jenright

Phil, that must be what I heard about. Thanks for clearing that up and revealing the anagram!

Ellen, now that you mention it, did they have a magazine named I-rect or something like that? I never actually saw it, but I heard of something like that. Michael, I think there's a reason she didn't publish Good Copy while she was alive. But probably as early work it held a special place in her memories. John

Marsha, yes, the short story was "Good Copy," by AR. It appears in "The Early AR". Barbara discusses the incident on p 278 of "The Passion of AR". Ellen, yes, I'm willing to believe temperamental differences are at play in the fast-fuse vs. slow-fuse aspect of anger. The magazine at MIT was ERGO.

That would be a yes, Phil. I have raised my voice with pickpockets, children, dogs, and even cats. I wasn't trying to be critical of Rand. I was just asking out of nosy curiosity. I do think with Rand the anger flashed on and then vanished off a lot of the time. I admire this ability. I can only do that when I'm acting. If I actually get really angry, I tend to stay that way for a while until I "simmer down."

A limerick novice named Kat Got a hit on her first time at bat. And just now, I reckon, She doubled to second. That calls for a tip of my hat!

Phil writes: Phil, Barbara, in her book, if I recall correctly, tells a story about an incident where Rand got angry during the FW class. The incident had to do with Rand giving the class a story to read and asking the class to comment. The class was highly critical of the story, not knowing it was actually one her own early stories. I think it was the light-hearted O'Henryish story about a somewhat staged kidnapping. Rand felt the criticism was misplaced and became angry. As I recall, when I heard the somewhat-edited tapes, there was reference to this incident, but it was in the form of a calm discussion during the NEXT meeting of what mistakes had been made by the classmembers in the previous meeting. Do you recall this? Just wondering. Thanks for your comments about the unedited tapes, by the way. I am jealous of you!

Quoth Ellen: However, in support of a broader evolutionary angle, I think we could find animal evidence of a tendency to rescue the distressed young of the same species, and sometimes even across species. It would by no means be a universal tendency, but in some species it would be strong. I hope you all will bear with me while I quote from Mencius, a major thinker in the Confucian tradition: I'm with Mencius on this. Why it should be so, remains a good question.

Is he going to be on TV? Cool.

Jonathan's right - there are four Limericks he wrote and no more. At least that was true Till he went on to do This last one. (My math grades were poor.)

Alas, Phil, my reasoning was book-learning-based, and actually misled me on the simple question "did she or didn't she."

My mind is left puzzling and ponderin' All of those limericks by Jonathan. How did he churn out Five without burn-out? I think that The Force must be strong in him.

Ellen writes: Ellen, you are a veritable Miss Marple. I never saw them together. I came into this scene just after their break, as a 17 year old trying to make sense of the smash-up. Here was my mistaken premise: she would have the wisdom to foresee that such a relationship would take a bad turn. Why did I think this? Well, my own thought was that the age and status disparity would put her in charge of the relationship in a big way, and that this would interfere, long term, with her ability to feel worshipful the way she obviously needed to. And, from his point of view, I thought such a relationship would be very wearing because he would end up drenched in criticism rather than basking in high regard from an appreciative woman. From his articles on romantic love, I rather got the idea that he wanted the latter. So the funny thing, reading Barbara's book, was how well the relationship tracked to my nightmare vision of how such an affair might turn out. John

A bold existentialist hero Penned limericks starting at zero From there they went minus Since he, in his slyness, Burned them while fiddling like Nero.

Ellen, At this point I'm not sure of the event. We did used to do all her Ford Hall Forum appearances. We left New York in May of 1980. After all these years it is possible that I have some of the setting wrong, but I think I would remember if Harry had asked that question. I recall being surprised that the question was asked, and I half-expected her to blow up, but she didn't, and she got a laugh from the people listening with her smart-alecky reply, and I completely believed her. I cannot swear it was during Q&A, but I would swear it was not a private conversation. There were people listening, and they went hush at the question, at least that's how I recall it. So it must have been Q&A or one of those little crowds that would gather around her. It looks to me like Leonard P. did his Objective Communication lectures in 1980, but I don't know what months, and I don't remember it specifically. John

There once was a writer named Rand Who never feared taking a stand. She staked out positions And stocked up munitions! The fireworks always were grand. I know... the subject line is plural, but this is just a single limerick. Perhaps someone else has a limerick inside them, waiting to burst out!

Thank you, Jody. It's been a long time since I read Ciardi's book, but I remember it as a good one. The man had skills.

Phil, it didn't sound whimsical. It sounded like an apology. It sounded like self-reproach. Phil, I asked Marsha, too. She says: "No. She was guilty." By the way, Ellen, it's spooky you mention Miss Marple. Rand told him that whatever he'd written was sitting on her desk or something, but that all she could do lately was read mystery novels. We think this was after Frank had died. Ellen, Marsha says hi! As for the "no and he's not my type," Ellen, I've been telling people for years that I heard her say that. As, here: http://john-j-enright.livejournal.com/146232.html John

Michael, It's a good question, how sense gets wedded to form. I think that in many cases it is not really done at the conscious-calculating level, but at the sense-of-life level, of what feels right. In my case, I often start with a line, or a beginning of a line, that comes to me or appeals to me. Then I think about what kind of rhythm that line has and what kind of form might spring from it, and what kind of form I feel like doing. I may also be influenced by what I have read lately. If I have been reading sonnets, the odds go up I will feel like writing a sonnet. Perhaps that's partly because I will have an orderly, constrained, sonnet-type feeling from reading all those sonnets and getting in a sonnet mood. Indeed, there are times when a set and fairly rigid form appeals as a challenge and a recipe, a target to hit, a shape to twist into. At other times, cutting loose and generating a form as I go seems satisfying. A rigid form is more like a set ice-skating routine, cutting loose is more like cross-country skiing through an unknown woods. Anyway, after all this vague theorizing, I would like to think this particular poem comes off as deceptively prosaic, keeping you off balance about where it's going, but giving you an uncertain feeling it's working its way to somewhere, until it finally roars home with the thunder beast image in celebration, as you say, of man's mind. When the image arrives, it has been quietly prepared for, so it feels natural, but still surprises with its force. John

Ellen, Marsha and I heard this exchange as it happened. We were quite struck by it. John

Michael, On the one hand, I could have just printed the poem as 2 sets of sixes, and the rhyme scheme vs. verse issue would have disappeared. But on the other hand, it seemed the meaning-paragraphs were in fact falling into threes, as were the rhythm-paragraphs, and I wanted the meaning to be very clear, particularly in the case of a rumination like this where the internal dialogue jumps around a bit. One effect of breaking rhyme from sense, here, is to create a sense of tension at the end of the odd numbered verses, pulling your ear ahead into the even numbered verses, because your ear knows it is missing a rhyme. I can't say I had the effect in mind, I just heard it happening. I do like the sense of suspense created by ending a meaning unit while leaving a rhyme unit hanging. I feel it creates a sense of yearning for forward motion. As for the rhythm, this takes us back to those 3-line verses again. The rhythm changes every three lines, too. Generally, the rhythm begins (1) with an unusual jerky dactylic/anapestic feel with descending beat counts, (2) picks up speed with a bouncy iambic trimeter/dimeter, (3) starts marching to a strong regular beat with trochaic tetrameter, and then (4) at last seems to settle into iambic pentameter, the standard verse of calm reflection in English. But just at the end of the last line, the rhythm alludes to the anapestic rhythm of the opening, for a sense of the circle being closed. This is done while maintaining the ten syllable count of iambic pentameter. Of course, that first line, jerky though it was, was also a ten-syllable line. I would scan it this way: /--/--/--/ /--/--/ /--/ -/-/-/ -/-/- -/-/-/- /-/-/-/- /-/-/-/- /-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/ -/-/-/-/-/ -/-/--/--/

Thanks, Mark! -John

Commuter Train Just the idea of laying steel track, Evenly spaced, there and back, Boggles the brain. But then - to build a train? That makes the laying Of track... seem like mere playing. Harnessing explosive forces To outpull a thousand horses... How exactly is that done? I wonder whether I'm the only one Who's awestruck, as we glide along the rails, At just how rarely this thunder beast fails.

Thanks Michael and Roger for the info. In theory you can separate the issues of "children have rights" and "parents have an obligation to care for children." But they are certainly related. I seem to recall someone at TOC, at least at one point, was negative on children's rights, but positive on parental obligation. When pressed carefully, his position did not allow for child abuse, so his real position was not as outrageous as it had first seemed. Also, someone at TOC argued that a father was not responsible for the child if he and the mother were unmarried and had not discussed the possibility of having children. I published an article exploring my disagreement with this position. Personally I fall into the rights-for-children and obligations-for-parents camp, which is a well-populated camp. I do think the obligation to care for your offspring is one that can reasonably be transferred at times, as when a very young mother puts her child up for adoption.

Can we assume that ARI folks at least are committed to parental obligation? This was certainly Rand's position. With them it sometimes happens that a given position of Rand's will be viewed as "not part of her philosophy" and therefore not something they need to agree with.

Kat, what a nice idea. I have a few more, I think. I will have to dig them up. --John