Well, this is a wretched disappointment!

Noting that it'd been a while since my last posting, I proceeded with a description of how we were able to see the shuttle _Endeavour_ & the ISS orbiting overhead earlier this month. Merely expanding the frame so I could keep writing in this field, however, proved a mistake, since my unsaved text (contrary to what I recalled from previous experience) promptly disappeared! Just for that, I won't bother.

_In Quintem Novembris_...

Yes, it was on Guy Fawkes Day--or Election Day this year in the USA--that Dr. Cornell & I happened to meet at our precinct's new polling place; like the previous site it's on campus, but this building is a bit closer, dominating at a distance the vista down our old street (where once a nice remnant chunk of forest stood, but that's another story). I don't even remember how many years it's been since we last met in person--possibly as many as 18. It *had* occurred to me that this might happen, though I couldn't assume it probable. [Improbability of improbabilities, says the Writer, all is improbability.]

I wonder now: if this election proves as significant in the long run for the GOP as some believe, might we see Republicans henceforth celebrating November 5th by burning jackass effigies?

Did a Web search on the word "charax," returning 1080 results, of which I viewed only the first few pages. Seems the original meaning was more specific than I'd realized: a _palisade_, a wooden stockade-like barrier or one of the pointed stakes making it up. Evidently a related word is _charagma_, something inscribed, translated "mark" in a notorious passage from the Book of Revelation. And there were indeed some ancient cities by that name.

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Well, this is interesting. Our previously-mentioned former neighbor has admitted making a veiled reference to yours truly in a published column! In turn I had to tell "Dr. Cornell" that I'd done something similar in this weblog. Then I had to tell him where to find it, which meant looking it up myself, since I didn't remember the URL. For all I know, he could be the first (aside from the author) to read this stuff.

His subject involved an incident 40 years ago which we couldn't recall here. It was positive enough, which is nice. Too many memories, though recorded on an inferior version of my brain, suggest that I might often have been a stupid little jerk.

Must report that I've begun taking bagpipe lessons! The idea of actually playing the great Highland pipe may have occurred to me in my youth; but, to my knowledge, learning how didn't become practical around here till the past few years. The current arrangement is practically free. One curious detail: I find myself studying alongside my third-grade (think mid-1960s) teacher. Presently it's unclear when I'll get hold of a full set; for the time being we're sticking to the practice chanter.

Disclaimer: while I may tend to think it's the most interesting part, Highland ancestry accounts for only a modest fraction of my family tree. I might be considered a generic example of a Nordic, that being an official name for the curiously & variously colored local race historically inhabiting the northern side of West Asia (commonly if quaintly known as Europe) before spreading around the globe. Among my forbears were Sutherlands of Caithness who joined the Black Watch regiment during the United Colonies' rebellion & wound up settling in what became New Brunswick.

Regarding the previous entry: I hadn't planned to go _two months_ between postings, but it seemingly took me that long to get it ready, mainly because of competition both digital & analog. For all that, I forgot/left out a few items. Fortunately this medium allows for easy correction.

When it comes to the analog world, my reading of periodicals & books has so far not recovered from my (curiously-timed) tour of New York City last October. Though we were only there some five days, indulging my compulsion for setting things down took me in this case from Halloween to Thanksgiving! Incidentally, having finally seen Manhattan up close, I found it all amazingly positive, given my attitude of previous decades. Easy to agree with the "We are all New Yorkers now" sentiment.

Actually, the neighbor I mentioned before _was_ originally a New Yorker. How he wound up in _this_ college town I apparently never asked, though I intend to if I get the chance. He still lives there, only a few blocks from where we moved to. Funny thing about that move: it seemed to accelerate my idiosyncratic development, which, from what I'm told, showed up early on. Gradually drifting away from my friends, I traveled through adolescence as something of a loner--except for my family. Evidently we stick together more closely than has been typical for this culture & era. And here we still are, a few of us currently on the same corner lot we settled in 1967. After my own various quasi-independent episodes, none of which now bear elaborating, I returned here again nine years ago as an ILYA (Incompletely Launched Young Adult): a designation I'm not proud of. But it no longer applies--I'm too old!

So who am I, anyway? (Cheap snide anwer: Who cares? Cheap egotistical anwer, lifted from an obscure novel: I am he who is. It may not sound so sacreligious as a Cartesian starting point.)

Assuming anyone really wants to know, I can frame the specifics in generalities. Leaving out the more fantastic-sounding stuff, we might begin with demographic & related elements. (Hope nobody minds my use of the ampersand, a habit I may have acquired/affirmed since switching to the computer for journal-keeping eight years ago [after the short gap left at the time of my father's decease].) I can claim membership in what we might call the "Sputnik Cohort," those born at the peak of the Baby Boom. Which makes me want to start quoting from a little piece I wrote about my background some years ago:

How long did it take me to realize what an uncommonly decent background I had?

Short answer: a while.

Actually I think it was a gradual process; and it probably did, in some rudimentary way, begin in my childhood, when I dimly remember being told that our nation was somehow (I’m not sure) number one in the world. Certainly it took time to put this in perspective. As I often tell myself, I didn’t realize how good I had it. I wonder: perhaps that was a blessing in itself.

First of all I was born in the United States of America in the 20th century, which should go a long way toward defining, by global and historical standards, how well off I started. That my parents were, to put it roughly and unimaginatively, white and middle-class may add something to this understanding, as may the fact that I came along, their first child, at the height of the Baby Boom. (Being male was no liability either--and I could’t complain about my inborn state of health.) They had not been entirely spared economic hardship in their own lives but were determined that their offspring should lack nothing. Though I’ve been told since that some threats of scarcity actually occurred, no memory remains of any family problems--financial or otherwise.

I sometimes wish everyone could grow up in circumstances offering such security. Obviously this sentiment isn't much of a guide to immediate practical action, particularly in regard to race & sex. And, for good or ill, the past cannot be re-created. (Still, while the present seems a more difficult era for bringing up kids, there's something to be said for doing it here in a backwater part of the US, yet in a town like mine featuring a sort of cultural oasis. [For most of my first decade we lived next to one of the leading local intellectuals--though I was ignorant enough not to realize this--& hung around with his kids.])

As noted above, in retrospect my childhood was marked by a certain amount of (necessary?) ignorance. The older I get, the more Confucian I seemingly become, & Exhibit A pertains to my parents. As a kid, I sometimes considered them tyrants. Now I regard them as storied heroes whose like may be hard to find in these latter days. As for their number one son, he's surpassed his dad perhaps only in the weight department, with low serotonin & high cholesterol to boot--plus hypothyroidism & sleep apnea. More about him later.

I see the enclosure as metaphoric. The expression does bring to mind something literal, like the rural compound my brothers want to establish, a fort or stronghold of some kind--or, more pacifically, the series of courtyards making up a classic Chinese upper-class house. (OK, I've neglected a previous application, having chistened an interesting--but rather fictitious--valley "Charax.") We may eventually be able to call some property "Charax," but for now I'm starting with the little impenetrable enclosure of my mind, which despite its size contains the entire world as I experience it.

"And so it begins."

A word, first, about a word ("In the beginning was the Word..."): Charax. I first recall encountering it at about age ten as a place name in a novel set on Mars. In my teens I believe I ran across it in the Apocrypha. Only quite recently did I (incidentally) see "charax" in print with a definition attached; evidently it's a Greek term meaning "enclosure". Thus did an attractive-looking word acquire a use for this would-be writer. So these ramblings ostensibly are about an enclosed area--but what?