PO BIZ: It's not everyone who can take their first published book of poetry to the printer in the morning and have dinner with the U.S. poet laureate in the evening. But that's the kind of day Saratogan Mary Lou Taylor had last week.
Her first book, a collection of her poetry called The Fringes of Hollywood, comes out Nov. 18. The publisher is Jacaranda Press. As a board member of San José State University's Center for Literary Arts, Taylor was invited to have dinner with Billy Collins, U.S. poet laureate, when he was in town for a couple of readings at San José State in late October. 'Twas a Thai dinner at a professor's house.
Collins is often described as the most popular poet laureate since Robert Frost. The word "accessible" is used for Collins because he often writes about very common things with uncommon, empathetic twists. He prefers the word "hospitable" to accessible, however. Accessible makes him sound less human, more like an object—a road or a mountain the reader is about to climb.
Collins is also renowned for his sly sense of humor. How is it, he wonders in one poem, that the three blind mice could get together in the first place, being sightless as they are? And then, where do they get the motivation to run after anyone's wife, much less someone as practiced at knife wielding as a farmer's wife? And to what end? To have their tails whacked off, no less. The picture of sightless, tail-less mice draws considerable sympathy from this poet. Indeed, he calls one of his lifelong themes that of empathy.
At the San José State reading, when asked how his life had been changed by being named poet laureate, Collins replied that now, when he has a down day, he can often lift his spirits by saying to himself, "Hey, how bad can it be? I'm the poet laureate!"
RELATIONS WITH INDIA: Consul General of India H.H.L. Viswanathan spoke at a recent Saratoga Rotary Club meeting about relations between the United States and his country. Though historically the relationship has been rocky because of the Cold War, relations are recently much improved because each country recognizes its dependence on the other.
India is looking for investors' money; the United States is looking for an ally in that part of the world. Citing recent, combined military operations—one in Alaska and one off Indian shores—Viswanathan said such a joint venture would have been inconceivable just a few years ago.
Since nuclear engineering, biotechnology and information technology are all big businesses in India, that should make the United States and India natural allies. The United States is India's largest investor.
India has been de-hyphenated in the past few years, Viswanathan said. The United States used to think in terms of India-Pakistan; now people no longer lump the two countries together in their thinking. In the future, relations between nations will be value-based, he said, since all nations are becoming increasingly multicultural, multilingual.
U.S. goods are manufactured in China, rather than India, because the cost in India is higher, despite the fact that Indian workers are paid less than are those in China. It's a bafflement that hasn't been figured out yet.
The garment industry is currently moving from government to private ownership. This privatization should ultimately erase the Indian black market, but that eradication will take a number of years. Overpopulation, lack of education and unemployment are ongoing problems and vary widely from state to state. Some states have an enviable 100 percent literacy.
VIOLIN SOLOIST: Saratogan Catherine Chiu, 12, will be the violin soloist at two concerts this weekend—Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m. at the Congregational Community Church in Sunnyvale and Nov. 17 at 2 p.m. at Cubberley Theater in Palo Alto. Catherine is part of the Galbraith Honor Strings.
The strings group will be performing works by Mozart and Boyce, among others, with the Sinfonietta Orchestra. Catherine is a seventh-grader at Challenger School in Sunnyvale and, besides music, is enthused about tennis, swimming and golf.
CRACKING ENEMY CODES: Marilyn and Bob Cross find it fascinating to learn how the United States cracked enemy codes in World War II and have taken two Elderhostel trips with code cracking as the gist of the study. Last year they went to the island of Midway to study how the Japanese code was broken.
This year they were off to England to explore how the German code was cracked. The most amazing thing to the Crosses was how the 12,000 Brits involved kept the secret of the Enigma Project. Even today some haven't told their spouses they were part of the covert operations at Bletchley Park.
BIRDING BY THE BAY: Freddy Howell of the Wild Bird Center in Los Gatos will give a slide show on local birds and birding Nov. 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Los Gatos Town Council chambers. The lecture is presented by the Friends of the Los Gatos Library.
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By Mary Ann Cook