Goatee Entries July 2005

°2005.07.27.we | Cornerhost Discount

I use Cornerhost to host my sites. I like Michal's hosting so much I took advantage of a limited opportunity to buy lifetime service. But that also means I have a $261.36 credit for services (about 16 months of a shell account!) previously purchased, which I'm offering for $150. Great service and a great deal.

°2005.07.24.su | the Catskills

What kind of person reads the book, or writes in her journal while sitting at a bar? While these are permissible — nay, required — activities in a cafe they strike me as odd atop a tall spinning stool.

But I, a prudish teetotaler, am already an oddity sitting at the bar. I'm a stranger in a strange land and this is but one of many customs I have surely violated. But, I'm waiting for Nora — and she tells me people often read at the bar. So, having my journal in hand and the outstanding task of capturing our trip last week, I shall put the time to good use.

The Catskills surprised me in their relative vacancy. Aside from an older woman and her Scottish terrier Elke, we had the Belleayre Hostel to ourselves. While the bunk room, cabins, and cottages are full of ski bums in the winter, the summer months are surprisingly idle, particularly the weekdays that we were there. (I imagine the weekends are little more busy with those on romantic getaways, or attracted by the odd art or music festival.)

Many of the restaurants and stores in the small towns were simply closed. The nearby lake, the Kaaterskills Falls, and tubing (F-S) on the Esopus were not solitary adventures, but nor were they crowded as one might expect given the mountains' proximity to one of the largest concentrations of people — New York — in the country.

The sun was bright and hot, tempered by the occasional and brief rain cloud falling over the apex of the nearest mountaintop. The evenings were cool, even chilly. Our small fire in a massive pit birthed embers who floated on thermals until they disappeared into a field of stars usually veiled by The City's haze.

°2005.07.15.fr | Harry Potter

Tonight, at midnight, the new Harry Potter book goes on sale. Nora and I have reserved a copy at the Brooklyn Public Library, we are 225 out of 429 in the queue; the librarian told me they will probably order nearly 100 copies. I hope that the wait won't be too long and I fear I already know which main character dies.

Nora is actually collecting the hardcover editions but she prefers to buy them in thrift stores where they show up in about a year.

Richard Stallman is suggesting that I not buy it new at all, and I agree with the notion that prohibiting people from reading or speaking is anathema, but a common Canadian policy. So because I'm cheap, looks like we'll comply, but while the principles are important this particular case seems trivial and I don't know if I would advocate this boycott to others.

°2005.07.14.th | Broadway Lafeyette

The Reebock store with its massive glass windows and brushed steel is now complete; the crevice between the sleek building and subway entrance where the homeless used to bivouac has been filled with planters that will never see the sun.

°2005.07.13.we | Monkey Ethics

Yesterday I read an article on how promoting human neuron growth in primate brains might raise some ethical issues.

Scientists have been warned that their latest experiments may accidentally produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.

While I might be pedantic and point out that humans are animals, and our monkey cousins are not that different, I'm glad some expressed concern. But what is it about a human neuron that tips the scales of decency? The boogie-word "consciousness" is raised, but what exactly is that and why is that a requirement for not being experimented upon — needlessly or with some alleged benefit. (The question to me seems to be whether an animal can experience pain, which we know they can.) In any case, primates can communicate, they have a sense of self, and can be fond of and grieve the loss of another. In fact, they can also be more empathetic than their human keepers. In one famous experiment monkeys, forced to choose between shocking another monkey or forgoing food, preferred hunger to another's pain — one monkey even went without food for two weeks. I can't help but wonder when Stanley Wechlin (1964) wrote up his results if he felt a sense of shame, or at least irony.

°2005.07.12.tu | Morning

A few seconds ago the nearby church bell rang nine times and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Nora is still asleep on the futon, having awakened in the middle of the night because of the heat. I could hear her opening the skylights, which we must've left closed from the heavy rains of the last week.

The windows of the apartment face West, so the mornings are usually the coolest. I woke up at eight, did some yoga stretches, ate a massive orange — my lips still burn because of my fondness for the white pulp of the skin — and read another chapter of Dharma Punx. I attended a gathering with its author last week and thought to reread it.

In a couple of weeks I think I will start getting up at 5 a.m. to acclimate myself to the schedule of a retreat I'll be attending. Otherwise, I fear I will be groggy and nodding off during the meditations.

°2005.07.11.mo | Writing

This week I'm starting a practice of writing a little bit every morning. It doesn't have to be for my work, nor for my blog necessarily, but it does have to be words on the paper.

One of the challenges of this practice when I haven't been writing for a while, is what to write about? For work, there is no challenge, there is always plenty to do, but for my own writing it is as if I've lost the gauge to measure what is worthwhile: what I'm reading (V°clav Havel's essays are fantastic), daily trivia (today Manhattan will be like Stonehenge, the sun setting with the alignment of the city grid), or things I'm doing (maybe a quick trip to Fire Island this week and on to the Catskills next).

In any case, for this week it doesn't matter what I write as long as I do.

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