Cute Kitten Picture Monday

I don't think one of these kittens is even real. Guess which one.

4th Week of Friday Unrelated Information

(I love the Unrelated Information. It requires no planning and no editing. Perfect for Friday.)

1. Ever wanted to know what your pirate name was? Find out! (Mine is Iron Prundentella Flint. I'm not completely taken with it, but it does sound piratical.)

2. Speaking of, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is fast approaching--t's September 19. (The UK site's address: www.yarr.org.uk)!

3. Here's a quote from Rumi: "Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

4. And here's a Blue Moon Ranch picture of Karma earlier this month:

Future Raymond Chandlers, Right Here

So this was forwarded to me yesterday..I guess there's high-school English teachers who submit their students' bad writing to a sort of contest. I don't know if that's the case (or how mean-spirited the contest is), but I loved these:

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

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.