Old friend of a friend

One of my great pleasures in college was getting to read Ed Skoog's weekly column in the Collegian. If you go to the "Podcast & Audio" section on this page, you can listen to his poem read by an actress and then hear Ed discuss the poem. I still remember his op-ed piece on Calvin Hall and the poem about Mrs. Wefald walking her poodles. I hope the kids at KSU have someone as gifted writing for them these days.

Resolution: Revelation and Revolution

As for the New Year tradition, writing down a resolution is the surest way to guarantee that I won't accomplish it. I try to think of changes as guidelines, and I give myself permission to ignore any guideline I give because with that permission in place I'm more likely to follow the guideline. I just don't like it when I boss myself around and am prone to breaking rules out of spite.

Here are some hopes for the New Year over which I have no control:
A happy spring
Something good in my life that brings me joy
Focused goals
Love
A respite from toughness

I guess you would call those prayers since I have no control over them. What else can I do with hopes like that except pray?

As for my guidelines and resolutions, I'll just have to tell you about them in person if you want to know, but one of them is to be more open about myself. I'm sure if I try to break it that you will be able to cajole me into following through. I will be a revelation and ideally my whole life will undergo a revolution.

Unfinished Business

I've had some requests recently about Christmas quotations. I am dutifully passing them on such as they are.

1. "I'd never seen spaghetti before[I went to college]"

2. "13-- that's when girls get hot".

3. "I like him. He has white hair."

4. "I'm Jesus."

5. "Don't get frosting on the Holy Family"

6. "Oh, no! I dropped a choking hazard"

I felt like I did not end up with a very extensive list, so I wasn't too excited about it. However, the more important list is pictured: The 2007 Fantasy Championship Team, the Coconspirators.

Christmas

Christmas Eve tea (Kathryn's photo)

Some pictures really are that funny.

It's not Christmas until you've crawled on Grandma.

Do you know what I know?

My favorite part of that song is when the shepherd boy asks the king that question. So tonight, think of yourself alone with a flock.

In the distance are more sheep and more shepherds. The stars are bright and you are thinking of sadness and worry. Then your sky changes and what was once a field becomes a place of glory. An astonishing voice speaks as you tremble, "Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

You rise in wonder. Then more come and the sky is no longer dark and starry. The inhabitants of heaven are singing with a voice as big as the sea: "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" You hear their words in your soul and your soul cannot stay where it is; it must move. You find a little family with a baby swaddled just as the angel said that you would. In a manger is a child. In a manger is a savior. You smile broadly and you tell the king what it that you know.

Maybe he'll say something like this: "Listen to what I say. Pray for peace people everywhere. The child, the child sleeping in the night, he will bring us goodness and light."

Favorite Wildcat Ever

Watch Darren go. He's magic.

The Writer's Almanac for December 18, 2007

piano plays and fades.
Garrison: It's the birthday of American born blogger, linda jean. She spent much of her solitary life in the town where she was born. She thought that she was ill-equipped for living alone and yet believed that she grew to know herself more fully than she would have otherwise, and her life became more authentic because of it. linda jean who wrote:
"I told a man that my birthday was on the 18th and he said that his was on the shortest day of the year. I told him it meant that he was born on the longest night of the year which he hadn't considered. I have a belief that we are affected by the time of year in which we are born and so we have similarities to those who are born near the same day. It's not a belief in the cosmic, astrological sense, but based on the physical world. Our birthdays are cold, they include Christmas decorations, the day is short. Our first days were full of shortened sunlight, festive gatherings, clinking Salvation Army buckets, and heavy clothing. On our birthday we wake up and think 'why is it still so dark?'. I find the weight of heavy blankets comforting even when I'm not cold."

More sequins please

I think just about everyone had a grade school teacher that handed out a "test" and said "be sure to read all of the directions before beginning". There was a strange restlessness from half the class and the other half began working the test problems. I was, predictably, one of the kids that failed to read the directions that said not to answer any of the questions for an A or something like that. I was and am still indignant that no one graded the work that I did. No matter how many times I take a test like that I am going to fail. I have no idea how many essay exams I messed up by answering all three questions instead of answering one of the three thereby running out of time to complete the final essay question worth 50 percent of the points on the test. It seems like a simple enough solution to read the directions, but I've lived long enough to know that if the problem seems obvious to me, I won't read the directions.

This weekend I started a felt ornament kit project where I'm making little felt ornaments in the shapes of stockings and wreaths and other holiday icons. The kit was given to me out of one of my grandmother's stash of craft kits. I have to refer to the directions at various times in order to get through the tougher portions. One of the directions in the kit is not to deviate from any of the instructions. I have deviated. I've deviated a good deal. The ornaments have less sequins and are filled with cut up pieces of a plastic bag from the grocery store. The deviations let me come up with prettier ways to make things and make them look more like objects I would have made.

I wonder sometimes if all of my best work isn't the work that wasn't supposed to be. Maybe my best essays were the ones I wouldn't have written had I read the instructions or my best days are the ones not set aside in my calendar for fun or good. Some days it feels like I took a wrong turn somewhere, but I wonder if I had taken the right turn if my life would have too many sequins and look less like something that I had made.

P.S. If you haven't seen pictures from Thanksgiving yet, go and visit JEO.

I can be pretty boring.

If you want, you can listen to today's arguments regarding 6 Guantanamo Bay detainees heard before the Supreme Court. It's an hour and a half long and there are a lot of references that went over my head (it's a lot easier to follow if you've read the briefs). It's easy to zone out, but fascinating.

It's about humoring me.

This picture makes absolutely no sense.

Post Thanksgiving

I went away for Thanksgiving. Thankfulness is all about perspective. I am really thankful to have someone like my sister in my life. We did lots of kitchen types of things and lots of outdoorsy things before the kitchen things.

When I got home I discovered some new tenants on my porch: Smoop and Lucky, two cats. They keep on coming on to my porch and I think I'm going to let them without too much grief. I have the room, they need a porch. However, I won't be feeding them no matter how tempting. Besides, they are far from skinny, which makes me wonder how many porches they frequent.

Beyond all of that I thought I would share some travel observations and some noted unnotable moments which are numbered for no reason--

1. The airport in San Francisco is not a warm place. They even have a large piece of public art with the word "void" across it. It felt like being on the campus of KU. Everyone is walking around like everyone else is invisible. I really dislike those places. In spite of that I would like to visit (I've never been there). Flying out and looking down I wondered if I could visit some day and drive over every single bridge in one day.
2. Exercise makes life easier. I've been trying to be more diligent about taking care of my body for the past few months and I was pleased to discover that my Oregon hiking was much easier. We didn't do any strenuous hiking, but I did notice that it was all a bit easier.
3. I ate pomegranate for the first time the day before I left for Oregon. While I was in Oregon I cut open and seeded my first one. Before last week I had never thought about them and now I think that they are great. Yes, there is a huge life lesson in the pomegranate.
4. I don't think that I get enough hugs. Just an FYI. In case you see me, I'm open for a warm one.
5. If your little dog is hacking while you are hoofing it through the Denver airport, he would appreciate it if you stopped and checked on him. The girl walking behind you would appreciate it as well since your little dog's hacking is not a dry cough.
6. I will get dirty if given the opportunity, always.
7. Just because someone is rude to you when she gets on the plane, she might feel guilty by the end and be extra nice at the end of the flight. She didn't hate me just because she was mean to me.
8. Seeing old friends is magical and seeing old friends in the redwood forest makes you believe in magic.
9. God has blessed me with a wide berth of thought and a really entertaining mind. It's pretty fun to be me and I get a kick out of having pretentious reading materials when I'm travelling, but when it's late at night and my flight is delayed it would be nice to have something besides poetry, Dostoevsky, The New Yorker, and Harper's to read. I watched Larry King Live for an hour.
10. The issue of the The New Yorker that I was reading was the "cartoon" issue. As much fun as it is to have pretentious reading materials, I also love getting to an entire page of cartoons and not getting a single joke.

Thanksgiving Haiku

Happy Thanksgiving. Last year we started a little tradition here that I believe ought to continue: Thanksgiving Haiku. It's a bit early and nothing too Thanskgivingy has happened yet, but I'm afraid the next few days will yield little time for poetry. So, here you are:

Rotten pumpkin stink
A disposed decoration
One less for Thursday

Please join in.

I throw like a girl

I do not like to admit certain gender differences. I hate saying that someone "throws like a girl", but last night at church I was watching the girls throw the football and they were all throwing like girls. I also hate to admit that I am a girl that throws like a girl. It's terrible to assign typical gender abilities to anyone let alone myself, especially when I generally have "typical" female weaknesses without having too many "typical" female strengths (like cooking a delicious supper or keeping a neat house or being a great flirt). I realized watching those girls that I must look like a girl when I throw a ball too. For some reason, I had never thought about the way I look when I throw a ball. I hope I can still throw a ball without feeling too self-conscious and embrace throwing like a girl.

I started thinking about writing and whether or not there is such a thing as writing like a girl. I thought of certain works by women, especially feminist writers, and how most of their works could only have been written by a woman. There are also works by men that could not have been written by a woman. This conclusion is strange to me because I want to believe that genders can write the same things, but our experience differs. I did finally think of a few people whose work seems to be non-gender informed, but how can I be sure? I wish there were a way to read without knowing the author so that I could really examine the issue without prejudice. It sounds like a grad school project.

I'm pretty sure that I mostly write like a girl, but I do love to create gender ambiguities.

Question Authority

My brother had me watch this Youtube video. I think a few of you will recognize the star.

I just watched Luther which happens to also have a strong message about questioning authority. I do wish I had read a brief biography before I watched so that I would be more prepared for when exactly the movie would end. If you hadn't thought about how amazing it is to have freedom of religious belief, then you ought to watch it.

I also wanted to provide a link for your questioning pleasure that relates to a conversation that I had at lunch. I was wondering how long this particular political point had been an issue and I think this got me a bit closer to the source.

Finally, not that many little girls are authorities, but my niece has seemed to accurately assign the names of various Winnie the Pooh characters to real people in her life. I have been assigned "Pooh". I'm a little afraid of the implications.

Squirrels

These are two squirrels that I met recently in a small southwest Kansas town.

A politically charged blog entry

This week I'm pretending that I'm going on some great trip and I have to get up when it's dark so that I can make my flight. I actually arrived to work almost on time with this strategy (only 10 minutes late)and though it was starting to be light when I got to the office, the sun was not risen technically. I'm not really enjoying the extra light this evening. It's making me angry because I would have preferred it on the other end of the day. If I were running for President, this would be my one campaign promises: return the end of daylight savings to its previous weekend. When will the candidates address the everyday man's concern?

Shhh

Silence is sneaky. I drove into town from the farm without realizing that I hadn't turned on my radio at all until I was back home. I had been thinking without outside stimulation during the entire drive. It's good to not talk and to not hear anything sometimes. Faith steers you when you can't hear anything. I realize that I haven't been saying much through this medium lately either. It's not that I'm not thinking silly thoughts or that I don't wish to share, it's just that sometimes you have to be quiet with yourself to let yourself examine what it is that you aren't saying.

Recently I went and visited a place that I've meant to see for years. It was quite worth the visit and so I'm letting you know that if you haven't gone to see the Tiffany stained-glass windows in Topeka, you really ought to some time. Do it when you have the time, or make the time if you need be. It seemed like it would be a good place for silence, if you need that.

A hero sleeps at night.

I've been having fitful sleeps lately. I even counted sheep last night being unable to remember the charms of Linda. Getting less sleep is certainly an annoyance and an inconvenience. It does yield some nice weird dreams. Last night I dreamed that I was a boarder in an old home that was being renovated. The young couple that was working on the house seemed to avoid me. However at the end of the dream the husband told me that he really thought highly of me. He then said that I was capable of being a hero, but I wasn't quite one yet. He then gave me advice on how to actually achieve hero status. Alas, I can not remember any of his advice. Then I dreamed I was at a spa with my husband who had to use smelling salts to awaken me after I had fallen asleep in some fancy bathtub. He went ahead and purchased the smelling salts to use at home when I was sleeping and was snoring too much. I've never actually been to a spa, but it seems odd that I would take a bath as part of my spa treatment, but I suppose it's possible. Not sleeping tends to mean that something is bothering me, but I'm not really sure how to make it go away. Either I'm concerned about my snoring or I'm concerned about not being a hero. I can't really do anything about the snoring except take sudafed, allergy prescriptions and try to avoid mouth breathing to the extent possible. Being a hero seems like it might be too much work, but maybe I need to explore it as an option. My new life coach has suggested that I need to get a hipster photo for my blog, but I'm not sure if that's what the man in the dream suggested. Or it may be that it's too cold at night to be sleeping without the heater running.