Idle Hands, volume 875

So I went to Amazon looking for a CD containing Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Come My Way My Truth My Life." I was listening to my Vaughn Williams Xmas CD, to his Variations on a Theme From Thomas Tallis. My Dear Father, Raul Stanati, sang "Come My Way.." when I was growing up, so it's in my musical bedrock, and it's a beautiful setting of the George Herbert poem.

Fragments of Raul's repertoire -- he had and still has a lovely baritone voice -- litter my musical consciousness. Bits of Schubert's Winterreise, of Mendelssohn's Elijah, of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute, of Debussy's L'Enfant Prodigue, of the Messiah. There's a song I can't locate, maybe by Randall Thompson, that begins: I sit alone in a waystation/on a long railroad/waiting for a train to pick me up. Raul still sings at weddings. And funerals.

Suddenly, a few days ago, out of the blue, I thought of Percy Grainger. He's in my "English Folk Song Influenced Composer" brain file next to Ralph Vaughn Williams. I think we played a piece by him in high school band, a suite of country dances called "Lincolnshire Posy." I have carried around a mental image of him as a hoary, wooly-haired English gent. How could I not with that name -- Percy Grainger ? I mean, it reeks of sheep and shepherds. Tweeds. Pipe tobacco. Utterly bucolic.

Turns out he was an Aussie, who hung with Grieg and Dvorak, and is quite possibly the most beautiful man who ever lived.

Even if he falls into utter musical obscurity, he deserves to be remembered for his ravishing, pre-raphaelite looks.

Blogging About Blogging Is Like Boggling About Googling

"Blogging about blogging" opens the file in my brain where the famous quote "talking/writing about music is like dancing about architecture" is stored. Leaving aside the humiliating insight that my intellect operates via clang associations rather than profound metaphorical or logical connections, I Googled the phrase to see who said it.

Turns out no one really knows. It's variously attributed to Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin, John Cage, Clara Schumann, Thelonious Monk and others.

But Googling "blogging about blogging is like" returns no hits. Neither does the subtly different but related "blogging about blogs is like."

So does it fall to Paula's House of Toast to inject a half baked phrase into the Googlanacular ?

Looking at my stats recently, I learned that the Paula's House of Toast ranks first out of 427 on the Google search paula begone. I have seen bloggers boast about their blog being the first ranked hit of various google searches, so this is my blog brag. Blog brag. Now there's a horrid little phrase. Paula, begone !

I am sorry to have to admit that my other blog, "Anita Rust," is buried deep on page thirteen of the Google search results on physical control of nematodes by steaming.

I'm gonna steam them worms right outta my hair.

I like effecting Google. That's probably evil. Narcissistic. Increasing the noise to signal ratio for serious web searchers. I feel like a gnat on an elephant. Pesky, small, possibly carrying some spirochete-related contagion.

But, I'm sorry, call me callous, call me elitist, anyone needing "robin cook toxin character analysis" -- as if Dr Cook's medical thrillers contain "characters" nuanced enough to withstand "analysis" -- deserves to be confronted with whatever Anita Rust has to say. And that someone might be writing about Toxin as an academic assignment frankly boggles. And that they're Googling for help, boggles further.

And there we have our half-toasted phrase: Blogging About Blogging Is Like Boggling About Googling.

And I, Paula, said it first.

Academic Veterinarians Maim Then Kill Dogs For Science

Tufts Students Ask School To Stop Killing Dogs

This is pretty shocking.

Tufts Veterinary School's ethics committee sanctioned an experiment that involved fracturing both hind legs of six dogs, and applying a standard external fixation device to half of the legs, and a "newly developed flexible bone brace" to the other half. The dogs were then to be euthanized and the bones examined for healing.

Students, one would hope most of them, were outraged. Some protested. Their protests have not been heeded. The experiments were done, and the dogs are being euthanized in order to dissect these legs and check for healing. Leaving aside for a moment the brutal premise of the experiment -- breaking animals' legs -- is there a reason why standard measures of healing -- xrays, bone scans, CT scans etc. and clinical function can't be the measured end points ? The school claims histopathology is the "gold standard" end point.

But what is the ethical "gold standard" in veterinary research ?

One wonders why a clinical experiment could not have been devised: with informed consent from owners, randomize 100 sequential dogs with already-broken legs to receive either the standard treatment or the new brace, and monitor clinical outcomes by xrays, bones scans, CT scans, functional assessments.

One also wonders about who is funding the experiment. None of the reports I've found addresses this. In fact the first I learned about this was from a one paragraph regional news brief buried deep in the Boston Globe today. Several articles I found via Google News state "a new product" is being researched. One must ask: do the researchers stand to profit ? Have they taken out patents ? Is there an anticipated human application with even bigger potential profits on the horizon ? Are veterinary schools in the business conducting of animal experiments with anticipated human applications ? Who is funding the study ?

I'm disappointed that the Boston Globe has had virtually no coverage of this story.

In Which Clothes Unmake The Woman

I realized yesterday that I am having a pajama crisis.

I was undressing for bed. My husband was in the bedroom as I was doing this, which prompted me to look at myself through his eyes.

There I was in my Saddam Hussein hairdo and my spiffy Desalvo neck brace, wearing a shirt I'd inherited from my son, a black, K-mart boy's hooded sweatshirt the front of which was encrusted in several dinners, and, the coup de resistance, my pink pajama pants. Ancient elastic-waist pull-ons. Made of some vile synthetic knit. Fraying. Both stretched to bagginess AND shrunken to about six inches above my ankles. They were an Xmas present from my mother probably over a decade ago. There's a matching pajama shirt somewhere, I think. But I usually wear T shirts. Crappy ones. Last night I was also sporting two pairs of socks and my old, scuffy blue slippers. I'm sure an expanse of unshaven leg was visible between where fraying pink left off and double socks began.

I plunked down on the bed and began to whine.

DK, sweetie that he is, sat down beside me. "There, there," he said. Patted my hand. Told me I was perfectly fine. Reassured me all would be well. And that , if I wanted to, I could go on the internet (he knows how disinclined I am to shop in physical stores) and order some pajamas. "J.C. Penney," he advised, nodding sagely, pointing to his own handsome, dark blue pajamas. "That's where I got these !"

Being married is wonderful. I looked like some creature who'd just crawled out of the proverbial dark lagoon, and he was unfazed. Offered practical advice. Which I might even take.

Becoming vegan made my already excruciating fashion life even harder.

There are two things I wear that might not be strictly vegan. The first are my slippers. They're ancient, ordinary, and perfectly molded to my feet. They certainly antedate my switch -- about three years ago, or was it four ? -- from vegetarian to vegan. The other day I realized that the soles might be suede.

When I made the switch, I tossed out my leather shoes. No Imelda Marcos, I had one pair: boring but sturdy leather flats. My footwear life has been sheer hell since then, but I won't bore you with that.

I'm going to wear out the slippers.

The second is a red scarf that I started knitting and that my Lithuanian grandmother, impatient at my progress, ripped apart and re-knit when I was in the seventh grade. I suspect that it may contain wool. Nonetheless, because the scarf is a collaboration between me and my first and most brutal editor, I will continue to wear it. Hey, who knows ... maybe it's polyester !



Muffler

Mary didn’t criticize the yarn,
its unconditional red, its Z- and S- twists,
nor how it knit and purled across the line
almost iambically. And I, lest I drop
a distich or two, kept my eyes
on my laborious, fledgling tricotage,
and on the looming acrostics in the wale.
So how could I have known her hands
chafed at their own work, itching to edit mine,
until they’d swooped and snatched the raggy swatch
that I’d been sweating over for a month
and bore it off ? Within two days
the piece was complete -- still red,
but half as wide, and ten times longer,
the enjambements perfect, the rhymes true,
the narrative seamless,
the ends fringed in epiphany.

Everything is revision. Even,
after 40 years, in the broken knit
of the red scarf I still wear,
the smell of her hands.

11.19.98

A Good Way To Start The New Year

Killing five of these.


US Fish and Wildlife Service

"I think I shot five," Bush said. "I'm not that good a shot, but it was a lot of fun. It's a good way to start the new year"

Then he ate some beef.

Language Body

Asters are late blooming, and linger into autumn. Up close, they're rayed like daisies. Or, as the name suggests, stars. They are small, white or purple, profusely bunched. Then they turn to fluff: thin, dry, white. Then they are simply brown. The seeds disperse, the skeletons lean, and fall. And, next year, asters return.

I like this picture of dried asters in the snow because it reminds me of bowing. In extreme moments, we express ourselves with gestures, wordless sounds. We ululate. We tear our clothing. We strike ourselves. Confrontation with immensity engenders prostration.

Maybe it's biological, baring the throat as a sign of non-aggression, or a plea: Don't hurt me, I am vulnerable ! Our cats, when we approach, roll on their backs and present their soft undersides. Have mercy on us, oh, large and powerful ones who control the can opener of bliss and make pure the litter boxes of degradation.

Humans are not terribly merciful. We prey on weakness. We like our revenge. Wronged, we are keen to exact blood, money. We hire hit men, lawyers. We watch with horror and fascination the flushed faces of victims that fill the TV screens on the nightly news as they cry out in their pain and loss. We identify with them. We hate right along with them. We enact inflexible laws and prescribe inflexible, harsh sentences for transgressors. Politcians amass capital -- votes -- braying for the death penalty, even as they reference religious traditions that clearly say: do not kill. Forgive. Have mercy.

There is a line in Angels in America that struck me. Among so many other wildly, extravagantly wonderful lines, it is simple, almost a cliche: forgiveness may be where love and justice meet. When the terribly wronged can in fact love -- forgive -- it is breath-taking. Astonishing.

The last words of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, regarding the crowd that was stoning him to death, words that echoes Christ's words from the cross, was a prayer for their forgiveness.

Saint Paul, then Saul, "approved" of the stoning. He later had a change of heart -- a conversion -- and a whole tradition "forgives" him, venerates him, follows his dictates, despite his initial terrible trespasses against the Christ Himself.

President Bush, who makes loud political truck of his own rebirth and his life as a Christian pal of Jesus, when he was Governor of Texas, denied the Born-Again murderess Karla Tucker clemency. And, in public, mocked her plea for mercy.

Why, if "Jesus died for their sins," and prayed for his killers' "forgiveness" as he hung crucified, are Christians so slow to forgive ?

A Roman Catholic Archbishop who expressed pity and sorrow at the image of Saddam Hussein emerging from his spider hole, was vilified. It is not easy to imagine the suffering, the inner hell, of a perpetrator. To posit a kindred humanity. To imagine ourselves transgressing like that .

Sometimes we simply (though we deny it) like to hurt the weak, the small, the already suffering, the different, the Other. To console ourselves about our own weakness with an illusion of strength. A famous image of Simone Weil's is of people kicking a wounded hen.

The President is quail hunting today.

"Fearing God" always baffled me as a child. But what could be more intuitive ? It baffled me because I'd been taught the Sunday School party line: God Is Love. And probably because my own father, the dear Raul Stanati, was, when I was a child, more loving than fearsome. (Though all fathers, I think, are somewhat fearsome.) The God to-be-feared seemed a contradiction.

So, eventually, I gave up on the whole project of religion. It just didn't make sense. How could one reason about what was beyond understanding ? I would venture that there was not one sermon that I heard during my whole childhood or adolescence of churchgoing that even touched on how to approach, think about, talk about, understand, formulate questions about "God."

Perhaps if I had been taught more body language I'd have understood more. The sign of the cross, genuflecting: I envied my little Catholic friends these gestures. They brought the body into the church, into prayer, into speech-to-God.

A prostration seems to me the perfect prayer: face down before the altar, identifying features hidden, pressed against cold stone. The whole body becomes an expression of emptiness, of abjection: I am nothing. I do not know. I submit. I am broken, broken-hearted.