I want to call this one, “My Wife.” Heard earlier this week on The Writer’s Almanac. Enjoy!
His Wife
My wife is not afraid of dirt.
She spends each morning gardening,
stooped over, watering, pulling weeds,
removing insects from her plants
and pinching them until they burst.
She won’t grow marigolds or hollyhocks,
just onions, eggplants, peppers, peas –
things we can eat. And while she sweats
I’m working on my poetry and flute.
Then growing tired of all that art,
I’ve strolled out to the garden plot
and seen her pull a tomato from the vine
and bite into the unwashed fruit
like a soft, hot apple in her hand.
The juice streams down her dirty chin
and tiny seeds stick to her lips.
Her eye is clear, her body full of light,
and when, at night, I hold her close,
she smells of mint and lemon balm.
photo by Patrick Denker
I’m finally just getting around to reading Anne Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith.” In fact, I’ve already had to renew it at the library once because it’s so chock full of thought-ful stuff that I keep reading it for only a chapter at a time, and then putting down to ruminate for a good while on what I’ve read. Last night I read a wonderful paragraph that I wanted to share with you:
It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools — friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty — and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.
If you’re a long-time reader here, you’ve no doubt noticed the more than usual sporadic nature of this blog. I’ve been sort of torn about this blog for a while now, meandering around, looking for a focus. It’s impossible to maintain a blog that is about all things all the time. I enjoy writing a blog, though, and for some unknown reason, people seem to enjoy reading it.
But the reality has become that I spend way more time thinking about what to write than I do actually writing. And then after all that thinking, sometimes I don’t even write anything.
I have decided to actually have a focus to this thing, albeit a broad one. Pretty much, the focus is going to be “life as I see it.” Meaning, I’ll be writing a lot more about our house projects, our garden projects, our animals, our pond ….
I can’t not write about politics — it’s something that’s in my DNA. From the age of 2 I grew up inside the beltway, and I’ve followed elections since I campaigned for George McGovern in the sixth grade. But I’ve honestly burned out on tracking the insider games of Washington. I mean, I could focus on one subject — which is something I thought about. I could focus on the Iraq War, for example, since no one seems to be paying much attention to that. But I honestly do not have the energy to do that consistently.
So, as I struggle to get this blog under control, please brace yourselves for more information about the famous “Bathroom Project” (no, it’s not finished yet), regular updates on the first tomatoes of summer, the pros and cons of using corn gluten rather than RoundUp, and the joys of eating a salad from the garden.
It’s more of the British Lady Invasion! Here’s Florence & The Machine performing “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)”:
In America today, we forget about coal until we hear of a tragedy such as the one this week at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia. But coal and death are intertwined, and that’s something that anyone who turns on a light or plugs in their laptop had better realize. Hard to remember, yes. After all, it’s not like when my father was growing up and they had a coal furnace to stoke every morning, or when his father was a boy working in a coal mine in Ohio, opening doors inside the mine — deep inside the mine. In those days the realities of coal could not be denied. Today, let’s remember the mine workers who put their lives on the line for us.
Which Side Are You On?
Come all you good workers
Good news to you I’ll tell
Of how the good old union
Has come in here to dwell
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
My daddy was a miner
He’s now in the air and sun
He’ll be with you fellow workers
Until the battle’s won
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You’ll either be a union man
Or a thug for J. H. Claire
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Oh workers can you stand it?
Oh tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Don’t scab for the bosses
Don’t listen to their lies
Poor folks ain’t got a chance
Unless they organize
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
So um, it turns out Sinéad O’Connor was on to something back in 1992 when she appeared on Saturday Night Live. She recently wrote a column for The Washington Post that is well worth the read, as it gives some insight into the tangled relationship of the Catholic Church and Ireland.
Meanwhile, here’s a live version of one of my favorites of hers: “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Don’t you hate it when an April Fool’s gag goes wrong? Surely President Obama will appear on our tv’s later today and announce “Chill, everybody — it was just a joke!”
He can’t really think we would take him seriously when he says things like this, right?
I want to emphasize is that this announcement is part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on home-grown fuels and clean energy.
I think this is really just a clever use of irony on Obama’s part. See, he’s saying this will help us move away from using fossil fuels, when in fact, we will be drilling offshore for … fossil fuels!
So, I will will be watching the news later today and waiting for President Obama to say to the nation (and the world):
April Fool’s!!
I swear, some days I don’t know how I get anything accomplished. Most of the time my mind is like a black hole, a place where thoughts go — but never return. Instead, another thought — almost random but for the tiniest thread tying it back to my original thought — takes it place. Until it, in turn, is replaced by another tenuous idea.
Although I’ve never been never diagnosed, I’m sure that I have some level of attention deficit disorder. No hyperactivity, I can assure you of that. But what a lot of people don’t understand about ADD is that it is not really the inability to pay attention, it is the inability to stop paying attention. In other words, it is the state of paying attention to way too many things all at once.
Take earlier this week, for example. Our visiting vet came to the house to check on Isaac, our 18 year-old cat who has been losing weight despite eating every morsel of cat or dog food in sight. Upon examination, she said that he most likely has thyroid disease, which is common in older cats. I was following along just fine up to this point, but when she tried to further explain by saying “It’s like Graves disease in humans,” I immediately pictured Barbara Bush’s face. (Maybe you have to be of a certain age to remember that time in the late ’80s when we all learned about Graves disease because Mrs. Bush’s eyes were freaking out the nation.) As I tried to follow along on the prescribed treatment in cats, all I could see was Babs’ face — specifically her bulgy eyes on Isaac’s face.
Fortunately, the vet followed up with written directions.
