Nature Omniverous: plnats and other things that sprout

Weather and crop reports (our credo: "You never know what will crop up!"), fish and fowl, flora and fauna, birds and bees, recipes, art and architecture, landscape and geography, and so on … in the form of poetry ("Most Poetic Thread," according to Poetry Thread magazine), prose, photography, music and video—you name it, we got it. And (a bonus!) once in a while we even mention a book.

For those who haven't been here yet, that is, who might merely have stumbled upon this latest (eleventh) iteration of Nature, this is where we're coming from (as some of us used to say, back in the day):

http://www.librarything.com/topic/99379

Yodel, ladee yodel ladee, yodel ladee hoo!

Since I must slog through the snow over the Cascades this morning, thought I would go alpine on ya.

See ya tomorrow night or Wednesday am, folks!

This, on the serial comma vs. the nonserial comma (aka Oxford punctuation), from an entry in Andrew Sullivan's blog on Saturday:

Why it is vitally necessary to prevent the extinction of the final serial comma

From a photo caption on a story about Merle Haggard:

The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.

Were Merle & Kris & Robert ever actually married? Somehow, I doubt it. My guess is that the passage in question should have read:

Among those interviewed were his two ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson, and Robert Duvall.

Can anyone think of a good reason to leave out that last comma in a series? I can't. In fact, the practice has always irritated me. It belongs in the historical dustbin of English usage.

When I learned grammar in school I learned the final serial comma. I was surprised, later, when I went to college (the fourth time) that it was poo-poo'd by the current professoriate. I have tried always to use it. I can't think of a good reason to drop it. I know commas slow things down, but is clarity to suffer for facileness? How much slower is reading something over again, maybe more than once, for the same understanding that that last comma would have yielded on the first read?

The number of commas is slowly decreasing over time. That final serial comma is redundant, no? Still, it's difficult to change the grammatical habits of a lifetime. Pity the poor Germans who have had to weather an enormous restructuring.

Fresh blood! Even vampiric tendencies crop up on our funky thread, RidgewayGirl from South Carolina: just next door to Gene, according to my map--our only southerner, if you don't count the N'Awlins transplant who lives in NYC, and whom I will no doubt hear from any second.

Hope you stick around, Alison, or at least revisit long enough to explain the German restructuring to which you referred.

Viva la coma serie!

8 - Bah! Crossposted, and yes, I still count as a southerner. :P

Tell Me a Story

A.

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

B.

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Robert Penn Warren

The German language reforms were changes in spelling to make things simpler and more consistent. They were highly controversial although now it seems as though everybody has managed to change without the world actually exploding, which is what people seemed to expect. I was just learning German when the biggest chunk of changes moved in--I mainly liked not having to remember when to use that big B letter (the eszett) instead of multiple esses.

It boiled down to a debate on whether language is part of one's cultural heritage and, as such, should be kept inviolate or whether it was a living, changing thing. Which brings us nicely back to the final serial comma...

As far as being a Southerner, well, I'm a transplant. While it often feels like a foreign country, whose politicians are sent to us directly from Central Casting, it's a pleasant and friendly place. Could live without the college football thing, though.

Another seasonally appropriate Colinet - its my favorite.

Grey, Mouse, Candle - Paul Colinet
Translated from the French by Rochelle Ratner

Grey, the depths, the labyrinths, the sleepingbags; grey, the patient stairs; sly grey, grey brain, mischievous brain, grey, granaries of grey. Grey, the week; grey, the attic window overlooking grey fields, heaven’s grey eye, the messenger on the grey horse; bullet music, the angel caught in his grey snares.

Mouse, clever mouse who smiles with tiny grey eyes which go cri-cri; pointed mouse, spinning mouse, twinkling mouse; mouse who dots the grey quilt; mouse who says oui with a little cry, in the heaps of folded grey.

Candle, it's a castle. Day castle, night castle, castle of mice; castle of cats; castle that sings, winged castle, song of wings. Circle of virgins, candle-virgins radiantly turning, with bouquets of eyes and velvet mouths. Lace-collared candle, fairy candle, candle of Orpheus, French candle greyed from mouse-nests.

That's hardly surreal at all, slick. I have the feeling, btw, that I know, or knew, Rochelle Ratner, though back then I called her--or whomever--Shelly Ratner.

Anyway, on the southern thing, it appears I have Saul Steinberg's myopia when I look west and south from the mental vicinity of Manhattan Island. How else could I have forgotten that Guy, Arkansas, where Farmer Paul lives, is also part of the South?

As for college football: I'm staying out of that briar patch.

Knoxville: Summer of 1915
James Agee

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in that time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

... It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the tress, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto: a quiet auto: people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, pasteboard, and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber. A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping; belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks; the iron whine rises on rising speed; still risen, faints; halts; the faint stinging bell; rises again, still fainter; fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten. Now is the night one blue dew.

Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose.

Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes...

Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glories hang their ancient faces.

The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.

On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there... They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine, ... with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth lying on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the of hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her; and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home; but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

As set to music by Samuel Barber

Piero, you really should support LSU. I mean we have a real tiger!! Who we roll out to the visitors entrance in the stadium! Just look how cute he is:

A lovely entry, Jane. And how'd you know I was a cat person? No fair playing on my predilections.

There was nothing on the satellite picture yesterday, and there was no rain overnight. But when I came out onto my back porch this morning the sky was overcast. Today's satellite picture showed serious tall weather, albeit not too tall, all over the area; the radar picture didn't show much water aloft, though. From time to time the clouds break, and there is deep blue behind them. The forecaster speaks of high cloudiness with the possibility of wetter weather Tuesday and Wednesday. There is some, welcome, breeze even close to the ground, but on my porch I need my fan.

Robert

Since no one knows where you live, Robert, your entry is something like Where's Waldo?

Where is Waldo?

Robert

THE LOST FOLLOWER
As I have known them passionate and fine,
The gold for which they leave the golden line
Of lyric is a golden light divine,
Never the gold of darkness from a mine.

The spirit plays us strange religious pranks
To whatsoever god we owe out thanks,
No one has ever failed the poet ranks
To link a chain of money metal banks.

The loss to song, the danger of defection
Is always in the opposite direction.
Some turn in sheer, in Shelleyan dejection
To try if one more popular election

Will give us by shortcut the final stage
That poetry with all its golden rage
For beauty on the illuminated page
Has failed to bring - I mean the Golden Age.

And if this may not be (and nothing's sure),
At least to live ungolden with the poor,
Enduring what the ungolden must endure.
This has been poetry's great anti-lure.

The Muse mourns one who went to his retreat
Long since in some abysmal city street,
The bride who shared the crust he broke to eat,
As grave as he about the world's defeat.

With such it has proved dangerous as friend
Even in a playful moment to contend
That the millennium to which you bend
In longing is not at a progress-end

By grace of state-manipulated pelf,
Or politics of Ghibelline or Guelph,
But right beside you booklike on a shelf,
Or even better godlike in yourself.

He trusts my love too well to deign reply.
But there is in the sadness of his eye
Something about a kingdom in the sky
(As yet unbrought to earth) he means to try.

from A WITNESS TREE (1942)
Robert Frost

Oh, there you are, Peter. I was looking for you.

Stormy Monday in Seattle. Perfect day for Banana Fish. High 70's in dear dirty Detroit.

what happens see is they go to war just fine, just fine, but sometimes when they come back they're a bit off kilter, been tweaked, disturbed, so that they talk to little girls ankle deep in the sea, see, about bananafish, how those dang fish eat so many bananas they practically are bananas, get stuck in their fishholes cause they're so fat from eating so many bananas and they die.

Winter 2010-11 According to Those Who Know
(Some might call this a metaforecast)

Pacific Northwest: La Niña (cooler Pacific waters) will make the upcoming winter colder and wetter than average in this region. So we wouldn't be surprised if there's more snow than usual in the mountains.

California and the Southwest: Warmer and drier than average, exacerbating drought conditions in these areas. Wildfires set by idiots will burn more than usual from winter till spring.

Northern Plains: Colder and wetter than average. Increased storminess and flooding are likely. Fortunately, hardly anyone lives here.

Southern Plains, Gulf Coast States, Southeast: Warmer and drier than average, exacerbating drought conditions. All southern states are at risk of above normal wildfire conditions from winter till spring.

Florida: Drier than average, but we don't know much more than that so we'll say there's an equal chance of above-, near-, or below-normal temperatures and suggest you consult an astrologer.

Ohio and Tennessee Valleys: Warmer and wetter than average. Increased storminess and flooding likely.

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic: We don't know, so we'll say equal chances for above-, near-, or below-normal temperatures and precipitation and point out that it's not our fault that winter weather for these regions is often driven not by La Niña but by weather patterns over the northern Atlantic Ocean and Arctic, which are short-term and only, maybe, perhaps, predictable only a week or so in advance. If enough cold air and moisture are in place, areas north of the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast could see above-average snow.

Central U.S.: We are abashed to report that the chances are 50-50 of above-, near-, or below normal temperatures and precipitation.

:(

Oh, sorry, Sheila. You want a metaforecast too. Is that it?

Well, at least you can read my expressions, Piero.

Made me feel bad, seeing your sad face. Made me want to apologize. But don't fret, Shelia, I'll come up with a metaforecast for New South Wales. Only it might take me a while to find my tarot deck. It's around here somewhere, maybe in the file cabinet with the birth charts and such ...

Do my chart, Wilson... please, please?

Another southerner, dubbed a "major minor poet," which he accepted with humble good humor:

The Ingrate

By night we looked across my field,
The tasseled corn was fine to see,
The moon was yellow on the rows
And seemed so wonderful to me,
That with an old provincial pride
I praised my moonlit Tennessee,
And thought my poor befriended man
Would never dare to disagree.

He was a frosty Russian man
And wore a bushy Russian beard;
He had two furtive faded eyes
That some old horror once had seared;
I wondered if they ever would
Forget the horrors they had feared;
Yet when I praised my pleasant field
This stupid fellow almost jeered.

"Your moon shines very well, my friend,
Your fields are good enough, I know;
At home our fields in the winter-time
Were always white, and shining so!
Our nights went beautiful like day,
And bitter cold our winds would blow;
And I remember how it looked,
Dear God, my country of the snow!"

John Crowe Ransom

Who dubbed him thus?

I just got back from 5 days in Chiang Mai. Had a super time. Chiang Mai is chockablock full of second hand bookshops. I spent the whole morning here and came away with a huge haul of treasure:

http://www.backstreetbooksiam.com/

Chiang Mai is a delightful town with some incredible Buddhist temples

I like how those balustrades (if that is the correct term) make the building look alive. Truly awesome.

>31 anna_in_pdx:. That would be Richard Tillinghast, himself a (southern) poet, in an article in The New Criterion (1997). Tillinghast was also a writer, including a critical memoir of Robert Lowell. All of these guys--Ransom, Robert Penn Warren (#11, above), Tillinghast--apparently knew each other. It seems Tillinghast's quote was not meant as a putdown (!), nor was it taken that way by Ransom.

>32 QuentinTom:. Whoa, mama! Just what this new thread needed.

tcM: What do you think of the Back Street Books logo? How cool would it be to go shopping there? I would love it!

yes, it's an amazing temple that one. Wat Chedi Luang. More pics here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Chedi_Luang

it's incredible at night. Ah Chiang Mai.

SLick, I only 'saw' the logo after your comment. LOL
it's probably the best secondhand bookstore in Asia.

Okay, you want cats! You want poetry! You want cat poetry! YOU CAN'T HANDLE CAT POETRY!

THE GINGHAM dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink!
The old Dutch clock and the Chinese plate
Appeared to know as sure as fate
There was going to be a terrible spat.
(I was n't there; I simply state
What was told to me by the Chinese plate!)

The gingham dog went "bow-wow-wow!"
And the calico cat replied "mee-ow!"
The air was littered, an hour or so,
With bits of gingham and calico,
While the old Dutch clock in the chimney-place
Up with its hands before its face,
For it always dreaded a family row!
(Never mind: I 'm only telling you
What the old Dutch clock declares is true!)

The Chinese plate looked very blue,
And wailed, "Oh, dear! what shall we do!"
But the gingham dog and the calico cat
Wallowed this way and tumbled that,
Employing every tooth and claw
In the awfullest way you ever saw—
And, oh! how the gingham and calico flew!
(Don't fancy I exaggerate—
I got my news from the Chinese plate!)

Next morning where the two had sat
They found no trace of dog or cat;
And some folks think unto this day
That burglars stole that pair away!
But the truth about the cat and pup
Is this: they ate each other up!
Now what do you really think of that!
(The old Dutch clock it told me so,
And that is how I came to know.)

Eugene Field, my namesake.

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream
but he free, maybe
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
His kin, lean and slim
or deep in den
In the east feasted on beasts
or tender men.
The giant lion with iron claw in paw
And huge ruthless tooth in gory jaw
The pard, dark-starred, fleet upon feet,
That oft soft from aloft leaps on its meat
Where woods loom in gloom -
Far now they be, fierce and free
And tamed is he
But the fat cat on the mat
Kept as a pet
He does not forget.

-JRR Tolkien, and I am sorry if I got some line breaks wrong, but I am happy to say I still have it memorized.

:)

Djever notice that when the subject of cats comes up, everyone goes bananas?

THE AIM WAS SONG
Before man came to blow it right
The wind once blew itself untaught,
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn't found the place to blow;
It blew too hard - the aim was song.
And listen - how it ought to go!

He took a little in his mouth,
And held it long enough for north
To be converted into south,
And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be -
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song - the wind could see.

from NEW HAMPSHIRE (1923)
Robert Frost

By the way Piero, I like 'omniverous'. Nice.

Glad you showed up, Sheila. What is it, lunchtime there? Which is to say, my ignorance was showing last night (lunchtime, to you) when it never once occurred to me that I can't give you a winter weather forecast since it ain't winter there! I rediscovered that today when I trolled around trying to figure if you were part of Southern Australia (you're not) and whether mudslides in the Philippines or floods in Indonesia, or vice versa, had any relevance whatever to Eastern Australia, which seems to be where you are. The upshot of which is, vis-a-vis us--as in U.S.--you live in a topsy-turvy world. Sorry, dear, even my tarot cards can't make that right. Take two aspirin and check back with me in June.

Yes, my sad face was actually quite a complicated expression, encompassing my disappointment at not getting a winter metaforecast, and it not being possible to get one for another 6 months as you so rightly point out, and of my never being in sync with the rest of you... but we have had this conversation before, and in all truth I rather like being outside the herd.

I would express my concern that you had to spend so much time learning about Australia on the net, but on second thoughts, it probably did you good.

This might help you in future? http://www.bom.gov.au/nsw/forecasts/sydney.shtml It's rather official and boring though, and tarot cards have more appeal.

Long sleeves are being left at home, the sunshine feels like a warm hug, and my peach tree seedling has baby peaches on it. That's a personal weather observation from topsy-turvey land at lunchtime today (27 Oct).

All this talk of being down under brings this to mind, one of my favorite bits of symphonia, Beneath the Southern Cross from the TeeVee documentary that set the standard.

good morning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHv1gV7E1PM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_nufvh7AhA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGof2ZXHco&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-QHIzNRyQ&feature=related
Too much just ain't enough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXZ1Yu7zrw0&feature=related

Buffalo Bill's

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

e.e. cummings

For today:
The Day that the Rains Came Down
Just Walking in the Rain
Slim Harpo
Buddy Holly
The rain has its own rhythm
Africa.

I guess it's raining down South, huh?

It's wet here, having rained last night. I look out at what to me is a sprawling backyard, the grass and moss nearly covered with leaves, but plenty still clinging to the trees (though a few are bare). A scene in yellow, brown, and nondeciduous green.

People wait as long as possible to rake so they won't have to do it more than once. Me too. And it's also the season to prune the forsythia and the wild berry bush next to the deck. Manana. I'll do it manana.

Another treat from Wilson... Keep 'em comin' Mr... IDowannaRakeYet! ;-)

Wilson's backyard?

Haven't seen the cummings poem in a coons age. And what a fine poem it is. Same sort of elan as Steven's EMPEROR OF ICE-CREAM.

ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE
The Universe is but a Thing of things,
The things but balls all going round in rings.
Some of them mighty huge, some mighty tiny,
All of them radiant and mighty shiny.

They mean to tell us all was rolling blind
Till accidentally it hit on mind
In an albino monkey in a jungle,
And even then it had to grope and bungle,

Till Darwin came to earth upon a year
To show the evolution how to steer.
They mean to tell us, though, the Omnibus
Had no real purpose till it got to us.

Never believe it. At the very worst
It must have had a purpose from the first
To produce purpose as the fitter bred:
We were just purpose coming to a head.

Whose purpose was it? His or Hers or Its?
Let's leave that to the scientific wits.
Grant me intention, purpose, and design -
That's near enough for me to the Divine.

And yet for all this help of head and brain
How happily instinctive we remain,
Our best guide upward further to the light,
Passionate preference such as love as sight.

from IN THE CLEARING (1962)
Robert Lee Frost

I have laughed by day, I have laughed by night,
With maid and with man been jolly,
I've sometimes done wrong and sometimes right,
And right was the greater folly.

The maid was a mother before a wife-
Why all the lamenting after?
If you've never been foolish at all in your life,
Your wisdom's a thing for laughter.

Heinrich Heine

Yes, Steven. He too dropped a Heine poem into the thread, I believe. Where'd he go? Steven, I mean, not Heinrich.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Wallace Stevens

Oh, you meant Stevens's poem! You gotta watch those possessives, Porius. I thought you were referring to a contribution from our friend in Colorado.

I told my freshman English professor that Buffalo Bill's was among my favorites, and he chastised me -- something about, "You couldn't possibly take such hyperbole to be..." I still like it a whole lot. I think I have it copied to my never used Wiki here on LibraryThing, but it's too hard to check.

Robert

With Wallace Steven's Christian name and the title of his fine poem in the same post PW I don't quite get your confusion. I was making a comparison between Buffalo Bill & The Emperor of Ice-Cream. Eugene Gant couldn't have been further from my mind, redoubtable fellow that he is.

The confusion was typological: the editor in me, in other words. Seeing Steven's, rather than Stevens's, in your entry relating to the two poems, I immediately assumed you meant Steven--not Stevens--and went looking through the nature threads looking for the I supposed the man from Colorado had made, so I could post "The Emperor of Ice Cream." Of course I didn't find it. No doubt you were the one who posted it. In any case, I snared it from the Internet, and only afterward realized what you must have meant.

So, anyway, where are you now, old man? Still in Washington State, or farther south? Did you manage to catch the utter disorganization of the Miami Heat last night on TV, the team everyone loves to hate (including me)?

Yeah, those little, maybe not so little matters drive me crazy. I am staying here till next Tuesday. I really like this area. Trying to see as much as I possibly can. I am pleased that the Heat got run over last night. I didn't see it. I am avoiding TV sports because I despise the big money culture that is running amok today. I can't bring myself to watch even the chatting gravy trainers. The time-servers on the many NBA and even NCAA benches. Oh I'll probably watch at some point, for now, I can wait. Having too much pfun here in Seattle area.

I've got to watch those little grammatical matters, etc.

You probabaly know this, but the famous Elliot Bay Bookstore, once near Pioneer Square, is now elsewhere. I don't recall the street; it's a block off Broadway, on Capitol Hill, not far from the library and the Jimi Hendrix statue.

As Anna recently pointed out, you can look it up on the Google.

It's bone chilling up here tonight. Not sure if I am coming down with something or if I may have to don the thermals. blech.

Anyone heard from Lisa? Hope she made it through the storm okay.

Gonna go hit the rack. I think I am getting something. Double Blech.

Good morning
Was a sad day indeed when John Cowan Hartford died (June 2001)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdgLtzWJhbU&feature=related
It's just knowin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fXXkybycsU&feature=list_related&a=GxdCwV...
Jr. Walker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek1UslvFps&feature=related

>61 highdesertlady:. Last I heard from Lisa, Tani, a long while ago, she was off the boat. With Porius splitting for the Coast, as they say, and no virtual presence in Chicagoland, we have a gap in the Midwest; only Marian near Sandusky, Ohio, and we haven't heard from her in a while either. Seems we're at the mercy of the newspapers to know what's going on there.

Abso-friggin-lutely Gorgeous!

Piero Wilson's road, later in the day, closer to "peak" season

...I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Boy, Fall is such a gorgeous time of year. Sometimes I almost miss the east coast. Fortunately Portland has lots of imported deciduous trees.

Not cold today, actually pretty mild. But the wind is gusting and leaves are flying everywhere. There's still color, of course, but less of it, with fewer leaves on the trees, and you see some bare branches. I fear it's all downhill from here.

We have a few inches of snow left. It's cold and dreary with the prospect of more precipitation. Am almost sure I have some kind of ear, nose and throat thing going on, damnit. Too much to do and not feeling like it today. blech.

67: I heard they are opening Timberline early this year b/c of all the snow up there. Hood is beautiful and white again!

#68 - I know, Anna! Isn't it great! Bachelor and the Sisters were beautiful yesterday, as well. When we came over Govy last week, it was weird to see Palmer so bare and dirty. It should be another banner season up there this year. The last time we had a La Niña winter, Welches (@ 1,350') had 3-4 feet on the ground most of the season. It will be interesting to see what it will be like up here. Do you, Chris and the boys ride or ski?

I snowshoe and my father and his wife cross-country ski. Chris' oldest, Sean (15) is taking a snowboarding class later this fall and is pretty excited.

When I worked for TLine, hotel reservations, I had the most fun. It was awesome to set people up for their Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations. Christmas reservations open up October 1st every year for the following year. Needless to say, we were inundated and the phones ring non-stop from 8am until about noon on that day. There are only 70 rooms so it's a frenzied dash to get the fireplace rooms and the chalet bunk rooms.

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old--
October--November--
How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget--
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old--
October--November--
How she disliked the cold!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Perfect, Wilson!

With you in mind, mountain woman:

It's cold and dreary with the prospect of more precipitation ...

Thank you, friend... was beautiful to read in my current state. I roasted a chicken the other night, think I'll go make some chicken soup.

IN MY CRAFT AND SULLEN
In my craft and sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by the singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Dylan Thomas

This one's rather long, but I love it and the words carry it swiftly:

The Law of the Yukon

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others -- the misfits, the failures -- I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters -- Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;
Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,
Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept -- the scum.
The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,
One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was -- Men.
One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,
Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;
Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;
Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,
Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;
Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,
Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;
Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;
Lost like a louse in the burning. . .or else in the tented town
Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,
Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,
Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,
Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame
Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,
Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who will win me -- and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,
With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;
Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,
When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;
Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave --
Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!

Robert W. Service

#s 72 & 76 - Y'all are gonna make me weep. Such beautiful poetry warms my heart.

I cannot believe it's that time of year again. The world series, Halloween, the day of the dead... raking leaves, burning said leaves, playing football in the mud, snowbirds heading south in their RVs, snow tires, practicing putting on chains, shoveling walks and driveways. Soon the throngs will be hitting the malls, flocking to the slopes, drinking hot cocoa and hot toddies, gatherings at work, friends and families homes. Yes, a time for endings and renewals.

ETA - Wow, Gene... The ruggedness! The sound strength of the wild Yukon... I love it.

I HEARD a voice, that cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And through the misty air
Passed like the mournful cry
Of sunward sailing cranes.
I saw the pallid corpse
Of the dead sun
Borne through the Northern sky.
Blasts from Niffelheim
Lifted the sheeted mists
Around him as he passed.

And the voice forever cried,
"Balder the Beautiful
Is dead, is dead!"
And died away
Through the dreary night,
In accents of despair.

Balder the Beautiful,
God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the Gods!
Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword.

All things in earth and air
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;
All save the mistletoe,
The sacred mistletoe!

Hoeder, the blind old God,
Whose feet are shod with silence,
Pierced through that gentle breast
With his sharp spear, by fraud,
Made of the mistletoe!
The accursed mistletoe!

They laid him in his ship,
With horse and harness,
As on a funeral pyre.
Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.

They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed,
Sinking beneath the waves.
Balder returned no more!

So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing.

Build it again,
O ye bards,
Fairer than before;
Ye fathers of the new race,
Feed upon morning dew,
Sing the new Song of Love!

The law of force is dead!
The law of love prevails!
Thor, the thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more,
No more, with threats,
Challenge the meek Christ.

Sing no more,
O ye bards of the North,
Of Vikings and of Jarls!
Of the days of Eld
Preserve the freedom only,
Not the deeds of blood!

Tegner's Drapa
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not balderdash, that.
Rugged indeed Gene like the photo with the fishie and you.

Thank you, Tani. When I read your stories of glistening mountains and snow in the passes my mind wanders to such as that. Stark, bold, beautiful and deadly.

Anna, there's a thread over in History from 30,000 feet in which we are currently discussing why the Old Norse discovery of North America didn't take off like Columbus's did. That Longfellow would surely fit there.

P, I would love to take credit for that rugged look, but the guy in the picture with the pfish is my wife's cousin. Hmmm, I wonder if a beard would 'sute me.

Not you? I thought there was a difference between that and your profile photo. Beards are acceptable.

Anna, my viking blood loves that.

Gene, a link to the thread, please?

81: Please re-post on my behalf! We were just having a conversation about that very thing at home the other day. It hinged on whether exiles (which I guess the Vikings who discovered the new world were) could be counted as explorers. We concluded that they did.

Whut an outpouring of verse! And here's that link to Gene's wife's cousin, one of the great nature pix:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/95490#2118396

Lake Erie has been on a rampage since Tuesday's big storm. Lots of cool, cold wind blowing down from Canada and points north. My daughter who lives in Palm Springs CA scheduled her vacation so she could see the annual leaf display & maybe a few cool breezes (there is no Autumn in Palm Springs.) She brought her camera to take pictures of the fall foliage but it is blowing off the trees faster than she can catch up with it She borrowed my goosedown jacket & still was back in the house in a couple minutes. Over the week-end the guys have planned campfires, right now its 46 with a wind chill of 33. The little kids are all looking forward to "trick or Treat" Hopefully they won't have to wear their costumes over their snowsuits.

Yay! Parts of the Midwest heard from! Glad our winds have calmed down. Bad enough with snow on the ground in October.

Tani, here's that link Here (maybe, I can link all over the internet, but not back to an LT thread. If this doesn't work, some help please).

Snow in October is exactly one of the reasons why I don't live in Colorado. Snow in June is one of the others.

Um, I live in Central Oregon now... I lived in Colorady in 85-86. ;-) But while I did live there it was my first Halloween with snow and my poor kid froze his butt off. brrr.

You must have missed something on your link, Gene. It's not workin'. Insert Gilda Radner's voice here: Nevermind. Thank you Gene, it worked.

Variation on a Theme by Rilke

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

I like that a lot. That could be the official salon poem (or war cry).

Wow, she always seems to resonate with me. I agree with 'Rique.

Chilly outside today. Funny, how coming out of the winter a 50 degree day feels almost warm, with its neutral breeze a contrast to the cold days of frozen earth. And now, with the ground still soggy from recent rain, the breeze feels cold, and maybe it is, but the thermometer says 50 degrees.

Here, too, Wilson... and we are expecting mid 60s early next week. No wonder I am sick with all these damn temperature fluctuations. Meanwhile, I shall snuggle up with Dostoevsky, my cat and my woolly blanket.

I read that book years ago, Tani (The Brothers Karamazov, I assume you mean), and liked most of it.

Yes, and I am looking forward to it. Just wish I felt better. Hard to read with watery eyes. I shall wait to ask what parts you did not like.

It was a while ago, and I don't recall actually not liking any of it, though certain parts went on too long for me. But then, Dusty can be like that, and that's okay because he's so rewarding.

Stupendous day here in Wa. Seeing all I can till next Tues. when I fly to So. Cal. Great little towns here. Doing my best to support little shops, etc. Farm produce, dairies, little butcher shoppes, bakeries, the whole Dickensian 9 yards. Did I mention wine?

#98 - Oh yes, he can be a bit long winded at times, but I agree he is rewarding indeed.

#99 - Yes, dear Porius... above. Washington state does have some really good vineyards. If you run across 14 Hands, do try their Cab or Merlot.. they are scrumptious.

Didja happen upon a town called Snohomish (I think it was)? Big wide main street, antique and bric-a-brac stores, but most impressive, two bakeries facing each other across that wide street, one of which served sandwiches on thick homemade bread for lunch, with a side of potato salad that was the best I ever et.

If'n it weren't so snowy in the cascades right now, I would suggest Leavenworth. Awesome little alpine village.

My nieces used to live in Snohomish. Leavenworth was, maybe still is, a prison, in Kansas. Or Kann-siss, with accent on first syllable, as my Mexican friends would say.

Aw, but that is where you are wrong, dear man... It is also a small village in Central Washington not far over the pass from where you are right now. Do be sure to zoom out on the map provided. ;-)

My sister says it's a place not unlike Frankenmuth, Mi., a Tuetonick christmassy town the midlands of Mi. Quaintness to beat the band. If Leavenworth has sharp cheese, bread, beer, cream herring, etc. etc. etc. I'll be there.

Oh, do go if/when you have a chance. It is a fun place. It's like a Swiss Bavarian village. Not sure about the cream herring, but I know they have the beer and bakeries.

Gene has pointed out to me that omniverous, as in Nature Omniverous, should in fact be Omnivorous. I am, as always, abashed. It would be good if people posted a lot of photos and made a lot of postings so we can move sooner on to the next nature thread, where I can rectify my gaffe with a correctly spelled title (aside, of course, for the sentimental plnats).

It's called "spell check," COPY EDITOR!!

Fine, a pic of a famous Paris bookstore



and look, it's so wide that it caused the page to widen so that Gene will be irritated and you'll have no choice to but start Nature Omni 12!

Got our first frost night before last and a solid 30F as I write this. Nothing much left coming out of the ground but turnips. Do not often comment but I read all with pleasure.

Henri refers, of course, to Shakespeare and Company. I've been there myself a few times, but in fact spent more time on the bench outside, taking in the scenery, than inside. Joyce, Ernest, Gertrude, Scott: anyone who's spent any time in Paris has dropped in and/or hung out here.

Thank you, Paul, for reminding me it's time for a weather check. As befits the season, where encroaching cold has replaced hot as a notable phenomenon, today's list is arranged from lowest to highest, with the day's expected highs tagging along. Further, with Porius uprooting, Detroit is no longer a selective locale, and while we await his appearance in San Diego, we list Seattle, where he presently somewhat is.

Low and High Temperatures

October 30, for selected locales

La Pine, Oregon 34/50
Denver 39/81
Woodstock, N.Y. 40/56
Chicago 42/59
Little Rock 42/73
Sandusky, Ohio 43/60
Bethany, Conn. 44/59
Ghent, Belgium 45/54
New York City 46/55
Seattle 47/53
Atlanta 48/69
Portland, Oregon 49/57
Los Angeles 54/70
Sydney 67/76
Taipei 68/71

Brrrrr...

Cold this morning. Loving my hot coffee and grits.

Not being a Frank Sinatra fan, this poem appealed to me:

The Man Who Never Heard of Frank Sinatra

The man who had never heard of Frank Sinatra: he lived
A perfectly ordinary life in America. Born in 1915,
He followed all the fads, read the newspapers, listened

To Television, knew who Dean Martin and Sammy whathisname
Were (Sinatra's friends), but somehow, by a one in a
Zillion fluke, whenever Sinatra came up, he was out of the room.

Or his attention was diverted by something else, and
(You will say this is impossible, that it cannot be), never
Heard him sing, like a man in my generation who somehow

Missed the Beatles though he had heard everything else.
Once, just as he was about to hear the name Frank Sinatra
A plane flew overhead--he was fifty-five years old--his hearing

A little more impaired. He had heard of Humphrey Bogart,
Of Elizabeth Taylor, of Walter Cronkite, and of perhaps a hundred
Forty thousand other celebrities names by the time he died,

And yet he had never heard of Frank Sinatra. The Greeks had
That famous saying, "The luckiest man is he who was never born."
Which is kind of gloomy, but I think they were wrong.

The luckiest man is he who never heard of Frank Sinatra.

Aaron Fogel

hmmm... me thinks La Pine will be nearest the top of that list for quite some time.

A REFUSAL TO MOURN THE DEATH, BY FIRE, OF A CHILD IN LONDON
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames,
After the first death, there is no other.

Dylan Thomas

Love that Welshman...

116 - I would be pretty surprised if they were able to push that through.

Tonight I'm making baked lemon fish, roasted spaghetti squash, and green beans. Yum!

And tomorrow...I'm finalizing the Thanksgiving menu.

Rainy here in Redmond.

Note
The prologue in verse, written for this collected edition of my poems, is intended as an address to my readers, the strangers. This book contains most of the poems I have written, and all, up to the present year, that I wish to preserve. Some of them I revised a little, but if I went on revising everything that I now do not like in this book I should be so busy that I would have no time to write new poems.
I read somewhere of a shepherd who, when asked why he made, from within fairy rings, ritual observances to the moon to protect his flocks, replied: 'I'd be a damn' fool if I didn't!' These poems with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damned fool if they weren't.

Dylan Thomas

A Momentary Longing to Hear Sad Advice from One Long Dead

Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat
Saying to me as we walked across the Yard
Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said
You are not wearing overcoat. He said,
You should do as I say not do as I do.
Just how American it was and how late Forties it was
Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me
In his New York apartment sitting on chair
Table directly in front of him. There did he write? I am wondering.
Look at this photograph said of his mother and father.
Coney Island. Do they look happy? He couldn't figure it out.
Believed Pogo to be at the limits of our culture.
Pogo. Walt Kelly must have read Joyce Delmore said.
Why don't you ask him?
Why don't you ask Walt Kelly if he read Finnegans Wake or not.
Your parents don't look happy but it is just a photograph.
Maybe they felt awkward posing for photographs.
Maybe it is just a bad photograph. Delmore is not listening
I want to hear him tell me something sad but however true.
Delmore in his tomb is sitting. People say yes everyone is dying
But here read this happy book on the subject. Not Delmore. Not that rueful man.

Kenneth Koch

Very chilly today. Going to make crabmeat au gratin, braised greens, something with potatoes, and cornbread.

Your partner must be a fat guy.

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Donald Hall

A fictional character on his fictional horse in Buenos Aires
From our South American correspondent



(posting for Wilson)

122 - Nah, everything in moderation. Of course living on a 5th floor walk-up helps. :)

COLD! Brrr....I'm headed to Louisiana this weekend and can't wait. This winter nonsense is for the birds.

AUTHOR'S PROLOGUE
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and sails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Day's night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor piece I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds).
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpas of shapes
For you know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ringed dove
In the hooring, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough rumbling grounds
(Hail to his beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin
Hist, in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnhoofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work ark and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone, and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.

Dylan Thomas

A harbinger of things to come? Sadly, The Onion is too often as much a crystal ball as it is a humor site.

From a "story" about the new color Nook from B & N (apparently its their Kindle machine).

"It's only a matter of time before Oliver Twist is peppered with pop-up ads for gruel and waistcoats."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/barnes-noble-releases-color-nook,18372/

Here's the link, though once there, I didn't see a readable story. Nevertheless, you said enough, slick, so I can imagine it. And it is indeed another argument against Kindle and its cousins, though I was and am against the nonsolid book anyway, for other, sensory reasons.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/barnes-noble-releases-color-nook,18372/?utm_sou...

It's Melbourne Cup today - the Race That Stops A Nation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Cup

Good lord (I assume Melbourne was an aristocrat), the longest thoroughbred race we have here is a mile and a half, except for steeplechase events that no one pays attention to. Our horses are bred for speed--sensational, you might say, as befits our country--but without the stamina and endurance to handle 3,200 meters, which might say something about us as well.

And, hey, it's not lunchtime, Sheila, so vas machster? Which is to say, what are you doing, eating breakfast?

No, not breakfast. I'd just got into work, and everyone was making fascinators and placing sweeps, so I took advantage of the confusion to pop onto LT. It's starting to calm down now (race isn't until 3pm) so *sigh* it's back to work I go.

I think I shall cheer for Profound Beauty, who probably won't place. I like the name.

Oh, and Melbourne is a city, Piero, capital of the southern state of Victoria. I do believe Melbourne was an aristocrat, but few people remember him now.

So, before posting I looked him up - I cannot believe this. Our greatest cultural city is named after a British Prime Minister???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_of_Melbourne

Well yeah, of course. A city. They held the Olympics there once, in 1952, I think. (I am a fount of useless info.) But who doesn't know he was also a prime minister? Then again, I don't know what a fascinator is. A kind of (what we call) exotic bet, like an exacta or quinella? And when you say "place," is that as in: "win, place, and show" (first, second, and third), or "win, place, and straight," as some weirdos say? Or is it maybe a highball?

I'm insanely ignorant of British PMs, Piero. I had some vague mind-picture of a top-hatted Lord Melbourne, but I didn't know who he was. I should probably apologise for my ignorance, but have learned the unwisdom of apologising around here.

A fascinator, maybe should be spelled fascinater? It's a thing one wears on one's head, made of feathers and flowers and things. A sort of tiny hat, as it were. Here you are: http://dft.ba/-3zx - I did not make one, being a general party-pooper.

And by 'place', I just meant first, second or third. I don't know even what 'win, place and straight' means.

A hat. Well, fancy that. I shoulda looked it up.

I have no problem w/you apologizing, Muse, in certain rare and review-specific contexts.

Thanks Rique... I think.

To satisfy everyone's raging anticipation, Profound Beauty, as I guessed, didn't place. I'm glad I didn't put money on it.

You Americans may be flattered to learn that the winner was one horse by the name of Americain.

This Is a Photograph of Me

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.

but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)

Margaret Atwood

"You Americans may be flattered to learn that the winner was one horse by the name of Americain."

If the winner had been two horses would they have been named Americains? Or maybe, Rick's Americain?

Good morning. There's frost here. It sounds like it's in Oregon too, and Arkansas. Time to get out my winter things.

138: Wow, that poem is unforgettable - I had read it in a creative writing class when I was about 11, and I could practically smell the chalk in the room reading it just now.

I read a good Atwood poem about a frog once.

Winter things? How 'bout

Ancient Music
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham,
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Ezra Pound

(Who has a new selected poems and translations from New Directions on the 125th year since his birth.)
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780811217330-1

I couldn't find the frog, but this one's pretty good, I think:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Margaret Atwood

There's weather a few hundred miles to the southwest but none around here.

Robert

143: Like it a lot.

Yeah, me too. I'm a magnet for such women. I call it the Nastasia Filippovna syndrome.

I SEE THE BOYS OF SUMMER
1
I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.

I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb's weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.

I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its heats;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.

II
But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.

We are the dark deniers, let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp,
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp,
And from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron,
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ho the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies,
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry.
O see the poles of promise in the boys.

III
I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggot's barren.
And boys are full and foreign in the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.

Dylan Thomas

#146: Wouldn't the women be the magnet(s)?

#147: Lovely, even if a downer. Were you rooting for the Rangers?

Professional sports is a bore, S. I enjoy the individual talents but hate the kitsch, especially the chatting class, & co.

What are those correpondences called that aren't fully rhymes? Whatever they are called, that poem is a great example.

For me, best parts of that poem: read the last word of the first line of each stanza into the second line e.g.

totter / Into a chiming quarter
or
summon / Death from a summer woman
or
spinning, / Green of the seaweeds' iron,
or
holly, / Heigh ho the blood and berry,
or
ruin. / Man in his maggot's barren.

It works best in II and III. For some reason not as effective in I.

>148 slickdpdx:. Yes, you're right. The woman would be the magnet. But then, it's a symbiotic thing. Some men are attracted to women who appear to need help. I could write a book about it. Actually, I have.

>147 Porius:. So, where are you now, Peter? In the air? Taxiing down the runway? Or ... there's a time zone difference. Perhaps eating a late lunch?

Not on the runway yet. I am enjoying it here so much that I paid 75 dollars to put the flight off till next monday. I don't start work till the 12th. I love it here. Inky black yesterday and brilliant welkin loveliness today.
Too delicious today: hot dawg harry reid fighting for his life with that harpyknownothing. These two dreadful bantamweights mudslinging, sliming, spending money handoverfist, THIS is the change we've been waiting for, alright.

Oh yeah, it's Election Day. In N.Y. State we have numerous parties on the ballot, and they can endorse candidates running on other party lines. Those votes are tallied for the candidate, but by party, which is a way of casting a protest vote, sending a message of sorts. For example, I haven't voted Democratic for years, but for the Democrat on the Working Families Party line. A few years ago, up in Albany, Working Families ran its own candidate against the Democrat, for attorney general of that city, and actually won.

And then there are those who don't give a shit:

Election Day

Warm sun, quiet air
an old man sits

in the doorway of
a broken house--

boards for windows
plaster falling

from between the stones
and strokes the head

of a spotted dog

William Carlos Williams

Thank the gods that this extraordinary man, WCW, was spared the likes of rand paul and his ilk.

>153 copyedit52: I LOVE that poem. Wow.

fabulous Dylan Thomas poem. I used to know it by heart, I used to know a lot of DT by heart. but memory fades, dammit.

I know the feeling, I walk around with two USB sticks plugged in my ears...

Hope Is Not for the Wise

Hope is not for the wise, fear is for fools;
Change and the world, we think, are racing to a fall,
Open-eyed and helpless, in every newscast that is the news:
The time's events would seem mere chaos but all
Drift the one deadly direction. But this is only
The August thunder of the age, not the November.
Wise men hope nothing, the wise are naturally lonely
And think November as good as April, the wise remember
That Caesar and even final Augustulus had heirs,
And men lived on; rich unplanned life on earth
After the foreign wars and the civil wars, the border wars
And the barbarians: music and religion, honor and mirth
Renewed life's lost enchantments. But if life even
Had perished utterly, Oh perfect loveliness of earth and heaven.

Robinson Jeffers

EXCELLENT CHOICE PW

WHEN ONCE THE TWILIGHT LOCKS NO LONGER
When once the twilight locks no longer
Locked in the long worm of my finger
Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist,
The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
The milky acid on each hinge,
And swallowed dry the waters of the breast.

When the galactic sea was sucked
And the dry seabed unlocked,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
The globe itself of hair and bone
That, sewn to me by nerve and brain,
Had stringed my flask of matter to his rib.

My fuse timed to charge his heart,
He blew like powder to the light
And held a little sabbath with the sun,
But when the stars, assuming shape,
Drew in his eyes the straws of sleep,
He drowned his father's magics in a dream.

All issue armoured, of the grave,
The redhaired cancer still alive,
The cataracted eyes that filmed their cloth;
Some dead undid their bushy jaws,
And bags of blood let out their flies;
He had by heart the Christ-cross-row of death.

Sleep navigates the tides of time;
The dry Sargasso of the tomb
Gives up its dead to such a working sea;
And sleep rolls mute above the beds
Where fishes' food is fed the shades
Who periscope through flowers to the sky.

When once the twilight screws were turned,
And mother milk was stiff as sand,
I sent my own ambassador to light;
By trick or chance he fell asleep
And conjured up a carcass shape
To rob me of my fluids in his heart.

Awake, my sleeper, to the sun,
A worker in the morning town,
And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies;
The fences of the light are down,
All but the briskest riders thrown,
And worlds hang on the trees.

Dylan Thomas

97 in L.A.? Is it true, Henri?

Incredible poetry as always... thanks, youse guys!

No joke. High nineties; Santa Ana winds. Short sleeve beach weather. It's awful.

Thanks Freak; 'thinking of that while I walk the dog in this morning's pouring, ice-cold rain...

It’s raining today, which transitions well with the following excerpt: twlight in Manhattan in November. Name the author and the book and win a free honorable mention in the Thread that Never Dies:

Under the glass portcullis of a theatre he stood watching the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became gray and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxicabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day’s last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

I Think, Therefore Who Am I by Peter Weissman

No, but I'm pleased you thought so since it struck me--to my surprise, since I didn't read him until recently, which is to say he was not an influence--that stylistically, and as a matter of sensibility, there are similarities between this author and myself.

oooo... hmmmm.... *runs off to check Wilson's library*

No Honorable Mention for cheaters.

;p

Supposed to hit 100 today in some places, Sandydog. Sandals and thong weather too.

We had winds out of the east and weather hit the 70s yesterday. It was really weird. Feels like a storm should follow but it hasn't. Today it's sunny and cooler.

I don't know if you get the Santa Ana in Oregon, Anna, but we did get it in Berkeley ... and in Oakland, where whatever's in that hot desert breeze made my postal route alien terrain one particularly nasty day.

They'd assigned me a car--the P.O. did that then, leasing them to save money--and opening the driver's side door to begin the final loop, I was in such a frazzled state that I didn't check the traffic on Telegraph Avenue. A bus sheared the door right off, a moment before it would have been me.

So be careful out there, Henri:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/b9620cd1-69db-5a09-a6a3-9ccdb0496050....

Will do. People do act more bizarre during Santa Ana's. Have we discussed this before? I'm sluggish in the morning with them, then overly-energized by them of an evening.

Joan Didion wrote of the Santa Ana's in an iconic passage from Play It As It Lays, which I'd cite if I had the book handy. The winds and unseasonably warm temperatures a symbol of impending personal apocalypse both for her anti-heroine and for Hollywood in general.

A PROCESS IN THE WEATHER OF THE HEART
A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.

A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.

A darkness in the weather of an eye
Is half its light; the fathomed sea
Breaks on unangled land.
The seed that makes a forest of the loin
Forks half its fruit; and half drops down,
Slow in a sleeping wind.

A weather in the flesh and bone
Is damp and dry; the quick and dead
Move like two ghosts before the eye.

A process in the weather of the world
Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child
Sits in their double shade.
A process blows the moon into the sun,
Pulls down the shabby curtain of the skin;
And the heart gives up its dead.

Dylan Thomas

In re http://www.librarything.com/topic/101135#2286149, I don't believe that the theater had a glass portcullis, probably no portcullis at all. The author was reaching and may have had porte cochère buried in his mind, but most theaters also do not have one of those.

Robert

Okay, Robert, I accept that. I was prepared to make an entry pointing out that you'd actually read this book, but then went through your library and discovered that you don't have a single book by this author, which, for a well-read characater like yourself, is astonishing. Then again, I didn't get to him until early this year, and then followed that up with this other, "portcullis" book.

Okay, so I just googled it. I find it hard to believe that an author of that stature would have a publisher who would allow 'portcullis' to stand. I find it hard to believe because I find it hard to imagine a theater with a portcullis. The awning on which the marquee is mounted looks a lot like a porte cochère although it isn't one; that's why I thought the author might have confused the two.

Robert

PS I think I may have some of him, but it would be from wayback, among the books not likely to be catalogued soon.

R

This side of paradise the only portcullis in a theatre might, I say just might be found in a prison theatre. Made usually of any old iron.

In the case of a porte cochere: an actor with a splendid carriage might pass through.

Good show, old man, while keeping your cards close to the chest. You get an honorary honourable mention, as befits a theatre-goer. And you, Robert, get a Waldo, for sticking to your usual M.O. in not revealing the name of our mystery author.

Did The Globe have a portcullis? I seem to remember a scene from Lear that might have taken place outside the portcullis of Lear's castle. It's been a couple of years since I last read it. Didn't the final battle, when Burnham Wood came to Dunsinane, (Macbeth) take place outside the portcullis?

Back in the '30's and '40's porte cocheres were popular in some of the Craftsman style homes. Later they became simple carports.

Shakespeare's HENRY V addresses all these staging problems. We must always use our imagination.
http://www.william-shakespeare.info/act1-script-text-henry-v.htm
The marvelously dip-thongy Derek Jacobi stating our case
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5dI65LvbrE

I am soooo confused... Are we still guessing? Porius received the honorable mention on the Neverending Thread but, huh?

Wilson, your link leads directly back to here (not to the book or the author) and I am getting dizzy.

'I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line, my answer hath been, would he blotted a 1000.' which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance, who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted, and to justify mine own candor, for I loved the man, and do honor his memory on this side idolatry, as much as any.
'Rare Ben'

>182 highdesertlady:. Since nobody is hocking me about it, Tani, or even seems particularly interested (has one of those scifi microbes from the fifties taken over the virtual bodies of LTers?), but mainly because you're confused, and dizzy, the passage is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.

I shoulda known... that is one of your newer additions to your library.

Honestly, Tani, I have such a hard time finishing books nowadays, those that are good, bad, or neither, that few of my newer additions actually get read. I don't know if it's because I'm writing more and impatient with the way other writers express themselves, or I'm addicted to television, or that reading when I can't fashion a book, as I do when editing one (which I do all the time), has thoroughly jaded me to pleasurable reading. I gave This Side of Paradise five stars partially because I actually finished it.

How sad, Wilson. Not being able to enjoy reading. But I shoulda guessed that, because you mentioned in your original post on the subject that it was something that you read recently. And I saw it on your recently added books on your profile. Well done, though! And good for you in finishing it. (yeah, the tv thing kinda gets in the way here too) Can't read in the library because the tv is on in the next room (with an 18.5' ceiling) and a father who has difficulty hearing. Or if he's reading in the library he has music on really loud. Hence reading at night before I sleep. Where it's quiet. I guess I belong in a library. Oh yeah, and it's too cold to hide on the porch with my book. ;-)

>186 copyedit52: Piero, maybe it's the time of year. It's my problem too, which is why my cafe has the blinds down again.

Renaskaya! ♥♥♥

I was wondering about that, Lorena.

oo wow, I was missed! Hugs and ♥s to you both :)

I am still reading Karenina, but slooowly.

When my wife and I moved into our house in Georgia we intentionally created a little reading nook in the bedroom, far away from the TV just so one or the other of us, or both, can retire and do some reading while the other watches TV. It works out great.

I go through spells of being addicted to TV, but since we've moved and have this reading nook I've lost interest in most of what I used to watch avidly. My TV watching these days runs to football on Saturday and Sunday during the season, Castle, because I really like Nathan Fillion, I have the entire Firefly+Serenity series on DVD, Stargate Universe, and Boardwalk Empire. I watch the occasional bit of fluff like Toddlers and Tiaras or Hoarders just to spend time with my wife, but except for the voyeuristic aspect of these shows, which I really don't like to admit to myself gives me a sense of superiority, they are pretty much trash (pun intended). Pfucked up people working as hard as they can to pfuck up their kids. Any show that features a lot or even a little skin art as they so euphemistically call it, causes me to leave the room immediately. In some ways I do have quite a judgmental streak.

Jimmy Jet and His TV Set

I'll tell you the story of Jimmy Jet--
And you know what I tell you is true.
He loved to watch his TV set
Almost as much as you.

He watched all day, he watched all night
Till he grew pale and lean,
From "The Early Show" to "The Late Show"
And all the shows in between.

He watched till his eyes were frozen wide,
And his bottom grew into his chair.
And his chin turned into a tuning dial,
And antennae grew out of his hair.

And his brains turned into TV tubes,
And his face to a TV screen.
And two knobs saying "vert." and "horiz."
Grew where his ears had been.

And he grew a plug that looked like a tail
So we plugged in little Jim.
And now instead of him watching TV
We all sit around and watch him.

Shel Silverstein

#192 - That's probably the only thing I really miss about the old house. I had a separate apartment downstairs. I suppose I could go to my room, but If I read in bed I fall asleep eventually. During the warm months, I can sit on the porch and hide for hours.

#193 - Oh, us TV nerds. Wonder what the kids of today would say about our old sets with their tubes, antennas and hort/vert dials and UHF channels.

193: Reminds me of the character Mike Teavee from Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I've quoted this elsewhere, but it's appropriate here. In '68, Frank Herbert wrote a really great novel called The Santaroga Barrier and offered some commentary (through his characters) on TV:

"...it's all TV out there -- life, everything... They expect everything to happen to them and they don't want to do more than turn a switch. They want to sit back and let life happen to them. They watch the late-late show and turn off their TVs. Then they go to bed to sleep -- which is a form of turning themselves off just like the TV...

"There comes a morning for almost everyone of these poor people outside when they realize that life hasn't happened to them no matter how much TV they've watched. Life hasn't happened because they didn't take part in it. They've never been onstage, never had anything real. It was all illusion...delusion...

" 'So they get turned off,' Dasein murmured.

" 'It's all TV,' Burdeaux said."

David Foster Wallace wrote an exceptional essay on our relation to TV and its effect on the novel and reading in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I'll cite the essay once I can locate it. Day off work. Woohoo!

OK, I don't know how to download pictures but I put one on Facebook so that I could post it here. (Don't tell me, I know the instructions have been posted about 1000 times.)

Hm. I'll just post the link.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1704428172596&set=a.1704422932465.209...

Facebook won't let me see it.

Robert

Here's a link to the LibraryThing profile. I think that will work, but note to all, it's just a stupid pun turned into an even sillier picture....
http://www.librarything.com/pic/212035

can't see it either, Anna.

Anna, you must learn today (I insist) how to post pictures in a post. PM me and I'll happily, gladly, walk you through the easy step-by-step process just as Medellia (love her!) once did way way back when for me. Happy to. It is soooo liberating and freeing being able to add pictures to words; a whole new aspect of creativity is opened to you with the simple knowledge.

199> Ha! It's a model-D!

I would post the link to the thread that never ends, but by now it's "tl/dr" and I can't wait the ten minutes it takes to download every time.

Ol' Dusty never looked better! ;-)

ONCE BELOW A TIME
Once below a time,
When my pinned-around-the-spirit
Cut-to-measure flesh bit,
Suit for a serial sum
On the first of each hardship,
My paid-for-slaved-for own too late
In love torn breeches and blistered jacket
On the snapping rims of the ashpit,
In grottoes I worked with birds,
Spiked with a mastiff collar,
Tasselled in cellar and snipping shop
Or decked on a cloud swallower,

Then swift from a bursting sea with bottlecork boats
And out-of-perspective sailors,
In common clay clothes disguised as scales,
As a he-god's paddling water skirts,
I astounded the sitting tailors,
I set back the clock faced tailors,
Then, bushily swanked in bear wig and tails,
Hopping hot leaved and feathered
From the kangaroo foot of the earth,
From the chill, silent center
Trailing the frost bitten cloth,
Up through the lubber crust of Wales
I rocketed to astonish
The flashing needle rock of squatters,
The criers of Shabby and Shorten,
The famous stitch droppers.

II

My silly suit, hardly yet suffered for,
Around some coffin carrying
Birdman or told ghost I hung.
And the owl hood, the heel hider,
Claw fold and hoe for the rotten
Heads, deceived, I believed, my maker,

The cloud perched tailor's master with nerves for cotton.
On the old seas from stories, thrashing my wings,
Combing with antlers, Columbus on fire,
I was pierced by thr idol tailor's eyes,
Glared through shark mask and navigating head,
Cold Nansen's beak on a boat full of gongs,

To the boy of the common thread,
The bright pretender, the ridiculous sea dandy
With dry flesh and earth for adorning and bed.
It was sweet to drown in the readymade handy water
With my cherry capped dangler green as seaweed

Summoning a child's voice from a webfoot stone,
Never never oh never to regret the bugle I wore
On my cleaving arm as I blasted in a wave.
Now shown and mostly bare I would lie down,
Lie down, lie down and live
As quiet as a bone.

Dylan Thomas

>195 anna_in_pdx:. This morning, Anna, in response to Gene's post, I was looking for TV poems and found two I liked. I went with the shorter one. The longer one goes like this:

Mike Teavee

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set--
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink--
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK--HE ONLY SEES!
"All right!" you'll cry. "All right!" you'll say,
"But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!"
We'll answer this by asking you,
"What used the darling ones to do?
How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?"
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and
Just How the Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole--
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks--
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start--oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

Roald Dahl

Anna's picture:



I just sorta faked it.

Robert

BTW, all... Heard from Lisa C today and she said life has been getting in the way of LT and sends a Hello to everyone! Oh yeah... they got the boat out before the bad storms last month too.

Tomorrow's lows and highs for selected locales

Woodstock, NY 31-46
Guy, Arkansas 32-62
Sandusky, Ohio 33-42
Chicago 33-46
Bethany, Conn. 33-52
Woodstock, Georgia 33-60
New York City 36-50
La Pine, Ore. 38-58
Denver 40-77
London 41-54
Ghent, Belgium 42-53
Seattle 47-53
Portland, Ore. 48-58
Sydney, Aus. 53-66
Los Angeles 58-79
Taipei 69-77

Yay! I am sooo glad I am not at the top of the list. ;-)

Wilson... My 5th grade teacher read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlotte's Web to us and it was the highlight of each day. Thanks for posting that.

Just a little ditty to begin our Saturday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7AkTpJC2hA&feature=related

Happened to be seated at the table next to the local congressman last night, who was eating dinner with his son. The son and I fell into a brief conversation about someone we both knew, who died a few years ago--a friend of mine who was his teacher at the local community college--while the father chatted with my wife.

The gray-haired congressman, a feisty liberal, looked a lot older, and though he tried to pretend otherwise, I could see he was shaken up by the election.

"The tide will turn again," I said to him, trying to cheer him up when he paused at our table before leaving.

He pretended, of course, not to need cheering up. "It will be interesting," he replied, which is to say, said nothing at all, while his sad eyes said something else altogether.

Wow. That last line, man. Wow.

Okay, back to the pdf ...

Another Saturday Afternoon song. Not exactly a ditty, but I like it.

In case anyone notices a pattern to my music postings: Yes, I love the Airplane, and this is far and away their best album.

My introduction to Jefferson Airplane as an impressionable 12-year old in 1981, was Jefferson, uh ... Starship? Same band? Paul Kantner was still there, and Grace Slick makes a cameo in this, Find Your Way Back. I still like it, but absolutely loathed what they became a few four or five years later with that "We Built This City" schlock.

I pretty much lost interest in them when they became Jefferson Starship. The heart and soul of the band, Marty Balin, was gone, although, oddly enough his contribution to Baxter's, the album the above was taken from, was minimal. Jorma and Jack (lead guitar and bass) had gone off to form Hot Tuna, and Spencer Dryden (drums) was no longer with the band. It was basically Paul and Grace with other band-mates. The Airplane itself had been drifting apart for a year or so, anyway.

I like the raw sound they created, the Beatles spent a good part of '66 and '67 creating the tightness that stood out so well on Sgt. Pepper, the Airplane had a kind of loosey-goosey sound that spoke more of a kind of musical anarchy. Of course some of the members, Jorma and Jack, specifically, were arguably the best lead guitar and bass of the era. Spencer Dryden was a classically and jazz trained drummer, and one of the best rock drummers ever. When they all departed for other gigs, the band lost its sound and much of its appeal for me.

As with so many bands of the time, their first three albums were their best, each improving on the other, although lots of people, in fact most, would argue Pillow is better than Baxter's, but I disagree. Crown of Creation was a step back from Baxter's I thought. Although, there is some good stuff on Volunteers, it's more uneven than the others. The thing I like about Takes Off, their first is it defined the San Francisco style of the sixties, even more than the Dead. Unfortunately, the first great San Fran band, The Charlatans, left almost nothing in their wake. They devoured themselves as the house band in a bar in the hills living on acid and pills. Peter can tell us where that leads.

Not to nirvana, that's for sure.

That’s Odd

I am very unusual. People called me odd and this is why
I used to cry when everyone else laughed
But now I laugh when everyone else cries
I used to be born in 1957
But now I am born in 1857 because my birth certificate was written wrong
I used to be married
But now I’m divorced
Yet today is my sixth birthday
I used to hate a person whose name I don’t want to mention
But now I still hate her
I used to throw water balloons
But now I don’t because one landed in a place I don’t want to mention
I used to be able to scream
But now all I can do is whisper because of a birth defect.

Joel London

From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams, Teaching Children to Write Poetry, by Kenneth Koch

I opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside to smoke a morning cigarette. The big deer in the backyard looked up at me as her pals sauntered into the woods behind her. We stood there staring at each other in the chilled air for a while, then she bent her head and continued eating the grass beneath the leaves she'd rustled aside. Must've been good grass. Lifting her head to look at me now and then, she remained in place, chewing, eyeing me, then took a step, then another, eventually chewing her way toward the woods and away, to join the others.

We had twenty-seven geese in our yard yesterday, a couple of them were obviously standing watch while the others ate the seed heads off the long grass. Earlier, Brenda had seen a coyote on the ridge across the pond.

A few days ago we were driving down the rather secluded road we live off of and ran into a flock of about 10 turkeys working their way over a fence. Wild turkeys are actually rather impressive looking birds. Not like their poor cousins raised on turkey farms. I don't think a wild turkey would drown in a rain storm.

217> How odd!

TODAY, THIS INSECT
Today, this insect, and the world I breathe,
Now that my symbols have outelbowed space.
Time at the city spectacles, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
In trust and tale have I divided sense,
Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double
Of head and tail made witnesses to this
Murder of Eden and green genesis.

The insect certain is the plague of fables.

This story's monster has a serpent caul,
Blind in the coil scrams round the blazing outline,
Measures his own length on the garden wall
And breaks his shell in the last shocked beginning;
A crocodile before the chrysalis,
Before the fall from love the flying heartbone,
Winged like a sabbath ass this children's piece
Uncredited blows Jericho on Eden.

The insect fable is the certain promise.

Death: death of Hamlet and the nightmare madmen,
An air-drawn windmill on a wooden horse,
John's beast, Job's patience, and the fibs of vision,
Greek in the Irish sea the ageless voice:
'Adam I love, my madmen's love is endless,
No tell-tale lover has an end more certain,
All legends' sweethearts on a tree of stories,
My cross of tales behind the fabulous curtain.'

Dylan Thomas

Account

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle’s flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, though it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own—but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it’s late. And the truth is laborious.

Czeslaw Milosz
Berkeley, 1980

I HAVE LONGED TO MOVE AWAY
I have longed to move away
From hissing of the of the spent
And the old terror's continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
From there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.

Dylan Thomas

Chilly, with a cold, intermittent rain and strong winds baring the branches of quite a few trees. The electricity went out at 8:30, and with it, of course, the furnace, the water pump, civilization as we know it. It came back on twenty minutes ago.

I was editing a manuscript when the computer conked out, taking the document with it. It meant reediting a few pages; no big deal, one of the drawbacks in living in the so-called "country." The outage reminded me to see to my wood supply. Were this to happen in a snowstorm and at subfreezing temperatures (like last winter), I'd need fuel for a fire.

Loved that Milosz and am convinced that D. Thomas perfected rhyme.

Ah Dylan Thomas. What a singer the man was.

I've got to get to the leaves today. Like other procrastinators around here, I've waited until almost all the trees are bare, and now the backyard is covered with them.

With my birthday coming up I'll treat myself to some book purchases. I have two in mind at the moment: a book by Stefan Zweig, with a female protagonist for a change, reviewed a few days ago (I should have written down the name of it); and a copy of Tender Is the Night with binding intact and a reasonably sized typeface. I welcome suggestions, btw: novels or essay collections, please.

Zweig's twelve historical miniatures is really good. Really. I need to read F. Scott. What should I read if I read nothing else or what should I read first? Are they diffferent?

Thanks for the suggestion, slick. As for F. Scott, I've only read This Side of Paradise, which I liked, though not as much as The Great Gadsby, since the latter more thoroughly, and absorbingly, captured an era (speaking of history), while telling a universal story of a wealthy character with a different provence altogether (which I have a take on, btw, through a character in my upcoming book).

I suppose I'd better read Gatsby, then!

Well yeah, you'd better. Your book report is due after the holidays.

Dunce

At school I never gained a prize,
Proving myself the model ass;
Yet how I watched the wistful eyes,
And cheered my mates who topped the class.
No envy in my heart I found,
Yet bone was worthier to own
Those precious books in vellum bound,
Than I, a dreamer and a drone.

No prize at school I ever gained
(Shirking my studies, I suppose):
Yes, I remember being caned
For lack of love of Latin prose.
For algebra I won no praise,
In grammar I was far from bright:
Yet, oh, how Poetry would raise
In me a rapture of delight!

I never gained a prize at school;
The dullard's cap adorned my head;
My masters wrote me down a fool,
And yet - I'm sorry they are dead.
I'd like to go to them and say:
"Yours is indeed a tricky trade.
My honoured classmates, where are they?
Yet I, the dunce, brave books have made."

Oh, I am old and worn and grey,
And maybe have not long to live;
Yet 'tis my hope at some Prize Day
At my old school the Head will give
A tome or two of mine to crown
Some pupil's well-deserved success -
Proving a scapegrace and a clown
May win at last to worthiness.

Robert William Service

As I'm sure you all have discovered, I'm a big fan of RWS.

Oops! Double post.

Robert W. Service has been honoured with schools named for him including Service High School in Anchorage, Alaska, Robert Service Senior Public School (Middle/ Jr. High) in Toronto, Ontario and Robert Service School in Dawson City, Yukon. He was also honoured on a Canadian postage stamp in 1976. The Robert Service Way, a main road in Whitehorse, is named after him. Additionally, the Bard & Banker public house in Victoria, British Columbia is dedicated to him, the building having at one time been a Canadian Bank of Commerce branch where Service was employed while residing in the city.

(from Wikipedia)

And thank you for editing and not deleting that double post Gene!

Once, when I was a young child, my mother read me a story of the miner's journey from Dawson to Skagway with the Whitehorse pass (I think, is Whitehorse a town or a pass or both?) being involved somehow. All the names seemed so exotic to me and ever since I get goosebumps when I read or hear someone refer to them. I wish I knew what the story was, I'm not sure it was a children's story. It was when we lived in Philadelphia, so I couldn't have been more than six and probably more like four or five. I've seen the famous pictures of the long lines of miners working their way up the Chilkoot pass, but I don't think that was part of the story.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

What an opening!

I know all you lit critters out there are laughing your heads off at my liking Service's stuff, but while many poets are better at the craft of poetry, few could set the mood as well as he.

The Rhyme of the Remittance Man

There’s a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I’ve had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
On the water where the silver salmon play;
And I light my little corn-cob, and I linger, softly dreaming,
In the twilight, of a land that’s far away.

Far away, so faint and far, is flaming London, fevered Paris,
That I fancy I have gained another star;
Far away the din and hurry, far away the sin and worry,
Far away—God knows they cannot be too far.
Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon—how my purse-proud brothers taunt me!
I might have been as well-to-do as they
Had I clutched like them my chances, learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies,
Starved my soul and gone to business every day.

Well, the cherry bends with blossom and the vivid grass is springing,
And the star-like lily nestles in the green;
And the frogs their joys are singing, and my heart in tune is ringing,
And it doesn’t matter what I might have been.
While above the scented pine-gloom, piling heights of golden glory,
The sun-god paints his canvas in the west,
I can couch me deep in clover, I can listen to the story
Of the lazy, lapping water—it is best.

While the trout leaps in the river, and the blue grouse thrills the cover,
And the frozen snow betrays the panther’s track,
And the robin greets the dayspring with the rapture of a lover,
I am happy, and I’ll nevermore go back.
For I know I’d just be longing for the little old log cabin,
With the morning-glory clinging to the door,
Till I loathed the city places, cursed the care on all the faces,
Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

So send me far from Lombard Street, and write me down a failure;
Put a little in my purse and leave me free.
Say: “He turned from Fortune’s offering to follow up a pale lure,
He is one of us no longer—let him be.”
I am one of you no longer; by the trails my feet have broken,
The dizzy peaks I’ve scaled, the camp-fire’s glow;
By the lonely seas I’ve sailed in—yea, the final word is spoken,
I am signed and sealed to nature. Be it so.

Robert W. Service

You haven't cornered the market on self-consciousness, Gene. Not by a long shot. And it has nothing to do with literary "worth"; it's a human thing. My guess is that nearly everyone who posts occasionally wonders if they sound foolish afterward; I know I often do. With the possible exception, of course, of Henri le Grand, who seems to have no sense of shame.

One more, by a different poet. This has been a favorite of mine since childhood. I'm sure it's not unfamiliar.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson

My father's favorite poet is Robert Service. We heard his poems so often that the ones I've been reading here have all been half-heard in his voice. We were living in Edmonton and I think my father really, really related to the poems in winter. The Cremation of Sam McGee!

He's still alive, btw. My dad, not Service--who is dead.

I always liked Emily D.'s Nobody poem.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us - don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
to tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

That's what I think the Internet is. An admiring (and sometimes the opposite of admiring - despising?) bog.

I love the Service poem about Sam McGee. I have not heard it in a while. It really needs to be read out loud.

I volunteer my dad!

Our rambling thread has been missing a Canadian for quite a while now; for ever, in fact, which at the moment comes to eleven iterations and four thousand posts. This Canadianlessness has somewhat bothered me, and so it occurs: if we can think of Jane from NYC as Louisianian (is that the right word?), then why can't we consider Alison in South Carolina an Edmontonian? (These geographic appellations are bizarre; someone should do something about them.) Hopefully she won't disappear, but even if she does, from now on I will include Edmonton in our periodic weather postings, and expect that over the coming winter months (except for you, of course, Sheila, in NSW Australia) its low temps will abash the rest of us.

NOVEMBER
We saw leaves go to glory
Then almost migratory
Go part way down the lane,
Get beaten down and pasted
In one wild day of rain.
We heard "'Tis over' roaring.
A year of leaves was wasted.
Oh, we make a boast of storing,
Of saving and of keeping,
But only by ignoring
The waste of moments sleeping,
The waste of pleasure weeping,
By denying and ignoring
The waste of nations warring.

from A WITNESS TREE (1942)
Robert Frost

I would be exceedingly proud to be considered an Edmontonian. And it would give me a great deal of schadenfreude to see the weather postings. Until August, that is.

> 235 Geneg, sounds like something by Jack London or J.O. Curwood.
I would guess the first book of "Smoke Bellew" by Jack London

Isn't Martin Canadian?

How cool is that? Two nature lovers and/or poetry fans with dual citizenship; three if you count Porius, who is either in San Diego now or is not, but is most (virtually) certainly not in Detroit.

Still, the old trouper keeps pumping out poems, this one about leaves, which I am in fact raking today, inhaling the minty odor of death and decay, and doing untold damage to my back.

In lieu of a weather posting, Alison, which occurs only at very special times (what a bullshit artist this guy is), consider this:

Tomorrow's low and high for:

Greenville, South Carolina 45-72
Edmonton, Canada 16-36

234, 235> and to all Canadians, you must give Hannah Holborn a chance with her debut collection of short stories that came out early last year, Fierce. She writes extensively of the Yukon Territory and Top of the World Highway, particularly in the story, "The Fierce with the Fierce". I've got an autographed copy of her book that she was so kind to forward me, as at the time it wasn't available in the States, and I'll be pimping this book long after I've entered the grave, I suspect.

http://www.librarything.com/work/5920715/reviews/41597788

>246 slickdpdx:. True. Or so his profile claims. But I haven't seen him around here since he changed his name. I even tried to entice him back by promising we'd hold a Name the Martin contest, as we did with ChocoMuse aka Sheila, but still no Martini, or whatever he's calling himself today.

"Well, of course!" he said, smacking himself on the forehead with his palm. "This must be Canada Appreciation Day!"

So:

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

*

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

*

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

*

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

*

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

*

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.

Margaret Atwood

eh?

That is an amazing poem.

I've also added Fierce to my wishlist.

I am in SD. Started work today.

Bout time you be back here in So Cal where ye belong. Welcome!

Another Canadian:

Notes for the Legend of Salad Woman

Since my wife was born
she must have eaten
the equivalent of two-thirds
of the original garden of Eden.
Not the dripping lush fruit
or the meat in the ribs of animals
but the green salad gardens of that place.
The whole arena of green
would have been eradicated
as if the right filter had been removed
leaving only the skeleton of coarse brightness.

All green ends up eventually
churning in her left cheek.
Her mouth is a laundromat of spinning drowning herbs.
She is never in fields
but is sucking the pith out of grass.
I have noticed the very leaves from flower decorations
grow sparse in their week long performance in our house.
The garden is a dust bowl.

On our last day in Eden as we walked out
she nibbled the leaves at her breasts and crotch.
But there's none to touch
none to equal
the Chlorophyll Kiss

Michael Ondaatje

More Canadiana, from an outfit that calls itself Canada Reads:

The Essential Top 10 Canadian Novels of the Decade

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis
The Birth House by Ami McKay
The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall
Essex County by Jeff Lemire
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden
Unless by Carol Shields

re # 256 Piero, I copied this post to another group that I follow. There's a Canadian writer in the group who's somewhat of a curmudgeon hissef and wanted his thoughts on these books. I hope you don't mind.

I keep trying to get him to join us here, but he won't. Oh, well.

Not at all (do I mind). I'm always rooting around the back channels looking for new blood myself, and even old blood.

I know that canadian of whom you speak. I fear his opinion of his fellow Canadian scribes is curmudgeonly at best.

Are you two referring to whatsisname, Cliff something-or-other? The guy who has an opinion on every film there ever wuz? If so, I find him interesting, albeit a high-hat dispensor of what he knows. Nevertheless, when I put down John Sayles a few eons ago--about whom he thought highly--and expected a brouhaha, he merely nodded in my direction and moved on like Gandhi.

If you're reading this Cliff, out in Calgary or wherever, come on in, the water's fine, and none of the fish bite ... Well, sometimes they do, but none of us are sharks.

Yep, the Canadian has been identified. Cliff really does not like Canadian fiction overall. I've heard his negative opinion of Davies, Atwood, Ondaatje, pretty much all of the Canadians I know of, during the year or so I've been on the Lit Snobs list.

THE FEAR OF GOD
If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere,
From being No one up to being Someone,
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself
You owe it to an arbitrary god
Whose mercy to you rather than to others
Won't bear too critical examination.
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license
To wear the uniform of who you are,
You should be tempted to make up for it
In a subordinating look or tone,
Beware of coming too much to the surface
And using for apparel what was meant
To be the curtain of the inmost soul.

from STEEPLE BUSH (1947)
Robert Frost

probably posted this above but here it is again.

Well now! Not only is Martin a Canadian, he is from Victoria, BC, and the Bard and Banker is his second-favourite public house. (It is enormous and labyrinthine and you should all visit.) It is called the Bard and Banker after Service, who was of course both (I guess that's obvious, but you wouldn't believe how long it took for me to twig to it). He is probably not my second-favourite Canadian poet, but he is right up there in the rolls; when we were kids my grandma and her sisters, who were deep in this one-room-schoolhouse, memorize-and-recite-on-winter-nights vision of pioneer/colonial letters that I love (Dickens, the Romantics, Kipling to the ends of the earth) used to read to us before bed, things like "Tyger, Tyger" and "Gunga Din" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which is longish and does, like Anna says, need to be read aloud, but here is the amazing refrain:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Shivery! My favourite Canadian poet, though, is a man who I hope needs no introduction, the incomparable Leonard Cohen. Here is a work of beauty:

Beneath my hands
your small breasts
are the upturned bellies
of breathing fallen sparrows.
Wherever you move
I hear the sounds of closing wings
of falling wings.
I am speechless
because you have fallen beside me
because your eyelashes
are the spines of tiny fragile animals.
I dread the time
when your mouth
begins to call me hunter.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.
I want them
to surrender before you
the trembling rhyme of your face
from their deep caskets.
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want my body and my hands
to be pools
for your looking and laughing.

and:

I did not know
until you walked away
you had the perfect ass
Forgive me
for not falling in love
with your face or your conversation

Also, that top ten list is missing Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach and maybe Atwood's Oryx and Crake, reluctant as I am to bring up Margaret Atwood in a discussion of Canadian writers.

Well, all right, Martini! It appears, with your impetus, that Canada Appreciation Day is now Canada Appreciation Days. And yet, I'm surprised you overlooked another one of your eminent poets (whatever Calgary Cliff might think). To whit (or maybe wit):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BREYCGWOouw&feature=related

I think Cliff's from Saskatchewan. I might be wrong.

Indeed. The elusive Cliff Burns:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/CliffBurns

Neil may have been born Canadian but he proved to be wholly Californian, didn't he?

267: No more than Leonard Cohen.

263: Thank you so much for the Cohen poems. He's my favorite live romantic poet.

Martin why would you be reluctant to claim Atwood? I've got these oranges, no, it must be tea, mandarin oranges maybe, all the way from China for you and anna.

It's a lovely, brisk, sunny day here in the Northeast, but like a wage slave, I've been chained to the computer, editing one manuscript after another that's come my way, putting in an actual eight or more hour day, with a noon break to drive into town for a bowl of soup and a baguette.

Here's a glimpse into the true state of commercial publishing, for those occupied with Dostoievski and his brethren, from my ledger:

10/13 Secrets of a Proper Countess, a romance
10/21 Lord Langley Is Back in Town a romance
10/28 How to Love an American Man, a memoir
11/4 The Breaking, vampire, werewolf, shapeshifter series
due 11/18 Burn the Night, vampire, werewolf, gods and goddesses series
due 11/22 The Sins of Viscount Sutherland, a romance
due 12/8 Lord of Souls, a scifi fantasy to be dumped in the driveway today, an old-fashioned paper manuscript

I love that title. Lord Langley is Back in Town.

Determined not to be that same old clown
Those those above him may ever frown
It'll take more than that to keep old Langley down.

Well here's a real poem. Along the lines of Dusty's creepy-crawlees, another repeat:

DESIGN
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth -
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth -
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall? -
If design govern in a thing so small.

from A FURTHER RANGE (1936)
Robert Frost

I found this:

"We are intellectuals, you see," Mahmoud bawled in my ear. "There is no subject that we cannot discuss, and all subjects make us angry."

partway through Last Letters from Hav by Jan Morris.

I want to add that, for a few short weeks, the light coming through the trees and onto my deck is orangy-gold.

Yes, there is no subject we cannot discuss, or throw at the wall to see if it sticks (and/or beat it to death), including nature observations, geography, intellectual folderol, poetry (of course), even dogs and cats, which characterize our participants as much as anything else. Speaking of which, I see you're an ecumenical sort, with photos of each in your profile.

Picked up a hitchhiker today when I drove to town, a young kid with an earring bridging his nostrils. From North Carolina, an island off the Outer Banks--near Gene's old stomping grounds. He wanted to come up here and stay awhile, he said, so he could experience snow.

>269 slickdpdx: no, no, not reluctant at all! Just that she's who everybody thinks of first when they think of a Canadian writer ... isn't she? Also, I see your tea and oranges and raise you a money and a plywood violin.

And, >264 copyedit52:/7, oh, dear Neil. Certainly we think of him as Canadian, although did he have some sort of terrifying Reaganite conversion or something like that? Hard to imagine that happening to somebody who'd kept their inner socialist strong by regular contact with native soil. You know, sleeping in a coffin filled with Alberta turf. Although speaking of Alberta, I guess Canada is a lot more right-wing these days than it's easy for those of us who grew up during the Chretien era to understand. Growing old ...:(

Anyway, Cohen may have spent some time in California (he invented the Red Needle in Needles, California in 1975; it is: tequila, cranberry juice, lemon and ice--perhaps he is prone to bladder infections), but it goes fifth on my list of locales associated with the great man, after Montreal (of course), Hydra, NYC (I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel ...) and Mt. Baldy in Washington, where he spent a good ten years being a Buddhist monk ("Jikan", or "Silent One"). When he was on the mountain he used to come out and frequent Victoria cafes a lot when he needed flaneurie or smoked-meat sandwiches I guess, and people would always spot him and get all excited and I was so obsessed with Leonard at that age and I think it helped plant the seeds of my current cafe-based lifestyle. Here is an un-cafe related poem about Mt. Baldy in part:

O darling (as we used to say)
you are wide-hipped and kind
I'm glad we got over the wall
of that loathsome Zen monastery
We are not exactly young
but there is still some pleasure
to be squeezed from these leather bags
Even as we lie here in Acapulco
not quite in each other's arms
several young monks walk single-file
through the snow on Mt. Baldy
shivering and farting in the moonlight:
there are passages in their meditation
that treat our love and wish us well

>269 slickdpdx: no, no, not reluctant at all! Just that she's who everybody thinks of first when they think of a Canadian writer ... isn't she? Also, I see your tea and oranges and raise you a money and a plywood violin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQm1OmLMNno&feature=related

And, >264 copyedit52:/7, oh, dear Neil. Certainly we think of him as Canadian, although did he have some sort of terrifying Reaganite conversion or something like that? Hard to imagine that happening to somebody who'd kept their inner socialist strong by regular contact with native soil. You know, sleeping in a coffin filled with Alberta turf. Although speaking of Alberta, I guess Canada is a lot more right-wing these days than it's easy for those of us who grew up during the Chretien era to understand. Growing old ...:(

Anyway, Cohen may have spent some time in California (he invented the Red Needle in Needles, California in 1975; it is: tequila, cranberry juice, lemon and ice--perhaps he is prone to bladder infections), but it goes fifth on my list of locales associated with the great man, after Montreal (of course), Hydra, NYC (I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel ...) and Mt. Baldy in Washington, where he spent a good ten years being a Buddhist monk ("Jikan", or "Silent One"). When he was on the mountain he used to come out and frequent Victoria cafes a lot when he needed flaneurie or smoked-meat sandwiches I guess, and people would always spot him and get all excited and I was so obsessed with Leonard at that age and I think it helped plant the seeds of my current cafe-based lifestyle. Here is an un-cafe related poem about Mt. Baldy in part:

O darling (as we used to say)
you are wide-hipped and kind
I'm glad we got over the wall
of that loathsome Zen monastery
We are not exactly young
but there is still some pleasure
to be squeezed from these leather bags
Even as we lie here in Acapulco
not quite in each other's arms
several young monks walk single-file
through the snow on Mt. Baldy
shivering and farting in the moonlight:
there are passages in their meditation
that treat our love and wish us well

Since it appears we're still noodling around Canada ...

(I used to think the following joke was funny: It's just like the U.S., only less so. But turns out it ain't so funny anymore. Would be a blessing if we were less so too.)

... with its poets and writers, the Montreal curmudgeon should be mentioned, first encountered indirectly by me in the form of a movie: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

http://www.answers.com/topic/mordecai-richler

273> you picked up a hitchhiker are you NUTS? Could've been a serial hippie killer for all you knew! You were lucky. Please don't do that again.

I sedated him with my winning personality, Henri.

Speaking of hitch-hickers, I don't know if I've told this story or not, here, but here goes.

When I lived in Atlanta in the early eighties, I was driving near an amphitheater that was a venue for musical acts and some shows, located in Chastain Park (for those who may be familiar with the Atlanta area). I had just transferred my old vinyl copy of "Meet the Beatles" to a cassette tape and was listening to it in the car as I was driving. I saw a couple of teenagers, a boy and a girl, hitch-hiking back toward downtown and thought what the hell, I'll pick them up, so I stopped and offered them a ride. The girl got in the front and the guy sat down in back. We were cruising along with the cassette still playing in the player when the girl asked me who the music was. I told her it was the Beatles. She looked at her boyfriend with an empty expression and asked him who the Beatles were. He firmly assured her in all seriousness they were Paul McCartney's first back up band. The one before Wings. I almost dropped my teeth.

There was a time, before the ubiquity of oldies radio, when the Beatles were just another band that had gone their separate ways. Not the international rock icons they are today.

Awwww, Richler. Duddy Kravitz is a standard high school-English curriculum read up here, along with The Handmaid's Tale, Swamp Angel, and A Bird in the House. Oh, also Lost in the Barrens. There's some Canadiana.

278> that'll do it everytime I bet!

And let's not forget, on the heels of Gene's anecdote, speaking of hitchhikers, the iconic hitchhiking superstar with the humongous thumb: Sissy Hankshaw of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

My favorite hitch-hiker movie is "The Hitcher" with Rutger Hauer as the embodiment of evil. Essentially the same story as "The Terminator", but far, far creepier. The finger in the fries was sublime.

Speaking of hitchhiking, and Canada:

Long before the Era of Terror, I was refused entry to Canada--twice. The first time, since it was common knowledge that it was an open border, and I'd just hitchhiked to Detroit (I was headed for St. Louis, because I was intrigued by the name of that place, but followed the traffic, so to speak, which landed me in Motown), I decided to head back to New York by crossing over to Windsor. I'd never been to Canada, after all.

A guy in a VW bug gave me a lift, and we waited in line at the border crossing, where a customs agent stuck his face in the window and asked where I was going. Being sixteen, with a belief that the world was a boundlessly friendly place, I told him I was hitchhiking back home. He told me to get out of the car, led me into a little building, and searched my bag.

Turns out, in Ohio, I'd been so excited to discover that they sold 3.2 beer that I bought a bottle (I couldn't buy beer in New York State), which I'd forgotten was in my bag. They guy came upon it, amidst my dirty clothes, looked at me with disgust and told me I had to go back to Michigan. Thinking myself clever, I told him I couldn't, that I didn't have any money. As if that would stymie him. So of course he just put me on the bus and sent me back.

The second time I tried to cross the border I was a bit older, maybe eighteen. Me and a buddy were picked up in Nevada by a semitruck driver delivering California lettuce to Calgary, and we hid in the cab, where the customs agent in Sweetgrass, Montana, discovered us and denied us entrance.

I mean, for the longest time I thought Canada must be this unbelievable place, in the Marx brothers sense: a club that wouldn't let me in.

>283 copyedit52: heh, good stuff. My first trip to the States I was maybe nine (?) -- we bummed around Seattle for a couple of days, then roadtripped down to Portland. Mostly, being a kid and all, I remember the food: enormous cherries from Pike Place market that my sister and I spat out the car windows at passing motorists; amazing Mexican food in Portland that was unsurpassed until I visited San Diego (where it was actually better than anything we had in Mexico, although I imagine chance and the principle of feeding the turistas slop played a role there). Being a generic family, we had no trouble getting in, although I recall my dad had his duty-free cigarettes taken away for some obscure reason on coming back into Canada, and he was pissed.

Such good stories! I have no hitchhiking stories to add, except that every time I pass a hitchhiker I'm swamped by a vast guilt because I generally have many spare seats but I just zoom by and leave them to struggle on. I'm sure the vast majority of them wouldn't mug/rape/kill me, either; just appreciate a lift.

If you drive through South Australia (it's a state, people), past many vast orange orchards selling their goods cheap - do not buy said oranges, however delicious, if you're heading to the Northern Territory border. Otherwise you will have to throw them in the bin. That is a little lesson I learned once, though not as interesting as above stories.

I was 14 when we moved to a suburb of PDX. I spent the night at my best friend's house (in the old neighborhood) and sneaked out early Sunday morning to walk to my boyfriend's house. About a 1/3 of the way there a pantera comes off the freeway with a man and a woman in it. It's about 7am so I figured he must be dropping off his date from the night before. He came back my way and offered me a ride. He took me to my boyfriend's and that was that. I did not tell my mother that story until just recently for obvious reasons. (but, seriously, pass up a chance to ride in a pantera?)

When I lived in England, our house was on the Ridgeway, an ancient road and popular hiking route. I often ferried muddy hikers the few miles into Wantage to the bus stop there when they got tired of being rained on or twisted an ankle. They were sometimes smelly, but always harmless.

And here it is:

http://www.aldbourne.org.uk/awg/portal/main/?Section=our%20village&SubSect=2...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ridgeway

Beautiful morning here - bright sun, cold, sky a dark blue. Our office (all 4 of us) decided to take our Veteran's Day holiday off today rather than yesterday to get the long weekend. So I get to spend my day with the Brothers K, but right now I'm watching the best programming on tv - Sunrise Earth. Highly recommended for all you nature lovers who can't get out to the wild places often enough - it's real-time coverage of sunrises around the world without any music or narration. Right now I'm spending a pleasant hour with some gulls in Alaska.

A SERIOUS STEP LIGHTLY TAKEN
Between two burrs on the map
Was a hollow-headed snake.
The burrs were hills, the snake was a stream,
And the hollow head was a lake.

And the dot in FRONT of a name
Was what should be a town.
And there might be a house we could buy
For only a dollar down.

With two wheels low in the ditch
We left our boiling car
And knocked at the door of a house we found,
And there today we are.

It is turning three hundred years
On our cisatlantic shore
For family after family name.
We'll make it three hundred more

For our name farming here,
Aloof yet not aloof,
Enriching soil and increasing stock,
Repairing fence and roof;

A hundred thousand days
Of front-page paper events,
A half a dozen major wars,
And forty-five presidents.

from A WITNESS TREE (1942)
Robert Frost

In light of Salon reads tonight I am sharing with my beautiful esposa one bottle each of Belgium Trappist ale (Rochefort) and Russian stout (Rasputin)!

Aw, but the question is... Who drinks the stout and who drinks the ale?

We split each bottle! The Trappist ale was good, but she liked the Rasputin better. They are so different that I say I liked them both.

Awww, a marriage that will last...

Uh oh. I don't know if this means anything, but she just changed her mind. Does not like the stout!

What about the Bombay Sapphire? Does she like the Bombay Sapphire?

Okay okay, back to Vollmann ...

Well, what this means is... More Trappist and Rasputin for you! Sorry, Mrs. Slick...

Macumbeira is proud that his country famous Trappist beer makes it to the table of overseas intellectuals but shakes his head in disbelief at the Russian stout.

Long day here in SD. The Sun was blazing all day. Not hot. But always seemed to be in the way. Blue skies without the merest hint of clouds. A perfect night as I was selling tickets to our football game. Not the most exciting gig but I can use the extra money. Not much time for making a gnu-scents of myself here.

We miss your gnu-scents, not-so-Por Man! What are you doing with your first weekend in San Diego environs?

It's late. I'll read your response in the morning, Night Owl.

Nostalgia

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent a badly broken code.

The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Billy Collins

Oh, I like that.

#299

Ah, South Dakota, I do miss it. The 49s, the teepee creepin', Grand entries...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIEEYKL_yR8&feature=related

South Dakota? I had no idea, Peter. Are you anywhere near the Corn Palace?

http://two-friends-travels.com/gallerytft/main.php?g2_itemId=264

http://two-friends-travels.com/gallerytft/main.php?g2_itemId=269

Lots of work EF. No time for sargeants. No PW not South Dakota but San Diego. A different sort of corn palace. Though I likes S. Dakota Sandydawg (SD). More Blew skies here in SD (San Diego). Gentle breezes, just pretty mild overall. I'm between practices. I have a little time to make a motley of myself. I'm munching on some San Diego Mexican food here in the office. I am making an effort to lose some adventitious poundage. I'm not fat or any thing like that but I need to take some pressure off of my aching knees and ankles. This basketball thing gets harder every year. I used to be very much involved in the physical part of practice, now my jaws work harder than the rest of me. I guess that's what it means to get old, doesn't it?

Oh, did I mention that when ones arms move faster than one's legs when one is running - one is SLOW.

I WILL SING YOU ONE-O
It was long I lay
Awake that night
Wishing the tower
Would name the hour
And tell me whether
To call it a day
(Though not yet light)
And give up sleep.
The snow fell deep
With the hiss of spray;
Two winds would meet,
One down one street,
One down another,
And fight in a smother
Of dust and feather.
I could not say,
But feared the cold
Had checked the pace
Of the tower clock
By tying together
Its hands of gold
Before its face.

Then came one knock!
A note unruffled
Of earthly weather,
Though strange and muffled.
The tower said, "One!'
And then a steeple.
They spoke to themselves
And such few people
As winds might rouse
From sleeping warm
(But not unhouse).
They left the storm
That struck en masse
My window glass
Like a beaded fur.
In that grave One
They spoke of the sun
And moon and stars,
Saturn and Mars
And Jupiter.
Still more unfettered,
They left the named
And spoke of the lettered,
The sigmas and taus
Of constellations.
They filled their throats
With the furthest bodies
To which man sends his
Speculation,
Beyond which God is;
The cosmic motes
Of yawning lenses.
Their solemn peals
Where not their own:
They spoke for the clock
With whose vast wheels
Theirs interlock.
In that grave word
Uttered alone
The utmost star
Trembled and stirred,
Though sent so far
Its whirling frenzies
Appear like standing
In one self station.
It has not ranged,
And save for the wonder
Of once expanding
To be a nova
It has not changed
To the eye of man
On planets over,
Around, and under
It in creation
Since man began
To drag down man
And nation nation.

from NEW HAMPSHIRE (1923)
Robert Frost

Just pfunnin' around with the SD, Peter. Which brings to mind an old tourist map I have, in which there was, or used to be (I'm sure Tani will check in on this) a store in Bend, Oregon, called Pfundamentals. Made me think of your affectation. Of course, the pfundamentals nowdays for too many is catfood, and this store appears to be (or to have been) a cornucopia of touristic superfluities.

I wasn't pfunnin'...I was way off the ranch on that one!

Uhm I should have known from the weather description. Well, I'm sure there's at least a bit of sun and football in South Dakota as well!

damshowis. and i wotent mind bein in south dakota. tho there's pfun a-plenty here in San Diego. i just might head up alpine way tomorrow. i love those little pie making towns, rhubarb is my own favorite. though on this diet it must needs be a little piece that i am after. no ice cream. maybe some rice dream, though i can't go to heavy there neither, as they are wont to say in outlying areas. tonight it's Mexican soup replete with tripe and any Leopold Bloomy gamy organy thing they can find . Don't ask don't tell with some of these roadside eateries. i grew up, if that's what i did, in my father's butcher shoppe, so nothing quite frightens me in the comestible dept. before the 67 riots it was a racially mixed neighborhood, so I took the opportunity to sample every sort of 'soul food' including what some suburban voters would eschew like the plague. Namely hogsheadcheese. made from all the tasty and what some would call nasty bits of our porcine friends. i was also lucky in my plethora of uncles who showed me around some of the eccentric areas of the arts eating. Especially the 'gentleman' from Quebec, now that fellow knew what fine dining was - and could hold his own when it came to swilling. that brute could pick up a 100 pound bag of sugar with his choppers. my father and uncles spent more time playing poker and going to the track than they ever spent in a library. but you'd not want to match wits with these toughs, they were never at a loss for words.

It seems, watching TV, this year's marketing plan to trump a lousy economy is to launch the holiday season extra early, rather than wait for Thanksgiving. Which might have unintended consequences.

The Death of Santa Claus

He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,

he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital gown always flap

open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,

until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't

stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world he loves goes black,

and he drops on his jelly belly
in the snow and Mrs. Claus
tears out of the toy factory

wailing, and the elves wring
their little hands, and Rudolph's
nose blinks like a sad ambulance

light, and in a tract house
in Houston, Texas, I'm 8,
telling my mom that stupid

kids at school say Santa's a big
fake, and she sits with me
on our purple-flowered couch,

and takes my hand, tears
in her throat, the terrible
news rising in her eyes.

Charles Harper Webb

>309 copyedit52: heh.

Holidays!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBkTUzKAiXQ
hayyoo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcQZ2tnWeg&feature=related

What a beautiful 3 am Sunday morning song!

You'll always get a guy with a pie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vc4JJ8C4N0&feature=related

Like it. And remember, a long, long time ago ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6uEjifqTaI

I'd like to purchase a chicken
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1leDAwjtto&feature=related

PERHAPS THEY NEVER WILL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM&feature=related

Fear of the Inexplicable

But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished
the existence of the individual; the relationship between
one human being and another has also been cramped by it,
as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of
endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the
bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively
from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of
the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident
that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a
place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and
down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous
insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in
Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons
and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode.

We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about
us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us.
We are set down in life as in the element to which we best
correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of
years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we
hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be
distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to
mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we
arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us
that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now
still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust
and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those
ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses
who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps
everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless
that wants help from us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

More on Montaigne, from the Paris Review

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2010/11/12/what-bloggers-owe-montaigne/?utm_s...

Just realized I forgot to post the final Thanksgiving menu - this year centered around sauces, dips, and spreads:

Breads, Cheeses, & Spreads:
Cheese & Rosemary Bread Sticks
Baguette

Goat Cheese Mousse
Ricotta and Honey

Herb Butter
Pepper & Onion Butter
Honey Orange Spread

Dips:
White Bean & Garlic Dip
Spinach, Lump Crab & Artichoke Dip

Roasted Turkey:
Mesa Barbecue Sauce
Orange-Pomegranate Relish
Herb Sauce
Peach and Sage Gravy

Sides:
Sweet Potato Casserole
Butternut Squash Chutney
Saffron Risotto
Onions with Balsamic Glaze

Deserts:
Creole Country Ambrosia w/ Twin Chocolate Shavings
Apple, Almond, and Pine Nut Tart

Espresso-Chocolate Ganache
Pastry Cream
Lime Honey

Drink:
Hot Buttered Rum

Hard to believe, Jane, hard to believe. You made some of that up, right? Lump crab & artichoke dip? Really? Goat cheese mousse? And my favorite, espresso-chocolate ganache. But wait, there is such a thing as:

ganache

A glaze, icing, or filling for pastries made from chocolate and cream. Its origins date to around 1850, when it may have been invented in Switzerland or in France.

You and RidgewayGirl, btw, have been granted dual citizenship on the weather listings. You'll see what I mean when I make the posting later.

Can you post the recipe for the Creole Country Ambrosia? I'm a big fan of ambrosia.

New! Improved! Expanded! Even more personalized!

Low and High Temperatures for Selected Locales

Forecast for November 16, 2010

Edmonton, Canada 12-21
La Pine, Oregon 27-42
Denver 33-53
Guy, Arkansas 36-61
Ghent, Belgium 37-48
Sandusky, Ohio 39-54
Vancouver, Canada 41-48
Chicago 41-59
Portland, Oregon 43-53
Woodstock, Georgia 45-62
Chino, California 45-80
Woodstock, NY 47-54
Greenville, S. Carolina 49-58
Bethany, Conn. 50-58
New Orleans 50-73
New York City 51-57
San Diego 51-73
Sydney 62-71
Taipei 67-74

321 - no problem.

320/322 - Yay! I (unlike the US gov) highly approve of multiple citizenships.

Yep, that's about 23C in Sydney... the sun is warm, and the breeze couldn't be a better temperature if I was controlling it. We've had days of rain and storm, followed by perfect days of cloud and sunshine, and then the cycle starts again. What a marvellous spring this is.

Thread switch tomorrow, for several reasons, not least of which is the misspelling on Omniverous, which I'm tired of looking at. So if you have anything to say on this soon-to-be relic, say it now, before she disappears.

Apropos the upcoming thread:

Old and New

Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays,
Old times, old loves, old friendships, and old wine
Why should the old monopolise all praise?
Then let the new claim mine.

Give me strong new friends, when the old prove weak,
Or fail me in my darkest hour of need;
Why perish with the ship that springs a leak,
Or lean upon a reed?

Give me new love, warm, palpitating, sweet,
When all the grace and beauty leaves the old;
When like a rose it withers at my feet,
Or like a hearth grows cold.

Give me new times, bright with a prosperous cheer,
In place of old, tear-blotted, burdened days;
I hold a sunlit present far more dear,
And worthy of my praise.

When the old creeds are threadbare, and worn through,
And all too narrow for the broadening soul,
Give me the fine, firm texture of the new,
Fair, beautiful and whole.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Wait, I thought omniverous was like plnats!

I guess I shouldn'ta said anything. But one of you sussed it out, and I admitted my ignorance to him, so I assumed more than one of you was on to me. Omniverous was a profound misspelling, plnats merely a typo.

Profound typo, I'd say.

Being profound is Our Thing, so don't worry about it.

New thread, the twelfth edition of Nature:

Nature Obstreperous: plnats and other things that sprout:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/102601