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Virginia Is for Sluggers
The Old Dominion wants a major-league stadium. If you build it in Arlington, we will come.
by David Morton May 2nd, 2003 August 29th, 2020
Ever since Virginia lost its ABA basketball franchise in 1976, the state hasn't had a big-league team, in any major sport, to call its own. The closest it gets is AAA baseball clubs in Richmond and Norfolk, which groom prospects for the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets.
The problem is that the state's money and power are concentrated in Northern Virginia, an overgrown suburb of Washington, D.C., a world-class city that hosts a complement of sports teams. Teams with a "Washington" appellation.
Within Virginia, Northern Virginia suffers from an acute identity crisis. It's a job machine for the Washington area and a revenue generator for Richmond coffers. But it doesn't get much love from D.C. residents, for whom it is merely a suburb with good shopping malls. Nor does it get the love from down-staters, for whom it might as well be Massachusetts.
Now comes baseball with the promise of a cultural anchor for Northern Virginia. Major League Baseball is trying to find a new home for the Montreal Expos, a team that plays to sparse crowds at its current home, Olympic Stadium. Along with D.C. and Portland, Ore., Virginia is lobbying the big leagues for the right to give shelter to the underappreciated Expos.
If baseball behaved rationally, the Expos would already be playing in the Washington area, the eighth-largest media market in America. Instead, Major League officials have the Expos playing some "home" games before less-than-capacity crowds in a 19,000-seat stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and dropping hints that they may stay there.
The Puerto Rican strategy is designed to squeeze the best ballpark deal out of the governments bidding for the Expos. By playing games with the relocation, baseball officials are looking to extract every last concession out of the competitors. The keep-away tactics are also goading Northern Virginia officials into a fit of bad sportsmanship. They're talking trash about D.C.
The sniping began in earnest in recent months, as delegations representing the three bidders made their pitches to baseball's relocation committee. Fairfax state Delegate Vincent F. Callahan Jr. said, "People from Virginia are not going to go into D.C. in the evening." Prospective team owner Bill Collins, chair of the Virginia Baseball Club, said that the corner of New York Avenue and North Capitol Street, the favored spot for a D.C. ballpark, was "not an urban site." He described the neighborhood as a highway ramp to Baltimore.
And Gabe Paul Jr., executive director of the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority (VBSA), more recently played on officials' inner-city fears by drawing this cold distinction between the baseball bids of D.C. and its largest suburb: "We're not looking at this as an urban-redevelopment project. We're looking at it as an economic-development project."
D.C. officials refuse to insult Virginia. They're confident of their chances. Baseball in a downtown stadium in the nation's capital is a good product and an easy sell. The Virginians are wrong about the attractiveness of baseball in the District: Cars with Virginia plates already flood District night spots, and contending bidders would have trouble matching a close-up view of the illuminated Capitol dome as an urban center-field backdrop.
The Virginia folks, however, are right about one thing: Virginia, not D.C., should build a ballpark.
D.C. simply can't afford taking a $275 million (or more) gamble on a stadium that might or might not produce promised economic benefits. Virginia, with its own budget squeeze, probably can't afford a stadium, either. But that's its problem, not ours. If Virginia wants baseball, it can have it, so long as it's within a few Metro stops of D.C.
The goal here is to cater to the District baseball fan without draining the D.C. budget or subjecting the streets to traffic tie-ups and construction dust. But the means to that end isn't nastiness; it's called reciprocity.
For decades, Virginia has diverted D.C. income taxes to its own coffers, even as its citizens have ripped up our roads, mobbed our tourist sites, and gobbled up our neighborhood parking spaces, only to head back home and laugh at our legendary civic dysfunction. One good way to make amends: Build a stadium in nearby Arlington.
"If we didn't have risk-takers, we wouldn't have America, and we wouldn't have American baseball," says Rick Kowalick, president of the Virginians for Baseball Fan Club.
Channel that optimism, Virginia. Build a stadium. But don't call it a reward for your relative wealth. Consider it penance, a punishment for billions in payments past due.
In April 2007, District residents will have a compelling reason to visit Pentagon City aside from Nordstrom, Godiva Chocolatier, and Wolfgang Puck. The escalator from the Metro station will bring them directly to a brick-paved plaza peopled by the larger-than-life bronzes of Walter Johnson and Josh Gibson. Across South Hayes Street, chartered coaches will be busing in fans from Winchester, Fredericksburg, and Charlottesville, and dumping them in front of the Ritz-Carlton. Ahead of them will stand a new ballpark, designed to look as if it had been built before baseball had mitts.
If they squint their eyes and look past the frilly iron work and faux-antique street lamps, these baseball fans will notice a few other changes to the neighborhood. Around the immediate perimeter of the ballpark, there will be a thin cordon of retail stores catering directly to the game-day crowds. Fans will buy fitted caps and signed bats at one of two souvenir stores operated by the home team. After the game, if they don't have to wake up at 6:30 the next morning for their government jobs, they might drop in at the Bench or War Games, two new sports bars on South Eads Street.
D.C. fans will love baseball in Virginia. They will love it more than Virginians. For District residents, the trip to Arlington will be a seven-minute Metro glide from L'Enfant Plaza, while anyone driving in from Herndon, Manassas, or Woodbridge will be arriving sometime after the second inning. Unless, of course, I-66 has 14 lanes by then.
An Arlington stadium will be easier to get to for many D.C. residents than a new stadium next to RFK. They may choose to snack in Dupont Circle or Capitol Hill before heading for the game, instead of feeding on high-cost ballpark franks. Even better, excursions to Arlington will be guilt-free affairs. No worries about cost overruns or the depressing economic impact of a losing team. And no longer will it be the Redskins faithful littering Kingman Park with their empties. Instead, it will be baseball superfans pissing on Arlington flower beds.
The home team will do well some years, suck other years. D.C. fans will lose interest in the novelty of a team, and by 2013, they'll just catch the games on cable, except in the odd season the team makes the playoffs.
There are a lot of unknowns about how much economic activity baseball will generate at Pentagon City, where two of the five prospective Virginia stadium sites are located. For one thing, the neighborhood doesn't have much room to grow. Virginia officials, though, profess no concerns about such matters.
Recently, they carefully inflated their forecast of a new ballpark's economic impact on the state. In 2000, a George Mason University study estimated that the total impact of a baseball team in Northern Virginia would amount to only $8.6 billion over the 30-year life of a stadium bond. But in 2003, after Major League Baseball released new projections of how much fans would be spending at games and how much owners would be spending to field teams, that figure rose to $11 billion.
Ever since Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened, in 1992, there's been no end to this kind of fantasy-peddling. Camden Yards was the giant sun-filled loft of baseball, with lots of exposed red brick, views of downtown, and enough authentic antique fixtures—such as the railroad warehouse beyond right field—to give the rest of the throwback staging a whiff of history. The sellout streak lasted years.
Awed by Baltimore, more than a dozen other cities drafted their own old-style-stadium plans. Only one of these new parks, in San Francisco, was privately financed. In every other city, local leaders argued for taxpayer-financed stadiums that were something more than just sports venues; they were marketed as surefire downtown-rescue projects well worth a $300 million public outlay. The catalytic effects of new ballparks are by now so heralded that the movement has taken on the qualities of a suicide cult.
Some parks, though, haven't kept the trend alive. They've drained municipal funds without giving back to the community—in terms of either hosting winning teams or generating much tax revenue. That's what makes Virginia an ideal spot for the next baseball experiment.
In the last few years, new stadiums opened in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh that rigidly followed all the Baltimore-proven principles of old-is-new park construction. But winning architecture didn't produce winning teams, and the crowds have yet to materialize.
Even the successes aren't necessarily successful.
Cleveland's Jacobs Field opened in 1994 to sellout crowds. The mere fact that 44,000 people were willing to venture downtown at night, to an area previously known as Cleveland's red-light district, was a signal that baseball had saved the city. Nearby, the neglected Warehouse District sprang to life as a yuppie haven, with pricey renovated lofts and some of the region's best restaurants. Condos rose up in the Industrial Valley, near where the river once famously caught fire.
But the Jake Effect is a myth. It didn't create Cleveland's downtown renaissance; it merely rode an already surging wave. With the help of the first excellent Indians squads in four decades, the sellouts merely symbolized all the things that had started happening years before. In 1991, when a baseball stadium was still on the drafting boards, the tallest building between New York and Chicago went up right in the middle of downtown. The year before, a block away, Cleveland's historic transportation center became a shopping mall. And by the early '90s, the Flats, the riverfront nightlife district, had already become one of the Midwest's most popular tourist destinations.
Most of the new jobs created at the stadium are low-paying part-time gigs, and the Indians have taken to letting church groups work concession stands in exchange for a commission. The team's cheapskate owner charges the most trivial expense—such as office furniture—against his ballpark lease payments, frustrating stadium authority officials, who don't get the rent they expected from the deal.
Around the stadium, baseball crowds support maybe a half-dozen bar and restaurant franchises. In 2001, the team's sellout streak ended, and in 2002, Cleveland had its first losing season since 1993. This year, the Indians are still losing, and after 10 home games, average attendance is down 31 percent from the same point last year.
Pittsburgh, where a $216 million stadium widely deemed among baseball's best made its debut in 2001, may never have Cleveland's happy memories. Even this year's promising club is drawing fewer fans than last year's losers, who played before just the 22nd-largest crowds in baseball.
"Pittsburgh has an absolutely beautiful, wonderful ballpark," says Bobby Goldwater, president of the D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission. "It's one of the most intelligently designed, fan-friendly, revenue-generating [ballparks] I've ever seen. It's terrific. On the other hand, there were certainly some disappointing scenarios. At some point, the honeymoon is over and you have to have a competitive team to be successful."
Goldwater says that the advantages of being a large market will be D.C.'s insurance against failure. "You can't take anything for granted," he says, "but you start from a better position."
When you don't win, you lose crowds. Without the crowds, the city may see only a small return on its investment. The surest way to fill seats is to field a champion, but taxpayers don't set the team payroll, fill the roster, or call the pitches. Nor can they do anything about the overall health of a sport whose economics are wack and whose popularity is in perceptible decline.
"It's not inconceivable there will be a small positive effect [of a new park], but it's not the sort of thing you can count on," says Andrew Zimbalist, the Smith College economist who has written extensively about the sports industry. "If you do it, it should be for social and cultural reasons, not economic."
Earlier this year, Mayor Anthony A. Williams announced his goal of persuading 100,000 big spenders to move to D.C. Baseball is supposed to be a means of drawing them here.
Chris Bender, spokesperson for Eric Price, deputy mayor for planning and economic development, sees two constituencies moving to the District following construction of a ballpark: first, the baseball die-hards who will flock to D.C. for quality bleacher time and couldn't care less about the Vuillard exhibition at the National Gallery of Art; and second, the voluptuaries hungry for infinite entertainment.
"We're trying to make the city a breakfast buffet, where whatever you want is cooked for you," says Bender.
A stadium in Arlington would accomplish much the same thing—and save a couple of hundred million dollars in the bargain. Bender rejects the notion.
"A team in Virginia does nothing to help the District financially," he says. "It just doesn't. We have a fiscal imbalance, period. It has to be congressionally fixed. Until it is, we have to find new ways to increase our revenues." Revenues, he says, would roll in from new economic development encouraged by the ballpark, mimicking what happened in D.C.'s once-shabby East End, where the Hotel Monaco, the District ChopHouse & Brewery, and luxury high-rises sprouted with the opening of the MCI Center.
D.C. is weighing three potential sites, none of which can match Pentagon City.
• New York Avenue: This is the site D.C. officials like best. A stadium here, estimated to cost about $422 million, would be adjacent to a new Red Line Metro station opening next year and would help extend downtown development to the northeast.
Why it doesn't need baseball: Development is happening here already, thanks to the future Metro station and a little help from D.C. officials. The District used tax incentives to lure XM Satellite Radio here, and the headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is coming soon to a plot nearby. As Ed Lazere, director of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, has pointed out, all park-generated revenue would be dedicated to paying construction bonds. If Virginia built a stadium, though, the New York Avenue site would eventually generate revenue for the general fund.
• M Street SE: Located near the Navy Yard Metro station, about a mile due south of the Capitol, this site represents the most expensive option, with a low-end price tag estimated at $426 million. The spot is near major federal employment centers, an excellent source of fans for nighttime baseball.
Why it doesn't need baseball: As at New York Avenue, development is already happening here. It's too close to Capitol Hill to remain a backwater. The D.C. Housing Authority justified the impending demolition of more than 700 units of public housing partly by pointing to the obvious attractions of the area; more than 1,500 new housing units are soon to come. Office buildings, meanwhile, are already being built near the Metro station.
•RFK Stadium: This is the econo-option, a proposed $342 million stadium adjacent to the existing RFK. D.C. officials have indicated that a revamp of the current facility, built in 1961, wouldn't generate enough revenue.
Why it doesn't need baseball: No one really wants baseball here—not possible ownership groups, not the city. Baseball at the RFK site would be too much like it used to be: a stand-alone facility surrounded by parking lots and the memories of losing Senators teams. As for development potential, does anyone really imagine high-rise condos next to the D.C. Jail?
Whereas Virginia's financing plan has been made public, D.C. is withholding until next week the details of how it might pay for a ballpark. Officials say their negotiations with baseball officials have demanded secrecy. But they have indicated that the city would finance two-thirds of the cost. The team's owners would make up the difference.
It was recently reported that to finance its share of the bill, D.C. would face debt service of about $27 million annually. Maybe two-thirds to three-quarters of this sum would come from park-generated revenue, such as taxes on tickets and concessions, and a proposed tax on the salaries of home-team ballplayers who don't live in the District.
But even if a so-called jock-tax revision of the Home Rule Charter were approved by Congress, stadium revenue wouldn't be enough. Price's office also proposes imposing some form of gross-receipts tax on local businesses, as it did for the construction of the MCI Center. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce thinks baseball is good for business, wants it in the District, and supports such a tax.
Mayor Williams is currently battling the D.C. Council on spending cuts. Building a stadium while public-schools funding is at risk is conduct worthy of recall campaigns. The mayor masks his proposal with the promise that the city's general fund would not be touched to finance a ballpark. But by merely putting the gross-receipts tax on the table, baseball boosters may already be diverting the broader revenue stream.
That's because the business community has made it clear that its support for the stadium fee is conditional, as Lazere has said. It all depends on how the city closes its current budget gaps in the coming months. If D.C. increases franchise or parking taxes to avoid drastic cuts to core services, then the Chamber of Commerce may decide a baseball tax is one burden too many. "We cannot do it all," warns D.C. Chamber President Barbara Lang.
In a city on a desperate hunt for new sources of revenue, a baseball tax is permanent leverage for the businesses, now and in any future budget disputes. Tax them for sports and make taxing them for anything else that much harder. Soak them enough and some are liable to migrate to Virginia.
It's past time Virginia shouldered the burdens of being part of a world-class metropolis. Building a ballpark would be a good start.
Virginians sometimes forget that it's not IKEA and cinema/draft houses that attract talent to the region. What makes the Washington area worthwhile is the District, with its museums, monuments, and secure government jobs, and all the imperial majesty that comes with being the capital city. But the federally created city that hosts all these goodies—that paves the roads, pays the cops, and buys the firetrucks—receives no financial help from its neighbors.
Being the seat of power and a cultural showcase comes at a cost. What with all the federal installations, embassies, business associations, universities, churches, do-gooder groups, and other not-for-profit organizations, nearly half the property in town is tax-exempt.
Everyone in the region may benefit from the premiere services available at Children's National Medical Center, but it's D.C.'s police who patrol the neighborhood. Sixty percent of the beds for the area's homeless are in D.C. At the Kennedy Center, the society matrons of McLean and Chevy Chase display their grace and good will, but as a revenue-generating tool, that prime piece of riverside real estate would better serve the city if it were Fashion City at Kennedy Centre. Let Shear Madness play in Rosslyn.
Suburbanites get all the payoff with none of the pain. Take the new downtown convention center. The District government has invested 17 years, countless administration man-hours, and some $834 million in a facility whose benefits are shared by Virginia and Maryland. Washington Convention Center officials estimate that more than half the $1.4 billion the facility generates for the local economy will go to the suburbs. "Is there spillover and compression, and when they're really busy, do we benefit? No question," says Roger Murphy, director of the Arlington Convention & Visitors Service. And who is more likely to benefit from the industry trade shows it hosts, Dulles Corridor tech firms or the National Geographic Society?
Odds are certain that if there's a fire in an exhibition hall, a Virginia fire engine won't respond. Odds are even that the building will be able to make up for its huge investment of taxpayer dollars.
Virginia does nothing to right this wrong. While other suburbs in the country help shoulder responsibility for their urban cores, Virginia's cares end at the D.C. line. Numbers supplied by Brookings Institution think-tankers help to document Virginia's civic debt to the District. Here are a few entries on the imbalance sheet:
•Commuter incursions: $480 million. Virginia salarymen drive into the District, chew up its roads, and flush its toilets. The District's Home Rule Charter prohibits it from taxing all the free riders. The loss is devastating: Annually, Virginia takes in $480 million in income taxes from residents who earn their money in the District, and Maryland reaps $900 million. They only partially make up for it by shopping and eating lunch here, generating a paltry $40 million in sales tax revenue.
•Host services: $240 million. That's how much it costs to provide such city services as police and fire protection to the Virginia jobs program known as the federal government. Thing is, the feds are living off the District dole, too. If the federal government were a respectable business and made widgets instead of regulations, it would be taxable to the tune of $200 million, according to city figures cited by Brookings.
•Subway unfare: Millions. Metro subsidizes cheap parking in Maryland and Virginia. Meanwhile, District residents pay much of the Metro budget: $266 per resident versus $109 per head for the region as a whole.
•Licensing fees: More millions. "Washington" Bike Center, "Washington" Gypsum Supply, and "Washington" Dulles International Airport are all in Virginia.
•Viewing privileges: Billions! Hotels in Rosslyn and Crystal City get freebie peeks of the beautiful D.C. skyline. We get views of planes landing at National.
Total guesstimated loss: $10 billion.
Old Dominion baseball honchos want "Virginia" in the team's name. "After all, this is a Virginia team we're talking about," says the VBSA's Paul. Call them the Squires, the Founders, the Slims, whatever—just put the team in Arlington.
The VBSA has narrowed the possible stadium location to five sites, three of them in Arlington. The two outliers are near Dulles, on the border of Loudoun and Fairfax Counties, and in Springfield, on former proving grounds at Fort Belvoir. Paul says these two sites—which he charitably refers to as "semi-urban"—would pull the team closer to the heart of the Virginia market, by which he means closer to places like Haymarket and Richmond. For D.C. baseball fans, the non-Arlington sites are sure deal-breakers.
Arlington is nearly perfect, and it offers better views of D.C. than any of the proposed sites in the District itself. The site physically closest to the District is just across the Roosevelt Bridge, at the base of the former USA Today building in Rosslyn. The purchase price of the apartment complex currently on the site, somewhere in the $200 million range, helps make this the $610 million luxury option. For District residents, the more important figure is the number of Metro stops separating Rosslyn and Metro Center: four.
The two remaining possibilities are more or less next to each other on land currently occupied by retail directly east of the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City. Virginia Baseball Club Chair Collins considers these the best sites. Whether Virginians spend $394 million and displace some warehouses or $434 million and buy out Costco makes no difference to D.C. fans. Either way, the stadium would be four Metro stops away from Gallery Place.
Distance-wise, Arlington might as well be part of D.C. Until Arlington County's retrocession in 1847, it was. Since then, though, the localities' histories have diverged. Although Paul calls Arlington "classic urban," it looks and feels like a suburb—tidy, with malls and landscaped office parks. Aesthetically, it doesn't fully conform to baseball's urban ideal. But it will do.
Maybe, come 2007 or so, District residents will have the privilege of paying top dollar for baseball tickets at Lockheed Martin Park at Pentagon City. But no matter how much D.C. visitors spend, it will be coming at an invisible discount, far less than what Virginians will
be paying. Yes, Virginia, community pride
is overpriced.
"You can either let us be known as Arlington, the county with the high-rises and the cemetery," says Tom Brooke, co-chair of the Arlington Baseball Coalition, "or we can be something interesting and dynamic. You have to have something." CP
Art accompanying story in the printed newspaper is not available in this archive: Illustration by Lloyd Miller.


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MAKING BETTER BUSINESS DECISIONS THROUGH V.O.I.C.E.S.
Poor decision making can be detrimental and costly to any organization - especially in business. Even the smallest decisions such as concerns surround the use of the O-Rings in the Challenger Space Shuttle which blew-up in 1986 may have seemed relatively insignificant before to the explosion when ten of thousands of other decisions were being made prior to launch.
In today's increasingly complex and rapidly changing business climate, poor decision making can be far more costly and damaging than decades ago. Even what may seem relatively insignificant to some may have much larger impacts down the road - far beyond when the decision makers who were responsible for the decisions made are still around.


Perhaps this is a good sign for humanity in general. The act of making fun of diffables is indeed a trite thing that should have been extinct for a long time. However, that is not the only reason for the absence of these heartbreaking scenes. Maybe we just don't know that Dumbo is still being ridiculed – how about that, in this live-action version no animal can talk. Especially singing like the animated version was released in 1941. In fact, we even spend very little time with them. So, we also won't meet Timothy, the circus rat who became Dumbo's best friend.
The new Dumbo peak version is no longer a matter of how Dumbo can fly. He was good at flapping his ears from the beginning of the film. So, even though Dumbo's flying ability is still spectacular to witness, this part is not the main point of the film. Dumbo is still the center of the story of the film, but this time he is surrounded with too many characters with backgrounds and very cliched characterizations. We can almost guess how the story will run when a character first appears on the screen. To appear standout, Dumbo actually doesn't need them. Dumbo has been pulled from there.
The most important human character is probably Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), a horse rider in the circus owned by Max Medici (Danny DeVito). Upon returning to the task of the state in World War I, Holt had to lose one hand, his horse, and his wife. Due to the appalling financial conditions of the Medici circus, Holt was assigned to treat elephants, including a pregnant elephant named Jumbo. Yep, he was the elephant who later gave birth to Dumbo. Because of his physical abnormalities, only Holt's children, Milly and Joe (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins) were willing to take care of him.
When I saw Dumbo, I felt like I saw a real elephant. Okay, of course there are no elephants with ears and eyes of that size. However, the CGI magic made it real. When he moves or interacts with humans, he has a convincing weight and space sensation. Speaking of eyes, of course you know the function of the eyes is not from a character in a movie right? yup, to provoke sympathy and drain sweat in our eyes.
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Tim Steele remembers poet Helen Pinkerton: hardscrabble origins and poems "deeply in the American grain"
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018
A few days ago, we noted the death of the Stanford poet Helen Pinkerton, who died last Thursday, December 28, 2017, and we cited some earlier words from Los Angeles poet Timothy Steele, a longtime contributor to the Book Haven (here and here and here) and the subject of a number of its posts (here and here). He wrote his own tribute for Helen on Facebook:
Helen Pinkerton rose from hardscrabble origins to become one of the most thoughtful and graceful poets of her generation. She was born in 1927 in Butte, Montana, the home of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and possibly the roughest and most corrupt town in the country at the time. (Dashiell Hammett portrays it as Personville in Red Harvest.) Pinkerton had to take a circuitous route on her walk to school each day to avoid the town's large and thriving red light district. Her father worked in the mines and was killed in 1938 in an accident in one of the shafts in Butte Hill—"the richest hill on earth" during the copper boom. After graduating from high school in 1944, Pinkerton moved with her mother to Palo Alto, where they worked in a cannery. She applied and was admitted to Stanford. She later modestly said that she thought she got in because all the young men were off in the Second World War and the university needed students. Originally intending to study journalism, she took a class from Yvor Winters, who recognized and encouraged her talent for poetry and scholarship. After receiving her B.A. from Stanford, she earned a doctorate from Harvard. She married the scholar J. Wesley Trimpi, with whom she had two daughters, and wrote influential studies on modern poetry, the Civil War, and Herman Melville. Melville's Confidence Men and American Politics in the 1850s (published under her married name, Helen P. Trimpi) is considered a classic in its field.
With Helen and poet Turner Cassity in 2010
But Pinkerton's greatest work is her poetry. It exemplifies T. S. Eliot's thesis that fine poems are often a blend of tradition and individual talent. Her "Elegy at Beaverhead County, Montana," which appears below, draws on the long tradition of elegiac poetry in English. Its metrical-stanzaic form and its pastoral meditation recall Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Churchyard." At the same time, Pinkerton's poem is deeply in the American grain. Its twenty lines touch on so many critical issues in our country and culture—including the cruel manner in which we divide the future from the past and the struggle between those who cultivate the earth and those who would exploit it for wealth. (Pinkerton once noted that Native American observers had been shocked when settlers from the East started extracting minerals from the planet without putting anything back in.) Pinkerton also portrays—with moving sympathy and a daughter's cautious watchfulness—her strong and disappointed father, a man who had relatively little formal education but who loved music and played the violin.
Pinkerton uses as her epigraph, "Gold and silver," the motto that Montana adopted in 1865, when it became an official United States Territory. "Love, faith, and poetry" is a motto that her friends and admirers will remember her by.
Elegy at Beaverhead County, Montana
"Oro y plata"
My father fished here summers, scaled and cleaned
His catch by the gray weathered fence that dips
Into the river. Thin as a pine, he leaned
Again to rinse the knife in chilling rips.
The river is Missouri's western source,
So clear and shallow even stones and sand
Under that sun seem golden in its course.
Men came for gold and, failing, took the land.
Sons of unsettled men sometimes remained
To change the land through labor and design.
He left, rejecting when he might have gained,
But only found another ore to mine.
His quiet lapsed to taciturnity,
Slow anger to hard answers in a glance;
Music alone and its brief gaiety,
His father's gift, remained from circumstance.
For that rich butte in whose deep shaft he died,
Where I first saw, as silver as the earth,
Another stream flow west from the Divide,
Gave to him nothing of its final worth.
Helen Pinkerton (1927 – 2017)
from Taken in Faith (Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2002)
The poet Annie Finch remembered that Tim had put her in touch with Helen years ago when she was organizing her anthology, A Formal Feeling Comes. She posted the page with Helen's artistic credo, and the moving elegy on her Aunt Nora:
Tags: Annie Finch, Helen Pinkerton Trimpi, Timothy Steele
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"No poet in English writes with more authority": Requiescat in Pace, Stanford poet Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017)
At left, Helen Pinkerton at a Stanford event in 2010, with poet Turner Cassity at right. I'm in the center.
I met Helen Pinkerton fifteen years ago, when I wrote about her for Stanford Magazine. It was part of my effort to write about all the "Stanford poets" who had been in the orbit, however briefly, of poet-critic Yvor Winters – a circle that is largely unacknowledged and under-appreciated. Helen and I stayed in touch over the years, though not as frequently as either of us would have liked, for she was a indefatigable correspondent with a wide network and I had heavy writing commitments. (I have written about her here and here, among other places.)
En route to the Tucson airport yesterday, I received an email from her daughter Erica Light: "It is with infinite sadness I must let you know of the passing of the poet, scholar, Civil War historian, teacher, and friend to many, my mother Helen Pinkerton Trimpi, at her home in Grass Valley, California, at the age of 90. She made her peaceful transition yesterday, Thursday, December 28, 2017, in the morning with her family close about her."
I would have written differently about Helen today, but there were nevertheless some good bits in my long-ago article:
"She has written some of the best poems of her generation," says poet and scholar Timothy Steele, '70. Pinkerton's mentor, Yvor Winters, deemed her "a master of poetic style and of her material. No poet in English writes with more authority." The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, calling her style "austere," notes that "her carefully crafted poetry is profoundly philosophical and religious." …
Meeting Winters turned her aspirations upside-down. "I discovered a whole new world, which was the serious writing of poetry," she says. She decided she'd rather be a mediocre poet than a first-rate journalist. For Pinkerton, poetry "was a better thing to do—it was more interesting and more valuable. It was a funny choice to make, I must say," she adds wryly.
A second turning point occurred a few years later, when she read Moby Dick on an ocean liner going to Europe after completing her master's. It became the subject of her 1987 scholarly work, Melville's Confidence Man and American Politics in the 1850s—and of a number of her long narrative poems. "I gave a lot of my life to Melville," she says.
But poetry always came first, she says. "For fifty years, Pinkerton has been writing beautifully crafted poems, but the age has favored flashier and more improvisational talents, and her work has not received the hearing it deserves," Steele writes in the afterword to Taken in Faith. Flashy and improvisational she's not—but with a little luck, she may outlast both those trends.
Over at the Weekly Standard, James Matthew Wilson, another of her many friends and correspondents, wrote a retrospective of her work in "It's a Battlefield":
Over seven decades, Helen Pinkerton has published a small number of poems admirable for their austere intellectual beauty, such as the newly collected "Metaphysical Song."
First Principle
Being's pure act,
Infinite cause
Of finite fact,
Essential being,
Beyond our sight,
Without which, nothing,
Neither love nor light
Like those of her mentor, Yvor Winters, Pinkerton's lyrics exhibit both philosophical depth and clean, classical lines. She exceeds him in her careful definition of the human condition in terms of its inescapable orientation to the divine "First Principle." …
Over the years, I have published several articles on Pinkerton, in hopes of bringing her metaphysical lyrics to a wider audience. I see now, however, that I have given short shrift to what may be her most lasting contribution to American letters, her five dramatic monologues in blank verse on the subject of the Civil War. These, I believe, will become classics: miniature epics that, like Virgil's Aeneid, draw public history and private tragedy into a poetic whole.
And last but not least, Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence, wrote a tribute yesterday, "The Spirit's Breath and Seed," which includes a long excerpt from their own correspondence. (I believe I can take credit for introducing the two some years ago via email.) From Patrick:
Helen was among the last of Yvor Winters' students to leave us. With their teacher, they – Helen, [Edgar] Bowers, Thom Gunn, Turner Cassity – along with J.V. Cunningham and Winters' wife, Janet Lewis, represent the supreme flowering of the art of poetry in the United States. Helen's interests always surprised me. She published a book on Melville and another, Crimson Confederates, devoted to the students at Harvard who fought for the Southern cause in the Civil War. Last year, Wiseblood Books published A Journey of the Mind: Collected Poems of Helen Pinkerton 1945-2016.
Only death stopped her. Helen's collected poems, A Journey of the Mind, was published last year – a late harvest indeed, but that's not all. Her final poem, "Dialogue," appears in the Fall 2017 issue of Modern Age. And even her last few days held a surprise: two days before her death, she received the completed and bound copy of her interview from the Stanford Oral History folks, which, according to her daughter,"looks very nice indeed." The link for the video interview is here.
Requiescat in pace, Helen. Your grace, intelligence, and fine poetic ear will be missed.
Tags: Helen Pinkerton, James Matthew Wilson, Timothy Steele, Turner Cassity
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Four poets, two versions of Orpheus
Greville, for purposes of comparison.
"Thom Gunn once wrote a letter of reference for Edgar Bowers, and he evidently said afterward that the experience made him feel like Philip Sidney recommending Fulke Greville." So Los Angeles poet Timothy Steele opens his "Two Versions of Orpheus" in the summer issue of the Yale Review. One thing the Gunn and Bowers shared: a deep grounding and love for the Renaissance poets, including of course Sidney and Greville.
We've written before about Gunn here and here, and about Bowers here and here, and even a little about Fulke Greville here, and Tim Steele here and here and here, among other places.
But that's all in pieces. Tim's essays are always thoughtful, erudite, and insightful, and this long piece is one of the best of them – and it begins with Gunn's anecdote, which frames the essay.
You can read it for yourself, but if you don't know either of the poets, who studied with Stanford's Yvor Winters, here's your introduction, which gives you a taste for the whole:
Gunn: a panther tattoo and an earring.
Even in the personal impressions they produced, Gunn and Bowers differed in ways that Sidney and Greville did. Just as Sidney was the cynosure of his era, Gunn was a rock star in the poetry world of the second half of the twentieth century. Tall and handsome, he combined courtly good manners – he was in person very thoughtful and considerate of others – with an appealingly piratical air. He wore an earring long before it was a common fashion accessory for men. On his right arm, he had a tattoo of a panther that he got in 1962 from Lyle Tuttle, the San Francisco artist who later did Janis Joplin's tattoos and who tattooed the Allman Brothers with the mushroom design that has remained the band's logo to this day. If Paolo Veronese painted Sidney, artists like Don Bachardy and Robert Mapplethorpe drew or photographed Gunn. The dust jackets of some of his books carry their portraits of him. Seeing these, many of us feel that, yes, this is the way a poet should look.
Counterpoint: Sidney as fashionplate.
Bowers was just the opposite. Reluctant to call attention to himself, he dressed in a quietly tasteful Brooks Brothers manner, and with his understated charm could have passed for the kind of cultivated civil servant that Greville became for Elizabeth and James I. Though a wonderfully intelligent and lively conversationalist, he had no artistic airs. As devoted as he was to poetry, he sometimes said, as Dick Davis recalled in a memorial essay on Bowers in Poets & Writers (2000), that one is a poet only when one is writing a poem. Further, he thought that the poet's main responsibility was to write well and to produce the best individual poems he or she could, and he believed that it was ruinous to poets to imagine that they were more special than other people or had creative spirits that automatically conferred value on whatever they wrote. He worried that his contemporaries judged poets more by their appearance than by their work, and on one occasion during a literary dinner in Florence, his suspicion received ironic confirmation. One of the other guests, not realizing that Bowers had good Italian, remarked within his hearing that he obviously was not a real poet, in view of how well groomed he was. Such thoughtlessness irritated Bowers, but he recognized that it reflected the zeitgeist and resigned himself to the situation as best he could.
Bowers was a Brooks Brothers guy.
While on the subject of the folly of judging merely on appearances, I should add that Gunn, despite his outlaw image and his genuinely wild side, conducted his writing life with extraordinary meticulousness. Those who visited him at his house on Cole Street in San Francisco have noted how neatly he kept his room and library. As is shown by his notebooks and diaries archived at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, he was also an inveterate maker of to-do lists and was continually mapping out writing projects, quite a few of which he relinquished simply because there was not time enough in one life to do them all. Moreover, he maintained careful and extensive records of his publications and public appearances. In an essay in The Threepenny Review (2005), Wendy Lesser conveys the powerful impression produced by the thoroughness of this documentation.
After Gunn's death the previous year, and at the request of his longtime partner Mike Kitay, she and August Kleinzahler inspected Gunn's study: ''We found drawers of file folders containing every draft of every poem he had ever published, all sorted into book-manuscript order and each clipped to the finished, printed version of the poem; and we found schedules of every reading he had given for the past four decades, each with the list of poems to be read that night.''
In contrast, Bowers possessed, in spite of his conventionally tasteful wardrobe and exquisitely poised intellect, the kinds of quirks and crochets we tend to associate with the artistic temperament. As he confessed in a 1999 radio interview with Troy Teegarden's Society of Underground Poets, he was ''very disorderly.''
Read the whole thing here.
Tags: Edgar Bowers, Fulke Greville, Philip Sidney, Thom Gunn, Timothy Steele
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Is our anger an addiction?
David's "Wrath of Achilles" – but he doesn't look nearly as angry as my friends.
Rage is contagious and addictive. I didn't need the recent article in Time to tell me that. All you have to do is look at the social media, with all the shrill ridicule, the belligerent invective, the hectoring denunciation, the flared nostrils, the strong statements to one's friends about how this or that cannot be tolerated, in the name of tolerance. These posts are immediately endorsed by other angry friends. No persuasion is occurring – it's the far safer practice of preaching to the converted.
But the Time article about the (scientifically proven) nature of anger sure helps, and I hope it finds an audience. From Susanna Schrobsdorff's "The Rage Flu: Why All This Anger Is Contagious and Making us Sick":
Modern role model?
If we're always ready for battle, any bit of breaking news can bolster the fear that things are out of control. And judging by the rise in violence at political rallies, some things are getting a bit out of control. But as Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, points out, our fears often don't match actual risk. … "In a very fearful and tribalistic society, we run on emotion, which is the currency of social media. It's emotive first," says Levin. But all the sharing and venting we do has toxic side effects. One of those effects is the increased acceptability of crude or violent insults. They are now so commonplace that they fail to shock, whether they're coming from the man in the Oval Office or a late-night comedian. And that ups the ante so that those trying get our attention have to go a little further each time.
Anger is particularly contagious on social media. Researchers at Beihang University in Beijing mapped four basic emotions in more than 70 million posts and found that anger is more influential than other emotions like sadness and joy–it spreads faster and more broadly. This is as much a physical phenomenon as a mental one. Anger gives us a burst of adrenaline and sparks a fight-or-flight response in our nervous system.
No wonder it feels as if the nation is a little sick. It's as if we all have a virus and some of us are more vulnerable to it than others. That is in fact how some social scientists are describing the spread of rage and division. Violence and violent speech meet the criteria of disease, says Dr. Gary Slutkin, founder of Cure Violence and faculty of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Like a virus, violence makes more of itself. Rage begets more rage. And it spreads because we humans are wired to follow our peers.
The article was brought to my attention by a friend who lives in Charlottesville, John Murphy, who wrote: "As René Girard and others have pointed out, imitation leads to competition and competition leads to imitation. When we enter into tit-for-tat conflict with rage-filled people who say and do outrageous things, we end up eventually as rage-filled people who say and do outrageous things ourselves. It's a moralistic arms race that can't be won, with mutually assured self-destruction at the finish line."
Schrobsdorff concludes:
More recently, big societal shifts, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage or the election of Donald Trump, have left segments of the population feeling profoundly destabilized. "People are experiencing a shock because they thought they knew who we are. Now they don't. They think, Does that mean I don't belong, or does it mean that I have to get rid of these other people?" says [author David] Berreby. "This becomes a big source of fear, and people get angry when they're fearful."
And if policy disagreements are described as existential threats to our identity, issues like immigration, climate change or GMO foods can feel like a clash of civilizations. Once it reaches that level, says Berreby, it's no longer about the facts or the data. "It becomes a sacred conflict," says Berreby. "If you don't believe in this, then you're not a good person." Then it doesn't matter what you say, no one's changing camps. "At that point, it's more important for you to stay with your team than it is for you to be persuaded," says Berreby.
And therein may lie the problem. We don't seem to have anyone capable of reminding us that we play for the same team.
One of the best antidotes is a poem by another friend, Los Angeles poet Timothy Steele.
It's written in "sapphics," named for the Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, 7th-6th century B.C.
Sapphics Against Anger
Angered, may I be near a glass of water;
May my first impulse be to think of Silence,
Its deities (who are they? do, in fact, they
Exist? etc.).
May I recall what Aristotle says of
The subject: to give vent to rage is not to
Release it but to be increasingly prone
To its incursions.
May I imagine being in the Inferno,
Hearing it asked: "Virgilio mio, who's
That sulking with Achilles there?" and hearing
Virgil say: "Dante,
That fellow, at the slightest provocation,
Slammed phone receivers down, and waved his arms like
A madman. What Attila did to Europe,
What Genghis Khan did
To Asia, that poor dope did to his marriage."
May I, that is, put learning to good purpose,
Mindful that melancholy is a sin, though
Stylish at present.
Better than rage is the post-dinner quiet,
The sink's warm turbulence, the streaming platters,
The suds rehearsing down the drain in spirals
In the last rinsing.
For what is, after all, the good life save that
Conducted thoughtfully, and what is passion
If not the holiest of powers, sustaining
Only if mastered.
Tags: David Berreby, Susanna Schrobsdorff, Timothy Steele
Happy birthday to poet Charles Gullans! "He did political poetry especially well!"
Wilkes as seen by Hogarth
Another birthday celebration, coming to us courtesy the Los Angeles poet (and Stanford alum) Timothy Steele:
The poet and translator Charles Gullans was born on this date in 1929. Educated at the University of Minnesota and Stanford University, where he studied with Yvor Winters, he achieved significant notice in the 1950s and appeared in such anthologies of the time as "New Poets of England and America." Though his classically inclined work fell from favor during the ascendency of the Beats and the Confessionals, he was a popular and productive professor at UCLA and continued to write excellent poems until his death in 1993. He did political poetry especially well, as is illustrated by his poem about John Wilkes, the eighteenth-century Whig politician, journalist, and thorn-in-the-side of George III. (Wilkes once declined an invitation to play cards, remarking that he couldn't tell the difference between a king and a knave.) In view of this past fall's election, some readers may find timely Gullans' suggestion that we should prefer an imperfect political leader to one who is barbaric. The anecdote to which Gullans refers at the end of his poem exists in several versions and may be apocryphal. But it suits the context and Wilkes' character in any case. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Happy Birthday, Charles Gullans! (The caricature of Wilkes that accompanies this post is by William Hogarth. [Go here for Tim's birthday tribute to the artist – ED.])
Lord Bute, whose rant was the establishment,
Had studied and had mastered the appearance
Of public virtue, but his private bent
Was mistresses and whores built for endurance.
The public interest hid his private acts.
His principle, self-interest of the few,
The fool aristocrat, he hated facts,
And any man of strong, contrary view.
But here was Wilkes, the upstart gentleman,
Bourgeois, with an aristocrat's disdain
Of canting ethics and of rant in one,
Or in the many, whom he hoped to gain.
"I have no minor vices," though a boast,
Was license to quick, brittle fools to laugh;
Then, teaching what hyperbole may cost,
His wit pursued him like an epitaph.
No hypocrite, his vices all well known,
"Godless, but never womanless an hour,"
Hard and contemptuous, still the man had grown
Hating restriction and abusive power.
Consistency is firmness in each type.
Yet men of principle may simply be—
Hero or saint, coward or guttersnipe—
Persistent in the partial good they see.
Then if defect seems equal in each eye,
Prefer the cynic to the hypocrite.
Despise the Bute who said to him, "You'll die
Of syphilis or on the gallows yet."
Prefer the Wilkes who looked into that face,
And with the swift inconscience of the bored
Said, "That depends on whether I embrace
Your mistress or your principles, my Lord."
Charles Gullans (1929-93)
Tags: Charles Gullans, John Wilkes, Timothy Steele, William Hogarth, Yvor Winters
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Happy birthday to poet Edgar Bowers! He thought "intelligence and sympathy" would save the world.
Thursday, March 2nd, 2017
Los Angeles poet Timothy Steele has another birthday post (see earlier ones here and here and here). This time the Stanford alum is appreciating another Stanford alum, the under-recognized Edgar Bowers:
Born in Rome, Georgia, on March 2, 1924, Edgar Bowers served in Europe in the Second World War with the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After Germany surrendered to the Allies, he was posted to Hitler's alpine retreat in Berchtesgaden, where he headed a unit of the "De-nazification" program, whose goal was to identify individuals and groups responsible for atrocities committed during the Third Reich.
In his later years, Bowers came to believe that the survival of the species depended on its intelligence and sympathy, though he recognized that human knowledge is inevitably limited and that science and peace will probably never entirely overcome the forces of ignorance and war. He published five books of poetry, including a Collected Poems in 1997.
Bowers died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in San Francisco in 2000.
One of Bowers's best-known poems is "The Astronomers of Mont Blanc," which he reads in the video below. The poem and the recording (taken the early 1950s, when he was a graduate student at Stanford University) are reproduced with the kind permission of The Literary State of Edgar Bowers and its Executor, Joshua S. Odell.
Happy birthday, Edgar!
The Astronomers of Mont Blanc
Who are you there that, from your icy tower,
Explore the colder distances, the far
Escape of your whole universe to night;
That watch the moon's blue craters, shadowy crust,
And blunted mountains mildly drift and glare,
Ballooned in ghostly earnest on your sight:
Who are you, and what hope persuades your trust?
It is your hope that you will know the end
And compass of our ignorant restraint
There in lost time, where what was done is done
Forever as a havoc overhead.
Aging, you search to master in the faint
Persistent fortune which you gaze upon
The perfect order trusted to the dead.
– Edgar Bowers (1924-2000)
Tags: Edgar Bowers, Joshua S. Odell, Timothy Steele
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Happy firthday to the mixed-up guy who invented Spoonerisms!
Another birthday tribute from Los Angeles poet, scholar, and friend Timothy Steele. Collect the whole set here and here and here and here, among other places. Meanwhile, today's birthday boy:
Born on this day in 1844, William Spooner was for many years Dean and Warden of New College, Oxford. He became so famous for transposing the initial sounds of words that we now refer to such slips of the tongue as "Spoonerisms." Errors attributed to him include an offer of assistance to a foot-weary acquaintance ("May I sew you to a sheet?"); a reproach of a lackadaisical student ("You have tasted a whole worm!"); a description of his favorite means of transportation ("a well-boiled icicle"); directions from Oxford to London ("Leave by the town drain"); and reassuring words about Providence ("Our Lord is a shoving leopard").
Though some gems associated with Spooner are doubtless apocryphal, he does seem to have been almost congenitally disposed to mixing things up. He once spilled salt on a tablecloth and immediately poured claret over it. Giving guests a tour of his college, he warned them that a staircase they were about to descend was badly lit, then switched off the weak lighting, and led them down into total darkness. Also, he suffered from albinism, so his eyesight was poor. Reading lectures was a challenge, and he naturally mangled the text from time to time. It was reportedly during a formal address to farmers that he called them "noble tons of soil," and it was during a speech before Queen Victoria that he said, "Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed fish."
When he died in 1930, Spooner was remembered not only for his eccentricities but also for his long and fruitful marriage (depending which account you read, he and his wife produced five or seven children), for his able administration of New College, and for his devotion to his students. Among the latter, Leonard Woolley ("Woolly of Ur") recalled how, when he was young and clueless, Spooner convinced him to become an archeologist. Spooner had long been aware of his reputation, and his friends sometimes detected a subversive wit in his odd expressions, as in his remark to a colleague: "Your book fills a much needed gap."
So hail, Dr. Spooner! It's your Firthday on Basebook! (At right, is Leslie Ward's 1898 caricature of Spooner for Vanity Fair.)
Tags: Leslie Ward, Timothy Steele, William Spooner
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"Death is so plain!" Remembering Thom Gunn on the anniversary of his death.
I've been thinking about San Francisco poet Thom Gunn in the last few days, for reasons I won't get into. But perhaps a subliminal one is worth mentioning: he died on this day, twelve years ago. I was, to my best knowledge, the last person to interview him at his flat in the City, in a Q&A published in The Georgia Review – not online, alas.
He was apparently on L.A. poet's Tim Steele's mind, too. Both poets are alums of Stanford's English Department and its Creative Writing Program. Gunn studied with the legendary Yvor Winters while at Stanford; Tim was a Jones Lecturer.
Tim remembers one of Thom Gunn's many fine poems on this sad anniversary:
Thom Gunn died on April 25, 2004. A wonderful elegist, he also wrote with memorable affection about domestic animals, and these gifts come together in "Her Pet." As he indicates in a video clip (below), he composed the poem when, during the AIDS crisis, he was reading Michael Levey's "High Renaissance" and came across a reproduction of Germain Pilon's sarcophagus for Valentine Balbiani (1518-1572) that resonated with own experiences of seeing friends die in the epidemic.
The Balbiani sarcophagus is an example what Erwin Panofsky calls "the double-decker tomb." On the top of the tomb, Pilon depicts the reclining figure of Valentine as she was in life. Below, on the side of the tomb, he renders her as she was after she died.
Contracts concerning the sarcophagus survive, and they call not only for this double depiction of Valentine, but also for her being accompanied by "a little dog of marble, made as naturally as possible." Dogs often appear on tombs, but generally at the feet of the deceased and chiefly as symbols of fidelity. In this case, however, the dog was an effigy of a real companion of the subject, and according to contemporary accounts, it died of sorrow three days after its mistress did.
Writing about the sarcophagus, Gunn imitates its appearance by devising a double sonnet. The first sonnet—the upper one—describes the portion of the tomb that shows Valentine alive. The second sonnet describes the side-relief of her in death. Below is the text of "Her Pet," along with the two images of the tomb reproduced in Levey's book. The video clip of Gunn's reading of the poem is from a 1994 appearance at the Lannan Foundation in Los Angeles.
"Her Pet"
I walk the floor, read, watch a cop-show, drink,
Hear buses heave uphill through drizzling fog,
Then turn back to the pictured book to think
Of Valentine Balbiani and her dog:
She is reclining, reading, on her tomb;
But pounced, it tries to intercept her look,
Its front paws on her lap, as in this room
The cat attempts to nose beneath my book. …
[Well, copyright laws forbid us to do more. Listen to the rest below…]
Postscript on 4/26 from Tim Steele: "I well remember your Georgia Review interview with Thom. It brought many characteristic flashes of his insight. I also recall his comparing, in his conversation with you, Yvor Winters's influence on him to his mother's influence on him. (This appeared in your Stanford Magazine piece on Thom, I believe.) That's an incredibly revealing and touching comment. People often think of Winters as a formidable father figure, and he may have been that for Thom to some extent. But Thom also saw Winters as a nurturing, supportive, literature-loving figure, just as his mother had been."
Tags: Thom Gunn, Timothy Steele
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Happy birthday to the bad boy of Roman poetry!
More birthday greetings from our correspondent, the Los Angeles poet (and Stanford alum) Timothy Steele. This time the occasion is the birthday of Ovid. Tim has offered occasional salutations to Virgil, Marcel Proust, Jane Austen, George Frideric Handel, Christina Rosetti, William Hogarth and Oliver Goldsmith. And we have written about Ovid here and here and here and here and here.
But the years roll round again relentlessly offering us another occasion to celebrate the author of Metamorphoses – and Tristia, too.
This Sunday marks the birthday of Ovid, the bad boy of Roman poetry. Born in 43 BCE, he reports in his Tristia that versing came naturally to him even as a child. His masterpiece, "Metamorphoses," is a tour de force that knits together, by the recurring motif of transformation, myths and legends from the origin of the world up to the time of Julius Caesar. Though Ovid did not invent the stories, he recounted them with unforgettable psychological vividness and gave them their definitive form. No other poem has had a greater influence on subsequent art. Sculptors, painters, composers, novelists, and poets have drawn on it for centuries.
In his own day, Ovid was immensely popular, but, unluckily, the emperor Augustus was not a fan. A libertine in youth, he metamorphosed as a ruler into a priggish defender of public morals, and he detested Ovid's poems, which breezily treat sex and seduction and which parody conventional Roman pieties. In 8 CE he banned Ovid's work from the state libraries and banished the poet himself to Tomis, an imperial outpost on the Black Sea notorious for its bandits and bad weather. Ovid died there in 17 CE.
Many anecdotes survive about Ovid's genius and vanity. The Elder Seneca reports one of them in his Controversies (2.2.12): "[Ovid] was aware of his faults—and liked them. This is clear from an incident when he was asked by his friends to get rid of three of his verses; in exchange he asked that he should be allowed to make an exception of three verses which they could not touch. This seemed a fair condition. They wrote down privately the ones they wanted damned: he wrote down the ones he wanted saved. Both sheets contained the same verses. … From [this] it is clear that this talented man lacked the will rather than the taste to restrain the license of his poetry. He used sometimes to say that a face was all the more beautiful for a mole" (trans. Michael Winterbottom).
At right is a rendering of the Narcissus episode in Metamorphoses executed by the great bad boy of Italian painting, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
Another bad boy
Postscript: A gentle reader wrote to ask … Isn't Catullus the bad boy of Roman poetry? Tim replies:
"That's a good question. Catullus is revolutionary in his sexual candor. However, his epigrams and lyrics are often bitterly realistic, and he is sometimes excruciating on the subject of his obsessive relationship with Clodia/Lesbia. His ultimate disillusionment with his passion for her is the opposite, it seems to me, of licentious. (Catullus was also very well-born and a friend of Caesar's, who evidently admired his work.)
"Ovid, on the other hand, really is naughty. The Art of Love is virtually a vade mecum for adulterers. And in theMetamorphoses he presents (with great relish) the Greco-Roman gods and goddesses as pathologically vindictive, sensual, or deceptive. This isn't to say Ovid can't be poignant and moving, as in the tale of Baucis and Philemon or Pythagoras's powerful speech in favor or vegetarianism near the end of the poem."
And then, courteous gentleman that he is, Tim thanked the reader for raising the point.
Tags: Caravaggio, Michael Winterbottom, Ovid, Timothy Steele
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This video reviews the MFJ-1788 magnetic loop antenna, which purports to cover 40 meters through 15 meters. It doesn't cover all of 40 meters, and 40 meter performance is poor, but 20 meter performance is indistinguishable from a good vertical. MFJ has given me suggestions for 40m, which I will address in a future video.


text:
Q: Getting error while in Install New Package Version in Your TP Using command -> sfdx force:package:install -u MyTP --wait 10 --package GIFter@1.1.0-1 -k test1234 --noprompt
Error -> Error (1): Invalid alias or ID: GIFter@1.0.0-1. Either your alias is invalid or undefined, or the ID (04t) provided is invalid.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Chronicon
Subworld
Subworld is a two-person independent game studio based near Gothenburg, Sweden.
It has been run since its founding day in summer 2015 by Daniel "Squarebit" Stigsjöö. In 2021, Daniel's fiancée Marika "Marruu" Assgård joined the team.
Chronicon is the first commercial game developed by Subworld. It was originally meant to be a small rogue-lite game, a yearlong project at the most.
However it rapidly grew into something much, much larger, and after a year and a half of quiet development, Chronicon was submitted to Steam Greenlight as an ARPG.
In no more than 2 weeks, Chronicon was approved by the Steam Community, and was soon released in the Early Access program.
Here it spent 5 years, growing from a small and simple game into a fully fledged ARPG.
During this time, a community also formed around Chronicon. Members of the community would enthusiastically share their ideas and suggestions with each other and the developer, and many of those ideas are in the game today.
In August 2020, Chronicon finally graduated from Early Access and became a full game.
Chronicon greatly exceeded both reception and sales expectations, and earned a Silver award as a top Early Access Graduate of 2020.
With the launch success, both Chronicon and Subworld have secured a future in games, and Subworld hopes to be able to support Chronicon with both free and paid DLC for the foreseeable future
Copyright Subworld 2021


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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has returned from his official visits to Suriname, Guyana, Colombia and Brazil, where he discussed the possibilities of regime change in Venezuela, a nation which has drawn Washington's ire for over 20 years.
On Saturday the 56-year-old former CIA Director announced a $348 million package he said was a "response to the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the corrupt and illegitimate Maduro regime," and signaled the U.S.' "commitment to the Venezuelan people."
"U.S. humanitarian assistance provides access to emergency food, safe drinking water, direct cash assistance, sanitation, and hygiene support, health care, medical supplies, psychosocial support, livelihoods, and protection for vulnerable groups including women, youth, and indigenous people," the State Department's press release on the issue read, programs that the U.S. government is failing to provide for its own citizens during the pandemic. It also noted that much of the cash would actually be going to neighboring countries that have taken in migrants, rather than individuals themselves.
Yet neither Pompeo nor the State Department noted that Venezuela is in such parlous economic straits in no small part due to the actions of the U.S. government. Washington has placed the country under ever-tightening sanctions for years, going after any individual, business or government who trades with the country. This has effectively led to an international blockade of the country, where Venezuela can neither import vital products like food or medicines nor sell oil, its primary export.
The long economic malaise also brought on by government incompetence, local elites' intransigence, and a continued regional downturn has led to extreme hardship for millions, with the U.S. sanctions alone directly responsible for over 100,000 deaths, according to Swiss-American U.N. Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who visited the country and declared the U.S. guilty of "crimes against humanity." Thus, it could be said that the State Department's actions are merely attempting to put a bandaid over a deep cut they themselves stuck a knife into.
While in Colombia, Pompeo discussed regime change in Venezuela with Colombian President Ivan Duque, who described the Kansan as a "dear friend of Colombia" and accused President Maduro of Venezuela of crimes against humanity. In Brazil, Pompeo managed to get the Bolsonaro administration to sign off on his "Democratic Transition Framework" (DTS) for Venezuela as the way forward.
The DTS requires Maduro to resign and for the country's Constituent Assembly to be completely dissolved, with all power going to the National Assembly, the only branch of government the opposition currently controls. From there, the National Assembly would appoint new members to the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council. And while the DTS does not specifically state Maduro could not run for office again, Pompeo made it clear, stating, "Nicolas Maduro will never again govern Venezuela." Therefore, it seems unlikely that Maduro, who was elected by a larger share of the electorate than Trump in 2016 or Obama in 2012, would sign off on such sweeping changes to the country that the Trump administration demands.
The United States also continues to support self-declared president Juan Guaidó, who has launched a series of unsuccessful coup attempts since January 2019. Washington has recently been transferring seized Venezuelan government assets to him so he can personally give every health worker $20 per month during the coronavirus pandemic. With the Venezuelan bolivar so weak, the stipend amounts to a sizable subsidy. Guaidó has retained strong bipartisan support in Washington, despite leaked contracts between himself and U.S. mercenary group Silvercorp showing he intended to rule alone after the coup, paying the organization to become his personal security force and crushing any resistance to his rule. Inside Venezuela, however, polls show only three percent of the population back him.
Biden: a break with the past or more of the same?
With elections coming up in November, it is possible that there will be a change in government in the United States before Venezuela. Democratic challenger Joe Biden currently holds a 6.5 point nationwide lead in combined polling. Over 100 organizations are urging the former vice-president to adopt a "good neighbor" policy with regards to the region. And while the Democratic National Platform is more progressive on Cuba, it makes clear that it wants regime change in Venezuela as well.
In order to better understand the potential for a different American path for Latin America under a Biden presidency, MintPress spoke with Dr. Barry Cannon, a sociologist specializing in Latin American politics at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Cannon was hopeful that a Biden presidency could mean a more multilateral approach in the region, some lessening of sanctions on Venezuela, and more openness towards negotiations. It could also mean the U.S. moving away from such close support with the far-right Bolsonaro administration and more cooperation with left-of-center governments, such as those in Mexico and Argentina.
"However, I wouldn't expect any great departures from Trump-era policies," he warned, noting that Colombia, "which has a far worse human rights record than Venezuela," is, "almost always supported by the U.S." While Washington will "continue to actively work against any Latin American country which challenges U.S. imperial power in the region," such as Venezuela or Bolivia, where Movement to Socialism candidate Luis Arce is the frontrunner in October's election. "It's important to keep in mind the continuities in U.S. Americas policy with Trump in charge rather than the differences," he concluded.
Feature photo | U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, second right, and Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo, are received at a reception center in the Boa Vista Air Base in Roraima, Brazil, Sept. 18, 2020. Bruno Mancinelle | Pool via AP
A Record of Hawkish Intervention: Biden Picks Samantha Power to Head USAID


As your heating system ages, it can lose efficiency or stop working altogether. At Rock Valley HVAC, we aim to provide the highest level of quality for every furnace service we undertake in Southern Wisconsin.
When you call on us for furnace service, you can expect accurate, professional furnace maintenance and repair from a licensed and trusted HVAC contractor.
Heating systems generally do not break down during the summer; they tend to stop working during the heart of winter, when the weather is at its coldest.
Don't risk your comfort and property by putting off the furnace service you need!
We will thoroughly inspect your equipment and let you know if we find any problems – or potential problems, and provide expert furnace repairs. This way, you can nip your heating system issues in the bud before the cold sets in.
If a furnace service call is required during the same heating season, we'll waive our normal $80 diagnostic fee.


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Q: How can I scroll left and right smoothly on an element by triggering an event on a button? How can I scroll left and right smoothly on an element by triggering an event on a button using JavaScript? (no jQuery)
So I want to click on the next and back buttons and scroll left or right on the my-container__content which has really long content within.
Trying the below doesn't seem to work
HTML

<button data-back data-scroll-trigger>Back</button>
<button data-next data-scroll-trigger>Next</button>

JS
/**
 * Selectors
 */
const selectors = {
    scrollContainer: '[data-scroll-container]',
    scrollTrigger: '[data-scroll-trigger]',
    scrollNext: 'data-next',
    scrollBack: 'data-back',
};

/**
 * Main
 */

const scrollTrigger = [...document.querySelectorAll(selectors.scrollTrigger)];
const scrollContainer = document.querySelector(selectors.scrollContainer);

const handleScroll = ({ target }) => {
    if (target.hasAttribute(selectors.scrollBack)) {
        scrollContainer.scrollTo({
            right: 100,
            behavior: 'smooth',
        });
    } else {
        scrollContainer.scrollTo({
            right: 100,
            behavior: 'smooth',
        });
    }
};

if (scrollTrigger) {
    scrollTrigger.forEach((scroll) => {
        scroll.addEventListener('click', handleScroll);
    });
}

A: You have to specify the initial value, also use left property. Its a logical error. Try this. This worked for me.
    var left = 0;

    const handleScroll = ({
      target
    }) => {
      if (target.hasAttribute(selectors.scrollBack)) {
        left = left - 100;
        scrollContainer.scrollTo({
          left: left - 100,
          behavior: 'smooth',
        });
      } else {
        left = left + 100;
        scrollContainer.scrollTo({
          left: left + 100,
          behavior: 'smooth',
        });
      }
    };

Also you have to check if it has reached the limit of scrolling in order to scroll forward and backward.


Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, who have taken time off work, were joined by Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas on Monday and well, their photos from Miami prove the Jonas fam is living it up and how.
Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas might be busy with their hectic schedules and work commitments but the power couple knows how to take out time for each other and make the most of their time together when they are not at work. Priyanka and Nick, who have taken off to Miami for a family vacay, are living their best life. From dancing to their hearts' content to striking just the picture perfect poses, the power couple is doing it all and how!
While their posts from past few days are proof enough that their vacation is a memorable one, the fact that Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner have now joined the newly married couple on their vacay is indeed giving rise to some social media gems.
Another photograph from the vacation sees the entire gang posing for a picture-perfect moment and Priyanka's captioned reads as, "When the crew looks this good." Besides enjoying their time on a yacht and grooving to their recent hit track Sucker, Priyanka also took out time to enjoy the thrills of water skiing.
On the work front, Priyanka, who last graced the big screen in Isn't It Romantic alongside Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth and Adam DeVine, will next star in Shonali Bose's The Sky Is Pink co-starring Farhan Akhtar, Zaira Wasim and Rohit Saraf in significant roles.


Hi all - proud owner of a 2005 Limited Turbo. Ordered the cool Race & Street smoked LED rear turn signals, which are great, but they seem to not fit as snugly as OEM. Almost as if they should have a rubber gasket to make them stay tight to the body? Anyone else do this mod and have a suggestion?
Re: Replacement tail lights rattle?
Not to you but to anyone reading this, I've had 5 different taillights (couldn't find just the right ones) and NONE of them fit like the OEM lights that came from the factory. I have no answer for your question as to WHY. I've had people say, their light fit perfect, but a picture reveals the gap all the way round the edge.
On three of the lights, I took a small chrome edge trim and put it all around the outside of the lights. I have enough chrome to pull this mod off but if your not into chrome, about the only thing to do is work with the two metal clips inside the light. Bend them (but be careful) towards the edge so there's very little room between the clip and the edge of the light but enough room to slide the lights into place and it will give it a better, tighter fit. You'll still have the small gap all the way round the lights but they'll fit tighter and won't move around so much.
Last edited by CREWZIN; 22 Jun 2008 at 11:16 am.
i have heard of people with same problem taking black rubber hosing and using that to make gasket similer to what crewzin did.use either vacuum hose or like tubing on your wiper fluidhoses.can get at any auto store.split the hose and run around edge of lights.
Your welcome Steve. You know it's been a year and 2 months since you asked that question. Glad you found an answer.


AIIMS MBBS 2017 will be conducted by AIIMS, New Delhi for admission to MBBS programmes offered by All India Institute Of Medical Sciences. This year, AIIMS MBBS entrance examination is scheduled to be conducted on May 28 2017, in a computer based mode. The interested candidates can apply their application from 24th January 2017 and end on 23rd February 2017.
AIIMS MBBS Eligibility: The eligibility criteria for all medical courses offered by the AIIMS is slightly different. Here we are informing about MBBS eligibility criteria prescribed by AIIMS. Before applying for exam.
Candidates are advised to check the eligibility criteria: Candidates must be completed the age of 17 years on 31st December of the year of admission. Candidates must be cleared 12th or equivalent exam from any recognized board with English, Physics, Chemistry and Biology subjects with securing minimum 60% marks for General & OBC candidates and 50% marks for SC/ST/OPH Candidates. Candidates appearing in 12th or equivalent exam are also eligible to apply.
For each correct response 1 mark will be given and for each incorrect response 1/3 marks will be deducted.


Jock Gang specialize in a sound that is far harder to pull off than it sounds. That's probably why Women are still so highly regarded years after breaking up. This is definitely more Androgynous Mind than it is Preoccupations (nee Viet Cong), and at times reminds me of what a GSL-released 45 might sound like played at 33RPM. Dig that guitar tone, too.
Jock Gang's EP is out now via Pep Talk. I'm excited to hear what they can do over the course of a full album.
From a new EP by Rat Columns which is basically David West's solo thing. Not surprisingly great.
This is some good power pop here. Hailing from Canterbury, this is from their recent EP Cuppa Jarra Brossa.
I really like The Crabs. I've played them on the show, but I don't think i've ever posted anything to the blog. This here is from a new mini-ep they posted on bandcamp. The ep is ok, but this song is really good. Classic Crabs.


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How Do I Communicate with Avast
Home How Do I Communicate with Avast
You can communicate with Avast through an online form that is available on the official site of the company. You can follow the below-mentioned procedure that includes steps explained in layman's language so that you can apply the steps without any expert guidance.
You can visit the official page of Avast.
Then move to the Avast contact form and tap on it.
After that, choose the inquiry type and click on the next tab.
Now according to the inquiry, you need to fill in all the necessary details and information.
Along with the details, you can attach a supporting document related to your issue.
Finally, click on the submit request button.
Does Avast Have Customer Support?
Yes, Avast has customer support that includes technical help by customer service professionals who will resolve your query-related problem as soon as possible. The company provides different ways to get help from customer support via online and offline methods. The company provides various support plans that will connect you with experienced technical experts who will help you out in running your technical experts and protecting the system.
What is Avast Customer Service?
Avast customer service is a kind of option that will provide you with help from the customer service executive who is responsible for delivering the best possible solution to your question within 24 hours and seven days. Customer service is provided by the company so that you are able to get all technical help and other information related to the software. Customer service can be available through live chat as well as via phone calls.
How Do I Talk to Avast?
You can talk to Avast through a phone call process that will provide 24 hours and seven days customer service toll-free numbers that can be dialed from your preferred location. The number will provide you safe and secure environment so that you can raise your query without any hesitation, as all the calls get recorded for quality and inspection purposes.
You can open the official page of Avast.
Then move to the contact us option and tap on it.
After tapping, the page will provide you with the call us tab; click on it.
Following that, you can dial the toll-free number +1 844 973 3072, shown on the screen.
The dialed number will connect you with the IVR process, and follow the instruction.
Press 1 for flight status
Press 2 to claim for your baggage
Press 3 for baggage claim
Press 4 to talk with the customer service executive
Press # to disconnect the call
How do I Purchase Avast Care?
You can purchase Avast care through a digital platform that provides different plans. Once you have purchased any of the Avast products, such as Avast premium security or Avast cleanup premium for a single device or multiple devices, then the company offers an optional add-on with these products, that is, avast care.
Avast care provides you 24 hours and seven technical assistance, which includes expert installation support and removal of viruses or malware. You can get your PCs healthy from the experts, and it improves PC performance.
How Do I Contact Avast by Phone?
The users can get the best help from the customer service agent of Avast. All they need to do is get onto the official website of Avast to find the contact number on the contact page. The users can find numerous other easy to connect with the customer service agent of Avast. But people often call the representative. The steps to connect with the agent of Avast are mentioned here for you as follows:
Jump onto the official website of Avast and look for the 'contact' option at the bottom of the homepage.
Once you get onto the contact option, you are required to look for the customer service number.
Dial the Avast helpline number, and once getting connected, follow the IVR instructions.
Follow the steps to identify the nature of your query and the preferred language of communication.
Once the auto-generated process is complete, you may get asked to wait on hold for a while, after which the customer service agent will get in touch with you.
Other than a phone call, users can also find other ways to connect with the agent and get reliable help. The other mentioned days are live chat, email, and contact form, or if something else works out, you can also jump onto the social media account Avast.
What Happens When I Call the Avast Care Experts?
Avast care will provide the users with immediate and advanced help over call 24 hours, 7 days a week. The Avast customer service executive of Avast Care is well-trained in troubleshooting and fixing issues in the user's device by remotely connecting to their PC. they will share their expertise to keep your device secure and make sure that it will run smoothly. The users can also ask for a cancellation and get their money back if they don't feel satisfied with their current services.
What is Avast Premium Tech Support?
Avast Premium Tech Support is the customer service support the company provides to its premium members. Under this membership, the users can get various services, and they will also get a separate phone number, +1 844 973 3072, where the agent of Avast will be available for you on 24 hours basis, 7 days a week.
What services does Avast Premium Tech Support provide?
There are multiple help and services provided by Avast tech Support to their premium members. The list of some of those services is mentioned here for you.
The most basic feature and service are that the users will get 24/7 customer service support for their computer and software issues.
The company has various support plans that can connect directly and provide you with a skilled and well-trained agent.
They will also provide you with Anti-virus and scan services. You can also schedule an automatic scan at the time of your choice on any or all days.
The users will also get the virus removal service, and they will make sure that your files on the computer are safe.
The agent will also set up your network and internet so you can email and browse freely.
Email configuration is one of the other things that they do for their Avast premium members.
What Are The Benefits of an Avast Premium Tech Support Subscription?
The users can get many benefits if they choose to be a premium member of Avast Premium Tech Support Subscription. The service provided by them is mentioned here for you as follows.
The most basic protection provided by them is the safety and security of all h devices. They make sure that non of your data gets deleted or licked while they fix the issue.
Provide the users with the encryption of their public networks.
Boost the speed of your computer and performance.
Store your data in case you damage your device physically.
The users will get a 95% resolution rate while using the Avast services.
They also have the option of a 30-day money-back guarantee.


Death is a horrible experience, it is in fact the end of life experiences. The breaking news of Kenyan Actress Nana Gichuru's death has been a shocking experience for most of her fans, friends, family and colleagues. Here are the accident pictures that claimed Nana Gichuru's life on the spot.
We all need a little inspiration from time to time to help us live life better and more fulfilling. Use these Inspirational quotes and sayings as a stepping guide to self care.
You probably have heard Kanye West new song "New Slaves" and wondering what is the slave talk all about? Well, Kanye aka Yeezuz admits Black Americans are the new slaves. Watch his live performance on SNL below.
It is no longer news that Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) plans to introduce N5,000 note by January 2013. Many Nigerians are against the creation of this higher Naira currency due to inflation.
How do South Africans connect to the Internet?
In this article, an African blogger writes about how South Africans connect to the internet, citing recent statistics on internet users in South Africa and his opinion on internet connectivity in Africa.


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