Things I Love (Today)

~This is the happiest thing about Valentine's Day! What can I say, I'm a stamp geek, Google's avatar, of course, being a spin off of Robert Indiana's classic 1973 8c stamp.

Today is a waiting room. I'm waiting on an appointment, with whom I'm not too sure. Well--that is, this expectant feeling can be chalked up to: a reply to a request for some advice that will lead to radical financial changes; a reply from IT saying they're coming to fix my monitor that is determined to display everything as if it were Super Mario Bros, circa 1989; an extra pair of hands to help me over the next step in this project; a student worker so that I have someone else to talk to. All of these things may or may not happen today, so I'll meet them again when I walk through this door tomorrow. Known waiting, known response.

At home, I'll walk into another waiting room. But there I'm less certain of what it will be for. For a phone call? A half-finished project or a half-read book? Enlightenment? Visitors? The exact dinner I want? My intuition--the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?--insists on "Wait. Wait." Wait? When I want to run on and meet whatever is coming. When I know I'm not, mysteriously, equipped for it.

Migraine Puts on Her Happy Face

Today has just about been too much. My patience, my understanding, my tolerance, my sanity. At the breaking point. What is wrong with me? Tonight, I'm going to church, and I'm going to read stories to some precious little 3 and 4 yo souls, and we're going to sing about how much God loves us. The end.

One day, I'll be able to put both of my hands around all of this. I'll be able to lift it up as one piece, set it aside, and reveal the world that was always happening underneath.

These shall be mine, and I will call them manna.

Spoiler Alert: Cupcakes are now being served at people's weddings as the cool thing to do.

Last winter, two friends of mine got married in an event that was low on frills and rich in love. Being generally behind the rest of the world when it comes to the wedding scene, I found that cupcakes are "the thing" these days, but this was my first time to see it in action. And I was...hm. Well. Cupcakes present many benefits that a traditional cake doesn't, namely, you don't have to wrangle up someone to "honor" by asking them to "serve" it. You can save valuable time by not having to "train" someone on how to exactly put 8 layers of off-center hearts onto 450 plates with equality. And, and! They asked our minister's wife to make them. I had heard tell of Becky's raspberry mint cupcakes, but it just didn't sound right. Since February 2009, I've been dreaming of them. I finally decided 'twas time to locate a recipe.

I chose this one from The Cupcake Blog. I suggest you make them as well. Every time someone makes these, an angel gets its wings.

Win Some: Oh my word. My craving has been satisfied. The basic vanilla cupcake shall forevermore be the starter for all my cupcake efforts.
Learn Some: Why in the world does this involve gelatin in any form? Imagine jello mixed with whipped cream, and what do you have? That's right: elementary school cafeteria. Won't. Do. That. Again. Oh. And I'll chop the mint finer.

A few photos for your enjoymentwill be forthcoming. I call them food porn.

My new personal theme song

In homage to The Year of the Thyroid's passing and The Year of the B12 Deficiency's inauguration, I play for you now The Rolling Stones. Let the injections begin!



In sleepier news, I'm reading a lot. Finished all of the Stieg Larsson books. Reviews posted soon at Think Journal.

Cheers!

Sinks, while floating

Transcendence comes walking, galumphing, swimming. It whispers, screams, stands silent. It's red, purple, grey. It is sandy, silky, sickly, robust. It sinks while floating. Today we sang a song in church that had that feeling. The line was "Lest I forget thy love for me..." The altos ascend in pitch while every other part descends. Rare, that approach. But, oh, so right.

Lectio Divina

One of the most intimate scenes I've read in a novel happened in Grapes of Wrath. Ma Joad--the pillar of the Joad family in increasingly bleak circumstances--calls her daughter to help her with a task. She calls out the daughter's name "Rose of Sharon" and then repeats it over and over to herself under her breath, "enjoying the feel of it in her mouth." I've often felt a need to read quickly over that passage, as it isn't meant for the 3rd person omniscient narrator, let alone the unworthy reader.

I enjoyed Matt's Lectio Divina lesson at church last night. Lectio Divina is fancy Latin for purposeful meditation of scripture, involving prayer, silence, meditation, and memorization. I've been doing a lot of reciting to myself these days, and this was a way to focus that memorization and meditation on scripture, which I do less often than I do with other writings.

"I love you. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, would be my treasure still."--from Jane Eyre

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, protects all things."--I Corinthians 13:6

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." --Matthew 7:12

"For his withdrawal would have been a flight, his deliverance an accident, his reward dishonor, his future perhaps damnation. Then he would have borne witness, not to his faith or to God's mercy, but to how dreadful was the journey to the mountain in Moriah."--Kierkegaard's Fear & Trembling

Menagerie

I live in one. My dear, dear friend Andrea showed up in this hood yesterday afternoon, demanding food and shelter. Obligingly, I whipped up this sublime curry and fed it to her. My endearing, tiny apartment doesn't have a dishwasher, so I was hurriedly trying to keep up with the dirty cookware as it came off the stove. Looking out the over-the-sink windows, a squirrel appeared to be running across the backyard. Really, it was a tiny tabby-striped kitty frolicking in very tall grass. Precious! I've seen the mama cat before, thinking she was a sibling of my dearly departed Beezus. Beezus is an uncle!

I went out in the cool of the morning to water the tomatoes I didn't water yesterday. I went out through the kitchen door, seeing as how Andrea was sleeping on the couch. Something smelled funny, but Thursday is trash day, so I ignored it...until I saw the furry tail sticking up around the front porch steps. A smashed, maggotty squirrel lay dead on the steps. Mama and Baby Cat huddled sleeping in the porch corner, all of my flowerpots were turned over, and a beautiful tiny bird with tufted hair on his ears was perched in the tomato container, guarding the eggshells I sprinkled on the plant to keep slugs away.

I feel ridiculously flattered that they like my house, too.

Metablogging. I does it.

I often think of Blogspot the way I think (and most people think) about Windows/PCs. Functional, reliable, not so fancy. Could be a little snazzier. So today, searching for a little refresher for the ol' Inner Monologue, I found this layout. Summery, reminds of some good moments in the meadows of West TN. Way to go, Blogger.

To Dice a More Perfect Onion

Yesterday was Evaluation Day. Only 3 of 14 students responded, leaving me with one good, one average, and one bad eval. (I'm pretty sure who that one was, and he wasn't such a peach of a student.) I'm certain I can take away from this that the other 11 were satisfied/neutral enough not to feel the need to bleed all over me. Combine that with a big ball of internal rawr, a non-stop three week traveling schedule, and the annual let's-tally-how-much-work-you-did-accomplish v. let's-tally-how-much-you-should-have-accomplished reckoning and I morphed into one roiling, seething mass of primordial elements, a la The Blob.



I leap and glide and slip and slide my way home only to realize that I have a random smattering of groceries to pull into a cohesive, vaguely-healthy dinner. (Dieting--more later.) I have onions. This dinner is saved. My teaching skills may be questionable, but by golly, I can dice an onion. I learned this awesome trick from the Chinese cook on tv. Um...Simply Ming. (It's amazing what you can learn when PBS is coming through in any useful way.)

Slice one end of the onion off, and remove the papery skin layer. Don't cut off the other end. Make four or five slices across the onion in three directions, and voila! A beautifully cubic dice of onion. A dice so beautiful, so translucently pungent, so crisply caramelizing, such a supporter of the chickpeas and less of a competitor. The primordial ooze began slowly to retreat in the face of such brilliance. To question its ability to stand in the face of such superiority.

Squee

One of my super incredible, nerdy student workers got her dream internship today at Historic New England. I like to think I had a little hand in that. So proud of her hard work!

My work blog got picked up by speaktopower.org, topsy.com, and Curator Journal. So, you know. Yay me!

An update on TN museums in the wake of flooding

http://www.fhu.edu/blogs/archives/post/Local-museums-across-spectrum-of-flooding.aspx

This is a link to my work blog, "The Archives Weekly." I'm keeping a running list of what I can find out about museums and archives in the flooded areas of Middle and West TN. Please feel free to update by commenting or contacting me directly.

Here's the latest from Country Music Hall of Fame:
http://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/nashville-flood-update

Mea Culpa?

Spring is here, and without a couple of weekend tornado rallies, it wouldn't be West TN. So when I said the end was near...I didn't really mean to invite the apocalypse (which is wet, not snowy. At least then we didn't rescue people using boats, and we didn't keep running for cover every three hours). Was really looking forward to Allison's gathering in the sun. I guess she and I can trade declamations even without the trees.

Despite some flooding, all is well in Chester County. Parts of Tipton, Madison and Gibson Counties experienced severe flooding and the Navy got flooded out in Shelby County. The Navy. Got flooded out. Mom and Dad slept through the whole thing. Apparently, tornado warnings are routinely ignored by Baptist East. Which is probably practical.

A beautiful sunny day welcomed and beloved by all.
Listening to: birds.

What a month, or, the end is near.

I love pay day. I feel grown up, responsible, rich. Until tomorrow. Tomorrow begins a new month. Not a month dedicated to poetry. I hope you've gotten a little taste of rhythm, imagery, cadence, and wordplay in your life this month.

Money ~Howard Simon
Money
Money
Important
Useful
Necessary

Money
Money
Money
Wealthy
Middle
Poverty

Money
Money
Money
Save
Give
Spend

Money
Money
Borrow
Lend
Money
Money
Foe
Friend

Money
Money
Master
Slave
Money
Money
Satisfied
Crave

Money
Money
Laugh
Cry
Money
Money
Live
Die

Money
Money
Sick
Well
Money
Money
Heaven
Hell

Lots of writing about tourism in Chester County (there has to be a prize for the number of forked roads a county can have).
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Lots of teaching and grading about primary sources. (Listen to this one!)
You Begin ~Margaret Atwood
You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

Lots of time spent in the hospital or on the phone worrying about a sick parent (who will be fine, thankfully!).
Hymn to God, My God, in my Sickness ~John Donne

Since I am coming to that holy room,
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die,

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though their currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific Sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar,
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them,
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in his purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
By these his thorns, give me his other crown;
And as to others' souls I preach'd thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
"Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down."

And tomorrow, a tea party.
The Tea Party ~Jessica Nelson North

I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
'Twas very small-
Three guest in all-
Just I, myself and me.
Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea;
'Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.

Be Warm Begins! #2

Our first meet-up went really well at Besso's last night! Yes, it was made clear to me that, again, I have chosen the most labor intensive way to do things. But in the end, we all agreed to be responsible for one area--like scarves or washcloths--and then pool them all together at the beginning of the fall and see what else we might need or how best to distribute. I took one for the team and agreed to see what could be accomplished in the way of socks. So, I bought my first pair of double pointed needles and sock yarn last night. The needles are shiny and purple and the yarn is soft and white. Think baby blanket soft and white. Sigh of ineffable satisfaction.

Meet ups will be twice monthly in Henderson or in Jackson, alternately. And if you can come, you can come. Soooooo excited!! I can taste it! Some friends here who have friends amongst the homeless of Memphis keep relaying stories to me about how much these folks suffered with the winter cold, especially in want of hats. Maybe, just maybe, we can make a little difference in that this winter?

Venue Change

Be Warm Meet UP has changed from Green Frog in Jackson to Besso's in Henderson. A lot of our Jackson folks couldn't make it! Also congratulations to Leah, on the birth of Clara Elizabeth--four weeks ahead of schedule! Babies are blessings.

I found some fun baby quotes, that I think Leah and Allen would like:
"The old Irish when immersing a babe at baptism left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting."

"It is the nature of babies to be in bliss."--Deepak Chopra

"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on."--Carl Sandburg

"Raising a baby is part joy and part guerilla warfare."--Ed Asner.

Those great goddesses of peace

Back in ye olde days, I worked as a bridal consultant. Zipping and pinning and steaming, I could, movie-like, anticipate the litany of the remarks a bride or her mother would make: "This will be the happiest day of my life. Today is the day we love each other the most. Today my family means the most to me. Today I love him the most. This is the best time of our lives. The wedding has to be the most perfect day of my life." The air was palpable with the apex of someone's life: the climax in the narrative of their life. I could taste it, and it was bittersweet. I knew beyond knowing that the day had come to resign when I told a bride I had vowed to let my life operate on a ten-best principle.

Of course, accepting a ten-best principle means also adopting a ten-worst principle. On February 13, 2001, on June 24, 2001, on September 11, 2001 on March 20, 2003, on April 17, 2004, on February 16, 2007, on June 1, 2009, on January 30, 2010--I cracked open my well-read copy of The Colossus and Other Poems and reread "Lorelei." So often--I should have it memorized. I don't except the closing line--"Stone, stone. Ferry me down there." Did Plath have a death wish or a peace wish? Probably both. Hearing this expression of the agony, the wish for peace, well. Helps. I wish it had helped Sylvia.

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Listening to Ray Lamontagne

Be Warm Begins!

Rosalind Russell in The Women. During this scene, Russell ceaselessly knits as she uncovers that her estranged cousin's ex-husband's mistress-turned-wife is now the mistress-turned-fiancee of the husband of the Contess DeLave, whom she met at the Dude Ranch-Home-For-Divorcing-Wives. They've lost their equilibrium.

Be Warm meets up Thursday at 7:00 at Green Frog Coffee at E. Baltimore Street, Jackson. We're meeting to decide how we want to go about clothing the homeless and needy in our area through our humble needles and a few balls of yarn. (Few balls--giggle.)

Mother by Prabha Raj
Watch her, as she
Sits and knits.

As pair of needles
Criss cross,
I see her thoughts
Setting her wrinkles
To play.

The moment she completes
The picking of stitches,
Her wrinkles
Erase out.

I call it
The juxtaposition of
Mind and sentiment.