It seems like yesterday

For those of you who don't read Silverback's blog regularly, his post yesterday was a tribute to the crew of the Challenger space shuttle that exploded on January 28, 1986, twenty-eight years ago.

The crew consisted of Francis R. (Dick) Scobee (commander), Michael J. Smith (pilot), Judith A. Resnik (mission specialist), Ronald E. McNair (mission specialist), Ellison S. Onizuka (mission specialist), Gregory P. Jarvis (payload specialist), and Sharon Christa McAuliffe (schoolteacher). The last two were civilans, not employees of the Federal Government, and they are the ones in the center of the back row in this photograph:


I don't know whether it is still the same, but launches from Cape Canaveral used to have a tremendously exhilarating effect on people living in Florida. Mrs. RWP and I watched one from a balcony in New Smyrna Beach, 28 miles north of the Cape, and it was spectacular. Another time we were staying in Kissimmee with friends at their condo for a week, and one morning the four of us decided to drive down to see another couple in Winter Haven. We had turned south off I-4 onto U.S. 27 and were somewhere between Haines City and Lake Wales when we saw a shuttle rising off to the east along the coast. We must have been 75 miles as the crow flies from the Cape, but it was clear as day and a beautiful sight.

I will never forget the nighttime launch of Apollo 17 as long as I live. We were living in Boca Raton and the children were small. The launch had been delayed a bit earlier in the evening, so we had put the children to bed, but we woke them about twenty minutes after midnight and took them out into the back yard, not really knowing what we might be able to see. Way off to the north the sky was filled with clouds, but when the big Saturn V rocket lifted off at 12:33 a.m., the entire northern sky was lit up like day. Apollo 17 appeared to be very close, five or ten miles away, maybe just up the road in Delray Beach, but it was 175 miles to the north. It was a sight I shall always remember. Here is a photo of the launch site itself:


Perhaps even more thrilling than seeing a shuttle launch, though, was feeling one. Mrs. RWP and I saw -- and felt -- one daytime shuttle launch from the middle of the Indian River, having ridden down from New Smyrna Beach with a few others on a “luncheon cruise” with leaping dolphins for company and an occasional cormorant standing on a post in mid-river drying its outspread wings.

We must have gotten within two or three miles of the launch pad, very close, when our boat was stopped by the Coast Guard at the edge of the Space Center property and we could advance no further. But what an awesome moment it was to experience the sound waves from the shuttle pass through our bodies with a roar, entering at the chest and departing at the shoulders.



I have one last memory to share with you. In 1962 I was an enlisted man in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at McCoy Air Force Base south of Orlando. Alan Sheppard had achieved fame earlier on a sub-orbital flight, and a couple of Russians had already orbited the earth, but John Glenn would become the first American to do so, circling the earth three times and traveling more than 75,000 miles in less than five hours. I suppose we were about forty or fifty miles from the launch site. As his journey began, we left our radios and televisions and rushed outdoors to see what we could see, and sure enough, there was his missile with the capsule atop, rising in the distance, just above the treetops. We watched until it was out of sight.

Is it any wonder that we return to Florida again and again?

The weather, of course, has nothing to do with it.

Today is a day like all other days, except you are there

If Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were alive today, he would be celebrating his 254th birthday.


If Lewis Carroll (born Charles Dodgson -- doesn't everyone have a nom de plume?) were alive today, he would be celebrating his 145th birthday.


If Jackson Pollock were alive today, he would be celebrating his 98th birthday.


If Jesus Christ were alive today...oh, wait, he is.

Early on a Frost-y mornin’, look away...

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. --T. S. Eliot

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
-–The Eagles


The Roads Taken
by Robert Henry Brague, 1/26/2010

Three roads triverged in a mottled wood,
And I took all three, one at a time, because
Each one doubled back on itself, and at last
I found myself alone in the clearing,
Wond’ring how that happened, wond’ring what I
Had got myself into exactly, some sort of game
Apparently, from which there is no exit,
Just more of the same, ever more and more of
The same, over and over, ad infinitum.
“Ah, said my brain, “so this is how it is,
Thinking one is making progress, moving
along nicely, only to discover at end of day
That one is back at the starting point.
If ever I manage to extricate myself from
This labyrinthine maze I will never return.”
Someone will be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Three roads triverged in a wood, and I --
I took them all ’neath the puzzled sky,
And that has made not one whit of difference.

Even prose can be poetic

Earlier this morning I was reading today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac when the whole thing turned into a rhyming poem. Today, it turns out, is the birthday of Virginia Woolf. Her first masterpiece, it said, was Mrs. Dalloway. After going on some more about Virginia Woolf (it also mentioned her To the Lighthouse and The Waves and her long essay, A Room of One’s Own), another factoid announced that today is also the birthday of the man who wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an' men / Gang aft agley” and “Should auld acquaintance be forgot, / And never brought to mind?” and “O my luve’s like a red, red rose, / That’s newly sprung in June; O my luve’s like the melodie / That’s sweetly played in tune” -- none other than Robert Burns, who, said The Writer’s Almanac, was born in 1759 in Scotland in the town of -- wait for it -- Alloway.

All of a sudden it struck me that Dalloway and Alloway rhyme and I thought of (a) my childhood friend John Galloway and (b) how the entire reading for today in The Writer’s Almanac was suddenly transformed from dull prose into a kind of lovely poem that someone like Ogden Nash might have written on a very good day.

The effect was short-lived, however, because a short final paragraph in which the writer of The Writer’s Almanac used the phrase “Burns’ poems” when any editor worth his or her salt knows it should be “Burns’s poems” brought me back to reality.

If you think “Burns’ poems” is just fine you obviously have never read The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. Strunk, who was White’s English professor at Cornell in 1919, had written the little book himself as a textbook for his classes. White re-published it in later years, adding an Introduction.

Here is Rule 1 from Will Strunk’s first chapter, Elementary Rules of Usage:


1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding ’s.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write,

Charles’s friend
Burns’s poems
the witch’s malice

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in es and is, the possessive Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness’ sake. But such forms as Moses’ laws, Isis’ temple are commonly replaced by

the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis

The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and ours have no apostrophe. Indefinite pronouns, however, use the apostrophe to show possession.

one’s rights
somebody else’s umbrella

A common error is to write it’s for its, or vice versa. The first is a contraction, meaning “it is.” The second is a possessive.

It’s a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.

(End of first page of Chapter 1 of The Elements of Style)


E.B. White, in his Introduction to the second edition of Strunk’s book, said:

“Some years ago, when the heir to the throne of England was a child, I noticed a headline in the Times about Bonnie Prince Charlie: “CHARLES’ TONSILS OUT.” Immediately Rule 1 leapt to mind.

Charles’s friend
Burns’s poems
the witch’s malice

Clearly, Will Strunk had foreseen, as far back as 1918, the dangerous tonsillectomy of a prince, in which the surgeon removes the tonsils and the Times copy desk removes the final s. I commend Rule 1 to the Times, and I trust that Charles’s throat, not Charles’ throat, is in fine shape today.”

I note happily that Will Strunk foresaw not only Charles’s tonsillectomy but also today’s edition of The Writer’s Almanac with the phrase “Burns’ poems” that jumped out of the blue to shatter my Alloway-Dalloway-Galloway reverie and return me to the cold light of day.

Just for good measure, I am going to throw in here Rule 13 in Strunk’s own words:

13. Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.


E.B. Write called that paragraph “sixty-three words that could change the world.”

Elements of Style has its critics. Not everyone likes it or agrees with its rules. The world changes, time marches on, and language is not static.

But I like what Dorothy Parker said in her review of Elements for Esquire magazine in 1957: “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

How Definitions Change Over Time

.........................Old 41...........................




















....................................................................New 41.........................











Old 41 is, of course, former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993), the 41st President of the United States. He has been called “Old 41” to differentiate him from his son, George Walker Bush, the 43rd U.S. President (2001-2009).

The new 41 is U.S. Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts (2010-?), who will fill “the people’s seat” (or, as it is known by Democrats, “Teddy Kennedy’s seat”). Until Brown’s overwhelming victory in a special election last Tuesday, the make-up of the U.S. Senate was 60 Democrats, 40 Republications, making it “filibuster-proof” because 60 votes are required to cut off debate on certain issues before the Senate. But with Brown as the 41st Republican Senator, the Democrats’ ability to end a Republican-led filibuster (filibusters are used to delay final votes and to bring public attention to issues) or to approve such bills without the cooperation of a single Republican (who needs bipartisanship?) has vanished. On other issues, however, a simple majority of 51 votes is all that is required to pass a bill.

Happy birthday, Angela

Fifty years ago I memorized a poem I had found somewhere. Something about it just reached out and grabbed me. It wasn’t part of a school assignment, and I don’t know the poem’s title or author. Today seemed like a good time to put it in my blog.


A builder builded a temple;
He wrought it with grace and skill; --
Pillars and groins and arches
All fashioned to work his will;
Men said when they saw its beauty,
“It shall never know decay.
Great is thy skill, O Builder.
Thy fame shall endure for aye.”

A teacher builded a temple
With loving and infinite care; --
Raising each arch with patience.
Laying each stone with prayer.
None saw her unceasing effort;
None knew of her wondrous plan;
For the temple the teacher builded
Was unseen by the eyes of man.

Gone is the builder’s temple; --
Crumbled into the dust. --
Low lies each stately pillar,
Food for consuming rust;
But the temple the teacher builded
Will last while the ages roll; --
For that beautiful, unseen temple
Is a child’s immortal soul.

And now, if your blindfolds are all in place, panel...

Will tonight’s mystery guests enter and sign in, please!

Actually, panel, tonight we have not one but twelve mystery guests!

Six of them are human and six of them are equine.

Panel, you may now remove your blindfolds.







Your task, panel, is simply this: Without consulting Wikipedia or Google or any other search engine or enyclopedia, either online or offline, identify each of our human mystery guests and each of our equine mystery guests.

Good luck!