Dick Jones' Patteran Pages

More revisions in process. These are two of a group of poems written during & after visits to the Urals between 1989 & 2000.

BALEZINO STATION

At Balezino Station we disembark in silence
under the great arch of night. First
whispers leave breath hanging, shining

like bright smoke.  The old moon
leans through cloud.  A silver wind
blows the stars about like spray.

A tide of trees floods the half-dark,
sucks at the line’s edge.  Motionless,
we diminish, here at the junction between

two hemispheres.  Behind us bloodless territories
of turned soil and domestic waters
and beyond the taiga, the first forest

to come tumbling out of the young dreaming
of the world.  And now the thin edge
of an eastern wind brings tears of resin,

a scent of green disorder, a cataract
of leaves and berries far ahead.  Darkness
crowds us back onto the train.  Rocked

but sleepless, we sit and stand by night-
curtained windows, watching the dim images
of ourselves watching the flying trees.

BIRDS ON THE CHUSOVAYA RIVER

High flat sun, sour light
draining like whey
through muslin cloud.
This bird’s geometry – square-winged,
turning on the axis
of its hunger, reorders
the sky.  The berkut, summer eagle,
sideslips into the treeline.

Where the river croons
over stones, where we drink
from clear channels, this bird
scars the water’s skin.
The swallow, stippled in
the ribbed water, turns
on a wide wheel centred
in a blue orbit.

Night’s sheet is torn
at the corner.  This bird
has a knife in its voice.
It slides on a wire,
the owl, from maple
to beech, a yellow light
in its eye and acid
on its tongue.

Night rain boils in
the river.   Young moon
hooks clouds into ribbons
and rags.  This bird, the
heron, rising from the reeds,
climbs on its long arms
from dark towards light.

Balezino pic from: hewasthin.blogspot.com/

ICE OR WATER..?

The BBC News broke with tradition this morning & led with an item, which, strictly speaking, isn’t news.  We were informed that the concentration of greenhouse gases will result in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet & that, as a consequence, fundamental damage to the environment will be irreversible.  A rise of a mere 2 Celsius will result in:
•    ‘Decreasing crop yields in the developing and developed world.
•    Tripling of poor harvests in Europe and Russia.
•    Large-scale displacement of people in North Africa from desertification.
•    Up to 2.8bn people at risk of water shortage.
•    97% loss of coral reefs.
•    Total loss of summer Arctic sea ice causing extinction of the polar bear and the walrus.
•    Spread of malaria in Africa and North America’.

The report continues:

‘A key task undertaken by some scientists contributing to the report was to calculate which greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would be enough to cause these "dangerous" temperature increases.
Currently, the atmosphere contains about 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, compared to levels before the industrial revolution of about 275ppm.

‘"For achieving the two Celsius target with a probability of more than 60%, greenhouse gas concentrations need to be stabilised at 450 ppm CO2-equivalent or below," conclude Michel den Elzen from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and Malte Meinshausen of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

‘"A stabilisation at 450 ppm CO2-equivalent requires global emissions to peak around 2015, followed by substantial overall reductions in the order of 30%-40% compared to 1990 levels in 2050."

‘But, speaking on Today, the UK government's chief scientific advisor Sir David King said that is unlikely to happen.

‘"We're going to be at 400 parts per million in 10 years time, I predict that without any delight in saying it," he said.  "But no country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem - we have to accept that. To aim for 450 (ppm) would, I am afraid, seem unfeasible."’

As we ordinary folk are well aware, the remedies are not nearly as complex as the processes behind the problems.  The science, it would seem, is not the issue.  Bert Mertz & Detlef van Vuuren of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency explain:

"For all stabilisation strategies, the biggest problem does not seem to be the technologies or the costs, but overcoming the many political, social and behavioural barriers to implementing mitigation options.  There is a multitude of potential obstacles, ranging from lack of awareness, vested interests, prices not reflecting environmental impacts, cultural and behavioural barriers to change and, in the case of spreading technologies to developing countries, the lack of an effective enabling environment for new investments."

With the exception of the persistence of revolutionary Marxism in dwindling corners of the world, all current political doctrines seeking change & development are concerned with reform.  So overwhelming is the cataclysm that currently attends the passing of the crucial ‘tipping point’ that no process of reform, no system tinkering can even begin to address practically the issues that will arise. 

This is an open secret. Our governments are in denial; we, the people, are in denial.  Our leaders hope that by convening conferences & leaning earnestly over lecterns inveighing against those even less ready to embrace revolutionary change than they are, hot air will lower global temperature.  We hope that by putting out the bottles & the newspapers & turning the lights off before we leave for work, the ice will remain inviolate & the tides will withdraw.

I am as big a hypocrite as you are. I veer between dry-mouthed panic, steely resolve & abject denial.  I seek to moderate my lifestyle so as to lessen its impact on the natural environment, whilst at the same time placidly indulging my right to drive my car when I might take public transport.

And, like you, I am engaged in a continuing battle against that most insidious & corrosive conviction – that there is nothing that I can do that will make an iota of difference to the grand picture. That the overwhelming horror is the direct product of the greed of the few & the helplessness of the many.

Well, whilst the first belief has firm foundations, the second does not. What shall we, the many, do, & when..? 

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be.
Socrates

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais Nin

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
Mahatma Gandhi

I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the one who sold it. 
Will Rogers

Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Anonymous

More revision as I go through the collection of poems prior to transferring them to a new archive.

LIGHT

What makes light, wakes us;
what shapes light guides us
inside days. We drink it through
our skin; we are wet with its

silver scales. It sticks through holes
like big nails, scratches us
and we bleed light back. 
It squirts out of sudden

conduits: broken windows,
shifted curtains, open doors.
It drips from leaves, cleaning
them greener, slides like mercury

released; it flows up slopes
and hides behind shadows. 
Light must spill over all
we are and all we do. 

Light alone survives us.
We die in open places
and light will shine
our bones the whiter.

pic from: www.krazydad.com/gustavog/

Well, there we are. Done & dusted. The Circus Maximus is closed & the mob has dispersed.  Chantelle, the Essex ingenue, the rank outsider who was the sure fire winner from the outset, has won.  The glitzy fantasy of the rainy Sunday afternoon movie has been enacted for real. And shameless & guilt-free, pretending not a trace of weary irony or detached sociological observation, I loved every glorious moment of it & will now feel oddly bereft at 9.00 pm for a number of evenings to come.

Final brief reflections.  For 3 weeks the majority of the contestants turned their backs on the world of the omnipresent paparazzi, the heads turned in the street, the premieres, the photoshoots, the reserved table at the Ivy, the limo at the door, & they entered the plush prison.  Suddenly celebrity, past or present, was of absolutely no account.  No press cuttings were waved in their faces, no job offers were 'phoned through by their agents, no in-depth interviews or chat show ego massages were on the menu.  No place to hide, no one to hide behind.  And although copious quantities of makeup were in daily evidence & most of the housemates spent hours wreathed in cigarette & cigar smoke, where there were benign masks, they began to slip & where there were noble souls, they began to shine.

We didn't learn anything new about the strange, persistent, repellent yet compelling phenomenon of Celebrity. The paradox of the hero's strength & power deriving from crippling inadequacy & bottomless need was entirely apparent from the start. But where one came to mock, if one didn't exactly stay to pray, one was touched by the moments of real pain, impressed by the flashes of courage & cheered by the signs of nobility.

And now all 12 housemates return to their various specialisms. And they return to the world from whence they came, the world of the omnipresent paparazzi, the heads turned in the street, the premieres, the photoshoots...  And we wonder - will Barrymore really find redemption from his 3 weeks with the cats, the snakes & the cockerels? Will George Galloway take back with him into his strange, rarified corner of the political bear garden a little humility? Will Preston & Maggot really give a toss once they're back on the road in the comparable confinment of tour bus & hotel room?  And will Chantelle survive the blandishments of what she, the non-celebrity, will now face as the most illustrious celebrity of them all..?

Sorry, O Little Gang of Mine, but - Traci Bingham & Dennis Rodman apart - what follows relates entirely to the participants in the latest UK version of Celebrity Big Brother.  But if you get a chance to see it over your side - dug out, maybe, from that tangled mass of cable channels - do not hesitate..!

A CAT, A SNAKE & A COCKEREL: LIFE IN THE BIG BROTHER HOUSE

Celebrity Big Brother.  In the UK, there appears to exist no middle ground in the public perception of this extraordinarily popular show.  It is either loved or hated. The same absence seems to be the case with respect to brows: there is decidedly no middlebrow view of the activities of these illustrious goldfish either.  The highbrow view seems to derive from a spectrum ranging from haughty disdain to explosive disgust. The lowbrow view is spectrum free: it is simply one of shameless, indulgent, fanatical absorption. 

Personally (brow positively Neanderthal) I love it - the mix of feral C-list celebs, neurotic has-beens, ravenous chancers & token normals, forced to share group isolation for 3 weeks. A medieval torture was to cast the malefactor into the sea in a sack in which were also contained a cat, a snake & a cockerel, these being seen as nature’s most malicious creatures.  A feeble penalty when compared to the joint incarceration of these walking wounded. 

Each of them – with one notable exception – is a seasoned performer.  Each one seeks, to some degree, the realisation of self through exposure to the public forum.  And, indeed, this need not be the most ignoble of ambitions. With this in mind, let's consider first the good guys. Both Preston - the man in front of, & main motive force behind, the excellent post-Two Tone band, The Ordinary Boys - & the curiously gentlemanly Maggot - member of the riotous Welsh hip-hop crew Goldie Looking Chain - appear to have modest enough goals. As musicians within the broad territory of rock and roll, they’re travelling a familiar path, enjoying some success in terms of record sales & gigging promiscuously. Both bands are characterful outfits, very clearly extensions of the multifarious talents & personalities of each of their individual members. So for Preston & Maggot, both already team players, fame is not necessarily the spur. 

And then, moist & milky from the cradle, there is Chantelle, to all surface appearances, Essex Girl by Barbie Inc., but in reality a remarkably feisty proposition, unfased by the monstrous heavyweights on the other side of the age divide.   Placed in the Big Brother house in the paper-thin guise of a member of an imaginary girl band, Paris Hilton look-alike model Chantelle has not simply survived the exposure of her non-celebrity (a condition of her remaining), but has flourished.  Ingenuous & untutored to the point of tabula rasa, & completely without natural guile, she has teetered optimistically from room to room, quite ready to fight her corner when necessary, but apparently free from rancour or grudge.

Which is more than can be said of the remaining ‘housemates’.  Recent evictions notwithstanding, there has dominated proceedings throughout a Gang of Four - Michael Barrymore, Dennis Rodman, Pete Burns & George Galloway.  These are creatures of an altogether different complexion. Within moments of the arrival of each in the Big Brother House, it was clearly apparent that there were chips being nursed, grievances being incubated, obsessions being entertained & neuroses being indulged.

Michael Barrymore saw the superstructure of an enormously successful career come crashing down in the wake of, first, the rancorous breakup of his marriage following his coming out as a gay man, & then - to the predatory delight of the media - the death of an apparently sexually ravaged young man in Barrymore's swimming pool after a coke & alcohol-fuelled party.  Barrymore's refusal to take any responsibility for the tragedy & his subsequent noisy breakdown lost him a vast fanbase almost overnight.  An attempt to revive his wrecked  career failed miserably & the kindest verdict that can be returned for his appearance in the Big Brother House is that he has hoped to schmooze his way back into the affections of the British public.

If this has been his devout wish, then he's gone about it in a strange way. Alternately weeping in secluded corners of the House (in full view of the omnipresent cameras), bursting into fragments of song & bizarre comedy routines, arguing with fellow housemates & gazing inscrutably into the middle distance with a fag on, Barrymore has emerged more as a deeply troubled melancholic with a caseload of unresolved issues on board than a revitalised family entertainer just gagging to get back on the boards. But with the finale due tomorrow, I find it difficult to prepare to consign him callously to the outer darkness from whence he came. There is also about him a sort of genuinely uncomprehending bafflement, &, much against rational judgment, I can't help seeing him - pace the dead man's family - as more sinned against than sinning.  And his sudden bravura defence of Preston & Chantelle against uncompromising attack from Galloway was genuinely thrilling.  Stalking around the room like an outraged giraffe, Barrymore simply reduced the veteran bruiser to repetitive muttering from the depths of his chair.  So where in the first week one might happily have thrown him bodily to the ravening crowds outside, now maybe judgement should be tempered with mercy.

Any who held their breath awaiting the greening of Dennis Rodman will now be on oxygen support.  Whether stalking, cruising, lying in wait or simply inert on a sofa, Rodman has displayed all the sensitivity & grace of a grizzly bear awakening from sedation.  Attempts at verbal communication have been massively hampered by the constant & curiously arbitrary interposition of swearwords.  If they were all removed from transcripts of his utterances, there would remain about half a page of A4 stationary.  Additionally, speed of delivery & an almost impenetrable accent of no clear provenance have had housemates staring blankly at him when an interrogative lilt has indicated the posing of a question.  Mendacious, manipulative & sexually obsessed, he has been a menacing & troubling presence in the House.  To her enormous credit, Chantelle would not leave alone Rodman's drawled speculation that her failure to tell the truth when quizzed about her crucial part in one of the Big Brother tasks might, in different circumstances, have 'got her face smashed in'. 

Pete Burns is one of those monsters that, initially, you love to hate. Frank to a fault & gifted with a poisonous way with words, you cringe but come back for more. And then suddenly you realise that, in fact, he's out of control. He is not a sort of street level Oscar Wilde, savage but principled, concerned only to deflate pomposity & pretense.  He's actually deeply malicious & - when in full scouse flight - determined to do maximum damage.  Unusually, through gossip & black anecdote, first he stabs his prey deeply in the back & then, when the blood's up, he sallies forth & plunges the same knife in from the front.  What malignant cocktail of needs & drives has this aging bionic ladyboy being so uninhibitedly cruel, we can only speculate.  What is psychologically fascinating is that he presents so symmetrical a balance between feminine poise & masculine aggression & yet he appears to loathe both gender with equal passion.

Finally, the indefatigable George Galloway.  Villain because of his more than cordial relations with the murdering Husseins, Sadam & Uday, & hero because of his bandstanding before the Congress interrogators, Galloway enjoys (word chosen with care) the reputation of left wing loose cannon.  Deserting his Bethnal Green flock for a month in favour of a somewhat wider constituency, Galloway claimed at the outset that his intention was to spread the anti-war/pro-old style Socialism message from the pressure cooker environment of the Big Brother House. 

Whatever one expects from one's MP, one hopes for a little savvy, a smidgen of worldly wisdom.  To the surprise of no one (save, no doubt, Gorgeous George, now he's back on the East End beat), Channel 4 - maybe with the hammering meted out to the BBC for tendentious reporting of the Iraq war in mind - simply excised any diatribe of political nature coming from the Galloway corner. So we didn't get a whisper of why Tony Blair should be impeached, or what should have happened to Saddam Hussein, or why the great Soviet experiment was betrayed by the Trotskyites.

What we did get was some of the most abrasive bullying coupled with some of the coldest & most calculating manipulation that the short but rich tradition of reality television has ever witnessed.  Nestled motionless in his armchair, Galloway's small, still, empty blue eyes watched everything.  Wreathed in Havana smoke, he absorbed the scene - the bumbling plaintiveness of Michael Barrymore, the earth mother expansiveness of Rula Lenska, the puppydog cavortings of Preston & Chantelle, the hippy-dippy cluelessness of Traci Bingham, the fawning attentiveness of Pete Burns, the predatory prowling of Dennis Rodman...  And, apparently whimsically, he cherrypicked - a friend & confidant today, his subject basking in the charismatic attention of the omniscient sage, tomorrow a hapless victim of the basilisk judge. Responding to & playing on the very frailties & vulnerabilities that lay behind their hunger for attention & acknowledgment, he tweaked their strings & then let go. Easy meat when your prey is melancholy Michael or juggernaut Jodie.  But even the centred (if somewhat luvvie) Rula & the blithely secure Preston were played on his line - let run & then reeled in.  Both were confused & then hurt.  Why should someone give & then take away?  Surely no one gains, least of all the protagonist.

Watching him at work has been something of an education in the dynamic relationship between weakness & strength in a personality.  His ability to read need in others & to exploit it betokens a kind of dark, perverse strength.  But to require the oxygen of public acclaim - or, if necessary, disapprobation - in order to respire is to be fatally flawed.  For the sense of the integrity of self to be hostage to the rapt attention of a mass audience is profoundly disquieting & I saw that particular weakness as underpinning all of his gameplaying during this fascinating two weeks.  There is, of course, an alternative scenario: that his barnstorming is propelled by the messianic certainty that he is here to bring us into the New Jerusalem; that he is, in fact, free of self-doubt.  Now that would be profoundly disquieting.  Maybe we should keep a close eye on the post Big Brother George Galloway!

Well, by midnight tomorrow it will all be over.  The Big Brother House will be empty, following the exit of the victor - almost certainly either Preston or Chantelle. For my part,  I'm indifferent as to who wins. It's unlikely to be the good guys who benefit most from the exposure, anyway.  Pete Burns will get his chat show & the minor celebs will queue up to be humiliated.  For all the abundant flakiness that was apparent from the start - indeed, maybe because of it - Michael Barrymore will be given his chance for televisual redemption.  Preston & Maggot will return from whence they came & The Ordinary Boys & Goldie Looking Chain will shift more units than ever. Messrs Rodman & Bingham will fly back home, their picture of Britain & its Brits forever tarnished.  As for Chantelle's media future - somewhat speculative, I'd say. It's difficult to see how or where her combination of low intellectual output & girly charm might most obviously be employed.  There is - sadly - already a Paris Hilton.  She could, of course, simply become Mrs Preston. Now, the media would love that - for a while.  Hopefully, she'll return to Essex & pick up where she left off. I'm sure she was an entirely happy soul before the producer's secretary made that first 'phone call.  And George Galloway will flourish because if justice is done & the electorate of Bethnal Green, the scales cast from their eyes, summarily unthrone him, he'll end up on Pete Burns' Late Night Lineup. And then contracts will be signed & Pete will end up on the Gorgeous George show, & so on ad infinitum & certainly ad nauseam.

Now - who's being wooed for next year's Celebrity Big Brother?  I propose a meme - UK version & US version. Which 12 celebs do you want to see sharing sack space with a cat, a snake & a cockerel..?

RERUM…

As I walked out of the doctor’s this morning, cleared – predictably, but to the relief of my paranoia - of any dread causes for the small lump & its inflamed surround on a knuckle on my right hand, I was suddenly acutely conscious of the sun on the frosty trees, the bracing sharpness of the winter air & the comfortable bustle of people in the street. 

Not an epiphanic moment exactly, but definitely one of those fragments of time out of the world when one is comprehensively aware that the moment is all there is.  That the past becomes a fiction even as the present slips backwards, & the future is pure speculation, its validity hostage to any imponderable from the heart attack to the End of Days.  The light shines only now…& now; time past & time to come live in darkness.

Caught between the 5 minutes with the doctor & the empty hour in front of me, I took a deep breath & walked up Bancroft towards the town centre, caught – temporarily, of course – in the bubble of the moment.

.o0o.

Tonight is bell practise night at St Mary Magdalene, the Offley parish church (picture above). With the TV turned down low so as to hear if one of the kids wakes up, the sound of the bells drifts in & out of range on the edge of the wind.  It’s the most beautiful of sounds. It has none of the careful symmetry of music. The order of notes seems almost arbitrary & the spacing between each one has a glorious, organic inexactness about it. I imagine the six ringers standing in their Masonic circle, bending at the waist as they tug their ropes, united in their conspiracy of Plain Bob Doubles, Stedman Doubles, Grandsire Triples & Surprise Majors. 

.o0o.

There is still no word from the Radio Userland grease monkeys, the guys who go down below when RU springs a leak.  I was hoping that by now Lawrence or Steve might have taken a monkey wrench to the steam valve & cleared the blockage that continues to deny me access to my Salonista friends. His Loveliness Doctor Omed has expressed interest in some sort of alternative hosting arrangement so that our band of square pegs that gathers regularly around each other’s blogs might be better accommodated.  If the desire & the intention were to formalise the sense of community, then the problem would be the centralising of such a setup so as to provide the kinds of facilities that – when the choice has to be made – presently has Salon members renewing their subscriptions, the shortcomings of Loserland notwithstanding.

I’m unclear as to how it comes to pass, but non-Salon blogs show up regularly in the Recently Updated Weblogs list.  If this could be managed for the diaspora blogs (& I know some research is being done towards this end), then I guess a sort of de facto community might simply emerge within the penumbra of Salon.  A name, a logo, an identifying phrase or sentence might appeal, even if only ironically adopted!

.o0o.

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
St. Augustine

Most of the shadows of life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
Tao Te Ching

Emma & Reuben outside the Red Lion, Great Offley

I was going to post some more photos & a little resume of Reuben & Rosie's general progress tonight. But a single mother friend with a 2-year-old son 'phoned at about 9.00, distressed & lonely, & it's now 11.20 & I'm falling asleep over the keyboard.

Hers is not a  tale to be blogged. It's a grim, but all too common one & I'm struck, as I always am when we speak, by her courage, fortitude & humour, even when circumstances are particularly bleak. Suffice it to say, there are times when I wish it were possible somehow to disenfranchise myself, so to speak, from those aspects of masculinity that draw efforetlessly, it seems, on casual, brutish cruelty.

Anyway, D. is coming over tomorrow with her son so I hope that between us R & R & I (Emma's at work) can provide a little support.  (Maybe I'd better give Reuben a day's break from potty training...)

LIFE IN THE OUTER DARKNESS

Well, I don't know how my ex-Salon blogger companions feel about their self-imposed exile, but, after a couple of weeks here in the regions of outer darkness, I have decidedly mixed feelings.

I am, in the first instance, delighted so far with Typepad. After Loserland's perversities, its ease of operation, versatility & general rationality of design are a joy. Typepad’s qualities have made the difference between jacking it in, at least for a time, & carrying on more or less seamlessly. I know that in 17 days I shall have to shell out a first payment, but, on present performance, it will be a small sacrifice to make.

But I miss already the sense of community, the experience of a shared territory - the doorstep, the stoop, the garden fence.  And, as time goes by & the indifference or helplessness of Loserland customer services becomes increasingly evident, I resent being denied access to all my Salon friends.

As for those all-important hits, which indicate whether the whole raison d'etre of the blogging process is coming to pass, it's too early to judge whether there's any fall-off. Old friends are visiting &, happily, those lines of communication have been unaffected by the move. But there are some initial indications of its being a tighter circle of communicants now.

My weblog has never been, nor never will be, a stadium, a grandstand. I wish I had Meg's or Birdie's ability to hold communion with a broad constituency without for a moment compromising the wit, character or intelligence of their blogs.  But, like most of us, I plough a narrow furrow - a bit of politicking, some poetry, pics of my kids, some meme-play & the odd gag. We all have what the medievalists used to call our 'peculiar' &, with it, we're going to locate & keep contact with others who share it, or, at the least, are charmed by it.

I'm content with this. Sufficient unto the day, & all that.  But - although I'm a somewhat diffident soul, something of a loner, even - paradoxically, I've always been a communitarian too. Maybe it's down to my family's open door policy during my formative years, or my somewhat eccentric schooling, but I cherish the sense of being part of a like-minded convocation of people & Salon has certainly provided that during my first 3 years of blogging.

Well, early days yet. It's possible that something may stir in the underground labs & workshops of the Loserland complex & the wires will be re-attached. But I shan’t renew my Salon membership, due, I believe, next month, & I shall persevere with the Typepad blog.  When time permits, I shall continue my glacially slow self-education in html &, as time passes, I shall gradually adapt the site accordingly.  The mix of content will remain the same because, for better or worse, it represents my ‘peculiar’ & ever will do. And hopefully, gentle reader, you’ll be there the share it…