Act 1 Scene 3
We Stole Horses Together 
for Dr. Loganathan Sankaran, Ph.D

A Work in Progress
83

With enemies encamped all around us

We held out in our outpost in the Bellevue hills

Sankaran proved excellent at benchmarking

We won enough business our office paid its bills

We sold an all-cache memory computer

In the time of Thinking Machines and Intel’s Paragon

Among other competing parallel computer designs

We could claim ease of programming which is why

Because they were developing a key research code                                                                                                                                                   

Thom Dunning’s team at PNNL’s EMSL chose the KSR-1

Donal’s most competitive sale beating IBM’s SP-2

With a best and final that Peter Appleton Jones approved

Ed Lazowska and Hank Levy at UW bought one

Oliver McBryan at UC Boulder did too

Bill Busbee at NCAR wanted one but changed his mind

There were others who bought one, sometimes two 

DARPA stymied other potential deals

Steve Squires dictated policy and would only fund 

Intel or Thinking Machines so it was easy for Intel 

To overturn our biggest win getting Lockheed to unfund

Our hard-won deal after Sankaran won the benchmark

And our system was installed on Lockheed’s floor

On the same day in Seattle when Hank bought an upgrade

For a price Donal called HQ to complain was far too low

But Kendall Square Research wanted revenue

It had raised money from investors by cooking the books

And while Donal and Sankaran were kept in the dark

KSR sent a truck to Lockheed's parking lot 

While an exec signed a side letter beside the contract

Giving Lockheed the right of return at any time

Meaning the revenue wasn’t legally bookable

And somebody sent a fax of it to Donal who sent it to HQ

Not much later Bill Koch took over the company

And the Bellevue office was shut down

But not before Bill Koch flew into Pasco with his cushion

Because he had a bad back and gave Thom’s team

An out if they didn’t want to proceed

But they did proceed and now we have NWCHEM

Sankaran’s benchmarking made that win happen

Bill Koch’s courtesy has not been forgotten

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2025

Wasps

A Work in Progress 
82

Wasps that kept our garden aphid free are gone leaving a large brown ovoid nest hanging from a rhododendron with clean white comb without wispy wax moth web that we cut down mostly intact and hung from a peg in our potting shed showing its paper-ply cross section where a side of the nest had been torn off while taking it down from the tree with a pole pruner.

Creation began with wasps and bees to pollinate apple trees in the Garden of Eden.

Without wasps and bees, no original sin.

When the good news comes where will it come from?

All we hear is of a billionaire paying the military

An aircraft carrier headed to Venezuela

Murder meted out at sea

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                   2025

Act 1 Scene 2: For Absent Friends

A Work in Progress
81

The stage set is with a kitchen table laid as if a meal has been finished.  There are eight chairs around the table.

        

                  

                                                                           wine glasses

                                                                   remain    

                                                                                     amongst

                                                                         other objects    

                                                                            bereft

                                                                               of

                                                                            hands

                                                                       leave takings

                                                                     fond farewells

           

                                                        more urgent now to return

                                                            to that table

                                                                                those chairs

                                                                         those

                                                                              bottles

                                                                                of

                                                                             myth

                                                                       each return

                                                                   is another life

                                                               our myth is enriched

                                                         that table    those chairs

                                                        these glasses

                                                                     the touching of hands

                                                                           lips

                                                                         yet

                                                                      that place

                                                                does not detain us

                                                                        our eyes

                                                               carry it weightlessly

                                                                      recreate it

                                                                   in another time

                                                                     another place*

                                           they passed on before us traveling into the dark

                                               leaving a trail for us to follow

                                                             beacons

                                      

                                                    works of art that interconnect

                                                                 a bone full of marrow

                                                                             for minds to gnaw on

                                                             so humanity can pass on

                                                   Dick Russell (C) Richard M Russell

                                                      *first published in Lines Review

                                                                     Scotland, 1977