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NauenThen

11/22

November 22, 2017
Tags: JFK
I knew that if the girls told Mrs. Wooten, that day's playground monitor, it had to be true.

I ran home ducking my head, waiting for the sky to fall.

Would my mother's best friend have killed herself if it had happened a day earlier?

In the Midwest, we liked how he talked: his vigah.

My mother almost crashed into another car when her hands flew off the steering wheel at hearing the news. The other driver gave her a dirty look but at some point that day understood. I imagine it was part of that woman's story of the day for the rest of her life. It's part of Annie's story, now. How often we are bit players.  Read More 
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Errands

November 21, 2017
So entirely satisfying to cross off pretty much everything on my to-do list.

Not that there was much more to the day than that.

Does every day have to be the best EVER?

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Technology on the move

November 20, 2017
Tags: Electric Vehicles
Thank you, sun.
Much as I lament, at times, the end of the internal combustion engine, the recent electric-vehicle advances are pretty cool.

For example, last week Tesla showed the prototype for its battery-powered, nearly self-driving semi that they say can go up to 500 miles on a charge—not good enough for long-distance trucking but terrific for many routes, especially as the truck is exhaust-free and cheaper to run than diesels. Read More 
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Fighting!

November 19, 2017
I'm fighting that cold/flu/health weirdness that's going around. Fighting as in lying around & staring at the ceiling. Fighting as in being cranky. As in making sad face.

It would be fine if I could curl up with a spy novel, but my eyes itch & I feel restless.

Woe is me! Alas!
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Random photo of me in high school

November 17, 2017
Rich Ostrander on the left.
I remember that sweater & skirt set so well—they were a deep gold color & very heavy.

I remember less well why the photo was taken.

Not true, I remember perfectly well but am embarrassed that, almost 50 years later, I know it was for being a National Merit Scholar.

Embarrassed because I was so proud of my superior knack for taking standardized tests. I didn't even know I wasn't smart, because I was officially smart.  Read More 
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Books x2

November 16, 2017
Tags: Snowbound
A very quick mockup of what our chapbook will look like.
I sent the manuscript for my new & selected to my publisher, finally having decided on a title: Now That I Know Where I'm Going. I have wanted to use that for a long time, & meant it for American Guys 20 years ago, but Murat quite rightly talked me out of it. But this time it fits much better & I'm excited.

Not only that, Steve Willis, my friend of nearly 50 years, loves snow as much as I do, if not more, & we are putting together a dos-à-dos, or more properly, as I just learned, a tête-bêche book, where you'll flip his to read mine & vice versa. Nothing fancy, just a fun way to collaborate & get our work into a few hands.  Read More 
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Hola, España!

November 15, 2017
For some reason, I have been feeling strongly that I HAVE to go to Spain. So I bought a ticket. I'll go for 8 days, leaving in 2 weeks, & stay with my friend Mercè, who lives near Girona (she's from Barcelona). Our plan is to go up to Toledo for a couple of days, where neither of us has been.

I wish I could remember the Catalan I was learning before I went there a couple years ago, but I've moved on to Hiragana, which is so frigging hard; at best I'll be able to say a few polite phrases in Japanese & identify the characters.  Read More 
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Myron Floren

November 14, 2017
Tags: Myron Floren (1919-2005)
Wow, when did you get Myron Floren's autograph??

He was the guest of honor at a Sons of Norway lutefisk dinner, held in the basement of the Nordic Hall, a small building where my dad had his office for as long as I remember. I was probably 10 and very shy about asking—probably someone asked on my behalf.  Read More 
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Psychologically healthy

November 13, 2017
In my blog on October 15, I told the story of a guy who exposed himself to me on the train. I burst out laughing. When my younger sister was little, her friend's uncle exposed himself to the two little girls. Their response? They put peanut butter in his shoes. "He was bad, so we  Read More 
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Lady Bird

November 12, 2017
Tags: Lady Bird
Clearly I'm in a tiny minority for not loving Greta Gerwig's new movie, Lady Bird.

The Times for example:
You might think you’ve seen this all before. You probably have, but never quite like this. What Ms. Gerwig has done — and it’s by no means a small accomplishment — is to infuse one of the most convention-bound, rose-colored genres in American cinema with freshness and surprise. The characters can look like familiar figures: the sad dad and the disapproving mom; the sullen brother and his goth girlfriend; the mean girls and the cool teachers; the too-perfect boyfriend and the dirtbag boyfriend. None of them are caricatures, though, and while everyone is mocked, nobody is treated with cruelty or contempt, at least by Ms. Gerwig. (Lady Bird is not always so kind.)  Read More 
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What a week!

November 10, 2017
The women of America fought back & the world of elected officials looks a lot different than it did a year ago.... I finished a book.... I got a cellphone..... Something big that I can't talk about yet....
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What Home Is

November 8, 2017
Tags: Ginevra Kirkland
Fall in Minnesota.
What Home Is
for & with Ginevra Kirkland

I’ve lived so many places I don’t know where I’m from. Everywhere seems like the town I could have lived & died in, & maybe I did.

I was there in the POW camp with the German soldier who only wanted to get back to his herring, beer, & fraulein. I was in Otis, Colorado, a town so peaceful the only bar was on the second floor of an old hotel. I was a Mainer, or Mainiac, & lived 3 years in its white, bright, unmoving postcard.  Read More 
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Vote early, vote often

November 7, 2017
If anything, there's more at stake in today's election than in last year's, at least in the sense that we are now activated. It's fair to say we dropped the ball last time, but I don't want that to be said tomorrow.
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The Double Yews

November 6, 2017
Tags: The Double Yews
I have to admit, it's fun to say "my band" & it's fun to be in a band, even a half-assed poets' band, where I can't really play an instrument or sing. Annabel Lee & I mostly match poems to familiar tunes and sing them accompanied by her on guitar, me on various amusing rhythm instruments  Read More 
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Why is everything so big?

November 5, 2017
Tags: Milky Way
Are this guy's ideas insane or does this make sense?
So an object—asteroid? lump? comet? spaceship?—from outside our solar system, but inside the Milky Way, one of many galaxies, recently zipped past the sun & only 15 millions from us. Astronomers can tell it's from away because of its orbit. But how is that they know it's from our galaxy & not from even farther away? And how is it possible that, as the astronomers assert, it's the "first interstellar object known to have visited Earth’s neighborhood," according to The Economist Espresso. Is this a big deal? Why? And to whom?  Read More 
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Quote V

November 3, 2017
Tags: Simone Weil
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
—Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace

I've always loved this. Such a good correction to that immature longing for the "bad" that so many of us fall for when young, & I guess usually outgrow.  Read More 
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With lightning speed, I enter the 21st century

November 2, 2017
Not an iPhone... I'll miss that pony-hide cover Maggie brought me back years ago from Wyoming "in case you ever get a cellphone."
My tale of woe & redemption begins with my office phone going out. Verizon (boo) sends a repairguy. He reluctantly & slowly tries a couple of fixes then basically tells me to fuck off. I know that Verizon (hiss) has no real interest in fixing copper wires/landlines—they're expensive to maintain & fewer & fewer people have 'em.

He leaves, promising to come back the next day.

Verizon (jeer) also tells me to fuck off: the next available appointment is actually more than a week away. They act like they are my friend.

I go up the block, & an hour later my office number has been converted to a cell, & I am the owner of an iPhone. I guess that means putting my little workhorse 10-year-old flip phone to rest, eh?

Welcome to the future! I mean the past! I have a smartphone! Call me!  Read More 
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Tony Towle

November 1, 2017
The suave & witty poet Tony Towle read last week at the Poetry Project. As he gets older, he gets mellower but without losing his smart language.

My favorite of his books remains Autobiography but his new book, Noir, is pretty darn good. Unfortunately, I can't lay my hands on either one but here's the beginning of "Lines for the New Year":

The first day of January is the first day
of the New Year. In the north
there is snow and ice and the forest rings
with the sound of the ax.
So this is really a game of tag. Run across it
as if it were a cake, and you were a knife
cutting it right through the middle. At other times
the clouds seem to be pillows. My target
is a cool, tax-free million. I am very calm about it.
I could end up making a good deal more. Read More 
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Lost (Bozo)

October 31, 2017
On a lamppost, 3rd Street & First Ave.

Our 14-year-old grandson from New Jersey thought it was the funniest thing ever.

Happy Halloween.
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Spain in my heart

October 30, 2017
Tags: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
From our trip 2 years ago, an alley in Barcelona. There were so many links to articles about what's going on, but I finally chose one that said not to be inflexible.
Because of my visit not long ago, & because of my dear friend & native barcelonina Mercè, I have been following the Catalan independence saga closely. Nonetheless, I don't know the ins & outs enough to have a firm opinion, but it seems part & parcel of what's going on in so many places: people rocking their pretty comfortable boat for an idea, & seem sure to be worse off no matter how things play out.

One instinct is to rush to visit before it becomes impossible (war?!?!), the other is to stay far, far away & not risk getting trapped in any trouble. I mostly don't think anything will happen but....  Read More 
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Tough birds

October 29, 2017
Tags: fighting birds, Cornell Bird Lab
Sub-Antarctic birds.
I love that someone (the Cornell Ornithology Lab) had the idea—and figured out a way—to see how birds ranked at bird feeders. Who holds their place, who gets pushed aside?

Aside from the obvious—turkeys are the largest, so they never get kicked off feeders, & vice versa for sparrows—the researchers found:

It turns out that doves, buntings, and grosbeaks are less dominant than we would expect based on their body size, whereas crows, jays, woodpeckers, and blackbirds are more dominant than we would expect based on their size. These findings mean our intuitions weren’t so far off: doves really are peaceful, and jays really are feisty.
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Thinking about quotes

October 27, 2017
I am happy to have come up with a new wrinkle on my blogging. I've felt a little bogged down this week, what with all the work & social events. None of it seemed important to write about in the face of the horrors. I try not to be overwhelmed but occasionally it gets to me, the monster in the White House & how easy it's been for him to co-opt so many. I'm glad I've never wanted power or money or really anything that would lead me to act like that. (I would have done it for poetry if I had had any idea how.)  Read More 
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Quote IV

October 26, 2017
The things of the eye are done.
—Robert Lowell
"Myopia : a Night"
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Quote III

October 25, 2017
love exists, love exists,
your hand a baby bird so obliviously tucked
into mine, and death impossible to remember
—Inger Christensen
alphabet
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Quote II

October 24, 2017
He loved this country for the run of its hills, the shape of its elm trees, and the way the heather, running uphill to the skyline, meets the blue of the heavens.
—Ford Madox Ford
Parade's End
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Quote I

October 23, 2017
The unconscious is that which we know, or have experienced, but for which we do not have a name.
—Walker Percy
The Message in the Bottle
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Paying the price

October 22, 2017
None of the photos do justice to what it's like to be "riding of the rolling level underneath him steady air."
Wonderful day with my sister on Friday, going up in a friend's 4-passenger Cessna. O Manhattan how I love thee. Late night.

Saturday was a Seido party, another late night.

Today a birthday brunch with a dozen smart, interesting, kind, talkative women.

There's a poetry reading in an hour but I don't think I can motivate over there. Fading here....  Read More 
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Always in a rush

October 20, 2017
By tomorrow I'll have reliable wifi in my office, after several months of intermittent service. Then I'll be able to work more attentively & write better. I'll be taller too & better looking.
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Passport

October 19, 2017
It's exciting to get a new passport, because for the last couple of weeks, when it was about to expire & then when I'd sent it off, I felt grounded, not that I had any plans for international travel. But now! A couple of years ago I made a vow to leave the country every year & so far I  Read More 
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Diet of Worms

October 18, 2017
Diet of Worms

When I
become a
mugger
I’ll get
up
early
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