The column of Saint Theodore of Amasea, in Venice. Teodoro is standing on a crocodile or dragon.
You might think I’m in competition with Studiolum, what with the crocodile and the bestiary. His latest post at Poemas del Rio Wang is called Bestiary, and I recommend it to everyone, but I’m thinking of Kenneth Rexroth’s poem that Jamessal sent me today. Here’s one verse:
Goat
G stands for goat and also
For genius. If you are one,
Learn from the other, for he
Combines domestication,
Venery, and independence.
Here is some more:
From A BESTIARY
for my daughters, Mary and KatherineLion
The lion is called the king
Of beasts. Nowadays there are
Almost as many lions
In cages as out of them.
If offered a crown, refuse.Man
Someday, if you are lucky,
You’ll each have one for your own.
Try it before you pick it.
Some kinds are made of soybeans.
Give it lots to eat and sleep.
Treat it nicely and it will
Always do just what you want.Raccoon
The raccoon wears a black mask,
And he washes everything
Before he eats it. If you
Give him a cube of sugar,
He’ll wash it away and weep.
Some of life’s sweetest pleasures
Can be enjoyed only if
You don’t mind a little dirt.
Here a false face won’t help you.Trout
The trout is taken when he
Bites an artificial fly.
Confronted with fraud, keep your
Mouth shut and don’t volunteer.Uncle Sam
Like the unicorn, Uncle
Sam is what is called a myth.
Plato wrote a book which is
An occult conspiracy
Of gentlemen pederasts.
In it he said ideas
Are more nobly real than
Reality, and that myths
Help keep people in their place.
Since you will never become,
Under any circumstances,
Gentlemen pederasts, you’d
Best leave there blood-soaked notions
To those who find them useful.Vulture
St. Thomas Aquinas thought
That vultures were lesbians
And fertilized by the wind.
If you seek the facts of life,
Papist intellectuals
Can be very misleading.You
Let Y stand for you who says,
“Very clever, but surely
These were not written for your
Children?” Let Y stand for yes.
I’m not sure where to find the complete poem except, as Jamessal says, in Rexroth’s Complete Poems. Jim added “He’s not big on cat owners”, which certainly makes me want to find the whole thing.
Remember: If offered a crown, refuse.
A Bad Guide 
I’m waiting for a call from the Palace, with the offer of a peerage and an invitation to form a government.
I thought it was one or the other, but perhaps I’m behind the times. Anyway, with the peerage, why wait for a call from the palace? Do as the Germans: name yourself Graf or Gräfin von Somethingorother (I like Gräfin best, myself). At the moment I’m a Duke, I tend to hover around the the upper echelons of peeragedom, but when it starts confusing hotel-reservation clerks and maîtres d’, I revert to a knighthood.
I don’t feel like logging out of Robin’s account, but this is jamessal — with two more:
Cat
There are too many poems
About cats. Beware of cat
Lovers, they have a hidden
Frustration somewhere and will
Stick you with it if they can
[We should be sending more Muntz pics soon; he continues to thrive.]
Unicorn
The unicorn is supposed
To seek a virgin, lay
His head on her lap, and weep,
Whereupon she steals his horn.
Virginity is what is
Known as a privation. It is
Very difficult to find
Any justification for
Something that doesn’t exist.
However, in your young days
You might meet a unicorn.
There are not many better
Things than a unicorn horn.
I wonder why he had it in for cat lovers. It was before the days of cat marriage.
Wow! that german postman really has a frustration!
And I may not like it, but perhaps it’s true… There’s always some kind of melancholy in cat lovers (I am a cat lover, of course)
A noble competition indeed. The more bestiaries in circulation, the better for the world.
Remember: If offered a crown, refuse.
And what if offered by Crown?
I have also found a good motto for Río Wang:
If you seek the facts of life,
Papist intellectuals
Can be very misleading.
A Bad Guide can be very misleading too.
I wouldn’t be so hard on Papist intellectuals in particular. There are plenty of dire Protestant and Atheist intellectuals around – South Carolina evangelists, for instance, and Dawkins.
I’m not sure that the intellectual or religious ingredient is misleading by itself. At any rate, the combination is rhetorically more powerful. The same is true of intelligent gigolos.
I don’t think Studiolum — a Papist and an intellectual himself, (though that’s not quite the same as a “Papist intellectual”, is it?) — was being hard on anyone. The “facts” of life themselves are very misleading, I think you would agree.
Yes, you’re right. I think even the punctuation of the rhyme is misleading. This is the correct version:
If you seek, the facts of life
– Papist intellectuals –
can be very misleading.
Like this, it would be a worthy motto not just for a blog, but for a Catholic theological seminary.
¡¡Very clever, dear papist intellectual!! :-)
Grumbly, do you know of any intellectual gigolos, or gigolo intellectuals? (As opposed to “intelligent” gigolos)?
A propos, why Papist, why not Popist as we are accustomed to from those heated late 16th-century flyers?
In northern Ireland, the extremist Protestants shout “No Popery!”, but I can’t think of anywhere else Pop- is still used, except in words like “popular”*. I suppose “Popist” was originally just a more Anglicised version of “Papist”, but I defer to the linguists on this.
*Warning: Joke.
I have never seen or heard “popist,” and it is unknown to the OED except in an entirely different sense:
popist, n.
A follower or adherent of the pop art movement; a pop artist.
1981 Times 30 Apr. 19/6 All the anarchic excrescences of the affluent Sixties are given the Popist’s blessing. 1987 Sydney Morning Herald (Nexis) 5 Sept. 50 It would be misleading to now see Arkley as a Popist unhampered by motivation or morals. 2004 Guardian (Nexis) 6 Jan. 12 It is impossible not to compare Lichtenstein with Warhol. They were the two purest, most definitive popists (as Warhol called them).
Yes, I did not remember well the text of those leaflets. 16th-century British Protestant apologetic literature actually used “Popish”, not Popist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popish_Plot
I should have said intelligent womanizer. There have been plenty of intellectual womanizers – Casanova, Sartre, Hugo, Graham Greene.
I just found this quote from L’Icosaméron:
With a slight modification, it becomes rather ungentlemanly:
I don’t think Studiolum — a Papist and an intellectual himself, (though that’s not quite the same as a “Papist intellectual”, is it?) — was being hard on anyone
Not Studiolum, but Rexroth.
There have not been that many intelligent mannerizers, though. I can think only of Catherine the Great and Emily Post.
Well I was really looking for gigolos and gigolas, supported escorts of the elderly.
In Germany, the state pays for those people. They’re called Zivildienstleistende. In return for being excused from military service, they escort the elderly and tend to their every need. Unfortunately for you, I guess, they tend to be young men.
Anyway, I myself look forward eagerly to becoming elderly. Finally I will be able to reach the other side of the street under my own steam, instead of having at every turn to consult my petit robert as regards a suitable escort.
Unfortunately for you, I guess, they tend to be young men.
Correct. I’m far too old to carry out those sort of duties.
Anyway, I myself look forward eagerly to becoming elderly.
Change we can believe in. Incidentally, I recently downloaded a nice little article of that name from the NY Times. It’s about calculus and I’m trying to get my daughter to read it.
I studied immense amounts of calculus in high school and college and have never had occasion to use it. Your daughter’s mileage may, of course, vary.
She’s going to have to do it at school. I’ve never met anyone who has actually used calculus for anything except getting through school. However, this article (it’s pretty good) suggests ways it can be used by all of us. One example of how useful it is is for calculating the minimum required trudge through fields covered in deep snow — a topic my daughter might conceivably be interested in, even though she’d probably solve it by riding her horse.
For the general population, a vanishingly small amount of calculus is quite enough, in my opinion. “Statistics for everyday use”, on the other hand, should be a standard requirement.
I once had a customer rep at the Commerzbank in Bonn who didn’t know the difference between simple and compound interest. This was reason enough for me to change to the Stadtsparkasse.
What statistics and financial mathematics have in common is that they can easily be used to deceive people.
How many years since banks stopped dividing annual interest by 12 to find monthly interest and by 360 to find daily interest? I remember having a dicussion with an elementary school maths teacher about that stupidity. I concluded that those who understand growth choose science, so banks are designed to be run by people who stop maths at arithmetics. I must have been an arrogant child.
But I don’t know. My current rep is much better than the previous one, but last year I had to explain to him why it was profitable to maximize my savings account when the interest rate was higher than on my morgage.
I seem to remember that calculating compound interest is quite a bit less simple than figuring simple interest.
That’s amazing you were getting higher interest than your mortgage. I see how it could happen in theory in Norway, but all the interest we ever accrue is in the infinitesimally low bits of the single digits.
Calculating compound interest is more difficult than calculating simple interest only if you are trying to plug values directly into the formulas. Consulting compound interest tables is in fact easier that multiplying numbers by hand for simple interest.
In any case, it is of the utmost importance to understand the difference between simple and compound interest. The latter means demanding/paying interest on the interest. That idea should give pause even to a dullard, provided he wants to avoid paying more than he bargained for.
Calculating compound interest is more difficult than calculating simple interest only if you are trying to plug values directly into the formulas.
Only if you’re trying to do it, in other words. Anyone can use tables.
I, too, once had an account with Commerzbank. I didn’t like the name very much, not a very woody-sounding bank, though not as bad as “Bank of Credit & Commerce” or the other one that I had an account with, Chemical Bank, which sounds like a medical facility. I like the names of the private London banks the best: Coutts & Co., N M Rothschild & Sons, Raphaels Bank — imagine naming a bank after a painter — Hongkong & Shanghai is a good woody-sounding name too.
I always liked Hongkong & Shanghai, and resent the new and very unwoody “HSBC.”
“Statistics for everyday use”, on the other hand, should be a standard requirement.
Heartily seconded.
It’s the toxoplasmosis, I’m sure.
I’ve just discovered that this nice young lady, whom I enjoyed on the telly as a kid, has written a coupla books to make maths more attractive to girls.
That’s interesting, Sili. I think they’re a bit too early for my daughter now, unfortunately.