This year's April in Santa Cruz Festival of Creative Music brings you seven new experiences of music, sound, and the world in which it emerges ... and it starts today!

FIND OUT MORE AT -
aprilsc.ucsc.edu

Song sparrows in Santa Cruz. One in the morning, another at dusk —

It was only a modest proposal in 1729, I’m assuming no less now. :)

and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. /I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increase to 28 pounds.

—Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal (1729)

always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish,

and my reason is that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to persons of quality and fortune,

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the (aforementioned) hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fifth part be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine,

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragout.

which cannot turn to account either to the parents or (aggrieved) nation, or the charge of nutriments and rags having been at least four times that value. / I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

… a boy or girl [of beggar parents] before twelve years old, is no sale-able commodity, and even when they come to this age, they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and a half a crown at most, on the exchange;

— Astafy—in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “An Honest Theif” (1848)—whose kindness Emelyan is exploiting, in a story that Astafy tells to the narrator, whose kindness Astafy is presumably exploiting.

“Emelyanoushka seemed to have an inkling of what a rage I was in. When a man is guilty, you know, sir, he scents trouble far off, like the birds of the air before a storm.”

He continued: “It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.”

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” -James Baldwin (interview with Jane Howard in 1963)

To say Dave Cope (May 17, 1941 – May 4, 2025) was ahead of his time doesn’t quite capture how elegantly and presciently he understood, far ahead of the world around him, the vital potential in links between computation and the arts. Peace Profound David.

medium.com/@benleedscar...

C’mon neolibs & neocons. Ya said “shut up left, with your your crazy worries about fascism”. You’re at bat. Swing you cowards.

9.
You’d better not shout
Or cry. And I’ll tell you why:
Santa is coming.

10.
Is that a comet?
Guide us to thy perfect light
Oh star of wonder

6.
Jack Frost nips your nose
Tiny tots’ eyes are glowing
Sleep is difficult.

7.
A snowman just danced.
There must have been some magic
In that old silk hat.

8.
Silent night. Holy.
All is calm and bright for this
Tender, mild infant.

3.
Shepherds reported
“Angels we have heard on high.
Singing.” Good gracious.

4.
One foggy Christmas
Santa Claus came to Rudolph
Requesting guidance

5.
O’er the fields we go
In a one-horse open sleigh
Laughing all the way

1.
It is beginning
To look a lot like Christmas
Everywhere you go

2.
Frosty the snowman
Was a jolly happy soul
With a corn-cob pipe.

Christmas carols take a lot of time. Once I listened to one that took like three minutes.

To help out in the TikTok era, I’m updating my Christmas Haiku collection this year. If you have any, add them in comments…