f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

For a fews hours last night, we posted at this spot a little piece lambasting a certain

professor known for his conservative whining and extralegal driving.  On second

thought, although totally accurate, the post was just too catty for the holiday season. 

Therefore, although that goose is already cooked, we have decided to grant it amnesty

and take it off our Thanksgiving menu.

 

  We do, however, want to make two points:

• 
  
  
  

  
  

  No prosecutor should have a plague put on his house for failing to “acknowledge” that

  
  

  a grand jury can be easily manipulated into indicting a ham (or turkey) sandwich.
  
  
• 
  
  
  

  
  

  It was Judge Judy Scheindlin who said “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining;” 

  
  

  her book by that name can be purchased here for as little as 50 cents.

the big cat sleeps
in the same seat…
with the doll

the leftovers
caught by the cat, people eat…
locusts

 

 

 

you’ve wrecked
my year’s first dream!
cawing crow

Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue                                                                                                                   

I hope all my weblog visitors and friends have a joyful holiday and safe,

pleasant trips to your destinations.  Because I won’t be getting to my

hometown, Rochester, NY, for Thanksgiving, I’m going to bring a bit

of Rochester to you and f/k/a, with an encore of some of my very favorite

haiku from Tom Painting.

 

pickup truck

an old retriever

laps the wind

 

fallen leaves

the child in her

gives a kick

 

 

autumn light

I lower the window

cover my child’s feet

 

November

yesterday’s puddle

brittle under my boot

 

 

 

Gettysburg
traffic backed up
to the interstate

credits:  “autumn light” and “November” – from piano practice 

            “fallen leaves: — The Heron’s Nest V.9 (Sept. 2003)

            “pickup truck” — The Heron’s Nest V.5 (May 2003)

             “Gettysburg” – The Heron’s Nest  VI:7 (Aug. ’04) 

by dagosan:

the shower massage

finds her navel –

Buddha smile                                

 

 

she washes

his bellybutton –

innie peace

                                    [Nov 23, 2004] 

one-breath pundit 

   I may not like the Law.com Blog Network ads, but I am enjoying the roundup of Network

postings in Lisa Stone’s Legal Blog Watch.  The Networkians all have goodies worth reading

today.  

 

   Lots of others who are bigger sports fans than I have covered the Pistons courtside riot that

occurred last Friday. [e.g., Juan non-V]  Almost as bad as the behavior of the players and the fans

was the statement by the Pistons’ Coach after the game, in which he said that lots of people had “made mistakes.”  “Mistakes happen” in math and underwear.  Grown men choosing to misbehave is not a

not a mistake; it is very often a crime or a tort.

Welcome to the weblawg community, Monica Bay and The Common Scold!  I’m looking forward to

your curmudgeonly take on legal technology and management issues (and the Yankees).   However, I clicked right over, when I saw Bob Ambrogi’s pointer to your weblog — only to be assaulted visually

and aesthetically by that [expletive deleted] Flipping Rolodex, whose sponsor I have not yet discerned.

Will one of Law.com’s visitors have to go into epileptic fits before that darn ad is cancelled?  (see our prior post)  That being said, best wishes, Monica.

 

the gossip

her yard fills

with leaves

 

            Tom Painting

  The ‘Lectric Law Library Lexicon has this to say about the term Common Scold

 

COMMON SCOLD – Obs. A woman who, in consequence of her boisterous,

disorderly and quarrelsome tongue, is a public nuisance to the neighborhood.

Such a woman may be indicted, and on conviction, punished. At common law,

the punishment was by being placed in a certain engine of correction called the

trebucket or cocking stool.

This punishment was abolished in Pennsylvania where the offence is now punished

by fine and imprisonment.

 

Would it be too cruel to subject a Scold to that Rolodex?

 

update (5 PM): Monica has emailed me to say the offending Rolodex ad (which is by SBC) does

not appear when she goes to her webpage and she’s never seen the ad (which has been all over

Law.com sites for quite awhile).  Every time I click on Monica’s weblog, I get flipped.  Life is unfair.

 

 

world of man–
even raking leaves
brings a scolding

                       Kobayashi ISSA

In two astute posts today — The Stupid Party and More on the Stupid Party — Prof. Steven Bainbridge

has taken “his” Republican Party to task for arrogant and ham-headed behavior this past week in the

House of Representatives.  After reading Avi Schick’s column today from The New Republic on the

Kerry Campaign’s decision to hide John Kerry’s role as the leading sponsor (since 1997) of the Workplace

Religious Freedom Act, I can assure you that the Republicans have no monopoly on stupidity.

Please read the entire article.  Here are the opening paragraphs:

“On July 31, 1997, John Kerry took to the Senate floor to introduce legislation that, in his own

words, “would protect workers from on-the-job discrimination related to religious beliefs and

practices” by ensuring “that employers have a meaningful obligation to reasonably accommodate

their employees’ religious practices.” . . .

 

“If you’ve never heard of WRFA, you’re not alone. Despite having been the bill’s lead sponsor,

Kerry refused to mention WRFA, let alone take credit for it, once it became clear that he would be

the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. In doing so, he passed up a trifecta of opportunities:

to connect with communities of faith; to challenge President Bush’s fealty to corporate interests;

and to present his Senate record as aggressive and idealistic. But WRFA also became wrapped up

in abortion politics, and so Kerry refused to speak about it for fear of offending liberal advocacy

groups. His campaign’s ham-handed approach to the bill points to everything that is wrong with

the Democratic Party’s current treatment of faith.”

  Click here for a rant from Change for America against Kerry’s support of WRFA; and here for the

ACLU’s case against the proposed Act.   [see our post towards a “democratic morality” ]

 

all sorts of fools
moon-gaze too…
winter prayers

                  Kobayashi ISSA

Ross Fishman of Red Jackal Ads has responded to the questions we raised about his services

creating glossy-magazine-style Yellow Pages ads for lawyers, in a Comment that deserves to be 

read in full. ( Ernie touted the “tasteful” ads earlier this month.)  I’d like to highlight two issues: 

 

   Ross Fishman says:  “[Y]ou comment skeptically that this will inevitably lead to”…

higher profits for some lawyers, without an increase in the quality of legal services”? Well, yes,

that’s our goal.  We’re an ad agency, not Legal Aid; we can’t practice law or control the quality

of the legal services of our clients. Our specific goal is to generate significantly higher profits for

some lawyers — our clients — just as mega-ad agency Leo Burnett’s goal has long been to generate

more sales and higher profits for Pillsbury using the Dough Boy. Hey, it’s the American way.”

   winter nears –
   in the dog’s eyes
   the wolf

                         Billie Wilson

Your Editor’s Reply:   An ad agency may not have a special duty toward the legal client, but lawyers

certainly do.   Consumers can readily tell whether Pillsbury biscuits are worth their premium price, and lose

little giving it a try.   But, the average consumer of legal services cannot readily judge quality or price, which

is one reason why clients are given fiduciary protection.  A lawyer’s using PR image-making (and faux empathy)

to create a platform for higher fees, unrelated to the quality of services, does not jibe with my concept of

fiduciary responsibility.  Unlike the legal profession, Pillsbury has never claimed to put its customers’ interests first and has never sworn to do so. 

 

  Ross notes that Lawyers Weekly, despite its excellent work, may not always “get every single

fact correct,” but confirms that “Lorne [MacLean, the ad client in the story] had just spun off his divorce

practice from his partner.”

the wolf too
peeks out his hole…
autumn dusk

 

Issa, translated by D. G. Lanoue

 

Your Editor’s Reply: This still leaves unanswered whether the LW USA article was correct in stating that

MacLean, who had so recently started his own firm, had “increased his firm’s already significant profits by

more than 200 percent” and did so “By simply changing the design of his Yellow Pages ad.”  Whether

used by a lawyer or an ad agency, if the quote is misleading, it should not figure so prominently on Red

Jackal’s website. 

 

    in the dark

the trap snaps shut

    silent dawn

 

                            Jim Kacian

 

 

p.s.  My family name starts with “jackal,” but I’m not sure I’d want that scavenger-predator as

my logo or corporate identity.   The image of the famous movie-character killer for hire doesn’t

inspire me, either.  Guess I’ve gone soft with all this haiku around.

 

   

There are quite a few meaty topics to masticate at my favorite weblogs:     

                                                                                                                                       

 

Eschewing Obfuscation 

 

  Multi-linking Networkian extraordinaire J. Craig Williams scolds judges for using

arcane and darnright obscurant language in their opinions.  Craig’s research diligence

reaches supernumerary levels in this posting. [Harvey Keitel and Abe Vigoda learn the

meaning of supernumerary in their super-silly-ously entertaining film Crime Spree.]

 

Plain-speaking Jerry Lawson joins in the plea of James Robertson and Cindy Chick

that KM jargon be avoided when “pitching KM implementation.”  Jerry earned our gratitude last

year by observing that “the word blog makes this powerful new form of Internet communication

seem trivial.” Jargonophobes of the world unite!

 

Eschewing Expert Deception

 

LegalReader points to a new case out of Massachusetts that should delight Ted and        

Walter, while pleasing ethicalEsq, too (from LexisOne): —

Court Issues $20,000 Judgment Against Expert Witness; Neurologist Misled Jurors
A Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist has been ordered to pay more than $20,000

in legal fees after a judge in Lawence ruled this week that he deliberately misled a jury in a

malpractice case, forcing her to order a new trial.
by Scott Allen, The Boston Globe

 

Eschewing Weblog Sell-Outs

 

I f you missed Billmon‘s LA Times op/ed piece on Sept. 26, 2004, Blogging Sells, and Sells Out, you can

find excerpts at netlawblog, decrying “glorified billboards” and “sponsored blogs.”  Jerry Lawson asks: 

“Does the future really look as bleak as this? Sellouts will always be with us, but one of the beauties of

blogging is that it gives the authentic, honest voices, who will also always be with us, a chance to be heard.”  

 

  Not Eschewing Enough 

 

1). Malaprops and Misnomers:   Today, Bill Gratsch at Blawg.org mentions the new Law.com weblog network

and says “it appears they have randomly selected seven blawgs covering a fairly wide range of subjects.”  Since

Bill has seen close-up the varying quality among weblawgs, he surely must know that Law.com could not have

possibly chosen these eight quality weblogs randomly  — they are the wheat, not the chaff.    Dictionaries: use ’em,

don’t abuse ’em!

 

2) Self-flaggelation based on megablogimania:  The admirable Jim Moore ruminates today on the lack

of blog success in achieving political and social-humanitarian goals.  I want to humbly suggest that Jim expects

far too much from weblog technology.  It is merely a means of communication.  Having this technology has not

changed human nature, increased altruism, nor alterred significantly the sources of power on this planet.  (see our post)

 

 

first frost

only a dead fly

in the mailbox

 

 

abandoned factory

a cloud rests

on the smokestack

George Swede from Almost Unseen: Selected Haiku of George Swede 

(Brooks Books, 2000) 

 

 

by dagosan:

faithful husband

enjoying egg salad —

every day

                                    [Nov 22, 2004] 

 

                                                             — you can find the eschew obfuscation bumper sticker here at cafepress.com–

  In Paper bag politics Vincent Fiore says:

If the stunning election victories of the Republican Party are to mean anything, they must continue

to dance with what “brung’em to the dance,” and that is the moral and ethical concerns that created

the majority they now enjoy, without the arrogance and abuse of power that was so completely

abandoned by their Democratic Party colleagues in the early 1990’s.

first snow falling
I trust in his hand…
bridge by the gate

entrusting it to young folk
I sleep…
cozy wood fire

 

trusting its fate
to the autumn wind…
duckweed

. . . . . for more poems on trust by Issa, click here; translated by David G. Lanoue . . . . . . . . .

the bounce
of raindrops
on the basketball

 

 

lifting the hammer
the old carpenter’s hand
stops shaking

 

 

W.F. Owen 

credits: “the bounce” – Frogpond XXIII:3 (2000)

“lifting the hammer” Mayfly No. 30 (2000); A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices 

 

by dagosan:

rainy-night drive —

no generation gap 

in sight

                                    [Nov 21, 2004] 

In re Tom Delay: Scrivener C.E. Petit joins Prof. Bainbridge’s plea for consistently-applied ethics,

confessing to be “one of those weirdos who actually expects enforcement of ethical standards on

those who have (or seek) power, which is why I distrust pure-market solutions to anything.”  Non

sequitur or not, we weirdos concur in both sentiments.

 

 

  Citing Leon Panetta’s quote that (in Election 2004) “the party of Roosevelt became the party

of Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11,” Schenectady (NY) Gazette columnist Dan DiNicola, best

known for his movie reviews, says “If you are a traditional Democrat, you know that you are not

a Michael Moore liberal, even if you liked his movie.” [Dan did, and reviewed it here.]  DiNicola adds

that “the contingent of Hollywood liberals” has been greatly damaged by this election.  He concludes:

[I]f Hollywood liberals want to gain some cachet with the American public, they need

some ‘gentlemen’ spokesmen.  Considering the dismal turnout of voters between 18 and

30, perhaps shrill rhetoric works only with Americans who do not get to the ballot box.

The Gazette is only available online by subscription.  However, the entire article can be seen here, by

by scrolling to Reply 5.  (“Hollywood liberals need more gentlemanly tone,” Nov. 21, 2004)

• 
  
  
  

  Tom Patterson of the Vanishing Voter Project has done an interesting study on what made first-

  
  

  time voters go to the polls in 2004. First-Time Voters Propelled to Polls by Personal Contact

  
  

  (Nov. 11, 2004).  One finding is that, of Americans who had been eligible to vote in previous

  
  

  presidential elections but voted for the first time this year, “Roughly one in seven — 14 percent

  
  

  — of these first-time voters said that celebrity involvement affected their decision to cast a ballot.”

  Finally, we are sorry to report that Bekah’s offering of “Some haikus [sic] inspired by the MPRE“

did not receive a passing grade from the Bard Review Board.  See Comments. (Via Schaeffer Underground)

update (10 PM est): In what may prove to be a futile step at mitigation, Bekah has retitled the above-referenced

post: “Some hastily written, fake haiku-ish rubbish inspired by the MPRE.”

 

 

the bounce
of raindrops
on the basketball

 

 

lifting the hammer
the old carpenter’s hand
stops shaking

 

 

W.F. Owen 

credits: “the bounce” – Frogpond XXIII:3 (2000)

“lifting the hammer” Mayfly No. 30 (2000); A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices 

 

by dagosan:

rainy-night drive —

no generation gap 

in sight

                                    [Nov 21, 2004] 

In re Tom Delay: Scrivener C.E. Petit joins Prof. Bainbridge’s plea for consistently-applied ethics,

confessing to be “one of those weirdos who actually expects enforcement of ethical standards on

those who have (or seek) power, which is why I distrust pure-market solutions to anything.”  Non

sequitur or not, we weirdos concur in both sentiments.

 

 

  Citing Leon Panetta’s quote that (in Election 2004) “the party of Roosevelt became the party

of Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11,” Schenectady (NY) Gazette columnist Dan DiNicola, best

known for his movie reviews, says “If you are a traditional Democrat, you know that you are not

a Michael Moore liberal, even if you liked his movie.” [Dan did, and reviewed it here.]  DiNicola adds

that “the contingent of Hollywood liberals” has been greatly damaged by this election.  He concludes:

[I]f Hollywood liberals want to gain some cachet with the American public, they need

some ‘gentlemen’ spokesmen.  Considering the dismal turnout of voters between 18 and

30, perhaps shrill rhetoric works only with Americans who do not get to the ballot box.

The Gazette is only available online by subscription.  However, the entire article can be seen here, by

by scrolling to Reply 5.  (“Hollywood liberals need more gentlemanly tone,” Nov. 21, 2004)

• 
  
  
  

  Tom Patterson of the Vanishing Voter Project has done an interesting study on what made first-

  
  

  time voters go to the polls in 2004. First-Time Voters Propelled to Polls by Personal Contact

  
  

  (Nov. 11, 2004).  One finding is that, of Americans who had been eligible to vote in previous

  
  

  presidential elections but voted for the first time this year, “Roughly one in seven — 14 percent

  
  

  — of these first-time voters said that celebrity involvement affected their decision to cast a ballot.”

  Finally, we are sorry to report that Bekah’s offering of “Some haikus [sic] inspired by the MPRE“

did not receive a passing grade from the Bard Review Board.  See Comments. (Via Schaeffer Underground)

update (10 PM est): In what may prove to be a futile step at mitigation, Bekah has retitled the above-referenced

post: “Some hastily written, fake haiku-ish rubbish inspired by the MPRE.”

 

 

Woe is me.  My new driver’s license arrived in the mail today, and the photo ID looks

even worse than it had at DMV when they took it last week.  Despite having an aging

population, New York State re-licenses drivers for 8 years — they sent an application to

my 85-year-old Dad recently.   So, I’ll be flashing this little baby when Pres. Obama is

finishing his first term. [No, it won’t be going on my Sibs Page.]

• 
  
  Demographic policy questions are not what’s on my mind.  I’m wondering
  
  
  why I said “no,” when the DMV clerk asked whether I wanted to keep my
  
  
  current license photo.  You know, the one where I had all my hair and no gray.

Issa was lucky back in early 19th-Century Japan — no ID photos.  See his self-portrait: . . .

 

vain clouds
forming vain peaks
in vain

scolding
vain man…
the autumn moon

 

Kobayashi Issa, translated by D.G.Lanoue

one-breath pundit  

The headlines ask Is dodgeball too dangerous for kids?  I’ll let Overlawyered.com cover this

in full, but I just have to wonder about a lawsuit that claims teacher-supervised dodgeball is 

too dangerous for 7-year-olds and inappopriate for grammar school gym classes.   I’d like to see

stats that compare injuries from dodgeball with pee-wee sports like soccer, baseball and football,

which seem to be fine with the very same folk who think dodgeball is too warlike.   Why not

just have the little kids use softer balls?  Would this case exist without a potentially big dollar

payout for the lawyers? (Lawsuit aims to put dodgeball on trial (Newsday/AP, Nov. 19, 2004)

Updates: (Nov. 21): Walter Olson treats this topic here.

(Nov. 22, 2004): Wikipedia has a good, brief history of “dodgeball” and has this

to say about the current Controversy:

“Dodgeball, when it emerged, was touted as the “nerd’s sport”.  Since players

normally were not part of a team, no player had to endure the teasing that would

fall upon a player accused of “causing the team to lose”. As well, the game was

seen as having a light-hearted and self-deprecatory nature and, therefore, more

amenable to non-athletic students.

 

“Ironically, dodgeball has come under attack for failing to meet the needs of precisely

those students. Opponents of dodgeball have argued that the game provides, for

bullies, the excuse to abuse unathletic and unpopular students, by throwing the

ball hard enough to cause injury.”

 

 

 

 

fall’s first chill —

the football

bounces louder

 

driver’s training–

the instructor’s hairy arm

hangs out the window

 

by Barry George from A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku  

credits: both poems – Haiku Happens 1998

 

• 
  
  by dagosan: 

clogged drain–

300-pound plumber

under the sink

   

                                        [Nov.20, 2004] 

 

Saturday Searchee Bonus:  I haven’t posted this yet on the Inadvertant Searchee page, but

had to chuckle over our 1st Place showing in the Google Search won’t stop mentioning prior relationships>.

Have no idea why someone was Googling amputee+happy>, but I hope it was therapy, not depravity. [we

came in #72 of 73,000 results.

Denise Howell got it right: “Oy” is her response to the pumped-up ads that Law.com

has required for entry into its new Weblog Network.  [The eight weblogs are all top-

notch and I hope their authors will resist any urge for self-censoring to avoid displeasing

their corporate sponsor.  They all insist that this new arrangement won’t change them.]

 

It’s a little ironic that one of the new Networkians Commented here last year that

“I don’t like the idea of law bloggers posting ads at their site. I don’t

know whether it’s ethical or not, but it just looks cheap.”

(see the OJR article “Will Microads Save Online Content? The next big thing could be quite small,”

written by Mathew Honan,  praising inobtrusive text ads and panning banner ads.  Despite our

initial visual confusion, Honan, is not Matt Homann, proprietor of the Law.com Network weblog

the [non]billable hour).

 

I hope weblog readers will urge Lisa Stone of law.com’s Legal Blog Watch to  lobby

on behalf of her Networkians to have the required ads greatly reduced in size.  Such

e-billboards are >tacky and unnecessary — and may prove to turn off a lot of visitors

(and ex-visitors).  The silly flipping rolodex ad that is featured on many other law.com

pages today is even more annoying than EDDix‘ infamous “confounded scrolling

ticker thingy.”

• 
  
  
  

  Law.com/ALM knows that bigger is not better.  The Network weblogs are stuck with

  
  

  an ad that is 3.25 inches wide and 5 inches high at the very top of their righthand margin.

  
  

  There are no such monstrosities on Law.com own homepage.  It’s Newswire page does

  
  

  have a 2.75 inch ad, but it comes after links to the important stories in the day’s edition. 

  
  

  It is only on its non-substantive Index page and on its new Weblog Network pages, that

  
  

  the 3.25 inch Big Box ads are found.  I think we can deduce the real answer to Law.com’s

  
  

  question “Why Blogs?”.

p.s.  There’s an interesting piece on lawyer ads at First Amendment Center.  In it, John Bates of

Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. is quoted (via Ambrogi): “It is the nature of the First Amendment

that there is going to be speech in every medium of communication that some people don’t like.”

 

 

while selling his dumplings
and such…
blossom viewing

 

morning frost–
yet still a child
sells flowers

 

 

by Issa, David G. Lanoue, translator                                                   

Lawyers’ Weekly (Australia) says Lawyers a miserable bunch: survey (12-Nov-2004).  Lawyers are  

 among “the unhappiest workers in Australia” –“55 per cent of the legal sector consider themselves

either unhappy or very unhappy with their current job.”  Here in America, check out a whiny, fickle

young lawyer and the ABA e-mentor who suggests lying to back with a former law firm.

Coincidentally, the (photomorphically) photogenic Martin Grace is wondering

today — in terms only a RiskProf could love — why anyone would become a lawyer.

 

Afterthought (11 PM, Nov. 19):  Although I don’t fully agree with philosophy professor David

O’Connor’s analysis (and believe he got Dick the Butcher’s motivation wrong), his lecture-article

Professionalism and Happiness: Some Lessons from Aristotle (1998) is thought-provoking.

Meanwhile, from Britain: Government fights accusations of UK’s growing compensation culture — “a stance

welcomed by the insurance industry.” (TheLawyer.com, Nov. 10, 2004)

“The Government is determined to scotch any suggestion of a developing ‘compensation culture’ where

people believe that they can seek compensation for any misfortune that befalls them, even if no-one else

is to blame.”

 

• 
  
   Speaking of the purported compensation culture, Walter Olson revisits the Vioxx-Millions website story.  Which reminds me to ask (similar to ethicalEsq‘s concerns over which content-targeted ads appear on a lawyer’s website) are there ethical concerns with where a lawyer’s ads appear when a firm  participates in programs like Google’s AdSense?

Also, Australia’s Shadow Attorney General Nicola Roxon says excessive lawyer pay hurts legal  access and social justice.  Hands up for a pay decrease   (Lawyers Weekly, Nov. 19, 2004)  She notes:

• 
  
  “When lawyers try to talk in the media or to governments about family law reform or tort reform they are  almost instantly dismissed because of perceived self-interest, irrespective of the merit of their argument”.
  
  
• 
  
  
  

  “The ability to question, query, test, doubt and probe is something we are all trained to do and should

  
  

  mark us out as the lead sceptics, challengers and reformers in the country.”

• 
  
  Ed. Note:  When lawyers make excuses for higher fees — especially when they use euphemisms such as “value billing” and pricing/branding strategies from “professions” that are not fiduciaries nor recipients of licensing protections — they fail to understand the basic fiduciary relationship between lawyers and their clients.   And, they undermine further the profession’s image. (see ethicalEsq Value Billing or Venal Bilking? and Fees and the Lawyer-Fiduciary)

On the hand hand, a new working paper from AAI says international cartels overcharge their customers 32% on average, while domestic cartels average a mere 18%. Price-Fixing Overcharges: Legal and Economic Evidence (American Antitrust Institute Working Paper #04-05, by John M. Connor).  Buy American (cartels)!  And support aai!

 

 

• 
  
  by dagosan: 

sharing her flu –

even the coffee

is bitter

      [Nov. 19, 2004]

 

 

  If you’ve wondered what it feels like to have fibromyalgia, click here, and

let the Three Graces show you where the FMS “tender points” can be found. (click it to enlarge)

 

  After all that misery sharing, you deserve some fresh haiku from this month’s

The Heron’s Nest, written by a few of f/k/a‘s Honored Guest friends:

 

 

sunshine

through the river’s haze

white butterflies

                                 Barry George 

 

winter doldrums

up to her elbows

in potting soil

                          Pamela Miller Ness

 

 

graveside

my father and I

find common ground

                                  Tom Painting

 

long winter —

prayer bundles sway

in the cedars

                                 Billie Wilson                            

                                                                                                                                     

 

 

p.s.  Despite Prof. B’s bloviation, Carl Zimmer of The Loom weblog has just won the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s 2004 Science Journalism Award for a three-part online series. (via Corante Blog)  Zimmer can indeed spark an interest in evlolution and all science with his fine essays and books.

 

p.p.s. Let’s end with a positive note from the weblawg trenches:  A new weblog by Robert Ambrogi —

Media Law (a weblog “about freedom of the press”).  Bob won’t need any good luck.

– below are haiku and senryu written by “dagosan”, this weblog’s Editor, David A. Giacalone. most have been on the Home Page, some are outtakes and rewrites. each is a work in progress. i hope they show improvement over time and encourage others to try writing haiku –

– click here for dagosan’s archive index –

snow turns to rain –

our Buddha’s visit

cut short

[Dec. 31, 2004]

just enough snow

for a Buddha —

too much snow

[Dec. 31, 2004]

new snowman —

hatless

scarecrow

[Dec. 30, 2004]

children awash

in christmas gifts —

tsunami on tv

[Dec. 28, 2004]

coins inside the walnuts –

great-grandchildren

cracking a smile

[Dec. 27, 2004, for Grandpa Bart]

cross words over turkey

over parenting–

the Yule log burns

[Dec. 26, 2004]

a sleigh-shaped cloud

floats by –

Christmas morning blue sky

[Dec. 25, 2004]

Nana serves

Grandma’s recipes —

Christmas Eve calamari

[Dec. 24, 2004]

it’s about

the journey —

not today!

[Dec. 23, 2004]

two-hour backup —

just past the accident,

Christmas Eve rainbow

wrapping and

packing–

she pastes on a smile

[Dec. 22, 2004]

of course,

it’s coming back —

solstice clouds hide the sun

[Dec. 21, 2004]

married a decade

she hides

the mistletoe

married a decade

he buys

new mistletoe

[Dec. 20, 2004]

rattled

by the parking space stalker

— season’s greetings!

[Dec. 19, 2004]

wind chill zero —

outside the high school

not one jacket zipped

[Dec. 18, 2004]

3 am nature call–

the loud drip

of icicles

[Dec. 17, 2004]

her migraine

lingers –

nine (shopping) days ’til Christmas

[Dec. 16, 2004]

fogged window –

too cold

meets too hot

[Dec. 15, 2004]

winter wind

rattles the windows –

the fridge hums louder

[Dec. 14, 2004]

birthday phone call –

your triple bypass

trumps my bad knee

[Dec. 13, 2004]

waiting room –

the masked man

brings his own magazine

[Dec. 11, 2004]

eyelid lightshow —

he hits the snooze button

one more time

[Dec. 10, 2004]

can’t put a name

to a very pretty face –

birthday gift

[Dec. 7, 2004]

snowstorm begins –

got coffee

no half ‘n’ half

[Dec. 6, 2004]

Sunday morning

omelet

for one

a single

mimosa

– hold the toast

Sunday evening

no shower

no shave

[Dec. 5, 2004]

two strawberry blondes

lean into the wind –

cattails lean with it

[Dec. 4, 2004]

snow falls

from a low gray sky –

she lifts the sauce pan lid

[Dec. 3, 2004]

a favorite tree

reflected in the river –

made me look again

[Dec. 2, 2004]

the river mirrors

the busy bridge –

one duck races the cars

[Dec. 1, 2004]

under nana’s afghan –

dreaming homemade

bread and meatballs

[Nov 30, 2004]

a mostly-cloudy sampler

of blues, grays and whites

— driving alone

[Nov 29, 2004]

finally touching

her face –  “are your fingers

always this cold?”

[Nov. 28, 2004]

the shower massage

finds her navel –

Buddha smile

[Nov 23, 2004]

rainy night drive —

squinting at glare

with dad’s eyes

[Nov 21, 2004]

clogged drain–

300-pound plumber

under the sink

[Nov.20, 2004]

sharing her flu –

the coffee

is bitter, too

[Nov. 19, 2004]

garbage can overflows —

skinny squirrel ignores

man and river

[Nov. 17, 2004]

sitting to meditate-

toilet and nose

start to run

[Nov. 15, 2004]

waving from the river bank

waving back

cattails

[Nov. 13, 2004]

first snowfall

no one knows how to drive

‘cept I

[Nov.12, 2004]

handful of pawns

protect the king –

Veterans Day

[Nov.11, 2004

even lovelier

naked

backyard elm

[Nov. 10, 2004]

almost sunset –

<span style="f

Comments Off on dagosan’s scrapbook – 2004 pt. 2