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After more than a year scouring eBay, patiently waiting, I finally found another one of those beautiful vintage tie racks I lost when I moved to my last abode in Portland. It cost me $7 but I would easily have paid $100 or more. It's the finest single piece of gentleman's kit I've ever come across.

*Grammar*

Please avoid use of an unqualified "so." It is imprecise to say for example:

I am _so_ happy for you.

Yuck. A person is always so happy, so angry, so tired, etc., that something else is also true, something which should be named. For example:

I am so happy for you I could cry.

The bus driver was so tired he kept veering off the road.

She said she's so angry she's going to shoot somebody.

In some cases "so" is an integral part of a colloquial phrase; for example, "I'm so there." Nothing to be done; that phrase is part of our lexicon.

It can be insidious and sometimes uncontrollable, but know that it's generally awful. "I'm so happy you can come" is nearly gibberish; what you will always mean to say is, "I'm very happy you can come." There is always a better way to coin a phrase than with the flaccid "so." Try these:

I'm elated you can join us. [Instead of "I'm so happy...."]

I could eat a horse. [Why muck up your sentiment with excess verbiage like "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." ? Simple is always best.]

That was a riveting show. [Instead of "That was so good." One can be ornate with everyday language without excess; one should be so. The effort makes the world a more colorful place in which to live. Would that we all had others in mind when we thought to open our mouths.]

*Perfume*

This week I went to a place for embroidery; my plan is to offer an embroidered handkerchief with each bottle of perfume. The bottles will not have spray tops, so one can either apply the perfume with the included handkerchief or use the included small roll-on bottle. But the handkerchiefs I had found are too lightweight; the automated embroidery-machine work looked terrible. I will either have to find handkerchiefs with more heft, for cheap, or I'll have to find a seamstress who's willing to turn out a hundred at a time. For now I will include plain handkerchiefs, but embroidered ones I think will add a really elegant, and old-world, touch to Lord's Jester packages.

On the business tip, I filed initial papers to incorporate in New York state. Soon it will be Lord's Jester Inc. I thought the right thing to do was to get an LLC; I have Eros Aromatics LLC in Florida. Because of trademark problems, I abandoned efforts to trademark that name. It turns out that New York has strict laws about "publication" when you form an LLC; you have to publish notice in two major newspapers for six weeks. That would cost an arm and a leg, so an S Corp is what I made; I'm not totally clear on it, but a regular C Corp pays taxes twice (on the way out and the way in, I think) whereas and S Corp pays only once. The difference from an LLC is that I will have to have board meetings and officers; since I'm President, Secretary, and Treasurer, I'll have to keep minutes and all that for all meetings I have with myself on corporate business. :-)

I've decided Anthea is just too sharp, though it has plenty of fans. On the next try I will cut way down on the jasmine--it's a jasmine perfume so there will still be a lot, just less. I am finding it hard sometimes, as I do in all the arts, to know when to say enough's enough. It's not perfect yet, and I can't sign off on it until it is. Additionally, Pop gave me very positive reviews of the revamped Helios, now with significantly more orange (pressed orange, orange distilled from orange juice, bergamot) and a tad less patchouli. This is now a working recipe, and may be one of the ones I submit to the Guild (to gain the title Professional Perfumer).

We also made my first really successful immortelle perfume, called Chronos. In fact, it does smell a fair bit like Annick Goutal's Sables, the quintessential immortelle perfume (synthetic), though that was not my intention. It's almost right, but I think it needs some brighter stuff in the heart (immortelle is fairly dark). Not sure yet what extract will bring the _right_ brightness (I might try ylang ylang, though I don't think of it as bright; it could be the right foil for the consonance of the rest of the composition). And we made a liquid version of Selene; the solid version of it is what I passed Level I of Mandy Aftel's course with (fair to say she raved about it). The liquid version is fleshed out; the solid has 12 essences, and the liquid 16.

We made a revamped version of Phoebe, my tribute to osmanthus; I've decided to work past what I consider heavy-handed scents (which I favored when I first started), and to work with each recipe until it is, even for a perfumer, mostly inexplicable. I want anyone who smells my perfumes to smell something simultaneously familiar, enjoyable, and mysterious. Phoebe is too obvious for me now, though I'm sure most people (non-perfumers) would have no clue that osmanthus is its main constituent. Still, I don't want _anyone_ to smell my compositions and think, "Oh, well, I know what that is." Another old one that's heavy handed is Daphne (used to be Keeper, my chypre), and that one is heavy on tonka bean. In all cases, this sort of "problem" is easy to fix.

*Poem*

Solidarity of the Shattered

One summer I went with

my late friend Nick

to his parents'

summer place

in Connecticut.

In New London,

not far away,

there was a guitar store;

Nick and I spent

many hours in there

dreaming of the great

guitar players we might

one day be.

Through the various

contortions of fate,

guitar greatness was

not in the cards

for either of us.

It reassures me

to remember that

while he was

still with us

Nick and I dreamed

together our innocent

(but doomed)

visions of fame and

fortune and greatness.

Neither one of us

really got a fair shake

this go round and

for that, the ghost

of my old friend and I

will always share

a certain solidarity

of the shattered.

*Teachers*

The best jazz-improv lesson I ever received was from my friend Christopher Woitach, written in pencil in an old spiral-bound notebook. This is a set of ideas to bear in mind, and choose from, when improvising:

Motivic development (Motif, idea, short phrase, "lick")

1. Silence

2. Repetition

3. Sequence--same idea, different notes

4. Augmentation--longer note values

5. Diminution--shorter note values

6. Retrograde

7. Inversion

8. Call/response (Q&A)

9. Noise/articulation

10. Fragments

11. Rhythmic displacement

That silence is first on the list is extremely telling. Miles Davis once said that a piece of art isn't finished until everything is taken out that doesn't need to be there; silences, like empty space in design or painting, often say more than noise/clutter. All of these points offer the experienced improviser a great palette to use. The trick is learning to use it on the fly, to engrain it deeply in one's consciousness.

*Rainshadow*

At the end of my year with an electric car, I became an intern with Rainshadow Solar on Orcas Island. (There is a "rainshadow" which causes less rain to fall on the San Juan Islands than falls on the mainland.) This was yet another element in my grand schemes: the electric car, residential solar (I did the internship as an independent study), agriculture, etc.; I was engrossed in an investigation into the meaning of Sustainable Development, so I set out to experience all the alternatives I could find to the mainstream, suicidal way of life. I had a great time, but I feel badly for Rainshadow's founder, John Mottl, whom I worked with every weekend for several months; I was a really bad intern, and I blame that on the fact I was about a year from being diagnosed with MS (most of my life was just plain difficult and I had no idea why).

Mr Mottl had himself a fine occupation: from his home base on Orcas, he travelled by boat to various wealthy homes on the San Juans, especially the ones with no ferry service, to maintain and install different kinds of renewable-energy systems. I learned a great deal about what works, what's a pain in the butt, and what simply can't be relied on. We worked on systems with solar arrays, wind generators (windmills), micro-hydro systems, etc. Through my work with Rainshadow, I became particularly enamored of mico-hydro and wind generators, but mainly micro-hydro. The problem with wind is that if your location is no good (not enough wind) there's absolutely nothing you can do. Solar panels take far too long to recoup the energy it took to make them in the first place (some maintain that you never can get all of it back).

You can generate limitless energy with micro-hydro, and the generator itself is tiny and takes practically nothing to fabricate. Some would say the problem here is the same as it is for wind: logistics. All you need is a trickle, but there has to be a good "head," the difference between the height of the intake pipe and the output pipe (at the generator). If the head is good, what was a trickle at the top of a hill where the intake is becomes a powerful stream of water at the bottom where the generator is. Mottl showed me one example which generated _too much_ energy for its household--and it was from a tiny intake pipe atop a tall hill. I have an idea for micro-hydro in cities which I think is a really good one and I wish I could find a way of getting the idea across to the right people:

Every major metropolis has an extensive network of storm drains, one plentiful source of water already beneath the surface of the earth; buildings with basements (very common in cities), for another source, could cycle water up and down the building just for power. The idea with the storm drains would be to direct the water to generators deeper down, for good head; likewise with building "energy water:" in most cases the height from the top of a building to the basement gives you plenty of head. Setting up tens of thousands of small generators tied to storm drains or building water systems would easily, and at relatively low cost, be a massive source of clean energy. End the era of burning coal! Push for outside-the-box thinking when it comes to energy production.

*Quotations*

You feel, in New York City, the energy coming up out of the sidewalks, you know that you are in the midst of something tremendous, and if something tremendous hasn't yet happened, it's just about to happen.

--Brendan Gill

[Damn straight]

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

--Denis Diderot

[I feel this in my bones; the latter part of the statement caused much trouble in college.]

If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn't transfer over automatically to the second story. You're always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you're always becoming a writer. You're never really arriving.

--Edward P Jones

[I have long felt this ever becoming never arriving.]

Memory believes before knowing remembers.

--Faulkener

[Anyone care to explain this to me?]

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising everytime we fall.

--Confucius

[When we've been told we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes we can.--Obama]

Although the conclusion may appear at first startling, it will be difficult to deny the probability, that every particle of earth forming the bed from which the turf in old pasture land springs, has passed through the intestines of worms.

--Charles Darwin

[Worms must be acknowledged as the real farmers on any farm.]

We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

--William Glasser

[I only see a need for survival, love, and fun, but love most of all--with it the rest of the world falls away.]

Every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival.

--Philip Booth

[Nicely put.]

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

--CS Lewis

[Endowing survival with higher value is a most under-appreciated effort.]

Disappointment to a noble soul is what cold water is to burning metal; it strengthens, tempers, intensifies, but never destroys it.

--Eliza Tabor

[That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger.]

Peace love and ATOM jazz