Lunacy:

Insomnia can be a blessing during the full moon, especially these cold clear nights of indigo, silver and black. All the ten thousand things stand out sharply, distinct in silhouette. Which is figure; which is ground? Such nights are made for haiku. One can only submit to the lunar urging, and say Ahhh. So it's time again to submit your own haiku to NCPR--we will post your musings in the next Listening Post. Extra credit goes to those who accompany it with a photo of the day.

The garden Buddha
shoulders a snow comforter.
His tuque, too, is snow.

Tinnngggg......

Terry and I are slow starters--our habit has been to awaken to Morning Edition on the clock-radio and pig it back to bed with organic coffee set up the night before. Two cups later, we're usually capable of morning ablutions and such. But then there's that whole yelling at the radio thing--and violent gesticulations that leave coffee stains on the comforter. Hard on the serene demean. So we have given up our morning mad for Lent, saving news for later in the day, when it doesn't blindside our dreams. And we dusted off our "Zen" alarm clock, a birch triangle with Hokusai's Wave on the dial, and a delicate temple gong sound that leaves me listening for a geisha's scratch at the screen with a wakeup pot of jasmine-scented tea. And for good measure, we also threw into the Lenten offering our favorite seasonal affect disorder treatment, megadoses of chocolate--or "Vitamin C" as we call it. No doubt it will be good for our characters. But come Easter Sunday, I doubt you will find us at sunrise service. We'll be snug in the flannel, with Liane Hansen turned up loud enough to carry over the slurping of hot cocoa and our running objections to the day's headlines.

A Terribly Unfortunate Thing to Have Happen:

When the Manhattan Project scientists were preparing to set off the first atomic bomb at the Trinity site in New Mexico, some believed there was a chance that the detonation would ignite the atmosphere and cook the entire planet down into something resembling a giant fried marble. One in a thousand, one in a million--but a chance. Tonight around 8 pm, I will be doing something similar with ncpr.org--updating the database that organizes all the news stories and associated pages on the site. If everything goes according to plan, you will wake up tomorrow and notice nothing much has changed. On the other hand, you may check in with ncpr.org and find nothing but a fried marble floating on the screen. Consider prayer.

At the Goat Rodeo:

When things become particularly disorganized at the station, Joel Hurd refers to it as a goat rodeo. Them suckers were everywhere today. At 10 am both the news and calendar sections of the website vanished into whatever hidey holes errant bytes find in the gullies of cyberspace. It is a rule of thumb that one week off equals two weeks behind. And so I find myself working late, getting up to stretch every now and then and think those after-hours thoughts. Like--if every byte in the website was the size of a malted milk ball, would it fill the moon? or, If we can't understand their language, how can we be certain that sea lions aren't barking haiku? Oh well, back to the roping.