A Tidings of Magpies

I don't know if anyone else out there has become obsessed with been watching the new ABC show, Once Upon a Time , but I cannot wait for it to come on every week  have found it interesting and entertaining. Full disclosure, still a fan of LOST. And, huge fan of fairy tales. Although, it does make me wonder a bit about Jungian archetypes and Joseph Campbell's work on The Myth of the Hero and how in our rather disjointed, but more globally connected world do we unearth ancient sources of meaning and guidance? Mostly though, I like a good fairy tale, especially the old-fashioned Grimm ones that didn't pull any punches or bedazzle-up their messages. I like my trolls to look like trolls. The sun is shining here and it's not raining; big change from the last couple of days. I've got the hospital's biannual ACLS to study for so that means I'll find some more things around the house that must be dealt with today--old magazines? Must be skimmed through and...

The White by Patricia Hampl These are the moments before snow, whole weeks before. The rehearsals of milky November, cloud constructions when a warm day lowers a drift of light through the leafless angles of the trees lining the streets. Green is gone, gold is gone. The blue sky is the clairvoyance of snow. There is night and a moon but these facts force the hand of the season: from that black sky the real and cold white will begin to emerge. please note: photo by Drew Sanborn

Counting Sheep by Linda Pastan Counting sheep, the scientists suggested, may simply be too boring to do for very long, while images of a soothing shoreline ... are engrossing enough to concentrate on. —The New York Times When I reach a thousand I start to notice how the eyes of one ewe are wide, as if with worry about her lamb or how cold the flock will be after the shearing. At a thousand fifty I notice a ram pushing up against a soft and curly female, and for a moment I'm distracted by errant images of sex. It is difficult to keep so many sheep in line for counting— they are not a parade but more like a roiling sea of whitecaps, which makes me think of the shore— of all those boring grains of sand to keep track of as they slip through the fingers, of all the dangers of sunstroke, riptide, jellyfish. The scientists fall asleep lulled by equations, by dreams of experiments, and I ...

Must have been a slow news day in CinCity today, verrrrry slow since they actually came to interview us this afternoon. If you happen to watch the video I'm in the background--the woman in red. Red scrubs before I got peed on and changed. Hey, just one of those days :>) Working on Thanksgiving? Who's complaining?

Sundown by Jorie Graham (St. Laurent Sur Mer, June 5, 2009) Sometimes the day light winces behind you and it is a great treasure in this case today a man on a horse in calm full gallop on Omaha over my left shoulder coming on fast but calm not audible to me at all until I turned back my head for no reason as if what lies behind one had whispered what can I do for you today and I had just turned to answer and the answer to my answer flooded from the front with the late sun he/they were driving into—gleaming— wet chest and upraised knees and light-struck hooves and thrust-out even breathing of the great beast—from just behind me, passing me—the rider looking straight ahead and yet smiling without looking at me as I smiled as we both smiled for the young animal, my feet in the breaking wave-edge, his hooves returning, as they begin to pass by, to the edge of the furling break, each tossed-up flake of ocean offered into...

by Mary Mackey One November a week before Thanksgiving the Ohio river froze and my great uncles put on their coats and drove the turkeys across the ice to Rosiclare where they sold them for enough to buy my grandmother a Christmas doll with blue china eyes I like to think of the sound of two hundred turkey feet running across to Illinois on their way to the platter the scrape of their nails and my great uncles in their homespun leggings calling out gee and haw and git to them as if they were mules I like to think of the Ohio at that moment the clear cold sky the green river sleeping under the ice before the land got stripped and the farm got sold and the water turned the color of whiskey and all the uncles lay down and never got up again I like to think of the world before some genius invented turkeys with pop-up plastic thermometers in their breasts idiot birds with no wildness left in them...

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Amendment One of the Constitution of the United States of America Excerpt from January 28, 2011, Remarks by President Obama on the Situation in Egypt: "The people of Egypt have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere." 1894 1932 1965 1969 with a thanks to Debra & From Skilled Hands for President Obama's quote

by Walt McDonald Pulling our Stetsons low, we whispered songs to sweethearts who clung so close we danced in slow motion, heartache of steel guitars, vows we swore with our bones. Their hair was the air for an hour. We breathed and held them close, ignoring the war for the night, voices on jukebox wax winding around like a rope. One week we kissed them hard and rode off, swearing we'd bring back silk and souvenirs. Long after a war no one we cared for survived without scars, Earl and I are here with wives as old as country songs and guitars, our children older than all of us that fall. Don's a name on the wall in Washington. I hear his name sometimes in questions at class reunions. I haven't heard from Carl.

by Patricia Hampl These are the moments before snow, whole weeks before. The rehearsals of milky November, cloud constructions when a warm day lowers a drift of light through the leafless angles of the trees lining the streets. Green is gone, gold is gone. The blue sky is the clairvoyance of snow. There is night and a moon but these facts force the hand of the season: from that black sky the real and cold white will begin to emerge.

It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat at the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraith-like shadows that raced along the ground. The house shook. excerpt from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle please note: photo by StrawberryFields1967

by Ben Jonson The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad, And so is the cat-a-mountain, The ant and the mole sit both in a hole, And the frog peeps out o' the fountain; The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play, The spindle is now a turning; The moon it is red, and the stars are fled, But all the sky is a-burning: The ditch is made, and our nails the spade, With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, Merrily, merrily, make him fail, A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below, With a whip in your hand, to make him go. please note : photo by Gigi De Carlo

Many, many years ago when I was a young nurse we had a patient who was admitted frequently after being picked up by the police for sleeping in the park. His name, which we will agree on as James, could begin an avalanche of moaning and itching among the ICU staff as he almost always came in with lice and was definitely always very determined to get his own way. I loved James. I don't know why. But, I did and we got along. He made me laugh. It floored me that he would come in as the poster child for A Hot Damn Mess and we would work hard to clean him and patch him up only for him to leave AMA and refuse to leave until we gave him clothes. We had "stolen"his. The man still had moxie. I met his brother once, towards the end--a dentist from one of the suburbs where they had both grown up. James "had some kind of break" and left the circle of his family to become one of the faceless and homeless men who wander through our city. It was because of James that I met...

When the War is Over by W. S. Merwin When the war is over We will be proud of course the air will be Good for breathing at last The water will have been improved the salmon And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly The dead will think the living are worth it we will know Who we are And we will all enlist again please note: photo of  a team of C-STARS( The Air Force's Center for Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills) and a heartfelt thank you to all our veterans.

by Linda Pastan How separate we are under our black umbrellas—dark planets in our own small orbits, hiding from this wet assault of weather as if water would violate the skin, as if these raised silk canopies could protect us from whatever is coming next— December with its white enamel surfaces; the numbing silences of winter. From above we must look like a family of bats— ribbed wings spread against the rain, swooping towards any makeshift shelter.

Reusing Words by Hal Sirowitz Don't think you know everything, Father said, just because you're good with words. They aren't everything. I try to say the smallest amount possible. Instead of using them indiscriminately I try to conserve them. I'm the only one in this household who recycles them. I say the same thing over & over again, like "Who forgot to turn out the lights? Who forgot to clean up after themselves in the bathroom?" Since you don't listen I never have to think of other things to say.

  In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus by Alden Nowlan I wouldn't like to be one of the walrus people for the rest of my life but I wish I could spend one sunny afternoon lying on the rocks with them. I suspect it would be similar to drinking beer in a tavern that caters to longshoremen and won't admit women. We'd exchange no cosmic secrets. I'd merely say, "How yuh doin' you big old walrus?" and the nearest of the walrus people would answer, "Me? I'm doin' great. How yuh doin' yourself, you big old human being, you?" How good it is to share the earth with such creatures and how unthinkable it would have been to have missed all this by not being born: a happy thought, that, for not being born is the only tragedy that we can imagine but need never fear.