WhimsyLand

Goodness.  It seems that everyone eventually moves to ChicagoLand.

Everyone on my virtual blogroll seems to be a part-time music critic.  I think the more interesting question is:  Does God approve of Christian rock?

I'm waiting to read a poem of Simon's that is astrophysical.  I have poems with Venus, Orion, and Pleiades in them.  Eventually, every astronomical object gets into my poems.

Answer to my question yesterday about a black hole's gravity :  "General relativity is a local theory, which means that the field at a certain point in spacetime is determined entirely by things going on at places that can communicate with it at speeds less than or equal to c. If a star collapses into a black hole, the gravitational field outside the black hole may be calculated entirely from the properties of the star and its external gravitational field *before* it becomes a black hole. Just as the light registering late stages in my fall takes longer and longer to get out to you at a large distance, the gravitational consequences of events late in the star's collapse take longer and longer to ripple out to the world at large. In this sense the black hole *is* a kind of "frozen star": the gravitational field is a fossil field." 

I like the notion of a fossil field.  I reminds me of post-poemic glow, that strange feeling that persists after reading a particularly good poem.

The AARP Magazine (this month's cover:  Tony Bennett and Christina Aguilera) cite Portland, Chandler AZ, Atlanta and Austin as good places to move.  Also, Milwaukee, which Junie and I found to be lovely downtown.  Also, Boston, even though the housing costs are high.  I've always had a sentimental (romantic) notion about how great it would be to live in Boston, but mainly because of all the Spenser novels I've read.

Oh, good.  There's another Martin Cruz Smith novel out.  He once made it into a poem.  Eventually everybody gets into one of my poems.

Fraser Sutherland is the best writer of poetry in English.

Junie and I need a new porcelain convenience for the upstairs bathroom in our house in Eau Claire.  Well, the only bathroom, actually, as that was how many bathrooms you got in 1938, when the house was built.  The cheapest one-piece toilet is $22.40 and somehow still gets a 5-star rating. There are nice 2-piece toilets in the $100-$300 range.  The most expensive toilet in the world is the Toto Neorest which retails for about $6,000 and includes jet-assist water dispersal, tank-less operation, auto lid lift, available in Cotton White or Sedona Beige.  The ad says "Unlike any other toilet in the world, this feature rich, highly publicized throne has more bells and whistles than you knew you needed."   I once got stuck in a small railway station in Tuscany as the result of a typical Italian rail strike.  They had a 3-piece toilet:  two pictures of feet glazed into tile, and a hole between them.  Sounds pretty reasonable, but I doubt I will be able to sell Junie on the idea.

Deborah suggests putting an unusually-named town in your poem.  I once put Climax, Saskatchewan into a poem.  Eventually, every town gets into one of my poems.