No Horses Here...Nobody Here But Us Chickens

So the Salt Lake County Fair and demolition derby on Saturday was quite a bit more than I expected (there was even a marriage proposal over the PA system!). We looked at all the livestock exhibits but I didn't see any horses. During the search for horses in the empty stables, the lovely Amber commented, "This must be what the Apocalypse will be like: Just me and Karen, looking for some horses."

You can see how deserted and post-apocalyptic the barn looks:










Some action from the penultimate heat:










FUNNEL CAKE, the most delicious substance ever:

Happy Birthday, Dad

My excellent father Frank was born 59 years ago today. He knows how to tie knots, make furniture, and fly model airplanes; he can fix anything; he taught me to clean as I go; he has a catgorical knowledge of The Music Man, sailing ships, and how things work; he reads voraciously; he's pretty damn tough; he taught me the meaning of the phrase, "That would be the easy way, but it wouldn't be the cowboy way"; and he gave me my curly hair. So I think I'm pretty lucky to have a dad like him and I hope he has a happy birthday.

Meow?

Things On My Mind Today

1. The Salt Lake County Fair's Demolition Derby. It's going on for TWO NIGHTS. I have tickets for tomorrow night. And the lovely Amber and I will look at the exhibits before the derby, including the livestock. Last year, I saw a palomino paint. (Not this actual guy, although he's very nice. I'll remember my camera this time.)

2. What I should wear to the derby.(Still undecided.)

3. Mercedes the cria sitting on a carpeting scrap Linda put in the barn for her (yesterday's Blue Moon Ranch update):

All About the Brontes

I was going to work on the sewing project last night. Then I was going to work on the knitting project. But instead I ended up re-reading the second half of Jane Eyre. I found a good site from the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire that gives a quick biography of the girls.

At least we can all be gald we're probably not going to die of tuberculosis.

Escapism

For a book that ends so badly for its heroine, The Portrait of a Lady begins delightfully:

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more
agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as
afternoon tea...Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon.
Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.


"That sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour"--perfect. I think that might be why I like the thought of cocktails and hors d'ouevres every afternoon so much. If only...

Big Things in Saskatchewan

In another example of a site interesting in its single-mindedness, here's a compilation a gentleman in Canada has made of big things in his province. (That's him next to the giant burrowing owls in front of the seniors' home in Leader.)

In other news, here's a word I learned that's very fun to say: hortatory (HOAR-tah-tor-ee). It means "tending or aiming to exhort." Someone could give a hortatory speech, for example.

Oh, words. Oh, huge fiberglass sculptures of burrowing owls.

Must Be Monday

The Third Weekly Friday Post of Unrelated Information!

Things on my mind today:

1. This pattern from Simplicity. (I like how I keep getting more projects started while not finishing the projects I'm working on.)

2. Mission statements. Never, ever write one for your company. Unless you can actually make it say something anyone would care about reading.

3. Sleeping in.

4. The latest from Blue Moon Ranch. (This is Pippin.)

The Wells Fargo Wagon is NOT A-Comin'

Dad: Don't expect the Wells Fargo wagon to arrive today. It's been rescheduled.

(Yes, that's a Music Man reference.)

Out of Order

So the Mark Strand poem from last Monday that started out, "It is true, as someone has said, that in a world without heaven all is farewll," is a reply to this one by Wallace Stevens, which I looked up last night. And while it's probably not the best idea to post something I don't really understand, I remember a professor once saying a poem was "an emotional map on paper." And we all need maps.

"Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu"

That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the center,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops
Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,
And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,
Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one's singular self, to despise
The being that yielded so little, acquired
So little, too little to care, to turn
to the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One's cup and never to say a word,
Or to sleep or just to lie there still,
Just to be there, just to be beheld,
That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,
Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,
What is there here but weather, what spirit
Have I except it comes from the sun?

Cute Cria Picture Day

Since we missed Cute Kitten Picture Day, here are some alpaca babies (crias), courtesy of Blue Moon Ranch. (The one below is named Karma. She's my favorite.)

Special

I'm interrupting regularly-scheduled Cute Kitten Picture Day to bring you...

PICTURES FROM THE TOOELE COUNTY FAIR DEMOLITION DERBY


(The food item is a funnel cake. The monkey was from the carousel on the midway.)

I love the derby experience so much.

Unrelated Friday Information

Things on my mind today:

1. The Tooele County Fair and Demolition Derby, tomorrow at 6:00. I not only have tickets, I have pit passes. Hopefully, I'll remember a camera.

2. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

3. The Library at Alexandria. Wish I knew what happened to it. Wish I knew what was in there.

4. This Proust quote, from Within a Budding Grove (I haven't made it past Swann's Way; I found this as part of the ongoing quote project):

"Your soul...is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species; they are genealogical trees."

Straight from 1983

Yesterday, someone at the office diecovered a site that's cataloged theme music of popualr TV shows form the 70's into the early 80's. I heard the "He-Man: Masters of the Universe" theme for the first time in about 12 years, which lead to a great loss of productivity but a good time remembering my childhood:


"I have the power!"

The lovely Teela and her outfit:











And don't forget the evil Skeletor (to whom Orrin Hatch bears a resemblance, I've always thought).

A Peach Tart Thing and A Druidic Holiday

Last night I made a freeform peach tart thing, since it was cool enough to bake; we went from a high of 101 on Saturday to a high of about 76 yesterday.

I've always noticed a change in the light here come August. It makes you realize summer is over--when the heat breaks, too, like it did this week, it really drives it home.

So imagine how surprised I was to find out yesterday was the ancient Druidic holiday of Lughnasa. Not being a Druid myself, this was news to me: "Lughnasa marked the midpoint between Beltane in May and Samhain in November, and symbolized a turning point in the lifecycle of Mother Earth. It was both a joyous celebration of plenty and a solemn wake for the decline of the potency of the sun god Lugh, from which the festival takes its name."

See? Someone else noticed the beginning-of-the-end phenomenon in August. Those Druids.

Words

A geology word I learned this morning, reading about the Gulf of Mexico (my roommate was watching Armageddon last night and that sparked some desultory scientific talk about the Gulf's depth and if it really was formed by a meteorite and what a good role for an aging Bruce Willis that was): orogeny (or'-o-jen-ee), "a process in which a section of the earth's crust is folded and deformed by lateral compression to form a mountain range."

Other words that have come up recently: fabulist and tragedian. A fabulist is, of course, someone who composed fables; a tragedian is either an author of or an actor specializing in tragedies.

And, to top it off, I ran across this word in a Neruda poem over the weekend (no, I'll spare you a Neruda poem today) and remembered when I learned it from my old boss: amanuensis (a-man-you-EN-sis). The original meaning was someone who took dictation specifically for a blind person, but now it's "a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts."

I'm sure you will have all sorts of opportunities to drop these words casually into everyday conversation.

Mark Strand Saves Us Again

I know today is Cute Kitten Picture day, but this was in my head all evening last night. It seemed pretty perfect for my mood, the events (I was sunbathing), the moon that evening, the end-of-July poignant indecisive feeling (yes, that's the technical term for it).


Section XVI from Dark Harbor, by Mark Strand:

It is true, as someone has said, that in
A world without heaven all is farewell.
Whether you wave your hand or not,

It is farewell, and if no tears come to your eyes
It is still farewell, and if you pretend not to notice,
Hating what passes, it is still farewell.

Farewell no matter what. And the palms as they lean
Over the green, bright lagoon, and the pelicans
Diving, and the glistening bodies of bathers resting,

Are stages in an ultimate stillness, and the movement
Of sand, and of wind, and the secret moves of the body
Are part of the same, a simplicity that turns being

Into an occasion for mourning, or into an occasion
Worth celebrating, for what else does one do,
Feeling the weight of the pelicans' wings,

The density of the palms' shadows, the cells that darken
The backs of bathers? These are beyond the distortions
Of chance, beyond the evasions of music. The end

Is enacted again and again. And we feel it
In the temptations of sleep, in the moon's ripening,
In the wine as it waits in the glass.


That's so good: "...a simplicity that turns being into...an occasion worth celebrating, for what else does one do?" What else does one do, indeed.
And here's a cute kitten picture to boot:

Not too bad for a Monday. The kitten here looks less than thrilled.

Another Friday Post of Unrelated Information

1. Here's a kitten looking like it's going to pounce on you:



2. Last night I sewed a dress and watched The Way We Were, which was silly but in a good way. I liked Streisand's hair throughout.

3. A not-necessarily-encouraging-but-not-overtly-discouraging quote popped in my head this morning, from The Hours. Here it is:
"They could have had a life as searing and potent as literature itself."

4. I think there's a wildfire somewhere on the mountains. It's smoky.

More Fun Online

This is a video entitled, "Cats Being Awesome." It delivers what it promises. It's worth waiting for it to download if your connection is slow. (The video quality isn't that great even on a fast connection.) But it contains cats. Being awesome. Enough said.

A Site Unusual in its Single-Mindedness

Here is a link to a site entitled "Poulpe Pulps," poulpe being the French word for octopus and pulps referring to--of course--pulp fiction. Because why wouldn't someone collect (and post online) covers of pulp fiction novels that have octopi on them? Really, there's no good reason not to.

Weekend Report

Things I did:
1. Visited Blue Moon Ranch in Woodland which is a REAL LIVE ALPACA RANCH. I learned all about alpacas for an hour an a half. Then I bought some yearn, spun from Minnie.

2. Hiked up to Hidden Peak (in under three hours, with my dad), topped the ridge, saw the view to the east--nothing but more mountains and blue air--and thought of the first two lines from "Praise to the End!", one of my favorite Roethke poems. I looked up the other two lines this morning.

Arch of air, my heart's original knock,
I'm awake all over:
I've crawled from the mire, alert as a saint or a dog;
I know the back-stream's joy, and the stone's eternal pulseless longing.

Of course, I forgot my camera for both trips (the picture of Minnie is from the Blue Moon Ranch website). And there were baby alpacas.

Less-Manic Friday Post of Unrelated Information

Some things I've been thinking about this morning:

1. Hiking up Hidden Peak at Snowbird on Monday and taking the tram down.


2. What happened to Amelia Earhart? Basic theories, courtesy of Wikipedia and National Geographic.

3. A new knitting project, maybe.

4. Alpacas.

A Late Post of A Knitted Creature

(Sorry about no picture yesterday. It was visible on my machine at work, but I heard it still didn't come up. This picture that works is from knitty.com, a good site if you can knit.)

Words to Live By

"Do one brave thing, then run like hell."


(I tried to put this up Friday but noticed the picture didn't come through. And what good is a saying without a cute anthropomorphized picture?)

Haikai

Yes, that's the plural form of "haiku". There ends my knowledge of Japanese. Since it was so hot last night, here's something from Issa, whose name translates to "a bubble in brewing tea." (Maybe you shouldn't take my word for it, though.)

Under a full moon
yet still not cool:
the straw mat.


And, for good measure, here's something from the SPAM haiku site, going strong since 1998. This is number 48, and incorporates hobos, too.

Sing the hobo's blues:
SPAM for breakfast, SPAM for lunch,
SPAM for dinner, too.

It's Monday and We All Know What That Means

It's Cute Kitten Picture Day!

And there's even a word of the day: hebdomadal (heb-DOM-a-dul, adjective). It means "weekly" and comes from late Latin hebdomadalis, from Greek hebdomas, hebdomad- ‘the number seven, seven days,’ from hepta ‘seven.’

So one could say Cute Kitten Pictue Day is a hebdomadal event.

Happy Bastille Day!

Liberte, egalite, fraternite!
(Sorry, I can't make an accent ague in this program.)
Speaking of France, here's a series of images that superimpose Star Wars characters onto Parisian scenes--very French and futuristic.

Raymond Chandler Fix

I picked up The Big Sleep again last night and poked through it. This is from the first chapter, right after Marlowe gets done telling us what he's wearing (including socks with dark-blue clocks on them): "I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."

Fact that you probably already knew: Chandler was British. Here he is:

Roommate update: He's much better. Not dancing any jigs yet, but better.

Two Random Quotes

First, sorry to disappoint all six of you who read this with no post yesterday. There was a slight emergency with the roommate, but nothing some muscle relaxers won't fix.


I was going to post these two quotations yesterday. They popped into my head for no known reason. The first is Hemingway, from The Garden of Eden; the second was from a college friend.

Quote 1:
"What makes your martinis better than everyone elses, David?" Catherine asked.
"Gin," he replied.

Quote 2:
"I endure it like I endure locusts."

(I foreget now what 'it' referred to. But I've always remebered the analogy.)

National Whatever Day

The Internet tells me today, July 10th, is both Clerihew Day and Teddy Bear Picnic Day.

Since something MUST be true if it's posted online, I hereby declare today (and maybe every recurring Monday) Cute Kitten Picture Day and, with this post, make it official. (Oh, the heady feeling of power!)

Manic Friday Post of Unrelated Information

1. My roommate will be out of town this weekend. I may have knitted a car by Monday. I'll let you know.

2. There's a demoltion derby at the Logan fairgrounds Saturday at 7:00. Gates open at 5:00. There's a even a dance contest between heats.

3. Here's a cute kitten picture. (This kitten's name is Enid--cute!)



4. And here's a sign from a site, www.engrish.com, that collects and posts such things.

Happy Friday, habitual drinkers!

Fun with the Internet Anagram Finder

This is good for a few hours. Put in a word or phrase and it will rearrange it into every imaginable combination. "Jolly roger" comes up with "rye jog roll," for instance. Yes. It's fun, I tell you.

Happy Fifth of July

I was one of the lucky ones who got a four-day weekend, but I had to share this belatedly patriotic quote. I felt the same way coming back from Paris--even though I loved it. Jefferson liked France, too.

[A trip to France] will make you adore your own country, its soil, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people and manners. My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), U.S. president. Letter, June 17, 1785, to James Monroe.

Out of Africa

"The chief feature of the landscape, and of your life in it, was the air. Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigor to it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water... Up in this high air, you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be."

Waking up Thursday morning about 4:30, the sky just getting light, the air was the coolest it gets all night in the high desert and there was the smell of dry grass with the dew on it coming from the foothills. And I breathed the grass smell and rolled over (no, not even I can think of long literary passages at 4:30 in the morning). But later I thought of this perfect and heartbreaking passage from Out of Africa. (Notice the change of tense in the third sentence--writing this years after leaving Africa, she gets so caught up in her description she forgets it's past.)

I'd forgotten how much I love this book (sorry, Dad, I think I took your copy). The first seven pages are, I think, the most brilliant beginning of any book, ever. Well, maybe Anna Karenina ties in brilliance. But that's pretty brilliant.

Hobo Name #638:

Old Pliny Dance-for-Ham. (See Tuesday's post, if you're confused.)

And here's some literature for all those who don't find hobo names as hilarious as I do. It's summer, as you may have noticed, and that means Big City Soup is now serving gazpacho, which gets a passage in Hemingway's The Garden of Eden:


It came in a large bowl with ice floatingwith the slices of crisp cucumber, tomato, garlic bread, green and red peppers, and the coarsely peppered liquid that tasted lightly of oil and vinegar.

'It's a salad soup,' Catherine said. 'It's delicious.'

'Es gazpacho,' the waiter said.

Today's Favorite Hobo Names From Yesterday's List:

#131: Sherlock-Holmes-Hat Carl III

#217: Joachim Bat-in-Hair

#277: Pally McAffable, Everybody's Friend

(I know, it's not much. You expect more from me. I'll see what I can do.)

Useful Things to Know, Mostly about Hobos

1. The poem from yesterday is called "Tahoe in August."

2. Here's a key to symbols used by hobos to communicate with each other.

3. The origin of the word "hobo" comes from "hoe boy," which stems from the post-Civil War South, when farm boys would go out with their hoes in search of farm work.

4. The bundle-at-the-end-of-a-stick-thing hobos carry over their shoulder is called a "bindlestick." I don't know the orign of that term.

5. Have you ever wanted a hobo name? Here's a list of 700 hobo names. Some have been illustrated. They come from a book. It's a long story. (My top hobo name picks for today: #153, Slo-Mo Deuteronomy; #614, Salad-Fork Ron; and #335, Crispy-Whiskery.)

HOURS of fun to be had on this blog, folks...

Summer

I might try a summer theme this week, if I can plan ahead enough to get my literature in order. I was walking to the car this morning and it was already warm, and I thought of more Robert Hass. These are the first two lines of a poem I can't remember the title of, but will find and report tomorrow:

"What summer promises is simply happines:
heat early in the morning, jays raucous in the pines..."

Why I Love it Here, Part II

Part II of an extremely occasional series brings us this article from today's Salt Lake Tribune: "Jacob's bad luck - is it...Satan?".

("Now, Karen, having the Prince of Darkness sabotage your political campaign is NO LAUGHING MATTER." Gosh.)

A Quote From Todd + A Robert Hass Poem

My roommate Todd has started living with me again, although he leaves for vacation tomorrow morning and I am NOT HAPPY about that. (Are you reading this, Todd?)

I was cleaning out a filing cabinet this week and found a stash of notes we'd left each other over the last three years. Profundities like, "Just because you were disappointed doesn't mean you were wrong" are followed by, "Sorry I left the dishes again."

But it was very comforting to find that. For some reason, it made me think of this Robert Hass poem. (That's the inspiration for the image today.) So read, be comforted, and do the dishes for your roommate.

Wednesday Meat Theme

Found this link to barbecues on the Coudal Partners site, one of which made Michelle remark, "Nothing says a good night's sleep like drying meat," which then reminded me of a Michelle quote from a while back: "I once ate forty to fifty pieces of deer jerky in one sitting."

Meat!

Druids, Pay Attention

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, at 9:36 a.m. In honor of that, don your robes, pick a chant, and go somewhere tonight to watch the sun set. If you're a local druid, I suggest our own take on Stonehenge, the Spiral Jetty. (Okay, it has nothing in common with Stonhenge except rocks. But it's all we have.)

It's Monday. We Need a Kitten Picture.

Maybe TWO.

Friday Advice

(It's in two parts.)

Part I:
Go outside. Especially if it's a lovely evening and your apartment is empty because your roommate is STILL GONE, making you want to get a dog which would at least give you something to talk to besides yourself. (ARE YOU READING THIS, TODD? I'M SERIOUS. I'D NAME HIM BUDDY. WE COULD HIKE TOGETHER.) I recommend parts of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail: Up above City Creek, as mentioned yesterday, or around Red Butte, where I went last night. (I somehow got off the trail and ended up at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Lots of patios for a hospital.)

Part II:
If you're hiking in the grassy foothills--or really, if you're just about anywhere--heed the advice of today's picture.

Foothills

The trailhead from Sunday's little hike is at 18th Ave. and Hilltop Road. I know, because I went back yesterday evening. (Because if the day was long and you haven't seen your roommate in almost a week and you're full of nameless anxiety, you should not stay in your apartment and shop online.) I've always loved seeing the light on the foothills here; I'm glad it finally dawned on me I'd probably like being in those foothills in the evening light, too.

Almost as good as foothills for cheering you up: Jim Coudal's recipe for the perfect martini. I think I'll try it tonight.

The Delights of M.F.K. Fisher

It's a thinly-disguised fact that I owe most of what I know to the J. Peterman catalog: If I read about it there, I would usually go and find out more--from British colonialism, Lawrence of Arabia, or Elsa Maxwell to Tolstoy.

And now, 12 years after my first historic Peterman, I've discovered M.F.K. Fisher, who was mentioned in a Spring/Summer issue probably around 1996. (Seriously. There was an apron dress you could buy, in pink or blue.) I picked up The Gastronomical Me, and this is what won me over:

Now...the three of us are in some ways even more than twenty-five years older than we were then. And still the warm round peach pie and the cool yellow cream we ate together that August night live in our hearts' palates, succulent, secret, delicious.

"Hearts' palates." Perfect.

"Oh my god, she cooked something?"

Why, yes I did.
All the linden trees are in bloom in the neighborhood, which of course made me think of Proust having linden blossom tea and a madeleine, thus summoning his childhood memories of such and inspiring all twelve volumes of Remembrance of Things Past. (No, I've onloy read the first one.)
So I made madeleines. Hooray, we have an Office Snack of The Day again!

Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Darwin...and me!

Yessterday evening I met up with an old friend and her friend, and we all went for a hike in the foothills. We took a "shortcut" to the trailhead (on 18th Avenue and...um...Liberty Road?) and then walked up, and around, and finally down into City Creek and back home to 10th Avenue on the pavement. But the grass was still green on the foothills, there was wild rhubarb by the stream, the evening light was high and clear and yellow--and we got to talk about Robert Hass's poems. So a good evening.

Here's a quote I found from The Enormous and Ongoing Inspirational Quote Project that seemed to relate:

Why should all the major religions of the modern world include a crucial encounter with wilderness—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed in the desert mountains, Siddhartha in the jungle? And why should the predominant modern view of the origin and development of life have arisen from the five-year wilderness voyage of a Victorian amateur naturalist named Charles Darwin? ...Placing Darwin in the tradition of Moses and Jesus may seem heresy from both the Judeo-Christian and scientific viewpoints, but I think the roles played by the three figures have been similar. They wrenched their respective cultures out of a complacency that amounted to self-worship and thrust them in new directions that (if not always entirely beneficial) enlarged the human perspective. Moses forced his society to accept a unifying law; Jesus forced his to accept the unity of all humanity; Darwin forced his to accept the unity of all life. I doubt whether any of the three would have been able to influence his society if he had not been fortified by a season in the wilderness.

David Rains Wallace (b. 1945), U.S. naturalist, essayist. “Tracks in the Wilderness,” The Klamath Knot, Sierra (1983).

Un-Inspirational, Part II

Hey, happy Friday, everyone.

Patience. A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)

Promiscuity: optimism, free enterprise, mobility—the American Dream.
Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

Un-Inspirational, Part I

The quotations I've been looking through to include on the inspirational site we're building range from dreadful ("Hem your blessings with gratitude so they don't uravel") to just plain unsuitable:

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

Self-respect—The secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956)

(The image is from Despair, Inc. Brilliant.)

An Inspirational Quote. And a Fish Taco

The quote: Part of the ongoing project for an inspirational website. Good times, looking at inspirational quote sources.

The fish taco: lately, the most delicious thing I can think of to eat. (Especially this one, the Del Taco fish taco, $1.69.) And the blog needed some pictures.

Coming tomorrow and Friday: UNinspirational Quotations!

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
Author: The Buddha

Hey, We're Kinda Famous

Coudal Partners is an agency in Chicago with a witty, articulate web site with all sorts of artsy stuff--short films, stories, writing contests. The latest one we've been watching is the Booking Bands contest (now, unfortunately over, but still fun to think of) which involves combining a book with a band name, i.e. Horton Hears a Hoobastank or Megadeath of a Salesman. Look for an entry by yours truly, and others by the boss here, who won a prize. Hours of fun.

Paris One Last Time, and a Band Name

I haven't read this quote's source, but I do like it:

... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.
- M.F.K. Fisher

Potential Band Name Found in Everyday Conversation: Heated Pita.

Thought for Friday

Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.
–Molière

The Last of Paris

Here are shots from the hotel--the Odeon Theater was just to the south. And there were some good clouds on day three.