Category: Uncategorized

“Ghost of Madness” by Miki de Goodaboom

the inmates are outmates

escaped the asylum

with campaigns of keys

smuggled in by a

mindless electorate

straightjackets pinstriped

and pleated respectably

demagogues rattling bones

of dead dogmas that

echo with craven canards

a most artless display

of insanity normalized

raised to a level of influence

bound to derange

a democracy founded on

rational principles

You’re not really a coward if you want to start a blog but are afraid to do it. I just said that to get your attention.

I started my blog, Red’s Wrap, because I wanted to write about adoption, specifically from the perspective of an older mom of young adult adopted children. It was to be sort of a ‘this is how it turns out’ blog.

I already blogged on my business website  and the blog posts were often very personal even though they ostensibly dealt with community planning and research topics. My personal views, especially about issues of feminism and racism frequently bled through and I started to think that a separate, personal, blog might be a more appropriate vehicle.

Before I started my blog, I’d taken a couple of writing classes. Not with the intention of writing a blog, I just took the classes because…

Photo: Richard Peters Photography

Daily Savings Time!

Some people think that sled dogs are forced to run. It’s not true. As I’ve been told already a dozen times this week by  mushers: You can’t push a rope.

Sled dogs are Alaskan Huskies. This means that they are an amalgam of breeds; sled dogs are different sizes, different colors, different looks. What they have in common is a genetic desire to run along with physical characteristics that support the ability to run long distances in cold.

There’s a science and an art to raising sled dogs and putting together a winning team but the part that impresses me the most is the relationship dimension between the musher and their dogs. There is an enormous amount of physical affection that goes on, a lot of physical care and handling, laying on of hands at every stop, praising and long talks.

Yes, long talks. Kristin Pace told a story of…

Pink still means something to me. I know it’s not supposed to. I know pink has been exploited, used for profit and for keeping girls in their place. Pink is trite, the flag of gender stereotyping, the dog whistle of sexism, making it easier for those inclined to elbow women to the side.

I know all of this but pink still means something to me.

Today, the official start of the Iditarod 1,049 mile sled dog race across Alaska, pink means warrior.

It means Dee Dee Jonrowe running her 34th Iditarod at the age of 62. And she’s not just an old broad that everyone thinks is cute for trying again. She’s finished in the top ten 15 times. She’s endured broken bones and frostbite to finish races. She raced three weeks after finishing chemotherapy for breast cancer.

She’s one tough lady and pink is her color.

Today, it’s…

“Dementia” Fused Glass Art by Lucas Krenzin

insufferable demon
nibbles the brain
cell by cell
puts his torch
to the calendar
lighting his meal
with insidious
ambient menace

cell by cell
is a lifetime of
wisdom consumed
as the mind
shrinks down into
diminished capacity
paler with pallor
of memories lost

I am a teacher. I teach English at the high school of an independent district within Oklahoma City. I love my job. I love your kids. I call them my kids. I keep blankets in my room for when they’re cold. I feed them peanut butter crackers, beef jerky, or Pop Tarts when Michelle Obama’s school breakfast or lunch isn’t enough to fill their bellies. I comfort them when they cry and I praise them when they do well and always I try to make them believe that they are somebody with unlimited potential no matter what they go home to when they leave me.

What do they go home to? Sometimes when they get sick at school they can’t go home because you and the person you’re currently shacking up with are too stoned to figure out it’s your phone ringing. Sometimes they go home to parents who don’t…

Ikebana (You without You)

Between frames, between presence and negation, authority.

If your body lies in the earth, why are you here?

Limits admired and sought: the way of the flower.

I pluck leaves from the lower half to achieve balance.

Shape and line detach, yet comprise the whole.

My father, awake in his chair, mourns quietly.

A naked twig forms one point of the scalene triangle.

Starkness implies silence, resonates depth.

Heaven, earth, man, sun and moon invoke your absence.

As you trickle through the interval’s night.

* * *

Ikebana is the art of Japanese flower arrangement.

Man of the Year, Most Influential Woman, the 10 Best Dressed, the 100 Richest People – there’s no shortage of reference guides for who to admire. There are a lot of accomplished people out there. Our little town is full of them. We go to big dinners and the admirable people get Trailblazer Awards or Volunteer of the Year Awards; we listen to speeches, applaud and go home. It’s all good. But I’m not really impressed by all that. It leaves me flat, doesn’t speak to my life.

Here are the people I admire:

* People who understand the phrase ‘there but for fortune go you or I.”

* People who say they were wrong and they say it in front of a lot of people.

* Folks who have been publicly humiliated by their own actions or the actions of others who keep their shit together and come back…