Guy Conner's Blog, page 14

Civics

When I was in High School, Civics (or Government, as the subject was called by an earlier generation) was required for graduation; today, the term refers to more than one car made by Honda. It is sad, but true – the California Department of Education now refers to “Civic Learning”, possibly out of an ill-suppressed need to speak in jargon, but more likely to make sure that ordinary citizens don’t get confused.

If we are ever to end our relentless trudge towards oligarchy (the average net wort...

Translations

For many years, I have been interested in the art of translation. In the future, I will post my thoughts on the approach one should take to translation. Meanwhile, here is the first I ever did:

The Giantess

(La Géante)

by Charles Baudelaire

Trans 1967

When Nature, with artistic inspiration

Conceived a giantess each day,

Then did I love to live near her creation

Curled cat-like at her feet I lay.

Then did the spirit flourish in her form,

Which grew each time she played her fearful game

Mist danced behi...

Barbara Boxer

Barbara Boxer’s recent announcement of her decision not to seek reelection took me back to 1991.My late wife, Senator Pat Wiggins, spent the best part of that year working in a cavernous San Francisco office as the Assistant Financial Officer of Barbara’s first Senate campaign. Her job consisted of processing the thousands of small checks that flowed in from women, women’s groups and a sprinkling of men from around the country who wanted to see more women elected to the U.S. Senate.(1992 may...

Double Dactyl

As you may have figured out by now, I’m starting off the poetry side of this blog with some lighter stuff (although if you look closely at some of my light verse, there’s a serious edge to it). We’ll get more serious as time goes on, although the light stuff will never entirely disappear.

Today’s example is a double dactyl, a form invented in the 1960’s. A dactyl is a poetic foot consisting of an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables; a double dactyl is two such feet. The do...

Local Politics

Several people, who are familiar with my former work as a North Coast political consultant, have asked me if I am going to comment on local politics on this blog, since I appear to have been focusing to date on broader, more philosophical issues.

My answer is: yes – fairly often when it’s the political season (Spring to November of an election year). The rest of the time, I will be tracking political events in Solano, Marin, Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Mendocino, and Humboldt counties, and will chime...

Light Verse 1 – The Clerihew

The Clerihew, like most light verse forms, is an excuse for an intellectual type to be clever. Its thrust is biographical – it begins with the name of a famous person and proceeds, in two rhyming couplets of unequal lengths, to say something comical or satirical about him or her. Here is an example of my own composition:

Robert Frost

Strolled through the woods and found himself lost.

Said he: “Unless I am mistaken,

“I’ve traveled down the Road Not Taken.”

(For those of you who don’t know, The Road...

Loyalty

People like to back a winner. Sports fans are much more likely to attend a game if the home team has a winning record. Politics is also a sport, and voters are much more likely to back a candidate if they think he or she is likely to win.

I’ve always thought of politics as a team sport; one of my guiding principles has always been to back my friends to the hilt, whether or not they were considered likely to win. Some of my greatest political triumphs have been to come close when winning was co...

Unconventional Light Verse

When I was young, I developed an unseemly passion for turning serious poetry forms into light verse. The following Shakespearian sonnet is from 1970:

Consider, friend, the paradox of life:

It’s all you have, and all you’re sure to lose.

All that you do – grow up, pick out a wife,

Owes more to Chance than I, for one, would choose.

Fear not! The answer is Philosophy.

And if, at that, your heart fills with gladness,

Remember that all thought is Sophistry,

And thought is the certain way to madness.

These...

Turnout Issues

If you talk to people about politics these days (and of course, I do), you’ll hear a lot of verbal hand-wringing about the fact that people don’t vote, even when it’s in their best interest to do so. In my view, part of the problem is that voting is too hard, and voters have to do too much of it.

If you have spent any significant time talking with voters at the door (and of course, I have), you’ll have heard the complaints: “I need help.” “I don’t know how to vote on propositions X, Y and Z.”...