When B Goes Bad

Three weeks before Phone A went bad, the earphones went bad.

I bought new earphones. (I have a Blackberry Storm. I cannot hear well without earphones and am not yet willing to do the earplug thing with the Bluetooth).

Within a few weeks, I discovered the earphones weren't the problem. Phone A was the problem.

A trip to the phone store resulted in a warranty replacement: Phone B. Yahoo.

Twelve hours later, B went bad. It dumped all my contacts. (Sidenote: If I've not called you, this could be why. Who remembers anyone's phone numbers anymore?)

Five days later, the phone company (I'm trying to not name names here) shipped me Phone C. Yahoo. After the many hours at the phone store (first for the earphones and later for B), I  hadn't wanted to spend anymore time in that store. (Dozens and dozens of hours. . .)

(Sometimes I embellish.)

Shipping seemed way easier.

C was shipped. Today, I activated C. 

Yahoo, I had sound. Yahoo, I had the ability again to store contacts.  All I had to do was presto-magico-flashito set up my email accounts and I'd be up and running.

C had no email abilities. I called the phone people back. Two hours later the people verified that I really did not have email abilities with this Storm.

Another hour of work, though, they were able to fix the email situation. Before I could  *yahoo*  though, I suddenly could not hear the phone people on C.

What the?

C had lost it's sound abilities. (. . . and I was trying to hang on to my sound abilities . . .) No speaker phone, no earphone sound. So I held the handset to my ear like in the Olden Days.

The phone people shouted, "We can't hear you."

On Tuesday, Fed Ex will deliver D. I have been reassured that D will have sound, contacts and email abilities. Not to worry. Not to fuss. I can't tell you how much that excites me.

Dreaming of Gus

My sister called me the other morning.  (Not this morning, but you know. . . the other morning.) She had dreamt about getting a horse named Gus. She didn't know a horse named Gus, but still it didn't mean the dream was wrong.  Mary believes in dreams.

She was the little girl in so many nursery rhymes.

Mary had a little lamb.

Mary Mary quite contrary how does your garden grow?

This Mary, my sister,  might have replied,,"with all the pretty horses lined up in a row." 

She was the little girl who wanted to be a horse. It shouldn't have been impossible, afterall--we grew up in the country. Hills and a wild river. Plenty of room to run and chomp on prairie grass. 

As kids, we didn't understand that just because we lived here we could not have horses. We didn't own the land. But, my little sister reasoned, she could pretend to be a horse.

The path towards a horse is typical. Our paths are not short.  Albeit woven through periodic green pastures, the path is unbeaten and at times desolate.

It's possible to feel as though all is not to be.

But then one day, a rancher came into her life.

And then another day came, seemingly all of a sudden although we know these things don't happen quickly.

This is not Gus. This is Buck, Mary's first horse. He taught her about dreaming.

The day after she dreamed of a horse named Gus, she received a phone call from the man who shoes horses. He had a gentle horse in need of a home. He had a white stripe in his red coat. He was only five years old and loved people. "What is his name?" my sister asked.

Gus.

Of course.

(Landscape photos courtesy of our father. Photo of Buck and Mary grudgingly permitted by camera-shy sister. Photo of Gus? In a few weeks. Mary is riding him right now. Plenty of time for photos later.)

Between Apple Jack's and Alexander's Grave

On my way to see the lions at the library last spring, I got lost somewhere between Apple Jack's and Alexander's grave. A map from the past might have helped.  ( I never did get to the library.)

Somewhere in Manhattan

He lets time happen when he writes

the tree line of an aspen grove.

I study him, this man in derby clothes

who walks Manhattan

to kneel at Alexander’s grave
beside a prairie girl with no lantern.

She finds stories packed in sawdust

and wood chips saved in a whiskey keg

layered with apple jacks and chocolate pound cake.

He breathes what passes. Words

settle into years.

*   *  *

The poem is mine, but the map is an Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 / by I. N. Phelps Stokes.  If you can zoom in, do! You might get as caught up in the steep-roofed houses as I did. If you can't zoom in, go to the library I went to and find maps to help you find your own way to whenever or wherever.

The New York Public Library:  http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm.

By the way, the library sells the prints from their gallery —in case you want to buy a scroll, hide it in your backpack and go exploring backwards into time. Let me know if you do! We could meet up somewhere and get lost together.

FOUND: An Elephant Without A Story

I thought to wait to write this post about the elephant's missing story because the elephant's current owner (if one can own an elephant) is on Winter Travel. I've not asked him if I can write about the elephant he found in the creekbed that corners his North Forty. What I want to know is how long the elephant soaked in the high mountain creek, waiting to be discovered. What the traveler wanted to know when he sent me the photo: who was the last person to see this elephant? Do elephants have long memories?

From Oranges to a Baby's Opera

Today's post was to have something to do with a man in blue, peeling an orange while waiting for a bus. There is a poem about this in the hopper so I don't want to say too much more about the man and his orange right now, but I woke up this morning, thinking I'd write a post about peeling oranges and such. I  started to search for a photo of an orange being peeled.

One photo led to another. On the 24th Google page, I found this:

Lost in nostalgia as I often am, my search for a curled peel from an orange stopped. I got caught up in http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/4/1/25418/25418-h/25418-h.htm.

Do you know Project Gutenberg? It brings us such things as this:

I might be gone the rest of the day. You can find me at Project Gutenberg, listening to the Baby's Opera:

Got Irish?

This is where my Irish comes from. The man on the left—the grandfather I never met. Remy O'Keefe.

Whose Uncle Pat?

My father has a brother named Pat. I have a brother named Pat. We have cousins named Pat. We have something like 29 cousins and something like every fifth relative is named Dan. So between those two names, we end up with conversations that stall out with "Whose Uncle Pat? Yours or mine?" or "Whose Dan? Terry's Dan or Dad's Dan?"

Last week my folks called to let me know that they were sending Brother Pat's latest book for me to read. Understand, we are a family that likes to read. One brother has a grocery list in his wallet. Except instead of groceries on the list, he writes titles of books on the list for his next visit to the library. In any of our homes, there will be a box or a bag of books waiting to be shuttled to the next relative. Books Mom has already read, but Mary hasn't. Books that your Uncle Pat doesn't want anymore and thought you'd like to have. Books no one liked, but maybe you'd like to read them anyways.

Brother Pat is not my brother Pat. This is what my dad calls his brother, Pat. From a family of six boys and two girls, Dad and Uncle Pat are the only men left now. Mailing books back and forth between Southern California and Central Montana is one way to stay connected. Not too long ago, Uncle Pat mailed my dad a book that was over 1600 pages. The note inside said, "Read this fast. It's not mine. It's from the library down here and it's due in two weeks."

Most of the books that get swapped start with Uncle Pat. After his girlfriend reads it, it gets mailed to my father whose best reading times are first thing in the morning. Morning starts at three a. m. at his house. When he and Mom are are done with the book, it gets mailed to one of their five kids. Last week, the latest book on Ireland was in my mailbox. (Are you surprised that most of the books we swap have to do with God's Favorite Country?)

I'm instructed to read it quickly because Cousin Kelly in Oregon is waiting for it. I thought to cheat and say I read it and mail it on. Sitting next to my bed are five or seven books I am reading right now. Who'd notice if I ever read Frank Delaney's IRELAND? But knowing my family, there will be a quiz. A gathering months from now where I won't be able to pretend I read the book. So I started it last night and now, I can't put it down. There are ROCKS in this story! Second only to books, this family of mine is known to share rocks with each other as well. And now, after reading the first two chapters in Delaney's book, I understand why. Stones are as old as the world. So are some of the stories being told in this book.

Marie Ponsot

Think you have no time left in your life to share a spot or two of solid wisdom?  Consider a poet whose poetry I am just now beginning to explore. Oh my. We are never Too Old. There is always time to become wise and giving. Check out this video of Marie Ponsot reading one of her poems.
  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2009/12/weekly-poem-tv-evening-news.html

Making Good Use of August

When Nadine and I were six years old, we were best of friends, each living at a power camp along the Missouri River, miles and miles from town. We spent four years exploring the countryside together, climbing apple trees, examining road kill, tracking deer, following trickles of water to hot springs miles away. Her father relocated his family when we were in fourth grade, so we became penpals. I'd write stories and send them to her and she would send me illustrations and more suggestions for more stories. Nadine is the artist whose watercolor graces the cover of my first chapbook, Making Good Use of August.

Contact me if you'd like a copy of the book. It's worth the price, just to have her artwork. No kidding!

Goodbye Bales, Goodbye November Snow

I remember back in the Winter of '08, my brother-in-law rescued my dogs by showing up one artic evening with a Jeep filled with bales of straw. My dogs had eaten their dog house. (Yes. Everything in this blog is contrived of the most honest understanding of fact. As I recognize it.) That evening, an artic front had blown in and it was about 20 below outside. Inside my house, it was about 93.2 degrees because I was fuming, having come home to see that the pups had once again destroyed their dog house. How was I to keep them protected while I was at work? Well, a phone call to my sister resulted in Rex To The Rescue. He built a straw igloo, complete with an upstairs apartment (or so Charlie, the dutch shepherd thought). We got through the Winter of '08 thanks to Rex. Spring came before I recognized it. By the time I recognized it, the straw igloo was no more. It had become straw litter. What took Rex one Jeep load to deliver, took my daughter and I three truck loads to haul away to the dump.

 (This is Cali before any Winter had ever set in.)


Come the winter of '09, I was better prepared. More knowledgeable. I knew not to invest in dog houses, not even the igloo kind with the upstairs apartment, with the widow's walk on top. My garage was rearranged and the pups were instructed on how not to chew up the Toyota parked inside. And to leave the deep freeze alone. And the spare pickup tires stacked in the corner. I no sooner congratulated myself about having entered a winter proactively when my daughter called to ask if Uncle Rex might loan her grade school students some bales of straw. A Christmas play was in the works and the baby needed a manger.

Once again, Rex showed up with a Jeep load of bales. He saved the baby in the manger at Friendship House right before the winter of '09 set in with record breaking snow. The road from here to his farm was precarious with drifts and whatnot. We were instructed to go ahead and keep all nine bales of straw at my house until the weather cleared. Last year I might have thought to store the bales in my backyard, but this winter I was wiser. The bales would line my driveway for a week or so. Just until the weather and roads cleared and it was safe to drive back to the farm with the bales.

I asked a good friend of mine if he thought  I'd be arrested having that much straw in the city. He told me about a friend of his who throws chicken bones up on her rooftop to feed the birds. Another friend reminded me of how it had taken me a full year to be rid of the Christmas tinsel in my front lawn (one winter I had forgotten to de-tinsel the tree before hauling it out to the curb.) This is what you call a sidenote to the story. Flavor sprinkled onto Fact.

Eighty nine days later. Today the bales are going back home. In a few weeks it will be lambing season out on the farm. They'll need their bedding. Of the borrowed nine bales, eight of them are returning. Of the eight bales, seven of them made it into a poem of mine. When you do the math, you realize none of it adds up right. I know! If you knew my dogs as well as I am getting to know them....you'd be doing what I am doing - casting a suspicious eye in their direction.