Now ya see me - Now ya don't

A couple more days

and we’ll be in the month of May. May has always seemed to be an invisible month for me – the adjunct to a song about April showers. Maybe it’s because April being poetry month is usually a busy time around here or maybe it goes back to school days – May being that last full month before summer break – a time for turning in text books – washing the blackboard – final tests – film strips and thumb twiddling in bare walled classrooms.

Even May’s holiday, Memorial Day, comes at the end of the month skipping over ninety percent of the month’s days like absentmindedly stepping over a springtime puddle.

Maybe it’s the transformational qualities of the month – nobody spends a whole lot of time staring at a cocoon. We predict weather with caterpillars and plant gardens to attract butterflies but don’t notice the chrysalis affixed to a milkweed stem. The bitter cold of February or the melting swelter of an August afternoon can turn our heads – but the not really cold and not really hot sweatshirty kind of weather of this month just doesn’t snatch one’s attention.

The month of May is the low man on the calendar pole, a place holder, the opening band that nobody remembers once the headliners hit the stage.

May – a month to get through.

Food for thought

I have recently begun eating my words
Boiled they slide from the page like a pat of butter
Across the bottom of a heated sauté pan
But their texture and flavor is bland
Like overcooked polenta
Rib spackling filling but overall
Lacking
So I try again
Chopping and dicing
Spicing them up with chilies and cardamom
Stir frying then serving over saffron rice
They become lost in the seasoning
Artifice masking for meaning
Baking I decide
Three hundred and seventy five degrees
For forty five minutes only left my words dry
Sticking to the bottom of the tin
So I threaded my utterances onto a skewer
An orderly syntax shish kabob
Marinated in olive oil and pepper infusion
Roasted over glowing charcoal briquettes
Of mesquite and cherry wood
Close
But not quite good enough
For dishing up to persnickety company
Finally I just rinse them in a colander
Under the tap
Pile them free of pretense
Raw into the wooden bowl
Sitting on the countertop
To be absentmindedly snacked upon
While reading a good book

Raining cats and...

This is our foo dog Suzi – she is a Papillion. Supposedly Mari Antoinette carried one of these bat eared fuzz balls to the guillotine with her.

What makes our Suzi so special is that she is a weather dog, a canine meteorologist if you will. Her capabilities are rather astounding. Every morning when we wake up we shout “all dogs outside!” and Suzi and her undocumented step brother Hector, the Rat Terrier mix, shoot out of the door like thoroughbreds from a starting gate. When they return one can discern the current weather conditions via a quick inspection of Suzi.

IF SUZI IS:

Soaking wet – chances are good it is raining and appropriate actions need be taken before venturing out into the world.

Covered in icicles – It is snowing or very very cold – dress warmly – remember 90% of body heat is lost through the head.

Panting with ears drooped – it is too hot for yard work – make lemonade and find shade.

Blowing down the sidewalk like a hairy tumbleweed grabbing onto then losing grip on mailbox posts and street signs – you just may have a hurricane on your hands – head to the basement.

Corkscrewing a couple hundred feet into the air barking like the horn of a car alarm – you got yourself a tornado going on – to the basement!

Refusing to come in, instead electing to lay in the grass sporting tiny little white framed sunglasses next to the blow up pool – well, you just may have to use one of your “sick days” – grab whatever book you’ve been meaning to read and hit the hammock.

"This has been coordinated test of the Suzi emergency broadcast system in your area. A small self important dog that can quickly warn you during emergencies is being tested. If this had been an actual emergency such as a 'tornado warning or severe thunderstorm warning’, official messages would have followed the alert dog. This concludes this test of the Emergency Suzi Alert System."

For my next trick...

March and the first week and a half of April have been crazy busy. School visits – a couple of teacher conferences, library readings – I’ve been standing in front of groups of folks and speaking from Baltimore Maryland to Dayton Ohio. In the meantime I have been training for the Cleveland marathon (I’m only running the half marathon) nursing a shoulder that feels like I have a knitting needle skewering the joint and doing a bit of side work helping a friend put together some PowerPoint presentations.

All of which coagulates into an excuse for not updating this blog. It’s not that I haven’t anything to say I’ve just been huffing and puffing (at time literally) to catch my breath. Add to that the fact that I have entered the Blackberry universe and haven’t been taking a laptop on the road as a result and well you get the picture.

It’s not that I don’t have some good stories – and I promise once April (poetry month) is about in the books I’ll be back at it.

Gahanna - ya know ya wanna...

These young ladies are practicing attitude!

Laughing with us or at us - your call.


Another fan overcome by emotion.


Visited Ghanna Middle School a couple weeks back. Here're some pics taken by Lisa the Librarian who invited us down!

In Dog We Trust

We live in a very doggy neighborhood.

This morning our neighbor’s beagle was trying to warn the whole block of some imagined, impending danger and began barking and howling around 5am and continued this feat for three hours. God knows what was rattling around inside the little guy’s skull that made him decide the best course of action would be wailing like some Scottish ghost walking the upper floor halls of a moss covered castle overlooking Loch Ness.

I come from a canine friendly family – my parents have bred and raised English Mastiffs for years and usually have a half dozen or so of the 200 plus pound dogs lumbering around in a pack around their place. One of my sisters raises boxers – a breed that always looks to be incredulous and another sister has a farm where her mismatched pack of dogs roams unencumbered. We have a beagle mix of our own named Hector Wingnut Rodriguez who was brought home from a Home Depot parking lot and our foo foo dog – Suzette Crème Fromage a Papillion with a mild case of OCD.

Even with all this experience I rarely can guess what is going on in a dog’s mind. Why does Suzi suddenly jump from a deep sleep and race to another part of the house? Why did Mikey – a one eyed Boston terrier we once owned lick walls? Did Hector expect us to pay him for the trenches he dug across our back yard? What is the next door neighbor’s beagle’s problem? Who knows?

One of my favorite inscrutable dog actions is my parent’s pack of mastiffs harmonized howling whenever they hear a siren go by the house which - since a fire station is only a block away - happens with some frequency. We don’t know which of their dozens of dogs started the tradition but even as one is replaced with the next the habit is passed down so that the entire mob joins in the a cappella choir.

My father is near the top of the food chain when it comes to backyard mechanics. He has a garage that is better equipped than most Sears car repair centers. So his is the place where brake jobs, oil changes, and even bodywork and paint jobs are performed. On several occasions I have helped with different projects including the resizing of eight foot tall four foot wide metal storage bins where I learned to become quite proficient with an acetylene torch.

During one of these activities – instigated by me – bodywork and painting of a friend’s RX7 my dad was seriously injured. While crouching down to primer the back bumper of the little sports car he tipped over accompanied by a snapping sound. Both of his knees are replacements and we assumed that one had given out. Lying on his back wincing as if he were listening to a preliminary round of American Idol the old man is shouting at me to “Snap it back – snap it back!”

And I’m going like, “What the hell you talking about snap it back!?”

“Damn it, just pop my knee back in!”

Now might be a good time to let you know my dad is a lunatic – he’s been kicked in the teeth by a horse he tried to stop by grabbing its tail as well as being ejected like a champagne cork from the back porch while working on a live 220 line. Thus I took his suggestion of popping his knee back into place like it was part of a Lego set with a grain of salt. Even so I picked up his foot to see what could be done. His leg flopped around like a broken bicycle chain wrapped in a tube sock.

“Ain’t no popping into place happening here – I’m calling 911,” I said.

That’s when the magic happened.

As the ambulance arrived – sirens hailing their approach my parent’s mastiffs were in ecstasy. It had come! Their howling finally paid off – the magic squealing flashy light thing that they had been summoning through generations of champion producing bloodlines had paid off. Their ancestors were avenged and now smiled proudly down from canine Valhalla upon their progeny as they rolled in the grass flashing the whites of their eyes and kicking their legs as if they were experiencing small electric shocks – which they may have been. Like an obscure aboriginal legend passed down during clandestine rites of passage ceremonies these dogs had no idea why they howled and to suddenly be face to face with their deity – well let me just say it was overwhelming.

Dad had fractured his femur but he healed well and is up and about again and now his dogs have a new story to pass onto their pups, of the time when the siren – every bit as magical as Ulysses’ - actually paid a visit.

Got Platelets?

Those who know me and my triathlon habit know that the part of the race I loathe is the run. I’d be much better ending a race moving large rocks or chopping down a tree than running any distance. 200 to 205 pounds is a bit of a load to rumble down the road with.

So what am I doing this year? I’m training to run a half marathon in May. I still plan on doing three or four Tris this year but this Cleveland Marathon is special. I’ll be running as part of Team Stephanie in honor of Stephanie Lufkin – our granddaughter who we lost last May to complications associated with the blood disorder ITP.

I joined team ITP as a memorial to Stephie and I’ll be wearing this gear during all my races until it is threadbare. Take a couple minutes and check out Stephie’s page. Then if you’d like feel free to become one of my sponsors.

I heart Warrensville Library

Started an after school writing program
at the Warrensville Heights Library yesterday. Fridays @ 3:15 'til 5:15. I had a crew of vivacious participants at our first session where we talked a bit about understanding metaphor and wrote about our circle of friends as if they were all parts of a single body. I'm looking forward to our next meeting, part of the drop-in writing and performance sessions that the education department of Playhouse Square and I came up with a couple years ago and still going strong.

Who amongst your friends would you compare to the brain - the eyes - the feet - the heart etc. etc.?

2 minute play #7

Diner – two men are sitting at the counter next to each other with cups of coffee. They are facing the audience. The men are dressed as if they are ready to work in the fields. Ball caps with agricultural themed patches i.e. John Deere or Monsanto. Carhartt type bib overalls long sleeved flannel shirts – sleeves buttoned at wrists heavy boots caked in dried mud. The men are in their late forties early fifties.

Man 1: “So then she says to me – you and your dad are both a couple pussies”

Man2: “Well that’s a bit harsh. This was yesterday?”

Man1: “Yeah - Tell me about it, I’m thinking like – c’mon Mom give me a break”

Man2: “How old’s your old man again?”

Man1: “I don’t know – eighty-something I guess.”

Man2: “Wow”

Man1: “Yeah”

The men drink their coffees – a waitress shows up and gives them a warm up – no words are exchanged but Man 2 winks at her.

Man2: “Oh – did you hear? The Barnharts’ have got gnomes.”

Man1: “That blows – they builders or diggers?”

Man2: “They got diggers – the pasture looks like some drunk has been driving a big ass trencher all over it. Deep too, one of the girls fell in and Andy had to lie on his belly to reach her.”

Man1: "Goddamn gnomes – anyone see them yet?”

Man2: “Naw, you know how it goes”

Man1: “I had builders once.”

Man2: “I remember”

The men gaze into the distance for a bit.

Man1: “Wake up and you can’t even get to your barn, the whole yard lousy with arbors and wishing wells, little windmills all made outta my firewood god I hated those bastards.”

Man2: “You know – I heard that the diggers and the builders are actually the exact same species – you take a digger and throw him in with a bunch of builders he becomes a builder.”

Man1: “Yep – that’s a fact. They’re pert near kept alive by peer pressure – I heard tell if you got an even number of diggers and builders in a group they’ll freeze in place – won’t do a thing – you can stack ‘em like bales of hay and just drive em off your property in a cart. ‘Course I ain’t never seen it happen – hell I never even seen the ones that was building all that crap in my yard.”

Man2: “How’d you get rid of ‘em?”

Man1: “Well, I ain’t proud to say – but I bribed ‘em. Thousand dollars worth a hand tools – 55 gallon drum of Country Time lemonade and a pickup bed full of onions – I figured there had to be a couple a dozen of ‘em as fast as they was building that stuff”

Man2: “Dude, you negotiated with gnomes!?”

Man1: “Negotiate? Hell, I gave up – all I know is they took the stuff and was gone. Sometimes ya gotta bite a bullet – You watch if you don’t see Andy at the hardware store buyin’ a butt load of fancy shovels an' picks.”

Man2: “I guess, but it still don’t seem…”

Man1: “You come and talk with me AFTER you’ve had gnomes.”

The men finish their coffees.

Man1: “Okay – gotta hit the fields”

Man2 “Seeya ‘morrow”

Just deserts...

Phoenix Arizona was amazingly green
relatively speaking – compared to other summertime trips to the state. We have just returned from the International Reading Association conference where we signed books and ran the Poetry Olio. The Poetry Olio is an evening of poetry and sometimes song which happens one evening each conference. Sara and I have been involved with this event for quite a few years, acting as some of the principle ringleaders the last couple.

We had a stellar line up this year thanks to the efforts of Dr. Jim Blasingame – full time young adult literature expert (and part-time cowboy poet) from Arizona State University. Our performers included – Simon Ortiz, Alberto Rios, Laura Tobe, and Kyle Wilson. Our featured poet was the ever enjoyable Nikki Grimes – winner of a pickup truck’s worth of awards for her many books. Sara and I were also on stage. I’ve got to say – of all the Olios I have attended this one took the tamale for sheer literary power.

Debbie uncharacteristically standing still.

Luckily for us though, the time in Arizona was not all work – we managed to squeeze some hikes into the mountains in as well thanks to our very good friends Debbie and Guy – who fed, watered, and sheltered us during our visit.

Sara and Debbie

Petroglyphs