f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

. . . . . Jackadoggi & Giacalone . . . . . . . . .

Yep, that’s Jack the Bulldog, the sports mascot of my college alma mater Georgetown University. And, his human doppelganger is the editor of this weblog, in my one and only “baseball cap,” which just happens to depict Jack alongside the Georgetown Hoyas logo. Donning that cap (and looking only mildly skeptical) is about as much March Madness as I am willing (or likely) to ever show — even if the Hoyas make it to the Elite Eight, the Final Four or the Last Dance/Championship Game. As I confessed this time last year: “Frankly, I’m not much of a sports fan (except for good basketball and baseball haiku).” So, you better go to Wikipedia, if you want an explanation of brackets or berths, seeds or rounds, and any other aspects of the NCAA collegiate basketball championship, which has been dubbed — and which inspires so much — March Madness.

one on one…
she dares me to show her
my vertical leap

…….. by ed markowski

march madness
he tells me his fantasy
teams

march madness
he fits me in
pre-game

. . by roberta beary

As the Washington Post reports today, the “Hoyas Are Ready, and Open for Business: Experienced Georgetown, No. 2 Seed in the Midwest, Will Get Started Against No. 15 UMBC” (March 17, 2008). Should the Hoyas make it to the regional final or beyond, I’ll surely watch the last few minutes of their games, and report about their victories here at f/k/a. However, barring a hot date with a serious college basketball fan (I knew a couple of women lawyers who were big Hoya fans, and a few Tarheel fanatics, when I was an FTC staffer in DC), you won’t catch me on a sofa or bar stool with my eyes glued for hours to a large screen filled with baskeball jerseys. Nor will I be filling out a Brackets Sheet. If you desire more info about Georgetown basketball, I suggest clicking HoyaSaxa.com.

Although we don’t suffer from March Madness here at f/k/a, our bench-warmer dogosan is not immune from related Senryu Silliness:

cheering for
his blind date’s team –
arch cadness

march sadness:
nana wants
her soap operas back

my nephew lets me
beat him to H-O-R-S-E –
march gladness

again she hides
his brackets sheet —
spouse badness

two hours alone
with his teenage son –
march dadness

branch managers
play bookie –
march madness ends

………………………. dogosan ..

Want some real march madness senryu? Here’s more from the all-star team of Markowski and Beary:

march madness
his team slam dunks
our date

march madness
he enters my bedroom
to check the score

. ……………………….. by Roberta Beary

calligraphy class
the point guard
pens a nike swoosh

city moon
my basketball flattened
by a shard of glass

game winning shot
the big man
palms my head

long rebound
crossing mid-court
she crosses my mind

……………………….. by ed markowski

– afterthought: don’t miss Ed’s new poems in this comment –

It may be March 17th, but a wee nap sounds a lot better this morning than a wee nip or a wee new posting to the f/k/a Gang. It’s a good thing we were much more into the St. Patrick’s Day spirit in past years. See:

• “wearin’ o’ the white” (2007), no snakes but lots o’ snow.
• “reprise: feeling a little Irish?” (2006)
• “feeling a little Irish?” (2005), where we pointed to Thomas Fleming’s NYT op-ed piece “Don’t Parade, Just Go Vote,” and o’pined that minorities surely should vote, but shouldn’t expect to keep all the political spoils to themselves if they win.

St. Paddy’s parade –
at the curb
green and yellow snow

…. by dagosan [March 12, 2005]

Over in Dublin, Lex Ferenda (“daithí mac sithigh’s blog on cyberlaw and more”) is hosting Blawg Review #151, which has lots of timely pointers to the best o’ the blawgers — including a reminder that Anne Reed, our favorite redheaded blawger, has been in Japan talking about juries, and offers insights and reflections at her Deliberations weblog. Meanwhile, although he continues to insist on anonymity (and to mask his nationality), the mysterious Editor of Blawg Review is claiming Irish blood, and has been celebrating the St. Patrick’s Festival for several days (with a very nice YouTube parade clip).

drawing the
designated driver straw –
st. patrick’s day

…….. by dagosan [March 17, 2006]

In case you are planning to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in customary American style, please keep in mind this timely message from the anti-liberal brain of Jenn of the Jungle (via Texas Hold-’em Blogger):

……………………………………………………….

Enough for now from us (except to wish the Luck o’ the Irish to David Paterson, who becomes governor of New York State today, as a blessed consequence of the Spitzer sex scandal; see NYT editorial; and a Schenectady Gazette article; watch the inauguration at 1 PM EDST, by clicking here).

St. Patrick’s Day
a traffic cop directs
gridlock

…….. by Pamela Miller Ness from “The Can Collector’s Red Socks” (2003), a haiku sequence

st. patrick’s day
the foreman hands out
pink slips

st. patrick’s day
an old pot filled with
losing lotto slips

…………… by ed markowski

p.s. Hungry for more Irish lore from f/k/a? Check out Paul Quirk’s photo of the Classic St. Patrick’s Day Feast. Learn the meaning of “erin go bra!” by scrolling down our post about a famous paralegal. And, don’t forget our Big Dance post from March 16, 2006, featuring the adorable Irish Setter Puppy from Metroland (”The [NY] Capital Region’s Alternative Weekly Newspaper”):

. . . . . . Irish Setter Stew . . . . . .

– “made from tender young Irish Setter puppies!
– Perfect for St. Patrick’s Day!

– see the Irish Setter Stew ad enlarged here –

High-brow Snowmen? Last night, f/k/a was honored to be the first featured site in a new series at Bob Eckstein’s Today’s Snowman weblog — see “High-brow Snowman; The Series Part I.” Many thanks to Bob for honoring us with a bouncy description of our weblog, links to a couple of our recent snowman postings, and a pair of related haiku. (Part II focuses on “prolific poet Darryl Price.”)

Speaking of high-brow: Eckstein is studying whether snow-buddhas were being sculpted as far back as the 7th Century A.D. in China. (You can find more on the topic in his book The History of the Snowman.)

snow turns to rain –
Buddha’s visit
cut short

………………….. by dagosan

– As for buddha-like impermanence: the once-mighty 9′-Aspen, Colorado snowman now stands alone, melting away.

March ice storm —
a starter snowman melts
in the freezer

…….. by dagosan

It may be March, but Bob is continuing his monthly Snowman Today snowman contest. I sure hope Southern Hemisphere webloggers will help spread the word, and nominate local snow creatures for future months, as we in the North America, Europe and Asia head into spring.

stiff march wind
the sound
of an airball

……………………….. by ed markowski

Ready for March Madness? This photo by my brother Arthur Giacalone (turned into a haiga here), reminds me we’re in that in-between season of lambs and lions, thaws and freezes, snowmelt and snowstorms. This morning, I awoke to 810WGY’s morning talk host Don Weeks noting that Monday March 17 will be both St. Patrick’s Day and Brackets Day. Don mused over how much more difficult it might be to decide on your NCAA basketball brackets picks when filled with green beer. That coaxed a smile out of Prof. Yabut, but didn’t keep the rest of the f/k/a Gang from bemoaning just how quickly mid-March has descended on us (not to mention the new, unnaturally-premature Daylight Savings Time).

mid-March thaw –
et tu,
snow buddha?

………………… by dagosan

It prompts questions like:

• Where the heck did we leave our piece on the Ides of March?
• Should we remind our readers again how boring we find Final Four and Big Dance cliches?
• Do we dare reprise our Irish Setter Stew graphic, after blurbing this week about Animal Rights? And, can we be politically incorrect on the heels of Geraldine Ferraro’s gaffs, and mention the 7-course Classic St. Patrick’s Day Feast.?
• what the heck is a hoya?

We’re gonna have to nap on these a few times this weekend. Meanwhile, just in case we don’t get around to it, or you simply can’t wait for us to post them, click here for a bracket-full of basketball haiku and senryu by our Honored Guests.

boy shooting baskets–
deep snow piled
all around him

 

……. by lee gurga from Fresh Scent

game over
men turn to leave
the tv department

………………….. by John Stevenson – Upstate Dim Sum (2004/I)

[larger] The anchorman and weatherguy at Fox23News in Albany [NY] were yukking it up a little after 10 PM last night, about a story out of Schenectady — a man who climbed a tree when confronted by the cops had refused to come down for several hours. It sounded interesting enough for me to seek out the tale this morning at the websites of our region’s two main newspapers, to see how the story ended. See “Suicidal man in tree slows I-890 traffic” and “Cops: man out of I-890 tree” (Albany Times Union, March 12, 2008); “Man pulled from tree after 11 hours” (Schenectady Daily Gazette, March 12, 2008; photo of man in tree) As seems to happen more and more lately, the tale wasn’t quite so funny upon closer inspection.

all its leaves fallen
a tree we were
forbidden to climb

. . . . by paul m. – from called home (Red Moon Press 2006)

As the Times Union reported, “Police said they initially received a phoned in complaint about someone urinating in the street. Officers responded but the man ran off and climbed the tree.” It was eleven hours before the man, who originally had two butcher knives and was threatening to harm himself with them, was brought down from the tree. According to the TU:

“After over seven hours of coaxing, officers attempted to grab the man, but were unsuccessful when he stripped off his sweater. Clad only in a tee-shirt, the man grew colder over the next three hours. Officers offered him a blanket around 3:52 a.m., and grabbed him.”

The Gazette adds: “The 29-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, got within reach of rescue workers as he tried to accept an offered blanket. He was pulled into a fire department bucket [by the pants] just before 4 a.m., police said.” Although “the man never threatened anyone but himself,” there was a warrant out for his arrest, “for failure to pay a fine on a marijuana conviction.”

Here are a few more details that seem noteworthy (emphases added):

• More than a dozen police cars were on the scene, as well as a fire truck with its ladder extended, and an off-duty FBI agent.
• Traffic was slow-moving as the left and middle lanes of the arterial interstate I-890 were blocked off for a quarter mile.
• Lt. Brian Kilcullen, the spokesman for the Schenectady Police Department, told the TU that he credited the ordeal’s end to officers who worked to gain the man’s trust and keep him calm. Officers Marlon Ivery and Dwayne Johnson “really developed a rapport with him.”
• Giving an interesting twist to the verb “coax,” Kilcullen told the TU, `”We made repeated attempts to coax him into the bucket, and at 3:52 a.m., we were able to do it, . . . not willingly.”

a masterly climb
to the top of the peony…
frog

the big nettle tree
as his shield…
croaking frog

on the pine tree’s
tippy-top…
moon gazing

……… by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

I’m glad the man got down safely and hope he will get the help he needs (be it medical or legal). I’m even happy not to know his name. Meanwhile, I sure hate to think how long that young man would have been up in that tree if our police heroes hadn’t been so good at building rapport, and I hope all the real criminals around here didn’t notice how easy it is to distract virtually the entire police department for most of two entire shifts.

winter crescent
the reservoir’s bottom
of tree stumps

… by Paul Miller from Shiki Haikusphere Anthology (2007)

sharp curve-
a weathered cross
nailed to the tree

…. by Tom Clausen – from Roadrunner Haiku Journal (Issue VI:2, May 6, 2006)

 

looking now
with greedy eyes
bare winter trees

in mountain shade
rest without a care!
nut-less chestnut tree

ISSA, translated by David G. Lanoue

fallen sycamore —
the chess players move
to another tree

…….. yu chang – The Heron’s Nest (Dec. 2005)

nude beach –
the crowd around
the dead whale

morning stillness …
first snow
on the tree-bound kite

………………by Michael Dylan Welch, from Shiki Haikusphere 10th Anniversary Anthology (2007)

By the way, the Law Student Division of the American Bar Association has designated March 27, 2008 as Mental Health Day. Click to learn more about the Law Student Mental Health Initiative. (hat tip to Prof. Alan Childress, of the Legal Profession Blog, where you will find a recent post by Mike Frisch about a Maryland bar applicant rejected due to his financial irresponsibility, a topic that got our emeritus editor ethicalEsq into some hot water with a bunch of young lawyers and students back in 2004.)

road crew –
bright orange jackets
circle the old tree
….. by Hilary Tann – Upstate Dim Sum

.. from Gasoline Alley to the Arctic Circle . .

freezing wind–
the body builder pumps gas
in a muscle shirt

alpine meadow-
kneeling to photograph
white heather

…………… by billie wilson [who went from Indiana to Alaska]
“freezing wind” – First Prize, The Gerald Brady Award for Senryu (2001); Frogpond XXV:1 (2002); “alpine meadow” – The Heron’s Nest (October 2000); for more see Alaska Haiku Society.

It’s been several decades since I’ve followed the adventures of Walt, Skeezix and the gang in the Gasoline Alley comic strip. It seems I’m not the only one who has outgrown the “gentle, good-natured continuing story of four generations of Wallets.” Earlier this winter, the readers of the Schenectady Daily Gazette voted to eliminate Gasoline Alley from the paper’s comic strip page, and to replace it with Arctic Circle, which King Features introduced in August 2007, and which will appear for the first time tomorrow, March 11, in the Gazette. See “Gazette comics page gets a little cooler” (March 8, 2008). Written by British-born New Zealander [Ms.] Alex Hallatt, the strip sounds like it will soon be a favorite of the f/k/a Gang.

“The strip centers on the friendship between three charismatic penguins, Oscar, Ed and Gordo, who move to the North Pole to escape mistakes they made in Antarctica. Other characters who round out the engaging cast include a cynical middle-aged polar bear, a gullible lemming, an intellectual snow bunny and a ruthless Arctic tern.”

Far as I can tell, hug-seeking Oscar would have appreciated our Leap Day posting, and a cynical polar bear is a potential goombah or role model for our Prof. Yabut. If any of our readers are Arctic Circle fans, please let us know.

that whale I could have touched
surfaces again
in my mind

……………………………… by billie wilson – Mariposa 15 (2006)

Speaking of polar bears, there’s a pair of them on the cover of the new March issue of Washington Lawyer, along with the cover story “Animal Law.” The tabloids have been filled with animal-related stories lately — from Michael Vick to Ellen DeGeneres. And, this article tells about the “growing number of lawyers who battle within the legal system on behalf of animals.” In addition to bar association committees and reports:

“Animal law also is a growing presence at law schools and law firms across the country and has come to encompass almost every area of law you could think of— administrative, constitutional, criminal, disability, environmental, international trade, torts, and trusts.”

Don’t plan on making it a full-time job just yet, but you’ll find lots of pro bono opportunities in the field of Animal Rights — along with political battles, and frantic opponents fretting over slippery slopes and spinning worse-case scenarios: “if we give animals rights, then do we have to give them the right to vote and to drive cars?” At least our animal friends without opposable thumbs won’t be yacking on cell phones while driving.

retreating glacier–
how long since we’ve heard
the black wolf’s song

……………………………… by billie wilson – Modern Haiku 38:1 (2007); echoes 1 (2007)

Female lawyers are definitely not an endangered species, but their rights and interests are the focus of the brand new issue of The Complete Lawyer (Vol. 4 #2, March 2008; cover art by Polly Cook). Asking “What do women lawyers really want?“, the National edition alone of TCL has nine articles that try to answer that question. For example,

• “Women Really Want A Level Playing Field,” by Cathy S. Wright
• “Women Attorneys Share Work-Life Balance Tips,” by Judi Craig (who says “To counter the unrealistic ‘you-can-have-it-all’ mindset, most women give themselves a heavy dose of reality.”)
• “Cultivate Work-Life Synergy: A Guide For Women Lawyers,” by Arnie Herz of Legal Sanity.

– In her piece, “Women Are Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands,” Holly English, President of the National Association of Women Lawyers, says her colleagues are still complaining about unequal pay. We’re still eschewing lawyer-ethics punditry, but if you scroll down our posting “short but tart” (Nov. 29, 2007), you’ll find some concerns expessed over the recent NAWL survey on the income gap between female and male lawyers, and “the perils of advocacy group statistics.”

mid-February
choosing the sunniest spot
to fill my tank

……………….. by Hilary Tann – The Heron’s Nest VIII:2

whalebone
from a beach near Savoonga–
winter rain

overdue hunters–
the Coast Guard cutter’s wake
reaches shore

……………………………… by billie wilson
“whalebone” – First Place, Harold G. Henderson Award, 2003; Frogpond, 2004; “overdue hunters–” – Mariposa 15 (2006)

by the statue
of the polar explorer
lingering snow

………… by George Swede – The Heron’s Nest (May 2002)

snowdrift
news of a missing dog
from pole to pole

………… by yu chang – Upstate Dim Sum (2004/II)

rising gas prices–
an attendant changing numbers
in a pouring rain

…….by Michael Dylan Welch – Modern Haiiku (2005)

p.s. Who can you trust?   In the blogisphere, people looking for resources on building trust, turn to Charles H. Green’s Trust Matters weblog.  Today, those in the know are checking out Charlie’s version of Blawg Review #150, to find links to some of the very best recent work at law-related weblogs.  And, because we’re so grateful that he pointed his readers to our “snowjobs” post on electoral campaigning, we’re not going to complain too strenuosly that he linked to this atrocious collection of so-called “Budweiser-related haiku.”  Where are the haiku police when you really need them?

  The entire f/k/a Gang is taking another Mental Health Day off today — probably daydreaming of Sadie Hawkins Days past. Luckily, someone had already keyed in a bunch of new haiku by our Honored Guests, from the newest issue of The Heron’s Nest (Vol. X, No. 1, March 2008). So, please enjoy the work of our haijin hotties, while we nap (and scroll to the end of this post for a surprise visit from a Boomer icon):

icy morning
the twists and turns
of a child-proof cap

…………………. by Alice Frampton – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)

Remembrance Day
traffic sounds crisscross
the bagpipes

darkening clouds
I press cold earth
on tulip bulbs

………. by Laryalee Fraser – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)

mid-morning
an ice-crack ricochets
across the river

storm clouds —
hearing the pauses
in the katydid’s song

…… by Hilary Tann – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)

needles of rain
the talk show guest
addresses my problem

dark comes early now —
we speak of the children
we didn’t have

……….. by carolyn hall – The Heron’s Nest X:1 (March 2008)

When we discovered yesterday that janisian.com had linked to our posting on shark-bitten lawyers, we thought we’d find a new band of loyal supporters, or perhaps a complaining group of two-faced barristers, or even determined heretics, at the other end of of Referer Link. Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to find the still-impishly irreverent, Grammy-winning, singer-songwriter, “Rude Girl,” and folkie-hipster Janis Ian musing (and dreaming) about defamation law, and the benefits of writing about dead people. (News and Updates, March 1, 2008).

It was fun clicking around Janis Ian.com, and inspiring to read about her Pear Foundation, which is named after Janis’ mother and works to create college scholarships for “returning students.” It was a little disconcerting to realize that Janis arrived on the scene as “Society’s Child” over forty years ago, just as I headed off to college and left behind my innocent childhood.

digital age —
aging digits
at the keyboard

……. by dagosan

fire-side poetry –
I turn to warm the left side
of my brain

………………… by Alice Frampton, from Raw NerVZ Haiku Volume VII No. 3

early March
the head of Mary
above the snow

water’s edge
the pull of the river
under ice

….. by Hilary Tann – from Upstate Dim Sum 2007/II