the new triggXR

Check out the new triggXR!

I've decided to go ahead and close this blog in light of my recent graduation. triggXR also seems full and "heavy" with my experience in my doctoral studies which have now ended. I plan to keep the original triggXR posted except to fix broken links.  I'm trying to emulate a starting with a fresh "pallette" or journal by moving the triggxr2.com. 

YA-TA! master's workshop here I come!

Today I got an email from the good people at Centrum who have accepted me into the master's workshop with Mark Doty! There is something to be said for uploading your crappy poems and not looking back. I got my money's worth for that PhD. If I can overcome the voice in my head that writes for science publication maybe I'll be a poet again. Or I keep the voice and make an inner choir.

I had to go over the poems to get them formatted for submission. I was amazed by how much the language and the phrasing that I used in the 90s anticipated the explosion of the information age yet to come with the internet. Now having read the postmodernists I understand my own poems better. I was doing postmodernism without knowing a thing about it except that Jane Miller had called herself a PoMo poet. I love that Jane Miller.

I always said the poems were written using a formula (which really is written down somewhere in one of my journals). What I remember about the formula is that it included found language and broken sentences, and had to somehow be glued together with a true emotions story line of some sort.

No decision about whether to update this profile, or start another one. I do have a few ideas.

Back to snow, book chapters and polishing crappy papers to submit to medical & nursing journals.

the fate of this blog

I was just about to change the profile on this blog to reflect my recent graduation when it occurred to me that perhaps I shouldn't. I've struggled with finding a way to use the computer to replace the old journals into which I used to hand write my notes. Those each came to an end and I'd start another, decorate the cover with whatever I had on my mind at the time. What if this blog were to come to an end and I started another one for the next period of my life?

I've already started a rather dry blog at www.aethno.com/wordpress which I'm using to construct an autoethnography of my doctoral studies. I mean for that to be a tool for learning autoethnographical research methods.

I'll think about it before I change the profile. If I change the profile, it won't reflect the profile that I used to start this distinct collection of writings and musings.

I think if I start another one I'll call it triggXR with a 2 in it somewhere.

Cabin Fever

It has snowed every day here for one week. The temperature has stayed below freezing so we have snow frozen over snow. As you can see my sled dog mix loves it.   When he comes in the house he has snowflakes embedded in his outer fur layer.  We've seen him lay down in the snow and cover his nose with his tail, but I haven' t caught a picture of him doing that.

I've made it to the hospital and back the last 3 days in my VW but today I could not get home on my own. I got stuck in an intersection on a hill when I had to stop for the light. The snow was finally just too deep for Paloma. A man came by and offered to tow me for 20 dollars and I took him up on it. I told him I wanted to give him some more money but we'd have to stop by the cash machine. He got me up the worst of the hill, followed me into BankofAmerica parking lot and I got 100.00 out for him. Before I gave it to him he told me about being mugged when he stopped to help someone the day before. One of the bandits asked him for change for a 100 dollar bill and when he reached into his pocket, the other bandit hit him with a 2x4 and sped away--they weren't stuck at all! I thought he was going to cry when I gave him the 100 bucks. It's not often you get to see money solve a problem in person. He showed me his lower lip which had two large cuts and was very swollen. I told him I was putting a blessing on him for being such a good Samaritan.

I've been getting a sick pleasure out of documenting my smaller pets struggle with our inappropriate weather. The cat insisted on going out this evening, but seemed to ask us to leave the door open while she did her business. I just caught a shot of her falling through the ice on the surface of 7 layers of snow as she no doubt wanted to slip off privately to take care of business. She sunk like a rock. I ordered my partner to go out with the cat to make sure she was safe! Fortunately the cat turned around and came back in the house. I guess the litter box doesn't seem so bad under the circumstances.

There are a lot of us here in Seattle who don't really understand this snow or where it comes from. Have we stolen the snow of some barren ski slope? Some little town that needs the revenue gleaned from snow bunnies?  This morning I saw someone skiing down my street. It just never snows like this here! And there's a reason we don't live in Madison, WI, or Minneapolis, MN, and it's been right outside my door for a week!

We have 2 little 10 pound dogs who have to go out every so often to do their business.  This is the only time that I don't mind my sister smoking--she takes the dogs out with her every time she needs a cigarette.  We aren't beasts but we just got these little dogs house trained after very long time and a lot of work.  We bundle the dogs up in "layers" of dog coats.  They look ridiculous but they bravely go out and face the weather.

I've been using the time to break in my new laptop and polish up my poems to send off to Centrum.  I just put them all into one file and uploaded them without hesitation.  That's what a dissertation has done for me!  Doesn't matter how crappy you suspect your work might be, you hand it in.  You are done when you turn in your last crappy paper.  My work always seems crappy to me.  I might be a little obsessive compulsive.

Maya Angelou -- I Rise

poet sunday--Maya Angelou singing

Mulberry Fields--Lucille Clifton

poem Sunday--Lucille Clifton

poetry sunday--Jorie Graham

Poets.org: Letter to God, by Mark Doty

	This page was sent to you by: triggXR, triggxr@gmail.com Message from sender: This is a good poem. I uploaded some poems today in application for the master class with Mark Doty at Centrum this summer. It seems that since I've defended my dissertation I'm totally over the hangups about submitting my work. Some people will like it, some won't! Letter to God by Mark Doty Listen to the recording on Poets.org. Subscribe to Poets.org: Never miss a verse. Poets.org offers several ways to keep you informed and connected to the poetry world. Sign up for our free newsletter today. Go Mobile; Bring Poetry: The entire collection of over 2,500 poems on Poets.org, as well as hundreds of bios and essays, is available in a mobile format. Visit the mobile site now.
	Discover thousands of poems, biographies, essays, audio clips, and more at Poets.org. Copyright © 2008, Academy of American Poets Donate Privacy Policy

Mark Doty--poet & memoirist [at Centrum this summer]

the PhD is a done deal

No time to blog, I was getting my defense done along with all the last minute stuff that included.  I've also been learning wordpress and set up a wordpress newspaper theme blog for my professional organization.  And I've been working on another blog for an autoethnography of my doctoral studies.  That will give me something to do for a while.

poem saturday--albert goldbarth

The Talk Show


frankly, I don't know if it's legal for me to post other people's poems here.  I love them and I want to share them.  Today I'm sharing a link.

hello poems, hello world

I have been searching for poems and music since we moved into this house.  We moved in and never looked back.  We have boxes in the basement that we have not touched since we started parking in front of the house.  The rules say that we should just get rid of them.  That would include my cookbooks and many of my other books so we are not following that very tempting rule.  I still don't have room for all my books upstairs.

I'm covered with dust.  The basement is under reorganization due to the bathroom remodel so a few things have bubbled up including a box of poetry and a box of music.  But not the poems I was looking for!  I found Broumas so you'd think I'd find Bell!  He's not my favorite poet, but one of his poems has a line that I never forget:

...don't let them tell you I didn't love your mother
I loved her....

But what poem, what book?

I did find all the books that tell me how to be a writer and William Carlos Williams stories.  Apparently I carried a box of books directly to the book case in my room and promptly put something in front of them.  Jane Miller is back.  I have two copies of American Odalisque and I did find Memory at These Speeds.

 The best part is that poetry is back and I'm not in pain or mourning.  Poems, I missed you.

memories at these speeds

Jane Miller has a book of poems that I love by that title.  Today I understand what she means.  Yesterday I was triumphant about my finds from the prom years.  Today when I tried to reorganize the envelops into plastic boxes for safety I felt this knot in my chest, like I was on a roller coaster at the scary high fast curve. If I can find my poetry books, I'll post another Jane Miller poem. 

This might be harder than I thought.  I did find a story from PennyK and a series of letters to ClearCreekGirl from her son.  These artifacts are like a gold mine in a field of landmines.

poem monday---marvin bell (a poem I tore out of a journal and saved 20 years ago)

Spot Six Differences

Hand is moved.  Sleeve is longer.  Hat is
different.  Bone is moved.  Gloves are
missing.  Dog is missing.  Nozzle is moved.
Tail is shorter.  Country is missing.
Air is darker.  Background is closer.
Lines are fuzzy.  Shapes are general-
ized.  Mouth is open.  Dog is hiding.
Air is shorter.  Hand is longer.  Hat is
missing.  Tail is moved.  Gloves are
different.  Nozzle is open.  Window is
brighter.  Dress is shorter.  Country is moved.
Air is darker.  Sleeve also.  Bone is missing.
Lines are fuzzy.  Background is closer.
Shapes are open.  Gloves are general-
ized.  Mouth is open.  Hand is hiding.

memory lane--the 80s

I went to a wonderful Halloween party last week.  It was at the home of a dear friend and her partner--a new friend.  I hadn't had my friend for many years, 15 years I'm embarrassed to say.  We had a falling out over something stupid, and didn't speak for a long time.  I really hurt her feelings.  Of all the friends I've missed, I missed her the most.  She loved me, she knew me well, she recognized my bullshit, and she called me on it some of the time. I think she let a lot of things pass because of how much she loved me.

The 80s were hard for me. I didn't know how to be on the planet. My astrologer says it was because I'm actually from another planet.  I suspect it had more to do with the AIDS epidemic and what that taught me about medicine and politics, and my inexperience with having friends in general.  Let's just say I was a difficult child and leave it at that.

The end of the 80s were even harder due to the deaths of several people close to me within a short period of time.  They don't tell you that when those close to you die, they take part of you with them.  I lost what I'd learned about "how to be on the planet," and was left with an aching gaping hole.

During the 80s and early 90s I wrote constantly. When I wasn't working as a nurse to make money, I was writing or engaged in some other humanity building activity like dancing or going to some 'cultural' event.

When my friends died I was paralyzed and in horrible pain.  I no longer wrote because it was too painful. One friend was a man with AIDS who worked nightshift with me and always knew when I was writing something new.  Another friend died in a climbing accident.  I wrote her letters every day for 7 years.  It was her contribution to my becoming a writer.  The other friend was a poet who took his own life.  These deaths all happened within 8 weeks.

I was silenced by the pain and I pulled away from my life thinking that this would give me some relief.  [It did not.][There are no shortcuts in grief.]  I packed my life away in labeled manila envelopes with dates on them.

Anyway, after spending a grand Halloween evening with my friend, and feeling like I had finally bridged the gap between the 80s and now, I started looking for my past life as a poet. I was hoping to find some material for my NaNoWriMO project.  I found all kinds of amazing things, including a poem from Marvin Bell which I apparently tore out of a journal and saved.  Looks like it was on my bulletin board for a while.  I'm putting it on the next entry.

My partner has been helping me to find my envelopes that have been tucked away and she has been putting up with my crap in the middle of the floor! [This is a big deal because we are also remodeling.] I have not found my poetry books yet, so this is not my favorite Marvin Bell poem.

poem thursday--Mina Loy

On Third Avenue
                   
1
"You should have disappeared years ago"--

so disappear
on Third Avenue
to share the headless incognito

of shuffling shadow-bodies
animate with frustration

whose silence'  only potence is
respiration
preceding the eroded bronze contours
of their other aromas

through the monstrous air
of this red-lit thoroughfare.

Here and there
saturnine
neon-signs
set afire
a feature
on their hueless overcast
of downcast countenances.

for their ornateness
Time, the contortive tailor,
on and off,
clowned with sweat-sculptured cloth
to press

upon these irreparable dummies
an eerie undress
of mummies
half unwound.

2

Such are the compensations of poverty,
to see---

Like an electric fungus
sprung from its own effulgence
if intercircled jewellery
reflected on the pavement,

like a reliquary sedan-chair,
out of a legend, dumped there,

before a ten-cent Cinema,

a sugar-coated box-office
enjail a goddess
aglitter, in her runt of a tower,
with ritual claustrophobia.

Such are compensations of poverty,
to see---

Transient in the dust,
the brilliancy
of a trolley
loaded with luminous busts;

lovely in anonymity
they vanish
with the mirage
of their passage.

-----from Compensations of Poverty [poems 1942-1959,]
in The Lost  Lunar Baedeker Poems (1996)
selected & edited by Roger L. Conover

Mina Loy
at poets.org
at wikipedia

wordle--paper #3

24 days lost

No, I didn't lose 24 days. I have been busy with final drafts, job apps and job interviews. I heard from my reading committee that they have accepted my last paper with a few minor changes. Now to the whole committee for the final defense. Then I'll really be Dr. T!

Otherwise sleeping well, covering vacations and having my bathroom remodeled. I have quite a few options for after graduation. I'm not complaining but it's hard to predict what I'm going to be doing even 6 months from now!

Postdoc? Fellowship? Teaching doctoral students in Texas? Something else? Hard to tell!

More to follow as it all unfolds!

halloween 2007

the doctor made a mistake!

Mom doesn't have cancer! Woohoo! She also can now stand at the sink for 8-12 minutes!

I'm dissertating a lot lately and don't have much time for this blog. I think I'm close to the final draft of that last paper.

I did add a player for the Performance Poetry IndieFeed. Check it out! I listen to them on my iPod when I'm going to sleep at night. Podcasting has opened up a new portal for me to reach through for surprises.

We are having our bathroom overhauled and adding a new one upstairs. When we got the sink/cabinet out to the light of the day, we couldn't believe how horrid it was and how long we just overlooked it. Now I can hardly wait to say buh bye to the pink tub.

Shopping for the stuff to go into the new bathroom. Found a like new low flow Kohler Cimmaron at the 2nd Use for 100 bucks! Some old growth 2x4s at Earthwise Salvage.

blindness--jose saramago

I spent a year reading this book blindness. It is a very difficult book and I'm pretty sure that I now own two copies because I lost the first copy for a while. I was struck by the sentences and couldn't stop reading it even though it was maddening at times. It took the full year. It was a book worth reading, but I could have waited for the movie.

poem friday--Jane Miller

check here:

The Cover of Mars
at the Poetry Foundation.

red clay tightwad

 I took a couple of early morning walks around mom's 13.6 by the creek and found several arrowheads. that was nice. I grew up loving this land that was originally a part of my grandmother's farm.

oak tree twu

 I went to Texas to see my folks last weekend. Mom now has cancer. She can't catch a break. I went to check out the TWU campus. It doesn't have as many trees as West University in Houston, but isn't this swell? TWU is a women's university over 100 years old with large graduate nursing program and three campus'.

west university, harris county, Sept 13, 2008 Ike

oaks on rutgers, west university, harris county Sept 1, 2008

red door dusk

oak dusk, West University

crate myrtle dusk

Splendid Declivities--Jorie Graham

50 Poets in 2 Minutes

another triggXR poem

IF I WERE IN BELLINGHAM TODAY

for Denise

I'd go to your house and follow you around

until you pretend to be mad

and that very moment

I'd take you in my arms

and say Honey, What's Wrong?

and you'd push me away

then burst into tears saying

I'm Not Getting My Needs Met

and we'd walk to your room

sit on your bed

and you'd cry. Holding you,

I'd be covered with hot tears

and snot and long red hair.

Then I'd cry and you'd touch my face

saying, Yes, the Soup,

and we'd breathe up all the air.

Then we'd laugh and eat big life.

Write poems with fat crayons

for little fingers

and fight over the black.


COPYRIGHT 2008 Lisa Trigg ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

vacationing in houston

We have been in West University in Houston for the last few days. If vacationing in Houston not a redneck bonafide I'm not sure what is.

Our little dog Xena had bilateral knee surgeries and had to be on light duty for 6 weeks. We saw no way to keep her quiet in Seattle with our menagerie so we sent her to her grandparents in Houston.

I love Houston. My in-laws have a pool and I spend a lot of time in that pool throwing a half eaten flip flop for Choo Choo who swims with me.

I'm learning to play bridge. I don't know why people want to play bridge instead of poker but it was fun anyway.

Yesterday I went to the wonderful Boutique Day Spa & Salon and splurged on a manicure, a spa pedicure, and a haircut. I love my haircut so much that I can finally get my picture made for the website. I guess I'll have to commute to Houston every month for a haircut! You probably didn't know how vain I am about my hair. I'm told that the Boutique is all word of mouth. So if you come to Houston looking for a fantastic spa experience, go to the Rice Village and find the Boutique.

Yes, it's humid, and yes, I'm here for hurricane season again thanks to Gustav. But when I walk out of the house into that humidity it seems like I'm walking in the warm breath of God.

yesterday's poem

was a science poem I wrote in the early 90's before I went to live in an environment that was not friendly to poems. In that life my job was to bring home money.

I never set out to write poems but I had a spontaneous onset of writing poetry after a week of writer's camp. Hearing the readings of a famous poet every daytriggered something in my brain. Centrum had a stellar line up that year with Robert Hass, Jane Miller, Jorie Graham, Jane Hirshfield, and others.

For the first time I fell in love with poetry but I never really got it. I think I experience the poetry well enough but I don't get why we write it. My poetry came on like a tic and I couldn't get rid of it. These lines went through my mind continuously after this workshop. I couldn't refrain from writing them down because that was the only way I could regain dominion over my thoughts. It was like a condition. I wrote down all the lines as they came and when I had enough, I wrote a poem. To write the poems I used a formula. If I can find the formula, I'll post it here.

The next summer I went back to Centrum and met Olga Broumas, in fact was delegated by Centrum to pick her up at the airport and drive her to Port Townsend. She said she liked my poems.

But why do we write them? I know why I'm a nurse. I know what is important about my nursing and nurse practionering. But why poems?

I'd like to get back to them but I've lost my poetry tic and can't break through these questions.

Now I'm so self conscious that writing is creepy. I liked the spontaneous writing that I did.

Why is Science Winning?

I wanted to say something gentle
abt believing in love & starving
for sex & chocolate,
or what it feels like, really,
to say I'm still in love with you,
please come back to me,
but all that is written
on my heart today
relates to the early
beginnings of dinosaurs
& thought experiments
involving fish,
which makes me wonder
is there something wrong
with my mind,
& will I ever pull through this
stupid experimental attitude
abt the spontaneous
hermeneutics
of primary symbols,
the Marian apparitions
and folding icons
of ordinary saints
& contemporary angels
& madonnas
for the masses?
Or an AIDS novel
that will help people
understand and try harder
until believing,
believing in,
believing as,

a nothing seeming
to be something
flies over the pole
& stone takes
its first breath
in the coconut grove
& not between the legs.
Soon it will be a dinosaur.

It's late. I must think of a gift.


2 14 93
COPYRIGHT 2008 Lisa Trigg All Rights Reserved

poem thursday bonus -- Sherry Chandler

Sherry Chandler reports that her poem "World View" has been nominated for the Sundress Best of the Net Anthology. Her must read is posted at Dead Mule School of Southern Literature!

I like it!

poem thursday--James Tate

Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
by James Tate
They didn't have much trouble teaching the ape to write poems: first they strapped him into the chair, then tied the pencil around his hand (the paper had already been nailed down). Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear: "You look like a god sitting there. Why don't you try writing something?"
From Selected Poems, published by Wesleyan University Press. Copyright © 1991 by James Tate. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.

Found on www.poets.org

wordle--SherryChandler.com

Is this cool or what? triggXR is right in the middle of the sherrychandler wordle.

Ok, Wordle might be among my redneck bona fides.  Na na na na na na!

clarification Kentucky Poet

I've been reading Sherry Chandler for a couple of years. She made me remember Marvin Bell. I love her coverage of the south and southern poets and poetry in general. I found her site when I googled for poetry when I was on light duty for a year. I'm honored she read my post and I did not mean to offend. But really, who would style me if not myself? I can't just wait for someone else to come along and observe my conflicted white self questioning the grand narratives of rednekkidness. Can I?

I cannot possibly put my redneck bona fides up on this blog.

I started my blog after reading her blog. She's my blog mentor except I think I'm more into the Simpsons and South Park than she is. I needed a response to my decrepit brain age that didn't include those hideous puzzles. I liked finding her thoughts there to ponder when I was sick, sitting in my red chair day after day, unable to type, barely able to walk or use a touchpad, the doctors thinking I was a nurse trying to get narcotics, imagining that grad school was over, using my hand for anything was over. Once I lost her URL and spent all day messing around with my browser history trying to find it. I immediately started a blog and figured out how to link to her website so I could always find it. That was my puzzle. I'm now within spitting distance of finishing the dissertation or the "diss" as one of my committee members calls it.

I found the reference to her remarks about Baraka on a "this day in history" widget on her website. I wrote my response in careless haste.

My point was that Amiri Baraka IS one of our Ginsbergs. I can't imagine what courage it took to "come out" as he did, sacrificing his position. I don't especially agree with all his conspiracy theories but I admire his courage. And I love the way he scats throughout his poems. Looking at real life head on and writing and scatting about it is hard as hell. I do not do it. I look but I don't write about it.

I too was in a bad mood after the 2nd Bubba Bush installation. I'm still pretty crabby about it and no longer listen to anything political. I've been sending Obama stuff to the spam folder. I hope he's going to make a difference if he's elected, but I'll be very surprised if he does. If he surprises me I'll send him some money.

Things have gotten so bad in my Texas grandmother's dear country that I have a hard time imagining how we will recover. I guess I have to go back to Religious Science to get my affirmations pumped up.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep digging up Baraka-casts and look for other gutsy poets. I'm not one. And I'm not changing my mind about Ginsberg or NAMBLA. That's where I draw the line. I know too much about the outcome of this kind of stuff. It never ends well for the boys and it's NOT a free speech issue but that's a good cover story. I don't watch Woody Allen movies and I'm not changing my mind about him either.

Ugly People ---Amiri Baraka

I think I love this guy. I have the same feeling when I read Walter Mosley. How do these guys learn to say this stuff, write this stuff? They think it, feel it, experience it, write it.

All my work just seems so, well, white in comparison.

on writing--Amiri Baraka

This guy writes poems to save his life. Jesse Bernstein was the same way.  He wrote with courage I cannot imagine having.  I asked Jesse one time if he ever worried that his drug use or mental illness would interfere with his writing.  His response was "I always write.  If I wake up in jail, I write.  If I wake up in the hospital, I write.  No matter what else I do, I write."

And they say their scary true thoughts.

When I was focused on my poetry, I worried every day that something would stop me.  As it turned out fear stopped me.  I don't know how to say the true things.

Somebody Blew up America--Amiri Baraka

I read where a Kentucky poet thought that Amiri Baraka had turned himself into a laughing stock. She was bemoaning our lack of radical poets with respect to the Iraq Occupation. Where is that pedophile Ginsberg when we need him to write war protest poems?

We have who we have and I've had all the same thoughts Baraka has been able to express.

I've decided to highlight Baraka in this blog for a few days and look for the laughs. I assume this is the poem she's referring to. I've found several versions of this poem at YouTube. Some I like better than others. So far I'm not laughing.

wordle of my blog

08:50 and already hot as h-e-double-hockey-stick

I've opened all windows, turned on all the fans and put on some blues music trying to combat early morning lethargy due to oppressive heat.


heat fighting music, Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis, Two Men With the Blues:

My Rhapsody Playlist

purge number 2

No pictures but purged a few cardboard boxes and some out of date paperwork. My sister tells guests who come to my home "Welcome to my sister's boxes..." I guess because of all the cardboard boxes by the door. I don't know what the big deal is about the boxes.

Anyway, some of them are gone now.

new beetle ragtop haiku 1

downtown driving through

the shadows of skyscrapers

wind hair cool cool cool





copyright 2008 all rights reserved

lethargy of Seattle summer

Having a little more breathing time after a quick trip to Texas for a family reunion and then worked a weekend. Those weekends go on forever.

I into the Olympics. Our satellite company has an Olympic basket ball channel. We wake up in the morning and watch what we can live, then record the rest. Team USA is hot hot hot! They are literally the Dream Team---Lisa, Tina, Sue, Sylvia, Cappie, etc.

We are also watching diving, swimming, equestrian.

I'm watching sports. I'm watching sports.

no no man--steven jesse bernstein

sunday morning

birds fussing, little dog wants more breakfast
declaration of love from a cousin who has known me for 50 years
updating luminotes for collaboration
kitchen back together, cabinet doors back up
workspace for grant writing

Goethe pick me up

Swamped today, read Goethe for a pick me up this morning. Have a share!

On Commitment

Until one is committed there is always hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness,
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
Raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings
And material assistance which no man could have dreamed
Would come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

oh no obama!

I'm voting for Paris Hilton!

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Let's start a movement!

poem thursday--Galway Kinnell

I found this poem on the wall at work. It helped. I stole it. Here 'tis


Sometimes
it is Necessary to
Reteach a Thing its Loveliness.
To put a Hand on the
Brow of the Flower and
Retell it in Words and
in Touch
It is Lovely
Until it Flowers AGain
Frome Within
of Self-Blessing

Galway Kinnell

causal modeling music -- Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Ladysmith Black Mambazo


I first heard this group in the 80s when I was a new graduate. They are beyond fantastic.

I was introduced to a very wide world at a large teaching hospital long before I ever heard of the internet. One of the women I worked with wanted to be an ethnomusicologist and she turned me on to all kinds of great music.

Must model now.

hoppy hitches a ride

 This little guy hitched a ride with me. I noticed him clinging to the mirror of the new car I bought recently while visiting Texas. I tried to get his picture on the mirror but we were in motion and I couldn't do it. I thought he hopped off several times but he finally wound up here, looking at me through the window. It was a bit uncanny. What does it mean when a tree frog hitches a ride with you and turns himself repeatedly so that he could look in the window and make eye contact.

I just love frogs.