the wind in the trees puts me in a trance
again
in the backyard with a record player
a long orange extension cord
a rock star cellist from the 1940s
Yesterday I drove south into Franklin County to check on some friends who live near the town of Phil Campbell, Alabama. Phil Campbell was one of many towns and cities across the South devastated by Wednesday’s tornados.
WASHINGTON – At a press conference on Tuesday, President Barack Obama dismissed public concerns over the long-term impact of damage to Japan’s Fukishima reactor as well as the safety of U.S. nuclear facilities, declaring that “nukulur power will remain on the table.” Following the President’s…
The ride to the airport across the desert sands took about thirty-five minutes. I couldn’t help but notice the maximum security penitentiary, just out of sight from the tourists. It was only in the 80s at the time, but by summer, when the temperature reached…
…
(Cross-posted at Skundered!) The combined cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has now reached $1.29 trillion , and the President asked for $170 billion more to keep these two projects on life support for another year. As Truthdig’s Bill Boyarsky recently pointed out: The Afghanistan…
Okay, I finally finished reading The Sun Also Rises. I sat on the porch this afternoon and I read the dang ending. The weather was too nice for anything except loafing. I knew how it was going to end, but it was still fun, and there were breezes and blue skies.
Scrappy Pappy came over for some attention. He was puffed up and cocky today. Last night he fought another big tom and “won.”
It says something about a fighter’s character when his immediate reaction to being handed his first defeat in 27 professional bouts is to say that he’s thankful that no one was injured. Those were the first words out of the mouth of a still-stunned Andre Berto, upon hearing the judges unanimously award his WBC Welterweight title to the younger phenom, Victor Ortiz. While words like class, grace, and dignity start springing to mind when you hear something like that, Berto’s other post-fight comments quickly brought him back down to earth; he rationalized the loss by claiming that he “felt off,” and said “that wasn’t me in there.”
It came over me like a dark cloud: a wave of muck, broken tree branches, moss, liquid filth containing the putrid remains of reptiles and rodents. I was drowning, suffocated by a toxic funk. I couldn’t breathe, my throat was parched, my eyes burned, and my ears were ringing. It started off slowly and the sound grew. I figured that if I was going under, I might as well be able to do it in peace and quiet, but the sound grew louder. I still couldn’t move. I was trapped, caught up in a swamp with darkness closing in. I couldn’t move. I tossed and turned, but it was to no avail. The sound grew louder.
…
“What are you smiling at?”
the man with a bag of cans
snarls at me
as I swoop by on my bicycle
to the door
of the grocery store
(Originally posted at Skundered!) I got hit with a double-dose of boxing disappointment last weekend: I missed the Finals of the Chicago Golden Gloves tournament, stood up by my usual partner in fandom — a retired suburban elementary school teacher who is the only other…
Memory is unpredictable. What stays and what goes lacks any rational processing.