Saturday in CinCity. The Last One in 2011, Thank Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus.

with many thanks to Debra Heller Bures from whence I reallocated these bits of wisdom!!

and I'll add one more of my own...

Love. All ways.

Saturday in CinCity. The Waiting and Hoping and Wishing and Praying Edition.

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.

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

TGIF. The Two Days Before Christmas Edition.

Dewey's pizza and a movie with hubby and the girls. 'Cause nothing says Christmas like watching a hot mess ruin a perfectly lovely family occasion, or as we say in my family, "Merry Damn Christmas!!" (apologies to those of you who did not grow up with alcoholics)

Because Once There Was Patsy Cline

A woman in the Playhouse audience last night asked the sound check man if the lead, Carter Calvert, had an understudy and he said no, ma'am I don't believe she does. I'd been thinking I didn't know how she could given the actress's voice and her seamless fit into the role, but as I Googled for a video or a photo I found different productions and actresses. Amazing that there are so many talented people in the world and bless them all. If I could just sing on-key for the length of a song I'd be happy. If this show ever comes to your town or close by it's worth the dressing up and stepping out. Beware though, Patsy makes today's radio pop music sound a bit tarnished and thin.






A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country


by Barbara Ras



Because those cows in the bottomland are black and white, colors

anyone can understand, even against the green

of the grass, where they glide like yes and no, nothing in between,

because in country, heartache has nowhere to hide,

it's the Church of Abundant Life, the Alamo,

the hubbub of the hoi polloi, the parallel lines of rail fences,

because I like rodeos more than golf,

because there's something about the sound of mealworms and

leeches and the dream of a double-wide

that reminds me this is America, because of the simple pleasure

of a last chance, because sometimes whiskey

tastes better than wine, because hauling hogs on the road

is as good as it gets when the big bodies are layered like pigs in a cake,

not one layer but two,

because only country has a gun with a full choke and a slide guitar

that melts playing it cool into sweaty surrender in one note,

because in country you can smoke forever and it'll never kill you,

because roadbeds, flatbeds, your bed or mine,

because the package store is right across from the chicken plant

and it sells boiled peanuts, because I'm fixin' to wear boots to the dance

and make my hair bigger, because no smarty-pants, just easy rhymes,

perfect love, because I'm lost deep within myself and the sad songs call me out,

because even you with your superior aesthetic cried

when Tammy Wynette died,

because my people

come from dirt.

"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today..."

then

and now...

Tuesday in CinCity. The Five Days Before Christmas Edition.

Lilac Sunday


by Diana Der-Hovanessian



Let us agree to meet

here some winter

when the park



gates are locked,

and the arches thinned

of their vaulting green



to climb the wall,

thaw the icicles

and watch the rain



like flowering

cherry and lilacs

that kissed your hair;



some winter

when the fog is heavy,—

to return to this light.



Neither I nor CinCity have fallen off the edge of the world, though I can't say with certainty what I've been doing. I'm sure that driving aimlessly around the town was involved.
                                                                                                            
Biggest news is that CollegeGrrrl had her nursing pinning and graduated this past Saturday and Sunday.


Lovely day and lots of proud parents and families
filling the auditorium. Some of the graduating nurses were pinned by their children and/or their grandparents
--always a tearjerker. Not that I needed any prompting.
 
I remembered the night before we left for CollegeTown that we had a dog to care for, and no plans made. He stayed with the new graduate and her roomie and he's still there. They wanted to keep him till our grrrl comes home on Wednesday. Did not bat an eye when we left
and has started his own Occupy Movement there.
 
I've been trying to get all the shopping done and figure out food for the week. Turns out CollegeGrrrrl--who will need to be renamed...Blondie for now??--has foresworn all meat and dairy, so I'm flipping through recipes I have stuffed in nooks and crannies around the kitchen. I found a Lobster Risotto which sounds very yummy,
and also have a favorite which we call, Pepperoni Rigatoni, but it's really vegetarian. I just threw in some meat to satisfy my husband's flesh-eating requests. And seriously, what is pepperoni made of?
 
Let the count-down continue...
 

where's Santa?

TGIF. The And How We Love It...Edition

Those visits home, the way the young

by Marianne Boruch


 

Those visits home, the way the young

come back and still follow you around

or find you on the bed reading

or writing, to lie down at an angle or



sit cross-legged. No secret between you,

not even trouble quite though

it isn't ordinary, the way the world unravels

through them: what he said, what she



never, who traveled where, that things—

how exactly—splinter and break

and cut. It trails off then. Both of you,

which one to speak but thinking



better of it. And the book is just a prop,

what you were writing perfectly weightless

in this silence. Child, oh fully no longer,

out there tangling, untangling.

Used Book

by Julie Kane

What luck—an open bookstore up ahead

as rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,

and then to find the books were secondhand,

with one whole wall assigned to poetry;

and then, as if that wasn't luck enough,

to find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,

the blue-on-cream, familiar backbone of

my chapbook, out of print since '83—

its cover very slightly coffee-stained,

but aging (all in all) no worse than flesh

though all those cycles of the seasons since

its publication by a London press.

Then, out of luck, I read the name inside:

The man I thought would love me till I died.