Sea surface full of clouds (first stanza)

by Wallace Stevens

In that November off Tehuantepec,
The slopping of the sea grew still one night
And in the morning summer hued the deck

And made one think of rosy chocolate
And gilt umbrellas. Paradisal green
Gave suavity to the perplexed machine

Of ocean, which like limpid water lay.
Who, then, in that ambrosial latitude
Out of the light evolved the morning blooms,

Who, then, evolved the sea-blooms from the clouds
Diffusing balm in that Pacific calm?
C’était mon enfant, mon bijou, mon âme.

The sea-clouds whitened far below the calm
And moved, as blooms move, in the swimming green
And in its watery radiance, while the hue

Of heaven in an antique reflection rolled
Round those flotillas. And sometimes the sea
Poured brilliant iris on the glistening blue.

The raid

One evening many years ago, I was playing Go at the Korean Club on Lawrence Avenue. I left the club early that night to go home and watch a White Sox game. The next day, I counted myself a lucky fellow upon hearing that the club was raided by the Chicago police. They hauled away 13 Koreans in a paddy wagon on gambling charges. With no windows to the street, I wondered how the police could make such a claim. Later, it came out that undercover officers had been spying on the gamers through a narrow crank window in the alley.

Go is a game of skill; it involves no luck. Technically, gambling requires an element of luck. In essence, a few dollars wagered on Go is akin to a few dollars bet at a bowling alley. The wife of a physicist, a well known Chicago mystery writer, informed Mike Royko of the incident. He wrote a column questioning why the Chicago cops spent so much time hunting gaming geeks while gangs and thugs ravished nearby neighborhoods. Eventually charges were dropped and the club resumed its gaming activities.

Later, it came to light that a Go widow (the wife of a player who stays out all night playing Go) informed on the club in order to get her husband back.

Artist and artist

Author Ames and illustrator Haspiel discuss the fine points of graphic novel collaboration.

From the collection of David Lade, Chicago IL

"Toy Soldier"

Artist: Martin Soto

Medium: Oil on canvas

Oooooh Baby Baby

UFO hunting in Tucson

The woman who published a small libertarian newspaper asked me, “Do you want to come UFO hunting with us tonight?” This would be a first for me, so I gamely accepted her invitation.

With my Pentax and tripod in tow, we picked up the others, bought a case of beer, and headed twenty miles NW of Tucson to a spot near the former Titan missile silo complex.

I quickly learned the art of UFO hunting. Drink some beer, erect tripod and camera, open up the aperture all the way, set on time exposure, and wait.......and wait.........and wait. Bats darted about, picking off small insects with the efficiency of a Hoover. There was a little conversation among us, but not so much as to ruin the effect of our mission--to locate and photograph aliens.

On the way to the location, the woman told me that her boyfriend was a hybrid, half human and half alien. She referred to him as a Visitor. I was happy she left him at home that night, and didn't bother to ask which parent was the alien, though I hoped it was the father.

I downed my fourth beer quickly, and looked to the Southwest. A blinking light above the horizon caught my eye. I alerted the others to it. It must be a plane, I thought, but it wasn't very high in the sky and the light was too irregular for a beacon. I stared hard and got behind my camera's 300 mm telephoto lens. A thin dark outline broke the arc of the sky 20 degrees behind the light. It was the edge of a mountain range, and the blinking light was a car traversing a tree-lined mountain road.

The aliens were probably two college students looking for a secluded spot.

Tombstone Arizona is InWorld and out of this world

Tombstone AZ in Second Life. StevieG in foreground wearing suspenders

During my college days, I wrote news and feature articles for the local edition of the Tombstone Epitaph. The newspaper made the University of Arizona Journalism department one of the best in the country--we wrote and designed a paper for a real town with permanent residents. And Tombstone's storied history provided added cache that drew visitors from all over the world.

Dinosaur bones, nearby ghost towns, local beauty pageants, and contemporary town power brokers provided a wide palette for reporters. Today you can follow the goings-on in Tombstone at the online version of the Epitaph, still published by the U of A Journalism department.

Inspired by Casey Olbermann's Epitaph article (Culture Section), "Many travel to Tombstone's virtual world," I recently went through the preliminaries (see above graphic) to enter the virtual world of Tombstone Arizona on Second Life. I will post my experiences there from time to time. SG