"God made gay people. I don't believe he made them to live their lives alone"

Mainers: Please call Gov Baldacci's office (207-287-3531) and leave a message urging him to sign same-sex marriage into law in Maine. Do it right now -- its very easy and will only take a minute!

ETA: When I called, they didn't ask any personal info - like if I actually live in state or not - so anyone who wants to call from out of state, please feel free to do so. Keep it short and sweet, they're clearly swamped, even at 8:00 a.m.

For thorsbaby

Wishing you ....

(no subject)

From the Wikipedia article on Dr Seuss...

"Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter also employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This characteristic style of writing, which draws and pulls the reader into the text, is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well-received.[15][16]

Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units, anapests, each composed of two weak beats followed by one strong beat; often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. An example of this meter can be found in Geisel's "Yertle the Turtle", from Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories:

"And today the Great Yertle, that Marvelous he
Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see."[17]

Geisel generally maintained this rhythm quite strictly, but in his later career somewhat relaxed this tendency. The consistency of his meter was one of his hallmarks; the many imitators and parodists of Geisel are often unable to write in strict anapestic tetrameter, or are unaware that they should, and thus sound clumsy in comparison.

Some books by Geisel that are written mainly in anapestic tetrameter also contain many lines written in amphibrachic tetrameter, such as these from If I Ran the Circus:

"All ready to put up the tents for my circus.
I think I will call it the Circus McGurkus.

"And NOW comes an act of Enormous Enormance!
No former performer's performed this performance!"

Geisel also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of a strong beat followed by a weak beat, with four units per line (for example, the title of One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. The formula for trochaic meter permits the final weak position in the line to be omitted, which facilitates the construction of rhymes.

Geisel generally maintained trochaic meter only for brief passages, and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter, which consists of a weak beat followed by a strong, and is generally considered easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in Bartholomew and the Oobleck make their first appearance chanting in trochees (thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth):

"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff"

then switch to iambs for the oobleck spell:

"Go make the Oobleck tumble down
On every street, in every town!"[18]"

FYI: The Wikipedia article is also useful for the complete list of books by Geisel, including many early ones (even a couple of Caldecott Honor Books) that I'd never heard of and now must seek out).

Where have all the links gone?

FYI: Increasingly, I'm posting interesting links I run across to Facebook, because its so very easy to do it ... just click a link and there it is. Please feel free to friend me on Facebook. I'm also going to try and do a once-per-week roundup of the Facebooked links to my LJ.

Maine Marriage Update

Baldacci will sign the bill, legalizing same-sex marriage in Maine.