Muse in the Morning

Random Poem

Art Link Fire Teaching There must be a spark to which tinder can be judiciously applied to get a smolder (Or is the spark applied to the tinder?) With skill the smoldering tinder gives rise to a flicker and then a flame to which the kindling is added leading to creation of a real fire with the introduction of the hard wood How delicate is the the process that it can so easily be derailed I am a teacher It is my job to nurture the fire There is rarely a second chance if this flame dies –Robyn Elaine Serven –December 6, 2005

Muse in the Morning

Random Poem

High School Colors English Teachers Of the majick of gods and goddesses Marion taught of myths and legends and creations other realities as well as the fact that teachers sometimes drink And chain-smoking Scholastica leadfoot schooled me in Pepys Hawthorne and Irving and the boundless unconditional love she displayed to us for her beloved Ben But Mrs P Holly’s wonderful mom you lit the spark with Buffalo Bill and mister death and the pretty how town which now burns in me some forty years later –Robyn Elaine Serven –January 2, 2007

Muse in the Morning

Random Poem

Art Link Cat on Amethyst Patent Pending With total attention I focus energy concentrate on giving a gentle loving touch Thus will my human problems be diminished according to my cat –Robyn Elaine Serven –March 14, 2006

The previous parts:

250 years of history

mathematics and science, philosophy and religion

Frank Anderson, Malcolm Smiley, William Reid, Hyman Ettlinger, George Birkhoff, E. H. Moore, H. A. Newton, Michel Chasles, Simeon Poisson, Joseph Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, Johan Bernoulli, Jacob Bernoulli, Gottfried Lebniz, Christiaan Huygens.  Fifteen generations of my mathematical ancestors.

Yes, there was a side trip to Pierre-Simon La Place and Jean d’Alembert that ended in a dead end.  And it is true that the leap from Lagrange to Euler is tenuous, what with Lagrange being pretty much self-educated in mathematics.  And it is also true that Huygens was more of an inventor, a maker of clocks and telescopes…and hence an astronomer.

Christiaan received a Master of the Liberal Arts degree from the University of Leiden in 1647 and a Doctor of Canon and Civil Law from Université d’Angers in 1655.  His advisors were Frans van Schooten and Jan Stampioen.

In the interest of full disclosure:

I was married for twenty-four years, from March of 1969 until some time in 1993.  We got married because there was a pregnancy and there was going to be Hell to pay with the in-laws.  So I agreed to run off to Miami, OK, to get a quicky marriage…and to spend at least the next 18 years of my life raising our daughter, who was born in August of that year.

In 1992 I began my transition from male to female.  Lawyers were contacted.  Papers were filed.

I quote myself from Sexual Disorientation (poor form, I know):

Me:  Personally, I was married to a woman for 24 years.  Then I had a sex-change.  Now I cannot marry a woman.  Go figure.  Aren’t I still me?

Me, again:  Follow-up thought:  Then again, in many states, I can’t marry a man either, but such is life for transsexual people.

Muse in the Morning

Pseudo-random Poem

Art Link Purplegreengold And miles to go… A flicker of white appears in the dark maybe the Big Bang of some microverse Perhaps it could be Tinkerbell’s candle The color soon dims through yellow to gold Then green tendrils spread out from the center The sparkling dwindles to a throbbing pulse as purple appears and black and I sleep –Robyn Elaine Serven –March 9, 2006

Muse in the Morning

Random Poem

Art Link Lace Like the Pixels The pixels laid singly or in short segments pixilated sand intricately woven into a meaningful pattern pixie dust spread to simulate complexity My world grows takes new form until it gets to the point where it can be flipped, flopped flooped it’s the flooping that makes it distinctly mine Moments are the pixels of being by which we color the larger tapestry of our lives living in the instant in the now is our floop –Robyn Elaine Serven –November 8. 2005

Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry XXXIV – finis

Art Link Passage Rites and Passages (the latter years) Isolating Declaring Bemoaning Observing Writing Speaking Affirming Protecting Finding voice Initiating Writing Speaking up Ghettoizing Returning Creating space Confronting the beast Writing Speaking out Helping Representing Taming the beast Depicting Moving on Broadening Writing Spreading out Identifying the larger beast Combining Proclaiming Defending Teaching –Robyn Elaine Serven –November 15, 2005 –June 13, 2006

Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry XXXIII

Art Link Desert Tortoise Survivor When I was a small child and life seemed so very hard I was positive I could not survive When things happened to me that should happen to no child I doubted I would survive When the sins of my parents were visited upon their children I questioned whether I might survive When I grew older, I somehow learned to think of myself as a worthwhile person I thought, I can survive Faced with the cruelty of not living in a world of my own making I decided, I shall survive I endured the harshest challenges that I can imagine a life having to offer As excruciatingly hard as it was, I survived When life itself, cruel cellular biology Seemed to conspire against me Even then I did survive Even age, that most viscious mistress tries to slowly grind me into giving up but I have still survived I don’t care what life brings my way now no matter what or who may come or go I know that some way I will survive –Robyn Elaine Serven –April 28, 2006

Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry XXXII

Art Link Islands in the Storm In Passing Every year or so I stop for a moment grieve about the people I met and befriended as much as I knew how My existence has flicked from thought to precious thought from spacetime to spacetime those friends have become painful fond memories My life journey required that I had to move on though I could have settled for the bittersweetness and shared more time with them –Robyn Elaine Serven –December 19, 2006

Where were we?

(Part I:  250 years of history)

Oh, yes.  Poisson, purportedly the most prolific mathematicians in terms as the number of publications, was a student of LaGrange and La Place at École Polytechnique in Paris.

LaPlace was a student of d’Alembert, but there we lose track of the lineage, since d’Alembert attended one of the colleges in the University Paris…which was decommissioned and dispersed during the French Revolution, so records are lost.  Or because I am not a historian and I am not planning a trip to Paris to search for said records.

LaGrange, on the other hand, was a self-taught mathematician, mostly, whom Leonhard Euler chose to nurture to be his heir as Director of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.  Euler even left Berlin for St. Petersburg in 1766, happy to return now that Catherine was on the path to becoming the Great, so that LaGrange could begin his tenure.  For that reason Euler is generally agreed to hold the position of LaGrange’s academic supervisor.

I identify with what LaGrange accomplished by teaching himself mathematics.  While I had some wonderful teachers during my years as a student, the thing that they accomplished the most was to help me learn how to teach myself.    I’ve always tried to remember that in my own teaching.

You’re wondering about the image to the left?  Read on.

Perhaps as penance for something I did in a past life, I am prone to perusing the back pages of Daily Kos.  Like Diogenes looking for a human being among his fellow Greeks, I search for those who might learn that hatred starts small and begins with the words we use.

I seek to teach.  Mostly I discover people who are unwilling to learn.  I find people who are so invested in their juvenile attempt at humor that they can’t stop to learn why it is juvenile, why it is demeaning, not to its supposed targets, but to those whom it actually hits, and as the conversation progresses (I refuse to give up the hope that everyone can learn not to hate), I get to learn how deep and varied their hatred actually is.

I find pseudo-intellectual  analysis of why only the so-called normal people deserve equality in this society.  Upon challenging their reasoning, I often find the same people have a very low opinion of education.  I ask questions that don’t get answered.  Apparently, those questions do have an effect, however.  You’d be amazed at the number of times people assume that the questions I ask must be asked in anger and respond in kind…and never answer the question.

And I find hatred, both the small and the large of it.