There is no Frigate like a Book

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Courses like a Page
Of prancing Poetry -
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll -
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human soul.

Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine invention

"Faith" is a fine invention
When gentlemen can see -
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.

Emily Dickinson

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-handed gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

Ignorance

Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But force to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
Someone must know.

Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,

Even to wear such knowledge - for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions -
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
That when we start to die
Have no idea why.

Philip Larkin

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

Hidden Costs II

The second surprise of the return to college occurred when I bought my textbooks for the coming semester. As a side note, my very first semester in college, lo those many years ago, got off on the wrong foot when my parents and I arrived on campus at the last minute. By the time I was moved in and ready for the start of class, most of my textbooks were sold out. This was so disturbing that I was too embarrassed to go to some of my classes. I did not understand that I had other options. Thus were set the conditions for my early departure from that lovely bastion of Southern education. If I did not gain much from that first experience, I did learn the importance of buying textbooks as early as possible. Now that I am (I hope) a mostly fully realized adult, my compulsions are merely an extension of my personality. That is to say, I got to the college bookstore well in advance of the start of this semester.

I had, of course, seen the temporary booths spotted around the campus at semester-end. I knew that various bookstores were buying used textbooks from those students happy to be well rid of a particular subject and desperate for beer money. But I did not understand the economic model of the textbook industry.

I have a clearer understanding now. My textbook cost, for 5 low-level courses, was just under $400. That total does not include notebooks, a calculator for Mathematics courses ($140), pens, pencils, and a snappy messenger/book-bag to transport various books to and from different classrooms (okay, the bag was a Christmas present).

The prices are unconscionable. As I type this, sitting on my desk is a thin volume, "Chinese Religious Traditions", which is the size of a 5 x 8 notecard, less than 125 pages in length, bought used, for $10. There are 5 such books for that one course. In algebra, according to the course syllabus, we will cover only about 40% of the book that cost me a cool $83, used. It was strongly suggested that I purchase the accompanying Solutions Manual (@ $33), which I did, only to find that the text has, in the back, the same answers as the solutions manual (only the odd numbers in both) . Could I return the solutions manual? "No, we only buy textbooks. I'm sorry". Well, so am I. An English literature anthology that has been owned by at least three previous students, at least based on the different colored hi-liters, cost more than $100.

Today, as I enjoyed the luxury of a Saturday morning perusing my favorite web-sites, I discovered the root cause of the textbook valuation crisis. As always, an understanding of basic economics provides the answer. To wit:

...one of the major causes of higher priced new textbooks is the used textbook market. For example, if the fixed cost of producing a textbook is $500,000 and 5,000 units of the book are sold each year for 4 years then each textbook would bear $25 of the fixed cost.

However, if, due to the used textbook market, only the first 5,000 units are sold and, in each of the remaining three years these same 5,000 units are sold as used textbooks, then the publisher still has the $500,000 in fixed costs spread out over only 5,000 books. Thus each new textbook bears $100 of fixed costs, resulting in higher retail prices for all textbooks. This example demonstrates what has been happening in the textbook market over the past several years: As the used textbook market has expanded so have the market prices of new and used textbooks.

Now there's a revolutionary idea. Don't buy the textbooks back, keep using the same edition until there is a significant change in the knowledge base, and the unit cost of the books will decrease.

To my admittedly cheap way of thinking, textbooks should have some value to the owner beyond the 3-month semester; after all, it used to be that way "way back when". If the damn books don't cost so much, they won't have as much value in the "used" market. Then, maybe, my English anthology that is full of lovely poems might find a place in my bookcase. Perhaps it would provide a lifetime of enjoyment, providing insight for years beyond the classroom, and serving as a reminder of a joyous time in my life, especially since the three previous owners will not have had their chances to highlight every third line in various shades of pink, yellow, and green.

Hidden Costs I

When planning for the return to academe, the first issue addressed was the expense of the adventure. To my unpracticed eye, that meant tuition and fees. As an adult, there wouldn't be the additional expense of lodging and meals, since the campus is a very short drive from my home, where my wife generally provides an optimal dining experience as long as I go to the grocery store.

It did not take long to understand the tuition is just the beginning. A few exploratory trips to the campus indicated that parking would be a major issue. My school is located in the middle of a medium sized city, surrounded by neighborhoods and narrow streets. As is true with other schools in similar settings, the surrounding neighborhoods are a mix of private residences and homes "ghettoized" into student housing. That is to say, homes built to house a family now provide residence for many more students than the architect intended. The consequence is that too many cars are forced to fight for parking on those beautiful narrow streets. To the city, this is a golden opportunity to enhance revenue through parking violations. An opportunity that the city does not ever pass up, to the consternation of the students and their parents. Indeed, students cannot register for classes, or even graduate, if parking tickets remain unpaid.

The school does provide access to parking facilities, doled out each semester by seniority, which means it is limited and expensive and not available to underclassmen such as myself. But, it is not as expensive as the rates charged by private landowners, for whom the laws of supply and demand provide validation of their economic beliefs every three months.

Having learned the hard way that the student approach to parking, i.e., park anywhere and let an adult worry about the tickets, is not the optimal approach, I have reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that I will have to pay the city for the right to park in one of its garages. This will, I calculate, add approximately $800 to the cost of education, per semester.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand;
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, 1921

Sailing Along the Algebra Coast

The journey of rediscovery has, so far, taken us to a few very interesting places. One place is the Land of Algebra. It has a reputation as a fierce land, foreboding and harsh, unforgiving and unrelenting, a country that many must traverse on their journey to enlightenment. Few choose to live in Algebra, with good reason.

I have been to Algebra, but not in many years. The mists of time have erased many of my memories. What remains is of no use to me on my return visit.

For several weeks now, we have been navigating along the coastline of Algebra, searching for a safe place to land. From our vantage point, the rough coastline has hindered our view of the hinterland. Today, however, we landed at a place called Logarithm. Once ashore, we proceeded inland for a bit. What could not previously be seen is now clear. The inland areas of Algebra are even more terrifying than we thought when seen from the safety of our vessel. It is a land of confusion, of irrational numbers, full of inverse relationships to things that do not make sense even in other lands. It is rooted in functions that we cannot comprehend. It is at once both Real and Imaginary. The future is incalculable, graphic, and indeterminate.

We are very afraid.

The Salt of the Earth

A great thing about learning is that one has the opportunity to be surprised at any moment. Today's surprise came in our history class. In discussing the development of agriculture, we learned that building and maintaining irrigation systems in Mesopotamia called for the development of societal structures. That is, a system has to be in place to organize the whole infrastructure of water and crops; from this development sprang the many predecessors to modern society. Laws, division of labor, trade, and writing are all the byproducts of a system of agriculture. Fair enough.

The surprise came in the form of this photograph. It seems that ancient bedrock formations are rock over which oceans once existed. Salt was, and is, a component of all oceans on earth. As the ancient Mesopotamians learned to control water, they learned to irrigate. Once they could grow crops, they noticed dramatic increases in yields. To increase yields, they began to excessively water their crop land. This excess water soaked the earth down to the bedrock, which began to release the salt that resided in the rock. The salt worked its way to the surface and, over time, altered the chemical composition of the soil to the extent that the land could no longer grow anything. Thus, today, the formerly fertile Mesopotamian River Valley is an arid wasteland, incapable of supporting any agricultural production.

Has Man been altering his environment literally since the beginning of recorded history?

Note: The photo is the property of the John & Peggy Sanders Collection found here.