Haiku: the sky closes for repairs

colors surrender

the sky closes for repairs

while the mountains rot

Min Tull. Saturday. October 20. 2018. Featuring Maggie Astor of the New York Times.;

[Min Tull -- which means 'My Nonsense' in Norwegian -- is a burlesque of Karl Ove Knausgaard's runaway bestseller 'My Struggle' -- which has now stretched into six volumes, and threatens to grow even larger. In it he details his protagonist's Nordic life from childhood on up in a way that would have caused Proust's mustachios to bristle even more. It is so ludicrously detailed and self-serving that it demands to be lampooned. Besides, I have nothing else to do today except make a tuna salad for tomorrow's Sunday brunch  . . . ]

I arrived in Williston, North Dakota, on a blustery spring morning in 1980. My friend from Brown Institute of Broadcasting, Dewey Moede, had lined up the News Director job at KGCX Radio for me. I took an immediate shine to the place. The men wore overalls with cowboy hats, the women, the older ones, all woofed out a loud "Uff-da!" whenever they sat down after a long spell in the kitchen making spitzen. The young women were blonde and freckled and had sharp blue eyes that promised nothing but hinted at much; but none of them, when I arrived, were my particular brand of Christian. I was leery of dating out of my Church, because, at the time, I was an insufferable snob.  And I was obsessed with making a good marriage -- had been ever since I returned from my 2 year mission in Thailand.

To me North Dakota is the Land of New Beginnings. It's where I began my new, and brief, career as a newsman. The air, before fracking acid fouled it, smelled of sage and Canadian ozone and optimism. I met my wife Amy there, at Church the week after she graduated from BYU and took a teaching position up in Tioga. I learned to be pugnacious about my Norwegian heritage, instead of making deprecating jokes about it --  I always had Mrs. Olson's Lefse in the fridge and gobbled lutefisk with butter sauce at every Lutheran basement supper I went to (I could always count on a news story from the pastor about how far behind they were on the church mortgage.) Just like there is comfort food, there is also comfort space -- and for me that comfort space is North Dakota. I lived there with Amy and our growing family for fifteen years, off and on. I was usually off with the circus and Amy was usually on the lookout for a few extra dollars to keep the kids clothed and stuffed with potatoes and macaroni -- lefse was too expensive once our children started to arrive -- although Amy made it herself every Christmas.

During my tenure at KGCX I went to a news conference where the Governor, Arthur A. Link, announced plans to run for a second term. I ran into a reporter from the New York Times there -- back in those days they flew reporters hither and yon at the drop of an inverted pyramid just for a few paragraphs 'from the heartland.' I don't remember that particular reporter's name -- all I remember is that he told me he was a general assignment reporter -- a 'legman' he called himself -- who had been dragooned into coming out to the back of beyond to get a quote from Governor Link -- and he was nearly in tears over the fact that there were no bagels or Dr. Brown's Celery Tonic to be had. I tried to interest him in some rolled up lefse with butter and cinnamon sugar inside, but he was having none of it. He was smoking a long dark green cigar that could have come out of the hind end of a calf.  

 Which is why, in a roundabout way, I was interested to read a story about North Dakota in today's New York Times -- which I have gotten an online subscription to for $9.50 per month for one year, after which it goes up to $19.50 per month. I have been trying for months to get one of the reporters I know there, like John Schwartz or Dennis Overbye, to gift me with a free online subscription like Bob Davis did at the Wall Street Journal when I told him I couldn't afford the subscription rates anymore. But these NYT journalists are pretty tough customers -- they don't fall for my sob story about being on a fixed income and having to economize just to buy Metamucil. 

 The piece is by Maggie Astor, a political reporter. She's reporting on the disenfranchisement of North Dakota native Americans by a new voting law that requires a photo ID, like a driver's license, and doesn't accept a P.O. box as a legitimate address. Many North Dakotans don't have a street address on their ID, only a Post Office box -- and that's especially true of Native Americans living on North Dakota reservations. So, in effect, they are shut out from  voting for the next Senator from North Dakota -- which, according to Astor, could determine if the Senate gets a Democratic majority or not.    

So I had to pen a limerick, which I call a Timerick, about it:

A guy in the county of Steele

was told that his ID ain't real;

unable to vote,

he gave this fine quote:

"Is citizenship prone to repeal?"

Astor's article is concise and informative. I don't believe she actually went to North Dakota for the story. From the way it's written she probably telephoned a few people in the state, and the final paragraph quotes an email from the ND Secretary of State that "he wrote in a response that his office provided to The New York Times on Thursday."  I'm assuming it was an email -- it may have been by carrier pigeon.

Long distance journalism, done by email, texting, and phone calls, is pretty standard for most newspaper stories today -- even for the New York Times, the last of the journalistic Big Time Spenders. I've been interviewed twice by the NYT in the last several years, and it was by phone. Nobody flew out to get the facts from me, face to face. I've also done several radio and podcast interviews in the last 3 years -- all on the phone. This encourages rambling hyperbole, on my part. Talking to a stranger on a cellphone brings out the fantasist in me. 

In the past I have emailed my poems directly to the reporters themselves, but lately I have sent them the link to my blog where the poem about their story is posted. That's what I'm doing with Astor; she won't get the actual poem based on her story -- if she wants to read it she'll have to click on the link and come here for it. Chances are good that she won't bother -- the most common response I get from reporters, and others I email a link to, is that with hacking so prevalent they don't want to take a chance on clicking on a link that might introduce a virus into their smartphone or laptop. This is a sorry state of affairs, know what I mean Vern? 

******************************

The raven is a noble bird, but still I do not trust it.

It's thieving ways are quite well known, and royalty has cussed it.

Tradition may insist the bird is sacred to the scholar;

from what I've seen it's better called a sneaky feathered brawler.

*************************************************************************

"Personally, I think that Torkildson fellah has a screw loose."

Haiku: hardened with neglect

harvested pumpkins

tumbled roughly at the store:

hardened with neglect

Haiku: colorful sepulcher

autumn is merely

the colorful sepulcher

of a single leaf

Haiku: this fissured living

this fissured living

of mine gets better at night

when candles make sense

Haiku: the brown creeps onward

the brown creeps onward

to end the verdant daydreams

of stripling summer

Alex Stamos and the Stanford Internet Observatory -- The Country is Being Overrun by Dumb White People -- #MeToo Comes of Age in India

Silicon Valley has made strides in battling disinformation since the Russian interference, Stamos said. But foreign hackers could still alter the outcome of an American election, including the coming congressional midterm vote.

Washington Post

A hacker from far overseas

our midterm elections did seize.

Despite the large vote

he put in a goat

that now sits in Congress at ease.

************************************

A black man arrived at the entrance to the building where he lives in St. Louis late Friday night only to find himself blocked by a white neighbor who demanded proof he lived there.   NYT

The stupider white folk become

the more they are growing too numb

to ever discern

we're put here to learn

respect is a good rule of thumb.

************************************

NEW DELHI — A junior minister in the Indian government stepped down after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, delivering the first major victory to the country’s nascent #MeToo movement.  Washington Post.  

A lecherous man from Pune

did finally meet Judgement Day

when his victims told

of his misdeeds bold

and had his job taken away.

"If things get any worse I'm gonna move to Norway."

Artificial Intelligence is Writing Our Novels

It’s probably too early to add “novelist” to the long list of jobs that artificial intelligence will eliminate. But if you watch Mr. Sloan at work, it is quickly clear that programming is on the verge of redefining creativity.    NYT

A writer filled up a bookcase

with novels as thin as shoe lace

by having AI

fill in on the sly

with copy that no one could trace.

Min Tull. (A Burlesque of Karl Ove Knausgaard's 'Min Kamp.') Thursday. October 18. 2018. Featuring Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer

5:10 p.m
I actually started this much earlier today. But, like a time traveler, I have brought the future into the present because I want to feature 2 reporters from the Wall Street Journal:  Jacob Bunge and Lucy Craymer  before I go back to this morning's events. I have often written poems about their separate stories, but today they team- wrote an article called America Struggles to Take it's Pigs to World's Biggest Market. They work well together, so I am featuring a poem about their story here at the beginning, instead of at the end, of today's chapter. Because I will email them both with the link to this page in the hopes they'll both click on it, read their names here, and become so enchanted with my stellar prose and indefinable genius that they will tell all their other reporter friends and I can collect that Nobel Prize sooner than expected and pay off a few bookies:

 China has the world’s biggest appetite for pork. It’s such a beloved staple that the written Chinese character for “home” depicts a pig inside a house. U.S. producers banked on that business being around for years.

That’s changed. As a result of the Trump administration’s clash with Beijing over trade, China’s tariffs on U.S. pork have climbed as high as 70%, making U.S. imports more expensive. At the same time, an outbreak of African swine fever in China has increased demand for imported pork.

To fill the void, Chinese customers are increasingly looking to companies in Europe and South America to fill their orders    @WSJ

The world is in love with all swine.

In China tis a valentine.

But Uncle Sam's pork,

just like a school dork,

is shunted aside like strychnine. 

******************************

9:01 a.m.
Let's start with a list of what old people, people I know personally, obsess about:

• Two men that I know can think of little else but of how the religion of their youth, to which they gave much time, service, and money, has let them down. They searche online relentlessly for feel-good songs and philosophy courses to assuage their guilt at losing their spark of faith. 
• A woman I've known for five years has a thing for Rush Limbaugh. She buys all his CDs, books, and listens to him religiously, then mass emails everyone she knows about the latest hidden government conspiracy. 
• An 83 year old man who I admire as the best handyman and craftsman I've ever known can't get it out of his head that the Utah Transportation Authority is riddled with corruption, from top to bottom, and has corrupted every single public official in Utah Valley. 
• And older woman, known throughout Provo for her kindnesses and charity, insists that Trevo liquid nutritional supplement is all anyone needs to regain their health, and will cure things like cancer, leukemia, arthritis, diabetes, and so forth. She is so hipped on this elixir that she surreptitiously puts it in her lemonade in the summer, which she serves to all her guests, and in her famous squash soup in the winter, which is featured as a great treat all winter long at Relief Society meetings up and down Utah Valley. I lived in her unheated basement for nearly 2 years, and know whereof I speak. I seen her dood it.

Charles Dickens nailed the subject in David Copperfield with the character of Mr. Dick, who could never get the thought of King Charles' head out of his mind. I'm having some cards printed up to pass out to all the tedious windbags I know that reads:  "Beware of King Charles' head -- It is happening to you!"

I also know plenty of regular old people who are not nutty. My friend Clara spends her days puttering around her apartment, dusting, writing birthday cards to her numerous grand children, crocheting mittens and hats, and driving others around for shopping and to go see a movie. She never seems to obsess or brood about anything. When I see her in the hallway I can be sure she won't buttonhole me to tell me a story she's told me before or to warn me that there's a yeti up on Y Mountain. 

My considered opinion is that people who begin to obsess as they grow older should give up thinking altogether, buy a cheap pocket knife, and take to whittling, like Jed Clampett. Just think of all the sticks and twigs that could be turned into useful mulch if all these compulsive old coots sat outside on nice days whittling instead of slinking about with their idiotic neurosis. 

And that includes me, too. I know very well I obsess about food. Just yesterday I spent most of my mental energies on fretting over whether I should make chicken and dumplings for Sunday brunch or an antipasto salad. I went so far as to buy a stewing hen, for six dollars, which I stuck in the freezer. But as I reviewed all the tedious steps to making chicken and dumplings, which I'd have to do Sunday morning, compared to the ease of throwing together an antipasto salad on Saturday and tucking it away in the fridge, ready to serve on Sunday, I realized that I was whipsawing with myself over a trifle. But I'm not the only one with manic tendencies when it comes to food. My friend in Thailand sent me this email this morning:

My dinner salads are getting better by the week.'

Brocoli

Tomotoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Onions

Black olives

Pinto beans

Salt 

Pepper

Balsamic Vinegar

Olive Oil

Apple Cider Vinegar (Bragg's)

Pan Fried Chicken, marinated in Salt/Pepper (no breading)

Sunflower seeds

Raisins...

If that salad doesn't add 20 years to my life, nothing will!!

My night caps are freshmade lime squeeze drinks...it's my new regular drink of choice...

But then again, this is the Age of the Diet. Everyone has one or is considering going on one.  Reader's Digest just posted an article called 'The Diet That Could Stop Cancer From Spreading.'  The writer basically says eat beans, tomatoes, squash, and tofu, and stay away from dairy and red meat. Bathe in olive oil. Avoid sugar like an opioid. And eat ghost peppers like there's no tomorrow. And you might feel better, poop better, sleep better, and when the cancer finally kills you you'll be in much better shape.

I think I'd rather whittle. People with too much time on their hands and food in their bellies invent diets. I bet this type of thing doesn't happen on other inhabited worlds, of which there are many. They're probably laughing their heads off at us right now on Kolob.   

Eschatology aside, we now come to the dedication of this chapter of Min Tull. I offered to dedicate it to a friend who emailed me about my vinegar pool and the carbon footprint it makes -- which I think is an excellent point to pursue. So I told him that in gratitude I would dedicate the next installment of my book to him -- for a small fee. He thought I was funning, so didn't send me anything. That's tough for him, cuz I meant it. I can have quite a racket if I can get readers to pay me ten dollars to dedicate a chapter to them. And since my pal decided not to get on the bandwagon, I hereby dedicate this chapter to Karl Dodge, an old missionary companion from Thailand, who told me a story about how his dad kept an old horse fenced inside a small apple orchard, where it ate all the windfalls and cropped the grass around the trees. I have often cheered myself with that mental image, of a sway backed nag happily chomping wormy apples under a blue mountain sky. Thanks, Karl. 

So, my good readers, if you wish to become immortalized in this budding classic narrative of inanity, just mail me a money order or do a wire transfer for ten dollars. And if you DON'T send me ten dollars, you mingy readers, I will mention your name ANYWAY, in some terrible way that will embarrass you completely and forever. Call it blackmail if you want -- I gotta pay for my foodie obsession somehow. 

Now I'm gonna take a walk down to the Provo Rec Center to stir up my bowels and get in a swim. The ambient temperature outside right now is 55 degrees, with partly cloudy skies. Very light wind. I can see thistledown lazily floating by my patio window. And the vinegar pond looks to be down about a pint from yesterday. According to most online sources, it can't freeze unless it gets below 28 degrees and stays there a while. So it will act as a thermometer this winter -- if there's ice on my vinegar pool I'll know it's 28 degrees outside, or less. That's an old Boy Scout trick I learned from Vlasic.  

"Darn fool waste of time, that's what it is!"

Anne Kadet Writes About Living on Minimum Wage in New York City, for the Wall Street Journal, and Poetry Ensues

Anne Kadet writes about, and is obsessed with, New York City. She has never petted a wombat.

Back in 2012, when workers in New York City started demonstrating to demand a $15 minimum wage, the appeal struck many as unrealistic, if not downright bonkers. But by the end of the year, $15 will be the new minimum for most of the city’s hourly workers.  Anne Kadet, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

To live in New York City takes no money, none at all.

It takes appreciation of Central Park trees in the fall.

Wages don't deliver any kind of happy spree

when you can take a ferry to see Lady Liberty.

Who needs to go to Sardi's to enjoy a pleasant meal?

Take an apple with you to the MoMa -- it's ideal!

A subway token takes you on a magic carpet ride;

you may wind up in Brooklyn with a Bobov by your side.

Oh, money has its uses and a decent wage is good;

but window shopping still is free in SoHo neighborhood.
If my thoughts seem callow it's because I haven't been
to New York City since before they first invented sin . . . 

"I'd rather live in Flatbush."