Monday Meh

Trinity Church reflected in Hancock Building, Boston (Source: Corbis)

 

Many of you know that my daughter attends college in Boston -- thankfully she has been in touch and is safe on campus, far enough from the scene of the explosions that turned the Boston Marathon's finish line into a scene from a nightmare.  

 

My heart is breaking for the city and the people of Boston. 



Wienerdog Wednesday, Walk on the Wild Side Edition

Thanks to alert guild member and Photo Sleuth extraordinaire Brett Payne, today we discover more celebrity wienerdogs. Brett's sleuthing turned up this photo of Lou Reed and friend:

 

Some sleuthing of my own revealed that Lou was owned by two dachshunds early in his career, The Baron and The Duke. Apparently they were camera shy. Or else Lou spilled something interesting on his pants and shirt. 

It may be that Lou got the idea to be a doxie proxy from Andy Warhol. Oh, those were crazy times....

This last is not one of Lou's doggies, just a fan:

Monday Meh, MLK edition

The Problem We All Live With, Norman Rockwell

One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names, or names of other honored leaders of the integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in the three decades after Brown v. Board of Education, and to find out how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation. It is even more disheartening when schools like these are not in deeply segregated inner-city neighborhoods but in racially mixed areas where the integration of a public school would seem to be most natural, and where, indeed, it takes a conscious effort on the part of parents or school officials in these districts to avoid the integration option that is often right at their front door.

Jonathan Kozol, "Still Separate, Still Unequal"

Wienerdog Wednesday, Literary Edition

Read excerpts HERE

Just back from a hurried road trip to Boston and back. The drive North was made more entertaining by the audio version of The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, recommended some time ago by Mr. Charleston but only last week finding its way into my CD player.  This is the second book in a trilogy, but even without having read the first (Portuguese Irregular Verbs), it required no background knowledge of the protagonist -- just the ability to stay focused on the road while laughing hysterically.

Wienerdog Wednesday, Winter Edition

Nothing for a long dog to do on long winter afternoons but take a long snooze. 

We finally did something we said we'd never do and bought Scooter Pie a sweater this year - I think her ol' bones appreciate having the extra layer of warmth when there's not a lap to latch onto.

Monday Meh, blow it out yer ___ edition (A Collective Poem)

"Women with party favors" Photo by Leslie Jones from the Boston Public Library Flickr Archive

Perched on the edge of a fiscal cliff
I cannot help but wonder if
the new year will be any diff-
erent than Two Thousand Twelve.

Will the world become more kind
than in the year that's soon behind
or will  __________* still be maligned
like in Two Thousand Twelve?

Global warming not averted,
Women's health rights unasserted,
Naked greed un-pantsed and -shirted;
I'm disappointed, Two Thousand Twelve.

(your verse appears below in color)**

Same old Boss got re-elected.
Death and war quite unaffected.
Our poor grew ever more dejected.
Was this your plan Two-Thousand Twelve?

Occupy and unions surveilled and tested.
Tea Parties and banks left unmolested.
Lawmakers all uninterested.
Just S.O.P. Two-Thousand-Twelve.

 I've lost life's passion
My heart has turned hard and ashen
My words to myself are hard and bashin'
"My lard-ass is jiggling like a Kardashian."
-- according to Now in Two Thousand Twelve.

Obama's son Trayvon is dead!
attacks by gun are up
wages and production down
end of the year and what do we get
a ball drop in New York, 
end of Two Thousand Twelve.

Losing rights day by day
But one needs revising anyway
Give 26 bullets to the NRA
And then just go away Two Thousand Twelve.

Heft yourself up two thousand twelve
let your stink rot away on the shelf.
Kiss my ass you were one very fucked up year,
you’ve already got me marked and labeled
bent naked and flat across the fucking table
a bit lower and place your lips upon my rear!***

I am unfamiliar with Kardishians
But I know what Congress is slashing
The social programs and safety nets they are lashing
To give tax breaks to the rich.

Can't develop any pass-i-on
for a rhyming with Kardashian
who are shameless with their fash-i-on
but could use a good whip lash-i(o)n'
-- says Harlequin re: two Thousand Twelve.

But auld acquaintance be forgot
this New Year's Eve let's drink a lot
and leave with this departing thought:
It could've been worse, Two Thousand Twelve.

 Happy New Year Anyway.

(* gays, immigrants, liberals, women, the unemployed, the 99%, single parents, minorities, socialists, Muslims, people who "look" Muslim,  -- just part of the exhaustive list of groups who were bullied one way or another by politicians, media, and sometimes entire countries in 2012. There wasn't room to list them all in the rhyme scheme so insert your favorite! )

**Hey kids - a genius friend of mine (I'll just call him "Kevin" ) had the idea to make this a crowd-sourced poem. If you want to play along, compose your own verse in the comments, below, and I'll paste it in a different colored font into the body of the poem (the original will be in black). 
UPDATE: Non-political verses welcome, too -- now's the time to bemoan the NHL lockout, Whitney Houston's untimely passing, and Honey BooBoo's appearance. Special prize for the first poet who can rhyme "Kardashian."
UPDATE 1.1.13: Just like the NRA won't restrict access to firearms, I've decided to lift any restrictions on rhyme scheme. Sticks and stones, ya know....

*** Read more of Detroit poet M Durfee's work at The Walking Man 

When the weather outside is frightful

You can order your own copy HERE.

When the wind howls and the snow blows and there's nothing to do besides all the housework that I've let slide for the past 4 months while working full time and being a grad student part time -- that's when I like to sit down with a mug of tea, a plate of cookies, and a good book. Blogging buddy Murr has gone and put a bunch of her most excellent essays in convenient book form, and I highly recommend it. Even though I have been a reader of Murrmurrs for a year or so, I have apparently incinerated enough brain cells to impair my short-term memory (see reference to hot flashes in previous post), and so it's like reading all this material fresh. And as Murr helpfully points out, I don't really want to take my computer to the loo with me.

Hopefully the memory loss is a temporary phenomenon, but my copy of Trousering Your Weasel is for keeps.

Unless the dog gets ahold of it.

(PS - Don't forget the cookies. You'll laugh 'em off, I promise!)

Rum Cake for Breakfast

Photo Credit

Scene:  December 25, 2012. 08:45 a.m. Somewhere in the upper east corner of Tennessee (they don't like to call it NORTHeast Tennessee, for some reason), in the kitchen of a century-old wooden frame house, a solitary female is at work, washing a few serving dishes, wineglasses, baking pans -- items that are too old or fragile or unwieldy to go in the automatic dishwasher, which will hopefully go on churning its way through several more post-Christmas Eve cleanups. In a bedroom down the hall, a TV blares, but the woman ignores it, knowing that whatever holiday goodwill she is feeling will be destroyed by the sound of the so-called "journalists" on the Channel That Shall Not Be Named. Instead, for some reason, the song "Mele Kalikimaka" is running in a loop through her head. She lets it run through several verses while she finishes the last of the washing, wipes down the counter tops, and opens the refrigerator to get something for breakfast. The woman's eyes scan the shelves, passing over the leftover ham, the crate of clementines, jars of jams and condiments -- and then the silvery foil catches her eye. 

Rum cake! 

One slice of cake and one cup of coffee later, the woman is ready to get to work, baking the birthday cake for her daughter, who decided to make her debut at 7:31 a.m. on a Christmas morning 22 years earlier.

The Christmas you get, you deserve.

'Tis the season...

Browsing through my photos yesterday, I thought this Chihuly chandelier, if rotated upside-down, would make an interesting Christmas tree substitute. There's something Dr. Seussical about Chihuly's work, maybe that's why I like it so. But there is also the mystery of how a material as fragile as glass can be made to take on the shapes, colors, and substantial presence that the artist imagines. During much of this past year I've felt as fragile as glass, but in spite of all the things that were thrown at me, I didn't break. So I guess that means I'm not really made of glass after all, which is a really good thing, because lately I've been having hot flashes of nuclear proportions, quite possibly capable of melting glass. I'm beginning to feel guilty for contributing to global warming....

Alas, that's the only thing I have to feel guilty about. Ain't misbehavin' at all these days, which would be less lamentable if I was channeling my energy into something productive. But even the small changes I'm working on take a huge amount of effort. I hope I have some oomph left for when it's time to tackle something really BIG. Taking the path of least resistance, as I have been, has only been leading me in circles....

I have a plan cookin' on the back burner, though. Of course, it requires the cooperation of various family members, and of my own body (especially you, knees....are you listening?) and resolve. I know I'm really pretty lucky and have had a way better year than a lot of people. But that doesn't mean I'm not ready to kick 2012 out the door. Next year has to be better, right?

Merry Christmas, y'all. Tune in next year -- I'm going to try and make it a more blog-worthy one, if nothing else!

If it's Wednesday...

...there's got to be a wiener dog at PRS! Today you are being treated to a recent portrait of the intellihome's resident wiener dog, Scooter Pie. Miss Pie celebrated her 13th birthday back in September, but she is in pretty good shape thanks to a new walking regime (we'll see how that holds up over the winter) and to our continued ability to turn a deaf ear to her pleas to share our people food with her. No doubt part of her good looks can be attributed to her strict routine of a minimum of five naps per day, too.