I've been thinking about the neighbors today. I returned from Leicester today in time to run into one who was newly returned from her allotment, and provisioned us with lettuce. And also -

Was it just last week we passed along the street?
You, in habitual armor of gloves and hat, white,
reflecting back the sun. So often we'd meet
this way, passing across the road, amidst a flight
of errands, and would comment on the rain, the snow,
my umbrella-lack, incipient drops, or clear blue skies.
You and yours: the first to greet us after our slow
translocation here. Stalwart neighbor, useful to advise
on songbirds, gardens green, and shops near by.
'Twas just last week - but you went before July.

First, answer the original poll on purple rice & beef.

Then, if you're feeling like you would like to fill out another poll just now, here is one which examines more aspects of the same issue. (Polls are not, after all, editable.) The other one looks like it will resolve my actual point of curiousity (about which more in another post. Not today.) This one is optional extra detail.

[Poll #1587862]

This poll is dedicated to desperance, who requested clarification.

From Hammersmith & Town,
the Circle line was born.
A gilded, crowded crown,
a city to adorn.

Yellow, with age and use,
today, it makes the news:
Infinity's unwound,
it no longer goes round.

Encoiled, its extent
is volute. An event:
the Circle line is torn;
a Spiral line is born.

For brisingamen and desperance.

Soon, they will wake, the earlybirds,
and find the city tranquil, void
of all the audience and worlds
which, in its halls, they enjoyed
until last night, when, winding down,
their wave of programming collapsed
on the shore of this Laurentian town,
at the final fête, now elapsed.
In the fall of Perseid's night,
all rockets launched, each mapled base,
auroras seen, with sidewise sight,
and masks set aside, in boreal space.
When paint-stripping or baking, keep in mind:
anticipation ends in daily grind.

Dear Conversion software,
I am grateful you exist.
Before, today, I found you,
I'd with makeshift means subsist.

BBEdit's been my pal
for years to scrape out text
from inconvenient formats,
from Word Perfect or .docx.

Zamzar was rather helpful
when I'd time to wait for it
to change these common formats
into ones more common yet.

Today, I knew my time had come,
today, I gave up hope.
.pptm was beyond
convertatory scope.

Initial web-wide searching
yielded means for other OS.
I didn't really want to
think this data all a loss.

But Microsoft created it,
and Microsoft relents.
It's issued out a package
for the problem, and so hence,

For files, Open XML
Converter, I am glad:
Your alchemic translations
strips the grunge with which they're clad.

These files are now open,
and their booty I shall prize.
Alas, 'tis not the death of all
cross-format compromise.

From various medievalists (only formerly in prose)...

You may very well a medievalist be
if you have a best-loved Lateran decree.
The same may be true if a one-car collision
could wipe out your whole academic division.
A giveaway token is if you add "yet"
to "I don't know that language"; you will soon, I bet.
At conferences, all other folk in your session
have made holy orders their lifelong profession.
Your second'ry sources, for some other student,
are primary sources, selected, most prudent.
You must know the truth about Arthur and Cei?
You don't? Well, why not? Please do tell me, I pray.
For you, the Americans fought revolution
for freedom, a recent and modern solution.
The Renaissance? That's just a dirty, late lie;
it's one that we all resolutely deny.
And when you've bad day, when hellbound all ways,
you can say in which infernal ring's your malaise.


For an original version, see here. It's not the sveltist collection of couplets, but I thought I put into it all the work that the project deserved.

The tinted beryl was enlensed,
as sunglass, way back when.
Beryllium, byproduct since,
now holds the lenses in.

The burn was wedged into its depths.
In density and air, the raging caught,
wood to ash, inheritance to dream.

A swarm of firefighters - no foam,
but water, pouring rivers - but not
drowning flame's heart, fatal gleam.

Come the morning, the pyre is doused.
Leaving blooms, the mourners, distraught,
corpseless, render their esteem.


All thanks to tsutanai for updates about the gate's news, for the observation about foam, and for wondering about how often there is mass mourning when there is no body. I would say I'm on a roll with current affairs poetry, but technically there is more recent news about the burning than that it happened at all.

The Ramada Hotel in Friedrichroda won my heart by providing its entire hotel directory of services in rhyming couplets. It did this not just in German, but in English too, in a part of Germany which sees mostly German tourists. There was something like twelve pages of rhymes. I loved them so much that I typed up nearly all the English ones (except for a few more dull ones) and a few of the German ones for comparison.

No author was ascribed. It was obviously local effort, not a Ramada policy (much as it would be nifty if it were otherwise), as the directory described that particular hotel's services, amenities, timetables, and prices.

Friedrichroda is a small town in the Thuringian forest, an excellent base for inexpensive accomodation and the best hiking trails I have seen in my entire life. The area even has Germany's only remaining countryside tram service, offering regular transport between the major towns and villages of the region for better access. Perhaps it's this tranquility which inspired the unknown author to put such effort, cleverness, and whimsy into writing in rhyme.

Pets

You came with your pet - your cat or dog
No problems - it's welcome around the clock
Eight Euros per night - these rates you can read
And you have to put your dog on the lead.
Entry to the restaurant is granted only to guests with two feet
For beings on numerous paws
Sorry! The doors are closed.

( A 'few' more of them... )

At fjm's recommendation, I read Alan Garner's The Owl Service. He's a staple writer of the fantasy genre, so it was something of a surprise to me to realize that I'd never read any of his works before. It's a powerful work, a retelling of the Mabinogion tale of Blodeuwedd, who wants to be the flowers from which she was made, but keeps being turned into owls. Garner casts the tale in the form of three modern teenagers stuck reliving the tale in a rural Welsh valley.

Much of the tale's power lies in the way Garner uses dialogue instead of action. Much of the action is implied when there is discourse. The dialogue is a tight interchange without dressing, the speakers identified by sequence and speaking style. Distinct personalities and agendas keep the interchanges distinct. We cannot know what the characters are thinking, what their facial expressions are, only what they say and how the other participants in the drama react. That inbuilt ambiguity means the reader must discover what reactions are through subsequent physical and verbal reactions rather than by having the author spell it out for them.

The exclusion of unnecessary information - such as expressions during dialogue - keeps the story tightly focused. The character of the mother, for example, is background information. Although her presence and attitudes affects several of the decisions made in the story, she never actually appears in the text because she is not necessary to it. She is background, not a pivot of narrative structure.

Most of the fantastic elements in the book are likewise ambiguous. Almost everything which happens can be explained as happening due to some other cause. The world hovers on the edge of realism and on the edge of the fantastic.

Whether it was because of that divide between worlds or because of the physical nature of the edition, after I finished, I found myself thinking of works by Diana Wynne Jones. The Homeward Bounders, Archer's Goon, and The Time of the Ghost, for example, all operate on the edge between the probable and improbable, to varying degrees. In each, the main character is caught up in a master plot, and which can only be resolved happily if the main character can twist the plot's predictable course into an alternate resolution.

Thinking about DWJ, my mind wandered back to The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, which which includes descriptions of Fantasyland stews and farms, although without mentioning specific vegetables. ( Which may be why I then wrote a poem about cabbages.... )