Category: Uncategorized

Truth in Blogging Warning: This post contains no useful cross-cultural information and the incident described is in no way typical of American life.

And with that out of the way,  I’ll refer back, as bloggers do with a look of strained innocence as they post links that drive you deeper into their blogs, to an earlier post about some of the nuttier reasons people call the British emergency services and it reminded me of a time when Wild Thing and I made one of those calls in the U.S.

We lived at the time in Minneapolis, in the downstairs half of a two-family house. That’s in Minnesota. If you’re not sure where that is, take the map of the U.S., fold it in half and look more or less on the fold, just below the Canadian border. Minnesota’s the state curling sweetly around the westernmost of the Great Lakes.

Irrelevant photo: Sign on a…

“Flower Painting 2011”
Painting by Mario Zampedroni
From deviantart.com

the child knows the flower
delights in the running
of handfuls of dirt
through her fingers

she understands naught
of the seed and its role
in the intermediacy
between blossom and soil

but what does it matter
it would seem not at all

the woman knows of love
and delights in the feelings
of tingling skin halting breaths
and the skip-beats of heart

she understands naught
of the heart and mind nexus
of its intermediacy
between selfness and selfless

but what does it matter
it would seem not at all

We just finished the third Time of the Month Club donation drive. The ending tally was 28,776 tampons, pads and wipes for women who are homeless in Milwaukee. The supplies are delivered to emergency shelters and outreach programs and put to use right away.

There is no overhead or administrative costs. There are no fees to pay for storage or delivery. Basically, the supplies pile up in my dining room and front porch until the end of the drive. And then I count them, yes, every tampon and pad in every box, bag them up in giant black garbage bags, staple a Time of the Month label to them, and start loading up the truck. My husband, son and I make the deliveries. It’s one of the things I love about it – that the two of them are all in to help out unless they have to explain it…

Having a real summer ( I use the term loosely) in July here in Ireland is something of fiction. Some people live here all their life still waiting for their first summer. This year they finally have got it, but in October.

Last Friday afternoon, a couple of hours before the sunset, I went for a walk around beautiful Tramore Bay & Backstrand, enjoying unusual weather, soft light, and tiny wildlife. I don’t have a real macro lens and have to manual-focus my trusted 70-200, but it is how I like it.

At home, I picked up some images, resized them, added them to the draft of my new post, and started thinking about a story to match.

I was almost ready to start writing, but got a “visit” to my blog and paid a “visit” back.  It is where I read a remarkable story that  brought back my own memories.  A story I want to share…

A friend in the U.S., L., recently sent me an American measuring cup. I’d asked for it because early in my blogging career I read on an expat blog that the British pint contains one more fluid ounce than the American pint. I tucked that information away in the back of my screaming brain to ponder at some time in the future when I suddenly become competent with numbers.

That’s another way of saying, I ignored the information. Even when I’m working with imperial measures, I don’t measure things by the pint, I measure them by the cup or the fluid ounce. But it nagged at me. What, I couldn’t help wondering at 3 a.m. when my brain was fizzing and the kitten had noticed I was awake and decided to see if he couldn’t sleep inside my nostril, if the ounce itself is different?

Nah, I told myself once morning…

Wherein the Book Implies Source 

And words form the vessel by which we traverse centuries, the river
stitched across the valley’s floor, easing access.

Accession by choice. Inorganic memory.

Vellum conveys its origin: of a calf.

How like an entrance it appears, a doorway to a lighted space.
Closed, it resembles a block of beech wood.

To serve as conveyance, to impart without reciprocity.

Framing the conversation in space, immediacy fades.

The average calfskin may provide three and a half sheets of writing material.
Confined by spatial limitation, we consider scale in terms of the absolute.

The antithesis of scroll; random entry; codex.

A quaternion equalled four folded sheets, or eight leaves: sixteen sides.

Reader and read: each endures the other’s role.
Pippins prevented tearing during the drying and scraping process.

Text first, then illumination.

Once opened, the memory palace diminished.

This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of 

Hi, my name is Rommy and I am a guest blogger here on sanseilife.

Although I am no longer in this world my mom thinks about me a lot and I try to send her memories to remind her about the great life we had together.

I reminded mom about a friend I made one day.  Laura was in a wheelchair and was very sad.  I went right up for her so that she could pet me.

She told my mom that she was amazed that I was not afraid of her or her wheelchair.

Mom and I would occasionally go on outings with Laura.  She knew all the friendly people and cool places that didn’t mind me coming in their stores.

One day we were in a favorite store and about five people talked to Laura and asked her about her dog friend.  She was the happiest I had ever seen her.  Suddenly animated…