Month: September 2016

Snapshot #29

I came across this in my neighborhood! Let’s call it “A Sign of Hope in a Red State.”


Peace, people!

Dolly, Jolene, and Pentatonix: At Long Last, Love

I absolutely hated the song Jolene when it was released in 1974. I mimicked Dolly’s voice, bleating out, rather than belting out, the lyrics about a woman in danger of losing her man to the much lovelier Jolene. And what kind of crazy, made up name was Jolene anyway? (My apologies to all the actual women I now know who bear that moniker.)

But the tune slowly grew on me over the decades. While I didn’t actually like the song, I didn’t despise it anymore either. If the strains of Jolene began playing on a country oldies station I didn’t automatically switch to an alternate channel. 

And now there’s this lovely acapella version of the song featuring Dolly Parton and Pentatonix. Pardon me while I sing along.

http://youtu.be/oYCoyUxY2HY

Peace, people!

Strings 

Cue the violins
Tugging hard on my heart’s strings;
Mournful strains of loss.


Ties that closely bind
My yearning soul to your own;
Ever tightening.


Invisible routes
Crossing ordinary lives
Connecting ley lines.

Racist Reflex

Dammit! That’s all I can say.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

I think if you’re an American, you have to watch the video. So I did. Here it is. Terence Crutcher getting shot while the emergency lights on his car are flashing. The irony of a man getting shot after he turns on his flashers to warn other people not to run into him and to alert passers-by, like police, that he needs help, it’s just too much.

For the past few days, I’ve avoided looking. It sounded even worse than the ones before, if that’s even possible. Could this shooting be worse than the boy shot holding a toy gun after the police officer assessed the situation for less than 10 seconds? I don’t know. Why are we even in the business of grading how terrible these shootings are? The pattern is so blatant. White bad guys are taken into custody with no injuries. Black guys immediately deemed to…

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The end of everything might’ve begun the day somebody told Donald Trump that he

Could be anything, even President, if he told enough lies and threw the right people

Under the right bus at the right time. He cowed his Republican opponents, one by bitter one.

Now, a tombstone engraved “R.I.P., G.O.P.” rises plaintively from a grave between 

Reason and insanity; a silent symbol of the demise of the once proud party of Lincoln.

A Mango-Shaped Space

This sounds really good.

yourdaughtersbookshelf's avataryourdaughtersbookshelf

unknown

This is a difficult book to review, and I am not entirely sure why. It was an easy read with lovely writing and interesting characters, it made me cry absolute buckets of tears by the end, but I am having trouble distilling the main message. Be true to yourself? Those who love you never leave you? Don’t be so wrapped up in your own thoughts that you ignore others? Maybe it’s all of them and more. It seems to start one way and meander over to an entirely different path by the end. This may be a short review. Or I may ramble on ad nauseam. Probably the latter, who’s kidding who.

By the way. It is a wonderful story.

13-year-old Mia Winchell is entering 8th grade, and she dreads it. Math is impossible, she has to learn Spanish, which is just not going to happen, and she lives in fear…

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Summer Day on the Farm

Plucked me an apple
Firm and red,
Forked up some hay
To store in the shed.
Climbed an old oak tree
Surveyed the land,
Scratched a mosquito bite
On skin smooth and tanned.
Hitched up the pony
To a little red cart,
Hied to the meadow
Where I left my heart.
Played chase in the rows
Of slender bean stalks,
Slipped out in the dark
For a sweet summer walk.
One brilliant summer day
From my innocent past
Lingers forever
In my memory vast.

One summer, maybe when I was eight or nine, I took a trip to California, Missouri, with my paternal grandparents. I remember very little of the trip except one magical day spent in the company of a distant cousin whose name I cannot remember.

Even as I near the great age of 60 this day stands out as one of the best of my life. I hope this simple poem conveys a little of the wonderous experience.