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It amazes me that we can feel moisture, can tell if something's wet or not without looking.

*Lord's-Jester*

I now have at least a quart each of Ares eau de cologne, Heracles eau de toilette, and Zephyr eau de toilette. They're waiting to be filtered; to filter that much perfume, one needs special equipment: an Erlenmeyer flask (mine is 500mls, about half a quart) with an air-evactuation nozzle, a Buchner funnel to fit the flask with a stopper, a vacuum pump to force air out of the flask and draw liquid down through the funnel (using the air-evac nozzle), and fine lab filter paper. My idea is that we can filter half at a time; that may make for a mess, but I doubt it. The night before one filters, one adds about a teaspoon of bentonite clay, shakes well, then stores the perfume in the fridge overnight. In the morning, all particulates and cloudiness will have dropped out of the solution and one can filter away. What's left should be crystal clear.

I made a large batch of Heracles for one reason: boronia is expensive and hard to come by (this is my boronia perfume). If I'd made another test batch, I might not have had enough boronia to make a big batch (I probably would have had enough; I guess it was more that I wanted to try it). Several things about this batch potentially could be problematic: I adjusted the recipe by weight, the ambrette I used is brand new (it possibly has a different odor profile from what I've smelled before), and the boronia is from a new batch that I just received which definitely has a different odor profile from what I've smelled before. So the whole thing could be a wash; if it is I will have learned this lesson: be sure to make test batches with the ingredients you have on hand. The variation between different batches of the same aromatic material can be dramatic.

The one potential problem with Zephyr is that, I suddenly realized, this latest batch of orris-violet co-distllation smells quite different than the previous batch. I'm starting to realize that one should always make perfume with the materials on hand; one should _never_ expect that botanicals from different sources, or even different _years_, will smell the same. I've noticed this phenomenon with a few other botanicals I've gotten recently, things I had before but now are coming from a "better" source. Boronia, juniper, nutmeg, jasmine sambac, and cedar are a few that all smell different than what I had before, different but not worse; different enough though that recipes need to be changed/adjusted to make for a perfume that smells like what I want. With Heracles and Zephyr we made large batches without ever testing to see how they might have been changed. We can only hope for the best--and never do it again!

As one friend has it, this forever changing aromatic landscape is where the true art of natural perfumery lies, in knowing how exactly a given recipe must change according to specific changes in the odor profiles of components. Ares eau de cologne I've heard several positive reviews of (from men), and there are no changes to the recipe; I'm confident it will turn out right. As of now, I plan to send in six perfumes to the Natural Perfumers Guild to gain the title Professional Perfumer (PP), all liquids: Ares EdC, Heracles EdT, Selene EdP, Demeter EdT, Chronos EdT, and Zephyr EdT (Zephyr used to be called Cuir du Farceur, and is my leather scent, with 19 notes altogether). Solid perfumes will come with my next submission: Anthea is my ode to jasmine (seven notes altogether), the point of Helios is to highlight patchouli with citrus (15 notes altogether), and Selene is a powdery carnation/orris affair.

That's a lot to submit at once, but I'm certain I'm ready, and I have all packaging, labels, boxes, etc.; my view is it'll be good to get the PP title sooner rather than later. This will enhance numerous aspects of the business, the price my perfumes will command at market, instilling confidence in potential customers, getting apprentices, etc. The hardest part will be getting ecommerce up and running; I can do it myself; it's a matter of how long it will take. I want total creative control over how my web site works and looks. As with every other web site I've designed, minimalism is the operative word for me. Also I want it to be a "manly" site; that is, a site where men will not feel funny ordering. This will definitely not be a feminine site, no pretty flowers, no quaint but insipid imagery, none of that stuff. This will be utilitarian, elegant, and simple. Check out the beginnings: lordsjester.com.

*Basketball*

From The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1892 [January 20] that the first official basketball game was played, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Basketball was the brainchild of James Naismith, a Canadian who was teaching at a YMCA training school in Springfield, which prepared young men to go out and be instructors in YMCAs. Naismith was teaching physical education, but the winters were cold in Massachusetts, and his students were frustrated that they couldn't go outside. He wanted something physically challenging but that could be played indoors, in a relatively small space. He tried all kinds of new and old games, but nothing worked. Finally he remembered a game he had played as a kid in Canada, a game called Duck on a Rock. He took a few rules from that and adapted it into a game he called Basket Ball. He nailed peach baskets to the balcony on each side of the gym, but the baskets had solid bottoms, so if anyone managed to get the ball in the basket someone else had to climb up and get the ball down. The rules evolved, and basketball caught on fast, helped by the spread of YMCAs. Naismith helped establish the sport at the college level, becoming head coach at the University of Kansas. By the time he died in 1939, basketball was an official Olympic event.

*Quotations*

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

--Martin Luther King Jr

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

--Federico Fellini

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.

--CS Lewis

I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.

--Bob Dylan

Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

--Joseph Campbell

If I had to choose between apathy and violence, I would choose violence.

--Gandhi

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy--indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

--William Osler

So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm disgusted with my generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whinning about for years.

--Kurt Cobain

That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real, only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

*Music*

I've been listening to Pink Floyd for more than 20 years. There is no question in my mind that The Final Cut is far and away their best record. It's also the record Roger Waters always wanted to make. Talk about orchestral rock! It contains all the blending of one song into another that Floyd pioneered, the all-over-the-map instrumentation (pianos, guitars, backup singers, strings, saxophones, etc.), along with, of course, Roger Waters' inimitable soaring guitar solos. Overall it's a scathing rebuke of what Waters sees as the failed post-war ideals for England; Waters' father was killed in WWII, and the story is detailed in the tremendous, auto-biographical song When the Tigers Broke Free. This album contains some of the most insightful, personal, and tormented lyrics Floyd ever recorded; and it sums up the forces and the troubles of the war with stunning clarity. It is not a happy record, but it's definitely a desert-island disc for me.

The lyrics, which are epic, confessional, and, at times, brutal, speak for themselves; imagine these lyrics together with the massive, larger-than-life, no-holds-barred orchestration characteristic of Pink Floyd:

"Tell me true, tell me why was Jesus crucified?

Was it for this that daddy died?

Was it you, was it me? Did I watch too much TV?

Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?

If it wasn't for the Nips being so good at building ships,

the yards would still be open on the Clyde.

And it can't be much fun for them beneath the rising sun

with all their kids committing suicide.

What have we done, Maggie, what have we done to England?

Should we shout, should we scream:

what happened to the post-war dream?

Oh, Maggie, Maggie, what did we do?"

[Showing here the self-loathing, racism, and sardonic aspects of Waters' youth.]

"In derelict sightings the poppies entwine

with cattle trucks lying in wait for the next time."

[Cattle trucks waiting for the next time there are legions of corpses to transport.]

"It was just before dawn one miserable morning in black '44

when the forward commander was told to sit tight,

when he asked that his men be withdrawn.

And the generals gave thanks as the other ranks

held back the enemy tanks for a while,

and the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price

of a few hundred ordinary lives.

Kind old King George sent mother a note when he heard father was gone.

It was I recall in the form of a scroll, with gold-leaf and all.

And I found it one day in a drawer of old photographs hidden away,

and my eyes still grow damp to remember His Majesty

signed with his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around, there was frost in the ground,

when the Tigers broke free,

and no one survived from the Royal Fusiliers Company C.

They were all left behind, most of 'em dead, the rest of 'em dying,

and that's how the High Command took my daddy from me!"

[The track above did not appear on the original record. I think the Suits thought, rightly, that it would bring tears to too many. It comes off like a dirge.]

"Floating down through the clouds

memories come rushing up to meet me now.

In the space between the heavens

and the corner of some foreign field,

I had a dream, I had a dream:

Goodbye Max, goodbye ma.

After the service when you're walking slowly to the car

and the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air,

you hear the tolling bell and touch the silk in your lapel,

and as the teardrops rise to meet the comfort of the band,

you take her frail hand--and hold onto the dream!

A place to stay, enough to eat,

somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street,

where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears,

and what's more, no one ever disppears,

you never hear their standard issue KICK in your door.

You can relax on both sides of the tracks,

and maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control,

and everyone has recourse to the law,

and no one kills the children anymore."

[Heartbreaking in its insistent and blind hope. The latter part, beginning with 'A place to stay..." is exactly what Waters had imagined for his father's post-war dream.]

"Brezhnev took Afghanistan,

Begin took Beirut,

Galtieri took the Union Jack,

and Maggie over lunch one day

took a cruiser with all hands

apparently to make him give it back."

[Bringing up the sheer folly of the post-war.]

"Take all your overgrown infants away, somewhere,

and build them a home, a little place of their own,

the Fletcher Memorial Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings."

[More follies.]

"They disembarked in '45, and no one spoke and no one smiled--

there were too many spaces in the line.

Gathered at the cenotaph, all agreed with hand on heart

to sheathe their sacrificial knives.

But now, she stands upon Southampton Dock

with her handkerchief and her summer frock

that clings to her wet body in the rain.

In quiet desperation, knuckles white upon the slippery reins,

she bravely waves the boys goodbye again...

When the fight was over, we spent what they had made.

In the bottom of our hearts we felt the final cut."

[I assume the first part is about a statue on Southampton Dock. The second part is dismal, but you know it's true. The final cut in Waters' mind is the maladjustment of at least two generations of men.]

"The rusty wire that holds the cork that keeps the anger in

gives way and suddenly it's day again.

The sun is in the east even though the day is done.

Two suns in the sunset, fff!, could be the human race is run."

[Waters is clearly not very hopeful that we will ever learn to solve our problems with oppression and violence without resorting to violence.]

The whole thing is very much like an opera, complete with numerous "idée fixes," musical or lyrical variations on or repetitions of musical or lyrical content. This is a dense, rich, complex exploration of various aspects of Waters' youth, continued angst, and the devastation war brings.

Peace love and ATOM jazz