Category Archives: Poetry

Im Memoriam: Bug Ottenheimer 2004-2008

Last Friday our friend and colleague, brother and mentor, Bug suffered a critical heart failure. Those who met him knew him as a loving and compassionate cat, always interested in taking time to enjoy life with others and show them the finer sides of living.

Bug

He was an inspiration and an ally through thick and thin. Bug stood strong next to me, providing strength and energy when and where it was needed most. I loved him very much and he will be missed.

Dana Goodyear’s blog turned me on to this Aimee Man video, that somehow seems appropriate:

Who has said it any better than Alfred, Lord Tennyson?

I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world’s altar-stairs
That slope thro’ darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.

Be well and be safe Bug. My thoughts are with you. Thank you for your help in saving poetry.

superbug

Phishing for poems

The New Yorker often has good poetry. This one reminds me of how far we have come from the old meaning of fishing:

And now he feels he’s in his element,

Baiting a hook and casting forth the line,

And through clear water sees a heaven-sent

Swift flash of silver rise into air and shine.

Ah, let it go-go, dart back to the deep.

A lovely thing, but much too small to keep.

Does a phisher ever say “nah, this one is much too small”? Not enough data, or maybe too poor to steal from?

Probably not. The modern phisher is about as unlikely to follow catch-and-release rules as a greedy seagull. Or, as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow put it in Hiawatha’s Fishing:

Three whole days and nights alternate
Old Nokomis and the seagulls
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma,
Till the waves washed through the rib-bones,
Till the sea-gulls came no longer,
And upon the sands lay nothing
But the skeleton of Nahma.

And upon the silicon lay nothing but the skeleton of users..

Mingling of Fairy and Witch Beliefs

After commenting on one of Bruce’s blog entries, I was reminded of a poem called “The Flyting betwixt Montgomery and Polwart”. I tried to find a handy copy to refresh my memory, but instead I ran into an odd article in Folklore:

At all events the British Association has more than once taken note of them, and has not gone so far as the Russian Commissary of Education, who has announced that all mention of fairies, angels, or devils in fairy tales is to be supplanted by the words “scientists and technicians who have served humanity.” Whether these partake the nature of angels or of devils, or incline more to that of fairies, I leave you to judge.

My thought exactly.

I wish I could find that old poem by Alexander Mongomerie.