What Did You Do the Last Weekend of the Year?

A friend of mine got married! Another friend had a baby. Hard to top that.

Saturday afternoon, Dean and I cleaned out some of the basement storage and took three or four boxes of "stuff" to Goodwill. Then we went to Sears and bought more stuff (hehehe): new bathroom rugs, jeans, and who knows what else. The we went to Costco: the place was mobbed!

Then I found this very cool program for backing up your entire blog, comments and pics included, to your own hard drive. It's called HTTrack Website Copier. It's free and highly recommend it. http://www.httrack.com/ I wanted to be able to save the whole three years worth of blogfiles. Who knows, maybe I'll make it into a little book.

We had friends over for dinner Saturday night. We had hummus and pita, cocktails, mussels, salad, seafood risotto, bread, and Marionberry pie with "rich-lite" vanilla bean ice cream for dessert. The we played this crazy old Italian card game called Briscola (I think it means Trump). What a great time we all had!

Today we fixed breakfast of bacon and eggs and hashbrowns and toast. Then we fixed the birdfeeder. Then we took a walk from Pioneer Square up the the Seattle Art Museum. Saw the Japan show and the Gaylen Hansen show. His art is fascinating: cartoonish, yes sophisticated. I think he is said to have taught Gary Larsen how to draw cows.

Then we walked back down to Pioneer Square and had lunch at Cafe Umbria. Then we went to Elliott Bay Books and I bought a new novel, The Night Train to Lisbon, that I had just read a review about in the Seattle Times. I read the first few chapters all huddled up on the living room sofa under a throw. I think it's going to be a good read.

Tonight we are going to a neighborhood dessert party. I think we are taking a Panatone and a bottle of wine.

I'm putting some final revisions on a couple of poems. At least I hope they are final.

I can't believe it's almost New Years. But with it coming on a Tuesday, and working both days on either side, it doesn't seem like much of a holiday this year. We'll probably go to the neighborhood burn in the afternoon, and have a quiet evening at home. And be in bed after the ball is dropped in New York (meaning 9pm here).

It makes me think of that old song "What Are You Doing New Years Eve?" Not the Barbara version, but the Ella version (my favorite).

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An ode to the meat eaters (myself included)

I've been reading Norman Dubie's new book and enjoying it a lot. Here is a poem, that was featured on today's Poetry Daily.

The Last Gold Raptors of Soma
for Joel & Laura

This winter equinox is different from any other—
it's not the lizard men
playing ping-pong through the trees, the lighter-than-air
balls red with sunset; their sleeves
dressed with the feathers of dead Medici falcons.

A cow looks nervously at its eye
reflected in the ice
that the farmer breaks, releasing
the rope in the tree
and its black anvil weight falling. . .

The cow now looks at its eye
reflected in water,
thinking this is its cruel nativity—
the farmer looking at its lame hind leg
thinking of his red-haired brother-in-law,
the local butcher.

The sensitive cow, Mirtle, now charges the winter pond.
She drowns. The poor cow's tail
still flagging the spaceships just
behind the reddening hill.

So, the sun's down, the ship's lights
are like obvious fat jewels. And
if we want to have commerce
with the lizard men in their blue suits,
then we must eat more of these slouching animals
and faster too.

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Norman Dubie
from The Insomniac Liar of Topo
Copper Canyon Press

Bhutto, ah Bhutto . . .

I can only hope that, God willing, peace and justice will come to Pakistan.

How About a Shave?

Dean and I had a lovely Christmas Eve with family. One of my sisters hosted at her house, and there were about 30 of us. Great fun!

And then Xmas day it snowed! Very rare in Seattle. It didn't last, but it was beautiful to watch the big flakes coming down.

Christmas Day afternoon we went to see Sweeney Todd. What a sad, funny, gory, sweet movie! It has everything, a love story, great songs, humor, and blood. Helena Bonham Carter is off-the-hook funny in her role as Ms. Lovett, the meat pie maker. And Johnny Depp is perfectly cast as the vengeful mad barber. A must see!

A patient gave me a box of Red King Crab legs. Dean and I steamed some of them last night: they were amazingly sweet and succulent. Though it was kind of creepy stuffing these huge spider-like legs into the pot and covering them with a lid. Esp after Sweeney Todd. We mixed some of the meat with tomato sauce and tagliatelle pasta for dinner. Yum.

Hope your holidays have been grand.

Merry Xmas! (Santa on a Stick?)

Apparently, this guy's neighbors are not amused. I think it's a hoot.




It's not so much the Santa impaled on the cross in front of Art Conrad's Bremerton home, it's the headless Santa that sings carols on his front porch that has neighbors crying humbug.

Anagrammer, Scrabbling

Looks like somebody in the audience had a camera phone? From last Friday's Copper Canyon Press Open House reading.

You can't be alive unless you have a doctor's note

Social Security declared teacher dead

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PASCO -- No one knows how the Social Security Administration decided that Doris Pennington was dead, but she has spent the past week, including a visit to the doctor, trying to convince the agency that she is very much alive.

This story is too funny. When she asked if they had her husband down as dead too, the staff person said she could not give her that information.

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And in other news:

Lynne Spears's Parenting Book 'Delayed Indefinitely'

HAHAHAHA. You can't make this stuff up!

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Your assignment: Combine these two news items, plus one other of your choosing, into a poem.

From this week's American Life in Poetry:


In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas

In the house of the voice of Maria Callas
We hear the baby's cries, and the after-supper
Rattle of silverware, and three clocks ticking
To different tunes, and ripe plums
Sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds
Dissecting the avenues outside. We hear, like water
Pouring over time itself, the pure distillate arias
Of the numerous pampered queens who have reigned,
And the working girls who have suffered
The envious knives, and the breathless brides
With their horned helmets who have fallen in love
And gone crazy or fallen in love and died
On the grand stage at their appointed moments--
Who will sing of them now? Maria Callas is dead,
Although the full lips and the slanting eyes
And flared nostrils of her voice resurrect
Dramas we are able to imagine in this parlor
On evenings like this one, adding some color,
Adding some order. Of whom it was said:
She could imagine almost anything and give voice to it.

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American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2001 by Steve Orlen. Reprinted from "The Elephant's Child: New & Selected Poems 1978-2005," by Steve Orlen, published by Ausable Press, 2006, by permission of the author. First published in The Gettysburg Review. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Washington's First Poet Laureate

Gov. Chris Gregoire today announced that she has named Samuel Green as the Washington State Poet Laureate, a position established by the Legislature this year to build awareness and appreciation of poetry across the state, a news release said.

Green, who lives on Waldron Island, is a native of Washington.

He has served as editor of a small press focusing on the work of Washington poets for more than 30 years.

Yay, Sam!

Read more about Sam's life and work here.

Well, Gawl-lee!

Does anybody else notice the resemblance between Huckabee


and Gomer Pile (aka Jim Nabors?)


Can I get a Gawl-leee!

Concerning The Lottery

Dean told me about hearing this on The Writer's Almanac the other day. This short story has always haunted me. I did not know this background information, though. Wow.

"It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Shirley Jackson, (books by this author) born in San Francisco (1919), who married a Jewish man against her parents' wishes and went to live in a small town in Vermont where she developed a reputation for eccentricity. The local townspeople talked about her behind her back, calling her a Communist, a witch, an atheist, and a Jew. She felt as though everyone was watching her and judging her, and she began to dread leaving the house. And then one day she sat down and wrote a short story about a town where one resident is chosen by lottery each year to be stoned to death. She finished the story in two hours and sent it off to The New Yorker magazine, where it was published as "The Lottery" in 1948. The story generated more reader response than any other story in The New Yorker's history. Hundreds of readers wrote to the magazine, demanding to know what the story meant, or asking to cancel their subscriptions because they were so disturbed." (from the Writer's Almanac website)

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Had a wonderful time at the Copper Canyon Press Open House last night. Dean and I drove up after work. The place was packed. Wonderful drinks and snacks. 20% off all books! A chance to touch in with the staff of CCP, old friends, and locals. Then, at the end of the evening, Matthew Zapruder and I gave a brief reading. The audience was great: knowledgeable and responsive and high energy. I think I gave one of my better readings. Enjoyed meeting Matthew again, and hearing him read. He and Dean had a great conversation about therapy. I meet a woman whose past husband was named Pereira, and we connected over the whole Portuguese diaspora thing. Small world.

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I worked Saturday clinic today. And I am on call 24/7 for the rest of this week. I hope it is quiet. Fingers crossed.

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Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over

From the New York Times

Anthropologists studying the human spine have found that women’s lower vertebrae evolved in ways that reduce back pressure during pregnancy, when the mass of the abdomen grows by nearly one-third and the center of mass shifts forward considerably.

. . .

If evolution provided relief for women in pregnancy, one might ask, what about the equally awkward morphology of men with beer guts?

Also see:

Fetal load and the evolution of lumbar lordosis in bipedal hominins in Nature.

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I just have to say that *I* feel safer, knowing scientists are not afraid to tackle the really tough questions.

Also: I just *love* the term fetal load. "How are you today, honey? How is our fetal load?" Use that in a poem.

Mini-Roundup

Jim Bertolino has an interview here.

Kathleen Flenniken has an essay about Frank O'Hara here.

Rebecca Loudon continues to amaze us here.

C Dale's caption contest has some special guests here.

One Laptop Per Child

Give One, Get One. Extended until December 31st! Check it out here.

Turn Ho Ho Ho! into XO XO XO!

Catching up with Poetry Daily. I really enjoyed this one:

Patroclus Putting on the Armour of Achilles


How clumsy he is putting on the armour of another,
His friend's, perhaps remembering how they used to arm each other,
Fitting the metal tunics to one another's breast
And setting on each other's head the helmet's bristling crest.
Now for himself illicitly he foolishly performs
Secret ceremonial with that other's arms,
Borrowed, I say stolen, for they are not his own,
On the afternoon of battle, late, trembling, and alone.

Night terminal to fighting falls on the playing field
As to his arm he fastens the giant daedal shield.
A while the game continues, a little while the host
Lost on the obscure littoral, scattered and almost
Invisible, pursue the endless war with words
Jarring in the darkening air impassable to swords.

But when he steps forth from the tent where Achilles broods
Patroclus finds no foe at hand, surrounded by no gods.
Only the chill of evening strikes him to the bone
Like an arrow piercing where the armour fails to join,
And weakens his knees under the highly polished greaves.
Evening gentle elsewhere is loud on the shore, it grieves
It would seem for the deaths of heroes, their disobedient graves.


Daryl Hine

Recollected Poems, 1951-2004
Fitzhenry & Whiteside