean, people love the lakes and I admit that if your life is all about sailing and ice-fishing, you’re going to be magnetically drawn to these great bodies of water.

If, on the other hand, your only lake associations are either with 1. the Union Terrace on a late summer afternoon, 2. the view from your office, if you’re lucky, 3. the unfortunate death of Otis Redding, or 4. the very real possibility of increased mosquito activity, then you have to look elsewhere for outdoor diversion. Forgetting about State Street (which has greater commercial and people-watching value than outdoor-amusement ), there are still any number of non-mosquitoed walking places, including bike paths, interesting neighborhoods, and, of course, places like conservation parks, or the Arboretum.

When I am reminded that this month marks the beginning of all these trekking possibilities, I positively soar with energy and joy.

[photo: Owen Woods]

A Blockbuster in hell

I hate being wasteful –spending money on things that prove to be completely worthless, too horribly bad for even the garbage can.

Last month I bought a DVD, thinking it would rest easily on the shelf of “DVDs that are fun to watch when you want to do the ironing or pay the bills and don’t want to exert yourself much but wouldn’t mind a sweet moment with the silver screen or at least a good laugh.” That shelf has a number of movies on it that I consider completely entertaining – Possesion, Chariots of Fire, Tortilla Soup, Moonstruck – all fun stuff, nothing too taxing, a pick-me-up-when-I-am not-too-chipper-kind of shelf. To this I thought I’d add “Intolerable Cruelty.” Why? Because anything with Catherine Zeta-Jones was bound to be easily digestible and not terribly challenging in the cerebral way, and although it only had a “US Weekly” recommendation on the back (“Huge Laughs!” it reads, which I now think has hidden subversive meanings, sort of an inside joke among reviewers: “what a HUGE LAUGH it is that some people will actually spend more than a quarter to see this!”), I though it would be okay.

It was not okay. In fact, I have played it several times just to demonstrate to various people passing through this house how BAD a movie can be, because no one quite believes my blasphemous comments uttered in a not altogether sane manner about it.

So what do I do now that I wasted what suddenly seems like huge sums of money on this worthless piece of trash? I can’t toss it, but I also can’t possibly display it – I can’t stand to even look at it, let alone be reminded that I actually brought it into the house. What now?

There ought to be a special delivery service collecting movies of this nature for rental in hell. This particular film could make life miserable for any number of people who need to be tortured in a systematic and continuous way. Consider it a charitable contribution, just from me.

But does he care about you and me?

A Washington Post poll shows a decline in people’s perceptions about how compassionate GWB really is. Here’s one set of responses:

Bush has frequently described himself as a 'compassionate conservative.' Do you think Bush has -- or has not -- governed in a way that is compassionate?

Has 49% (now) 64% (2/2/2003)
Has not 45% (now) 34% (2/2/2003)
No opinion 5% (now) 2% (2/2/2003)

I’ve never fully understood what the term “compassionate conservative” really means, and what its opposite may be (“spitefully conservative?” “indifferent-to-the-lot-of-others conservative?”) and who would subscribe to that opposite given that it’s bound to then have pejorative meanings or associations.

But it’s interesting to wonder what exactly happened in the last year that would cause the change in public opinion. People sometimes ascribe great meaning to smaller things and not enough meaning to big ticket items, so it remains a mystery why numbers on compassion where as high as they were a year ago (and, conversely, why they dropped).

The most touching story…

…appears in the NYT today (here). It is about an old (perhaps 84 yrs?) Kenyan man who took advantage of the government’s decision to make elementary education free and enrolled in first grade (he had never before gone to school and could not read, write, or count). If you passed over the article, do at least read these snippets for a real feel-good start to the day:

On the first day of school, he put on some gray knee socks and blue trousers that he had cut off above the knee to resemble the short pants worn by schoolchildren all over the country. With his school uniform in place, he limped his way from his mud hut to the office of the headmistress, Jane Obinchu.

She thought Mr. Maruge was joking when he said he was there to enroll in the first grade. But Mr. Maruge was insistent, and Mrs. Obinchu decided to give him a chance - a spot right up front where he could hear her.

The other students, most of them 78 years younger than Mr. Maruge, were amused at first by the old man's presence. But over time they grew used to having a "Mzee," the Swahili honorific given to elders, as a classmate.

After all, Mr. Maruge practiced writing the A B C's just as they did. He worked on basic math problems right alongside them. Slowly, the entire class, Mr. Maruge included, began to learn to read.

Kenyan officials were stunned that Mr. Maruge and others well beyond school age had sought to take advantage of free primary education. "We never knew that such people would come," said S. K. Karaba, senior deputy director in the Department of Education. "They still want to be taught. There is an urge."….

At Kapkenduiywa Primary, Mr. Maruge is now a fixture. He is frequently the first student to arrive in the morning, sometimes an hour early. During the school day, he plays the role of both student and teacher. He feels free to give advice to his classmates, reminding them frequently to study hard and listen to their parents.

When the school day is over, Mr. Maruge walks back to the home he shares with his sister. He tends his small herd of sheep and his goats and chickens. Later, he pulls out his books to study a bit before dinner. He is the only student at the school who asks his teacher for homework.

The story does remind me of my grandmother who, though basically literate (in the way that you would be if you completed only three years of schooling), had never read a book in her life until she was about 70. From then on, she read with a vengeance, going straight to the Polish classics that we’d bring to the village from the Warsaw library. She worked her way slowly, very slowly through the great epics and tragedies belonging to the past. She never talked about what she read, but I used to like to watch her, sitting at the kitchen table, turning the pages slowly, following each line, sometimes mouthing the words. It was so quiet in the village (no paved roads, no traffic, just one store a mile away). During the years that she lived there alone, books must have literally kept her sane against all that quiet.
[photo credits: "Kenyan first grader" is from the NYT, countryside around my grandmother's village is from Ekoland.pl]

No photos or art will accompany this post

Did anyone catch the Cap Times review of the 3-day show opening this week-end at the Barrymore? It’s titled ‘Puppetry,’ and it is about, about… an art form of sorts, depicted with humor and, I should think, great physical skill. Certain body parts of two actors are formed into, among other things, a pelican, a hamburger, the Loch Ness monster and the Eiffel Tower.

How original and apparently exceptionally funny and asexual. Still, tickets are at $35. I’ll wait for reports from others. Write me if you venture out to see it.

How can you keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree..

Ollie, my canine, was well trained (emphasis on ‘was’). I believe I have bragged ad nauseam about his independent quick run in the unfenced yard each day, all on a brief verbal command from me.

Today, Ollie went out as usual as I waited, bored, inside. And waited. And waited. Ollie had obviously flown the coop. Spring had gone to his head, poor guy, and he was off to see the world. For the first time in his four and a half years of life, he experienced FREEDOM! Oh, he was shy enough to come back when I went out on the street, sat down (how odd-seeming was that?) and stretched out my arms (he can never resist the lap and arms). But I’m not fooled. He’s seen bigger oceans and grassier fields now. He’ll fly again. Who wouldn’t?

No, no, no, of course not!

A reader (referring to blog posts below) asked today how is it that I got all my plants to bloom this early in the season. This reader, obviously an urban and urbane fellow, assumed that the photos in my “Spring Update” series depicted flowers that were now in their best form in my yard. He was exceedingly in awe of my horticultural skills since he’d only seen crocuses in other Madison yards.

It is painful to stick a pin in the balloon that stands for one’s over-inflated-worth-in-the-eyes-of-another, but I fear I must: no, my flowers are not yet in bloom. Far from it, no such luck, couldn’t be, no way. April, that most wonderful, revitalizing month, just started YESTERDAY! The plants identified below have all emerged from the ground, but the photos simply portend showy summer weeks ahead. We’re not there yet. As I sit here typing in my wooly socks and big burly oversized sweater I am reminded, brilliant sunshine today notwithstanding, we’re not there yet.

Spring Update

I apologize – these updates are now loading here fast and furious, but my plants are rapidly breaking ground and it is a joyous experience, one that deserves notation. Today, it’s all about daylilies. There are hemerocallis nuts out there – people who study, breed and cultivate the hundreds of varieties of this genus of plant. I’m not quite there, but I am charmed by daylily designs and colors. Plus it remains one of nature’s most prolific flowers—a regular fertile myrtle: a bud opens each morning, is spent by the end of the day, a new one opens the next day, and so on. It is a remarkable thing to observe.

I can’t find all the varieties I have in the front and back of the house, but they include some of the ones pictured here.

Maybe I should reconsider spectator sports

Yesterday, in our discussion of custody and physical placement (in the Family Law class) I gave examples of cases I had worked on that had, in my opinion, an incorrect result despite the fact that a text-book reading of the fact patterns would have lead you to predict a decent outcome. I had wondered if the students could really understand this peculiarity about family law – it can be unpredictable because so many factors can confound and confuse the proceedings. I was gratified, therefore, to get the following email from a reader this morning. She was reflecting on the class discussion and thought of it in this way:

Here's a basketball metaphor I think applies here: anybody can learn to dribble the ball down the court to the basket, and make a stylistically brilliant shot from different points on the perimeter, with enough practice and diligence, if you're playing alone with no other players. However, in the real game, even just a one-on-one, there is another person always covering you, trying to stick their hand into your dribble and get the ball, and block where you can move on the court, block your shot once it leaves your hands, etc., which severely limits what parts of your game you can play depending on the opponent. Like in family or custody law: any book could summarize how the custody decisions are made on paper, or you could read the statute and think that's easy enough, but your real-world explanations today were kind of like the defense checking the ball handler.

I’m impressed. Sports metaphors typically elude me (is that ever obvious – see posts below), but this one hit home. This semester I have a renewed respect for the playing field, and an exponentially growing admiration for the students in my classes.

Suspicious minds

My friends and readers have let me down. One after another, they question the authenticity of blog posts today JUST BECAUSE IT’S APRIL 1st! The last message on this was the final straw. My reader writes:

“Now I'm just trying to figure out if the Smigus Dyngus post is for real, or an April Fools post in itself. The photo, with realistic looking costume, has me being less suspicious, but one never knows... Very mysterious you can be!!”

Now really, would I make up something like that? Check out the site here (scroll down to the bottom for an analysis of Smigus Dyngus). Or, if you aren’t the checker type, let me quote the relevant passage for you:

Smigus-dyngus, czyli pomyślność na mokro: Oblewanie się nawzajem wodą w poniedziałek wielkanocny (nazywany z tej okazji Świętym Lejkiem) to również zwyczaj stary i wywodzący się najprawdopodobniej z obrzędów związanych z wiarą w dobroczynne właściwości wody. Był przy tym i jest doskonalą zabawą dla całej rodziny, a także okazją dla psotników, by płatać figle... w zgodzie z ludową tradycją. Polewano się różnie, na dworach paroma kropelkami wody perfumowanej, na wsiach wiadrami i konewkami. Niejedna panna została nawet wepchnięta do rzeki czy koryta z wodą.

Is says it right there, doesn’t it?

The essence of fox

A reader asks where I am able to procure 100% fox urine (see Spring Update posts below). Well, naturally, I don’t chase down the animals myself with jar in hand. But someone does, and what a job that must be! I suppose I could also find it on the Net, but for me, it’s just as easy to locate it in select stores that sell farming or gardening essentials. And btw, it seems not to “spoil:” if you buy too much to use in one season, let me assure you, the stuff is even more foul smelling the next year.

The fools of April

A reader and a friend sent me the following email message late last night:

“It is now April Fool's day. meaning I refuse to talk to you for the next 22 hours (until the day is over, your time). what will happen this year? I don't know, but I know it will be something, and I know I'll fall for it, whatever it is, so see you April 2.”

That’s harsh! I’ll have you know that this year, I am much more into Smigus Dyngus – a traditional Polish celebration that falls on Easter Monday. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SMIGUS DYNGUS IS???? Wait ‘til Monday, will you ever be surprised!!

[For those far away, and therefore not within a bucket’s reach that day, let me explain: traditionally, on Smigus Dyngus, boys drenched girls with squirt guns, buckets of water, anything that caused great wetness. The thought was that the more a girl was sprayed with water, the higher were her chances of getting married—though I see some pagan ritual elements here, as in cleansing the body and soul, etc... The holiday is observed especially by young people: boys will literally wait out on the road, near markets, in village squares and as soon as a girl would pass – she’d get the bucket. Older men, on the other hand, sprayed their wives with cologne water, though I’m not sure what the purpose of that was – unless he secretly wanted her to leave and marry someone else, a.s.a.p.!? The revenge comes the next day: the girls dump water on guys on Tuesday. In my time, we were way too impatient and so everyone, male and female, dumped water on each other, all Monday long.]

A lesson from the past: my lack of talent may be a virtue

A guest lecturer from Taiwan came to my class yesterday to address issues of Family Law in the context of changing norms and values. His own view was that Taiwan had rushed to embrace Western standards too fast and without enough discussion of what was sacrificed along the way. Individual rights are all fine and well, but the relinquishment of family-centered values comes at a very personal cost to the many people who once had a rich network of family and now feel themselves to be isolated.

The Taiwanese professor gave two examples of old Chinese proverbs that no longer have the force they once did, and I must say, even though I do not live in Taiwan, I am intrigued by them and think they could have interesting applications even on this side of the ocean. Consider each one:

1. “For a woman to be without talent is a virtue.” Sure, I know that sounds harsh, but think how much pressure would be off our shoulders if this was honored today. Awards would be meted out for mediocrity and lack of accomplishment. Working long hours to perfect something would be pointless and indeed, may cause you to appear virtue-less.

2. “Marry a chicken, follow a chicken, marry a dog, follow a dog.” This one, too, is superb! You want marriage? Great – here it is: you got yourself a dog. Now are you happy?? Much could be learned from these words.

One of the most telling moments, however, came at the beginning of class. As students were trickling into the room, I handed them outlines of the paper to be presented by the visiting scholar. He watched in fascination, then asked: “Do you always hand out papers like that to students?” I hesitated, wondering if I had committed some International Gaffe of Great Magnitude and Consequence. He explained: “You are the respected one here, no? Why don’t you have THEM come and pick up the paper themselves?” It had never even occurred to me that I had just put myself down, meeting the students at their own low-status level rather than asking them for proper respect. No wonder they throw spitballs in class and play spider solitaire on their computers. Resolved: today, they come to ME to pick up the statute that I am now copying for them (wait: why am I even making copies for them??).

Liking the news again

Missing UW student found, minimum wage bill passes in Madison (one of just a handful of cities in the country now with a minimum wage that’s higher than the federal level), can we please just continue with the roll of good news?

Spring Update

The weather leaves much to be desired, BUT the white campanula is really shooting up, and the geranium is forming a thick mat. The veronica leaves are also quite large, and the dianthus is getting ready for the rabbit assault (their favorite).

The scientific revolution

A finding that is worth sitting up for: according to a UC San Diego study (published in Psychological Science), people pick pure-bread dogs that resemble them. I don’t really go for knocking studies that affirm the obvious. I’m surrounded by social scientists and have come to appreciate that there’s a big step from positing an “obvious” conclusion at a cocktail party (do people still go to cocktail parties?) to documenting it and drawing wider implications from it.

Still, this one seems so very basic that it, at the very least, does not deserve to be included in CNN.com’s top stories (here) for the morning.

On the other hand, it made ME click and read, just in case there was something to be learned from my own choice of an American Water Spaniel for a pet. The terribly frustrating thing about the cited study is that it seems not to specify (at least in the CNN synopsis of it) the criteria used for matching owners with their pets. It appears that different judges used different criteria, which, to me, is perhaps the most revealing aspect of the study: that you can use different criteria and arrive at the same place (similarly, when we admit students to law school, we use our own individually crafted set of markers, yet we wind up choosing pretty much the same students).

In dog selection, the conclusions presented are rather basic: Frenchies for trendy people, collies for gregarious folks.

They don’t say anything about American Water Spaniels, and I don’t think it would have application to my “selection process” anyway. I picked this particular dog because I was riding the bus from the Milwaukee airport and noticed this peculiar sight: a gorgeous, rather large animal, making his way up to the lap of its owner. I asked if he was feeling stressed after the plane ride. The owner said no, not especially, he just sort of fancied himself as lap dog – all 45 pounds of him. Ollie, our rather shy animal and offspring of this dog has the same (must therefore be genetic?) habit. If you sit down, he’ll make every effort to get into your lap. Yet his appearance is such that you’d think he’d be the perfect hunting companion to Dick Cheney. An incongruous mixture of traits. Does this say something about my predisposition?

[Btw, the American Water Spaniel also happens to be the state dog of Wisconsin, though absolutely NO ONE living here knows this, so I doubt it would steer a selection process.]

Students are so helpful

A few weeks ago, I wrote here that a concerned, well-meaning student come up after class to tell me that calling something a “slam dunker” violated every athletic principle known to man, woman, or child. Gratefully, I made a note that henceforth it shall be simply a “slam dunk.”

A reader then informed me that he had problems with my blog because I alluded there to being dense about slam dunks due to my limited knowledge of the baseball field. He told me that it is not the habit for athletes to achieve slam dunks in baseball.

Today, the same concerned “slam dunk” student told me that I might expand my sports education even further: rather than mentioning the “hometown” advantage of filing a court petition where you reside, I might try incorporating such terms as “homecourt” or “homefield,” even though he assured me that the athletes in the class would be comfortable if I decided to stay with “hometowning.”

Oh, I think I can spot a set-up here: I’ll bravely throw out “homecourt” next time, and mention playing tennis, even though I should be back in basketball land. And what’s “homefield?” Is that baseball or have we now switched to football? Or maybe it’s hockey? So many mistakes to be made with using this terminology… so many…

Good will and cheer

This is one of those days where I had reason to cross the mile-long State Street that links our campus with the State Capitol (and the court buildings). I was going to attend a law firm baby shower for a former student, an event that brought forth great feelings of nostalgia as no fewer than three of the firm’s six attorneys are former students of mine, and I’ve worked on family law cases in the past with all but one of the partners.
Half way up State Street it struck me that my baby gift would benefit greatly from a little rubber duckie stuck to the outside and so I went into a soap store (the Soap Opera, pictured here) to purchase one. This is the way Madison works: one favor leads to another and before you know it you’re all over-favoring each other until there are no more favors to bestow. I paid $1.50 for my duckie; the sales clerk loved the duckie-on-top-of-box idea and offered to add ribbon for effect (the store has always been keen on elaborate ribbonning of gifts); of course that meant that I had time to browse and pick up a number of astronomically expensive soaps –gift ideas for imminent occasions requiring little things of this nature; it was determined then that I was also deserving of many free samples, including one that I thought would actually best be purchased, in large quantities.

A cynic may comment that I was a sitting duckie myself: a target for salesclerk largess that would inevitably lead me to deplete my bank account in that store. But that cynic would be wrong. True, I left with a beautifully ribbonned-duckie-adorned box plus many other items, with the final bill reaching outrageously high levels if you think of it as a duckie bill, but on the other hand, the bill was not so high if you think of all the stored-up presents, the good will, the exchange of kind words of praise and admiration and promises of life-long friendship.

Division of assets

Pausing in my review of notes for today’s Family Law class, I take a quick look at CNN.com (to make sure the world hasn’t yet destroyed itself; as Friedman of the NYT wrote yesterday, one has such low expectations of news stories these days), where I find an article about another couple’s relationship woes (story here).

Demba and Chaka (Demba’s the female) seem not in the mood for procreation. After five years of inhabiting the same space, they seem hardly to have glanced at each other and Philadelphia zookeepers now believe that they may have never even had a sexual encounter (this in spite of the fact that Chaka is one fertile guy, having fathered many babies in his previous surroundings).

She gets to keep the house (she’ll stay in their ‘home’), but he gets to move in (at another zoo) with a couple of promising females. Her biological clock has ticked away, while he can just keep going and going. Have we really evolved from ape-dom all that much?

[CNN photo is of Chaka--beloved by females, though not by Demba. I'm with Demba on this one]

Star gazing

A friend-reader reminded me that I should be looking at the sky at dusk because it will be many decades before I will be able to see again the line up of five planets without the aid of a telescope. I have only until the end of the month to do this.

Wanting to spread the wealth, let me post the map of planets so that you, too, can tell your children and grandchildren that you were fortunate enough to have read a webblog in 2004 that showed you what to look for: