Making Magic

I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett yesterday (published in 1911). I had polished off The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908) a couple days earlier.  Both are commonly defined as “children’s literature” and never have we needed them more. With the occasional exception of Toad’s forays to recapture Toad Hall from the shoats and weasels, Wind in the Willows is remarkably free of any taint of violence - even those skirmishes produce only bumps and bruises, no one actually dies. The Secret Garden is a prototypical green novel, perhaps the archetypal example of the genre. For those of you who haven’t engaged in this joyful read in a decade or more, in The Secret Garden, a group of preteens employ the “Magic” of the renewal of spring growth in a long neglected garden to restore the physical and emotional health of two of their “secret group.” Their recovery is facilitated by a new, unexpected, powerful identification with, and appreciation of, the flora and fauna living in the garden.  The transformation is most obvious in the character Colin, who largely through what he identifies as the “Magic” of the garden, transitions from believing he will soon die, to the firm conviction that  “I am going to live forever!”

And what, you might ask, has turned my attention to these two “children’s books” from the previous century? Not really a difficult question. The motivation for this double dose of kiddy-lit Valium is the recent horrific dosage of the murder of school children here in America. Aside from the fact that the guns in the most recent bouts of carnage were purchased “legally,” the other common element appears to be that the murderers believed that they were acting from a position of moral certainty and that their victims represented a threat to a preferred society anchored in their own moral certainty.  I have also recently watched a couple of documentaries on Curiosity Stream about the rise of Hitler and fascism in the early decades of the 20th century. The parallels between the fascists of history and our current domestic crop are obvious.

I find it sadly curious that my two comfort children’s books were written as the world was sliding towards the “war to end all wars,” which turned out to be anything but.  Still there is, I do believe, an ethical component to existence. But I am much less sanguine regarding the notion that we have stumbled upon it.  Louis Pasteur said "Chance favors only the prepared mind."  While he was addressing the necessity of preparation in scientific investigations; I would assert that it would not distort the axiom too greatly to consider its application to ethical and moral considerations: Ethical and moral clarity favors only the open mind.  I view with significant skepticism those hucksters, religious zealots, and politicians on the right and left fringes who assert they have found the “truth” and conveniently close their minds to options and ideas they have yet to encounter or consider.

The comfort I draw from both Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden is that they both, perhaps naively, take place in a world where compassion and gentility are more valued than power and coercion. True, it is a world seemingly alien to the one in which I actually live, but then the great religious and philosophical texts of our civilizations also seem to depict realities still seemingly beyond our grasp. 

An interesting experiment. Contact your representatives in Congress and inquire about their feelings regarding the state of current gun legislation. If they assert that current legislation is sufficient, you will have learned two things about them; one a probability, the other a certainty. The probability is that their election campaigns are supported by meaningful contributions from the NRA (the National Rifle Association, for those of you lucky enough to reside beyond their nefarious influence.) The certainty is that they are wrong. If they wish to cling to their belief that there is nothing amiss with current gun control legislation you might suggest that they visit cemeteries near to these locations:

ROBB ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL

SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL

MARYSVILLE-PILCHUCK HIGH SCHOOL

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA

SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

OIKOS UNIVERSITY

NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

VIRGINIA TECH

WEST NICKEL MINES AMISH SCHOOL

RED LAKE HIGH SCHOOL

COLUMBINE HIGH SCHOOL

There they will find the graves of the 169 students, from elementary school to college, for whom, since Columbine, the current legislation did not suffice.

Enabling Hatred

Since we seem to be unable to implement the idea of “love one and other” perhaps it is finally time to stop enabling hatred. It should come as no surprise that here in our totally technology dependent nation that we need to focus on controlling the technology that enables our inexcusable, world leading, rate of death by firearms - guns. According to the New York Times, the US counts 45,000 annual gun related deaths. I don’t think this is a statistic that should have anyone chanting “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

 Yes, I have heard the old NRA inspired excuse, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That is in some strange way true, but it ignores a vital lesson from history. The evolution of technology enables everything we do, everything we know. It was not so long ago - in the rather short history of humans on earth - that we believed we were the center of the universe. Uniquely blessed creatures on a uniquely favored piece of real estate comfortably located close to the one and only sun. And then Hans Lippershey invented the telescope back in 1608, and all bets were off. The constant evolution of optical and electronic telescopes since that point in time have brought us to the James Webb space telescope of today, peering back over light emitted 30 or 40 billion years ago, past countless stars and galaxies to help us understand the nature of our universe. Flip the telescope over and you have the microscope that revealed tiny creatures swimming around in blood, dirt, etc. A discovery that allowed us to shed the mysticism of shamans for the insights of science as we confront disease in the human body. 

Make no mistake about it, technology enables the capabilities of humanity - and we never voluntarily revert to last year’s model unless we discover that “the new way” carried unseen faults and danger. Albert Einstein - a world renowned pacifist - signed a letter, in August of 1939, to President Roosevelt encouraging the development of nuclear weapons to blunt Nazi efforts along those lines. After witnessing the previously unimaginable devastation caused by the bombing of Hiroshima, Einstein deeply regretted what he saw as his intellectual complicity in that desolation. But the atomic genie was out of the bottle, constrained only by intricate international agreements to stave off mutual self- destruction. Agreements whose fragility is being revealed by Putin’s raging. 

So technology is essentially culturally neutral, constrained only by legislation that defines its place in society. Now we have plastic guns that can be printed on 3D printers in the privacy of your own basement. We have legal kits to convert “legal” semi-automatic weapons into illegal fully automatic weapons. And, of course, we have the legal weapons used in the most recent atrocities at Robb Elementary School - deep in the heart of Texas, a state with some of the most lax gun control laws in the country. 

Now, again from the President to the coach of my Golden State Warriors, we are hearing cries of “Enough is enough!” It is time to reign in this deadly technology that is obviously out of control. I hope this latest round of indignation finally translates into meaningful legislation. But it is a hope I have hoped before. 

 In the meantime parents, teachers, pastors, rabbis, imams, big brothers and older sisters, teach the children well: Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.

The Secret Life of Trees

The Secret Life of Trees

Foster Harmony

 It is, perhaps, because this tenet is foundational to Distilled Harmony - my “path to appropriate living,” - that I find it so dismal when life unfolds in ways that are totally oppositional to it. The fact that the teenage murderer who killed 10 people and wounded 3 others in Buffalo, NY was a delusional racist white supremacist advocate of the “great replacement theory” allowed me to briefly hide behind the “He is insane. A kid blinded by the violent rhetoric of hate that seems almost everywhere in the world today. A crazy kid, an exception to the norm.” Then I learn about the 68-year old ethnic Chinese man in Southern California who murdered 1 and wounded 5 others during an attack on a church that was motivated by his hatred of people of Taiwanese descent. Well, there goes the crazy white teenager excuse.  Maybe everyone “out there in Southern California is crazy.” Then on the next link I get the latest from the war in Ukraine - which seems to have done the seemingly impossible by drawing republicans and democrats together, or mostly. This war is OK. 

Perhaps I am foolish to continue to believe - as Anne Frank, Dr. King, Mahatma Ghandi, Albert Einstein - and others far wiser than I, that deep down where it really matters, people are kind, caring, and compassionate. But it is getting harder. I am most frustrated by the incredible arrogance and false piety of contemporary religious leaders. I know of no faith that advocates something other than their version of “treat people the way you would like to be treated.” But somehow there are always implied exceptions. “Oh, you meant them too? I don’t know that I can go that far. They are, well, just different. Strange, you know?”

To clarify. Foster Harmony means foster harmony with everyone. And it starts at a personal level. You need to try to avoid personal disagreements - which is really hard especially here in the midst of the Covid pandemic. I am of the age and with a medical history that causes my oncologist to strongly suggest that I continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing in public and especially around children. I try my best.  Still I have folks point out to me that “you don’t need that anymore.”  My response? “I think I feel a cold coming on.” Much easier to lie than launch into a mask-muffled explanation. 

But here is a strange, admittedly bizarre, thought that is beginning to seem more plausible.  I was watching a documentary the other night - Netflix, I think the title was Unacknowledged. Anyhow, the basic assertion was that we - Earthlings, for lack of a better descriptor - have been in both direct and indirect communication with other far more advanced civilizations for several decades at least. These “unacknowledged” contacts have not been acknowledged - according to the documentary- for a variety of political reasons. But the one that struck me as most plausible was the assertion that “they” believed that we were, as a species, too violent and unreliable to be trusted to interact with these other far more advanced and - I assume - evolved civilizations.

They would, I muse, read one of my posts:

“Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, and Oppose Harm. Well, of course. And why don’t you do that?”

Dandelion

 It is a perfect day for dandelions, so I wandered out among them to look at a few.

While sitting on a bench I happened to look down and spied a tiny little gent - no more than an inch tall - striding amongst them. He was carrying an even smaller easel and a matching wooden case.

“My,” he murmured, with a slight Dutch accent, “look at all the sunflowers!” And opened his easel.

I slipped silently away so as not to disturb him, and made my way back to the asylum.

The Ultimate [Virtual] Video Game

Alright, let me assert right up front that none of us, even the youngest of the young, are not going to be around to play it, but I have a pretty good track record at predicting these future developments.   Back in 1998 I started an online children's publication company with a young novelist. We called it Chapter & Verse and had to build the whole site from scratch since no one else thought it was a good idea. Then Amazon and Barnes and Nobels swooped in, bye bye C&V.  Also, I was developing online courses years before the pandemic pushed education that way.  More recently, I was exploring marketing my images as Non-Fungible Tokens  - NFTs  - at least a couple of years before Dolly, and other less endowed pop and sports stars busted the field wide open. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

So why aren’t I as rich as Elon Musk? Well, that’s pretty simple. My strength is predicting. When it comes to taking the idea to market? The whole business side of things? Pretty clueless I’m afraid. But that isn’t a problem with this concept since, as I said, we won’t be around to play it. You know how prognosticators are always saying “So perhaps in 30 years, this that or the other thing, may become commonplace?” This is more like 300 years, if then. 

But let’s play with the idea.

First, we need to focus on the multiverse. Yup, here I go again. But I have been talking about the multiverse long before the silly movie about a multiverse of madness came out.  In truth, it may not be silly, I haven’t seen it. But the promos seem to be pushing PT Barnum's assertion that you could never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public.  

But to clarify, and greatly simplify, there are three dominant flavors of ideas about the multiverse:

Flavor one asserts that our "here and now" universe is just one of a bunch of universes that all came into being simultaneously at the Big Bang and have been independently floating off around in spacetime ever since.

Flavor two has little baby universes growing out of those independent universes, initially sharing characteristics with their parents, but eventually popping off to go their own way.

Flavor three, and the one I like best, and upon which my ultimate video game depends, is the “many worlds” version.  You can visualize this version by looking at a pine tree.  The tree has a central trunk from which other branches grow. The cool thing in this flavor of the multiverse is that when we make significant choices in our lives we determine the primary direction of the central trunk of our “here and now” universe. But all those other choices that we did not make - the paths not taken, if you will - branch out and continue off in “another world” version of what our life would have been had we made that choice. Whew.

OK. So here is how the video game would work, and the challenges that cause me to posit that it will be a long, long time coming. First, we would have to determine the bottom of the tree, the “where it all began point” of our particular "many worlds." Logically this would be when we were born, and could begin to make independent choices.  Then the game would have to move on up the tree to get an understanding of each branch of the tree - each “choice point” that, in addition to the choice we made leading to the "here and now" around us right now, set some new worlds spinning off our central trunk - the paths we did not take. I talked about this a bit in the last post where in one world I became a forest ranger, and in another married my 6th grade sweetheart, remember? All of those "paths not taken" would be contained in the ultimate video game - the UVG.  Or maybe better,  UVVG for the "ultimate virtual video game" because, the UVVG would allow you to visit each of those many worlds, follow each of the paths not taken, while still returning to the “real here and now” in which we actually exist. 

Or not. And that “or not” is why I push my game out centuries in the future, because without that default to your “real here and now” the game does begin to take on shades of psychosis with an accompanying potential for addiction that makes fentanyl seem like MMs. I mean odds are that as we traipse around in those very real seeming "many worlds" we are going to find one or many alternative worlds that seem quite preferable to the one we currently inhabit. Perhaps a "perfect world!" So why not stay? Well, at the moment my thinking is we cannot stay because we aren’t really there. It’s a game, an artificial construction.  Maybe like Scrooge in the George C. Scott 1984 A Christmas Carol movie - my favorite version - you would "be there", but nobody in that world could see you or interact with you.  And at some point you have to take off the VR googles, or the batteries run out, or something, and the UVVG ceases to function. But you remember that perfect world, and there you are like a kid stuck with their nose against the window of the candy store - seeing, remembering, knowing, but never being able to go in.

I have these visions of the opium dens of the 1800s where people lay around in a stupor living, but not really, in their particular drug-induced fantasy world.  Pick your own version of these personal, ultimately destructive, fantasies. There are plenty of them out there in myths and fictions. And sadly in contemporary real life, with the addicts aided by today's descendants of opium.  And it is this easy digital path to psychosis and addiction, not to mention the incredible technological and the science/physics challenges to be overcome, that forces me to push the UVVG out there centuries in the future.

But if we could do it right, safely, harmlessly, wouldn't it be awesome?

 

PPP: Macro Mystery

 Hi All -

My better half suggested that I post this with no description and see if you can guess what it is and suggest titles. I will post what I call it in a couple days. 😜

Thoughts on Age, Insomnia, and Quantum Mechanics

With age, I am beginning to realize, comes an increased inclination for us to sleep like babies. We squirm around, we whine, we need to pee and poop, and no sooner than we wake up, we want to eat and finally nap.  Given this unfortunate reality we devise strategies to confront our golden age insomnia. My own ploy is fan, temperature, and iPad based. The fan circulates a breeze of no more than say, 65 degrees. The iPad is my answer to “white noise” that some friends and family address with an actual fan, or garden fountain. I have an app on my iPad called NatureSpace: Holographic Audio, which has dozens and dozens of audio tracks - crickets, cicadas, streams, waves, storms, rain, trains, etc., etc., etc. You name it and it is probably there. Now the cool thing about NatureSpace is that you can “blend it with other apps.” Like your favorite music app, like Pandora or whatever. So I confront my golden age insomnia with a variety of audio blends - classical violins and gentle rain, piano and distant trains, and other possibilities almost endless.

And what you may well ask, does my better half think of this?  Well, headphones seemed a good option for awhile, but failed to address the: “Hey! You are snoring!” “I don’t snore! You snore!” “No I don’t!” “Tape me!” "Tape You!"  debate. Which often leads to the age appropriate luxury of different bedrooms. Yes, it is true. When the kids finally move out you don’t only lose all that laundry, you also gain an additional bedroom or two. But I digress.

So, I asked myself, what soporific environment am I trying to create with my iPad/fan/temperature manipulation?  A number of childhood memories eventually came drifting back. In the summer we kids would occasionally sleep out on the screened-in porch. The best nights had breezes, rain, even an occasional storm. Similarly, most summers the family would vacation at “cabin number 12 in the pines” at Tower Hill Camp on the shores of Lake Michigan. There too, we kids would bunk in the screened-in porch. Breezes in the pines, occasional rain showers. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that those sleep-inducing nights had followed me throughout my life; as a camper and then a counselor at scout camp in Ohio, as a counselor at a treatment ranch for “emotionally disturbed" 5 or 6 year-olds - my “itsy-bitsy-skitsies” - in Northern California, Scout camp in Austria. Nights with cool breezes, out in nature. Further, I came to realize that my current nighttime meditations would often send me drifting to those calming places and spaces. Sometimes inhabited, but just as often not. But I have recently come to understand that my “beat the insomnia” ritual is probably about much more than temperature and sound. It is about Harmony and the porous nature of existence.

Let me try to explain. Those perfect sleeping environments held no expectations for the future - those nights were somehow isolated in space and time. Perhaps the many worlds of spacetime? Floating? Harmonic? Protected? I’m not sure how to express it, They made the world go away? Or maybe made the world harmonic?

Which of course brought me back to Distilled Harmony. Back around 2000, in The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, I asserted that the unique “string” vibrations in our unique DNA determined the “chord” that defined us, and further determined whether we were in "harmony" or "discord" with the world in which we found ourselves at any particular point in time. People, places, sights, sounds, everything. We either hummed along harmonious in that moment of existence, or there were a lot of those “fingernails on the blackboard” moments - discord. Over the intervening years I have distilled those observations down to the four tenets of Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. It strikes me that my iPad and the fan moments are an obvious attempt to create at least some portion of those drowsy, soporific moments. But it further occurs to me that there may be more to it than that.

I remain intrigued with what seems to be the various special qualities of different types of sleep.  Why am I writing again here in tiny hours of the morning, knowing that even with my iPad and fan properly coordinated, were I to blank my screen and set the heating pad on low - did I mention the heating pad? - sleep would still be an hour or more away.  Yet, in mid-afternoon I can lay down my colored markers, and barely make it to my bed before sleep - often accompanied by technicolored dreams - overwhelms me.  No doubt a neurologist would offer an insightful medical explanation. Or a psychologist who would explain that I am still caught in a childhood mandate that I “should” sleep at night or Santa won’t come or whatever. While nap time is a time when I, as a retired adult with no lectures to prepare or research to pursue, can simply choose to sleep and hence do.  Could well be the case. But I am still more interested in what happens after I get to sleep, regardless of how I got there. Which is probably why I put so much effort in creating the ideal sleeping environment.

I am fascinated with the relationship between sleep and the “many worlds/quantum mechanics” issues I have mentioned here before. You see it seems quite reasonable to me that when we sleep - and the sleep scientists might provide some insight here as to when this might occur - we might well slip over the boundaries, perhaps through a personal "wormhole" between our many worlds and spend a little time in one of our alternative “worlds not chosen.” Neat idea, not?

So I am beginning to think of dreams, less as “dreams” and more as "quantum clusters" - sort of like cosmic candy bars, maybe mental mints.  They are, it seems reasonable to assume, unique otherworldly manifestations of Harmony, as reflected in the four tenets of Distilled Harmony.  Physicists tell us, although with less certainty it seems these days, that the laws of physics should manifest themselves consistently throughout the universe - as we know it.  It seems no less likely to assert that the tenets of Distilled Harmony are equally far-flung, with those very real seeming, hi-res, multicolored dreams being supportive data points.

Now, if I could only remember them better. 

Macro Silliness

Hi There -

Still getting used to the process, will try some more thoughtful constructions later with less stumbling around! 

Cheers!

PPP: Just an Update

 Hi there. A number of you have sent me a number of versions of this question:

"What do you do with all your images?"

It is a legitimate question, especially since I had to collapse the images that had hung in my office at NC State for 40 odd years. Large images 4'x3'. Stretched on canvas, maybe a dozen. They are now in the Raleigh house including my largest image in the master bath, maybe 5.5'x4.5 - well, the images that were on the sides of city buses were bigger 40 feet by something. But I don't have those. They hang in the Transportation Building in Raleigh.

So you see I do struggle with the "Whatcha gonna do with all those images?!"  Here in Burr Ridge, the upstairs walls are already taken, so I am limited to the walls here downstairs in my studio - or the cave - depending on your perspective. So I have figured out how to surround myself with at least the images created here:

Of course the problem is I have just purchased an iPhone 13 pro that has the macro photo capability. I have already begun doing silly things with it, which will quickly fill the wall behind me and force me to begin to expand to the walls across the room - lots of room there!

If any of you own - or have access to - a gallery that might be interested in relieving my logjam of images do let me know. These days the work of old white guys is not much in demand. I toyed with the idea of starting my own gallery called "Of a Certain Age."  However remembering how much work my partner and I put into our online children's publishing company, "Chapter and Verse" back in the late 1990s, starting another company sounded a whole lot like work with not much time left for drawing. So I'm moving away from that idea 😜.

Breezes Through the Wormholes of My Mind

It would all be much easier if

I knew the where and when of it all.

I’m not quite sure which particular

Physicist to blame for these various

Theoretical conundrums that

Keep me up until the tiny hours.

Two in particular are bothersome.

First, wormholes, far less prosaic

Than their unfortunate moniker.

Wormholes occur when two

Wildly separate lumps

Of space-time inadvertently

Bump up against each other.

“Oops, beg your pardon.”

“Not at all. No harm done,”

But as they spin off

To wherever and whenever

A cosmic spiderweb clings

To both, a closet swiped

From Narnia allowing

One to magically transverse

Across their now unimaginable

Spaces in but a single step or two.

Second, “many worlds.”

For which, it seems,

Quantum mechanics

Are to blame.

And do quantum mechanics

Wear quantum overalls?

Unimportant.

Important is the notion

That we exist in many

Worlds - simultaneously.

In grade school I took

A “placement test.”

Things, no doubt, no longer

Given for some curricular

Concern or another.

Mine, however, declared

I was to be a forest ranger.

I affected one of those

Smokey the Bear hats

For a while.

Unimportant.

What is important is that

According to “many worlds”

I did, in one of the “many worlds”

Perhaps by stepping

Through a wormhole,

Become a forest ranger.

Just as in another world

I did marry the pretty

French girl I met in

Fifth grade in Vienna

And I did become a Broadway

Musical star with Streisand

And on and on and on and on

Across the “many worlds”

Promised in this Hogwartian

View of the universe.

My problem is that I,

Thankfully I guess,

Only in my dreams,

Have a bit of trouble

Keeping the various worlds

Neatly separated.

Oops, some blended

Sagas lurking here.

It is just that:

A. The dreamed realities

Seem quite as real as

The waking realities.

And my inability to

Re-enter and edit the

Last few dream scenes is

Incredibly frustrating, and

B. Looking back on some

Choices I have made in

My “real-real” world

Makes me wonder

What world was I really

In at that moment?

Is it too late to apologize?

If so, I hope that

In yet another world’s

Version of that moment

I made a kinder, more gentle,

More harmonious choice.

So you can see why I began

By saying:

It would all be much easier if

I knew the where and when of it all.

Elsewhere and Elsewhen

The cemetery in Kalamazoo 

Had always been

A favorite spot.

Misty and mysterious,

Well-suited for all manner

Of personal and shared adventures

But the ghosts were well-restrained

Beneath pretentious monoliths

Wandering Raleigh proves

More complex.

Quantum years

Many worlds, many truths

Many lives

Flashes of faces now absented

My particular reality

Beckon to paths not taken

That have unfolded

This half century 

Yet

Elsewhere and Elsewhen 

Spotlights and footlights

Novels and poetry

Physics and philosophy

Achievements and errata

Lovers and adversaries 

Families and progeny 

Successes and failures

Ecstasy and despair 

Dreamed or lived

Elsewhere and Elsewhen.

If I Ran the Lab

Not sure how this will turn out.  It is buried back in a 22 year old file.  It is an obvious homage to Dr. Suess' "If I Ran the Zoo". I sent him a copy and he sent me a drawing of The Cat in the Hat with the caption "McNab runs a great lab, and so does Robert Schrag! Thanks for letting me see it.  Dr. Suess.

If I Ran the Lab

 

By

 

Robert L. Schrag 

“It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab,

“Though the egghead who runs it is really a crab.

And the work that they turn out’s not quality work,

‘Cause the Project Director’s a bit of a jerk.

But if I ran the lab, said weird Harold McNab,

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

As the genes they’ve been splicing ‘round here up ‘til now.

When it comes to strange genotypes, I’d show them how!!

 

First I’d change the lab’s name from ‘Ace Genes and Research’

To ‘Home of the Weirdest New Gene Types on Earth 

And the Strangest New Creatures in this Universe.’

As a name with a grab, that’s not really bad.

And each creature’s rear, when released from my lab

Would carry this label: New Genes by McNab. 

 

There’d be no starting small with bacteriumasis,

I’d jump right on in with a creature colossus

A beastie that started life out as a fungus,

Now stretches from Pittsburg to southwest Columbus.

I’ll call this new creature a Fermi-o-fump

‘Cause we’ll use it on Tuesdays for a nuclear dump.

And the glow that it gives for the rest of the week,

Reduces the oil we now buy from the Shiek.

 

I’d move on to grain the following morn,

And I’d whip up a Superdee-Popper-d’Corn,

A version that passes an elephant’s eye

And tops out in August at forty feet high!

With self-popping kernels of one pound or two,

And cobs, that when carved, make a nifty canoe,

The shucking’s made simple with an easy pull tab,

That grows on this nifty new corn by McNab!

 

And the Superdee-Popper-d’Corn’s not alone,

There’s another new corn-type that begs to be grown.

I’ll call it The Ultimate Cornflake Created

‘Cause the leaf on this monocot corn is mutated

To form cereal bowls for all those who’ve waited

For ready-made breakfasts, organic, prefab,

And grown from those fabulous genes by McNab.

 

They say rice is nice and easy to breed,

And here at McNab’s lab we’ll make what you need.

No domestic rice, all tamed down and mild,

Here in my lab I will start with rice wild.

Then we’ll splice in some genes from a hot chili pepper,

Add tomatoes, add onions, bring garlic you schlepper!

And when this new rice in the free open air grows,

You’ll smell why we named it McNab Rice Rancheros!

 

And wheat is quite neat, but it too is too bland.

So here at McNab lab we’ll all lend a hand

And whip up a wheat strain a touch more exciting 

Than wheats that are currently palates delighting.

First, amber wheat’s nice and is fabled in song,

But to leave it just amber is certainly wrong.

We need purple wheat and blue wheat, don’t y’know?

We will whip up a strain called Wheat Eau d’Rainbow!

Just think of the bread you could bake with this stuff!

Why MOMA’s main hall will not be big enough

To display all the wares that will end baked goods drab,

Another triumph for New Genes by McNab!

 

The next thing we folks at McNab’s lab will dare

Is to clone a whole forest from Grandma’s best chair.

We’ll not talk about copies or facsimiles,

But the very same genes from those very old trees,

The trees that were old when Abe Lincoln was young,

Good wood from the days when the country’d begun.

But don’t worry my Earth Friends, no logging’s in store

When a chair from New Genes by McNab hits the floor.

There’s been no clear cutting or practices grim,

We pick all our chairs from the end of a limb.

They grow right out there, in patterns quite fab,

All thanks to those coded New Genes by McNab. 

 

But it’s time to quit dealing with things vege-table,

Let’s move to the animal kingdom while able.

I’m sure there’re some beasties just waiting for life

To spring from McNab lab’s new gene splicing knife.

For example, the Porker d’Piggy His Nibs,

Engineered for the South, made completely of ribs,

And his littermate, Porker d’Piggy Foo Foo,

Who grows into two tons of pulled Bar BQ!

These swiney, so finey, are just the first stab,

At creating great beasts with New Genes by McNab.

 

But while pork is quite nice, and Pig Foo Foo’s divine,

For the kosher food market we will take a bovine,

And splice in the genes of the sea swimming salmon.

And the creature we get will be perfect, dear madam,

To serve at Bar Mitzvahs and Sisterhood talks

For where else could you find a nice brisket of lox?

And then when we mangae to pull this one off,

You will hear a great cheer – ‘To McNab! Mazel Tov!’

 

In addition to ethnic food one must, these days,

Meet the market demand for the holiday craze,

When dishes traditional must grace the table,

Whether or not the poor sous chef is able.

Thanksgiving’s a day that is tied to a feast,

But the cook in the kitchen just slaves like a beast!

There’s turkey and hams, mashed potatoes and yams,

For guests that your family hauled home in four trams!

And pies without number, pumpkin and mincemeat,

Put the finishing touch on this holiday treat.

But while the stuffed relatives roll out the door

The cooked-out old cook slowly slumps to the floor.

That’s how it once was, but McNab says, ‘No more!’

 

McNab’s new research has made such a break-through,

That a holiday meal is no task you must ache through.

By blending the genes of one fowl and two grains,

Add a couple of fruits, save the best from each strain,

We’ve created a creature that looks quite beserky,

It’s the Eight-Legged, Four-Breasted Self-Stuffing Turkey!

And it nests in the oven to save you more steps,

Laying eggs that taste just like fresh vegetable crepes.

So the main course and side dishes now hit the slab

In one beast, from those folks at New Genes by McNab!

 

But we won’t stop there with dessert to be made.

To ignore the last course fails to service the trade.

So we’ll whip up a plant called The-Pie-In-the-Sky

That grows out the window, six feet or so high.

And the pies that it grows have already been baked,

Boasting crusts upon which reputations are staked.

Plus, it’s crossed with a grasshopper so it is able

To walk cross the floor and hop up on the table.

There it’s served, like the rest of the meal, upon dishes

That are grown on the back of rare deep-diving fishes.

These dishes are cloned from some sweet English custard,

And are eaten at meal’s end with fine Spanish mustard.

 

When the last bite’s been eaten, Cook declares from a chair,

As well-fed descendants lounge ‘bout everywhere,

While a feeling of gratitude fills up the room,

‘Mid the lingering traces of dinner’s perfume,

‘Before all you kids start your games and your pranks,

To the Lord – and the folks at McNab’s – let’s give thanks.’

 

But the holidays come, at the most, once a year.

To make business sense it soon becomes clear

That McNab’s lab needs products so new and so strong

That the market demand remains high all year long.

So we’ll whip up more beasts with awesome new traits

That will leave all the other gene labs at the gate

When we introduce in our Fall catalog

Critters to set the whole country agog!

 

There’s the Grid-Lock-Reducer, a sort of a mammal,

A new type of gene type, an urban type camel

With legs well-designed to stride over the autos

That tie the world up in mechanical knotos!

It’s a creature that sees by both day and by night,

And in really tight places can even take flight,

Thanks to the genes of the Humbird Gigantus

That we dredged from the mud of mighty Atlantis!

 

And the Fast-Food-o’Fetcher’s a wonderful beast

With forty-eight Kangaroo pouches, at least,

To keep hot food hot, and to keep cold food cold,

That feature alone’s worth the beast’s weight in gold.

But we didn’t stop there, though we could have stopped, brudder,

Instead, in each pouch we designed a small udder

With spigots for ketchup and mustard and mayo

And an optional tap for the sauce of the day-o!

We think it’s a beast that you’ll find is ideal

To send out to fetch you a fine fast food meal!

 

For sub-urban folks we’ve designed a new steed,

That we modestly think is the best of the breed

For yard work and gardens that need some up-keeping

This beast the whole countryside soon will be sweeping.

It’s an Ovis-d’Bunny-cum-Elephantatus,

And wait ‘til you see what this creature has brought us!

Part sheep, it keeps lawns and curbsides neatly trimmed,

The bunny gene’s spliced upside down on a whim,

That causes the critter in vegetable beds,

To avoid eating veggies – it plants them instead!

And our garden consultant assures us it’s wiser

To use, in the place of some chem fertilizer,

An organic source of good food for the plants,

Hence, all of the genes from those huge elephants.”

 

“Soooooo. It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab.

“Though the stuff that they turn out is still far too drab.

I would sprinkle the world with some creatures quite fab.

Ah, I certainly would – if I ran the lab.”