Persimmons in sestina (4th & 5th stanzas)

The second and third stanzas appeared last Monday. Today we add the fourth and fifth.

Always on Sunday: Puncture

You like the legal thriller genre? Fan of John Grisham? The 2011 movie Puncture (directed by Adam Kassen and Mark Kassen) isn't based on a Grisham novel, but it does have some similarities to The Litigators (2011).

Tom Lowe's favorite websites

Holding our contributing editors in high esteem as we do, we figured that you, our readers, might like to check out their favorite websites, so you could see whether any of them become your favorite websites too.
    Today we're letting you know Contributing Editor Tom Lowe's favorites, and we'll give you a week to check them out.

Fish for Friday

Well, my goodness. See The Guardian's article, "Pew's religion survey reveals a secular shift away from the religious right" [personal communication]:

Thor's Day: Straight from the pit of hell

When we thought it just couldn't get any better, the Associated Press came out with a small story from Athens, Georgia, that

10th Congressional District Republican candidate Rep. Paul Broun said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of hell" meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

Ask Wednesday: Susan C. Price on her art

I first met Susan Price in 1966, when my new wife and I visited her family in San Diego, because her older brother had been a friend of mine at Yale. We've stayed in touch, had dinner with our spouses in October 2006.
    Susan is a self-described amateur artist, utterly without pretensions. She says that she's "trying to learn to paint." Well, we like her work so much that we asked Susie if we could show you some of it, perhaps in the course of an interview? [Our questions are in italics]:

Tuesday with Another Voice

Today's voice belongs to
Contributing Editor
motomynd

So, what is a “wasted” vote?

This is the time of year we are pushed to vote either Democratic or Republican so we don’t “waste” our vote on someone with no chance of actually winning the race to be President of the United States. The logic of the “wasted” vote seems simple enough, but have you ever actually thought about it?

Persimmons in sestina (2nd & 3rd stanzas)

I started writing "Persimmons in sestina" last Monday without André, who indeed would like to have joined me, but couldn't:

I'm glad that you've gone ahead and started one on your own, as it may be a couple of weeks before I can start mine. I'm eager to see what you will produce; I imagine it will be a challenge to keep to your timetable for each stanza.

Always on Sunday: Moscow, Belgium

"Aanrijding in Moscou" is the original title of the movie Moscow, Belgium (2008: Christophe Van Rompaey). Matty (Barbara Sarafian), a mother of three children, including 16-year-old Vera (Anemone Valcke), and mostly without art-teacher husband Werner (Johan Heldenbergh), whose midlife crisis is being tended by a former student, collides with a truck while backing out at the supermarket, and remains peeved and confrontational during the argument that follows, despite 29-year-old truck driver Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet's) evident personal interest in her.

First Saturday Green 101: Preparing your lawn for winter

By motomynd

As impossible as it seems, there is a series of commercials these days that may be even more irritating than the barrage of election ads. And they may be even more over-hyped and deceptive than the false claims that Barack Obama cut Medicare funding or that Mitt Romney plans to starve to death the 47% of Americans who he says will never vote for him.

Fish for Friday

I have some thoughts about [Wednesday evening's] debate that I haven't heard or read yet. Several media observers have said that Obama looked ill-prepared or insufficiently motivated, that he had the look of wanting to be elsewhere. I didn't get those impressions. Rather, I thought he was truly rattled. He had no teleprompter, of course, and his dependence on that device has been widely mentioned ever since he became a national figure.

Thor's Day: A conversation with Bill Gates

By Ken Marks

Some time ago I came across an extraordinary quote in a biography of Bill Gates. He told his biographer:

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Ask Wednesday: Jennifer & Matt Neumann on the boating life

Have you ever thought you might like to own a boat? Today, we're pleased to offer you some information to help you decide.
    Jennifer & Matt Neumann have sailed and power-boated out of Coyote Point Yacht Club, San Mateo, California for a number of years. They have graciously taken half an hour out of their active outdoor life (and from their own blogging) to talk with Moristotle.

Tuesday with Another Voice

Today's voice belongs to
Guest Columnist
Chuck Smythe

A musical conundrum in five voices

“Write what you know,” they tell us. Since retiring, many years ago, I have spent a lot of my time trying to know music. I hope to describe, here, my current battle to do justice to good music. I hope you’ll find it interesting, and I hope some of you will have insight to offer.

Persimmons in sestina (first stanza)

When my cousin André visited us two weeks ago and he accepted my invitation to write about the Harvest Moon, he asked me whether I'd ever read Elizabeth Bishop's poem "Sestina" and later wrote that:

I like to read her poem in late September, especially on a rainy day like today. In a sestina, the final words of each line of the first stanza (six lines) are reused for the remaining stanzas, but the order in which the words appear are different each time.