glenniew

11:10 pm: So right in the middle of Mass ...
Father Rob calls William and me to come to the front, makes a speech about all the stuff we do, and hands us each an envelope, token of appreciation thing. When I open it up later, it's a gift certificate at the uppiest scale place in town. Wow.

Anyway, so I figure this calls for a food pantry run. I called William and he's on. We'll hit Dollar Store & Denny's tomorrow and take a bunch of stuff over. Also what we've collected at church. That'll allow us to have lunch.

Snoozed this afternoon so the kitchen is a mess. Barb turned up while I was still at church, so when I got back with leftovers she had lunch here. We chatted for a while while she did laundry, then she left. On Tuesday we'll go over to William's as he has a microwave to spare and she needs one.

No deep thoughts tonight.

12:09 pm: Hello again
Like the boll weevil, here I are, here I are. Stopped in Sept., I don't know why.

Working on a poem about vegetables vs. fruits, original sin, and whatnot. Having a hard time keeping the symbols where they belong. Like so:

Genesis

Fruits of the earth are bitter;
fragments of soil between the teeth,
mold’s aftertaste lingering on the tongue,
the raw scrape down the gullet
to an uneasy home in the gut.

But the fruits of sweet trees are a blessing,
The eye their soft peel pleasing
The hand wherein they fit
As if designed for it.
Curve your lips to their shapes
Gently crush their flesh
Flooding the tongue with longing
For a perfect time before the twining
Serpent slithered from the leaves
And looked sidewise from a shining eye.


See? Needs lots of work.

Tags: fruit, genesis, poem

11:25 pm: To Mad City & Back
Drove Maria down to Madison, were at Noodles & Co at 1 sharp, Wanda arrived, then Alex, we had a pleasant lunch. Alex & Wanda transferred Maria's stuff from Cleopatra to the van, then we all drove off in different directions. Wanda to Browntown, Alex to somewhere in Mad City, me back to Algoma. Except for one accident it was clear sailing all the way.

No one here but me & the katz. Peaceful. Watched STNGen in thrilling black & white, the color on my TV kicked out. I think I'll just watch it like that for a while and check out how powerful the images really are.

Invited Wanda to come in to Live Journal, hope she does. Friend of mine called, tech support problem, she'll drop off the laptop tomorrow. Circuits beginning to overload ... kzkz ... krk ... Beam me up, I'm through for the day.

08:33 am: Steve
The Sting
for Steve Irwin

He is a peaceable sort,
Not short of temper, nor quick
To take offense;
But that day he sensed a presence
above him in the waters
And idly
He flicked his weapon upward,
Then swam away
Innocent of the first taste of death
In the mouths of a million children

Tags: steve irwin

10:27 pm: Today ...
Maria & I went to GBay. Shopped at Goodwill, checked Fleet Farm for clearance patio furniture (nope), had lunch at Chinese Buffet (burp), picked up special dogfood for Radar, did a drive-by iced mocha latte sounding just like James Bond ordering a martini " ... shaken, not blended, a shot of chocolate, a grind of nutmeg, ... " and came home. Revived after a rest, and we watched a Morgan Freeman thriller.

I was somewhat on edge, but I'm only back on the anti-depressants a couple of days now. Looking back on my behavior the last couple of weeks, I can see that it's not that they slowed me down, they kept me civilized. I do not think of myself as rowdy, but that's the only word that describes my behavior at the last two Writers Group meetings.

Speaking of which, I need to write them & apologize ... that's all for tonight.

02:16 pm: Houseful of people
For the last couple of weeks, Maria has been visiting, then Gertrude and Alex have also been staying with me. Resulted in a lot of eating out, *not* a good idea. After Gertrude left, we made a point of eating at home. Alex leaves tomorrow for Mad City, then to Chi for the Jazz Fest.

Writers Group meeting tonight at June's. After Alex leaves, it will be just me and Maria for another week or two, then we'll parade down to Cassville to her Mississippi River home.

Today Joe V is in taking on various projects, mainly a wall fan to exhaust from both the laundry and bath areas. Jim stopped in to install the new shower head. Turns out it was the wrong one, rats! But I'll go get the right one and move this one upstairs. Only one missing is Harv's, to fix the strange ceiling wiring in the storage room which will have whoever tries to fiddle with it impersonating a fried egg on the floor one of these days. (I'm not only the Queen of Cheap Clip Art but the Empress of Agglutinated Memes, in case you hadn't noticed.)

All the animals are getting along nicely, Radar is a perfect little gent, like most shelties, and the cats are too old to make a fuss about anything.

L8r

08:48 pm: Well ....
Odd day. Not too hot, so I did some errands, then started for Green Bay to go to Menard's, then realized (a) I needed gas and (b) I needed to not spend money right now. So I did a Uturn and came back. Sorted papers and generated a bagful of shreds for Barb's horse's tushie.

Tried to make bumper stickers, Joski for Sheriff, but the sticker stock was too slippery and screwed up one end on both tries. So much for political activism.

Scanned Scott's print of Algoma from an old newspaper color section. Surprisingly difficult to match the subtle blues and greens of the water, took a few passes.

I skipped Writers Group Monday night, thought I'd spare them my effervescent (read overbearing) personality for a bit. The anti-depressants did tend to smooth out the spikes but I'm better on the whole without them. I'm not in any major depression now, and if I feel that I am beginning one, I can start a course of meds.

No pomes today. Even the cats are comatose.

10:46 pm: Whew
Cooler. Cats way happier. Me too.

Barb took me to lunch today, we went to Pilot House, had chicken samwiches and sodapop. Talked with Scott who has a neat little collection of Algoma images. I offered to scan them for him, maybe find a cheap frame for one or two. Also ran into Bucket, we talked about fitting webcams into chat programs, so I'm going to mess with Yahoo Messenger & see if I can get up & running and communicate w/California.

Went back home and ... guess what ... fell asleep. Slept through the cold front. Now my toes, tiddley-pom, are cold and I love it.

Not clicking on all eight right now, so that's it for today.

10:42 pm: Writers Group
Went to AWG tonight after a brief Vestry meeting. Thinking I was the last one to read, I waded right in, shared out some stuff, read my piece, ... then ... discovered that the first person to read wasn't even finished yet, and nobody stopped me. Yikes.

Got to thrash this out in Reconciliation, I guess.

Recorded my first video in the Logitech Webcam software, sent it to Liz & family so they can tell me if anything is off.

You remember the Kee-kee bird, whose cry was "Kee-kee, kee-kee, Keerist it's cold out here"? His tropical brother is singing "Kee-kee, kee-kee, ... " and there's no relief until Wednesday. It was one hundred and two verschlugginer degrees today. Evening was better.

Tags: hot weather, kee-kee bird, poetry

02:08 pm: Severe weather alert
Severe Weather Alert


The wind has ripped the edge of air,
has sent it to curl behind the ears
of anyone fool enough to leave the shade
within, come out to stare

at what’s blown down today,
froth of foliage, lengths of log,
watched by a malevolent sun,
silent ultra-violet stabbing the grey

goggles, eyes, brains, and all;
a fried soul croaking to itself,
that cannot sing until it’s sure
summer has given way to fall.

Tags: hot weather, poetry

08:47 pm:

Little Monsters

08:36 pm: Throwsday


Ray's lil monsters. Made a card with monster border top & bottom. It says "Monsters exist / only / in your imagination." Inside says "... have a nice day."

Talked to the printer about possibly taking some of Ray's digital art & making ?cards, ?posters, ?whatever from them, at least this way people get to see them. After they're locked up at the Newberry, forget it.

Did errands, bought groceries. Wm in for tea. Had Lean Cuisine for dinner. Perm tomorrow, plus trip to Kewaunee. Never had so much going on before.

That's it. 'night.

11:16 pm: Whinesday
The completed booklets for William's 50th came back today. The printer screwed up the order slightly in the middle, but Wm didn't mind.

Tomorrow I have to go out and about, it's too seductive to just sit in the wingchair and read or watch TV. Unfortunately, my secret vice, Star Trek DS9, is on every day. Well, now you know and I'll have to shoot you.

A friend asked me to copy her ultrasound but the CD wouldn't allow it. Probably just as well. Would you want your innards all over the web?

Got to go find somebody's draft poem for them to re-write tomorrow.

L8r.

10:38 pm: Sleepy Saturday
When I said tired I wasn't kidding! Today I slept in, woke up long enough to feed cats, went back to sleep. Wm banged on the door with more material for his 50th reunion. Barb called & said I'd left some stuff in the back of my car with the liftgate up so she took it to the back door. Janet checked in from NY to see how I was. Napped in between calls. Woke up in evening long enough to process some more stuff on the computer. Now going, God willing, back to sleep.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.......

10:36 pm: Tiiiiired
Today William & I finished up his 50th anniversary reunion booklet for Boyceville High School. The pictures should be fine, and he liked the narrative I worked out to frame them. We finished up around 11:30 and I dropped off the CD and a sample copy with the printer. Hope he works it out ok. We went to lunch at the Hudson and ate nice healthy salads. I called DoorPI because my internet service has been out for the last two days. Sam came over around five and we discovered that somehow I had inadvertantly reset my linksys unit. Sam said, "See, the button is nearly impossible to push accidentally," and promptly pushed it accidentally. We now have a big piece of white tape over the reset button, so that won't happen again.

It seems as though every day or two some part of the house is torn apart and has to be reassembled. Things are slowly finding out where they go, I long since stopped trying to control that.

Something about wind is taking shape in my head, I'll put it down when it has more definite outlines.

Also, I'm stymied now that there are two poems about Corbu, Days of the Week and Counting to Ten, what do I do for more in the series? Dogs don't tie their shoes, or brush their teeth. If anyone reads this, suggestions are welcome.

Going to bed now, catch u L8r ...

11:39 am: Arlo & best friend II


I was staring at my destop and putting together a piece, as follows:


A picture on the screen shows
Batman aged seven on the left,
Superman aged six on the right.

How natural that the most powerless
people should pretend
to be omnipotent

that even their secret identities
reflect immense wealth
or special access to knowledge

How touching that Superman flexes
both biceps and puffs out his face
to be as fierce as possible
where Batman smiles, flexes his right arm,
but drapes his left arm kindly around
the younger hero

For Batman knows
that Bruce Wayne,
wealthy philanthropist, does not exist
and the Batcave is
closed until further notice.

Tags: grandchild, poetry, superhero

10:58 pm: Writers Group
Met here, June, Marion, Ricki, Gail, Bill, me. Gail, Ricki, June, & Marion had pieces to discuss. We talked about titling pieces and the uses of repetition. Interesting how differently people come at the process.

I tend to work out things in my head, the way I reconstruct a piece of music I haven't heard in a long time -- example, the Sarabande from the Boyce symphonies which I heard maybe forty years ago in a version arranged as a ballet suite by Constant Lambert and called "The Prospect Before Us". Quite a few of the dances came back a couple of decades later and I could "remember them up" fairly accurately. Nowadays it takes a more strenuous session of memory. Still, the whole is fitted together piece by piece in my head before it ever is played on a keyboard. Poems the same. Reporting & other more concrete forms I can do onto a keyboard, mess around with on the computer.

That being said, I don't leave raw creations in their pristine state -- some pieces I work on for a long time. But their shape stays, that's a basic determination made before they're written down.

That sounds rather pompous, doesn't it, don't know what brought on such a fit of literary Blimpery. Oh well, all the leftover vegetables from the party tray and some extras are simmering in a slow cooker for consumption tomorrow as soup, with some smoked sausage cut up into it.

Took some more stuff over to the printer for my sample book. The amount and variety of stuff I have edited, put together, typeset, designed, illustrated, blah blah blah, is getting kind of staggering even to me. The only one that stopped him in his tracks was the editing of the prayers of St. Gertrude the Great of Helfta, soon to be a trashy motion picture near you!

Ta ta.

That's it for tonight.

08:00 pm: Grandchild worship, II

Batman & Superman Grandson Arlo (left) and his new best friend Matthew support Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

09:31 pm: Trip to the Big City
Went to Green Bay today after booksorting and taking stuff to the rummage sale at St. Agnes. Went to Susan Private Chef & had a good gossip & got some cheese, went to Goodwill and got some new clothes, went to Copps and got veg and fruit platters for the Bishop's visit tomorrow. Still got to make a strata, Shirley was firm about that.

Wm & Rob for high tea today, i.e. picnic at 4 pm, iced tea, bits of sandwiches, lotsa fruit & cookies.

Got to wrestle w/trash tomorrow too, I hate that.

Anyway, the new bed is perfect, lots of sound sleep. It's nice to wake up not because I'm ashamed to sleep any longer but because I've slept enough.

Got to send out letter to writers group for Monday night meeting. Just got Sano's piece on Lake Mich. Only one or two to go and it's bombs away.

That's it for today.

10:51 pm: Animals, part II

	Schrodinger's Cat
	Babbage