NTodd Has A Blog?

'Til then

I walk alone.


PS - this is a test to see if I can publish changes to an existing post.

PPS - test successful.  So currently, I cannot post new content (getting 502s).  Been that way since Friday, 4/12, and support has been...suboptimally efficient.

PPPS - my support person is friendly and good, just what you want from support.  My main bitch is that there seem to be no SLAs, let alone proactive monitoring, or anything much that can help isolate an issue.  This isn't the first time a problem has taken many days to resolve, and in contrast to Blogger, which cost me 0 dollars a month, this is a paid service.

Can you picture what will be?

The End:

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

 

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

 

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

Mark Strand.

#throwbackthursday

4 years ago this week, just before I returned home for the first time in months.  Yeah, we're better off now.

Surrender, surrender

Mother told me, yes she told me...

Strikes One

Chord:

A man steps out of sunlight,

sunlight that streams like grace,

 

still gaping at blue sky

staked across the emptiness of space,

 

into a history where shadows

assume a human face.

 

A man slips into silence

that began as a cry,

 

still trailing music

although reduced to the sigh

 

of an accordion

as it folds into its case.

Stuart Dybek.

it burns, burns, burns

But I hear there are creams for that.

don't give yourself away

My Lady Surrenders:

How did She abdicate?
Was it with soft sighs,
And pretty feignings of a lover's state?
Or was it solemn-wise,
With altar offerings and rapt vows?
Oh, no!—when Love himself was there
Most housewifely she bound her hair,
And was off across the fields to milk the cows.

Anna Wickham.

I am curious

Don't want to hurry us.

syzygy

Eclipse with Object:

There is a spectacle and something is added to history.

It has as its object an indiscretion: old age, a

gun, the prevention of sleep.

 

I am placed in its stead

and the requisite shadow is yours.

It casts across me, a violent coat.

 

It seems I fit into its sleeve.

So the body wanders.

Sometime it goes where light does not reach.

 

You recall how they moved in the moon dust? Hop, hop.

What they said to us from that distance was stupid.

They did not say I love you for example.

 

The spectacle has been placed in my room.

Can you hear its episode trailing,

pretending to be a thing with variegated wings?

 

Do you know the name of this thing?

It is a rubbing from an image.

The subject of the image is that which trespasses.

 

You are invited to watch. The body

in complete dark casting nothing back.

The thing turns and flicks and opens.

Ann Lauterbach.

Fear is the lock

...and laughter the key to your heart.

However Far Away

Love Poem:

Beware of the amber error that is love,
Amber and mass of its continent,
And of all the connecting errors which make
                                      wandering loveable:

Though you glare with the volume
And lethargy of a head,
Though the bird escape, and that disc
That was going to be your fame:
You shall not leave me for mortal.

Though you perish in saying of speeches,
Sainted in your own eyes
For all of the terrible animals
That come into your eyes like ingots,

Yet here is the cracking of the bears of your fears,
The continent and darker hiding
Than self or other vertebrate.

Some eyes look up to our windows,
The quails of courtesy in them.
Or they watch with a calmness of canisters
Our morals passing like diamonds.

Rosalie Moore.

The Ole Double Nickel

Lots of folk mark today as the Internet's 55th birthday because of RFC 1, but from where I sit that's just the conception date.  It was a big deal, no doubt, but they all they did was write some shit down.

I submit Al Gore's information superhighway was born when the first real connection was made later in the fall.  Yeah, I'm contrary that way.  And the Internet gives me the platform to say so.

Maybe it's like the difference between Western and Eastern orthodox celebrations of Easter.  Whatever, imma watch Iowa/SC via streaming that was never imagined back in '69...

No love lost for lost loves

Yeah, I think I'm gonna like this one.

پرندے کی فریاد

The Bird's Complaint:

I am constantly reminded of the bygone times
Those garden’s springs, those chorus of chimes

Gone are the freedoms of our own nests
Where we could come and go at our own pleasure

My heart aches the moment I think
Of the buds' smile at the dew's tears

That beautiful figure, that Kamini's form
Which source of happiness in my nest did form

I do not hear those lovely sounds in my cage now
May it happen that my freedom be in my own hands now!

Spring has arrived, the flower buds are laughing
On my misfortune in this dark house I am wailing

O God, To whom should I relate my tale of woe?
I fear lest I die in this cage with this woe!

Since separation from the garden the condition of my heart is such
My heart is waxing the grief, my grief is waxing the heart

O Listeners, considering this music do not be happy
This call is the wailing of my wounded heart

O the one who confined me make me free
A silent prisoner I am, earn my blessings free

Allama Iqbal.

Stand back when the spirit comes

Looking forward to the new album in a couple weeks.  Think I'll stick to the familiar tonight, maybe post the first single on the morrow. Anyway, happy birthday, McCready.

Break With Muttered Wondering

The Kiss of Stillness:

I have forgotten skies that moan
And in the stress of wild storms tremble;
Cliffs that slowly cold and sunshine
Try, and shatter, and dissemble.

Tumult clanging through tall towns
Is hurrying life I cannot keep;
And pain as terrible as fire
Is like an unremembered sleep.

Then as the stillness, like a lover
Lingering, with full love lingers,
Suddenly and strange I feel
Along my throat her cool white fingers.

I am one with every stone,
I am one with every seed,
Mingled with the air and earth,
Woven into man and weed.

I am the rhythms of the ocean,
I am dawns of aeoned peace.
I am man before his coming.
I am Egypt. I am Greece.

The singing of the starlight, I,
And I am man when he is gone.
All living things that breathe and die,
All being, lonely and alone.

Richard Eberhart.

"I speak for all mediocrities in the world."

Seen on Reddit: "This is like a piano concerto that wants to be Mozart when it grows up."

Mount the Light and Ride Joined With Hope

A Plagued Journey:

Through all the bright hours   

I cling to expectation, until   

darkness comes to reclaim me

as its own. Hope fades, day is gone   

into its irredeemable place

and I am thrown back into the familiar   

bonds of disconsolation.

Gloom crawls around

lapping lasciviously

between my toes, at my ankles,   

and it sucks the strands of my   

hair. It forgives my heady   

fling with Hope. I am

joined again into its

greedy arms.

Maya Angelou.

#throwbackthursday

I wasn't the world's greatest stopper, but I was the scrawniest.

Opportunity

What you see?  That's your destiny.

Just Another

Today:

Today the sun rose, as it used to do

When its mission was to shine on you.

Since in unrelenting dark you're gone,

What now can be the purpose of  the sun?

Daniel G. Hoffman.

Just Keep Swimming

Woof, it was a rough day at AWS.  My team was impacted, and a number of wonderful, talented colleagues and friends woke up today locked out of their computers with an email breaking the news in their personal inboxes.

My current training cohort is shell shocked because my partner in running the show was among those let go.  This is now the second time settling nerves of my early career learners in the last couple years.  I instructed them to focus on self-care today, and we'd figure out how to move forward when the dust settles a bit.

My first layoff experience dates way back to 1992, six months into my first real job.  Today was my 10th round in a 32-year career.  Good news is that I'm batting .900 (and the one I didn't survive was partially due to my own frank advice to leadership).

Just another day in capitalism.  That college course on Marxist thought came in handy today.

For now, I'm watching my Celtics play the SuperSonics as they try for their 60th win this season...

Love comes to you and you follow

Lose one, on to the heart of the sunrise.

All I want my life reflecting

A Chant:

Gently the petals fall as the tree gently sways
That has known many springs and many petals fall
Year after year to strew the green deserted ways
And the statue and the pond and the low, broken wall.

Faded is the memory of old things done,
Peace floats on the ruins of ancient festival;
They lie and forget in the warmth of the sun,
And a sky silver-blue arches over all.

O softly, O tenderly, the heart now stirs
With desires faint and formless; and, seeking not, I find
Quiet thoughts that flash like azure kingfishers
Across the luminous, tranquil mirror of the mind.

J. C. Squire.

Minty Fresh

Surprisingly, I'm actually getting caught up on myriad things on the work and home fronts.  Still not quite enough space for putting much thought into bloggy stuff, but I cannot let this date pass without making a casual nod to one of my favorite Federal institutions: the US Mint, 232 years young today.

All you crypto bro weirdos can keep your stupid BitCoins...

 

He is Risen

Happy TDOV to all who celebrate.

Now and in time to be

Easter, 1916:

I have met them at close of day   

Coming with vivid faces

From counter or desk among grey   

Eighteenth-century houses.

I have passed with a nod of the head   

Or polite meaningless words,   

Or have lingered awhile and said   

Polite meaningless words,

And thought before I had done   

Of a mocking tale or a gibe   

To please a companion

Around the fire at the club,   

Being certain that they and I   

But lived where motley is worn:   

All changed, changed utterly:   

A terrible beauty is born.

William Butler Yeats.

I see we made it through another day

Now the night will throw its cover down.

every flight a posture torn from stone

Where Are the Days of Tobias:

Radiance, we know, is never quite as warm as light.

Who has not tasted the silver in sea mist?

Whosever they are, angels are the first to surface there.

You know a guardian by the silver of a river-crossing,

of a father’s filmy eyes, in gall, heart, fire,

and mostly smoke. In smoke and mostly mirror.

As, wedged between forward and backward being,

rehashing and planning ahead, presence will be specked again

with being erased, a reusable writing surface

calling down to the life without rest, the self-propelled

surveillances of sharks.

Sarah Gridley.

Beyoncé is giving that girl some trouble

I like it.  So does Dolly.

stars split, fade, wander in cosmic expansion

In the Next Next World:

After the great fire we

 

tread river’s late cream and flare.

 

We woke in a city.

 

Where who slew us into portions

 

on a block out of earth

 

gathered our limbs 

 

and we were allowed to continue 

 

unhunted. If “if” is the one word one is given with God 

 

to explain how one survived.

 

Oh.  Ah.  Siren,

 

white cockatoo

 

meets deep

 

blue. 

 

Fog.  Pour ammonia

 

on coyote 

 

scat.

Gillian Conoley.

Double Secret Safe Harbor

Gillen is incorrectly stating that Georgia did not meet its obligations under federal law with respect to certifying the election and appointing electors. Only Wisconsin did not meet the Safe Harbor deadline in 2020.

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) March 28, 2024

Suddenly reminded of Bush v Gore:

If we are to respect the legislature's Article II powers, therefore, we must ensure that postelection state-court actions do not frustrate the legislative desire to attain the "safe harbor" provided by § 5.

The Rehnquist Court took the Safe Harbor date as sacrosanct, but it really isn't.  MAGA's favorite whipping horse, Hawaii in 1960, is instructive:

[I]n Hawaii, when the recount resolved in the Democratic candidate’s favor (President John F. Kennedy) on December 28, and only after a court affirmed the process, the Governor of Hawaii re-certified the election and appointed the Democratic slate of electors. It was this official certification of the Democratic electors that was counted in the Electoral College tally on January 6, 1961.

But in 2000, SCOTUS reallyreallyreally wanted to stop the recount in Florida.  Odd, that...

The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind

Just another mad, mad day on the road.