Poker with God

The Wild Frog

Thomas shouted to his dad
“That’s the best dang frog I’ve ever had
Over there on the lily pad!
My old frog, he got away.
Poor old frog he couldn’t stay
Now he’s gone and I can’t play.
He is where the cattails sing ;
Where tadpoles swim and horseflies sting;
Where he is free and he is king!”

Little Orphant Annie

This is the classic poem by James Wibcomb Riley. I had quite a few responses on facebook when I posted it there. Many of the comments had to do with memories of mothers reciting the poem. One could argue that it belongs to the literature of the superego as a moral tale that parents like to tell their children to get them to be obedient, but I think Riley meant them more for fun than anything and for the love of a good scary story. “and we has the mostest fun a listenin’ to the witch tales that Annie tells about…” he also addresses the poem to “all the lovely bad ones” meaning the more ornery children almost preferring them to “the good ones—yes the good ones too….” As a kid, listening to my mother recite it to me, I got a good chill from it. It was the same kind of chill that get when I went to the “B” scary movies at the old theatre in Mooresville, Indiana where I grew up. I loved a good chill and that good chill that I am talking about from my childhood is a very different thing from the blood and gore of movies today that seem to be obsessed with all the psychological aspects and realism in the gore. But still, I think that there is nothing like those good old ghost stories. These stories suggested to me that there was more in this universe than the eye could see. It was scary—yes, but there was a kind of mystery, awe and wonder in it too.

The Name of the Moon

I have decided that I am going to name the Moon.
I don’t know if it has ever dawned on anyone that our moon has no real name. It may have had names in other cultures, in other languages, at other times, but in English it doesn’t really seem to have one. Or if it does, it certainly isn’t used.
I mean can you imagine a car company that put out an object simply called "the Car." I mean if I had three hands I’d say that it was audacious on the one hand, unimaginative on the other one, and just plain dumb on the third. Other planets have great names like Euorpa, Ganymede, and Callisto of Jupiter. We just call ours “the Moon.” How dull is that?
I mentioned this to my coworkers the other day in a moment of epiphany—when I realized that I could be the first person to name the Moon. So I joked that I would, of course, name it after myself. I could call it "Ken. " But my coworkers pointed out that Ogle would be a much better name for the moon. The more I thought about it, the more I decided they were right. I mean the moon is O shaped in the the first place, and Ogle starts with a long O sound making the mouth go round like the moon is round, and the name kind of connotes watching and all--as if the moon were a kind of eyeball looking down on us all.
I’ve read some articles in the Ogle/ogles family journal—a publication that keeps track of Ogles about the origin of the name which some think was once Ogill and that was a derivative of Ogg Hill where they speculated the first of our clan lived. Around 1066 there is apparently a record of a license given to a certain Humphry de Ogle to run a mannor in Northumbria. I figure the ‘de’ was a kowtow to the Normans and that Humphry figured it was better to join them that get beat by them. It is an old and honorable name associated with English aristocracy and nobility until the mighty have fallen in my day.
So it wouldn’t be a bad name for the Moon. On the other hand--o gosh, I just realized--we often use the word “Mooned.” If we changed the moon's name to Ogle, what would that do to the good name of our family? Suddenly people wouldn’t be mooned they’d be--- Nope. I’ve just decided to call the moon Ken. I’d much rather be “Kenned.”

Sun and Moon

Bright and shiny is the Sun
And he has only just begun
To shed his light on everyone.



Dark and lovely is the Moon
She will sing her haunting tune
That fades to silence all too soon.

Dragon Boat Racing

Chris, a really great man from the UK, has organized a number of events since I have been here. I am grateful for his willingness to do so because he has helped to bring about several of the more memorable events since I have been here. I had never been a member of a dragon boat crew before, but it sounded like a lot of fun. It didn’t involve a lot of prep, just two days of practice (in 110 degree heat) and then the race. This event took place on the body of water between the Island that is Abu Dhabi City and the mainland. It was held at the Shangri-la Hotel beach and was directly across from Sheik Zayed Mosque, the third largest mosque in the Middle East. (You can see it several times in the background of the photos in the videos.) We didn’t exactly take first place, but we made respectable runs and consistently improved our time.
The day of the race was pure fun and we ended the evening with a bar-b-q dinner on a second beach in the remarkably beautiful hotel complex. There was great food, drink, and dancing—a happy time. The evening was one of the first pleasant evenings we had had after long humid summer and it felt good just to get out and enjoy life.

Photos by Chris Jolliffe

Illustration in Red