Correspondence

Hey bro,
I know you managed your way back to Prov to get the van but did you find a place of refuge sunday night? Also, could you do me a big favor if you have the time and drop by to give our lawn a trim. It'd be much appreciated. You know how to reach me comrade.

Good day

===

Hi,

I slept for some time on the deck of the fishing memorial in Galilee and some time on the lawn of Eric's grandmother's house after trekking there and failing to find the key to gain access and lacking the energy or presence of mind to find a more suitable place. I did see several shooting stars though and overall it was quite comfortable on the back, though I was shivering off the cold for the majority of the night and didn't get much chance to actually sleep. I also had two memorable dreams; In the first a group of people from a nearby house all came out on the lawn with blankets and we had a jolly good and warm time together gazing at the sky. In the second, two men, armed with black, short-barreled* revolver-fed pistols, kicked me awake and claimed to be defending their neighbors' territory as part of some community-action-watch-coalition program and as I remember there was a moment of actual danger and so fear between my waking and their realization of my inability to offer them threat for lack of arms and confusion as to what was actually going on.

I took the 6am bus in the morning to downtown.

I learned that the comfort that comes with dryness and warmth at night should never be underestimated, though it may be relatively unnecessary from an absolute survival perspective. As a result, I plan to buy some type of very light, inconspicuous and compactible tent w/ matching blanket to ensure absolute freedom with respect to where I choose to sleep in the future. In the affore-mentioned scenario, if I had these items, I could have made my way to the nearest beach and enjoyed a free sleep with wave sounds that the majority, being sub-consciously shackled to beds they feel must always be returned to, very rarely will experience. Any reasonable excuse for the importance of the latter could be considered a design parameter for the former in this experiment.

The discomfort of the evening, in hindsight, was worth the unique perspective gained. Which leads me to consider whether one is capable of enduring any hardship, however perilous - as the major components to be endured, it seems to me, are the expectation and memory of it anyway, and if one sees positivity in useful knowledge gained in memory then does not expectation eagerly look forward for want of such knowledge? Perhaps this is the sort of perspective a Navy Seal must acquire in order to not 'ring the bell' and do the things I've seen them do on countless discovery channel navy seal behind-the-scenes-training programs.

The idea to mow your lawn has set sail in my ocean of consideration, however the tidal wave of the moment is the arrival of my brother - which should happen in 3 hours. I think we should consider all getting together for a campfire and maybe even a boat trip across the bay to Prudence Island in the quahog skiff to test out the above comfort theory of free sleep.

- A handclasp for the miles until then,

*I believe these are also called stub-nosed pistols and maybe even Winchester .38 specials if Tom Clancy novels and Fisherman's Friend catalogs are any guide. In any event, certainly superior in wounding power to my DFW** novel, ipod headphones (which I guess I could have strangled one with if I could endure what would most likely be 6 bullet wounds from the other) and corduroy jacket.

**David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

9-6

Stitch Chair

I've been on a quest these last few months to discover a way of living differently - to essentially do more with less; which this past month has been more, dare-fully worded, philosophical than material. And to those who are inquiring about the sparse nature of what could be thought of as progress, I would like to say, in a non-cheeky, non-after-skool-special and rather serious (and hopefully self-evident) manner, that success and discovery is built on a foundation of failures. And so to fail is a great thing, it is a great way to gather information! And I shall take advantage of that glorious Vanity I've been blessed with to continue with a revised perspective on the nature of what it means to live differently.

So the house isn't built (as I am rethinking strategy after first attempt to cover in shrink wrap which literally ended in flames) and I have an idea to 'take this show on the road' in a PT Barnum-esque type of way. The winter is a-coming, the garden is woefully inadequate (the unusual weather has upstate NY declared a disaster area, there should be tomatoes by now I hear and I have barely any) - And so I am re-defining the PR van as a mobile dwelling. Perhaps you could think of this as an uber-revolutionary, efficient and intelligent way to carry on or maybe you think it unusual that I plan to live out of a van*. I will leave you with either thought as I roam the American landscape - learning for myself what the 'average american' really is these days - and perhaps I get one of these cheap netbook computer machines so I can keep everyone well-informed with what I learn. As for date of departure: uncertain.

In the meantime, I've also been investigating the nature of comfort - at work, at home, while reading or writing - and it has lead to the development of about a dozen chair prototypes and models (this is what I do when I'm stuck on PR design problems).

While I will spare the details of the generalized working principles I've come up with regarding chair design - here is my latest iteration. It is by far the most comfortable chair I've come up with so far (though admittedly it needs some type of a platform, be it legs or rocker) and I rather like the look (which came about solely through necessity as it is one continuous sheet of plywood and I could think of no other way w/ the materials I had available to get it into shape.) I'm interested in getting a general ich nicht or ach ya from my usually-astute-readership-community.

Do keep in mind this is a mock-up and not final version - there are some cracks where I over-stressed the material and it doesn't line up as perfectly as I'd like. Other than that it's amazingly stiff even though it's only 1/4" plywood...

PS - this is why I needed a compass

*And yes, in my travels there will surely be times when I am parked near a river.

?

When we say "It's raining"

What is the 'it'?

New Compass Design

I needed a compass and thought this was a clever way to get one. It's adjustable from 10-15cm

Vegetal Progress / Best Spider / More Sand

Click on the photos for enlarged, high quality version.

PS - I'm a 'Google' Page Rank 2! Kepp watching the blog to increase my algorithmic popularity!

On the Origin of the Non-Rhoticity and Nasal 'Broad A' of the Boston Accent

To be clear, 'non-rhotic' is a pronounciation where the phonetic pronounciation of 'r' does not appear in the 'coda' position. This is essentially jargon for 'card' being pronounced 'cahd' (dropped r is non-rhotic I guess) which when spoken with the 'Broad A' sounds like 'caad' where the a is elongated with a slightly 'nasal' intonation and pronounced hard as if it were in words like 'at' - 'Soft A', the opposite in this sense, sounding like 'o' in hot.

I would like to introduce a theory as to its origination (or at least its reinforcement).

In the city of Boston some time around 1940, a police officer stopped traffic on a main thru street to let a family of ducks cross the road. This was popular in the press and inspired the 1941 publication of Robert McCloskey's 'Make Way For Ducklings'. It is a story about a family of ducks and their search for a home (including the afforementioned march across main street). The names of the ducks were Mrs. Mallard, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack. This book was enormously popular and has since sold over 2 million copies and won a Caldecott Medal*.

Now put yourself in the position of a child in the 1940s where you've heard many ducks and say the names above out loud. Seriously, regardless of where you are and how embarrassed you might be, actually say these words right now -

Jack

Kack

Lack

Mack

Nack

Ouack

Pack

Quack

Do you notice an inescapable tendency to imitate a duck's quack? The 'Quack' sound synonymous with duck imitation is exactly the 'Broad A' above and as soon as you ignore a few 'r's you're in non-rhotic territory. Is it possible that this book was so widely popular and universally repeated (before bed, at school, during leisure hours) that a playful pronounciation of the characters' names made its way into general usage?

The popularity of the book is evident:

This is a christmas ornament at the white house celebrating the book. Listen to any of JFK's** speeches and you can hear the above-mentioned accent.

A commemmorative statue which I think is in Boston Common.

This popular adoption mechanism was highlighted in my favorite (and soon to be yours) 'Spectacular Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' by Dr., Charles Mackay (written in the late 19th century). In the chapter 'Popular Follies of Great Cities', he traces the chronology of the mass adoption of popular phrases like 'Quoz', 'What a shocking bad hat!', 'Has your mother sold her mangle' and others. Malcolm Gladwell's 'Tipping Point' is also a fascinating account of similar mass-adoption anecdotes.

What do you think? Certainly there is a causality/chicken-and-the-egg issue with this theory that could only be resolved by a solid pre-1941 recording of this accent or at least a strong phonemological*** description of it. So I leave it to you dear readers, to go out on your tele-puter machines to find this evidence. Until then, I say Boston people talk like the ducks in the Charles River; and it's kind of endearing.

*This medal seemed to adorn all the best-selling books when I was a kid. The Chris Van Allsberg books, etc. that the librarians used to take time to read during library hour.

**Incidentally, regarding JFK's widely popular 'ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country' - I stumbled across in Henry David Thoreau's Walden which was published almost a century prior.

***That is PHONEME - ological, not phenomological.