Self-Cleaning Cats

Not that you asked, but I've never known how self-cleaning ovens work. I suspect I cling to my ignorance on this subject because I'm suspicious of the concept, "self-cleaning ovens." You want ovens that will cook food well and reliably, I think. Ideally, you might want self-cleaning ovens, but requiring an oven to self-clean as well as to cook reliably seems like asking too much, in the sense that whatever bizarre technology is required for "self-cleaning" might disrupt the technology that insures reliable cooking.

Cats, on the other hand, are self-cleaning in ways I understand, ways I've observed, with some fascination. Therefore, I wrote a poem on the subject.

Cats' Baths

A cat is not a user of tools,
must therefore clean its body
using only its body. At some
juncture, self-cleaning cats
persisted well in Evolution's
pageant, passed on codes
of instinct which direct regular,
thorough cleaning of fur, feet,
orifices. A cat concentrates

on cleaning longer than it
concentrates on anything else.
Cleaning calls to cats. They
are somber as they clean, not
quite grim but determined
and earnest, certainly sincere.
Distracted, cats may pause
briefly, the edge of the pink tongue
lodged between teeth, bright
and vivid like a fragment of
a rose's petal.

This cat-vocation, cleaning,
fascinates. After cats clean,
they often sleep deeply, as if
sleep were a solemn ritual
in preparation for which they
licked their fur in the direction
their fur lay, and rubbed their
ears with dampened paws,
and licked between each
separated claw-sheath.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Found Poem, Portland

We hadn't been to Portland (Oregon) for a while, so we spent a few days there. Many moons ago, we used to stay at a cavernous old hotel called the Mallory, and then we'd go to the venerable Benson for a drink. This time we stayed a few blocks from the Benson and stopped by, only to find that they'd remodeled the lobby and pretty much gutted the great old immense bar that used to be lined with dark carved wood. Oh, well. Things get modernized.

Predictably, I went to the secular shrine for bibliophiles, Powell's Books--always a good time. The place isn't quite as magical as it used to be, but it sure seems to be thriving. So far the Internet and some of the surviving used-book stores seem to experiencing a beautiful friendship. The stores can appeal to their traditional clientele but also sell books online. Maybe Kindle and other devices will eventually undermine even these stores, or maybe paper books will survive somehow. . . .

All big cities have a lot of homeless citizens, but Portland seems to have more than its "share," whatever a share is supposed to be. There also seems to be a greater percentage of younger homeless persons--people of high-school age--in Portland. I'm wary of a state and the State having too much power, but with regard to homelessness, I lean toward Sweden's attitude, which is definitely state-heavy.

Basically, Sweden sees homelessness as unacceptable. The police pick up homeless people and take them to a shelter. I'd be in favor of building a lot more shelters and having the police, or another agency, or non-profit groups transport homeless people to the shelters. I'd rather see taxes go to that then a lot of other stuff. There is an argument, I guess, for allowing people to live on the street if they want to, but it's not an argument that convinces me. In most cases, they've been forced to live there, one way or another, or they have mental conditions so genuinely disorienting that they're not good judges of where they ought to live. Also, a huge percentage of people on the street, especially but not exclusively younger ones and women, are targets for all manner of predation and abuse. I think people have a right to shelter and basic meals, and I think society has the responsibility of getting them into shelter, maybe even in spite of initial opposition. At the same time, the shelter has to be safe, not another site of potential abuse.

Now that the rant is over, I'll mention a found poem I saw in Portland. It was composed of eight signs, one word each, on the side of a grocery store downtown--I think it's called Helen's. The words were in white, with a black background, and appeared in a line on the side of the building. I've kept them in order but arranged them vertically.

FOUND POEM: GROCERY

BEER
WINE
SNACK
DONUT
CARD
BEER
WINE
CIGARETTE

The order of the words appealed to me a great deal--three single-syllable words followed by a multiple-syllable word. Then there's the repetition of beer and wine. All the nouns are singular, although "beer" and "wine" can work as collective nouns. I also like what the "poem" says about what items are most essential, perhaps most desired, and I rather like that "card"--greeting card(s), presumably (although playing cards were available in the store--is among the perceived essentials. Beer and wine appear to be doubly essential. I agree, of course, that the list is a bit of a nutritionist's nightmare.

Successful Beading

While I was waiting for the train, which is actually a bus (it's complicated, as they say on Facebook), to Tacoma in Bellingham, I made a bracelet out of beads for someone I've known a long time. I'd ambled past many a bead-shop before, but this was my first venture into one of the shops.

I didn't have a lot of time before the train left, so I set a brisk pace as I selected beads and politely pressured the person in charge of the shop to show me how to put a bracelet together. I had the sense my speed-beading was not a customary part of bead-culture. I chose beads of a similar color--light brown, tan, burnt umber, that sort of thing. And I chose three different kinds of beads and arranged them in a pattern, a kind of visual representation of Morse Code--a simple repetition of a simple series. I also went with the wire, not the nylon string.

Crimping proved to be a huge challenge because I couldn't see what I was doing, even with glasses on. I think next time I'll make a gigantic necklace.

People usually pretend to like something you make for them yourself more than they pretend to like something you bought for them, in my experience.

I predict bead-shops will thrive in this economy, which is starting to take on Herbert Hooverish characteristics. I'm not sure Bush even knows what country he's presiding over, but I digress.

According to the OED online, "bead," spelled "byd" and then "bede," originally donated "prayers," and if I'm inte-preting things correctly, it had nothing to do with prayer beads. "Bead," as referring to a small object with a hole in it (for stringing) didn't come into the written language until about 1377, whereas bead (bede) as prayer came in about 855.

It's too bad "beady eyes" is now a cliche. It's not a bad description.

I know what "draw a bead on" means with regard to sighting something and shooting at it, but I'm not sure precisely how the metaphor was supposed to have worked originally. A lot depends upon "draw," which can mean to pull but which can also mean to mark. So maybe the phrase meant to mark, figuratively, a bead on the target; or maybe it meant that once you shot a hole in the target, you would have, so to speak, drawn (marked) a bead (a wee circular image) on the target. I think it's too much of a stretch to link "draw a bead" to the tiny sphere that used to be on the front sight of some rifles; one would visually place that "bead" in the notch of the front sight and align both with the target.

Luckily, beading is now a completely nonviolent pursuit, although I suppose patrons of a bead-shop could get into a bead-throwing fight, but judging by the customers I saw in the Bellingham shop, this is unlikely to happen.

I do have to improve on my crimping skills, meaning I have to bring a magnifying glass next time. My eyesight has become too beady. The bracelet had to be recrimped, I guess because there was a crimp in its style, nyuk, nyuk, but everything is fine now.

In any event, I encourage all poets and readers of poetry to try to make something out of beads. In some ways, a line of poetry is like a string of beads, yes?

Insurance

Insurance


Is your abode too close to the river?
Does your home sit astride a fissure
between slabs that uphold illusions
of real estate? Is there a slope
above or below your place
that will one day fall for rain?

Perchance, did you build
a match-factory next to a field
full of dry, oily brush? Well, wherever
you live, your roommate is risk,
statistically. Pay us, please, in case

your relationship with risk becomes
more, or less, than Platonic. Rest
insured. If the river riots or Earth's
complexion cracks, if all falls down
or bursts into blaze, then count

your blessings, muse on ruination,
and wait for our reply. In the meantime,
we'll be watching data gather round
the mean. We'll keep your money
in a vault well away from risk,
from you. We'll keep your money safe,
where it can work in peace for us.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Beyond Beyond

For some reason, I never really favored making the first line of the poem the title, or the title the first line. Some poets pull it off just fine. I thought I'd try it with this one, although I'm tempted to give the poem a different title, such as "Beyond Beyond."








The other side of the universe


is a phrase that begs the question,
and a very good question it is. One answer
is how my mind feels when it fails
to imagine what's beyond the unimaginable
borders of reality, out where minds, not
to mention Time and Space,
break like waves on invisible coasts.

Perplexity is an intriguing limit, rather
like the horizon, which doesn't exist.
Does the universe have an outside
outside itself, or
does it, like Myrtle Thompson,
an ancient eccentric in my hometown,
prefer to stay indoors, forever?

Hans Ostrom

Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

Daphne

I've been teaching for a long time, and I think I've had only one student in class named Daphne. It's one of those great names that have gone out of fashion in the U.S., it seems. I put it in a category with Dolores, Edna, Olive, Inez, Agatha, and so on. These names probably sound bizarre to most people under a certain age, and they may even seem risible. Hunt Hawkins has a fabulous poem about "lost" women's names.

Daphne happens to be the name of a shrub, too. It's a low-growing shrub with thick dark leaves and pliable, slender branches. It "volunteered" in a yard we once had. It is spread in a classic way. Birds eat its berries, the seeds pass through the birds (along with natural nitrogen fertilizer), and there you go. Interestingly, Daphne basically refuses to be transplanted. It dies if you try to move it. Is it even available in nurseries? I've never seen it. Maybe you have to grow it from seen, like California poppies, which also die if transplanted. On the other hand, there are many different kinds of Daphne, so maybe the kind we had is especially stubborn about being moved. There are probably more agreeable kinds in nurseries. Allegedly, all types of Daphne are poisonous to humans--leaf, berry, and flower.

If I have the myth behind the name right, Apollo wanted Daphne but she didn't want him, so he turned her into a shrub. Anyway, I wrote a poem about Daphne.

Daphne

The shrub, Daphne, volunteers to grow
After birds, for example, defecate its purple berries
Onto soil. Daphne refuses to be transplanted.
Moved, it dies. The original Daphne became a tree

Because Apollo wouldn’t leave her alone. To me,
This sounds awfully much like Apollo’s version
Of events—concocted to save sunny face
When he came back without the girl.

Sunboy probably hauled a shrub back
With him, had it planted, watched it die,
And then said, “That used to be a girl,
And I warned her—if she didn’t blossom

Toward my will, she’d end up as dead
Foliage.” Whatever. Meanwhile, staying
With friends incommunicado,
Daphne told how she gave the big oaf

The slip, said why she’d live here,
Thank-you-very-much, not there.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Farm State

Farm State

Weary the wheat and plow the wishes.
Harvest what of God you know. Stow it
in a town-sized silo. Why grow
anything when the loans never seem
to evaporate? Summer stands over land
like a ruddy-faced fry-cook and cracks
the sky: out comes a yolk of sun.

Thunderheads filibuster like the senator
filling the Farm Bill with his high pressure.
Lightning votes. An incumbent known
as Toil rigs the election. This is a farm state,
where one day your fate may rise from loam
like a galleon shrugging foam, and maybe
you shall sail yourself away on swells of luck
toward a coast where roosters don't crow
til supper-time, tractor-axles never break,
and climate keeps its promises.

Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Paradigms and Poetry

As I continue my desultory reading of the philosophy of science, I am getting reacquainted with ideas from Thomas Kuhn, specifically his notions of "paradigm shifts" and "theory-laden data." The latter notion is meant to disrupt the idea that data can be neutral, just sitting there waiting to support this or that theory. ("Just the facts, ma'am.") Kuhn suggests that the way the data are gotten or placed or shaped springs from theory. It's not so much that, like Disraeli ("lies, damned lies, statistics"), Kuhn is mocking or dismissing data; he's just pointing out, I think, that data are never innocent ("theory, damned theory, and data").

With a paradigm-shift, I reckon a way of putting the idea is that one overarching way of looking at the world is replaced by another one. One of the most dramatic paradigm-shifts in my lifetime, I think, has been the one shaped by feminism and its effects. Not that long ago, it used to be unthinkable for women to hold a huge spectrum of jobs they now hold, and even people who remain allergic to the word "feminism" accept women in these roles--because the paradigm has shifted.

Two paradigms that simply will not, apparently, stop butting heads are so-called Evolution and Creation.

Bush took a bit of LBJ and a lot of Nixon and created a paradigm by which the president is an elected dictator, as well as a compulsive gambler. He seems to have put about as much thought into invading and occupying Iraq as a drunk does when he decides to hit on 15 at the blackjack table in Bordertown, Nevada. I exaggerate, but I wish I were exaggerating more. Even his former press-secretary, Scottie the Wonder-Dog, referred to Bush as "a gut player." That's quite a paradigm-shift.

In a minor key, the paradigm-shift can be useful for poets. You can get stuck writing one kind of poetry--first person, semi-autobiographical free verse remains a dominant paradigm, for instance. But then you can glance at Randall Jarrell's "Death of a Ball Turret Gunner," to pick just one example, and realize you can write from the perspective and in the voice of someone different from you, relate an experience you have not had but can imagine, and, by the way, have a dead person speak. Or, like Hopkins, you can look at the dominant "music" of your contemporary poetry and decide, "Gee, I think I'll blow that up." With sprung rhythm, he blew up the monotony of iambic pentameter. Dickinson ignored so many paradigms and seriously bent others that it's hard to keep track of them. Surrealism was once a scandalously new paradigm. Now it's pretty much a dominant one, as is the image-devoted poem.

I think poets are naturally comfortable with the idea of "theory laden data"; or at least they sense that all that stuff we encounter and perceive out there is laden with something. Often it's laden with our desire to write a poem about it. That summer's day didn't know Shakespeare was going to write about it and show why it shouldn't, in fact, be compared to his love; and those plums didn't realize that a) Williams would eat them and b) that he would then write a poem in the form of a note apologizing for having eaten them. They were cold, delicious, and poetry-laden data, those poems.

A Poet's Questions for Obama and McCain

I think I speak for all poets when I say no one can speak for poets, who are harder to herd than cats and, in politics, are mere noise in the data, at best, and crackpots at worst.

Situated somewhere between noise in the data and cracked-pottedness, I therefore launch my questions for the only two people who seem to be semi-serious candidates for the presidency, which in my opinion has become awfully close to a dictatorship; "has become" may be naive, however, for if the Constitution started with an electoral college and by putting the head of the executive branch in charge of the whole military, then it looks like "we" always had a hankering for a Strong Executive, or Dictator Lite. In any event, the questions:

1. The obligatory--but, I would add, a deceptively useful--one: who are your favorite poets, and what are your favorite poems, and why, gentlemen? Think of how revealing the answers to this question would be. I predict McCain would refuse to answer, perhaps get angry. I predict Obama would stall, go over the options, and then go with something wry or populist, such as "Bob Dylan".

2. Specifically, what will you do to reverse the growth of secrecy and privilege in the Executive Branch. Examples include "signing statements" (meaning "I won't obey the law you just passed, but thanks for playing"); claims of privilege that block Congress's ability to look at documents and interview employees; the unprecedented growth in "classifying" documents (new ones and old ones, paper and email) as secret because of "national security"; the excessive politicalization of the Justice Department; and so on. I predict McCain would simply revel in all the expanded powers of the Exec. Branch--which have developed over decades, even if Bush II accelerated things. I predict that Obama . . . would do the same. But this is unfair of me. Let the lads speak for themselves.

3. What, exactly, and please give us the math, will you do about the three "items" that drive the budget, which seems to have grown beyond Pluto [to which the arrows point in photos accompanying this post], which isn't even a planet anymore: defense spending; Medicare; Social Security. As far as I know, the rest of the budget is, comparatively, mere fluff. Bob "Roseanne" Barr talks about cutting the Education Department, for example, which would be like cutting one whisker from a mountain man's beard, although such analogies are probably not used much in economics circles, including pie-chart circles.

4. Why shouldn't every citizen have a health plan as good as yours? This is not a rhetorical question.

5. What will you do, if anything, about spying sans warrants on American citizens? I predict McCain and Obama would both mumble something platitudinous--and then leave the system as Bush created it. Both seem in favor of the current FISA bill, for example.

6. Okay, what will you do about torture? How about an Executive Order, written on your first day in D.C., outlawing it? I predict that whether it's Obama or McCain in office, the torturing and "rendering," also known as kidnapping as a prelude to torture, will continue.

7. Who's your favorite philosopher and why? I predict both lads would go for the joke here, if they answered at all. Neither would mention the name of a vaguely legitimate philosopher. But as with the poetry question, think of how revealing the answer would be!

8. What is the lie you told in your life (so far) that you regret the most?

9. Specifically, what will you do to roll back all the anti-trust excesses, including those in the oil industry and the media? I predict neither has any interest in dismantling media conglomerates.

10. What is the biggest line of bullshit you've uttered so far in your quest to become president? Nothing personal here, lads. Everybody knows all candidates have to speak bullshit to get elected, or just to pass the time, or to give the frenzied crowds what they want. Which line of bullshit do you yourself have trouble saying?

11. Speaking of Pluto, as we did in #3, will you promise to reinstate it as a planet? I realize the territory known as "Pluto" isn't strictly under American control, but that has rarely seemed to be an obstacle in American foreign policy, and we're just talking about restoring planetary status, not occupying the place.

Praise Good Sense

July 4 in Tacoma was positively serene as compared with July 4 some 10 miles south, where they still not only allow but encourage fireworks.

In years past, we would have endured two weeks of the build-up, then the noise-riot of the "holy day," then a week of blasting the inventory that remained. One of our neighbors had a cannon. I kid you not.

This year: nothing, except for some noise from Gig Harbor, where official fireworks still go off for an hour, tops, and then some noise from one distant neighbor, who let off some fireworks in spite of the regulations. After this neighbor lighted the fireworks, they created light, noise, and smoke, just as they have done for thousands of years. Why don' t people just put in a DVD of fireworks going off? They seem surprised when the same effects result from lighting black powder anew. I hesitate to say the behavior is moronic. But. . . .

But: like a wee firecracker going off, a thought occurred to me this year that hadn't occurred in years past. Are fireworks gendered? That is, if men weren't around on July 4, would anyone set off fireworks? I assume that at least a small percentage of women would light them, but I think if men weren't around, fireworks sales would diminish by 90%, pure guesswork, and only guesswork. We'd need to hear from social scientists who study fireworks-behavior, take a look at their data and graphs, to get a better sense of this fireworks/gender issue.

I dream of a noiseless 4 July, when dogs and cats rest easy and all the money spent on black powder and paper goes toward . . . well, goes toward something, anything, quieter. Maybe baby food for impoverished families. Boom! Anyway, a tip of the cap to the City of T-Town and the good sense it had to outlaw fireworks, except for a big show down on the waterfront for folks who like that sort of thing.

Multiple Realization and Poets

Sometimes, after my mother (R.I.P.) would do something based on intuition, she would say, "Don't ask me why [I did that]." "Don't ask me why, but I had a feeling there was a rattlesnake there, so I didn't lift up the box."

Don't ask me why, but I've been reading some philosophy of science, though I haven't probed the depths as extensively as the Hyperborean,whose blog is on my list.

Specifically, I've been reading Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, by Samir Okasha. These very short introductions from Oxford U.P. are nifty little books. As is often the case with books, I'm drawn to these because they're physically pleasing--thin, nicely designed, easily fitted in the back pocket. I think I own about 10 of them now, everything from short intros to the Koran and to Islam to short intros on Descartes, Spinoza, Literary Theory, and Ancient Philosophy. If you know the subject already, the books are great refreshers, with updates on newer literature in the field. If you don't know the subject, they're great introductions (indeed) and point clearly to additional reading.

Among the topics I was drawn to in Okasha's book was the concept of multiple realization:

"How can science that studies entities that are ultimately physical not be reducible to physics? Granted that the higher sciences are in fact autonomous of physics, how is this possible? According to some philosophers, the answer lies in the fact that the objects studied by higher level sciences are 'multiply realized' at the physical level" (p. 56). The example of the concept Okasha deploys is demotic: ashtrays. That is, you can have a theory of or a design for ashtrays, but then when you go out into the world, you see that ashtrays are multiply and, figuratively speaking, infinitely realized. Even two ashtrays based on the same design are different. One has a nick in it, for example, or it's slightly warped. So any one ashtray cannot be completely reduced to the physics underlying. Another science, or two, is necessary to explain that one particular ashtray you're looking at.

I like this concept because it articulates the way in which what is always seems to outrun or disrupt what is thought about what is. I like it also because I think poets are drawn more to the particular manifestations of reality as opposed to reality as generalized by scientists, custom, and so on. That one particular bird, city street (and moment on that city street), interchange with a person, sweater, kiss, cloud, or copy of Kant's writing (the copy with the coffee stain on page 92): these highly specific realizations are what, in most cases, first hook a poet's interest. Poets aren't necessarily opposed to concepts or categories, and a lot of poets, I think, aren't in fact interested in the particular. But most are. In this sense, the poetic way of looking at the world is not so different from the scientific way. I think in another context, Emily Dickinson (for example) would have become a botanist or an entomologist. Her poems are far more grounded than most readers expect or think. Almost all of them begin in close observation of a single realization: not "snake" in general, but a snake, seen on that day. Also, Wordsworth liked geometry--because it was, in his view (and according to the etymology), it was the science of measuring the earthy [geo + metric]. That is, it had to do with the planet that supported his beloved lake country and its multiple realizations. Most mathematicians now, I gather, do not think of geometry as the science of measuring the earth but as just another conceptual framework--another dialect of math, as it were.

Don't ask me why, but I think I'll end this particular realization of the blog here.

Blue Teeth, Etc.

One with whom I live just reported that we're getting new cellular phones, which, by the way, always sounded like phones embedded in one's cells, something nano-technology apparently has in store for us, even though phone companies no longer seem to have stores. It was also reported to me that "you're getting the biggest buttons they have," meaning the buttons on the phone. I suffer from Homer Simpson's Syndrome, whereby when I hit a phone-button with one of my thick fingers, I hit three buttons at once. For whom are these phones made, anyway? Barbie? It takes me the better part of a day to construct and send a text message. Smoke-signals would be faster.

When it was reported to what we used to call THE phone company that I used 15 minutes of calling per month on my cell phone, the person from the company was incredulous. "Did you say FIFTEEN?!" Hey, that's 30 seconds a day. In Sweden, that would make you a real gas-bag. I don't like talking on the phone.

I'm also getting a blue-tooth, I've been advised. This is great, especially because I have no idea what one is. All I know is that it's associated with a thing you wear on the side of your head--something like Uhura wore in the original Star Trek. It looks like a big beetle, and I think it's quite a fashion statement.

I already have a blue tooth. Thanks to Raymond Cervantes, who hit me in the mouth with his elbow when we were going after a rebound in high school, one of my large, saber-tooth-cat front teeth is discolored; it's also dead. It's the original blue tooth. I can't receive calls on it, but so what?

The proliferation of phone-technology is most amusing, especially since, when I was young, our family was on a "party line," which sounds quite festive but which actually meant that we shared a phone line with two other families. One effect was that sometimes, when you picked up the phone to make a call, Sophie from the Yuba River Inn would be on there talking. It was considered bad form to a) listen in [did you hear that, Congress, Bush, Homeland Security, and Tele-Kom companies?] and b) talk too long. Of course it took forever to dial a number back then--because you used a dial. I think they should provide cell phones with dials because it's harder to make a mistake when you can lock your finger in that hole and spin the wheel. I think cell phones with little dialing-wheels would be more aesthetically interesting, too. People might rethink whether they actually need to make that call, and they could get their minutes down to 15 or fewer per month.

I'd like now to leap to a proposal: I think there should be an international text-a-poem day. We already have write-a-novel-in-a-month and write a blog-entry-every-day-for-a month, so why not a text-a-poem day? Everybody with access to a cell phone would simply text-message a short poem, which they could write or which they could borrow from someone else. Above the globe, where there used to be ozone, there'd now be poems flying around. I think the phenomenon known as "good vibes" would ensue, and Uhura, wearing her Blue-Tooth, could link up the Universal Translator. Keep thinking about those good vibrations.

Zzzzzzoooo

We went to the zoo today, chiefly to see someone who works there. While we were there, we looked at a few exhibited creatures. The lemurs looked like they'd been up all night, drinking caffeine and writing term-papers. In fact, pretty much all the creatures looked weary. It was late in the day, after all, and a humid day, too. The elephants looked very sleepy, but they also looked as if they felt lying down would require too much work. For an elephant to lie down is a bit like a building dismantling itself.

The tapirs were doing well. They seemed to have joined together in a civil union, and physically, they seemed to prefer to stand in a kind of parallel position. They wore matching fur outfits.

The Sumatran tiger was completely out of it, sleeping deeply, not even a flick of the tail.

I liked the empty exhibits. You walk up and look through the glass or over the fence, and there's no creature in particular there. It's as if someone took a great deal of trouble to create a space for absence. So you stand there and start to observe other people, who are, after all, inside the zoo, just like the other animals. Maybe they could employ a poet to sit in one of those empty spaces. The sign could say something like "Poet--Hominid," and people could take pictures of the person as he or she wrote a word and then erased it.

Crows at a zoo behave in an even more superior fashion than they do elsewhere, it seems. They hang around tables at a cafe, pretending to be customers, and they're all full of themselves about not being on exhibit, or part of the paying public, or part of the paid staff.

I saw the father of two young children buy two brightly colored cloth snakes for the kids. While he was purchasing the second one, his wife, mother-in-law, and kids sat a a table nearby. Referring to the kid who already had a snake, the wife yelled, "He just tried to make the snake kill my mother!" Then she laughed. So did the mother, who's apparently not afraid of cloth snakes or her grandchildren. I don't know, though. I might keep an eye on that one kid if I were her. The dad seemed moderately amused by the cloth-attempt on the mother-in-law's life.