Wednesday, May 31, 2006

lambent

from the oxford english dictionary - 1. of a flame: playing lightly upon a surface without burning it, like a tongue of fire 2. shining with a soft clear light, hence of the eyes, the sky, etc. 3. softly radiant.
a.) her eyes shone, lambent in the soft light of the moon.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

memorial day

dulce et decorum est

a poem by wilfred owen
march 1918

bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
knock-kneed, coughing like hags,
we cursed through sludge,
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
and towards our distant rest began to trudge.
men marched asleep. many had lost their boots
but limped on, blood-shod. all went lame; all blind;
drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

gas! gas! quick, boys!-- an ecstasy of fumbling,
fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
but someone still was yelling out and stumbling
and floundering like a man in fire or lime.
dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
as under a green sea, i saw him drowning.

in all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

if in some smothering dreams you too could pace
behind the wagon that we flung him in,
and watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
his hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
if you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old lie: dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Thursday, May 18, 2006

usufruct

i came across this word last night in an article on the organic food industry in the new yorker. webster defines usufruct as..."the right to utilize and enjoy the profits and advantages of something belonging to another so long as the property is not damaged or altered." the article was talking about this guy who created a meal without engaging with the existing supply chain we normally use to get our food, i.e. grocery stores. he picked morel mushrooms in the forest. shot a wild pig for the braised loin. scraped sea salt from a pond by the sea. picked greens from his garden. and ate cherries..."taken by right of usufruct from a neighbor's tree."

could he have taken his neighbor's car, driven it around, washed it, filled the tank up and returned it, and done so under the right of usufruct...providing he returned the car undamaged or unaltered? how about his neighbor's wife? could he take her out, feed her, have sex with her, and it's OK neighbor, as long as you return her undamged or unaltered?

usufruct. i guess it's time to get a shed with a lock for my lawn mower.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

western bluebirds

mountain bluebirds at the feeder. i've never seen them around town. up in the mountains you might see them streak across a road or trail. but they've never appeared in my yard in the seven years i've been here.

i walked in to the kitchen early yesterday morning to make coffee and caught a flurry of blue in the corner of my eye rising up from the ground from beneath the feeder. i couldn't figure out what i had seen. i thought maybe it was the bluejays from the family of jays in the trees that surround the house. but minutes later the little bluebirds were back, half a dozen or more, hopping around the lawn, scratching the ground for uneaten seeds.

yesterday evening, in a group of sparrows zoe saw a single bluebird.

potato pancakes

they leave a mess in the kitchen. you can take off a finger grating the potatoes by hand. they take forever. you end up with a nasty cup of grease to dispose of. the house stinks for a week. they're starchy, greasy and loaded with calories. but they're crunchy, hot, and crispy and you serve them with sides of applesauce and sour cream.

pass on the french fries. we like potato pancakes. last night zoe and i ate16 of them. eight a piece. and we both could have eaten more. just potatoes, eggs, flour, onion and salt. no fancy seasonings or expensive ingredients. the jews call them latkes, the swiss call it rosti. the greeks call them hash browns. in new york at the delis down on canal street, i've seen them served with a dusting of confectioner's sugar.

we like the potato pancake.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

mum and da



my parents were married sixty-five years ago this week on my dad's birthday, may 9, 1941, in youngstown, ohio. my dad was shanty irish. my mom, the daughter of an industrialist, lived in a big georgian-style house on gypsy lane.

at that time, youngstown was a booming steel town, home to truscon steel (a division of republic steel,) us steel, youngstown sheet and tube, and commercial, shearing and stamping. my mother's father was president of truscon steel.

my father's family was also in the steel business. they stoked coal in the besemer furnaces, stacked pipe in the mills and ground down forged goods in the machine shops.

after the war, my dad went to youngstown university on the g.i. bill. he worked as a machinist at night at commercial, shearing and stamping, and when he graduated he was hired as a salesman. in 1948, when i was two years old, he was transferred to commercial's sales office in chicago. they sent him to minneapolis in 1961 and in the early 1970s back to ohio. he left the company around that time to go build yachts with my uncle, my mother's brother. that partnership turned ugly and my extended family imploded.

my dad worked shitty sales jobs the rest of his career until he retired in the late eighties. he got in a few good years of retirement by the pool in southern california until he died of a brain tumor in 1988. my mother died of cancer in 2003.

my dad was a hale-fellow-well-met. he always had a good joke and a smooth irish charm. women were crazy about him. his people were what they call the "black irish," the gallic influence. he had a full head of hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes. he sang in a fine tenor, had an artistic hand and a theatrical flair. my mother was more reserved, stoic almost. a particularly nasty car accident in the late seventies left her crippled for the rest of her life. she was a tough bird and she was a fighter. so no complaints. ever. she loved her garden and the deep, dark mysteries of 99 cent stores.

i do miss them, especially my dad, probably because he left sooner, and not all that long after we had made our peace together. the vietnam war and my concientious objection to that war put us on opposing sides of the table. i'd like to sit down and have a couple of cocktails together and shoot the shit. now that we'd have something to talk about.

so happy birthday, happy anniversary and happy mother's day, you two.

Monday, May 08, 2006

mr. ed


i took this picture sunday afternoon from my living room window. this cowboy, with his passenger, was riding his horse down the middle of the street, past my house.

i don't know why, but it always makes me feel good to see someone riding a horse. it's reassuring somehow. you have to love a mode of transportation that can make a good 20 miles a day on water and grass. and no stops at the conoco station.

it made me think that come a complete breakdown in mechanized society and/or the sucking dry of the world's fossil fuel reserves, i'll be stuck here with both a car and truck in the driveway that i won't be able to give away. and this guy will be able to go wherever he wants to go. if there is anyplace left to go.

note the four gas hogs in the background.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

four dead in ohio

thirty-six years ago today, the ohio national guard killed four students on the campus of kent state university.