Sunday Quote

You may delay, but time will not.

-Benjamin Franklin

Last blaze on a black Friday

It does seem like autumn's swan song, the leaves mostly down, tonight's November sky was a smoky blue with the texture and depth of blue velvet swirled with dark mauve clouds among the black stark branches of the newly shorn trees. I love November, it's wild and wooly. Once Thanksgiving is past, the doors of the season are wide open and I have Christmas on my mind...not a big crowded mall, black Friday shopping kind of gal, but here are some things I like that I have stumbled across you might enjoy for your Christmas list consideration. This great fox scarf reminds me of childhood trauma, sitting behind my Aunt who had a fur stole of entwined dead foxes, staring at me with their little marble eyes. Stocking stuffers are going to fly over to my house from Perpetual Kid, fun stuff galore including Fred design that is witty and silly. I think this inanimate office stickers are a hoot, don't you? Natural Mama with a yen for the organic, natural gift? I love this site that does all the linking to wonderful Etsy stuff where you can purchase felted fairies and amazing cloth dolls and wooden toys and the like. My daughter still raves about the perfume I got for her last Christmas from here, maybe a repeat visit in the cards. A blog that links to a huge variety of fairytale-tastic jewelery, clothing, art sites. and to wrap up - the best maple spread I know of, the blended maple one here, I buy in the high numbers whenever we go to Vermont, but now I can just click and get some maple happiness. Happy Shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We've got it covered - the posting on the white board from the vegan daughter, Happy Tofurky, and the husband's heavenly turkey roasting in the oven, potatoes being cooked, cranberry sauce cooked, all children home, blessings, Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart, whose pulse may be thy praise.

-George Herbert

puppy in a fish tank and deep thoughts

Nodded off after dinner. Awoke to daughter discussing what she would do if she won a million dollars. It involved real estate. I was dreaming of money as well, curiously enough. My dream far more practical than hers - I dreamt I had a magic shoebox that kept giving me a thousand dollars in small bills every time I opened it. Ah, the practical mind, always thinking. Realizing I seriously need to figure out a better evening winter plan than coming home, eating dinner, policing homework, and falling asleep on the couch. Movement of some sort seems like it should be part of this plan. Don't like our usual walking at night after work - too dark and there are coyotes that are not as shy as one would like...so...what do you, gentle reader, do for exercise in the winter?

Sunday Quote

So dull and dark are the November days.
The lazy mist high up the evening curled,
And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze;
The place we occupy seems all the world.

- John Clare, November

TSA and children and accepting the unacceptable

I'm glad my family and I have had some nice trips this past year - to Florida and to Scotland - because I will not be buying any airline tickets. I refuse to deal with the insanity of the TSA.
That they seriously thinks the inappropriate gropings and x-rays (with most of the machines not working making the pat downs mandatory according to a good many news reports) will make anyone safer is beyond me.
I think of some of our friends and extended family, of the families I know through my work with children, and I include tweens and teenagers when I say children. Families with autistic children, children who have been traumatized or molested, children with psychological issues, are offered no alternatives. Stories are documented about the infirm and elderly being forced to get out of wheelchairs, leg braces removed, etc. There is a news reporter who took a cell phone video of his three year old being held by his wife, the child screaming as she is being patted down - and while the Dad objects and remarks about compromise and does this strange double standard of being outraged and yet trying to be okay with it, this child knows her parents stood there while she was terrified and touched by a stranger in places we tell our children not to allow anyone to touch them.
I don't want to be okay with something like this.
Apparently now if this took place with your child and you decided the hell with the tickets, we will just leave rather than upset my child like this, especially if you or your child has any sort of issues where this could be deeply upsetting you can be detained and significantly fined.
Can you imagine a rape victim having to go through these pat-downs? I read comments where the critics basically say man-up and shut-up and just go through to keep America safe. Apparently they have never been subjected to any sort of sexual harassment or history that might make these searches unbearable.
What of pregnant women or people with cancer issues - the radiation is not "nothing" as we are told. Children should not be exposed to full body scanning radiation.
Yet we are accepting this?
We honestly don't think as a country we could come up with saner, reasonable alternatives for airport security that don't stomp on our civil rights?
If you are flying and experience any problems with the TSA involving any kind of abuse during searches, the ACLU has a complaint form for you to fill out as they gather information.
If you opt out of flying - let your government and the airline industry know via letters, emails, tweets, blog posts.
I appreciate the need for safety and security but I do not believe for one moment that what the TSA is doing is making my country safer.
"He who trades freedom for safety gets neither." -Benjamin Franklin

Dogs Singing poetry anthology

Pleased to be in the same company as the amazing poets featured in this wonderful tribute collection, Dogs Singing, with poems about our canine friends released today. The proceeds go to animal charities. (I am thinking great holiday gift, right?)

How my children see me

Or have seen me...
Two are drawings by the boys at various times in my life - the first one is twenty years old and yet I still remember just thinking genius! artist! when he scribbled an actual face and said it was his mommy. Wow. That's the stuff when you have little kids. The second one where I look like a beatnik with a rose sticking out of her head was drawn fairly recently by the last child who is either keeping me young or aging me rapidly. He draws under the covers the way other kids read, very fun. The quite interesting art work by Dorothea Tanning is entitled Birthday, 1942, and is a painting my 24 year old daughter tells me always makes her think of me. Hmmmm. Where is my shirt? Who is my strange pet? The daughter is very into surrealistic art. As is the usual case with my children I am charmed, amused, and interested by all three impressions.

Good poem for a gray day

Home sick, the youngest is in the next room having his cello lesson while the dog howls from behind a closed door. Gray day that would be worthy of a fire in a fireplace, having none I will make do with a photo taken a month ago of a woodpile and a link to one of my favorite Adrienne Rich poems, Song.

Sunday Quote

Veteran's Day

Honoring those who have served our country and those who are serving now.

walkabout wonders...

Rat art, shadows and light, mysterious doorways, and always just a little green.

Sunday fine and lively with poets and writers

Where do you meet? Coming in on a train, at the clock. Cold but that doesn't stop a passing (and good-natured) New Yorker from showing off her stuff. Some Earl Gray (loose in a pot, of course)at the hotel that Harry Potter would stay in as an adult. Onto the point of the trek, or one of them, a wonderful poetry reading at the very atmospheric and appealing
Bowery Poetry Club and Cafe to hear Heather Hartley on her American tour reading from her recently released and quite brilliant collection, Knock, Knock. Also reading and new to me, Craig Morgan Teicher, reading from Cradle Book, a magical and mysterious collection of modern fables (could not get over one called Raised By Wolves). On the way to Indian food with a dear friend after, refound a store I stumbled across a year back and loved, Timbuktu, beautiful things. Drinks and cookie mad fabulousness at W, lost in the aisles at the Strand where I found a lovely secondhand book called Aid to Rhyme with lists of words that are perfect (by Bessie Redfield). Walkabout with great company at night in NYC, loved the sound and scents, noise and jazz of it all...train home with a purse full of books...that sort of fine.

Sunday Quote

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

- C.S. Lewis

I heart Friday night stay-at-home dates :)

Popcorn, diet root beer, the saved-for-later Castle tv show, and the husband.

Feliz dia de los Muertos

A tradition now at our library, the celebration and astonishing display of paper-mache art and sculpture created over months...

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and...

my girls, remembered, missed, Anne and Grace.