A Tidings of Magpies

Come right on in and sit down. We've been impatient to see you.

Proposals by Cecilia Woloch Mistaking me for someone else, he asked me to marry him. This has happened more than once. The first time, I was eighteen and the boy had a diamond ring in a box. It was the Fourth of July, it was dark, he said, Happy Independence Day. Of course, the ring was too large and slipped right off my finger into the grass. (It belonged to someone else: the woman he married, eventually.) And when I was twenty-one, that redhead, sloe-eyed and slinking out of his grief, said he'd imagined I'd be his wife. But he was mistaken. It wasn't me. Then a drunk who drove too fast, who threw the proposal over his shoulder like some glittering, tattered scarf. I staggered out of his car, saying, No thanks, No thanks, No thanks. And the man over eggs one morning, in the midst of an argument, saying he planned to wait for spring to ask for my hand, then he never asked. (So of course, I married that one for a while; spent years convincing him I was not his cup of coffee...

by Gary Johnson You made crusty bread rolls filled with chunks of brie And minced garlic and drizzled with olive oil And baked them until the brie was bubbly And we ate them thoughtfully, our legs coiled Together under the table And then salmon with dill And lemon and whole-wheat cous cous Baked with garlic and fresh ginger, and a hill Of green beans and carrots roasted with honey and tofu. it was beautiful, the candles and linens and silver, The winter sun setting on our snowy street, Me with my hand on your leg, you, my lover, In your jeans and green T-shirt and beautiful feet. How simple life is. We buy a fish. We are fed. We sit close to each other, we talk and then we go to bed.

by Pamela Porter That last day of the year we hung upside down on the world, air hot as exhaust from the black taxis of Buenos Aires, and while roses in Parque Rosedal opened their fragrant mouths like a Palestrina choir, the two of you ran to the window calling, "Snow!" From the windows of all the office towers, workers tossed the year's papers into the open air, faces serious as ice. December's memos, the first flakes, floated on the bitter wind; windshield wipers plowed the drifts of November's announcements. October fell, with the date and hour of a funeral, then September, August, the grey decisions of July, a list of those to let go, jealous tangos of June and May set free into the azure sky. We walked the Avenida in that bright disorder, the neatly tied loose ends flung open, the hoary edges of graphs flaming in the sun.

Spent the holidays in Neurodramaville, and "Hey!! Nobody died!!" Good days indeed. Boring as hell, but we set the bar low on wanting No Drama Today days.

The Marsh in Winter by Timothy Walsh If you stand and listen, you will hear the voice. Reeds sharp as rapiers rasp the wind. Frost creaks in the trees. Sunlight, ice-bright, falls from the sky. Scattered cedars and junipers loom like shadows. Sheathed in ice, a willow droops heavily Across the path. Driven snow packs the creviced bark of cottonwoods. Once-hidden bird nests now plainly marked by a white cap of snow... Out on the marsh, blue water shows through shifting ice. Tall brown reeds, slim as dancers, bend in the breeze. A hundred thousand cattails, each one lit by the low-angled light of a westering sun, each brown seed head blazing like the head of a saint.

Sacred spaces surround us everywhere--from stables to coffee houses, prison cots to sick beds, even ordinary living rooms.

Have a few minutes before I need to start wrapping and cooking again this morning. Hubby is at work for 12 hours, Grrrrls are over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house, and I have a few hours unencumbered to finish wrapping gifts, walk the dog, clear off the dining room table, find where I've hidden the stocking stuffers, cook up a little Fazzoletti coi Funghi (Little Handkerchiefs with Portobello Mushrooms), attend the evening mass (Sister MaryMartha), and drink bucketfuls of coffee. I'll be spending the next two days with my other loved ones in Neurodramaville so our little family at home will share Christmas wishes this evening. Hopefully before 9pm so I can load up on the beauty rest:>) Wishing all of you and your loved ones much love and joy. Enjoy. "...Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the house...

"...Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remembered that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house...' please note: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

"...For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all their buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the side board and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what migh...

Happy Anniversary to my hubby. Loveya, mean it.

I'm wrapping presents today--when I'm not drinking another cuppa coffee or looking out the window or reading a very important blog posting. Stopped by Writerquake and found out my preppy name which is always handy information and found this lovely little test, the Little Black Dress Test . Self knowledge is always a good thing. At least that's what Kiki and Corkie say... Your Little Black Dress Says You're Quirky You are lively and outgoing. You are naturally friendly. You enjoy meeting new people and making new connections. Your style is whimsical and unique. You're good at putting together interesting outfits. If you were a shoe, you would be: High heeled boots Dear Santa, just in case--

I had seen them in the tree, and heard they mate for life, so I hung a bird feeder and waited. By the third day, sparrows and purple finches hovered and jockeyed like a swarm of bees fighting over one flower. So I hung another feeder, but the squabbling continued and the seed spilled like a shower of tiny meteors onto the ground where starlings had congregated, and blue jays, annoyed at the world, disrupted everyone except the mourning doves, who ambled around like plump old women poking for the firmest head of lettuce. Then early one evening they came, the only ones— she stood on the periphery of the small galaxy of seed; he hopped among the nuggets, calmly chose one seed at a time, carried it to her, placed it in her beak; she, head tilted, accepted it. Then they fluffed, hopped together, did it all over again. And filled with love, I phoned to tell you, over and over, about each time he celebrated being there, all alone, with her. please note: photo by Tom Merigan

The Conjugation of the Paramecium by Muriel Rukeyser This has nothing to do with propagating The species is continued as so many are (among the smaller creatures) by fission (and this species is very small next in order to the amoeba, the beginning one) The paramecium achieves, then, immortality by dividing But when the paramecium desires renewal strength another joy this is what the paramecium does: The paramecium lies down beside another paramecium Slowly inexplicably the exchange takes place in which some bits of the nucleus of each are exchanged for some bits of the nucleus of the other This is called the conjugation of the paramecium.

There's something about the wind coming off the ocean, the waves washing the rocks that makes a person who is quickly annoyed by cigarette smoke and men putting nails into roofs forgetful and unconcerned. If you are easily disturbed you need to get an ocean. please note: photo by Ron Karpel

This business of getting older and doing so with some grace is a tricky little duck. No sense going on about the looks and body department. That infrastructure is crumbling as I write and girders must be hoisted. However, dancing...that has been a bit of a bittersweet surprise. The Hubby and I met while dancing along the steamy waterbanks of this beautiful river city when the humidity was high and the moon was full and we were seventeen years younger. Doesn't seem like so many and it really has flown by, but our muscle memory must have a short memory and our fast twitch muscles have quite forgotten how to twitch. We went to the swing dance on Madison Avenue Thursday night and met the new generation; the ones we compete against for floor space. What's a woman of a certain age to do? The white ankle top socks are simply not a good look for me.

please note: video found at A Time To Dance . Thank you, Maria.

Piano by Patrick Phillips Touched by your goodness, I am like that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby that someone had smashed and somehow heaved through an open window. And you might think by this I mean I'm broken or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't know exactly what I am, any more than the wreckage in the alley knows it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves. Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was. But touching me, I know, you are the good breeze blowing across its rusted strings. What would you call that feeling when the wood, even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?

This is a season when FoodBanks across the country are asking for help and donations. I'm sure your local one is, I know our FreeStore is, and our neighbors to the northeast have also been hard hit. Cups of Kindness is offering beautiful artwork and pottery with monies going to the Foodbank of the Akron/Canton area. Rather risky items for the herd of hippos living in this household, but I see several things that look perfect for the aunties and grannies in the family. Take a look when you have time.

Two things here--one is that HoneyHaired Grrrl and I went to the the production of Rent put on by her high school. Rent is the La Boheme of a New York artiste community in the early 80's. HIV is the death sentence carried by the young, attractive, vocally blessed characters we meet; the modern day equivalent of tuberculosis/consumption/the white death in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I doubted that these kids in this midwestern auditorium really understood the bone-chilling fear and hysteria that accompanied a positive ELISA/Western Blot test 25 years ago. Which brings me to the second thing. HIV infection has a longer survival rate in the United States than Diabetes Mellitus. This to me is miraculous. I remember the early eighties when AIDS patients were admitted to the ICU for the comfort care(read this as respiratory therapy and narcotics)we could provide. We didn't put those young men--they were all heartbreakingly young and they were all men--on ventilators. W...

The Guest House by Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. please note: poem gleefully stolen from Blissful Bohemian . Thanks Annie.

Trees are being lighted and the preparations begin. "In goes my hand into that wool-white-bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes." please note: A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands into the snow and bring out whatever I can find." please note: photo by Estonia Tallinn, A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." Eckhart, Meister please note: photo from a very interesting blog, Arch At Rang . Try it, you'll like it:>)

Optimism by Jane Hirshfield More and more I have come to admire resilience. Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side, it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true. But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth. I'm about ready to swab the inside of a turkey with orange rinds and coat the rest with butter before turning on the oven to 360 degrees, waiting for the smells of Thanksgiving to fill the air of the kitchen down the steps to the front hallway. CollegeGrrrl will be home this evening. HoneyHaired Grrrl is off school and Hubby is working a four hour shift this morning. Someone will root through the attic and dust off one board game or another--Clue, Battleship, Barbie Dating Game for a little rough and tumble before we eat. The boxer already sprawls unmoveable on the floor in front o...

If Hiliary becomes the next Secretary of State will we be seeing a lot more of this slice of mancake?? Good times are here again.

RUN by Ann Patchett "...a spectacular autumn book: moody and thoughtful, gentle in its handling of weighty topics, and quietly suspenseful."--Holly Silva, The St Louis Post-Dispatch Quintessential Sentence: "Anger and sadness and a sense of injustice that was bigger than any one thing that had happened stoked an enormous fire in her chest and that fire kept her heart vibrant and hot and alive, a beautiful, infallible machine." Favorite word: Enneacanthus obesus Full Disclosure: Ann Patchett could write out a grocery list and I would love it.

Runways Café II by Marilyn Hacker For once, I hardly noticed what I ate (salmon and broccoli and Saint-Véran). My elbow twitched like jumping beans; sweat ran into my shirtsleeves. Could I concentrate on anything but your leg against mine under the table? It was difficult, but I impersonated an adult looking at you, and knocking back the wine. Now that we both want to know what we want, now that we both want to know what we know, it still behooves us to know what to do: be circumspect, be generous, be brave, be honest, be together, and behave. At least I didn't get white sauce down my front. please note: art by Johann Gotthardt

My favorite show has been cancelled and pirates are actually the bad guys??

Survival by Sri Chinmoy I am not dreaming Of a hope-victory-life. I am just dreaming Of a hope-survival-life. One of our patients returned to our unit today to say hello, unrecognizable in her own clothes and walking without assistance. Her father could not stop smiling. She looked a little befuddled at all the fuss. She remembers nothing of her 8 day stay and that's just fine. She may be able to go back to school in the spring. She may need to stay out the year. Either way, she has a future waiting for her and we could not be happier as we send her towards it.

Okay, enough already...the first snow has fallen, to be followed by more flurries. Christmas music jangles from the radio. I get it. Summer is really over and the holidays are pouring out of their cars and scampering up the front steps. So..are you sending Christmas cards this year? You wanna send one to the address below? From the front lines to the home front, the American Red Cross provides our military men and women with the care and assistance they need. This holiday season the Red Cross is partnering with Pitney Bowes for the Holiday Mail for Heroes campaign. For the second year, holiday cards are being collected to distribute to American service members, veterans and service families in the United States and those deployed around the world. Pitney Bowes is generously donating technology, resources and postage to make this holiday card program possible. The goal is to collect and distribute one million holiday cards to spread the spirit of the season--that would be Holiday Cheer,...

Waking from a nap, we stand at the window watching dark clouds crawl across the sky, whip state-sized wisps down and out and up. Lights come on early, and people below on the street scurry and bumble about My arm around you, you say— Let it rain, let it pour.

First Christmas song heard on the radio--Wednesday, November 12. First dusting of snow in CinCity--Sunday, November 16. What about Thanksgiving?? Good grief...

Tonight I wonder where the man is who used to stand just inside the doors of the Lexington Avenue entrance to Grand Central Station. The full moon is rising. Around the earth, meteors move through space. Every day for over a year I walked by him early in the morning and at the end of the day he still stood in the same position, arms down his sides, looking straight ahead at thousands of people walking without colliding in all directions at once, everybody trying to get to a different place.

I have left my wife at the airport, flying out to help our daughter whose baby will not eat. And I am driving on to Kent to hear some poets read tonight. I don't know what to do with myself when she leaves me like this. An old friend has decided to end our friendship. Another is breaking it off with his wife. I don't know what to say to any of this-Life's hard. And I say it aloud to myself, Living is hard, and drive further into the darkness, my headlights only going so far. I sense my own tense breath, this fear we call stress, making it something else, hiding from all that is real. As I glide past Twin Lakes, flat bodies of water under stars, I hold the wheel gently, slowing my body to the road, and know again that this is just living, not a trauma nor dying, but a lingering pain reminding us that we are alive.

Guess who's coming to dinner... Bond. Tomorrow. Be there.

I have learned that life goes on, or doesn't. That days are measured out in tiny increments as a woman in a kitchen measures teaspoons of cinnamon, vanilla, or half a cup of sugar into a bowl. I have learned that moments are as precious as nutmeg, and it has occurred to me that busy interruptions are like tiny grain moths, or mice. They nibble, pee, and poop, or make their little worms and webs until you have to throw out the good stuff with the bad. It took two deaths and coming close myself for me to learn that there is not an infinite supply of good things in the pantry.

"...a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'." In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated the triumph of ending the old world order. After four years of bitter and devastating war, a peace treaty was signed and hope for diplomatic resolutions reigned. The "war to end all wars" was now over. Except for the ones that soon followed. This is a deeply heartfelt thanks for the many peaces that have been fought for and a prayer for those still slightly out of reach.