TYWKIWDBI ("Tai-Wiki-Widbee")

Famous poliomyelitis survivors

2026-10-26T15:39:08.703-05:00

Wikipedia has an extensive list, from which I've extracted some of the names I recognize:

Alan Alda born 1936 An actor most famous for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the television series M*A*S*H. Alda contracted polio at age seven, during an epidemic. His parents administered a painful treatment, developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, in which hot woolen blankets were applied to the limbs and the muscles were stretched by massage

Mia Farrow born 1945 An actress who was appointed a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 2000, and campaigns in the fight against polio. Farrow collapsed on her ninth birthday and was diagnosed with polio two days later. She was in the hospital for eight months, where an iron lung maintained her breathing.

Gwen Verdon 1925–2000 An actress and dancer on Broadway and in films. Verdon was encouraged to dance by her mother, a dance teacher, as therapy for her polio-afflicted legs.

Johnny Weissmuller 1904–1984 At age nine, Weissmüller contracted polio. At the suggestion of his doctor, he took up swimming to help battle the disease, and he went on to win five Olympic gold medals in the sport during the 1920s.

Arthur C. Clarke 1917–2008 A science-fiction author and inventor. He contracted polio in February 1962, which confined him to bed for months. In 1984, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, and he spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.

Judy Collins born 1939 As a child, singer-songwriter Judy Collins spent several months in the hospital recovering from bout with polio. Collins later became a representative for UNICEF and has worked to promote polio vaccination programmes.

Donovan born 1946 Folk singer-songwriter and guitarist Donovan contracted polio... This left him with a limp and feeling excluded. However, he says "I kind of look back on it and think it was positive for me because it made me withdraw from my pals and realise I was different."

Michael Flanders 1922–1975 An actor, broadcaster, and writer and performer of comic songs, often in partnership with Donald Swann. He contracted polio in 1943 while serving in the Royal Navy, and required a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Joni Mitchell born 1943 A musician, songwriter and painter. Mitchell started singing at age nine while in the hospital recovering from polio. Her distinctive sound featured dozens of non-standard guitar tunings, which she developed partly to compensate for a weakened arm.

Itzhak Perlman born 1945 A virtuoso violinist. He contracted polio at the age of four. Perlman requires braces and crutches to walk, and plays the violin seated.

Dinah Shore 1916–1994 A big band singer, actress and talk show host. Shore contracted polio, aged 18 months, which left her right leg crippled. She recovered strength through massage, swimming and tennis.

Neil Young born 1945 A singer-songwriter and guitarist. He caught polio at age five, during the epidemic of 1951.

Mitch McConnell born 1942 A Republican member of the United States Senate from Kentucky and current Senate Minority Leader. He contracted polio at age two resulting in a paralyzed left leg, but eventually recovered with physical therapy.

Robert McNamara 1916–2009 A business executive and former United States Secretary of Defense. Both McNamara and his wife contracted polio in August 1945. He was in the hospital for a couple of months but his wife was badly affected and remained there for nine months. His career change from Harvard professor to the Ford Motor Company was made to pay her hospital bills.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945 U.S. President 1933-1945. FDR founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, now called the March of Dimes. He spent as much time as he could recuperating from Poliomyelitis in the waters of Warm Springs, Georgia where he founded one of the first rehabilitation facilities for Polio survivors.

Bud Grant born 1927 The long-time former American football head coach of the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League for eighteen seasons. He caught polio as a child, leaving one leg shortened. He was advised to take up sport as therapy.

Jack Nicklaus born 1940 A professional golfer who has won many major golf championships. He caught polio, aged 13. Nicklaus was affected with stiffness, pain and weight loss over two weeks. He recovered without any paralysis but believes he may have post-polio syndrome, which makes his joints sore.

Wilma Rudolph 1940–1994 A track and field athlete, Rudolph was the first American woman to win three gold medals at the Olympic Games. At age four, she contracted polio and lost the use of her left leg. After five years of massage and exercises, she managed to walk again without her leg braces. By the time she was a teenager, Rudolph was faster than the boys in her neighbourhood were. Rudolph won a bronze medal, aged 16, at the 1956 Summer Olympics and three gold medals in the 1960 Summer Olympics.

Frida Kahlo 1907–1954 A painter who was the subject of a 2002 movie starring Salma Hayek. She caught polio, aged six, and spent several months in bed. Kahlo was left with a deformed and shortened right leg.

Dorothea Lange 1895–1965 A photographer and photojournalist most noted for her picture Migrant Mother. She caught polio, aged seven, and was left with a withered right lower leg and a limp. Lang said, "It was perhaps the most important thing that happened to me. It formed me, guided, instructed me, helped me, and humiliated me. All those things at once. I've never gotten over it and am aware of the force and power of it."

Henriette Wyeth 1907–1997 A portrait artist. She caught polio as a child, which crippled her right hand. She compensated by holding the paint brush between her first and second fingers.

Reposted from 2018.

Sheltering Arms Hospital in Minneapolis

2026-10-26T15:34:51.132-05:00

October is Polio Awareness Month (because it used to be a seasonal illness peaking in late summer and early autumn), so this is a good time for me to share some memories of my experience with the illness.

In the summer of 1952 I was a normal 6-year-old kid playing outdoors with friends in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. One day I contracted a febrile illness and spent a night moaning in pain from muscle cramps. The next morning when I tried to get out of bed I fell to the floor because both legs were limp and wouldn't support me. My mom was an R.N. who knew what was happening, so she and dad drove me to "The Sheltering Arms" institute over on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. I was admitted to the ward indicated by the yellow arrow on the postcard image embedded above. The ward had I'm guessing 25-40 beds with maybe some privacy curtains in between, staffed by nurses who had been trained in the Sister Kenny method.

There was no cure for this viral illness, but what she discovered in her early work in Australia was that patients were able to recover some function if the affected muscles were kept active during the illness. At Sheltering Arms, pairs of nurses would go around the ward pushing a cart with near-boiling water into which they dipped woolen towels which were then applied to children's legs. The initial application would be painful, then comforting as the heat subsided into warmth, but then they returned over and over again to reapply maximally-hot towels. When some measure of stability of the illness occurred, there followed intensive physical therapy with bags and socks filled with ball bearings draped over ankles and leg lifts repeated until exhaustion.

I spent much of my summer in that ward. As an adult I later learned from my parents that my sister had also come down with polio (in the bulbar form that affected her speech and swallowing), and even my mother was affllicted. She remembers seeing my father peering through a window on her hospital room door, his face in tears as he coped with three family members simultaneously afflicted. I eventually wound up with an atrophic right quadriceps but adequate ambulatory function, and a variety of contractures that needed release and even an attempt at tendon transplant at the Mayo in later summers, but I eventually had enough recovery to permit a reasonably normal adult life - unlike so many of my schoolmates who wound up on respirators or in wheelchairs or dead. This is enough for now; I'll probably add more info in future years updates, in an effort to counteract the horribly medieval mindset of some modern politicians who feel that vaccination is too risky.

Re the postcard above, I should clarify that the window to my ward is open in the photo, because polio was spread by fecal-oral contact, not via aerosolization of the pathogen via cough. The photo also shows a small ladder leaning against the wall, which parents could use to step up enough to wave hello to their children inside.

For those interested, there are about 15 other posts in TYWKIWDBI in the poliomyelitis category.

Polio was the "autumn ghost"

2026-10-26T15:02:56.962-05:00

So named because of its seasonality, poliomyelitis was the cause of worldwide epidemics in the 1950s. This new book presents a detailed look at the 1952 epidemic (in which I was an unwilling participant) with a focus on its effects in Denmark.

"... until quite recently in medical history, there was no intensive care. Seventy years ago anyone who struggled to breathe, whose heart gave out, or whose kidneys shut down would be kept comfortable and left to die. There were no ventilators, no monitors keeping track of vital signs minute to minute, no expertise of nurses and physicians to keep critically ill patients alive, and no dedicated units in hospitals for the care of such patients... This is the story of how we got from 1952 to now."

The story in Denmark begins at Blegdam ["Blei-dahm"] Hospital in Copenhagen, created in the 1860s as a "fever hospital" for quarantine purposes in a busy port city. Cases of cholera and various febrile illnesses arriving by ship would be sequestered here for isolation until resolution or death. Polio patients came here for "care," but not for "treatment" - which was nonexistent.

By 1952, some iron lungs were in use, especially in the United States, but those devices were immense, expensive, and difficult to use. In response to a massive epidemic which was killing their children, the Danes discovered the utility of "bagging" via an endotracheal tube. But no automated ventilators existed, so medical students were recruited to bag patients continuously, 24/7. Chapter 13 "Student Ventilators" details the development and implementation of this policy.

Nursing care in that era "was rooted in the tradition of a life given over to the work - long shifts, residence at the hospital for life, and no marriage." That also had to change. Analysis of blood gases and arterial pH - never before attempted (or considered) - was also invented, as was the concept of an "intensive care unit," (a term first used in 1958).

This book will not be of interest to everyone. It will have special meaning to current polio survivors, and should be a must-read for respiratory therapy students who want to learn about the invention of their profession and its tools.

Reposted from 2023 because today is World Polio Day (and because some U.S. states are using medieval thought processes to roll back polio immunization requirements). If any readers of TYWKIWDBI have a post-polio syndrome (as I do), please check out the information at Post-Polio Health.

Reposted from 2025 to accompany an adjacent post about Sheltering Arms Hospital in Minneapolis.

Fun fact

2026-10-25T11:19:06.801-05:00

There seems to be an endless number of political signs trolling Trump. I found this one on Imgur.

The Taihang No. 1 Tourist Road in rural China

2026-10-25T11:12:11.278-05:00

An aerial view of colorful autumn foliage and the Taihang No. 1 Tourist Road winding through a forest in Jinzhong, Shanxi province, China, on October 19, 2026, Photo credit: Xue Jun / VCG / Getty

One of the Photos of the Week in The Atlantic.

A drive through rural China

2026-10-25T11:01:30.130-05:00

This is truly a "longwatch" (one and a half hours), so I just browsed it. I continue to be impressed by the investment China is making in its infrastructure.

"It is a transportation corridor created to promote rural economic development... This section of the route officially opened in the second half of 2024. The most famous section of the route is the “72 Curves of Tongqiangou Valley ”, the highway looks like a giant dragon circling between the lofty mountains. Road started to turn in bends and switchbacks, the altitude climbs rapidly, and the rolling hills in the distance will continue to unfold in front of your eyes.

Related: Driving in Shangri-La (another hour-long video)

"Stairway to Heaven" - Heart at the Kennedy Center (2012)

2026-10-20T11:25:47.407-05:00

Just realized that I've never previously blogged this absolutely classic performance. As one commenter said "Imagine playing Led Zeppelin FOR Led Zeppelin, and getting a standing ovation from Led Zeppelin."

BTW, this is what the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was created for. And this is an example of why the fullscreen icon exists on videos. Also sound up to eleven...

Related: There was a seven-minute extended tribute to Led Zeppelin that preceded the finale embedded at the top.

Addendum: Most listeners don't know (or don't care about) the lyrics, but I'll leave them as a reminder that one phrase is "And as we wind on down the road" - NOT "And there's a wino on the road."

Know before you vote

2026-10-18T12:59:52.024-05:00

Everyone is rightfully expecting a massive turnout at the polls for the mid-term elections. Appeals to vote are everywhere, but I want to emphasize that people need to study up a little before going to the polls.

Embedded above is an excerpt from an informative flyer distributed to voters in Wisconsin with content from the League of Women Voters. The flyer was circulated by Wisconsin Conservation Voters (note "conservation" = environment, not "conservative") in order to call attention not to the candidates but to three proposed state constitutional amendments. One of these amendments is entitled "Freedom to Gather During an Emergency," which sounds like a variation on the basic "freedoms" so treasured by Americans, but it is actually a proposal that would limit or prevent the state from locking down during an lethal virus emergency.

I'll not discuss the flyer any further here, because it's a Wisconsin matter, but I would encourage everyone to check various online sources regarding non-candidate proposals on upcoming ballots in your state.

(If readers want to alert others re deceptive proposals on other state ballots, feel free to do so in the Comments).

Cribraria aurantiaca

2026-10-14T14:00:42.980-05:00

Whenever I want an interesting image to leave at the top of TYWKIWDBI at the end of a blogging day, I can always rely on a photo of a slime mold. This image, taken in West Sussex by Kutub Uddin is a winning entry in the Wildlife photographer of the year 2026 competition, via a gallery in The Guardian.

Inviting friends to your house is just "too exhausting"

2026-10-14T13:54:00.072-05:00

Excerpts from an article in The Guardian about a social trend in Britain:

"I really loved hosting at home years ago, before I had kids, when my house wasn’t filled with toys and I had lots of time to plan and shop,” says Rehanna, 41, from Birmingham. Now, if she’s catching up with friends, she would rather go out... When you host, quite often it feels like you’re just a spectator to your friends’ evening,” says Simon, 37, from Glasgow. In the past, he’s found that, as host, he spends so much time making sure his guests are catered for that it can be difficult to connect with them on anything other than a superficial level...

“One reason is that our social networks may have become more scattered as cities have got larger,” he says. “If we live in smaller villages and towns, it is easy to visit for casual get-togethers. There is a thing called the 30-minute rule: if someone lives more than 30 minutes away, we pretty much stop seeing them regularly. The time/effort required becomes too great.”..

In May this year, the Spectator claimed the dinner party was also being killed off “by the modern curse of the ‘dietary requirement’”; both food intolerances and voluntary restrictions appear to have increased over the past 20 years, and so cooking for others might certainly feel like more of a challenge...

I’d venture that the rise of tablescaping has a lot to answer for... Whereas hosts might once have simply given surfaces a quick wipe and emptied the bins, there are now tips for curating the perfect playlist, and rules for creating an aesthetically pleasing “theme”...

Caz has two children under the age of 10 and says her house is therefore always “a complete nightmare zone”. Of course, her friends don’t actually care about the mess. “I know this deep in my heart,” she admits, “but it doesn’t stop me from feeling shame every time anyone comes over.”..

“Until the 1960s, things like homework from school was limited, and children kind of looked after themselves – playing in the street together and turning up only when they needed to get fed. Now the little darlings are under your feet until they go away to university.” In addition, he notes that there is now an “endless stream” of extracurricular clubs and activities that children are encouraged to take part in, which means “families have to be free to do a lot of ferrying”.

Thompson also touches on the idea that it’s now “too much fun to be home alone”. Whereas we might once have invited friends over to stave off boredom – and faced social pressure to attend such events, even if we did not much care for the hosts – today we are “cocooned within personalised entertainment fortresses”.

Related: a similar article in The Atlantic - Whatever Happened to Friday Night?

Friday night has become "just another weeknight"

2026-10-14T13:40:18.603-05:00

The Atlantic makes note of a social trend in the U.S.:

Americans have been spending less and less time with their friends over the past two decades, a trend that started well before the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic, and has continued long after restrictions were lifted. But looking across the week, Caren found that, starting in the mid-2010s, the biggest loss of friend time happened on Friday nights. (Saturday hangs have also declined a bit, but are still “nearly double the weekday level,” he wrote.)...

But it seems that the vibe of Friday night is evolving... people of all ages have been reporting a strong preference for staying home on evenings and weekends. In a 2020 Gallup poll, Americans’ favorite way to spend an evening was “staying home with family.” The runner-up was “watching television or a movie at home.” Only 3 percent of people named “entertaining/visiting friends” as their favorite evening activity. In a 2026 Harris poll on Gen Z, 73 percent said that staying home was their default weekend plan...

Friday nights in particular might be suffering because of their association with hitting the bars; drinking has fallen out of favor in the U.S... Or people might simply be too exhausted at the end of the workweek... For whatever reason, “the cost of going out on Friday nights—people aren’t finding this worthwhile anymore.”

An article in The Guardian comes to the same conclusion.

When the restaurant wants your phone number

2026-10-14T13:20:18.249-05:00

Excerpts from an article in The Atlantic:

A man walks into a restaurant. He doesn’t have a reservation, but that shouldn’t be a problem; there are ample seats at the bar, visible just over the hostess’s shoulder. “Of course,” she says, smiling. “We can seat you right away.” As she gathers menus, he absorbs the pleasant hum of a busy dining room, breathes in the tantalizing smells from the semi-open kitchen. Then, the hostess stops, Columbo-like, to interrupt with one more question: “And what’s your phone number?”...

Like pretty much everyone else, I am well aware that my information is strip-mined wherever I go, in more ways than I can count and in many that I will never know... Much of the data collection has been justified in the name of customer service—a way to track allergies, preferences, birthdays, and so on, thus bringing technological efficiency to a job previously handled by a heavily notated reservation book or the encyclopedic mind of a gifted maître d’. “We try to build a database on everybody and get as much information as possible,” Vilkhu told me when I called him a few weeks after my dinner. His restaurant uses OpenTable, and he knew, for instance, which bartenders had served me, the friend who had joined me, that I had complimented the cocktail list and enjoyed the crawfish dumplings. This information, he assured me, was shared with the Kingsway’s sister restaurant but nobody else: “We just want to be able to curate the experience as best as we possibly can.”...

Most striking was OpenTable’s promotion of a feature, currently in beta, called Global Insights. Until now, as Vilkhu had told me, whatever data a restaurant collected through the reservation platforms remained confined to that restaurant or restaurant group. Global Insights, which is available to OpenTable Pro subscribers, is the first feature to jump that garden wall and allow other restaurants access to the same information—in OpenTable’s words, to “get an idea of how your diners behave at other restaurants across the OpenTable Diner Network.” With an account, any restaurant can identify big spenders, diners who tend to linger at a table, diners who order a lot of drinks, frequent late-cancelers, and chronic “no-showers."...

Curious to see what insights on me OpenTable might share with that hypothetical restaurant, I sent the company a request for my personal data....

Continue reading at the link. My goal in blogging is to drive people to links, not steal content.

This is a "tannin icicle"

2026-10-14T13:09:34.639-05:00

Sami drums

2026-10-14T13:07:45.075-05:00

Half of my biologic heritage is from Norway, so this Facebook post earlier this year about Sami drums caught my attention. Wikipedia has an extensive discussion of the history of these drums, but I don't have time to read, much less excerpt it, so for now I'll just embed the Facebook blurb.

Skyrocketing prices for some technology company shares

2026-10-14T12:53:43.018-05:00

The U.S. equity markets have been hitting all-time highs despite an ongoing war on Iran and relentlessly-increasing prices for gasoline, diesel, and other oil-derivative products like fertilizers. The rise seems to be driven almost entirely by huge increases in the share prices of AI-related companies (producers of the technology and of the materials necessary for the "build-out" of the process) - justified in the minds of investors by the potential for enormous gains in productivity and profits at some time in the future. The financing of these investments and the issuing of new shares to finance growth has sucked money out of other investments. These developments are alluded to in a recent statement by the CEO if Sun Microsystems, reproduced here in a post from Facebook several months ago:

For old-timers like me, the numbers look crazy. I'm old enough to remember the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987, when the DJIA fell over 20% in one day. I was an investor back then, and I've told people I "slept like a baby" through it (i.e. "woke up every hour and cried").

This ongoing and totally unjustified war by the U.S. and Israel on Iran is having widespread rippling effects through the world economy; the U.S. has been relatively spared but is unlikely to escape unscathed. Full disclosure: I established bearing options positions on the S&P index yesterday. Further disclosure: I tend to be a "perma-bear" predicting market falls that typically don't occur.

The cost of water

2026-10-14T12:34:08.830-05:00

Yesterday, The Guardian reported on rising costs for drinking water in the U.S.:

US households are paying 62% more for drinking water than they did a decade ago – outpacing inflation, grocery prices and household incomes, according to a new study.

Food & Water Watch, a Washington DC-based non-profit, analyzed 2025 billing data from the 500 largest community water systems in the US, which together serve about 155 million people, or 45% of the country’s population. The analysis compared current rates with data from a similar Food & Water Watch survey conducted in 2015. The study does not include wastewater or storm water charges, which are often billed separately from drinking water service.

In 2025, the average household using 60,000 gallons of water paid $531 for drinking water service, according to the study. However, costs varied widely, with annual bills ranging from $133 at the cheapest system to $1,416 at the most expensive.

I've been keeping careful financial records since moving into this house 26 years ago, so I looked up our numbers. In 2015 our house used 60,000 gallons of water at a cost of $158 (excluding stormwater and sewer as per above study). In 2025 our usage dropped to 41,000 gallons (in part because we have mostly stopped watering the lawn and gardens) at a cost of $177.

Adjusting those costs for usage, in 2015 we were paying $2.60 per thousand gallons of water. For 2025 the cost was $4.31 per thousand gallons. That's an increase of about 70% in ten years. Some of that increased cost may have resulted from the community replacing lead-containing distribution pipes in the circuits. Presumably the rest results from their costs for salaries, maintenance, water treatment, and other infrastruture upgrades.

The Guardian article has informed commentary on the reasons for the national increase, noting "corporate water abuses" (in years prior to datacenters), federal disinvestment, and climate change, and expecially the "major disparity between publicly owned and for-profit water systems."

Corporate-owned utilities charged the average household $823 a year, compared with $494 for publicly owned systems – a difference of $329, or 67%. Corporate systems accounted for just 11% of the 500 systems the study analyzed but represented 44% of the 25 most expensive systems. The study added that 70% of the top 10 were owned by for-profit corporations.

I'm not angry about our increase; I'm delighted that fresh clean (good-tasting) water is available at the turn of a tap. I wonder if any readers here have similar long-term data.

A request for Photoshop assistance

2026-10-09T15:52:10.758-05:00

I saw the above request in a Facebook thread. I don't normally monitor Photoshop request sites, but I have enjoyed some responses I've seen in the past, including my post "When you ask the internet for assistance" in 2017, this "Photoshop battle" in 2018, and more recently "AI is the new Photoshop" earlier this year. So I was delighted and not surprised to see these responses to the above request:

There are dozens more at the Facebook source; cyberspace abounds in amazingly creative people.

Addendum: Here's another request with hundreds of responses -

- and there are of course many more clever requests/replies in that Facebook group.

Blue Planet III

2026-10-07T10:38:47.979-05:00

Wow. If you're ever going to click the fullscreen icon in the lower right corner, this is the time to do so.

Three giraffes

2026-10-05T14:23:00.721-05:00

"I took this in 2025 in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, in the Oltepesi area. Three young giraffes were standing side by side on the savanna and looked back at me with great curiosity. Right behind the middle one stood a single umbrella acacia, perfectly lined up with its head and neck. The giraffe seemed to be wearing the tree, like a green hairdo or a fancy hat. Nothing was staged or arranged; it was a matter of being in the right spot at the right moment’"
Photograph: Dirk Koster/Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2026

Via The Guardian, where this was one of several featured photos from the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards finalists for 2026. (Image cropped for emphasis from the original)

"Send me a man who reads!" (International Paper advertisements of the 1960s)

2026-10-05T14:14:15.457-05:00

These advertisements from International Paper ran in a variety of magazines in the early 1960s. I encountered them in Reader's Digest, which our family subscribed to because it was the cheapest magazine subscription available via my high school's subscription-selling annual fund drive. I clipped these ads out, posted them in various places, and saved them for decades until they disappeared during one of my moves between apartments as a young adult.

As an adult I've wanted to see the ads again because they were so influential on my high-school brain. Some years ago I wrote to International Paper asking if any copies, prints, posters etc were available, but received no reply. My current neighborhood library for understandable reasons does not keep hard copies of decades-old magazines. I found these two in a 2013 post at Reactor Fire.

Addendum: A tip of the blogging cap to an anonymous reader who searched online and found this "doctor" one that was particularly meaningful to my 18-year-old self -

"Wild Grapes" (Robert Frost, 1942)

2026-10-01T11:30:00.076-05:00

What tree may not the fig be gathered from?

The grape may not be gathered from the birch?

It’s all you know the grape, or know the birch.

As a girl gathered from the birch myself

Equally with my weight in grapes, one autumn,

I ought to know what tree the grape is fruit of.

I was born, I suppose, like anyone,

And grew to be a little boyish girl

My brother could not always leave at home.

But that beginning was wiped out in fear

The day I swung suspended with the grapes,

And was come after like Eurydice

And brought down safely from the upper regions;

And the life I live now’s an extra life

I can waste as I please on whom I please.

So if you see me celebrate two birthdays,

And give myself out of two different ages,

One of them five years younger than I look-

One day my brother led me to a glade

Where a white birch he knew of stood alone,

Wearing a thin head-dress of pointed leaves,

And heavy on her heavy hair behind,

Against her neck, an ornament of grapes.

Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.

One bunch of them, and there began to be

Bunches all round me growing in white birches,

The way they grew round Leif the Lucky’s German;

Mostly as much beyond my lifted hands, though,

As the moon used to seem when I was younger,

And only freely to be had for climbing.

My brother did the climbing; and at first

Threw me down grapes to miss and scatter

And have to hunt for in sweet fern and hardhack;

Which gave him some time to himself to eat,

But not so much, perhaps, as a boy needed.

So then, to make me wholly self-supporting,

He climbed still higher and bent the tree to earth

And put it in my hands to pick my own grapes.

‘Here, take a tree-top, I’ll get down another.

Hold on with all your might when I let go.’

I said I had the tree. It wasn’t true.

The opposite was true. The tree had me.

The minute it was left with me alone

It caught me up as if I were the fish

And it the fishpole. So I was translated

To loud cries from my brother of ‘Let go!

Don’t you know anything, you girl? Let go!’

But I, with something of the baby grip

Acquired ancestrally in just such trees

When wilder mothers than our wildest now

Hung babies out on branches by the hands

To dry or wash or tan, I don’t know which,

(You’ll have to ask an evolutionist)-

I held on uncomplainingly for life.

My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.

‘What are you doing up there in those grapes?

Don’t be afraid. A few of them won’t hurt you.

I mean, they won’t pick you if you don’t them.’

Much danger of my picking anything!

By that time I was pretty well reduced

To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.

‘Now you know how it feels,’ my brother said,

‘To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,

That when it thinks it has escaped the fox

By growing where it shouldn’t-on a birch,

Where a fox wouldn’t think to look for it-

And if he looked and found it, couldn’t reach it-

Just then come you and I to gather it.

Only you have the advantage of the grapes

In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,

And promise more resistance to the picker.’

One by one I lost off my hat and shoes,

And still I clung. I let my head fall back,

And shut my eyes against the sun, my ears

Against my brother’s nonsense; ‘Drop,’ he said,

‘I’ll catch you in my arms. It isn’t far.’

(Stated in lengths of him it might not be.)

‘Drop or I’ll shake the tree and shake you down.’

Grim silence on my part as I sank lower,

My small wrists stretching till they showed the banjo strings.

‘Why, if she isn’t serious about it!

Hold tight awhile till I think what to do.

I’ll bend the tree down and let you down by it.’

I don’t know much about the letting down;

But once I felt ground with my stocking feet

And the world came revolving back to me,

I know I looked long at my curled-up fingers,

Before I straightened them and brushed the bark off.

My brother said: ‘Don’t you weigh anything?

Try to weigh something next time, so you won’t

Be run off with by birch trees into space.’

It wasn’t my not weighing anything

So much as my not knowing anything-

My brother had been nearer right before.

I had not taken the first step in knowledge;

I had not learned to let go with the hands,

As still I have not learned to with the heart,

And have no wish to with the heart-nor need,

That I can see. The mind-is not the heart.

I may yet live, as I know others live,

To wish in vain to let go with the mind-

Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me

That I need learn to let go with the heart.

Cited in Ann Patchett's "Whistler," and reprinted here in toto (it's in the public domain) from LiteraryTheory and Criticism, where there is relevant contextual information about the poem being a companion piece to his "Birches." Boldface added to my favorite phrases.

"The Secret of Secrets" (Dan Brown, 2025)

2026-09-30T17:21:14.285-05:00

In the 18 years I've been writing this blog, I've reviewed 139 books to add to the "recommended books" category of TYWKIWDBI. I suppose a majority of them have been somewhat obscure works that I wanted to bring to the attention of the readership, but some have been popular titles, including Booker Prize winners and other best-sellers. Such is the case with The Secret of Secrets. Author Dan Brown rocketed to fame with his series of Robert Langdon thrillers. This is the sixth book in that sequence, and a Netflix series (without Tom Hanks) is currently in production.

The book is an easy read because Brown writes well. He mixes action and problem-solving with an abundance (or sometimes a superfluity) of factual information about the subject matter and the physical locations of the action (in this case Prague). But another characteristic of his writing this time seems to be the inclusion of a boatload of product placement. For example:

"Langdon finished dressing, finally feeling warm in his heavy chinos, turtleneck, and thick Dale sweater."

"They met at Faukman's favorite table in Manhattan - the back booth at Trattoria Dell'Arte - where authentic Italian cuisine was served in a room decorated like an artist's studio..."

"Langdon would have much preferred his usual Vesper martini with Nolet's Reserve gin."

In none of these situations were the details relevant to the storyline. My wife and I counted over 250 such examples. I understand that the location of the Four Seasons Prague hotel next to the river was salient for an early action, but the next several dozen times he could have returned to "his hotel" rather than specifying the name (one wonders whether the author has been granted lifetime upgrades to suites for future visits). I don't remember whether such brand-name specificity was prevalent in Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code, and I understand that product placement is done routinely in movies and perhaps in other best-sellling books, but in this case it became a bit annoying.

I did appreciate some of the technical and historical information, one snippet of which I'll copypaste here rather than typing the text:

Readers are invited to offer mini-reviews and opinions in the Comments.

Addendum: Dan Brown denies using product placement in this interview (hat tip to reader Bob)

There are two types of sumac

2026-09-25T13:27:59.012-05:00

This is one of the most interesting things I've found today and it was worth a quick browse (only fast-forwarded a couple times). Despite having grown up around sumac since my Minnesota childhood, I never learned (or have forgotten) that there is a world of difference between "poison sumac" and "staghorn sumac."

Addedium: A tip of my blogging cap to an anonymous reader who offered these links -

Sumac Foraging and Preparation
Sumac vs. Zaatar: What's the difference?

Three-minute drum solo on a bodhrán

2026-09-23T11:53:34.865-05:00

"The Maguires at the launch of their debut album, Little Giants and Other Oxymorons at Temple Bar Tradfest in January 2017. This clip features a bodhrán solo from Seán Maguire, just 11 years of age at the time, followed by a set of reels from the band."

The instrument was totally new to me. Here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry:

Composer Seán Ó Riada declared the bodhrán to be the native drum of the ancient Celts (as did bodhrán maker Paraic McNeela), suggesting that it was possibly used originally for winnowing or wool dying, with a musical history that predated Christianity, native to southwest Ireland... However, according to musician Ronan Nolan, former editor of Irish Music magazine, the bodhrán evolved in the mid-19th century from the tambourine, which can be heard on some Irish music recordings dating back to the 1920s....

The drum is struck either with the bare hand or with a lathe-turned piece of wood called a bone, tipper, beater, stick or cipín. Tippers were originally fashioned from a double-ended knuckle bone, but are now commonly made from ash, holly, or hickory wood...

...a pitch-varying technique that enabled the bodhrán player to closely follow the cadence and melodic phrasing of the tune being performed. This approach marked a significant technical advancement in bodhrán playing, shifting the instrument from a predominantly rhythmic role toward a more musically responsive one.

Much more at the link.

A very unusual door

2026-09-23T11:40:13.259-05:00

The overall image is a bit distorted from using a wide-angle lens indoors, but it does show that a wooden bar has been fixed diagonally across the lower portion of this door. Its purpose is totally obscure - until you open the door...

Found in the Awful Taste But Great Execution subreddit, where there is often some totally bizarre material. The discussion thread for this post has some salient comments re design and building codes.