As almost everyone has already mentioned (there are perils to living in one of the last timezones before the dateline), today is P Zed Myers 50th birthday. Some, like Richard Dawkins) have done poems to celebrate the event, but I think a better present from me, given my talents, would be to write no poem - so here it is:
Now that I've got that taken care of, I thought I'd join John Lynch in using the opportunity to call people's attention to an article that is quite possibly PZ's single greatest bit of writing: The Proper Reverence Due to Those Who Have Gone Before. Take a few minutes to read it. You won't regret it.
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Not only have I re-read it, I also linked to it from my birthday greeting. It's a briliant piece of writing.
That article brought tears to my eyes.
I collect vintage kitchen items. Like PZ poring over bones, (which I have done, too) I often try to visualize the women (mostly) who used to use them, their lives, their homes, their stories. Following PZs example, One spoon = one whole life. Forgotten history = a mountain, an Everest of spoons and spoon-like objects.
Brings it home to me, somehow.
Thanks for posting the link.
Thanks for the link, Mike. That is special.
Also, thanks for the unpoem. There have been a few submitted that deserve only forgiveness. All in all quite an outpouring.
My ancestral searching only takes me back 200 years. Already there is nothing much left of the people themselves. Just dates and names on pieces of paper that have survived.
a lovely birthday present and unbirthday present for those of us , who connected with the link. i'm always amazed at the number of people who in previous incarnations were royalty.why aren't serfs,beggars and refugees ever re-incarnated? grunts [ infantry] seem to always return but not know it. they realize that what they've done hasn't worked but don't know how to change it. so they repeat it. i know because i am one.those footsteps in the ash are the same as the dying soldiers i held. as my father and his father held before me.steps taken by people that came from somewhere and ended where? thanks