“About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.”

 

 - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

 

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EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the world,
that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit
of our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters
the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by
necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves,
thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance;
drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedi-
ence of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of
whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to
the charge of a star! My father compounded with my
mother under the dragon’s tail; and my nativity
was under Ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough
and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled
on my bastardizing.

 

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“A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician” - Hippocrates

 

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A reader sends in “12 succinct descriptors for different astrological signs”:

 

1. Aries: wannabe
2. Taurus: loose
3. Gemini: moody airhead
4. Cancer: agoraphobia
5. Leo: narcissist
6. Virgo: obsessive-compulsive
7. Libra: needy
8. Scorpio: jerk
9. Sagittarius: dilettante
10. Capricorn: workaholic doormat
11. Aquarius: hippie
12. Pisces: navel gazer

 

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“We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more.” - Carl Gustav Jung

 

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Sex and Astrology (1971)

 

Zodiac America: The Super Master, released in the US as Zombie vs. Ninja (1987)

 

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“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother.” - Voltaire

 

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Astrology Chick demonstrates her wide pointy end

 

Dave Gorman follows his horoscope for 40 days and nights
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EzBYUnSi7eU

 

An exhausting insight into Astrology narrated by Christopher Lee
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6911117032737200933&q=astrology

 

Zodiac Trailer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xJTC8iMQBGw

 

Scary photo montage of the Zodiac killer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ttyUPtEagjM

 

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E-Verse Radio Invaluable Facts of the Week, courtesy of AstrologyAlive.com:

 

A 1996 Roper-Starch worldwide survey reported that one out of every four adult Americans, roughly 50 Million people, believes in the efficacy of astrology — and that the fastest-growing class of believers is made up of executives and professionals.

 

Astrologia was the job title for both astronomers and astrologers until 700 AD. Astrology and astronomy were virtually the same until 300 years ago.

 

The Zodiac was originally a natural agricultural calendar that dated the sowing of crops, and all important activities, by the rising and setting of the stars (especially Sirius), and the Pleiades or other recognizable constellations.

 

Astrology came to Greece around 250 BC via the Chaldean astrologer Berosus, who opened a school of astrology on the island of Cos — also the home of the Hippocratic school of medicine. Thus, there have been connections between astrology and medicine since ancient times. Hippocrates, the “Father of Modern Medicine,” advised that no physician be allowed to practice before he had studied the moon, stars, and planets.

 

The Greeks believed in a rational and structured universe, a cosmos (the Greek word for “order”). And since order and beauty were nearly synonymous to the Greek mind, the verb formed from cosmos meant to “make beautiful” — hence our modern word “cosmetic.”

 

Newspaper daily horoscopes were created 70 years ago for the express purpose of selling newspapers: In 1930, the London Sunday Express published an astrological article on the birth of Princess Margaret. The public response was enormous, leading to a commission for astrologer R.H. Naylor to write a series. Circulation soared and newspapers in England, France, Germany, and America began publishing columns of astrological predictions.

 

Winston Churchill and the British High Command employed Louis De Wohl as a one-man astrological agency, giving him the rank of Captain. Throughout WWII De Wohl attempted to advise the High Command on the moves Hitler might make according to astrological interpretation (based on the rumor that Hitler was using Swiss astrologer, K. E. Kraft to help him plot his military strategy).

 

Sources: Jim Tester, The History of Astrology; John Anthony West & Jan G. Toonder, The Case for Astrology; Paul Katzeff, Full Moons; Derek & Julia Parker, The Compleat Astrologer; Michel Gauquelin, Written in the Stars.

 

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The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

 

 

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer and Steven Jay Gould:

 

 

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E-Verse News You Can Use from the Un-E-Versity of Life:

 

 

“Plain” Jane Austen covers photoshopped to be more appealing to young book buyers:

 

 

 

“Teaching evaluations have become a permanent fixture in the academic environment. These instruments, through which students express their true feelings about classes and professors, can make or break an instructor. What would students say if they had Socrates as a professor?”:

 

 

There’s the live album, the sophomore effort, the catchy first album, and then there’s . . . the Crazy Album:

 

 

“Superhero comics books, the muscles and melodrama that kids once knew and loved, are in trouble . . .”

 

 

“Out from the shadow of Crumb — Cartoonist’s wife has her own stories to sketch”:

 

 

“‘The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.’ Easy for Samuel Johnson to claim it for his age. Much harder for Susan Sontag to argue it for ours”:

 

 

“Writers can create worlds readers never want to leave. Jane Austen addicts don’t just enjoy the novels, they want to hang out in the living room with the Bennet girls”:

 

 

“High school makes former student pay 30-year-old algebra book fee”:

 

 

How to be a gentleman:

 

 

“Finn is the latest example of a burgeoning — and commercially successful — literary genre: works that appropriate minor characters from major fiction or drama and award them starring roles. For reasons both legal and historical, 19th century American fiction has seemed especially ripe for revision”:

 

 

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“Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer.” - John Pierpont Morgan

 

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Zodiac, TX

 

Fact: The first Mormon temple west of the Mississippi was built at Zodiac, Texas, about three miles from Fredericksburg.

 

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“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

 

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Band of gypsies.

 

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“I don’t believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.” - Noel Coward

 

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“Good episode on the Irish (I love the Freud quote). To your top five Irish exports can be added (1) professional Irishmen. These people were My Irish Grandfather’s pet hate — people whose accent, and sentimental longing for their ancient Celtic homeland, grew with every year that they happily refused to go back to the place, (2) crap pop bands; witness U2, the Cranberries, the Corrs, Westlife, and so many others that I can’t remember, and (3) Terry Wogan (although this may mean nothing to Americans).”

 

 

“Top five contemporary films dealing with the British/Irish conflict”:
 
1. The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006, directed by the incomparable Ken Loach)
2. Hidden Agenda (1990, another Ken Loach special, starring Frances McDormand)
3. Cal (1984, starring Helen Mirren)
4. Some Mother’s Son (1996, another Helen Mirren special)
5. Love and Rage (1998, with the latest James Bond, Daniel Craig)

 

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Next week’s episode: Trees! Send in all things arboreal.

 

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“The English language brings out the best in the Irish. They court it like a beautiful woman. They make it bray with donkey laughter. They hurl it at the sky like a paint pot full of rainbows, and then make it chant a dirge for man’s fate and man’s follies that is as mournful as misty spring rain crying over the fallow earth.”

 - T. E. Kalem

 

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The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.

 

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1.  White Sweaters
2.  Bagpipes
3.  Guinness
4.  Irish Whiskey
5.  Bartenders

 

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Irish American Ninja (2005)

 

The Irish Gringo (1936)

 

Scenes in an Irish Bacon Factory (1903)

 

The Irish Vampire Goes West (2006)

 

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www.caveat-lector.org.

 

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Blackrock or thereabouts.
The bay spreads, a colossal
riffled sheen of phosphor.
The sound of waves, faint shouts.

 

About five minutes ago
the tide was full and brimming.
It must be getting dimmer
gradually, but who’d know?

 

Clontarf supports the sky
like some great arm; it ushers
the early evening rush hour
hordes back home and dry.

 

Lights flicker on in Howth,
Baldoyle, and further suburbs
a good bit out from Dublin.
Steady colonial growth.

 

The odd container ship
sits fat on the horizon.
This light is mesmerising.
The water meets the lip

 

of the observing eye
and shimmers in that opening,
loose flow of gold and opal
that grades into black lye:

 

it has a lift and sway
that makes the rest seem added,
even Howth, large shadows
of the ground-swell’s play.

 

I turn and find no land –
no town or station.
It has gone without saying,
and all that is to hand

 

is another mirroring sea,
which leaves me like a ripple,
a rift of mind that’s slipped in
between a sea and sea.

 

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Population of Ireland, 4,015,676 (July 2005 est.)

 

Irish-American population, 30,528,492

 

4: Number of places in the United States named Shamrock, the floral emblem of Ireland. Mount Gay-Shamrock, West Virginia and Shamrock, Texas, were the most populous, with 2,623 and 2,029 residents, respectively. Shamrock Lakes, Indiana had 168 residents and Shamrock, Oklahoma., 125.

 

22: Gallons of beer consumed per capita by Americans annually. Some establishments offer beer dyed green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

9: Number of places in the United States which share the name of Dublin, Ireland’s capital city. Dublin, Ohio, was the most populous, at 31,392, followed closely by Dublin, California, at 29,973.

 

If you’re still not into the spirit of St. Paddy’s Day after stopping by one of the places named “Shamrock” or “Dublin,” then you might consider paying a visit to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, with 3,488 residents, of whom in a ratio of 1-in-6 are of Irish descent.
 

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Father Ted — Father Jack Hackett Highlights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g40Pw6Oh4ME

 

Ali G in Northern Ireland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-fH9SX046E

 

Peter and Brian from Family Guy in Ireland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKuPtDq2kFU

 

Ireland Cricket http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ae3e5qKhuc
Ireland Rugby http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8JOus-Aev8

 

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 ”Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.” - Alex Levine

 

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Like oil lamps, we put them out the back –

of our houses, of our minds. We had lights
better than, newer than and then

 

a time came, this time and now
we need them. Their dread, makeshift example:

 

they would have thrived on our necessities.
What they survived we could not even live.
By their lights now it is time to
imagine how they stood there, what they stood with,
that their possessions may become our power:
Cardboard. Iron. Their hardships parceled in them.
Patience. Fortitude. Long-suffering
in the bruise-colored dusk of the New World.

 

And all the old songs. And nothing to lose.

 

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“The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.” - from Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

 

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E-Verse Radio Bad Book Cover of the Week, Fatally Yours by Xaviera Hollander:

 

 

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“The English should give Ireland home rule – and reserve the motion picture rights.” - Will Rogers

 

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Effin (Limerick, Ireland)

Nobber (County Meath, Ireland)

The Blue Ball (Tullamore, Ireland)

 

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Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

 

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“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: — Introibo ad altare Dei.”

 

“The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.” - Buck Mulligan

 

“It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.” - Stephen Dedalus

 

“When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water … Begob, ma’am, says Mrs. Cahill, God send you don’t make them in the one pot.” - Buck Mulligan

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”

 

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Sidle up to the bar at the Irish Pub, in Atlantic City and Philadelphia:

 

 

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A pint of Irish poets

 

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“Oh I think we can do better than that on Top 5 telephone songs . . .”

 

1. ”Chantilly Lace” by the Big Bopper
2. ”Memphis Tennessee” by Chuck Berry
3. ”Stephanie Says” (and its various variations) by the Velvet Underground
4. ”Pennsylvania 6-5000″ by Glenn Miller
5. ”O Superman” by Laurie Anderson

 

(Honorary mention ”El Disco Anal,” Los Amigos Invisibles)

 

 

 

1. “Memphis” by Chuck Berry ‘59
2. “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You” by Sugarloaf ‘75
3. “Sylvia’s Mother” by Dr. Hook ‘75
4. “You’ve Got My Number (Why Don’t You Use It?)” by the Undertones ‘79
5. “Call Me” by Blondie ‘80
6. “Call Me Up” by Gang of Four ‘82
7. “Calling You” by Jevetta Steele ‘87
8. “Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)” by De La Soul ‘91
9. “Beep Me 911″ by Missy Elliott ‘97

 

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“LibraryThing is a full-powered cataloging application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 60 world libraries.”

 

 

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“Check this out in honour of St Patrick’s Day and for your next episode ‘All Things Irish’. I should mention that ‘Doogle’, if you don’t know, is a play on the name of Fr. Dougal from the cult Irish sit-com ‘Father Ted’ which starred the late Dermot Morgan and Ardal O’Hanlon. For more information on it, check out.”

 

 

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“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge.” - Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

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I met a traveller from an antique land, 
Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 

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1. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
A palace with legendary gardens built on the banks of the Euphrates river by King Nebuchadnezzar II

2. The Great Pyramid of Giza
A gigantic stone structure near the ancient city of Memphis, serving as a tomb for the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu

 

3. The Colossus of Rhodes
A colossus of Helios the sun-god, erected by the Greeks near the harbor of a Mediterranean Island

 

4. The Lighthouse of Alexandria
A lighthouse built by the Ptolemies on the island of Pharos off the coast of their capital city

 

5. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia
An enormous statue of the Greek father of gods, carved by the great sculptor Pheidias

 

 

Runners up: The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, a temple in Asia Minor erected in honor of the Greek goddess of hunting and wild nature; and The Mausoleum at Helicarnassus, a tomb constructed for King Maussollos, Persian satrap of Caria

 

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The Channel Tunnel
The Clock Tower (Big Ben) in London, England
The CN Tower in Toronto, Canada
Eiffel Tower in Paris, France
The Empire State Building in New York City, USA
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, USA
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, USA
The High Dam in Aswan, Egypt
Hoover Dam in Arizona/Nevada, USA
Itaipu Dam in Brazil/Paraguay
Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, USA
The Panama Canal
The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The Statue of Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Statue of Liberty in New York City, USA
The Suez Canal in Egypt
The Sydney Opera House in Australia

 

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Angel Falls in Venezuela
The Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada
The Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia
Iguana Falls in Brazil/Argentina
Krakatoa Island in Indonesia
Mount Everest in Nepal
Mount Fuji in Japan
Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania
Niagara Falls in Ontario (Canada) and New York State (USA)
Paricutin Volcano in Mexico
Victoria Falls in Zambia/Zimbabwe

 

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 ”Wonder is involuntary praise.” - Edward Young

 

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Seven Wonders of the World (1956) Tagline: “…as seen through the greatest wonder CINERAMA”

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (1990)

Taarzan: The Wonder Car (2004)
When Billy Broke His Head… and Other Tales of Wonder (1995)
Lenny the Wonder Dog (2004)
8th Wonder of the World (2004)
He’s a Cockeyed Wonder (1950)
Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Feminist Icon (2005) 

 

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The Great Pyramid at Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that still exists.

 

Although most people know that a list exists of the Seven World Wonders, only few can name them. The list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was originally compiled around the second century BC. The first reference to the idea is found in History of Herodotus as long ago as the 5th century BC. Decades later, Greek historians wrote about the greatest monuments at the time. Callimachus of Cyrene (305BC-240BC), Chief Librarian of the Alexandria Mouseion, wrote “A Collection of Wonders around the World”. All we know about the collection is its title, for it was destroyed with the Alexandria Library.

 

The final list of the Seven Wonders was compiled during the Middle Ages. The list comprised the seven most impressive monuments of the Ancient World, some of which barely survived to the Middle Ages. Others did not even co-exist. Among the oldest references to the canonical list are the engravings by the Dutch artist Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), and Johann Fischer von Erlach’s History of Architecture.

 

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David Orr responds to Dana Goodyear’s New Yorker attack on the Poetry Foundation:

 

 

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“Sights seen in the mind’s eye can never be destroyed.” - Strabo (64 BC - AD 21)

 

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Abu Simbel Temple in Egypt
Angkor Wat in Cambodia
The Aztec Temple in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), Mexico
The Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines
Borobudur Temple in Indonesia
The Coliseum in Rome, Italy
The Great Wall of China
The Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
The Mayan Temples of Tikal in Northern Guatemala
The Moai Statues in Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Chile
Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, France
The Throne Hall of Persepolis in Iran
The Parthenon in Athens, Greece
Petra, the rock-carved city in Jordan
The Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar
Stonehenge in England
Taj Mahal in Agra, India
The Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, Mexico

 

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“All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance.” - Samuel Johnson

 

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War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells

 

 

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“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, inquiry the progress, ignorance the end.” - Michel de Montaigne

 

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Wonder, Nevada

 

 

excerpt from ”Town of Wonder” by David J. Dague

 

The town recklessly exploded from nowhere,
on an outcrop of high-grade ore.
Suddenly there was a bustling town,
where naught but desert had been seen before.

 

Raw canvass tents sprang up as shelter,
for the rowdy new dirt-floor saloons.
The best ones had upright pianos,
playing all the old ‘forty-niner tunes.

 

Next a wooden-framed shed for a general store,
then a “Certified” Office of Assay.
Promoter’s spanking-new Land Offices,
searched back East for prime greenhorn prey.

 

 

 

“Although ’Town of Wonder’ is a whimsical poem, it does have some basis in fact. There was indeed a town named Wonder, Nevada, which came into
existence in 1906 and (appropriately) lasted 13 years. Some years ago I began exploring the Ghost Towns of eastern California and western Nevada and my Guidebook was (and still is) ’Nevada Ghost Towns and Mining Camps’ by Stanley W. Paher. My copy is a second printing, published in 1970, but this important book on Nevada’s history is now in its 13th printing. There was indeed a Fallon Stagecoach. It was a stage line that ran six-horse coaches between Wonder, Fairview and Fallon, Nevada. The following is a photo caption in Mr. Paher’s book beneath an old photo of the Nevada Wonder Mine.”

 

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Google Earth tour of Ancient Wonders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OoBwP2gvHA

 

New Seven Wonders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQBTz_0iazM

 

Google Earth tour of Modern wonders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ewSqPE0ZiI

 

Vote for the new seven wonders of the world at www.new7wonders.com

 

Bonus folly . . . crazy Aussie decides to travel round the world http://youtube.com/watch?v=KpCAvMtnizM the first to travel to the seven natural wonders of the world by land and sea and the youngest to circumnavigate the globe.

 

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1. Biggest Ball of Twine
2. Cadillac Ranch
3. Wall Drug
4. South of the Border
5. Watts Tower
6. Lucy the Elephant
7. House on the Rock

 

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1. King Kong
2. a video game called 8th Wonder of the World
3. Album by Kimberley Locke, former American Idol contestant
4. Milford Sound, New Zealand, so named by Rudyard Kipling
5. The Astrodome
6. André the Giant
7. the iPod

 

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1. Big
2. Religious (most, not all. There are also monuments to love (Taj Mahal), the arts (Sydney Opera House) and power (Great Wall of China)).
3. Beige
4. Hard
5. OK, I’ll say it: phallic
6. Monuments to ways of life and ideas now extinct
7. Man-made

 

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Some Underwater Wonders, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

Palau
Belize Barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef
Deep-Sea Vents
Galapagos Islands
Lake Baikal
Northern Red Sea

 

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“A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.” - Lord Dunsany

 

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A Wow of Wonders.

 

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“The few wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.” - Charles de Lint

 

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Wroxton  Writers’  Retreat

Alfred Corn Director

June 4 - June 9, 2007

 

A five-day poetry course in a beautiful setting in Oxfordshire.  Wroxton Abbey, now Wroxton College of Fairleigh Dickinson University, is a 17th century country estate three kilometres west of Banbury, an easy drive to Oxford and to Stratford upon Avon. Housing is comfortable and quiet, each room provided with a private bathroom, most en suite. Rooms are on the second and third level, with no lift.  Staff provide well-cooked meals, with vegetarian option. Morning and afternoon coffee and tea available.  Computer room with Internet connection and exercise room are located in the basement.  The library, with works in many disciplines, may be used by students, as well as the reading room, which takes daily newspapers.  Fifty-seven acres of park with pond and gardens. Five-minute walk to Wroxton hamlet, which has two pubs. Forty minute walk to Banbury through lush countryside. The emphasis here is on writing, therefore group activities will be kept to a minimum.

 

To see pictures of Wroxton Abbey go to: http://view.fdu/default.aspx?id=329

 

The course consists of morning workshops with Anne-Marie Fyfe, whose most recent poetry collections are The Ghost Twin and Tickets from a Blank Window.  For many years she has organised the Coffee-House Poetry readings and writing classes at the Troubadour Coffee-House in London’s Earl Court. She founded creative-writing at the John Hewitt Summer School in Ireland, has been writer-in-residence at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, and is currently Chair of the Poetry Society.

An afternoon tutorial may be scheduled with Anne-Marie Fyfe, and Alfred Corn is available for consultation as well.  Alfred Corn, a U.S. citizen, has published nine books of poetry, the most recent, Contradictions. In 2005-2006, he taught a course for the Poetry School in London and one for the Arvon Foundation, Devon. 
Guest poet Craig Raine will give a reading during the week. His Collected Poems 1978-2000 appeared in 2000. He was poetry editor at Faber and is now Fellow in English at New College, Oxford and editor of Arete. His essays are Haydn and the Valve Trumpet (1991) and In Defence of T S Eliot (2000).  His new book T S Eliot was published by OUP NY and OUP in 2007.
 
The week concludes with a student reading.

 

Five nights, full room and board, and the course, L. 525.

 

Arrival Monday, June 4 after 2:00 pm, departure, June 9 after breakfast.

 

Contact: Because of demand, a selection will have to be made among applicants, who should send three poems and a brief CV to Alfred Corn, alfredc1@netzero.com before May 7, 2007. 

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“My favorite Dorothy Parker quote came during an encounter with Claire Booth Luce. The two women approached a door at the same time. Luce gestured grandly to Parker and said, ’Age before beauty.’ Parker sailed through the door, calling over her shoulder, ’Pearls before swine.’”

 

 

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“No mention of Menotti’s funny curtain-raiser opera THE TELEPHONE!”

 

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A reader with two more telephone songs:
 
“Mr. Telephone Man” by New Edition
“Ricky don’t lose that number” by Steely Dan

 

 

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A cineastic reader sends in “Top Five Death-by-Phone films”:
 
1. Detour (1945) – accidental death by phone, alone in a locked room . . .  all-time classic.
2. Halloween (1978)
3. Matrix (1999)
4. Dial M for Murder (1954)
5. Phone Booth (2002)

 

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1. Area 51 and Roswell — what’s up there?
2. Who killed JFK?
3. Black helicopters
4. Anally probing alien abductions
5. Impending Y2K disaster conspiracy
6. AIDS plot to kill whole populations of people
 

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“The late Aga Shahid Ali had a little yellow chap book of telephone themed poems. I think it was called ’The Yellow Pages.’  I have a copy somewhere – the poems are very witty. Anyone remember any of them? Worth reciting.”

 

And here it is:

 

from A Walk Through the Yellow Pages by Agha Shahid Ali, Sun Lizard Chapbook Number One, Tuscon, 1987. The first five poems in the book are based upon telephone company advertising slogans.
 
 
5.
Today, talk is cheap.
Call somebody.
 
I called Information Desk, Heaven,
and asked, “When is Doomsday?”
I was put on hold.
 
Through the hallelujahs of seraphs,
I heard the idle gossip of angels,
their wings beating rumours
of revolts in Heaven.
 
Then I heard flames, wings burning,
then only hallelujahs.
 
I prayed, “Angel of Love,
please pick up the phone.”
 
But it was the Angel of Death.
I said, “Tell me, Tell me,
when is Doomsday?”
 
He answered, “God is busy.
He never answers the living.
He has no answers for the dead.
Don’t ever call again collect.”

 

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Sunday, March 18:
World premier of the “Aria” from the MAGNIFICAT, my setting (in English translation) of the New Testament text about the Annunciation of Mary.  This will be performed by the fabulous soprano Rebecca Davis, joined by pianist Aleeza Meir.  11am at Old First Reform Church in Brooklyn, on the corner of Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue in Park Slope.  You can get there via the Q at Seventh Ave. or the 2/3 at Grand Army Plaza.  It is a beautiful space, and I am proud of this new piece Rebecca and Old First were kind enough to commission.  For more information: www.oldfirstbrooklyn.org.

 

Monday, March 13:
DIRTY LITTLE SECRET, the new CD by pianist Andrew Russo features my piece, A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET.  This Endeavor Classics disc is a collection of short “encores” by John Adams, Gerard Beljon, Derek Bermel, William Bolcom, Morton Gould, Scott Joplin, Aaron Kernis, Ligeti, Marc Mellits, Amonte Parsons, and Jacob Ter Velduis.  I am honored to be in such excellent company.  

 

Andy’s gotten an excellent review — the praise of his playing is richly deserved.  I’ve also included a link to the Endeavor Web site should you wish to purchase.  Get it for the extra hip fold-out artwork alone!

 

Coming Soon:  
Art Songs with American Opera Projects’ COMPOSERS AND THE VOICE series, May 11 & 12; and my new piccolo piece ALL WORK AND NO PLAY in Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall, June 10, played by the amazing Stephanie Mortimore, piccoloateer for the Metropolitan Opera.  

 

Advance Review on AllMusic:  
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&token=&sql=43:151784~T1

 

Order DIRTY LITTLE SECRET:
http://www.allegro-music.com//online_catalog.asp?sku_tag=END31019

 

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1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (SO glad she changed the title from the original): 100 million copies

2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: 100 million copies

3. Harry Potter and the Philosophers/Sorcerer’s Stone (first book in the series) by J.K Rowling: 87 million (let’s just put all the Harry Potters here: HP (#6): 65 million (and it was only published mid-2005!); HP #2: 60 million; HP #5: 55 million; HP #3: 55 million; HP #4: 55 million;

4. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (65 million)

5. The Catcher in the Rye by you-know-who (60 million)

 

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1. The Bible
2. Quotations from Mao
3. Xinhua Zidian (also by Mao)
4. The Qur’an
5. The Book of Common Prayer

 

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A reader sends in another reference to a telephone, by Leonard Cohen, in “It Seems So Long Ago, Nancy”:
 
It seems so long ago,
Nancy was alone,
a forty five beside her head,
an open telephone.

 

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