A Tidings of Magpies

Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for or what to call you I think I did not even know I was looking how would I have known you when I saw you as I did time after time when you appeared to me as you did naked offering yourself entirely at that moment and you let me breathe you touch you taste you knowing no more than I did and only when I began to think of losing you did I recognize you when you were already part memory part distance remaining mine in the ways that I learn to miss you from what we cannot hold the stars are made Also quite lovely in paragraph form... “Through all of youth, I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for or what to call you. I think I did not even know I was looking. How would I have known you when I saw you - as I did time after time when you appeared to me as you did, naked, offering yourself entirely at that moment, and you let me breathe you, touch you, taste you, knowing no more than I did. ...

You don't have to look far to see hundreds of thousands of people who have had to deal with very bad news. The Susan G. Komen Walk for Breast Cancer as shown by Rudee for instance. Being around people who have been delivered bad news is not new to me. I was talking with my patient, Ms. M., this weekend. She was supposed to have been in the middle of a cross-country road trip with her husband, destination northern California. Instead, she was lying in a hospital bed, paraplegic after falling from her horse. I was asking about how her family was handling all this and I asked about her horses-who was caring for them? Her horse's name is Ephraim. "I was going to change it, but after a while it grew on me and seemed to fit him. He's a sweet, sweet boy. So gentle. Goofy. A big galumph." I said that I bet he missed her. "My daughter went down to the barn the next morning to feed him. When she got there he just lowered his head and buried it in her chest." My ...

excerpt from The Blue Robe BY WENDELL BERRY How joyful to be together, alone as when we first were joined in our little house by the river long ago, except that now we know each other, as we did not then; and now instead of two stories fumbling to meet, we belong to one story that the two, joining, made. And now we touch each other with the tenderness of mortals, who know themselves: art by Sarah Faragher

You taught us well, sir. Thank you.

...and I'm paraphrasing because I was driving and not taking notes. "If they don't pass the bailout package soon it will be a calamity." " Except for the word "calamity." Haven't heard that word since grade school and I am loving it. If ever we needed a song it is now. Bring it on, Doris.

WHAT A DIABOLICALLY INGENIOUS WAY TO UNITE THE COUNTRY AKA DEFCONOMY 2 The economy is "cratering" according to Senator McCain and life seems very uncertain these days. We certainly are heading for a depression, although I think with the modern semantics it's called something else. I doubt that I'm alone in wondering how this will affect my family specifically. I'm guessing there will still be sick people who need hospital care so job security is less of an issue for us than others. If the Republicans get into office I am concerned about the talk I hear about running healthcare as a free-market business. That has worked wonders for the airline and the banking industries. And anyone who doesn't think the government isn't already determining how healthcare is provided is not aware of all the minutiae of paperwork by CMS(Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services). It rivals Peter Sellers in absurdity. The girls will still get through college. We'll have to lo...

I OWE HOW DAMN MUCH??? Could someone please remind me about the party? Am not remembering any frivolities. The memories are a bit grainy, much like this video, but sounds like it was fabulous fun for a select few. And after all, the piper must be paid. Damn pipers. I knew I should have stayed in band.

Fishing On The Susquehanna In July by Billie Collins I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna or on any river for that matter to be perfectly honest. Not in July or any month have I had the pleasure — if it is a pleasure — of fishing on the Susquehanna. I am more likely to be found in a quiet room like this one — a painting of a woman on the wall, a bowl of tangerines on the table — trying to manufacture the sensation of fishing on the Susquehanna. There is little doubt that others have been fishing on the Susquehanna, rowing upstream in a wooden boat, sliding the oars under the water then raising them to drip in the light. But the nearest I have ever come to fishing on the Susquehanna was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia, when I balanced a little egg of time in front of a painting in which that river curled around a bend under a blue cloud-ruffled sky, dense trees along the banks, and a fellow with a red bandana sitting in a small green flat-bottom boat holding the thin...

Please accept the deep and heartfelt thanks from all those who work in all the Neurodramavilles everywhere. And, It's back... I've been waiting.

The Hungry Gap-Time by Thomas Lux late August, before the harvest, every one of us worn down by the plow, the hoe, rake, and worry over rain. Chicken Coop confiscated by the rats and the raptors with nary a mouse to hunt. The corn's too green and hard, and the larder's down to dried apples and double-corned cod. We lie on our backs and stare at the blue; our work is done, our bellies flat. The mold on the wheat killed hardly a sheaf. The lambs fatten on the grass, our pigs we set to forage on their own-they'll be back when they whiff the first shucked ears of corn. Albert's counting bushels in his head to see if there's enough to ask Harriet's father for her hand. Harriet's father is thinking about Harriet's mother's bread pudding. The boys and girls splash in the creek, which is low but cold. Soon, soon there will be food again, and from what our hands have done we shall live another year here by the river in the valley above the fault line benea...

The Wordsworth Effect by Joyce Sutphen Is when you return to a place and it's not nearly as amazing as you once thought it was, or when you remember how you felt about something (or someone) but you know you'll never feel that way again. It's when you notice someone has turned down the volume, and you realize it was you; when you have the suspicion that you've met the enemy and you are it, or when you get your best ideas from your sister's journal. Is also-to be fair-the thing that enables you to walk for miles and miles chanting to yourself in iambic pentameter and to travel through Europe with only a clean shirt, a change of underwear, a notebook and a pen. And yes: is when you stretch out on your couch and summon up ten thousand daffodils, all dancing in the breeze.

Hear ya, Kiwi-grrrrl, loud and clear...

Back online having camped out at home and the hospital during the blackout in CinCity. The ass end of Ike blew through town killing seven and doing some infrastructural damage. Our neighborhood got power back late this afternoon and tonight, instead of hanging in the street talking with the neighbors, everyone is back inside with their lights on and doors shut. We got by with showers at five in the morning by candlelight, cooked on the campsite propane stove, and charged our cell phones at the local IGA. Think I might miss the three of us( and add on 2 cats and a dog) curling up in bed with the 4 inch battery powered TV dialing to find a channel. Right now the end of Miss Congeniality 2 is on and I am going to watch every bad minute of it with the HoneyHaired girl sitting next to me. Doesn't get much better than watching Sandra Bullock with my favorite teenager. That's life in a darkened living room in this northern town. "World peace", y'all.

First the good news, which is thanks to Lydia I was reviewed by DoYouDiggIT and they were very sweet and kind . It's always a bit of a surprise when someone comments on anything I've written and I have forgotten that it's out in the netherworld of the internet. Thank you, Lydia, for putting my name out there. The bad news is that I read the following daily comment by Henry David Thoreau which was on my Google page this morning. I find it fraught with ominousity--Okay, I made that word up--but,can Henry read my blog? "Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are." That seems slightly pessimistic and perhaps a bit rashly judgemental. There's no "pull yourself together, man" and "tomorrow is another day" mentality going on here. Is that his opinion of my work so far and he thinks I should keep my day job? I know that not everything revolves around ME, but after all, this quote...

My hubby likes Sarah Palin. He thinks that Charlie Gibson was "too hard on her" and that "he shouldn't be asking her those kinds of questions." Say what??? Now, just for the record--and why is it that when I think anything about Miss Sarah I hear her flat, western Cincinnati-sounding accent in my head--anyway, for the record, my hubby grew up as a long haired,hitchhiking,commune-living,anti-war kind of "dude". I was an anti-war, appalled by Kent State, Crosby, Stills and Nash-loving cheerleader. It was love at first sight when we finally met and we have been stumbling merrily(albeit with differing political signs in our yard)along the cobbled stone road of life for 17 years now. He's a smart man and a good man, and I respect his opinions. In fact, I've talked with a lot of people who like Sarah Palin and who have intellect and opinions I respect. Until this interloper. This female Svengali. What hypnotic power does she possess behind her fancy...

"...It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln Peace be with you.

Time for a break. I've been blogging for maybe 6 months, thinking that I could fit it all in. But, I'm not. And while time and the seasons are flying by I am reading and writing blog postings. I'm gonna take a rest from it. My goal is a month. Too much? Okay,a week. I must get back to my old life for one week. Wish me luck, please and have a great one.

You were far too busy with the responsibilities involved in your job.

Maybe the problem was that I got involved with the wrong crowd of gods when I was seven. At first they weren't harmful and only showed themselves as fish, birds, especially herons and loons, turtles, a bobcat and a small bear, but not deer and rabbits who only offered themselves as food. And maybe I spent too much time inside the water of lakes and rivers. Underwater seemed like the safest church I could go to. And sleeping outside that young might have seeped too much dark into my brain and bones. It was not for me to ever recover. The other day I found a quarter in the driveway I lost at the Mecosta State Fair in 1947 and missed out on five rides including the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl. I sat in anger for hours in the bull barn mourning my lost quarter on which the entire tragic history of earth is written. I looked up into the holes of the bulls' massive noses and at the brass rings puncturing their noses which allowed them to be led. It would have been an easier ...

Good evening. My name is Distracted By Shiny Objects and I'm a Commentatoroholic. I watch political programs waiting anxiously for a glimpse and a few words from the smart, funny,and insider-knowledge filled talking heads who are asked to speak in-between the bobbing head politicos. My last view was 37 minutes ago. I feel powerless to turn off the TV and radio. November cannot come soon enough when I'll start drinking, gambling, and hanging with Fox Mulder again. And shopping on Zappos. uhmmmmmm...shoes...

While I have my leanings and my own hopes for the future of our country and the future we leave for our children, I try very hard to keep an open mind and open ears to listen to both sides of any issue. On a pragmatic level, you can't effectively discuss a point if you don't understand the opposition's platform and thinking. You also don't know the areas of agreement or potential for compromise. And so, I remain interested in the political speeches of this week and last. Listening to NPR yesterday while driving about CinCity I heard a segment on a 21 year old's take on the 2008 election and the hope she feels "no matter who wins." The commentator agreed that this was something he was hearing in many circles--that younger voters could see benefits to both candidates and were much less partisan in their evaluations. Good for them. Isn't that what we teach our kids?? Look at the person, not blind loyalty to a political party? I also enjoy a night of the...

When we sold the tent we threw in the Grand Canyon with its shawl of pines, lap full of cones and chipmunks and crooked seams of river. We let them have the parched white moonscapes of Utah, and Colorado's magnificat of flowers sunbursting hill after hill. Long gentle stretches of Wyoming, rain outside some sad Idaho town where the children, giddy with strange places, clowned all night. Eyes like small veiled moons circling our single light, sleek shadows with pawprints, all went with the outfit; and youth, a river of campfires.

For the love of God and country, Tina, please send Sarah P. on a crazy wild goose chase and fill in for her during the campaign. Come on...it'll be fun. "...You can lose your mind, When cousins are two of a kind." Don't be coy. You know you so want to.