Elinor Nauen

It's still dark so I don't know if it snowed last night. If it did, there's none on the windowsill so I don't have high hopes.

Here's a piece that was published many years ago in Organic Style:

It always snowed on Halloween. White trees leapt out like fists at shivering witches and ballerinas, who stumbled through the neighborhood trick-or-treating, faces up to lick flakes out of the sky. I grew up on the Great Plains  Read More 

My sister, then in her teens, and I were in London, & for some reason decided to go to a movie, with our elderly Tante Ilse, & for some reason chose Celine and Julie Go Boating, which I liked more than I expected, given that I mostly only like movies with a car chase, & which infuriated Varda & Ilse.  Read More 

Lost: Scissors
Found: Thrown away & put outside, but retrieved.

Lost: Little yellow notebook
Found: Not yet

Lost: Winter gloves
Found: In a pocket of a jacket I rarely wear

Lost: Subscription card for The Week (6 free issues!)
Found: Not yet

Johnny works as a super (& all-round building helper) so he seemed like the right person to ask: Did they already have the Super Bowl?

It's this afternoon.

Who's in it?

Denver & Carolina.

One of them has that guy Payne Whitney?

He gave me a big hug so I knew this was incorrect. (He kind of likes when I'm wrong in a girl sort of way.) (Because it doesn't happen very often.)

Memo to self: Get out of the East Village once in a while.  Read More 

When I woke up this morning I looked outside & said, Hmm, how odd that I never realized that the tree in our courtyard (which I've looked at for almost 40 years) is a birch. Then I woke up a little more & said, It's snowing!

A good long lunch (pasta with lemon & parmesan—just maybe I'll order something else at Morandi, some day), good talk (Alex!), & a good walk there & back (7th Avenue & 10th St). And now it's nap time, except that I'm going to kabbalat Shabbat services with Alisa.  Read More 

Our next-door neighbors on Summit Avenue in Sioux Falls were the Farnsworths, we at 1503, they at 1501. A few years ago I was at my high-school reunion and went to an event celebrating the oldest graduates, because I'd heard my old journalism teacher, Miss Norman, was going to be there. She wasn't, but Mrs. Farnsworth (adults didn't have first names then) was.

I went over to introduce myself, & she remembered not just me ("the one in New York") but lots more about my family. She was so alive and so gorgeously beautiful, and I am grateful to have spent a little time with her, especially as she passed away not much later (at the age of 102). I've since  Read More 

I took this picture across from Macy's in December, ran across it again on this sleepy, rainy afternoon when my feet are too chilly to be able to think & I have to dash uptown as soon as I'm summoned. Hoping ... hoping... hoping... the call won't come.

Is there any couple sexier than Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane? So smart, so literate and Donne-filled, so Nick-and-Nora in their banter. Have any of the Lord Peter Wimsey books been filmed? Read More 

Thanks to editors Sanjay Agnihotri & Anna Marrian for pulling together the 3rd issue of the magazine Local Knowledge, with good writing, a fun reading, a swell community. They are among the many tireless workers in the literary kitchens, along with the poets, novelists, essayists, thinkers, philosophers (etc) who throw together flour, butter, &  Read More 

This is the most puzzling thing I saw on Sixth Street.

I guess I don't love purple snow as much as I love regular snow or the fabulous blog post by Sarena Neyman (click the caption—that's the link to her post). She only posts once a week & is always worth reading for the way she combines the personal with larger concerns.  Read More 

This is my favorite. A real photographer could make this shot poignant & evocative. You will have to do it with words.

This was next to the stuffed dog head window. Same apartment.

Amazing how often I walk on Sixth Street & how little I see. Until I do.

From top to bottom:
1) This facility is for our dearest Customer Only!
= I have never dared ask if that could be me.

2) Rest room out of order sorry!
= Whoever saw fit to write & print all the other signs was still loose enough to leave this one.

3) NO tissue paper in there! Please prepare your own!
= Repeated in Spanish.

4) Take the KEY out. Turn the Light Off. LOCK the door. Control your Usage within 10 minutes.  Read More 

I've long wondered why it is that people believe in conspiracy theories. Is it something in their basic makeup? their political leaning? the part of the country they're from?

As it turns out, a lot of researchers and thinkers are interested in this.

University of Miami political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, in American Conspiracy Theories (2014: Oxford University Press), report that believers in conspiracies  Read More 

Dych chi eisiau afal neu lemon?*

Eich bod yn synnu fy mod yn siarad eich iaith mor dda!**

DuoLingo launched their Welsh course this afternoon & I was one of the first people to sign up. I already know the days of the week & some greetings, although the words are pretty mushy in my mouth.

I remember going to visitmy relatives in Cardiff, and Aldwyn insisting I try to use Welsh, so I dutifully told the taxi driver I was going to 4 Llanfair road in as clicky a Welsh accent as I could manage.

The driver shrugged: Never heard of it.

It's a big street! It's right off of Cathedral Parkway!

I gave in & said "lan-fair" & he said, Oh! and took me right there.

* Do you want an apple or a lemon?
** You are surprised I speak your language so well! OK, I got this one from Google translate. It's the one sentence the brilliant & hilarious Barbara Barg knows in a dozen languages.

After the excitement of 26.8" of snow (a near-record), plus the unneeded, unpleasant excitement of having the roof alarm biting my ears for 15 hours (until a locksmith came & drilled it out), necessitating leaving the roof door open to let the sound fly away, and by the way the heat in our building was off, I'm relaxing to the serenity of this Japanese print. Ah.........

The patch of white that caught my eye turns out not to be snow, but I like it anyway.  Read More 

More things I love about snow:
= The excuses. Normally I always/never, but it's a blizzard, everything is permitted.
= The pretty. Big snow is the only "disaster [sic] that leaves the afflicted region more attractive in its wake."
= The camaraderie. I love hearing people's stories. I could look endlessly at photos of kids, dogs, pigs, pandas frolicking.
= The frolicking.  Read More 

I love poems about snow. I love snow men. I love "nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." I love being inside & the snow is outside. I love hot chocolate & the possibility of snow on my February birthday. I love not losing my hat or mittens. I love kids sledding on cafeteria trays. I used to love ice skating. I love reading books about the Arctic. I love thinking that I could theoretically walk to the North Pole. I love the Northern Lights. I love books set in Alaska & the Yukon & northern Norway. I love photographs of snowflakes. I love cutting snowflakes out of paper. I love having an excuse to go for a walk & not to work. I love everything I can think of about snow, "the most benign of big weather."  Read More 

As with a lot of things, anticipating snow is the most exciting part. Well, one of the exciting parts. Today is when it's still possible that we will have a blizzard! A foot of snow! Two feet of snow! Three feet! I love the squeaky quiet of my feet on the snow when there's no traffic. I love the bicycle- and hydrant- and car-shaped heaps on the street. I love too white to see. I love the wind. I love having to walk with my back to the wind so I can breathe. I love looking out the window and being inside. I love being outside. I love being cold. I love thinking about the people I know who also love snow (Steve!) and even the people who hate it & think we're nuts. I love remembering the snows of yesteryear.  Read More 

But I have to charge my phone.

One thing about living in New York, it makes everything seem tinged with irony. Maybe whoever wrote this on the subway wall was simply expressing a heartfelt, considered political sentiment but it makes me think of the "Free Kim Agnew" signs I remember seeing (hearing about?) in around 1970, when she was maybe 14 and wanted to go to an antiwar demo & her dad, Spiro, the vice president wouldn't let her.  Read More 

Poem

I'm the princess
luxe galore
hot choc & sparkle snow

& adoration
& there's one
little pea

one little pea

& nothing else

My new favorite musician is Vin Bruce (1932–), the "King of Cajun Singers," from Cut Off, Louisiana, son of a trapper and fisherman who played fiddle at local Cajun dances. (Er)Vin Bruce was one of the first Cajuns to perform at the Grand Ole Opry.

His French version of Hank Thompson's "Wild Side of Life" is pretty crazy but mostly I listen to waltzes and songs like "Fille de la Ville" and "Jolie Fille," full of accordion, fiddling, good beats, & catchy melodies.  Read More 

I love New York, I do. I've lived here two thirds of my life. Ten minutes into my first visit, I knew I was going to move here & live here forever. Today I got my free (courtesy of the NYC ID) membership at the Museum of Natural History, visited the buffalo for that reliable moment of plains homesickness, then set out to Read More 

I guess one good thing about people (artists) dying is that they jump back into your consciousness & remind you to appreciate them. I have especially liked hearing how much of an influence Bowie was on so many friends, in so many ways.  Read More 

I'm thinking of how women tend to feel either vulnerable or invulnerable, neither of which is probably correct. For example, a friend told me that his wife never hesitates to scold people on the street. He thinks she's nuts. I know it's because she thinks no one will attack her, a tiny woman in her late 60s.  Read More 

I was visiting my friend Willis in Spartanburg one summer, many years ago. He looked up. Not a cloud in the sky. "We should go down to the lake & swim now," he said. "We just have time before it rains."

We went down to the lake & swam, and just as we got back to the house, the heavens opened up.

"How'd you do that?" I demanded.  Read More 

I'm seeing an interesting style among young men who realize they are expected to carry their weight in the parenting department, but don't seem to think they should have to. So they've developed what one might call Hapless Superiority. "My [year-old, say] daughter can outwit me already," they pronounce, meaning he's smart (having a smart baby)—but he's not responsible for doing anything about it. Read More 

I've thrown out a lot of junk but found a lot of treasures. In particular, a box of magazines with poems of mine in them, many of which I didn't remember even writing (cf Ron Padgett, Poems I Guess I Wrote). I read a bunch this afternoon at a fun reading I did with Martha King,

Here's one, which was published in Mag City 8 (edited by Greg Masters, Michael Scholnick, & Gary Lenhart), in 1979:

 Read More 

It's like all 24 Days of Discard rolled into one. The great unflappable Emma is helping me clean, discard, sort, toss, tidy, throw out, rearrange, dispose of, get rid of, shed, & cast off a lot of the crap from my office. "Everyone keeps a bag of cords," she reports from her vast experience in other people's trash. I also have found a few things I'd forgotten I had or where they were, like copies of KOFF.  Read More