Art Kits to Kids

“I think if every child had access to art supplies, it would make the world a much better place,” she said.
Article

Habit

“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
— Aristotle

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Article

Inward Signifigance

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
― Aristotle

Aristotle

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
― Aristotle

We are a nation furious at injustice.

Read

It was Books that Taught Me

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

Children

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

James Baldwin

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Home

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

James Baldwin

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

The Guitar

“This machine kills fascists.”
― Woody Guthrie

Woodie Guthrie

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
― Woody Guthrie

Cold water Swims

The secret to acclimatising to cold water is just to swim in it, often – at least once a week, and preferably two or three, gradually extending the time that you stay in the water. Get out if you are not comfortable, and don’t set time goals for staying in the water.

Article

James Lee Jobe reads Tomas Tranströmer

Poetry reading, James Lee Jobe reads Tomas Tranströmer. 29 MAY 2020

Parking in the Cemetery

"Whenever I see a car parked back here I'm wary of walking near it," I said noticing a car parked at the mausoleum. "Usually it's some plubby guy sitting in his car doing nothing," my husband said.
"Let's take this high road so we keep our distance."
A slender man got out of the back door of the sedan. He had a green shirt on with a superman logo and he opened the driver's side door and got in. Then a blonde woman got out of the back on the other side and opened the front passenger side door and got in. They both appeared a bit embarrassed.
"See what I mean?" I said to my husband, as they drove away.

Invasion of the Buttercups

"It's the invasion of the buttercups," my husband said as we walked through Precious Blood Cemetery. Thousands of buttercups had bloomed overnight.
"There are worse things," I said.

They Keep a Journal

10 Habits of Highly Successful People with Bipolar Disorder
#1 They’ve created their own treatment plan
#2 They rally a supportive team
#3 They practice mindfulness
#4 They know their triggers and have a plan
#5 They have a healthy diet and exercise regularly
#6 They have good sleep habits
#7 They stick to a schedule/routine
#8 They pay attention to their thoughts
#9 They are grateful
#10 They keep a journal

A Fast Dressing

A fast dressing for raw broccoli. Mayo, ketchup, lowfat buttermilk. You can also embellish this further with hot sauce, garlic, chopped pickles and Adobo. Delicious.

A Swim!

I bicycled over to see a fellow swimmer. We jumped in the ice cold river. After a few minutes it didn't feel cold anymore. We tread water for a while. A shirtless guy came by with his two loose dogs. He was holding a beer. We were too shy to get out of the water while he was sitting there. He told stories about his dogs and the houses on the street and then he left. I loved the shock of the cold water, my skin felt minty and the water gave me energy. It made my day to swim. I could swim every day.

A Narrative

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

JOHN UPDIKE

I have seen their dreams

“I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Magic Hours

“For at eight o’clock the world came to an end. It was reading time.
The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, & when you are so enthralled they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
— Diane Setterfield

Something you Love

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
― Maya Angelou

Pablo Neruda

“While I am writing, I’m far away;
and when I come back, I’ve gone.”
— Pablo Neruda

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Words were different when they lived inside of you.”
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

William Foote Whyte

"I think you can change things that way. Mostly that is the way things are changed, by writing about them."
William Foote Whyte - 1984 - ‎Social Science

Abbas Kiarostami

“Don’t do anything you don’t wanna do.”
— Abbas Kiarostami, Iranian Filmmaker

Patricia Hampl

“A writer is aware not only of her own voice humming along, but hears with the ear of that mysterious other, the elusive reader for whom the sentences are laid out. Writers are always—always—in relationship. We write to—for —the reader.”
— Patricia Hampl

Émile Zola

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.”
— Émile Zola

The Devil in Action

The only thing that may save us from the administration’s regulatory vindictiveness is its incompetence.
Article

Introverts

article

No!

Feel empowered to say “no” to anything that’s going to make you feel worse right now.
source

The onion spirits are so beautiful

Alexander Chee
@alexanderchee
Did everyone else know you weren’t supposed to store onions and potatoes together? I can’t believe I’ve never known this.
Alexander Chee
@alexanderchee
Stephen
🔺
Molldrem
🌹
@StephenMolldrem
·
1h
Replying to
@alexanderchee
Wait what? They live in a pile together in my kitchen.

Alexander Chee
@alexanderchee
·
1h
The potatoes sprout faster if you do. The onions emit a gas that wakes them up.

Albee Wayee Lee • 李威夷
@weiweiwrites
·
1h
Replying to
@alexanderchee
“The onion spirits are so beautiful even the potatoes open their eyes for them,” my grandmother.

1h
Replying to
@alexanderchee
Also, learning about what vegetables do and don’t like being near each other in the garden feels like learning the suits of the Tarot.

Albee Wayee Lee • 李威夷
@weiweiwrites

Bubble and Squeak with Jamie Oliver

Here

20 Percent

"Twenty percent chance of rain," I said to my husband as we headed out the door with our dog, Romeo.
"I feel a little bit of moisture in the air," my husband said. The clouds were dark gray but they passed with just a little spit of rain. "It feels like twenty percent rain to me." When we arrived home I toasted 4 slices of bread for our peanut butter sandwiches and for mine I added a thinly sliced dill pickle. "It's an acquired taste, twenty percent good," I said, removing two of the slices.

The Free Soul

"the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them."
— Charles Bukowski

Cesar Nikko Caharian

“Swimming is simply moving meditation.”
― Cesar Nikko Caharian

Water

“Water. Like a blanket. Dark. Intoxicating. Cold.”
― Shannon Celebi, Driving Off Bridges

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

“Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Woodrow Wilson

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”
― Woodrow Wilson

Part Sun and Moon

“Everybody has a little bit of the sun and moon in them. Everybody has a little bit of man, woman, and animal in them. Darks and lights in them. Everyone is part of a connected cosmic system. Part earth and sea, wind and fire, with some salt and dust swimming in them. We have a universe within ourselves that mimics the universe outside. None of us are just black or white, or never wrong and always right. No one. No one exists without polarities. Everybody has good and bad forces working with them, against them, and within them.”
PART SUN AND MOON by Suzy Kassem
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

Dream

I dreamed I was making chili in a kitchen with a young man with hazel eyes and hazel hair.

Have you Noticed

“Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck-- people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Destined

“In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Sadness of the Cities

“Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Fiction

“Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.”
― Walker Percy

All A's

“You can get all A's and still flunk life.”
― Walker Percy, The Second Coming

Disappointment

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Nostalgia

“It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you--they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less--but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

We're Sentimental People

“Ours is the only civilization in history which has enshrined mediocrity as its national ideal. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we're sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity. Oh, we are sincere. I do not deny it. I don't know anybody nowadays who is not sincere.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Reentry Problems

“If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most.

Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Sing a New Song

“What needs to be discharged is the intolerable tenderness of the past, the past gone and grieved over and never made sense of. Music ransoms us from the past, declares an amnesty, brackets and sets aside the old puzzles. Sing a new song. Start a new life, get a girl, look into her shadowy eyes, smile.”
― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Eating the Shadow

“Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

This Age

I couldn't stand it. I still can't stand it. I can't stand the way things are. I cannot tolerate this age.
Walker Percy, Lancelot

Small Disconnected Facts

“Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.”
― Walker Percy, The Thanatos Syndrome

Love in the Ruins

“Jews wait for the Lord, Protestants sing hymns to him, Catholics say mass and eat him.”
― Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Automatons

“For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead. It happens when I speak to people. In the middle of a sentence it will come over me: yes, beyond a doubt this is death. There is little to do but groan and make an excuse and slip away as quickly as one can. At such times it seems that the conversation is spoken by automatons who have no choice in what they say. I hear myself or someone else saying things like: "In my opinion the Russian people are a great people, but--" or "Yes, what you say about the hypocrisy of the North is unquestionably true. However--" and I think to myself: this is death. Lately it is all I can do to carry on such everyday conversations, because my cheek has developed a tendency to twitch of its own accord.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

No One to Talk To

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Keeps me Alive

“They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Deranged Age

“You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

The Search

“What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Wander Seriously

“Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Walker Percy

“The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.

The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.”
― Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Stand Up

Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else.
- Maya Angelou

Two Eyes

“I'm two eyes looking out of a suit of armor. I write because I can't talk.”
― May Swenson

Notes from Underground

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Don't Lie to Yourself

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Cave

Growing up in my parents house I had a room in the cellar for my painting studio. It was warm in winter cool in summer, an ideal cave. I also liked that it was outside of the time zone, or it felt like it.

Temperature

We sometimes feel strange temperature and humidity differentials on our walks. Last week walking north we stepped one block east and the air was still so we turned back to moving air and headed west. Sometimes in winter when it's damp and windy we'll avoid walking along the pond. On summer days the pond can be too humid and swampy to walk near. It's fascinating. At home on a hot day we'll have our upstairs windows open for cross ventilation. The downstairs windows are closed trapping the cooler air. This works to keep us cool. Thermal curtains also work their insulating magic in both summer and winter weather.

Two Mornings

The replenishing thing that comes with a nap - you end up with two mornings in a day.
-Pete Hamill

Firecrackers + Iced Water

This morning at 8AM Romeo and I walked downtown. Someone blew off firecrackers and that ruined it for Romeo, he tucked in his tail and began panting and pulling hard to get home. I tried reassuring him and after a while he calmed down but then it happened again. Will he ever trust being outside again?

When I got home I filled a thermos with ice and water and a straw. I drank a quart. It made me so cold I had to put on my sweatshirt. I love feeling cool on my skin. It feels like I'm on Cape Cod, or in Vermont, Maine, or Martha's Vineyard all from drinking iced water on a hot day.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month."

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

Genius

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
― Woody Guthrie

Woody Guthrie

If you walk across my camera I will flash the world your story.
― Woody Guthrie

Shiny Top Loaves

I forgot about spraying water on my loaves while baking to make the crust shine.

I used a spray bottle filled with water and spritzed the loaves during the last 15 minutes of baking.

If you have a light bulb inside your oven it might shatter from this technique. Happened to me and I've never replaced it.

Nick Cave

For an artist, particularly a songwriter, this ability to be open to influence, to discard personae, gives us the freedom to express ourselves in contrasting ways. When I think about the artists who have had the greatest impact on me, this fluctuating and disordered identity, and necessity to reinvent themselves, is common to most of them. I think this is what I look for in an artist — the ability to change, and to grow, and to confound.
-Nick Cave

Dream

I dreamed about vertical clouds in a room in the shape of angelfish.

Steam

“Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.”
― Amy Hempel

Smart Dog

“They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.”
― Amy Hempel

Amy Hempel

“I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence.”
― Amy Hempel

Nin Andrews

Learning to Fly

Fear Response

Did your neighborhood set off firecrackers all night? We had them out front, out back and the side. It was hell for my dog, and introvert self. Ironically all of our new neighbors are LOUD. I've noticed on my walks in Blackstone in the suburbs, the new neighbors tend to be the loud ones. Bill says it's their fear response, people in a new environment wanting to fill the space.

Closing the windows and turning on box fans works wonders for calming my dog and myself.

Introverts

Spent the weekend reading about INTROVERTS.

The earth laughs in flowers

“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Emerson, Ralph Waldo

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tip Sheet

for Chemex

Michael Stahl

I began breaking bad cycles of behavior. I stopped drinking, redoubled my efforts in therapy, worked out at a gym six days a week, improved my diet, and pulled back on dating to work on myself before opening up to another person. It was part of a larger plan. I have a history of self-soothing my anxiety with booze, food, and, sometimes, women. Emotional chaos is my baseline norm, so I tend to make rash decisions without considering the later consequences to my state of mind. It’s getting drunk to reduce stress, but instead guaranteeing a hangover when I’d planned on a productive work day, which, in turn, increases stress. It’s eating unhealthy comfort foods and then feeling anger at my body when I look in the mirror. It’s climbing into bed with a near stranger, feeling vulnerable with them, and then experiencing inextricable disappointment when a relationship doesn’t bloom.
-Michael Stahl

Baubles on the Bonsai

They're hanging baubles on the bonsai and calling it living.

Anais Nin

"Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again."
—ANAÏS NIN

Tom Nichols

Not everyone grows up as they age.
Tom Nichols

Dream

I dreamed there was a new fad, garlic and rosemary coffee.

Pickle Juice

I chop up the remains of my big white onions and drop them in the pickle juice jar. Delicious in tuna and egg salads.

Slim Aarons, Photographer

Article

Dream

I dreamed and woke up asking this aloud to my husband, "What's the difference between an Otter and a Seal?"

Otters belong to the Mustelidae family, and seals belong to the Phocidae family. Though they have many differences between them, the most significant one is related to their ways of keeping themselves warm. Otters have dense fur for keeping themselves warm whereas the seals have a deposit of blubber under their skin.

The Art of The Glimpse

“I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.”
― William Trevor, An Anatomy of Chester: A Collection of Short-Short Stories

Just get going

“You can’t apply academic rules to art of any kind. As soon as you begin to have rules, you begin to say, “Well, it works like this: A plus B equals C,” and then you’re absolutely, perfectly lost. You have to take the chance! You’re gambling all the time, sometimes with no idea if a story works. But the alarming thing is in the teaching of literature, laying down what the writer was doing. If you can see through it like that, the writing is no good. You can’t see through Dickens and Conrad.
It’s a mystery how it’s done, even to the person doing it. If you think you know, you’re in deep, deep trouble. It’s rather like a born athlete analyzing: if you have a baseball player who can tell you exactly how he does it, then he’s not telling the truth; he doesn’t know. And I think once you lose touch with that, and believe you’re in charge, you could lose touch with the whole business of writing fiction.
It’s an endless struggle to fool yourself. Just get going, that’s the important thing.”
― William Trevor

William Trevor

“I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you can’t write unless you read.”
― William Trevor

“I get melancholy if I don't [write]. I need the company of people who don't exist.”
― William Trevor

“As a writer one doesn’t belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn’t belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.”
― William Trevor

“The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.”
― William Trevor, Paris Review interview

“My fiction may, now and again, illuminate aspects of the human condition, but I do not consciously set out to do so: I am a storyteller.”
― William Trevor

“A person's life isn't orderly ...it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present's hardly there; the future doesn't exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person's life.”
― William Trevor

100,000 Americans

Nearly 100,000 Americans lie dead, almost 40 million people are out of work, home mortgage delinquencies are soaring and the Mall of America is stiffing its lenders. The US looks like one of the president’s brand-name casinos. When [D***** T****] said “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” he meant the coronavirus. He could have been referring to the American Dream itself.

Sacking Rome was quicker than building it.

Article

Green Haircut

I just mowed my lawn. I charged the electric orange lawnmower a week ago. Tonight we carried it outside to mow our 20' by 20' piece of yard. "it looks just like a fresh haircut," I said "and it only took 10 minutes."

Erin Bromage

Erin Bromage

The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them

https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

Strengthening Swim Muscles

0:01 / 2:44
Strengthening Exercises : How to Work Out Pecs at Home

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgG6tXW7_KA

Stay Safe, Be an Introvert

By Erin Bromage
May 22, 2020

Memorial Day weekend is usually a time to come together and honor those who gave their lives defending the nation. But sometime this weekend, we also will pass the milestone of 100,000 American lives lost to Covid-19.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/well/live/coronavirus-pandemic-memorial-day-picnics-bbqs.html

Twice Baked

For decades my husbands favorite lunch was a peanut butter sandwich on my sourdough. I seem to have finally joined in although I prefer my bread toasted and my peanut butter salted. Biscotti means twice-baked. Essentially this sandwich is a peanut butter biscotti.

Mind Opened

“I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”
― John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Volumes 1-4, Diary (1755-1804) and Autobiography

Loose

“Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.

Letter to his son and 6th US president, John Quincy Adams, November 13 1816”
― John Adams , The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

Facts

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams, The Portable John Adams

John Adams

“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

A Fool

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
-Roald Dahl

Dream

I dreamed I rescued a puppy from a rooftop. I rescued two dogs from rooftops in the dream. When I woke up my real life rescue pup was next to me.

Sam Murphy

When we say we ‘love running’, is it truly the act of running – the process of putting one foot in front of the other– that we mean? Or is it the end goal that drives us? The shiny medal, the time on the clock? Perhaps it’s more about the opportunity it affords to connect and belong somewhere. Or maybe it is the need for a sense of accomplishment or release.

For most of us, there are myriad reasons. And, in normal times, that’s what keeps us going – you might not feel like doing speedwork, but you will anyway because you know you must if you want to crack that PB. You don’t mind running on your own on Tuesday because you’ll be chewing the fat with the gang on Sunday’s long run. But in these difficult far-from-normal times, running has become distilled to its very essence. It is just running, for its own sake, for better or worse.

Perhaps part of ‘acceptance’ is acknowledging this fact without judgment. On some runs, you’ll feel graceless and breathless and heavy –so be it. Other times, you will fly. Whichever run it is, pause along the way to marvel at your own spring landscape and think of me – and every other runner – doing the same thing.
-Sam Murphy

In troubling times, running is reduced to it's essence. In these uncertain, troubling times, running is the one constant.
By Sam Murphy

Danish Cow Jumping Holiday

Cows jump for joy.

I remind my introverted self that this is exactly what the neighbors are doing.

Thermos Queen

I appreciate my coffee black, super hot or super cold. We use thermoses all year round since our house is cold in winter and hot in summer. The best secret to cleaning a thermos is to put in a tablet of denture cleaner and hot water. If we use dish soap it tastes like soap. The denture cleaner is a miracle worker.

The Big Quiet

Since we’ve been quarantining & doing so much cooking at home, puttering around, card playing w/ the kid in the long afternoon hours, etc, I can’t stop thinking about my grandparents & how they lived. Lawn chairs in the yard. Talking about nothing in particular. Iced tea. Clouds.
-Steve Edwards

The trees have the right idea: just let that breeze ripple on through you.
-Steve Edwards


Steve Edwards @The_Big_Quiet

Hafiz

"The words you speak become the house you live in."
--Hafiz

Steve Edwards

Here are my top 3 tips for writing:

1) Effing relax. If your story is going to resonate it needs to sink down into all your hollow places. Tightness keeps it squeezed inside your brain. Breathe.
Steve Edwards

2) Pleasure. Take pleasure in words & images, the movement of a thought, the memories that surface, the insights, the rhythms an undeniable truth pounds out. You’ll never feel validated by publication—but if you take pleasure in the humble act of creation you can feel satisfied.
Steve Edwards

3) Never explain. What you were trying to say or what it meant. Or why you wrote it. Or why it matters. Or why you need to sit in a room alone staring at the wall for hours on end. That part of you belongs to no one, not even you, & you’ll only diminish it by explaining. Go. Do.

- Steve Edwards @The_Big_Quiet

Urban Zen

I heard a sudden loud car radio from a parked car out front. I stood on my porch and looked at the driver. He looked at me. He lowered the music and then made it loud again. He looked at me. I was still there. Then he lowered it and looked over at me. I put my hands together in prayer and bowed and thanked him. He drove off.

Pretzels with Paul Hollywood + Richard Burr

https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/recipes/all/paul-hollywood-pretzels/

3:27 Big And Salty Pretzels | Keep Calm And Bake 11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wXwC9bDyUI

Everyone loves a big salty pretzel and they're easier to make than you think. The Great British Bake Off's Richard Burr will show you how.

James Baldwin

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.
JAMES BALDWIN

Fan of the Box Fan

Spring is torture for my introverted soul. It feels like everyone in the neighborhood is living large and loud and taking up the sound space. People are either partying, blaring music, or using loud engines to transport themselves or to control plant matter.

I like the city I just wish people were a bit more considerate. I duck inside and put on my fan and read and write and cook. When I've had enough of that I take a very long walk to broaden my horizons and it usually lifts my mood.

I remember that my box fan is by best friend when the weather warms up because along with circulating air it mutes the world. Last year I discovered that I didn't have to take apart my fan to clean it. I could hose it off with warm water and let it dry out for a few days.

Introverts

Introverts prefer to hang out with their pets

Why introverts loathe phones

In the Air

To me storytelling is first a craft. Then if you're lucky, it becomes an art form. But first, it's got to be a craft. You've got to have a beginning, middle and end. And I have sort of applied the theatrical principles to writing. Throw the story in the air and see what's going to happen.”
― Robert Ludlum

Out of the Writing

Sometimes one can overanalyze, and I try not to do that. To a great degree, much of the structure has got to come naturally out of the writing. I think if you try to preordain, you're going to stifle yourself. You've got a general idea, but the rest has to come naturally out of the writing, the narrative, the character and the situation.

ROBERT LUDLUM

John O'Donohue: Circles

The year is a circle. There is the winter season which gives way to the spring; then summer grows out of spring until, finally, the year completes itself in the autumn. The circle of time is never broken. This rhythm is even mirrored in the day; it too is a circle. First, the new dawn comes out of the darkness, strengthening towards noon, falling away towards evening until night returns again. Because we live in time, the life of each person is also a circle. We come out of the unknown. We appear on the earth, live here, feed off the earth and eventually return back into the unknown again. The oceans move in this rhythm too; the tide comes in, turns and goes back out again. It resembles the rhythm of human breath which comes in, fills and then recedes and goes back out again.
-John O'Donohue, Anam Cara, Chapter Five

Pretzel Resources

My pretzel making has brought up a lot of questions...

How to keep fresh-made soft pretzels from getting soggy or stale?

https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/pennsylvania-dutch-hard-pretzels

V.I.P. Syndrome

[W]hen his patients are being unreasonable, is to say yes, they are extraordinary, but that they aren’t immune to the laws of physics.
Article

Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Henry David Thoreau

Notes on Sourdough Hard Pretzels

Today I made two batches of sourdough hard pretzels today (4-5 cups of flour filling 4 baking sheets). I need to make them many more times to figure out the best method.

The pretzels I scooped out of the boiling soda water as soon as they floated were not as soda tasting as the ones I left in for 30 seconds. Longer is better! Another recipe recommends 30 seconds a side, (but not to turn them just spoon water over them) in the simmering+ boiling baking soda water. I wasn't simmering the water (as I should've) so it boiled and foamed over the edge of the pot. Now I learned a larger pot with steep sides is best. A steel pot is better since my aluminum pot reacted with the baking soda and stained. There was so much foam that I couldn't see the pretzels when I went to fish them out. It was a riot. I finally took them off the hot burner.

I did notice that the baking soda in the water contributed the most to the pretzel taste.

9 cups of water needed 1/2 cup baking soda or 1/3 cup soda for 8 cups of water, or 2 Tablespoons soda per 2 cups of water.

I used all of my active and alive sourdough starter 2-3 cups, (this was too much!) and a weensy bit of instant yeast (1 teaspoon) and 3 cups of bread flour and 2 teaspoons of salt. Perhaps had I used less sourdough the dough would have been less limp. I refrigerated it overnight in a bucket. The dough was sticky so I added more of my bread flour which already has malted barley in it. I am used to wet bread dough and I was not using a recipe. Once I added more flour the density seemed right.

There was no need to oil the pretzels! In the past I used an egg wash, I might try that again.

I am still thinking about the fact that I'll need to do this many more times to get it right. Since my sourdough needs to be used often and we buy Snyder's Sourdough Pretzels every week perhaps we should be MAKING THEM and solve 2 things.

Sourdough Focaccia

A dollop of the starter should float when it’s ready and active.
https://www.baking-sense.com/2017/10/10/sourdough-focaccia/

Freeze Milk

A friend who grew up in New Hampshire told me this Quarantine or blizzard tip she learned from her mother: you can freeze milk. Just be sure to empty out a cup before you do so there is room for expansion during the freeze.

Pickles and Onion Tuna Salad

a vegetable-heavy tuna salad
1 big can or two small cans white tuna
2 pickles chopped
1/2 of gigantic mild white or red onion chopped
sriracha squirts
mayonnaise bloops
red wine vinegar squirts
toast homemade bread, add mustard
scoop tuna salad on top.
Yummy refreshing healthy delicious!

Sourdough Hard and Soft Pretzels

https://www.baking-sense.com/2018/01/09/sourdough-soft-pretzels/
More recipes using sourdough...
My favorite hard pretzel recipe (but I use sourdough)
Pretty pretzel shaping

Blue Tuesday

Just now on our downtown walk with Romeo-pup we spotted a huge crowd of police officers in uniform and civilians wearing black. They were gathered wearing masks standing outside in front of the police station. The flagpole was at half-mast. "What's going on?" I asked.
"One of our retired officers passed away so we're having a procession in lieu of a funeral," Chief Oates told us. A group of them were posing for pictures.
"Would you like me to photograph one with all of you?" I offered.
"Actually, would you be interested in photographing the motorcade in a few minutes?"
"Be glad to. I'll make a video and then you can edit out what you want."
"That would be great."

The red and blue lights and white headlights on the row of parked police vehicles came on. Traffic was stopped and I panned the officers and civilians lined up facing the street. The motorcade approached and then stopped. The police saluted and a brief ceremony was announced over the loud speaker from dispatch. I videoed all of them lined up saluting. I panned to the motorcycles with Woonsocket Police glow jackets. When I backed up I noticed one lane of traffic was still open and cars were driving towards me so I jumped to the sidewalk.

Sourdough Crackers

We are actually making less bread during the pandemic since bread was often made into breakfast and lunch for my husband's commute. So now my freezer is filling up with bread. My starter is crying out to me... Make use of the starter, and use a rolling pin, or pasta machine. I love these freeform thin crackers made with olive oil and herbs. A fun project to do!
Here.

Neighborhood Ice Cream Truck

Neighborhood ice cream truck is playing lullabies and other children's songs. The best part is the sound warps as it drives away.

Porch Light

We were out on our front porch the other night and saw the pizza man trying to get to our neighbor's front door. I ran down my front stairs "I think they use this entrance," I said, pointing to the other gate, "the door they use is on the side."
"Thank you," the pizza man yelled back.
"It's so hard to know these things," my husband said. "Especially with the numbers not lit up at night."
"It's like a Chelm story. We should put our numbers under the porch light, then the pizza man could deliver here, except we never send out for pizza," I said, laughing.

Short Quotes by Stephen Fry

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
― Stephen Fry

“The short answer to that is 'no.' The long answer is 'fuck no.'”
― Stephen Fry

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.”
― Stephen Fry

“You are who you are when nobody's watching.”
― Stephen Fry

Because they are Interested

“There are young men and women up and down the land who happily (or unhappily) tell anyone who will listen that they don’t have an academic turn of mind, or that they aren’t lucky enough to have been blessed with a good memory, and yet can recite hundreds of pop lyrics and reel off any amount of information about footballers. Why? Because they are interested in those things. They are curious. If you are hungry for food, you are prepared to hunt high and low for it. If you are hungry for information it is the same. Information is all around us, now more than ever before in human history. You barely have to stir or incommode yourself to find things out. The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”
― Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

The English Language

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

The Most Destructive Vice

“Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '.

Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.

I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the American culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like Americans and I love being in America. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.”
― Stephen Fry

Original Idea

“An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.”
― Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry, Paperweight

“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

[I saw hate in a graveyard -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005]”
― Stephen Fry

“If I had a large amount of money I should certainly found a hospital for those whose grip upon the world is so tenuous that they can be severely offended by words and phrases and yet remain all unoffended by the injustice, violence and oppression that howls daily about our ears.”
― Stephen Fry, Paperweight

Lover of Truth

“I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.”
― Stephen Fry

Language is my Whore

“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”
― Stephen Fry

We Are not Nouns

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
― Stephen Fry

Pickle and Onion

Spring lunch: tunafish with sriracha, mayo, wine vinegar, chopped white onion and chopped pickle, eaten on home made wheat bread toasted, with mustard on top.

First Iced Coffee of Spring

Today black iced coffee in my steel thermal mug with a reusable metal straw. The secret is to fill the insulated thermal mug with ice because in a thermal mug it does not melt before you are finished. Just like the secret to hot coffee is a preheated mug so the coffee stays hot while you drink it.

Great Beauty in the World

“I mean, I was never a depressed person,” he says. “I've always been basically optimistic. I see great beauty in the world. You know, I look around and it's a fucking awesome beautiful place. That's how I've always felt. I'm not saying this is some kind of thing at the moment—I've always looked at the world in that way.… Writing is basically an act of love, and a kind of joyful thing to do. That quickening of the heart that comes when you're onto something. I mean, I get all kind of shaky and stuff like that. It's an immensely positive act, nothing to do with sadness or depression or any of these sorts of things, no matter what you're writing about.”
-Nick Cave GQ article, The Love and Terror of Nick Cave

In an essay and lecture that Nick Cave, who is now 59, wrote when he was in his early 40s, titled “The Secret Life of the Love Song,” he quoted the poet W. H. Auden: “The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which the child has been patiently waiting—had it not occurred, it would have found another—in order that its life become a serious matter.” And, back then, Cave himself wrote:

Looking back over the last twenty years, a certain clarity prevails. Amidst the madness and the mayhem, it would seem I have been banging on one particular drum. I see that my artistic life has centred around an attempt to articulate an almost palpable sense of loss which laid claim to my life. A great gaping hole was blasted out of my world by the unexpected death of my father.... The way I learned to fill this hole, this void, was to write.

Recently, Nick Cave has been thinking about that Auden quote again, and he says that he has reconsidered.

“I always thought the traumatic incident was the death of my father,” he says, “but actually I don't think the traumatic experience had actually happened. It was waiting.”
-Nick Cave GQ article, The Love and Terror of Nick Cave

Pamela Jaskoviak

Reading her poems

Nick Cave

Issue #97 / May 2020
I recently stumbled across your interview in GQ magazine “The love and terror of Nick Cave” and was impressed by your brutal honesty when answering such personal questions. Are you that honest with yourself?
MARK, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

[Artwork] CLEARING IN THE FOREST BY CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH

How many Red Hand File questions do you get a week and how do you choose which to respond to?
PAUL, PORTLAND, USA

Dear Mark and Paul,

The poet David Whyte wrote, “The fear of loss is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.” I found there to be so much truth in these words. After my son died and I eventually stepped from the darkness back into the world, I brought with me a gift that I feel I am only beginning to understand. “The gauntlet with a gift in it,” as Elizabeth Barrett Browning so beautifully wrote. I felt that my family and I had been tested and that we had survived, and this gift that I carried was the freedom to be honest with myself and with others — as there was nothing left to conceal. The protective shell that I had constructed around myself, my old life, had been torn away. I had been exposed, and I had nothing left to defend. The gift in the gauntlet was a new and raw honesty toward myself and toward the world.

Because, you see, the world had done its worst. What harm was left to be done? What remained to fear? What was left to lose that I could not survive? I felt extraordinarily liberated by this, protected by the calamity itself and perversely invincible within my own vulnerability. Deception, artifice and keeping up appearances took up too much energy — I didn’t have the stamina for my own pretence and little patience for it in others.

Honesty is simply a declaration of one’s own vulnerability — it is its keen, bright edge — and my own vulnerability and the vulnerability of others became, in the end, a kind of shared armour. I learned that, ultimately, our own truth and sense of self is all any of us have. We are enough, if we could only allow ourselves to be.

This is the great value of The Red Hand Files. The questions that come in, so often naked and damaged and honest, offer me a form of salvation. I am the only one who accesses these questions, as I enter a sequestered world of mutual need. I read the questions each day, maybe fifty or so, sometimes more. It is like reading weird, brutal subterranean poetry, and like poetry they need to be read closely and with care. This exercise has become an essential part of my daily work.

The ones I feel I can answer I put into a file. Then when the time comes to write something I choose a question that feels in need of a response. The particular question always leaps out at me, as if waiting its turn to be answered. I feel at home among these questions, exalted and protected by them. It is an absolute honour to be a part of this undertaking, whatever it is and wherever it may lead.

Love, Nick

Hardest Thing

“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”
― Confucius

The Door

“The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?”
― Confucius

Stephen Fry Quotes

"I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book."
― Stephen Fry

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”
― Stephen Fry

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

Delicious Supper

Chop one huge white onion (size of a grapefruit). Put it in the skillet on high and add olive oil and 1/2 pound of frozen spinach. Sprinkle Adobo, and cook until the onions are translucent and the spinach is defrosted. Beat 4 large eggs and add scrambling it together with vegetables. The egg nearly disappears with the quantity of onion and spinach but hang on. Then add 2 ladles full of my best ever homemade tomato sauce. Stir. Enjoy.Enjoy. Enjoy leftovers for breakfast or lunch.

Stephen Fry

58:47
Stephen Fry - The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive Part 1
Part 2

Rituals from Women in Isolation

Alex Potter, photojournalist, trauma nurse and wildland firefighter

Potter is a photojournalist who has worked extensively in Yemen and Iraq, both documenting humanitarian crises and conflict, and working as a health care professional. She also spent two years as a wildland firefighter in Idaho.

Potter’s days are different depending on what she’s doing: from 12-hour shifts as a nurse, to working as a medic in Iraq, to highly structured days when fighting fires.

But she tries to start her days with coffee and reading for 10 minutes. It’s the same in Rhode Island where she works as an ER nurse now, or in Yemen or Iraq.

“I know it’s difficult to keep a routine when the world is in chaos,” she says. “I know what’s good for me, helps me feel on an even keel — that’s exercise and reading.”

https://www.thelily.com/she-spent-184-days-at-sea-alone-these-are-the-daily-rituals-that-kept-her-going/

Tagiatelle

How to make homemade pasta with a few key rests in the process. I'm not sure I rested my dough in between steps when making pasta in the past. This recipe has perfect stopping points for dog walking in between stages.

Each Night

Each Night we take a short drive and walk our dog in a different neighborhood. We are tourists in our own city. We revisit favorite streets and admire quirky houses and flowering trees. And we remember the world is much larger than our little neighborhood.

Details

You can find gold in the smallest of details if you're willing to be patient.
MALCOLM GLADWELL

Dream

I dreamed I was in North Brookfield at A+A's. I was standing on top of the hill facing the orchard and there was a camper parked there. It belonged to a woman traveling from Germany. She showed me the inside of the camper. It was furnished in blonde wood. In the dream the orchard became an ocean lapping up at the camper in strong wind.

People in the World

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”
― Martha Graham

get up and dance

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”
― Martha Graham

The Artist

“No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.”
― Martha Graham

One Reason

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.”
― Martha Graham

This One Moment

“All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”
― Martha Graham

Practice

“I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
― Martha Graham

Martha Graham Vitality

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham

Melissa Pritchard

If your commitment isn’t to truth, then you are in the wrong line of work. The poetics of silence still exist in America, but as writers I feel we have a responsibility to engage in history, in painful history, to be responsible witnesses to our own time. We are not separate; we are not an indulgent elite. We are not blind to suffering. We are, in fact, aware of our intimate relation to all other beings, and are thus accountable, deeply responsible. We must connect the personal with the political, the political with the spiritual. And though we can only work from our particular place, our given spot in the world, the particular can be a place of great power — the cry of the human heart and the yearning of the human spirit are, after all, universal.
-Melissa Pritchard

In the Gardens

I have been busy making a flower garden out in front of my house which I bought less than a year ago. People pass by in their cars or walking and remark on my garden and tell me about their gardens.

This morning I heard a knock on my door. A lady named Celia brought me fresh bing cherries she had just picked. She placed them on a chair on my porch. She said that every time she passed she saw me working in the garden and wanted to share her garden with me. I told her to wait, and in exchange I gave her a large packet of vintage garden flower seeds. She was very happy.

I had so many cherries that I left some on my neighbor's porch; this neighbor has been giving me stuff since I moved here -- the latest being 2 dozen eggs and a couple bags of potatoes from her church give-away, some of which I'd dropped off on another friend's porch on the way to the post office.

When I wind up with too many easily-eatables, I drop off a bag in an area where a homeless person is sleeping in hopes that when he or she wakes up, it will be a small blessing.

I want to give thanks for the kindness of friends, and also of strangers who are no longer strange. The more people who are kind, the more people who are kind. And so it goes...

-Phoebe Martone

Phoebe Martone

I was so excited about tasting Mexican food when I first moved to California in the early 60's.. It was a big treat. I'd never had an avocado either.

Here's something funny about avocados. When I later went to Rhode Island for college (after my divorce), there were no Mexican restaurants; at least I didn't see any then. Little by little, Taco Bells starting popping up here and there (also, finally little mom and pop Mexican places also started).

I was at the supermarket and I plunked a couple of avocados on the conveyor belt. The store clerk was very young. She asked me, "What's this?" (She didn't know what an avocado WAS). I said, "It's an avocado." She looked confused, so I said: "IT'S THE GREEN STUFF AT TACO BELL." She looked surprised, held up one of the avocados to her buddy at the next register and said, "HEY! THIS IS THE GREEN STUFF AT TACO BELL!!"

As a Californian, I got a big kick outta that.

-Phoebe Martone

Committed to Corruption

Florida.

Organize and Win

https://organizeandwin.com/

A Metaphor

Chirp, chirp. There are intermittent smoke detector chirps mingled with birds singing and it's all blended together in my neighborhood. This feels like a metaphor for our society. We have robots and humans intertwined. There is a yard on my street decorated with bright yellow orange and blue plastic flowers. We have cellphone towers disguised as trees. Can you tell them apart?

Home Fitness

https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/how-to-stay-in-shape-without-leaving-the-house-the-ultimate-guide-for-getting-fit-at-home/

Dan Schmidt

Research shows that coping with stress by getting involved with sports, exercising, meditating, or yoga is highly effective in improving your mental health, and can be even more effective than medication for those currently experiencing a mild to moderate mental health problem.

I understand this is much easier said than done to someone experiencing depression or social anxiety, but setting small, achievable goals (say a 15 minute walk a few times a week) can really help in getting you started, motivated and feeling better.

Surprise, surprise: it’s also been shown that what you eat may also affect your mood. A well-balanced diet will help keep you both physically and mentally healthy. (Win, win, win.)

Sleeping well, challenging yourself, socializing, and expressing yourself through art, writing, or music are also key factors in keeping your mental gear solid.

- Dan Schmidt, https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/a-nerds-introduction-to-mental-health/

Blundering Incompetence

Blundering incompetence.
Deliberate incompetence.
Solution?

Vote!

Josh Marshall

But let’s take the example of a fancy restaurant or really any in-person restaurant, whether it’s a crazy-priced fancy place or just your local sports bar with table service where you’re ordering wings and onion rings and sodas with free refills. To me at least a lot of the pleasure of that experience is the carefree-ness, the focus on the pleasure of good food and time with the people you’re with. If we’re all wearing masks and sanitizing the silverware and we’re six feet away from the next table and the waiter is decked out in some level of PPE, a lot of the point of the exercise is lost. At a basic level I’m constantly reminded that I need to take steps to avoid getting a potentially life-threatening disease; and that’s a pretty big buzzkill.

A lot of what I think we’re getting in those activities is precisely the ability not to worry about things. A certain level of focus on hand hygiene and physical distance and masking just defeats the purpose. To take the example in the article photo above, if going to a bar means having an improvised plastic sheet built on PVC piping separating me from the person to my right and my left, is that really going to a bar that has any of the fun and sociality most of us associate with it? If that’s working for you maybe you have a drinking problem.

-Josh Marshall, Navigating our New Hazmat Normal

Laura Hillenbrand

“I feel so fully alive when I’m really into a story. I feel like all my faculties are engaged, and this is where I’m meant to be. It’s probably what a racehorse feels like when it runs. This is what it’s meant to do, what its body is meant to do. This is what my mind is meant to do.”
Laura Hillenbrand, The Writer's Almanac

Paradox

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer.

In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

His Books

“He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books....

The books were the closest thing he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Dignity is Essential

“Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand: It's easy to talk to a horse

“It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Shake it Up

Yesterday I walked to Precious Blood cemetery and jogged the loops! Then I proceeded on my walk and spoke to Sandy who was up on her steps and I was down on the sidewalk 10 feet apart. We chatted for an hour about swimming, drowning, and our childhoods. Then it was 5:30PM so I walked home and Bill and I had a drive to walk Romeo in another neighborhood. We happened on a Blackstone neighborhood that we'd never seen off of Gaskill Street. We loved it. It was high on a hill with big beautiful trees and we had a view of the city's setting sun. We loved it.

Tree Murderer

A whole bunch of trees have been chopped down in our neighborhood and the town next door. The tragedy is the guy is taking down 200 year old trees. The other tragedy is he leaves the stumps! He tells his clients he'll take a few extra trees for FREE, leaving the stumps of course! He's a swindler just trying to scare people into it. To make more toilet paper.

Backyard Discovery

Tonight we took a drive to the north end and got out and walked around. We found a new neighborhood we never new about. It was the Swift + Temple Street neighborhood high up on a hill Blackstone MA.

VOTE mask

Dry Land Swimming

Russian Olympic swimmer Yulia Efimova shows off adamantine abs in kitchen at-home workout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clpe6DoNApE
Russian Olympic swimmer Yuliya Efimova, under quarantine at a California rental, found a creative way to train in the kitchen.

Al Giordano

The United States citizenry is under terrible siege right now from its own president, one that sows chaos and confusion, that weaponizes distraction and despair. In his reckless, undying need to make everything about him he has presided over the deaths of more than 85,000 Americans in the last 57 days, and a spiraling economic collapse.
Al Giordano

Sarah Cooper Comedian

I thought you'd like Sarah Cooper spoofing the guy in the white house.
Sarah Cooper
https://twitter.com/sarahcpr
Guardian Article

Gradual Running

Excellent tips

Robert Greene

In general, obstacles force your mind to focus and find ways around them. They heighten your mental powers and should be welcomed.
-Robert Greene

Wear a Mask

One minute, wearing a mask made you an outlier; now not wearing one does. I would estimate that 99% of people I see out and about in Manhattan have a mask on.

The other 1% are joggers who seem to think that, if they run fast enough, the virus won’t catch up with them.

While most New Yorkers appear to have embraced masks, it is a different story in other parts of the country. Everything is partisan in the US now, even death.

As such, masks have become a political statement. Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to say that they will wear one (76% versus 59%), according to a recent poll.

Wearing one signals that you believe in science; that you believe in putting the greater good ahead of your individual comfort.

-Arwa Mahdawi

The Zaneytown Police Department

Wearing pants has become optional for some people holed up indoors while obeying the stay-at-home order. A police department in a northern Maryland town is reminding residents that's not an option when they go outside.
source
Another article
Baltimore Sun

Rafia Zakaria

With New York literary life paused, most of my anxieties have also dissipated. In the lovely silence of my study I can simply be a writer rather than engage in the performance of being a writer which is what New York is all about. I wonder now, why I did not free myself of New York sooner?
-Rafia Zakaria

Just like live theatre

The pandemic turns out to be a bit like living on the National Theatre set of a Harold Pinter play.

There is a good reason we are obsessed with backdrops. You have seen the faces – your colleagues, your favourite Pilates teacher, the Duchess of Cambridge – 1,000 times but you haven’t seen inside their homes.

The pandemic has forced us to make our private spaces public. And what may have begun as a voyeuristic interest is morphing into something else as the potential “new normal” sees us spend much more time at home long term.

Your house is no longer just your home. It’s your HQ.

Just like live theatre – which, in a way, it is – the magic of the Zoom backdrop is in the potential for disaster.

Article

Adding a Habit

"The nail salon is open!" said Bill when I trimmed Romeo's nails this morning.
"It's the Bill Calhoun behavioral method of adding a habit to an existing one," I said.
"Romeo's nails are a bit quieter when walking on the linoleum."
"The millimeter a day is working," I said.

Loaves of Love

I just baked 8 mini loaves of sourdough
Ingredients:
bread flour, semolina, dark rye, coarse cornmeal, pin-head oats, my whole wheat sourdough starter, fleishmann's instant yeast and kosher salt + water. Incubated in the fridge for 30 hours of cold slow rise before baking in a preheated oven @ 450 for 35 minutes.

My Best Tomato Sauce Ever

I just made my best tomato sauce ever so I am going to write down exactly what I did for future reference.

I have made tomato sauce for decades slow cooking it on the stove top but this time I made it in my large 10 qt Instant Pot and cooked it for an hour which is the equivalent of cooking it all day.

The first thing I did was chop two celery hearts and added them to my Instant Pot. (My market was out of regular celery otherwise I would've used one head). Then I chopped a gigantic white onion and added it to the pot. Then I peeled a bulb and a half of (big) garlic cloves (I cored and chopped them with kosher salt to absorb the vital juices) and added them to the pot. Then I added 2 bay leaves, and about a tablespoon each of dried parsley, basil, + oregano and 2 teaspoons of red chili flakes. (If you have fresh herbs, by all means use them.)

I sauteed all of this in a generous amount of olive oil on the Instant pot saute setting. I let this cook for ten minutes while I prepared the next steps.

I opened 2 (6 oz) cans of large black olives and drained out the water and chopped them up and added them to the onions and celery mixture. (olives have always been my secret to great sauce)

Then I opened 3 cans of (28 oz) crushed tomatoes and spooned them into the onion celery olive mixture.

I turned off the sautee button to avoid splattering sauce.

I used a cup of water to rinse out any of the extra tomato clinging to the inside of the tomato cans (since the recipe calls for a cup of water anyway).

Then I added about a cup of Carlo Rossi Chianti to sweeten the sauce and give it age.

Then I added 1 6oz can of tomato paste. (REMEMBER don't stir it in, leave it as a lump otherwise you'll get a burn notice).

I tasted the sauce even before cooking it further and it was already fantastic!

I closed the lid and hit the pressure cooker for 20 minutes, and did this cycle 3 times! Which means perhaps next time I will hit the button for 60 minutes. The first time it didn't seal, so good thing I was checking on it.

When the hour was up I let it rest and release on it's own for 25-30 minutes while I cleaned up. It tasted amazing, it tasted like it cooked all day and rested overnight. I've never made a sauce this good. Usually tomato sauce takes 2 days to taste this good. We ate it with whole wheat spaghetti and Romano cheese sprinkled on top. Tonight we'll have it on homemade sourdough baked as a pizza.

Note: The sauce seemed liquidy at first but after stirring and cooling it was perfect. 

Note: Taste your sauce. If it seems too acidic, you may need to add a pinch or two of sugar.

Note: Sometimes skip the saute stage and all is fine. Sometimes I add chopped carrots with the celery.

Burnt Paper

I keep finding burnt paper in the parking lot. My fear is that the little boy who had a problem with this before might be at it again.

Nonstop Porch Party

We have a bunch of quarantined folks who are new neighbors. They play loud music and party on their porch 24/7. I can only imagine it's annoying to the other families in the building. At least they are staying home!

Monday Kitchen

I began a vat of tomato sauce, with 2 cans of olives chopped, a head and a half of garlic chopped + cored, oregano, basil, parsley, Chianti, red chili flakes, fresh black pepper, kosher salt, chopped celery and onions, 3 cans of crushed tomatoes, and a can of tomato paste. I sauteed the garlic onions celery olives and herbs in olive oil then I added the canned tomatoes and paste and wine and 1c water. I pressure cooked it for close to an hour. It tasted like it cooked all day!

Now I'm baking two trays of molasses granola.

I set up a semolina sourdough with corn oat rye inside....to bake in a day or two.

Sourdough Starter

I opened the fridge and my starter was begging to be used. I didn't plan on making dough today but the starter was crying out to me. So I mixed up a bucket of semolina oat corn rye wheat bread dough. It will have a slow cold rise in the fridge over the next two days and then I'll bake it.

Appreciate

Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
Anton Chekhov

Al Giordano

https://organizeandwin.com/welcome-to-my-kitchen/

Telephone Poles as Markers

Peter Mahoney suggested I use the telephone poles as markers. Walk, jog, walk, jog. I like it!

Willing to Look Stupid

You have to be willing to look stupid, to stumble down unproductive paths, and to endure bad afternoons when all your ideas are flat and sterile and derivative. If you don’t take yourself too seriously, you’ll bounce back from these lulls and be ready for the music’s next visit.

GEORGE MEYER

Dog Head Stench

Romeo never smells like skunk, (so far so good) but he smells like road kill if he sneaks his head under a shrub on our downtown walk. I don't notice it until he sits next to me at my desk and I get the putrid stench flying up off his head. That's when I grab a soapy sponge and give his head a quick bath. It's a daily routine in Spring. I can only imagine downtown is crawling with critters every night.

Build a Small Behavior

Do one weensy exercise today. Don't make a master plan. Carve a crack in the wall today. This is how it goes. Otherwise you put the cart before the horse. I know because it's the same for me. If I step out the door I have fitness. If I think "walk to the pond to run" I'll put it off. Bill tells me: Build a small behavior on top of a habit you already have.
For me it's adding a few jogs with my dog on the dog walk loop. If I try to take it away from that it's a monster! Does that make sense?

Martha Graham

Today is the birthday of American modern dance pioneer Martha Graham (1894), who once said: "No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the time."
-Writer's Almanac

Poet James Lee Jobe

https://james-lee-jobe.blogspot.com/

Learning

Now you wouldn't think that learning to jog and learning to snip puppy nails are in the same category but both of these things are new projects requiring training and patience, two qualities that don't come easily for me.

I'm learning by what I call the the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP slow daily effort method. Showing up is most of the battle.

If I touch the puppy nail clippers and then my dogs paws and get him to comply with that, he gets a reward and we've made progress for the day. I keep the mini kibble treats in a tin in the well-lit bathroom with the clippers at the ready. This way he already associates the bathroom with treats. It's also where I sponge off his head after a walk. He always gets his head under shrubs and bushes where the skunks and opossums go. And as my husband said, those animals don't bathe. Romeo gets a stinky head! So I need to take a sponge and soap his head and rinse and towel dry after every spring walk.

About jogging, I am a swimmer trying to make use of a new medium. Cardio vascular workouts are my best friend for helping me manage my moods and have been for many years. Except for the YMCA pool, I can't stand being indoors to exercise. A huge part of the mental health benefit is being outside. I have sneakers and a body and neighborhoods I know well from 25 years of dog walking. All I need is patience because each outing requires careful stretching before and after and then 2 days to recover. Slowly I hope to build up. I have excellent cardio strength from swimming long distances but jogging requires new muscles.

The Little Things

I had been eyeing it for weeks and telling myself I will do it. Today I put on my brown cotton gardening gloves and grabbed a plastic bucket and used my trash grabber to pick up all of the wind blown trash in my yard. It made me so happy.

Wild Story

We swore loudly together and laughed. I asked him for about the fourth time how he’d got into my house. He said he had no idea. Then he looked at his feet. He asked me if I had his other shoe. By this time I was properly laughing and my fear had disappeared.
Article

Happy Birthday Charles Simic

It’s the birthday of poet Charles Simic (books by this author), born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, which is now Serbia (1938). His childhood was dominated by World War II and the Nazi invasion. His father was repeatedly arrested and thrown in jail, finally fleeing to Italy. Simic didn’t see his father again for nearly a decade, until the family reunited in Chicago in the United States in 1954.

Life in Belgrade during and after the war was harsh, but Simic found bright spots. He says, “We had poverty, Communist indoctrination, but also a few American movies, and jazz music on the Armed Forces Radio.” American noir movies, in particular, would influence his later poetry. His favorite films were The Asphalt Jungle and The Naked City. He settled for a year in Paris with his mother and brother while their visas were being sorted out. His thick accent made school difficult, but Paris is also where he discovered poetry by Verlaine and Rimbaud and where his mother fed his fantasies about America by bringing home Life and Look magazines. Simic and his brother devoured the glossy photos of cars, girls in bathing suits, and rock musicians.

Charles Simic wrote the first poem he knew was good and wanted to keep while he was living in New York City, where he worked odd jobs like house painting and selling dress shirts in clothing shops. The poem was “The Butcher Shop.” He says: “I wrote it in 1963, when I was living on East Thirteenth Street. In those days, there were still Polish and Italian butcher shops in that part of town with wonderful displays of sausages, pig knuckles, slaughtered lambs and chickens. I never in my life went past a butcher shop like that without stopping to take a close look. Of course, it reminded me of Europe, of my childhood. I slaughtered chickens when I was a boy, saw pigs have their throats slit and then be butchered afterwards.”

Charles Simic’s books include Hotel Insomnia (1992), The Monster Loves His Labyrinth (2012), New and Selected Poems (2013), The Lunatic (2015), and Scribbled in the Dark (2017), and his work has been featured on the Almanac many times.
-Writer's Almanac