"The most successful people are those who are good at plan B." - James York
James W. York, Jr. (born July 3, 1939 in Raleigh, North Carolina) is an American mathematical physicist who is well known for his many important contributions to the theory of general relativity. In any physical theory, it is important to understand when solutions to the fundamental field equation exist, and answering this question has been the central theme of York's scientific work, culminating in the achievement, with Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, of formulating the Einstein field equation as a well-posed system in the sense of the theory of partial differential equations.
York earned his B.Sc. in 1962 from North Carolina State University.
York is widely credited with being the first to recognize the importance of conformal geometry in the initial value problem, and with introducing concepts now called the York curvature and York time.
York is a recipient of the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics from the American Physical Society, where he is a Fellow.
I have to remark at this point...how cool is that? Your peers allow you to place your name on a couple pieces of high math nobody else thought of before... Holy shit! I am proud to introduce him to you.
Another remark: somebody really knowledgeable wrote that thing for Wiki explaining what Professor Doctor York has done, and I wonder if it is York's own words.
Big Tent has offered a wordle and they are gentle about it. They say you only have to use a few words, or even leave something else. However, I love using all the words. Here is the wordle:
and here is the poem:
It Is My Call
I shall then rotate
and float in the darkening
night sky, a remote
caretaker's handle.
Like a sharpening function
and alert for heat,
I'll grind the blade down
to razor's edge, that special
twenty degree hone,
that angle, that keen
repose -
I am resistant
to all blandishments
from the head of state,
from his aging cabinet,
and, my love, from you.
February 3, 2011 4:49 AM
Don't blame me. I write strangely when I first get up. I think my baby's soft spot opens in the night, or maybe my knickers twist in a unique way while I stir and dream. Anyway I feel remote from my own words and a little bewildered. Should I say, bewitched? I am wondering if I am really like this down deep in my soul, like this is something I did, sort of, in a past life. I have written over a thousand poems in the last couple years. They just spill out, though I have slowed down to a few a week now instead of several a day. I gotta figure one of them is actually pretty good. I wonder if it is this one. But if it is I think my other brother in my head wrote it. I'm an innocent man, innocent, I tell you!
Now may I suggest that you pop over to Big Tent's Come One, Come All page and read some other good stuff. There is probably a great piece lurking over there somewhere. These guys are pretty good, many of them.
i could read your wordsmithing all day!! no matter what time you write it...
ReplyDeletethanks for these past few posts and the big tent encouragements.... all good!!
Great word blandishment - more attractive than the wordle words. But they surely set you off on an interesting trail.
ReplyDeleteI floated away on this poem! I especially like... "a remote caretakers handle"
ReplyDeleteHarlequin, thank you and I hope your investigation of the Big Tent crowd will be to your liking.
ReplyDeleteVivinfrance, "blandishment" stuck in my mind for some reason. I tried to dump it and couldn't.
Jeanne A, "caretaker" was not the original word but the poem was not making sense in a poorly crafted way, and I changed to "caretaker" hoping it made better crafted sense.
I liked all of what you wrote here. Your words weave magic in our minds. Thanks for introducing Doctor York.
ReplyDeletetears of the sky fall to the ground
Really like the phrase "keen repose." Lovely.
ReplyDeleteChristopher you have woven a magic tale here. I always enjoy your posts.
ReplyDeletebtw Mr. York has the same birthday as my daughter, except she is much younger:-)
You have an amazing way of making a wordle seem easy. I really enjoy reading your work, Christopher!
ReplyDelete~laurie
Gautami, thank you. I do think of myself as a weaver.
ReplyDeletedj, I too am fond of "keen repose" though sharpened steel doesn't really qualify as a material in repose. Granular material, like a pile of grain or gravel, has an angle of repose, and each material will take a certain angle due to characteristics of the "grains". However repose is used more generally too, meaning "at rest". So a blade after the stress of sharpening can be in keen repose. You gotta think sideways.
Flaubert, Of course I knew about your daughter's birthday, part of the reason I chose to share space with Dr. York. The other part, I really liked the plan B quote. That's where I started, after I got the quote I needed to know who said it.
Laurie, wordles are easy! But they are only easy if you let them lead. I don't start with the grand concept, but with a phrase. In this case, quite literally, I started with "I shall then rotate" and let the wordle lead me. After, I had to go back and change out a couple rough patches to tighten up the flow that showed up.
The whole thing took me half an hour.
Oops. I should have said the poem took me half an hour in the morning. The rest of the post was another half hour in the evening. And finally, there was the ten minutes to add in the link to Come One Come All after 10 PM.
ReplyDeleteThis post took just a little over an hour to put up on Blogger from standing start to finish. Usually I have the poem complete months ago. I still have nearly 400 poems to post but I have to write fresh to the Big Tent and 3WW challenges.
sharply written
ReplyDeleteNicely done!
ReplyDeleteI like it Christopher, it all seems so similar to the thoughts of a Rumified Aunt and her child-like excited state upon having found a back door entrance to the granary and hoping that upon exiting, she will not be met with anger nor brandishment of firearms.
ReplyDeleteAlways a pleasure to read your posts...
ReplyDeleteBarb, :D Sharply indeed.
ReplyDeleteMadeline, thank you.
Who, was it a Rumified Aunt or a Ramified Runt?? Indeed, blandishments are better than brandishments. If we keep woikin like this we will be better than Lennon and he was better than Jesus! (just in case, I mean Haysoos, the guy running a really great lawn care service in my neighborhood) :D
Tumblewords, thank you.
Accordianing to Yohuniton Elocke it was first an Hour, thenan an Aunt and if I had a memowry that serves the persons correct, statements such as the one you mention that Lennon went on and in about were in fact only his opinion and his minions were not in fact, bigger, until he counted the fictional minions from the back of his head.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows your can only put in the tip, otherwise the insertion of assertions won't be considerated as fact, but rather fiction, not non-fict nor fact.
so he was jipped out of a good portion of the profers in real life, as opposed to just online. Happaning online, that would be Egypt
That's a fine piece of crafting, Christopher: so many of the words and a poem that speaks with its own voice.
ReplyDeleteWho, I think it is fair to say that John was gypped. I have a feeling he was really getting it together when that fellow took him out. Ouch. I never actually was a big fan of John, but there is no doubt he was huge. I don't have a problem counting the denizens in the back of his head among his fan base.
ReplyDeleteDick, practice makes for excellence. If I have good poetry it is because over my lifetime I have close to two thousand poems, probably, and most of the early ones I don't consider more than practice. To me poems are like photos. You get good doing them but most are just there to pass through. At some point they all are "good" if you have talent, but few are "great". Also, I don't really own them, which is why you don't find any copyright marks here.
So glad you're blogging poems, prolific one. I look forward to reading more of yours.
ReplyDeleteOops I must add this, I'm beginning to believe in Plan B.
ReplyDeleteIrene, oh it's absolutely the case on the planet. You go out hunting and the damn tiger takes offence and all of a sudden you need to act like prey. Ever since then, plan B has been necessary.
ReplyDeleteI like the tone of this piece, blandishment and all, from the first pronouncement of "I shall then"
ReplyDeleteVery effective use of the words. Your writing has a classical air about it, which I envy.
ReplyDeletehttp://liv2write2day.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/life-plus-5-big-tent-poetry/
Deb, this poem is a bit royal, as if I had a leg to stand on making pronouncements, as if there should be a crier announcing for me my presence in the room, in the poem, in your life. Damn, that's another poem just popped out.
ReplyDeleteliv, I think my comment to Deb covers you too. My mother was nonplussed because she felt I would act as if to the manor born and indeed my father's mother came from Southern plantation life, but had no hand in my upbringing. This was part of how I behaved so much like my father did even though she divorced him and separated before I was two. I think this was difficult for her, a little, maybe sometimes a lot because not all of this stuff was cute.