Today is my 8-year old Granddaughter’s 8th Birthday!!!!!!!!

Congratulations. Loud Clapping. Hoots, Cries, Screams and Whistles. I Just Did A Back-Flip (on paper of course, but it counts). I did 8 back-flips. Stop, the words are getting tired and I’m winded. Wow and Double Wow. What a day.

We were climbing this mountain. It was about 3 months ago.

My granddaughter stopped, looked up the trail and asked, “Are you sure we want to climb this mountain, Grandpa?”

The rest of the family was far ahead of us. It was all up, with rocks, and it was getting hot. The scenery was beautiful, but the view can only carry you so far.

“Sure, let’s keep going,” I said.

Ten minutes later, I asked “Are you sure we want to climb this mountain?”

My granddaughter picked up a smallish rock, held it over her head and announced, “This rock will lead us to the top. Follow the rock.” With that, she marched off and up with grandpa in tow.

It worked.

We made it to the top!

Everyone was waiting with hugs and pictures and the extra water.

On the way down, my granddaughter stopped, looked me in the eye and asked “Would you like to be best friends?”

Talk about melting a grandpa’s heart. “Sure,” I replied.

“There are some requirements,” she said.

I knew there was a catch. “What are they?” I asked.

“First, what’s your favorite color?”

Not a fair question, even if I stick to the primary colors, that’s three possibities, blue, green and red. I like them all. So I have a 1 in 3 chance. This “best friend’ stuff was hard.

“Green,” I responded. My shirt was green.

“Right, that’s mine too. Good answer.”

Whew.

“Now, and this is important, are you flexible? Best friends have to be flexible.”

Good question. I knew she was smart. Now, I saw she was wise beyond her years. I secretly thanked her grandmothers for that inherited gift to their granddaughter.

“I can be,” I said with a smile, hoping the next requirement wasn’t, Okay, now do a back-flip.

“That’s it. We’re best friends.”

The rest of the way down we talked about things only best friends talk about. Sometimes, words aren’t big enough or there really aren’t words. We walked and talked and didn’t say a thing, because we didn’t need to. It’s that way with best friends.

I learned a lot that day — about myself, about how much I didn’t know and about how much I appreciated my Granddaughter.

Sometimes you have to follow a child with a rock in her hand up a mountain and down again to really see what’s all around you and how lucky you are.

Eight more back-flips!!!!!!!! See, I really am flexible, on paper, but it counts.

Thank you Granddaughter for 8 wonderful years.

Happy Birthday,

I love you,

Grandpa Jim

Iambic Pentameter.

What in the words is it?

At its most basic, iambic pentameter is our way of being and speaking. There is a flow and rhythm to our bodies and speech which caught the ear of the poet. Those rhymers of words saw the sounds and patterns, and they presented the model of our beats and speech in the iambic pentameter of their works that are so pleasing to hear and lift us above the more common verse of our daily lives.

“I don’t have time to speak in iambic pentameter,” the student shouts goodbye to his mom as he rushes out the door, “Verse will have to do today.” And it does, but in that everyday verse are the seeds of the iambic pentameter of the poets, because we ourselves are the more poetic verse.

In “Romeo and Juliet,” Shakespeare has Romeo say of his maid Juliet who is fairer than the moon,

“That thou her maid art far more fair than she”

that THOU / her MAID / art FAR / more FAIR / than SHE

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM

Can you hear it? That’s iambic pentameter? Each “da DUM” is an unstressed syllable (da) followed by a stressed syllable (DUM), and each da DUM is called a foot or an “iamb.” When a line has five feet, the line is referred to as a “pentameter,” with “penta” meaning five and “meter” representing the measure or length of the line. A line of five iambs is a line of iambic pentameter.

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM

Let’s use a line from John Keats’ “Autumn,”

“To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells”

to SWELL / the GOURD / and PLUMP / the HAZ / el SHELLS

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | da DUM

Now, a question for you: What do the individual iambs, the da DUM’s, sound like? Your heart — the human heart beat is the “da DUM.” That’s the “iamb,” an unstressed beat followed by a stressed beat, a relaxation (filling) followed by a contraction (pumping). Open and close your fist. That’s how your heart muscle does its regular work. It is our most basic rhythm, the one we remember from our mother’s heart close to us, the sound that comforted us in our beginnings and the sound we took with us when we were born, along with a good loud cry, meaning in baby talk, “I am here!” “I am” for iambic, and “da DUM” for the sound of your heart.

Why five “da DUM’s” to the line? Shakespeare’s lines are five. Why five iambs or feet to his lines? I think he wrote in fives because we speak in fives. It’s about the length of a normal or regular sentence, about as long as we like to say and hear a good sound bite. I will defer to the bard. William Shakespeare may have known words better than anyone who’s ever lived and spoken them. His sounds sound about right to me and many others, and he chose the pentameter for the pattern of his iambs, his normal heart beats.

Of course, Shakespeare varied his sounds because people do their’s, and variations make for more ear fun. So a da DUM may be a DA dum, called an inversion because it reverses the order of the stress in the syllables. Another thing young William did was add an extra unstressed syllable, da DUM da, to the end of a line to add interest and an air of mystery,

“To be, or not to be, that is the question”

to BE / or Not / to BE / THAT is / the QUEST ion

da DUM | da DUM | da DUM | DA dum | da DUM da

So Hamlet speaks in the line of iambic pentameter that is perhaps the most memorable and quoted in all of Shakespeare. “That is” is the inversion (DA dum), and “the question” (da DUM da) has the extra unstressed syllable at the end which is perhaps that most mysterious question without a question mark in the history of literature.

There is rhyme and rhythm to our lives and our words. The poets understood this and shared with us what we already felt but did not know so we could hear the echoes of ourselves in their words.

Listen to the words, put a hand over your heart and remember who you are,

Grandpa Jim

Fall is in the air.

Saturday, September 22, 2012, is the autumnal equinox, the start of what we call the season of fall or autumn.

In the Northern Hemisphere, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, from hot then warm weather to cooler and cold weather. Get that long underwear out and ready, the cold winds they’ll be a blowin’. “It’s cold out their today, Campers,” to combine and steal a line from the movie “Groundhog’s Day,” when that clock stuck on that same day for ever and ever — a great movie, if confusing, but back to autumn and fall and their own origins and confusions.

The word “autumn” derives from the Latin “autumnus,” but the origins of this Latin term are not clear. Some scholars suggest the original Latin derived from terms meaning dry or even reddish, indicating the color of the leaves during this period, perhaps as observed by the original Etruscans, who would probably know but are a long way back to ask. For us, it is the harvest time of year, a dry time when reds, browns, oranges and yellows tint the leaves and fields in a palette of colors.

Before the 16th century, most people worked or were close to the land and referred to the season simply as “harvest,” as that word was pronounced in the particular vernacular of their countryside. “Frank, take that straw our of your mouth and get back to work on the harvest.” It’s what people did that time of year and depended on for the rest. So the season became the name of the primary activity that was being, or was supposed to be being, conducted, harvest.

As folks moved off the open land to live in the growing towns, they learned their letters and took up other pursuits. To their more refined manners and activities, the agrarian reference to harvest in the local language became old-fashioned and unsophisticated. In time, harvest was replaced by the broader and more recognized autumn and by the more descriptive and colorful fall.

In the England of the 1600’s, the use of the term “fall” apparently derived from a contraction of the Middle English expressions “fall (dropping) of the leaf” and “fall (declining) of the year.” It was a bit of seasonal penmanship to write into four simple letters (fall) what is seen in the leaves dropping and observed in the year’s ending and the daylight diminishing. So fall it was, or autumn if you preferred.

Some preferred to leave and migrate to the Americas. When they did, they took with them in their fall from grace back home the more homey and comforting term fall for their season in the new land. Overtime, fall became obsolete in Britain and the more common reference over here in the United States.

Harvest, Autumn, Fall — whatever the name, it is a wonderful time of the year. To watch the colored leaves dance across the sidewalk and pull the jacket up closer around the ears in the bright crisp cold is a welcome change of season that brings a happy smile and an excitement of imagination in the anticipation of things yet to come.

Happy Harvest, Autumn and Fall,

Grandpa Jim

Two brothers who can’t get along, their sons and a young horse, a thoroughbred, a “hunter,” not a farm horse. So the play “War Horse” starts on a stage setting as surprising as the story that enfolds within it. The horse transforms into a majestic mount and a dedicated companion of surprising capabilities who leads the sons to war. What happens after and to the end is the stuff of story, and I would not spoil that for you. It is a journey into new lands, places and friends for you to enjoy.

“War Horse” was first a 1982 children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo. Michael lives in the village of Iddesleigh to the southwest in Devon, England. His appears an amazing writer’s life and is worth a peek. One granddaughter and her mom read the book and remember it well.

After the book was the stage adaption by Nick Stafford. The play opened in London in 2007. From there, it moved to New York where it received the Tony Award for Best American Play in 2011. I saw the touring version yesterday in Dallas. That granddaughter and mom have tickets and can’t wait.

Somewhere along the road a famous Hollywood director sat and watched Joey gallop by. “Joey” is the name of the young horse who grows and goes to war. Steven Spielberg released the movie “War Horse” on Christmas Day, 2011. The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It did not win. My granddaughter and her mom enjoyed it greatly. I plan to watch, after experiencing the play.

Horses have long been brought to war. Books have long been brought to plays, and plays to screen not as long but often now. Books and plays and screen are the safe environs of modest entertainment. War is not and never will. Rememberers write and script and film for us to remember, wipe a tear and raise a sad smile wishing that it were not, but thank you all for showing us that it was so.

May the eyes of the past guide your journey home,

Grandpa Jim

“Find a place where trouble isn’t.” Aunt Em is miffed when she says something like this to Dorothy in the opening sequence of the 1939 motion picture “The Wizard of Oz.”

Dorothy walks away and says to her pup, “Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It’s not a place you can get to by a boat, or a train. It’s far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain . . .” What happens next is quite amazing, and it was cut from the original film but reinstated. Judy Garland, Dorothy, starts singing what is viewed by many as the #1 song of the 20th Century.

Today, my favorite parts are these: “Somewhere over the rainbow way up high, there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby. Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops . . .” And, she did wake up in that far-away land. Down the yellow brick road, Dorothy walked, skipped and sang with the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion in the land of lemon drops to find that troubles there were there. She worked hard and helped her friends, and after all discovered that the answer was always with her, the ruby red slippers. “Wish for what you want, you can make it happen,” that kindly Wizard said, in my paraphrase. And, she did and off she went.

“Toto, we’re home. Home! And this is my room, and you’re all here. And I’m not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and – oh, Auntie Em – there’s no place like home!”

There’s no place like home. With all its own troubles, there’s still no place like home. Sometimes, we need to be lifted way up like Dorothy into the clouds so high to see that there is no land that’s trouble free, and where we need to be is where we are at. I wish with all my heart there were no troubles. I wish there was somewhere over the rainbow that’s trouble free, but I know while we’re here there isn’t that. My comfort is Dorothy finding the answer right there on her own two feet. Her feet and her persistence led Dorothy to find courage, answers and heart for those she loved and for herself. Her efforts led her home.

Somewhere over the rainbow is, I think, right here at home.

May you find courage, answers and heart.

There’s no place like home.

Grandpa Jim

Pluto has been demoted.

It’s true. These things take some time to circulate around, but the reports are accurate and precise. The news has reached Earth and the other planets. Pluto is no longer a planet. It is now grouped with a diminished band of dwarf planets.

In 2006, in Prague, Czech Republic, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted on the planets. By a clear majority, but with significant dissent, those scientists turned their heads to the heavens, spied the nine planets and approved a new definition of “planet” for our solar system. Pluto, where are you, boy?

Under the new definition, a planet must have three character traits: 1. It must orbit our sun; 2. It must be round; and 3. it must dominate its neighbors. Pluto is round and orbits the sun, but, in the eyes of those visionary viewers, Pluto does not dominate its neighbors. This exclusionary criteria apparently is satisfied because Pluto does not sufficiently clear a way through the asteroids, comets and other debris along its path.

Poor little Pluto’s orbit is a bit untidy. In its way, it resembles the yard around a dog’s house. Toys, bowls and bones are turned and scattered about. You’ve seen the picture in the children’s book — the dog house and the friendly homey littered backyard.

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck call from their rickety old car. Pluto, the true companion, runs and jumps into the rumble seat. They’re off on a new adventure. No time to tidy up. Who would want to? Fun is on the way.

One of my favorites is “The Haunted House.” It’s so spooky and scary and shivery. At the end, the three ghosts are chasing Mickey and Donald. Pluto sees something. That ghost has on a pair of shoes!  Pluto rushes over, pulls off the sheet and exposes the bank robber. Singledoggedly, the lovable mutt subdues the bandits, fetches the sheriff and earns a tidy reward for his master and friend, who drive off into the sunset with Pluto in the rumble seat holding a new bone in his mouth to add to the collection back home. His surroundings may be a bit untidy, but Pluto sure dominated that gang of bad guys and brought needed order to an old house and its surroundings.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto — maybe we should let the first 8 planets in their order vote on #9? It is their neighborhood. Perhaps they like their backyard to be a bit untidy, a friendly homey place for their happy backdoor relative? There will always be a few scientists peering over the fence with nets in their hands ready to catch a wandering mutt and haul him off to dwarf planet pond. Who’s in charge anyway? I say let the Big Eight vote for their friend and true companion.

I think we know how those eight will vote — jump into the rumble seat, Pluto, we’re off on a new planetary adventure.

Hold on tight and enjoy the sights,

Grandpa Jim

Rhetoric, the art of argument, had its start in the courts of Ancient Greece. The Greeks understood the power of persuasion and its advantages.

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” is the title of Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestselling self-help book. Notice that “win friends” appears first. Dale understood argument and its advantages, and he understood what argument is not.

Fighting never won an argument. Hitting your opponent with a stick does not make a friend. Beating the other side down will never lead your audience to your side. Fighting is not arguing, just as is winning is not prevailing. If done properly, arguing can be a good experience, can influence without offending or excluding and can draw people together. Persuade me and I may want to be your friend; beat me and I may never.

How can argument work for you?

Aristotle had three words for the basic tools of argument: logos, ethos and pathos. These are the stuffs of which effective arguments are made and friends are won.

Logos is argument by logic. “Do what I want because you are stupid” is not a logical argument because people are not stupid. Stick to the facts and never attack the person. “Do what I want for these documented reasons, which will also make things better for you,” is pretty good argument by logos. You have provided supporting data for your side, and you have shown how the argued outcome will help the other side. Unilateral argument is seldom effective. If the facts logically allow, make your opponent your partner. If the don’t, try another approach.

Ethos is argument by character. “Do this because you can trust me” is effective argument when the person across the table knows they can trust you. Establish a reputation for ethical behavior before you play the “me” card. Demonstrate trust before you ask for reliance. “I don’t lie” works if you first said “I can not tell a lie, it was I who cut down the cherry tree.” It may be legend, but I think George Washington understood the importance of character in convincing thirteen arguing colonies to become the United States.

And, if nothing else works, there’s always pathos, argument by emotion. Loud screaming and wiggling on the floor will work if I just saw you get hit by the library cart and I am sympathetic to your needs. It should not work if you just want your way and fall down in a temper tantrum. The key is in the word “sympathy,” which derives from the word “pathos.” If I can share in your feelings, I may sympathize and have compassion toward you, and I could favor you and want to help you. The emotions you want arguing for you are not your emotions, they’re the emotions of the folks on the other side. Ralphie’s Father in the 1983 movie classic “The Christmas Story” remembered his first BB gun, and he felt it would be pathetic if his son could not have the same experience. Thank you Jean Shepherd for writing perhaps the best picture of pathos. Play to the feelings of others and the feelings of others may work for you. “Put yourself in my boots” can be a pretty good pathos argument, especially if the other side remembers standing there holding a new Red Ryder BB Gun with a compass in the stock.

As in many things, it is often better not to go it alone. As the young Musketeer d’Artagnan announces so nobly “un pour tous, tous pour un” (“one for all, all for one”). With that, d’Artagnan joins “The Three Musketeers,” Athos, Portos and Aramis, in Alexandre Dumas’ rousing 1844 novel of adventure and comradeship. To which, rhetoric and argument stand in debate and respond with raised pens and loud voices “logos, ethos, pathos” (“logic, ethics, sympathy”). They may not win a fight, but those three working together can surely win friends and influence people.

Good arguing to you and make a new friend today,

Grandpa Jim

The trout was jumping last night.

Franz Schubert, the Austrian composer, wrote “The Trout Quintet” in 1819. He was 22. Franz died nine years later at the age of 31. In his short lifetime, Franz Schubert wrote almost 1,000 pieces of music, including 600 Lieder, a German word for a type of song setting a romantic poem to music. Because his life was so short, there was little time for the public to appreciate his work. Today, he is widely appreciated and his music is performed as often as any on our planet. Schubert died in Vienna on November 19, 1828. He was a romantic who loved songs. A friend commented after his death that he was the “King of Song.”

Listening to The Trout Quintet, I could hear and see the fish dart and flash as it played in the crystal brooklet. “Was never fish so lively, nor frolicsome as he.” But then the angler sullied the crystal water and enticed the fish to take the bait and lose its life. “And I was left lamenting, the fate of that poor trout.” Perhaps Franz could sense he was fated not to spend much time with us, so he played and frolicked in his music with an excitement and intensity that could not last long but would leave much for others.

Some stars shine bright and then are gone, too soon.

Grandpa Jim

“Space the final frontier . . . to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

For me, those are the most remembered words from the opening monologue of Star Trek, perhaps the most famous introduction in the history of television.

On September 8, 1966, 46 years ago, Star Trek, The Original Series or “TOS,” debuted with William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Years later, my young son referred to the shows on rerun simply as “The Captain.” Star Trek and The Captain launched us into space, and we’ve been traveling “out” ever since.

On September 5, 1977, 35 years ago, Voyager 1 launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Today, Voyager 1 is the longest-operating spacecraft in history and the most distant from the Earth, and it is still heading “out.”

Voyager 1 is a gangly apparatus that weighs about as much as a Volkswagen. It looks somewhat like a transformer with the pull cord for its nuclear-powered lawnmower engine dangling out the back as its flies through space at 38,000 miles per hour (61,200 kilometers per hour). That’s fast for a Volkswagen, even a Volkswagen transformer, but space is a big place – it is “the final frontier.”

The original mission was to tour Jupiter and Saturn and send back picture postcards, which Voyager 1 did to the delight of an adoring audience back on Earth: “Did you see the card from Voyager? It is so cute.” Concerned about the growing teenage fan club and their increasing demands, Voyager 1 then used Saturn as a gravitational slingshot to catapult itself toward the edge of our Solar System and farther away from the giggles and flashing lashes.

That’s where it is right now – way out there on the very edge of the bubble that defines the region of our Sun and the planets that are captured by its gravity and rotate obediently around its center, about as far away as it can get and still call it “home.” A short message takes nearly 17 hours to reach us here on the Earth, which is a long time between “How are you?” and “Fine.”

Still, Voyager 1 was always a loner – it’s the way he was built. Besides, he had to turn off the cameras to save energy, so that teenage fan club has largely disbanded or become grandmothers. These days, a few part-time researchers stop by to check his data messages. From the changed tone of the last few communications, those gray-haired scientists tottered off smiling and mumbling, “He’s almost there.”

By today, who knows, he may have crossed over and be in interstellar space, the space between the stars, the space “where no man has gone before.”

We wish you well little guy and we are proud of you,

Grandpa Jim

Think Thoughts This Thursday, Finding Friday and the Suggestion of Saturday,

440 scientists working in 32 labs around the world for 12 years started the release Wednesday of the initial 37 papers establishing that 99% of human DNA does something. It is not junk.

DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the chemical code that resides in each of your cells and determines who you are. Most DNA is in the nucleus or center of the cells, and your DNA is pretty much the same in every cell in your body. Each of your cells contains about 10 feet of DNA, coiled in a dense tangle resembling in its way a very small ball of twine. Some years ago, the Human Genome Project uncoiled the thread and mapped the entire sequence of human DNA. That project discovered that only about 1% of your DNA contains the genes which control inherited traits like eye color and blood type. At that time, the rest of the DNA was labelled “junk,” because it didn’t seem to be doing anything. Around and between the genes that did the original building of you the way you are, the scientists saw vast stretches of other DNA which looked to be just sitting there. But, was it just sitting?

The initial results of the recent round of international studies indicate that junk DNA does something. All those scientists working for all that time now believe that some 80% of our junk DNA, that junk that resides in every cell in your body, is active and needed. And, they seem to be saying that . . . it’s all a bunch of switches. The emerging thought is that all those little junk DNA switches – think of all the computer switches in the small microchip in your computer – regulate and control how our cells, organs and tissues behave on a daily basis and react to what we are doing and our environment about us.

My thinking is that we may have discovered that what we thought was junk DNA is really the keyboard and computer in each of our cells plugged into the Internet of cellular computers and servers in our whole body. Keep eating a high-fat diet, and those little computer switches start our metabolic equipment working more efficiently to process the fat. Don’t get enough exercise, and our think-tank switch yards send out the signals to the endocrine system to manufacture more stimulants and to the circulatory system to increase blood flow to keep the tracks running and the deliveries of nutrients and pep pills on time. Keep going with bad diet and poor exercise, and you overload the switches, they break down, systems crash, screens go blue and disease results.

In the paper this morning, one scientist commented that “Most of the changes that affect disease don’t lie in the genes themselves; they lie in the switches.” Another further thought might be that most of the changes that affect disease don’t lie in the switches themselves, they lie in what we are asking the switches to do. Even a good switch can only do so much. It may take another 12 years and 440 scientists, but, who knows, maybe they’ll discover that diet, exercise and a happy attitude are the best ways to keep the switches working and the train on the track.

Keep chugging along and wave as you pass the station,

Grandpa Jim