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We love our pain—if it doesn't kill me, it makes me stronger—even as we do almost anything to be rid of pain—billions upon billions spent each year on analgesics, not to mention alcohol, chocolates, pornography. Pain—the unpleasant visitor who won't go away because he's really not an outsider at all. … Would we really know day without night, summer without autumn, pleasure without pain? Answer in one hundred words or less; take as long as you like

just let me hear some of that rock and roll music any old way you choose it it's got a back beat-you can't lose it any old way you use it it's got to be rock-roll music if you want to dance with me CHUCK BERRY Before I finished college, I knew I wanted to be a writer. At the very least, I knew I wanted to live in Paris in the 1920s, partake of the moveable feast, drink exotic drinks, and do it all so well, and, oh yes, by the way, I wanted to write brilliantly, effortlessly. My plan to accomplish this goal, at least as close as one could get in the last quarter of the twentieth century, was simple: win fame and fortune as musician, a singer-songwriter. The fame would create an instant market for my books, and the fortune would support both the writing and the absinthe. It was a good plan-the value of the marketing plan has been proven again and again, by celebrities of all stripes, though certainly not by me. The plan was fine-it just did not work. A big problem was that I had no idea how to execute Step One. Perhaps if I worked hard on my playing and singing, that would work. Perhaps if I wrote a lot of songs, songs as good as I could make them. Perhaps if I hated disco enough. Perhaps if I played for hours every day, took every gig I could find, played saloons for a drink, or a dollar, or nothing, perhaps if I did it night after night, perhaps if I played church basements, sidewalks, cafeterias, lobbies of buildings. Perhaps I could figure it all out by myself. Perhaps not. But I learned things, I learned so much, so much that I did not know I was learning, so much I did not know I needed to learn. Poetry is dying again. Or perhaps it is dead-I can never keep it straight. Poetry has been dying for decades. Just back in September John Barr, the investment banker and poet who is president of the deep-pockets Poetry Foundation, told us that-you guessed it-universities, with their blurry lit-crit and especially their MFA programs, universities killed poetry. Maybe he has a point with lit-crit. Poetry has been dying for centuries-it may be the longest death chronicled in history. In Dante's day, in Horace's, in Ovid's, in Sappho's, people were bemoaning that they don't make them like they used to. Vergil? Homer was better, though his work was derivative too. Just ask Milman Parry. It is a variety of things that kill poetry, according to the wise ones who see so clearly the death that the rest of us miss. Technology, poor morals, poor teaching, too much teaching, too much license-all have been blamed for the demise of this art form that just keeps going no matter what we say about it. We humans are one big input/output system: things go in, things come out. It's a constant process, which starts before we're born and carries on after we're gone, whatever, exactly, we decide makes up that 'we.' Or perhaps we can be better described as a system of systems. Take in air; put out air, maybe with a touch less oxygen, a little more carbon dioxide, the smell of garlic, the sweetness of a baby's breath. Water, milk, tea, whiskey in; pee out. Food in-you get the sequence. For almost all of us, almost all the time, we do not have to think about it much; it just happens. To its own rhythm, which sometimes we can influence, perhaps even control, for a while, in a way. But the rhythm, by and large, exists outside our control. Rhythm is a part of us, maybe even the heart of us, but we are a part of it, too, localized concentrations of matter and energy, which, physics tell us, are fundamentally vibrations, which are, fundamentally, rhythm. We are rhythm, baby. Let's do it. Robert Frost, arguably the most famous and most popular American poet of the twentieth century, if not history, likened free verse-verse written outside of set forms, verse written apart from strict meter or rhyme-to playing tennis with the net down. Which is not playing tennis at all, but rather playing something tennis-like. …

Safe and economical disposal of paper mill sludge is a key consideration for forest products industry. A study was conducted to examine the effects of amendments of sludge and nutrients on soil surface CO2 flux (Rs) in northern hardwood forests and to quantify the relat among R5, soil temperature, and moisture in these stands. The experiment was a randomized complete block design that included sludge-amended, fertilized, and control treatments in sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh) dominated hardwood forests in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, USA. Results showed that Rs was positively correlated to soil temperature (R2=0.80, p

Aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and soil and vegetation nutrient concentrations were measured in pole-sized northern hardwood and aspen forests to quantify the potential for various nutrient amendments to increase tree growth, as well as potential deleterious effects on vegetation. Four blocks were installed in each forest type containing the following treatments: control, N+Ca+Mg+K+P+S (complete), wood-fired boiler ash (ash), N+wood-fired boiler ash (N+ash), and two rates of paper mill sludge (sludge and 2× sludge). The northern hardwood forests had three additional treatments: N, Ca+Mg+K (base cations), and N+Ca+Mg+K (N+base cations). Fertilizer treatments were designed to provide N at a rate of 100 kg ha−1. Other nutrients were applied in proportion to N so that N, P, K, S, Mg, and Ca were applied at a ratio of 100:50:33:9:5:4, respectively. Total ANPP was not significantly different among treatments for the maple stands, but plots treated with wood ash were 10% greater than controls. ANPP was greater in 1998 and 1999 for aspen plots receiving N+ash, but results were only statistically significant (p=0.013) in 1999. Basal area differed by 40–60% among experimental plots within any given block and was positively correlated to wood increment. Wood increment, adjusted for basal area, did not differ significantly among treatments for the aspen stands, but the N+ash treatment was 30% greater than the control. A two-way factorial comparison indicated that ash had a significant (p=0.024) positive effect on wood increment and N had a significant (p=0.044) negative effect on wood increment for the maple stands. Tree growth was not correlated to foliar nutrient concentrations, but ratios of K to other elements (K:Ca, K:Mg, K:N, and K:P) were highest, on average, for wood ash plots. These differences were not statistically significant with the exception of K:N for the aspen stands and K:Ca for the maple stands. We did not observe any beneficial effects of paper mill sludge on forest growth, but there was some evidence that wood ash increased annual wood production.

Title(s): Manifest Destiny, Personal Improvement, Not Dead Yet, Obviously Jim Ferris is an award-winning poet and disability studies scholar. His poetry collections include The Hospital Poems and Facts of Life. Past president of the Society for Disability Studies, he teaches disability studies and communication arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In Fall 2008 Ferris will assume the Ability Center of Greater Toledo Endowed Chair in Disability Studies at the University of Toledo.

Forest ecosystems across the Northwoods will face direct and indirect impacts from a changing climate over the 21st century. This assessment evaluates the vulnerability of forest ecosystems in the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province of northern Wisconsin and western Upper Michigan under a range of future climates. Information on current forest conditions, observed climate trends, projected climate changes, and impacts to forest ecosystems was considered in order to assess vulnerability to climate change. Upland spruce-fir, lowland conifers, aspen-birch, lowland-riparian hardwoods, and red pine forests were determined to be the most vulnerable ecosystems. White pine and oak forests were perceived as less vulnerable to projected changes in climate. These projected changes in climate and the associated impacts and vulnerabilities will have important implications for economically valuable timber species, forest-dependent wildlife and plants, recreation, and long-term natural resource planning.

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A new scheme of bundling National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) booklets, vertical bundling, was proposed in this study to overcome the limitations of the traditional methodology on booklet pairing balance and bundle length choice. This study compared the vertical scheme with the horizontal scheme through simulations using the 2002 NAEP spiral plans for Reading and Writing assessments. The results showed that the vertical scheme not only had flexibility with respect to bundle length, it also demonstrated potential for reducing the required number of different bundles, decreasing book wastage, and improving balance of within-session booklet pairings. On the other hand, it inflated within-session booklet duplication to some extent compared to the horizontal approach, a relatively small trade-off for improved balance of booklet pairings.