p

Ode to American English

I was missing English one day, American, really, with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English is not the same, if the paperback dictionary I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts, Dick Tracy, Tricky Dick? With their elegant Oxfordian accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod, hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U. S. of A., the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake, Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period, the inability of 90% of the population to get the past perfect: I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart, the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions, in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says, "Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie mummy, "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am, I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy, rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all, the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider, boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering, shopaholic rant. I miss its quotidian beauty, its querulous back-biting righteous indignation, its preening rotgut flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators of the swamps and plains. I miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent of utter unhappiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular. On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode, and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue, finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble, Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all, sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping in my head like Corvettes on Dexadrine, French verbs slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.

Barbara Hamby

q

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx

Enjoying the holidays: doing more with less

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

 

Imagine a holiday season where the main focus is on time spent with family and friends - a holiday season that celebrates your close connections to the people you love and the planet you treasure.

 

     Ok, back to the present reality.  Anyone feeling a sense of dread at the upcoming holidays? Looking for a way out of the frenzied hyper-commercial holidays? 91% of Americans polled feel that the holidays are too commercial and the idea of "peace on earth" has been forgotten by too many people.

     Just say no! Don't participate in the commercialization of the holidays which emphasizes gift giving over quality time spent with loved ones. Do celebrate the holidays in a way that honors your relationships and shows greater concern for the environment.

 

 

WHY GREENING AND SIMPLIFYING THE HOLIDAYS MATTERS:

 

    * Number of extra tons of trash produced in the U.S. each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day: 5 Million

 

    * Number of trees cut down: According to the Christmas Tree Growers Association over 30 million natural Christmas trees become a part of our throwaway society each year. An estimated 10 million artificial trees are bought each year. The natural trees are cut, sold, decorated, and discarded all within an eight-week period.

 

    * Wrapping paper: Tons and tons of wrapping paper, much of it containing metal, goes through the same throwaway cycle. Reducing the number of presents bought will have a corresponding effect on wasted paper.

 

    * Holiday cards: This year, Americans will send more than three quarters of a billion Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa cards, according to the National Greeting Card Association. If Americans sent just one out of every ten holiday cards electronically, it would save over 30,000 trees.

 

    * What about those energy and time drainers that are hard to measure like:

      All the time wasted in lines at stores and in traffic;

      All the stress;

      All the non-perishable and non-consumable gifts kept in their boxes and never used.

 

HOW TO SIMPLIFY AND GREEN YOUR HOLIDAYS

 

·         Gifts: Give only gifts that can be consumed like food, beverages, mixes, sweets or gifts that can be re-cycled like books or magazine subscriptions. Other "consumable" items like candles and natural body creams and soaps are great to give and great to receive.

·         Related gift ideas: 

       Favorite recipes with ingredients - maybe even a cooking lesson

           Dictionaries, an atlas with word or geography questions/games

           Sierra Club Membership

           Book: 50 Things you can do to save the Earth

           Gift certificates (either personal commercial)

          Movie tickets

          Donations to a favorite charity in recipient's name

          Bird feeding supplies

 

    * Trees: Buy a live tree and re-plant it. Cut your own from a specialized tree farm, this protects natural forests. The Sierra Club or a local nursery can give you advice about using a live tree for Christmas.

 

    * Wrapping and Cards: Make your own wrappings and cards. Decorate scrap paper or brown bags, or try potato printing on newspapers.  Save and decorate shoe boxes, cookie and coffee cans to put gifts in, pieces of leftover material could be batiked, tie-dyed, or embroidered and used for wrapping gifts. Don't use foil or mylar ribbons - they never decompose. Avoid glossed, glazed or wax papers, they mess up the re-cycling process. Use cotton yarn, twine, or decorative shoelaces instead of plastic ribbon. If you do buy paper and cards, only buy those made from recycled paper.

 

    * Decorations: Make your own. Set aside time for the whole family to make holiday decorations and ornaments: colorful wall-hangings, pine cone wreaths, menorahs, advent calendars, garlands of flowers or colored paper, dried nuts, seeds, or seashells. Lids to tin containers can be made into ornaments by fringing and cutting shapes with scissors and pliers.

 

    * Energy: Try making this a -- low energy -- Christmas by refraining  from buying anything which uses electricity, by leaving the tree lights and spotlights in the attic and decorating with popcorn and cranberries.

 

Other Suggested Actions:

 

    * Discuss issue with friends/share simplifying gift ideas with friends

 

    * Tell everyone that may get you a present that you would like only things that can be consumed or recycled

 

    * Give everyone that may get you a gift the Gift exemption card

 

    * Send an "I'm dreaming of a green Christmas /holiday season" e-mail to many in your address book

 

    * When sending your homemade holiday cards, include info on simplifying holidays

 

Here's to a wonderful holiday for everyone.

Hopefully your holiday will be filled with joy and wonder.

p

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and changes our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

q

The solution which I am urging is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations. Alfred North Whitehead

p

Aunt Lil

I They brought her to the hospital On one of those April days That remind us we will never live enough. That the soft smell of leaves, flowering breeze, The silver light flashing from windows, Will always be too much for us.

She kicks the covers back, not caring If we see her enormous thighs, her birthmark Tufted with secret hairs only lovers had seen. When her lips won't form around her thought, She cries out girlishly, "I don't know, I don't know." Her large eyes roll and stare, as if looking For someone to pry her from her failing flesh.

II A beach: scalloped sand, soft rasping waves; My parents searching frantically to see If I had drowned, or if, like the fish In the tale, I could breathe their angry Guilt and make a life of it. With a small boy's genius, I imitated childhood, Taking you, my large-eyed beautiful aunt, to love passionately and simply.

Cruel and soaring, You battered those you loved, As if ecstasy and cruelty were the same. Yet at times you were happier than anyone; so drunk on yourself, you could hardly Walk down stairs for the stumbling heavens at your heels.

III I remember sitting with you on the subway, Thick-headed with fever. You opened your newspaper To a cloud boiling on a stalk of light, A single word, Hiroshima. Amid the screeching of subway metal, The headlines drooping on front pages, your voice, Your immense body, seemed to fill the subway car.

I hadn't heard yet of your manic flights, The electroshock, the family's Embarrassed hush at your desperate ways.

You were sick of too much: Hope fucking laughter. Yet to me you were beautiful, A brown moon of flesh. And the boy who lived as in a cold sleep Came strangely forth into your larger louder life.

IV Old death, Will you come with me today To meet someone I love? We can walk there along the river Past tenements of brick, And barely thickening April branches: The river's grey-shine spinning past us, An orange tugboat, A low-swimming freighter out toward New Jersey.

Will you teach me about her rooms Filled with a westward light, Her books thumbed and bright along one wall? Nowhere the smallest hint of a failed life, No dust balls of loneliness or fright.

Yesterday I sat on her bed, Holding her soft woman's hands. She forgave me for being young, For the scared distance I put between us all these years. her enormous eyes never looked at me, Only her hands spoke, Her fingers stirring so I would know.

Old death, The more I see you, the more I know of restless eyes, vulnerable mouths, Uncertain language of lips.

For I have learned what I came for: My mad old aunt loved life. She only hurt us when she was afraid That it would burst in her. She never gave in to her old age, But expelled it from her, And hung clean sweet living upon her walls.

Paul Zweig

q

Where does one person end and another begin? Iris Murdoch

p

I Follow Barefoot

I long for You so much I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

That are high in the mountains That I know are years old.

I long for You so much I have even begun to travel Where I have never been before.

Hafiz, there is no one in this world Who is not looking for God.

Everyone is trudging along With as much dignity, courage And style

As they possibly Can.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Subject Tonight Is Love, versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

q

Travelers there is no path paths are made by walking

Antonio Machado