Building low-cost lab equipment using LEGOs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an interesting article by Diane N. Jung, Kailey E. Shara, and Carson J. Brunsat at PLoS One on August 12, 2025 titled LEGO as a versatile platform for building reconfigurable low-cost lab equipment. They discuss three creative examples, as is shown above in Figure 5 of that article. They are an orbital shaker, a syringe pump, and a microcentrifuge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pump shown in detail via Figure 1, which has a motor and gear drive that push to empty syringes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

A second is an orbital shaker, shown above in Figure 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third is a microcentrifuge, shown above in Figure 3, which has arms for holding spinning tubes.

 

There is a second article by Elizabeth Fernandez at the MIT Technology Review on June 25, 2024 titled Lego bricks are making science more accessible. It begins by showing a cell stretcher.

 

 

Using histograms for visualizing statistics from playing a hundred games of solitaire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It often is helpful to show the details of data rather than just a mean and standard deviation. Recently I played a hundred games of Solitaire to generate the game times shown above via a histogram (created using Excel with bins ten seconds wide). The mean time to complete a game is 221 seconds (3 minutes and 41 seconds), and the standard deviation is 31 seconds. But the range goes from 160 to 335 seconds. The distribution is roughly symmetrical, with three longer outliers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also kept track of the number of moves per game, as shown above via another histogram using a bin width of five. The mean is 133 moves, and the standard deviation is 13 moves. The range goes from 116 to 170 moves. The distribution is skewed positively (to the right) with two outliers.

 

A very good book on how to read a room

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a very good 2025 book by Dr. Mike Bechtle titled How to Read a Room: Navigate any situation, lead with confidence, and create an impact at work. His

chapter titles [and starting pages] are:

 

Introduction [9]

1] Why it matters [13]

 

Part 1 The Three Essentials (for Success) [21]

2] Master Your Mindset – You Can Do this [25]

3] Master the Process – It’s Worth the Effort [35]

4] Master Your Perceptions – You Can learn to See Others Accurately [45]

 

Part 2 How to Read a Room (for Confidence) [57]

5] Observe the Setting, Part 1 – Get the Big Picture [61]

6] Observe the Setting, Part 2 – Get the Small Picture [69]

7] Engage with People, Part 1 – Connect with Anyone [81]

8] Seven Engage with People, Part 2 – Converse with Anyone [91]

9] Plan Your Approach – Customize Your Strategy [103]

10] Execute Your Strategy – Work the Room [115]

 

Part 3 How to Lead a Room (for Influence) [125]

11] Leading the Room [129]

12] Leading by Influence in a Virtual Room [139]

13] Leading by Influence from the Front of the Room [151]

14] Leading by Influence through Written Communication [163]

 

Part 4 How to Serve a Room (for Impact) [173]

15] The Life-Changing Vision for Serving a Room [177]

16] The Challenge of Change [185]

17] Ten Steps Down into Greatness [193]

18] Legacy Time [205]

 

Conclusion [211]   

 

At the end of Part 2, on pages 120 to 122, he finally describes these twelve things (which you can find at Google Books):

 

How to Work the Room: The Basics

 

So, what are the most important things to consider when you’re ready to jump in and work the room? Here are some ingredients you can easily adapt to your own style and personality. They’re not a guaranteed approach but rather reflect commonsense things that humans respond to.

 

Smile. I mentioned this one earlier, but when we’re nervous, we usually don’t know how other people see us. The simplest way to show that you’re open for conversation is to smile whenever you make eye contact with another person. It’s a universal connecting point. Don’t be like the person avoiding eye contact on a bus so no one will choose the seat next to them.

 

Pay attention. When you’re talking to someone, give them direct eye contact to show you’re listening. Ask deeper questions to explore what they said. Don’t glance at the door or over their shoulder. If you’re ready to end the conversation, wrap it up graciously while still being completely attentive, then move on.

 

Encourage honesty. Avoid flattery like a pandemic, Share encouragement and things you admire and respect about them, but only if it’s completely honest, People sense flattery, and it builds a barrier between you.

 

Assume that others want to connect at a large event. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be there. It’s not risky; the worst thing that can happen is that they don’t engage, and you can move on. The best thing that can happen is that you’ll make a new friend.

 

Talk about them. Make them comfortable by focusing on what they’re saying instead of one-upping them with your own story. If they ask, respond. But in general, focus on them. They’ll remember you for it.

 

Say thanks. If there’s a genuine reason for gratitude, don’t just feel it – express it. Your casual, honest affirmation can make someone’s entire week because they probably didn’t know their words or actions had impact. Be the person who makes a difference.

 

Be generous. If there’s a resource you can provide or someone you can introduce them to, do it. If you connect them with things and people they can benefit from, you’ve gone up in value with them.

 

Focus on names. When you hear someone’s name, repeat it. If it’s a name that’s tough for you to pronounce, ask them for help. Names are important to people, and they’ll appreciate the effort to get them right. When meeting someone you haven’t seen for a long time, don’t assume they remember your name; reintroduce yourself.

 

Follow up. If you make a positive connection with someone and want to stay in touch, send an invitation via LinkedIn or another appropriate site as soon as possible after the event. Don’t accept their invitation to lunch or coffee under pressure if you know it’s not going to happen. Just say, ‘I don’t want to say yes now and not be able to make it happen. Let’s stay in touch on LinkedIn and go from there.’

 

Plan on learning something new. Each person you connect with has a unique experience and background. If you’re meeting them for the first time, it will all be new. If they are a colleague you work with every day, don’t assume you know everything about them. Make it your goal to dig deeper and glean something you don’t know. You’ll be enriched by it, and they’ll respect you for drawing it out.

 

Approach non-celebrities. It’s tempting to try to connect with the key players in a room, but the most meaningful connections often come from those who others aren’t approaching. They might be quieter on the outside but noisy on the inside – filled with rich experiences and ideas that haven’t been tapped.

 

Stay positive. Your attitude will set the tone for the conversation. Don’t get sucked into negative talk; divert them into a focus on the positive, optimistic side. You have the ability to influence the way people feel with your approach.

 

The cartoon showing a group of workers came from OpenClipArt.

 

 

Ten simple rules for attending your first scientific conference

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a useful article by Elizabeth Leininger et al. in PLoS Computational Biology for July 15, 2021 titled Ten simple rules for attending your first conference. That article is a 13-page pdf with 23 references. Their discussion includes both in-person and virtual scientific conferences, and advice for mentors. Those ten rules are:

 

Rule 1: Select a conference that aligns with your goals.

Rule 2: Find others to foot the bill.

Rule 3: Know your logistics.

Rule 4: Prepare for the environment.

Rule 5: Learn how to take in the science.

Rule 6: Make a conference strategy.

Rule 7: Make new friends but keep the old; be ready to communicate.

Rule 8: Prepare to (safely) get out of your comfort zone.

Rule 9: Take charge of your social interactions.

Rule 10: Tie up loose ends after the conference.

 

Under Rule 6: Make a conference strategy the third paragraph says:

 

“How do you prioritize what to attend? First, it is good to attend keynote and panel sessions as they provide perspective into the wider concerns of your field and often are forward looking to emerging challenges. Second, definitely attend technical presentations related to your specific area of focus in order to know what research is being done and become part of that community of researchers. Reading papers or watching videos in advance and thinking what questions you might like to ask about the work are great ways to prepare so that you can contribute to the discussion in a positive way. Third, the poster sessions are often short, so make sure you know which posters you want to visit while the presenter is there. Fourth, if the conference offers any first-time or new attendee events, plan on attending those as you will make some connections with other attendees that will make the conference more enjoyable and less lonely. Finally, attending the networking events (see Rule 7) helps you get to know your colleagues as individuals on a personal level (not all discussions are about the research) and also exchanging your research ideas.”

 

And there also is an 18-page pdf article from 2025 at Thompson Rivers University titled The Student Presenter’s Guide to Conferences.

 

On September 7, 2025 I blogged about another article from PLoS Computational Biology  on Ten simple rules for improving communication among scientists.

 

The graphic was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

How many members and clubs does Toastmasters International currently have?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On October 3, 2024 I blogged about how In 2024 membership in Toastmasters International finally began to grow again, after having dropped for three years in a row. In August 2025 Toastmasters International released a 26-page CEO Report as a pdf. As shown above (on page 6), from 2024 to 2025 membership dropped slightly again by 7,077 from 272,338 members to 265,261 members. (From 2021 to 2025 membership dropped by 11.6% or 34,945. At the end of 2020 it had hit a peak of 364,212).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Also, as shown above (on page 8), the number of clubs had dropped from 15,875 in 2021 to 13,833 in 2025. The number for 2025 was just slightly below (13) the 13,846 for 2024. At the end of 2019 it had hit a peak of 16,856.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, as shown above (on page 11), the average number of members in a club rose from 16.5 in 2022 to 17.9 in 2025.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

Some demographics are shown on page 19. The most common age group, shown above, is 35 to 44 (22.4%). Only 4% are aged 18 to 24, but 19.7% are over 65.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most common education level, shown above, is a Bachelor’s degree (38.7%). The current status of Toastmasters is relatively stagnant.

 

 

Seven tips on how to write a great speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent short article by Kulamkan Kulasegaram, Douglas Buller, and Cynthis Whitehead in Perspectives on Medical Education on pages 270 to 272 of the July 13, 2017 issue titled Taking presentations seriously: Invoking narrative craft in academic talks. They give the following seven speechwriting tips:

 

1] The act of writing a presentation can yield a clear academic presentation and provide clarity on the topic of presentation.

 

2] Work backwards from key message or conclusion you want the audience to understand at the talk.

 

3] Plot the most efficient and engaging route to this conclusion when writing your presentation. Remove extraneous information that distracts from this conclusion; focus the presentation on the salient points that lead up to your conclusion.

 

4] Each element of the presentation must serve the dual purpose of conveying information and facilitating engagement with the presentation. The effectiveness of conveying information depends on the level of engagement or interaction with the audience.

 

5] Interaction with the audience in a talk means engaging their attention and memory on the concept(s) you wish to convey.

 

6] You can more effectively engage with the audience by designing your talk around instructional design and information processing principles that address the audience members’ capacities for attention and memory.

 

7] Creating presentations is an exercise in creating meaning out of slides, words, and concepts. Revisit your talk once you have completed it and evaluate whether the meaning you want to convey is delivered effectively through the elements of your presentation.

 

The image was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Ten simple rules for improving communication among scientists

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent 14-page article by Carla Bautista et al. in PLoS Computational Biology on June 23, 2022 titled Ten simple rules for improving communication among scientists. It has six authors and 31 references. Those ten rules can be grouped into three areas: Speak, Join, and Assess, as is outlined and shown above [Figure 1]:

 

  1] Know your audience

  2] Use social media

  3] Listen how other scientists present their work

  4] Network with scientists and ask for feedback

  5] Get involved with scientific organizations

  6] Create opportunities to practice public speaking

  7] Organize scientific meetings

  8] Identify and enroll in scientific activities

  9] Collaborate with other scientists

10] Pace yourself! Don’t overcommit

 

The sixth section begins:

“Scientists communicate about their research throughout their careers. Learning how to give talks of different lengths and for a variety of audiences is an essential skill. Many platforms offer different types of talks for diverse audiences (e.g., the general public or more specialized audiences) and environments (e.g., academic or less formal interactions). Practicing your public speaking with diverse audiences and settings will teach you to adapt your presentation style and goals for each public speaking engagement. The presentation format is also essential; for example, poster presentations are generally more interactive and a presenter might be stopped and asked questions providing more room for discussion.

Practicing to communicate with broader audiences and communicating your topic without jargon will improve communication with fellow scientists (see Rule 4, especially with those outside your field of study. Therefore, aim to find places (or organize them yourself, see Rule 7) where you can practice presenting longer 1-hour talks or shorter 15-minute seminar-style presentations.”

 

 

 

 

Cracker Barrel made their new logo too abstract and then they dropped it

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old logo for the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain has founder Dave Evin’s Uncle Herschel nostalgically sitting in a wooden chair next to a barrel, as is shown above on the wall of their Boise location.

 

A press release on August 19, 2025 at PR Newswire titled Cracker Barrel Teams up with Country Music Star Jordan Davis to Invite Guests to Discover “All the More” this Fall described the abstract new logo:

 

“Its more popular menu offerings like farm fresh scrambled eggs and buttermilk biscuits even serve as inspiration behind the hues of a refreshed color palette featured in the new campaign. Anchored in Cracker Barrel's signature gold and brown tones, the updated visuals will appear across menus and marketing collateral, including the fifth evolution of the brand's logo, which is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That new logo with the sideways barrel and minus hoops (shown above) was so abstract that the Wikimedia Commons web page said:

 

“This logo image consists only of simple geometric shapes or text. It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I squeezed it, squared off the bottom and top, and added a pair of hoops to produce the more recognizable version shown above.

 

The new logo got a lot of negative feedback, and it quickly was dumped. For example, an article by Lorraine Taylor at Fox News on August 22, 2025 is titled Cracker Barrel faces customer criticism after ditching iconic 48-year-old logo for new design. A second article by Ali Abbas Ahmadi at BBC News on August 26, 2025 is titled US restaurant chain Cracker Barrel scraps new logo after backlash. A third article by Megan Cerullo at CBS News Moneywatch on August 27, 2025 is titled Cracker Barrel refreshed its logo and paid the price. Here’s what brand experts say went wrong. Experts said they went generic and severed the logo from its roots. A fourth article by Sarah Fortinsky at The Hill on August 27, 2025 is titled White House claims credit after Cracker Barrel reverts logo.

 

 

How to construct and deliver an elevator pitch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An elevator pitch is a brief marketing speech that provides a synopsis of who you are and what you do. There is an excellent specialized article by Leslie A. Caromile et al. at the BMC Proceedings on November 26, 2024 titled How to construct and deliver an elevator pitch: a formula for the research scientist. It has links to the following six figures:

 

Purpose of elevator speech [Figure 1]

Analyze your audience [Figure 2]

Context of elevator speech [Figure 3]

Developing a scientific elevator speech [Figure 4]

Major components [Figure 5]

Example [Figure 6]

 

A blog post at Northeastern University Online MBA on September 9, 2024 is titled 7 Essential Tips for Crafting a Winning Elevator Pitch. They are:

 

Identify your goal

Understand your audience

Keep it concise and clear

Tell a story

End strong

Practice and refine

Be confident

 

There also is another post at the UMass Amherst Iconnect blog on September 20, 2024 titled How to Give a Great Elevator Speech (With Examples) which has the following sections:

 

How to Write an Elevator Pitch

Who are you?

What do do?

What’s unique about you?

Call to action (or What’s your ask?)

Something memorable

 

Finally, there is an undated three-page pdf article from the Princeton University Center for Career Development titled What is an elevator pitch and why do I need one?

 

The elevator door image was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An interesting book by Emily Kasriel on Deep Listening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been looking at an interesting book from 2025 by Emily Kasriel titled Deep Listening: Transform Your Relationships with Family, Friends, and Foes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pages 10 and 11 in the Amazon sample list the eight steps shown above. They are described as follows:

 

Step One: Create Space. [Pages 83 to 106]. You begin by creating a place of psychological safety for your speaker. There are also physical changes you can make to your environment, so a conversation feels effortless. Your ambition: your speaker feels cherished and inspired to explore new ideas.

 

Step Two: Listen to Yourself First. [Pages 107 to 132].  You can’t be open to listening to others until you truly listen to yourself. This step explains how you can begin to forge a more positive relationship to your family of shadows, the unacceptable parts of yourself, so they no longer hijack your most important encounters.

 

Step Three: Be Present. [Pages 133 to 157].  This step will delve into an elliptical yet impactful aspect of Deep Listening – your presence, which transforms standard listening into a profound encounter. We explore what presence is, and how you can cultivate it to tackle the internal and external distractions that obstruct true listening.

 

Step Four: Be Curious. [Pages 159 to 186].  Here we unpack the qualities you project towards your speaker: curiosity, empathy, awareness of judgements and respect. Acknowledging that you don’t already know what’s in the mind of your speaker can be transformative.

 

Step Five: Hold the Gaze. [Pages 187 to 206]. This step explores the power of a steady, warm-hearted gaze and other non-verbal cues to communicate to your speaker that they are being heard. We explore how far you can read your speaker’s body language, facial expression and tone to understand what they are not expressing directly.

 

Step Six: Hold the Silence. [Pages 207 to 227]. In this step we unravel the many types of silence and the reasons why you may resist a pause. How can you use a rich stillness to centre yourself and signal to your speaker your true respect, giving them the space to think, reflect and share?

 

Step Seven: Reflect Back. [Pages 229 to 254]. Here we uncover how to crystallise what you’re hearing and reflect it back to your speaker. What are the clues that can guide you as you check your understanding of the meaning of what your speaker has conveyed, directly and between the lines?

 

 Step Eight: Go Deeper. [Pages 255 to 279]. This step explains how your listening can illuminate what ordinarily is hidden – your speaker’s deeper narrative. This deeper narrative is vital to understanding your speaker – and can include their unexpressed needs and whether their emotions are in harmony or alive with contradictions.

 

Each chapter has a list of takeaways. For example:

 

CREATE SPACE TAKEAWAYS – page 105

 

Find or create a place of safety | One where your speaker will feel free from any physical or psychological threat.

 

Contract to cultivate trust | Be transparent at the outset, clarify your intentions. Address how long the conversation is expected to last and what happens with any shared information, if relevant.

 

Listen before you speak | Unless you are habitually silenced in this relationship.

 

Get the physical setting right | Avoid glass and metal, which create bad echoes, and seek out wood and fabric. Choose warmer coloured diffused lighting and stay away from the harshness of overhead and blue-white light.

 

Ensure you are both rested and fed | Before an important conversation.

 

Adjust your position or take a journey | sit at an angle of 60 degrees to your speaker or walk with a slow rhythm so you are in sync with your bodies and each other.

 

Turn to nature | Nature can be an enriching setting for a difficult encounter, providing soft fascination and dissolving stress.

 

Earlier Emily briefly described Deep Listening in a feature article in the Winter 2022 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

 

My spiral was adapted from this art deco image at OpenClipArt.

 

Contrails are real, chemtrails are nonsense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on June 27, 2020 I blogged about Contrails or chemtrails? I said that chemtrails were a conspiracy theory and nonsense.

 

There is an article by Benjamin Radford on July 25, 2025 at the Skeptical Inquirer titled EPA Debunks Chemtrails. And there is a second article by Mick West in the January/February 2024 issue titled What Happened to Chemtrails?

 

A news release from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on July 10, 2025 is titled EPA Releases New Online Resource Giving Total Transparency on the Issues of Geoengineering and Chemtrails. There is a 4-page pdf on July 18, 2025 titled Contrails Fact Sheet. And there is a web page updated July 22, 2025 titled Information on Contrails from Aircraft. It has sections with the following titles:

 

What are contrails?

How do contrails form?

How long do contrails last?

Research on the environmental impacts of contrails

What are ‘chemtrails’?

What is intentionally sprayed from airplanes?

Are contrails related to geoengineering or weather modification?

What is HAARP and is it related to contrails, geoengineering or weather modification?

 

Yet there is an article from Kate Plummer at Newsweek on June 3, 2025 titled Map Shows States Trying to Ban ‘Chemtrails’. Nine are Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas.

 

Earlier on March 19, 2021 Lana Del Ray released an album titled Chemtrails Over the Country Club that has a Wikipedia page. Her title song, which has a YouTube video, says:

 

“Me and my sister just playing it cool
Under the chemtrails over the country club.”

 

Finally, there is an article by Ron Smith at the Royal Aeronautical Society on April 14, 2023 titled ‘Chemtrails’ debunked that has sections titled:

 

Contrails or ‘chemtrails’?

Iridescent contrails

How to see and photograph iridescent contrails

 

An image of contrails was cropped from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Not everyone fears public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There occasionally is a silly claim that everyone fears public speaking. It assumes that everyone has the same fear as you do. That shows up on page 195 of a 2020 book by Ahmed Adamu titled You Are a Leader:

 

“Everyone has a fear of public speaking: think of good public speakers, they all have fear of public speaking, but they still make good public speeches.”

 

It is in an article by Dana Wilson at TroyMEDIA on May 24, 2022 titled Overcoming the fear of public speaking:

 

“Everyone has a fear of public speaking. No matter how famous, we all have been uncomfortable speaking at times.”

 

It also can be found in another September 19, 2022 article at Tony Yuile Coaching titled Public speaking anxiety:

 

“It’s said that everyone has a fear of public speaking (aka stage fright).”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But when you look at detailed results from surveys, like the Chapman Survey on American Fears, you will find that less than 70% fear speaking. Two bar charts shown above are from my June 1, 2025 blog post titled An article on stage fright by David Pennington claimed public speaking was the #1 fear in a Chapman Survey, but ignored their nine other surveys where it was ranked from #26 to #59.

 

 

A brief football story by coach Bill Belichick about an unintentional gesture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been skimming therough the 2025 book by Bill Belichick titled The Art of Winning: Lessons from my life in football. A great brief story from it is on page 129 (and in Google Books):

 

“Carl Banks was a player who prepared at an elite level. Honestly, I had trouble keeping up with both Carl and Tom – they were very detailed in their preparation. Carl had the best key I had ever seen. When I was defensive coordinator for the Giants he found a tip on John Spagnola, who played tight end for the Eagles in the mid-eighties. Carl studied the stance of Spagnola and discovered that, incredibly, Spagnola wiggled his fingers on running plays and did not wiggle them on passes. When Banks told me about this, I thought it was a joke. It was not. I looked at all the end zone film and the key held up. I couldn’t believe it. After the first series of each game against the Eagles, Carl would come off the field with a big smile, saying, ‘He’s still doing it.’ Carl had incredible recall and would come into our Tuesday meetings armed with information: stats from every game our opponent had played that year (not to mention previous years) or memory of a play from ten weeks ago that he wanted us to have a game plan for.”  

 

In poker that sort of gesture is called a Tell.

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An often parodied, thirty-three-word, unpunctuated poem from nine decades ago

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in 1934 family physician and poet William Carlos Williams wrote a poem which I have shown above in a form that might have been taped to the door of an icebox. It even has a Wikipedia page.

 

Originally it was:

 

This is just to say

 

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

 

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

 

forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

 

It appeared on the wall of a building in The Hague. There is an 80-page 2012 book by Gail Carson Levine titled Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: false apology poems that describes how to do a parody on pages 22 and 23:

 

“Imagine his wife coming downstairs in the morning after dreaming about those plums all night and waking up tasting them. Possibly she opens the icebox door (no refrigerators then) and finds a poem in the neatly washed-and-dried plum bowl. Maybe she laughs or maybe she goes for a very long walk or maybe she seats his breakfast and then writes her own false apology poem-

 

Which you can do too. Many poets have written them, following the form invented by William Carlos Williams. But don’t even consider writing this kind of poem unless you can get yourself into a grouchy mood. You will be wasting your time.

 

If you do decide to write, your poems should be mean, or what’s the point? Mine are, and William Carlos Williams’s is too, in its subtle way. He’s glad he got to those plums first!

 

You don’t need a title because William Carlos Williams has given you one, which can be repeated endlessly until your reader is completely sick of it. You also don’t need a new ninth line, because that’s always the same too: Forgive me. Notice that there are three stanzas, which you may agree are quite enough, and each stanza is four lines long, which you may think are four too many. The first stanza states the horrible offense. The second stanza describes the effect of the offense. The last stanza begins with ‘Forgive me,’ and continues with the false apology, because the writer is not sorry at all. There is no punctuation (how nice), and the beginning words of only the first and ninth lines need to be capitalized. The line beginnings and endings substitute for capital letters and punctuation. Normally, capitals and punctuation help the reader understand, so be careful to end your lines in a way that is very clear, unless you want to confuse your reader, which might be the wisest course.

 

Also, think about the rhythm of the lines. After you’ve cleared everyone out of the house, read your stanzas aloud to help you decide where to end a line. Funny poems are still poems.

 

You don’t have to follow William Carlos Williams’s form exactly if you don’t want to. I haven’t. You can add or subtract lines and stanzas. Or you can abandon the form completely and write false apology poems in your own cruel way.

 

For those of you who lack an ounce of mean and are reading this book only for research into the psychology of unpleasant people, you can write a real apology poem. However, even this will not be possible if you are too angelic to have anything to apologize for.

 

Whatever way you do it, have fun and save your poems!”

 

An example of her parodies (from page 8) is:

 

This is just to say

 

My bulldozer

has flattened

the thorny

hedge

which

you mistakenly

expected to sleep behind

until the prince came

 

Forgive me

I’m charging tourists

ten dollars

to visit the castle

 

She also has versions based on stores for children like Jack and Jill (page 14), Jack and the Beanstalk (page 28), Red Riding Hood (page 55), Rapunzel (page 62), and Humpty Dumpty (page 66), etc.

 

There is another 48-page book from 2007 by Joyce Sidman titled This Is Just to Say: Poems of apology and forgiveness. She has apology poems written by a class of sixth graders and responses to them. One example from page 8 is:

 

This Is Just to Say  

 

I have stolen the jelly doughnuts that were in the teacher’s lounge

and which you were probably saving for teachers.

 

Forgive me. They were delicious, so sweet and so gloppy.

Too bad the powdered sugar spilled all over my shirt

and gave me away.

 

By Thomas

 

I got started on this topic by finding a blog post from David Murray at Writing Boots on August 22, 2025 titled Friday Happy Hour Poem (and a true story). His parody is:

 

 This Is Just to Say, by Eddie [the dog]

 

I have eaten the chicken shawarma (I think it was)

that was on the picnic blanket and which my owner

subsequently made me understand you were surely

eating for dinner with your young daughter,

when I ran over from playing with the other dogs

in the middle of Smith Park because I smelled something good, and ransacked before you and the little girl knew what hit you.

Forgive me. It was delicious, so moist, and so savory.