4 More Days, 4 More Years!

This election is so important. It's all about moving FORWARD, not backward.

And in WA State, can you believe we will probably legalize pot, approve gay marriage, pass charter school, and elect a Republican governor. Go figure!

from today's Poem a Day, how apropos . . .

The Hurricane by William Carlos Williams The tree lay down  on the garage roof  and stretched, You  have your heaven,  it said, go to it.  Reprinted from The Collected Poems: Vol. II, 1939-1962. Copyright © 1944 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Used with permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. About this poem: The Hurricane names slotted for 2012 include: Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie, and William.

The Things They Googled

I just loved reading this essay by Marion Winik in the latest issue of Utne Reader, reprinted from The Sun (and, it looks like, an earlier version appearing in the Baltimore Fishbowl -- this essay has legs!). I love all the places it goes.  Though the version from The Sun ends a bit differently (and better-ly) than the one below. It's really a prose poem, isn't it? Enjoy!

The Things They Googled
by: Marion Winik

If they were young, they googled the things they didn’t know. Some were things they were supposed to know, like the habits of the hammerhead shark. The perfect squares under 100. The phrase “rite of passage.” When they got bored, they googled images of peace signs, photographs of rainbows, a video of a girl singing about Friday and another of a baby laughing and laughing. They googled Anne Hathaway. If they were boys, they googled how to build a bomb. If they could get on the computer when their parents weren’t home they googled things they weren’t supposed to know, things like sodomy and lesbian and boob. Then they cleared the search history and googled hammerhead shark.

If they were old, they googled the things they had forgotten. Names of actors and movies, old sports scores and hurricanes, the vice president under Carter, the ingredients in a Manhattan. The hours of the liquor store, liquor stores open Sunday, directions. They googled things that had escaped them: the definition of “feckless,” a synonym for “regime,” most of the answers to the Sunday crossword puzzle. They googled remedies for burns and bee stings.

If they were lonely, they googled sex. They googled phone sex, cybersex, and sex xxx. They googled long-lost lab partners, old boyfriends, the name of their ex-husband’s new girlfriend. They googled cute pictures of baby animals. They googled the word lonely. They googled “distended stomach” “nosebleed that won’t stop” “numbness” “insomnia” and “cancer symptoms.”

The things they googled were determined by forgetfulness, by need, by desire, by curiosity, and by the endless availability of googling. In fact, there was no point in remembering anything except how to google. They didn’t even have to remember what they were googling: When they googled “When does G,” just that much, Google knew the question was when Glee Season Three would begin. When they googled pleonism, Google quietly looked up pleonasm. Google never made them feel bad about not knowing.

So they googled how to lose weight and pictures of psoriasis and checklists for diagnosing ADD. If they were pregnant, there was no end to their googling. They googled when it would rain and how much it would rain and when to plant their gardens. They googled the tides and the seasons. They googled sunrise and sunset. They googled births and deaths. They googled themselves, which was sometimes unsettling, turning up Boston Marathon times and class reunions and even obituaries not their own.

How did they live before Google, they wondered. How did anyone know anything? How did anyone remember, while driving through Mohntown, Pennsylvania, the name of the young blond actress in the movie Witness who was from that town?

When they were hungry, they googled. They googled “recipe chard cannellini beans” “recipe apple gingersnap” “recipe rice noodle salad.” How to freeze tomatoes. How to peel and seed tomatoes. Can you add grated zucchini to cornbread mix? What is that smell in my refrigerator? How can you tell if an egg is rotten? If one egg is rotten, are all the others rotten too? Best no-egg cornbread. Best no-egg omelette.

Best restaurant brunch.

Plagued by the disturbing familiarity of an essay they had read, they googled The Things They Googled, and again Google was there before they finished typing. It was the short story “The Things They Carried” they were thinking of, the beautiful, heartbreaking Vietnam story by Tim O’Brien. Google showed them where to read it online, and some of them actually did read it, which stopped them for a while from their googling.

Now put down that iPhone and I will tell you:

The actress is Kelly McGillis.

Pleonasm is the use of more words than necessary to express an idea.

You cannot find the best restaurant for brunch on Google, though Google confidently pretends otherwise. But this search works better the old-fashioned way: on foot, by hand, with your mouth. First, you will have to leave the house.

***

Marion Winik writes “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a column about life, love, and the pursuit of self-awareness. Check out her heartbreakingly honest and funny essays twice a month on Baltimore Fishbowl.

Four More Years!

The home stretch -- and where we stand now. Get out and VOTE! (map courtesy of Real Clear Politics)

Seattle Center & Jack Straw Productions present Unexpected Arts

Kathryn Hunt & Peter Pereira - reading from Jack Straw Writers alumni

10/6/2012 10:30 AM

Outdoor Spaces

Come join Kathryn Hunt and I, as we read new poems (and old). In the Poetry Garden! And thank you to Jack Straw - you've been there since the beginning. *

I DO: SUPPORT MARRIAGE EQUALITY

Check out the photo stream of people sending in pictures of themselves holding the "I Do" sign in support of marriage equality.  It is so moving to see all the support from all walks of life:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seatimesopinion/8027230294/
or here:
http://seattletimes.com/html/edcetera/2019160137_referendum-74-i-do-photos.html

another good one from Poem a Day:

Big Game by Brenda Shaughnessy         —after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem" What began as wildfire ends up on a candle wick. In reverse, it is contained, a lion head in a hunter's den. Big Game. Bigger than one I played with matches and twigs and glass in the shade. When I was young, there was no sun and I was afraid. Now, in grownhood, I call the ghost to my fragile table, my fleshy supper, my tiny flame. Not just any old, but THE ghost, the last one I will be, the future me, finally the sharpest knife in the drawer. The pride is proud. The crowd is loud, like garbage dumping or how a brown bag ripping sounds like a shout that tells the town the house is burning down. Drowns out some small folded breath of otherlife: O that of a lioness licking her cubs to sleep in a dream of savage gold. O that roaring, not yet and yet and not yet dead. So many fires

I love this poem from today's Poem a Day:

The Future is an Animal
by Tina Chang

In every kind of dream I am a black wolf
careening through a web. I am the spider
who eats the wolf and inhabits the wolf's body.
In another dream I marry the wolf and then
am very lonely. I seek my name and they name me
Lucky Dragon. I would love to tell you that all
of this has a certain ending but the most frightening
stories are the ones with no ending at all.
The path goes on and on. The road keeps forking,
splitting like an endless atom, splitting
like a lip, and the globe is on fire. As many
times as the book is read, the pages continue
to grow, multiply. They said, In the beginning,
and that was the moral of the original and most
important story. The story of man. One story.
I laid my head down and my head was heavy.
Hair sprouted through the skin, hair black
and bending toward night grass. I was becoming
the wolf again, my own teeth breaking
into my mouth for the first time, a kind of beauty
to be swallowed in interior bite and fever.
My mind a miraculous ember until I am the beast.
I run from the story that is faster than me,
the words shatter and pant to outchase me.
The story catches my heels when I turn
to love its hungry face, when I am willing
to be eaten to understand my fate. 

Let's Have a Kiki

Check out this "instructional video" from Scissor Sisters. Such a hoot!



And while you are at it: this live performance of "Only the Horses" is pretty hot. Even Tom Jones was giving them a standing O.

Love this poem from today's Poem a Day. So fitting for the end of August (though we are not to the end yet!):

 Mist Valley
 by James Longenbach

At the end of August, when all
The letters of the alphabet are waiting,
You drop a teabag in a cup.
The same few letters making many different words,
The same words meaning different things.

Often you've rearranged them on the surface of the fridge.
Without the surface
They're repulsed by one another.

Here are the letters.
The tea is in your cup.

At the end of August, the mind
Is neither the pokeweed piercing the grass
Nor the grass itself.
As Tony Cook says in The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks

The right thing to do is nothing, the place
A place of concealment,
And the time as often as possible.


*

Sounds like Argentina has a good thing going (from Atlantic Cities online): "Another installment of: Literary Laws that Will Never Exist in the United States. This week we turn to Buenos Aires, Argentina, home of the late Jorge Luis Borges, where aging novelists, poets and playwrights are eligible to receive government pensions. The New York Times reported Sunday that the recently-established program is now distributing pensions of up to $900 a month to over 80 writers. One of those recipients, Alberto Laiesca, told Romero that “the program is magnificent, delivering some dignity to those of us who have toiled our entire life for literature.” The requirements for the pension are strict, according to the Times and the Argentine news blog Occidentes: 15 years residence in the Argentine capital, a continuing commitment to the arts, and the publication of five works of literature, poetry, essays or theater, barring some other extended engagement with literature." full story here: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/08/retirement-day-poets-pension-buenos-aires/2935/

Romney VP pic coming soon. Who will it be? . . . and while we are waiting, here's a funny bit of reminiscence from today's Huff Post: "Meanwhile, the ghost of Sarah Palin continues to loom over Romney's decision. Only two days ago, former veep Dick Cheney, 2008 loser John McCain and La Palin herself engaged in a mud-slinging ménage a trois over whether or not Palin was up to the task of riding shotgun on the Republican ticket four years ago. The ever-dour Cheney asserted that she was not. Ya think? McCain, who will forever bear the Palin stain on his political legacy, played Sir Walter Raleigh-on-Geritol yet again and bashed Cheney on her behalf. The half-term governor, who now appears as a bobblehead doll on Fox News, tossed an incoherent (and duplicitous) word salad in her defense, reminding the world yet again why Cheney was right." Ya think? *

A Guide for the Poet Within‘The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets,’ by Jeffrey Skinner

I love the tongue in cheek of the title -- sounds like this might be an interesting book! "Halfway through Jeffrey Skinner’s new book, “The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets,” he quotes W. H. Auden: “Form looks for content, content looks for form.” It’s a pithy bit of near tautology that also happens to neatly describe Skinner’s thoughtful and genre-defying book." --from NY Times review

This looks to be a real fun evening, and for such a good cause. Hope you can come!

Such a delightful, heartwarming movie. Multiple interwoven stories, all coming together at a rundown but beautiful old hotel in India, that an unrelated group of British ex-pats have landed upon in their retirement years. A wonderful ensemble cast, including faves Judie Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith. And a surprising (and quite moving) plot line involving an Englishman who grew up in India, returning now to look for a lost love (also a man). The movie had so much going on, I am sure they left out a lot of the novel. In fact, this is one of those movies that makes me want to go back and read the book it is based upon: These Foolish Things, by Deborah Moogach.