My dog is a teacup rhinoceros.

Her teeth were so white they arrived at the party ahead of her.

“Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!” ― Joseph Mitchell

“it takes almost a lifetime to learn how to do a thing simply.” ― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

“You’re a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?’ ‘The human race,’ I said. ‘I come from the womb and I’m bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Gould is a night wanderer, and he has put down descriptions of dreadful things he has seen on dark New York streets – descriptions, for example, of the herds of big gray rats that come out in the hours before dawn in some neighborhoods of the lower East Side and Harlem and unconcernedly walk the sidewalks. ‘I sometimes believe that these rats are not rats at all,’ he says, ‘but the damned and aching souls of tenement landlords.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

 

“America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.” ― John O'Hara

Frank O'Hara Poem: Animals

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

 

Frank O'Hara 

September 25, 2026

Destruction by Joanne Kyger

First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.   He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.   He rips the Green Tara poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching a woman bathing.   Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue, Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and Women’s Sports into the oozing water bed mess.   He goes down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off. Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium and aspirin. __________ “Destruction,” by JOANNE KYGER.   Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation.

 

He has the most who is content with the least. Diogenes

I took my kids to our local public pool here in Cleveland Heights nearly every day this summer. There were old people there who had learned to swim in that pool eighty years ago. My kids learned to swim there. The air smelled of Coppertone and chlorine and nachos from the concession stand. Everyone is happy when they’re in the water. We all spent the summer being happy there. When the summer ended on Labor Day at 6 p.m. the lifeguards lined up along the poolside and all blew their whistles in unison. And one of them, a tanned teen boy, raised his megaphone and said, “Thank you, summer.” Yes. Thank you. 

George Bilgere

In the end these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?
― Jack Kornfield, Buddha's Little Instruction Book

Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.
― Jack Kornfield

Amounting to Something

My first job was washing dishes at a fancy trendy Italian restaurant. I ran away from the ritzy suburb of Larchmont New York at age 17 and was living in Providence Rhode Island. When I called home to tell my mother she shouted into the phone, You'll never amount to anything if you like washing dishes!

I guess I was supposed to amount to something. I still worry about this on a daily basis.

Am I allowed to enjoy washing dishes, teaching swimming, walking my dogs, reading and writing, doing laundry, making bread? Am I amounting to something yet? Have I earned my keep? Am I worthy of joining humanity? Have I made a meaningful contribution? Am I allowed to breathe air and take up space on Planet Earth? Am I worthy of love and friendship? Of being ALIVE?

My dogs say YES, and that's what counts. 

I was named after Emily Dickinson. When I asked my mother about it one day it she said, "Yes, I read her poems when I was suicidal and pregnant with you!" Grrrreeeat! I thought. What a legacy.

"She stayed in her room and wrote poems and nobody knew until until after she died. So stay in your room!" My sister loved to taunt me. I did stay in my room until the one day I hitched a ride out.

Since then I have not stayed in my room. I have danced in the street. I have built a life. And I still love to wash dishes. The feel of it, of being in water, soothes me. Water is the mother love medicine I never received but now give to myself, and to others.

Wake up at the Intersection

My circadian rhythm section woke me up - my dogs licking themselves at 3AM. I was actually already awake daydreaming of being five sitting on my mother's lap in a wet bathing suit at Harbor Island beach, asking her to buy me a colorful candy necklace. 

Suddenly a Pontiac's horn sounded at the four-way stop, announcing I am back! I hear this horn every few days if I am awake at 3AM. I wonder if it's an angry ex driving past his former lover's apartment or just someone blowing through the intersection. 

"It's okay to go through a red light if you honk!" My mother said, driving through red lights back in 1972.

This honk at 3AM? It must be my mother! She is alive, not just the mean voice in my head all the time, she's back, honking at me. Except she drove a Volvo. This was definitely an American honk. A Pontiac honk, rude, loud and insistent.

A few summers ago at this same intersection, a woman's husband shot out her 2nd floor apartment window on July 4th. This was to scare her. It did, and it scared the whole neighborhood. 

Then a few days later there was a dead rooster on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building.

Everyone was spooked, feeling that it had a particular meaning. So maybe my mother is keeping her honking tradition alive. But this time I laugh, Hi Mom! and let her go.

Afro-Caribbean Religious Offerings (Santería, Lucumí, or Vodou) In religions like Santería and Vodou, animal offerings are deeply sacred. A rooster is often offered to specific deities (Orishas) like Elegguá (the guardian of crossroads, paths, and doors) or Changó (the god of fire and justice). The Meaning: These rituals are usually done for cleansing, healing, or spiritual protection. The animal is believed to take away negative energy, illness, or bad luck from a practitioner. Why the Sidewalk? Intersections, sidewalks, and the bases of trees are considered spiritual thresholds where the physical and spiritual worlds meet. The offering is left there so the energy can be dissipated by the crossroads.

Spanish Vegetable Stew: Pisto

 https://www.themediterraneandish.com/pisto-spanish-vegetable-stew/

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: just do your job, then let go.

He who stands on tiptoe doesn’t stand firm. He who rushes ahead doesn’t go far. He who tries to shine dims his own light. He who defines himself can’t know who he really is. He who has power over others can’t empower himself. He who clings to his work will create nothing that endures. If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.

Carl Jung: There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul.  One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Not till old age did I learn to love silence.
Sometimes it is more exciting than music.
In the silence emerge tremulous signals
and at the crossroads of memory
you hear names
which time had tried to stifle.
― Jaroslav Seifert

Tom Nichols: T****'s obsession with these vulgar memorials to his own vanity is a reminder of the darkness around him, of his hostility to democracy, his loathing of honor, and his disordered mind.

Perhaps the president is looking ahead to the day he is no longer the most powerful man in the world, and it pains him to think that he would be reviled—or, worse, forgotten. If so, he seems determined to leave his mark on America’s capital even if it requires scarring it with militarized obscenities.

Tom Nichols 

the mind is formed by struggle, not by tranquility.

 

One electrical pole is not enough to cause a spark; it takes two. The single word “acts” only when it encounters a second that provokes it out of its usual tracks to discover new possibilities of meaning. Where there is no struggle, there is no life.

This is due to the fact that the imagination is not some hypothetical faculty separate from the mind: it is the mind itself in its totality, which, applied to this or that activity, always makes use of the same procedures. And the mind is formed by struggle, not by tranquility.

[…]

A certain distance between the two words is necessary. One must be sufficiently strange or different from the other, and their coupling must be fairly unusual, for the imagination to be compelled to set itself in motion to establish a relationship between them and construct a (fantastic) whole in which the two elements can coexist.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/06/07/gianni-rodari-the-grammar-of-fantasy/

Sad Pierre's Shoes

Sad Pierre was given a pair of beautiful shoes. These were not ordinary shoes. These shoes laughed and laughed. Pierre was horrified and annoyed. Even when he took them off,  he couldn't make them stop laughing.

So after many days he decided to bury them in his backyard. 

He began digging and digging until the hole was very deep and he dropped them in and covered them with dirt and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally he had some peace and quiet.

The next day his dog dug them up and carried them back to him and the laughter kept him awake all night.

So in the morning he borrowed his neighbor's axe and chopped up the shoes until there were very small pieces, the size of grains of rice. Then he sprinkled them into the adjoining rose garden. 

The crows and blue jays heard the laughter and brought the pieces back to his door and the shoes magically became whole again, laughing even louder.

Pierre held his hands over his ears and screamed.

The next day Pierre gathered a bunch of stones and filled the shoes dropping them in the well that night. Then he went to sleep.

The next morning laughter woke him up! 

A farmer had found the shoes floating in his well and left them at Pierre's door. 

Pierre decided to put on his shoes even though they were wet and he walked around in a circle. Everything became very quiet except for the squishy noise the shoes made from being soaked. 

Then he heard a whisper: You can't kill me. I am laughter. If I die you'll die with me.

And Pierre laughed and laughed and danced and smiled for the first time in his life wearing his magic shoes.

Mouse Trap

The humane mouse trap advises that we read the mouse a few Billy Collins poems while taking the mouse for a drive in an old blue Pontiac. We must drive for at least two miles before setting him free. Otherwise he'll know his way back to our peanut butter.

So we decided to drive the mouse across the country.

I've heard that all the east coast mice get taken to the west coast and the west coast mice are driven to the east coast. This is called Democracy.  In fact we've determined that this mouse is from San Francisco so he'll be happy to be returning home. He liked my sour-dough bread crumbs, but was pining for the real thing.

Autumnal Equinox

The Agonies

Fifty-degree weather combined with autumn outdoor mold can cause some of us sinus headaches.

I call them anvil headaches. Luckily taking a hot shower and sinus medicine coupled with walking and swimming can help take away the pain.

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
― Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

You must never be afraid to go there. Harlan Ellison

 “The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.”
― Harlan Ellison, The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective

 “Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Harlan Ellison

I talk about the things people have always talked about in stories: pain, hate, truth, courage, destiny, friendship, responsibility, growing old, growing up, falling in love, all of these things. What I try to write about are the darkest things in the soul, the mortal dreads. I try to go into those places in me that contain the cauldrous. I want to dip up the fire, and I want to put it on paper. The closer I get to the burning core of my being, the things which are most painful to me, the better is my work.

HARLAN ELLISON

 Happiness is a quality of the soul…not a function of one’s material circumstances.

 Aristotle

 "... it is interesting to note how any randomly chosen word can function as a magic word to unearth those fields of memory that had been resting under the dust of time."

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p37

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories by Gianni Rodari

An experiment in invention is a beautiful thing when children have fun with it even if rules get broken in the process, because it is the children themselves who are the goal.

 Gianni Rodari The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories p107

 “Reality can be entered through the main door or it can be slipped into through a window, which is much more fun.”
― Gianni Rodari, The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories

For the past forty-seven years I have devoted most of my time and energy to writing. It has been a vocation in the original sense of the word, that is a religious calling, one I was helpless to deny. For me writing has never been about self-expression. Writing has been about tending the spirit and making real the soul.
- Julius Lester

 To write and not tell the truth? That would be death for any writer. But more, it would be death to the imagination. And if the imagination dies, what would happen to the souls of children?
- Julius Lester

Hashtag Muffins in a Waffle Iron

I didn't want to heat up the kitchen so I made my bran muffin batter and made small hashtag waffles.

Eloise walked an old familiar route with her dog and noticed many of the old and gorgeous trees had been taken down. It's the ogre of Blackridge Massachusetts scaring people into removing their trees. 

Witches Salad: Orange Green Purple

Shredded carrots, frozen peas, chopped red onion, Adobo seasoning, red wine vinegar, olive oil.

Artist peers often become our chosen family because they share a unique creative language and understand the specific vulnerabilities, obsessions, and struggles that come with a dedicated practice.

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

REBECCA SOLNIT

 I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. Carl Jung

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

From the time I was nine or 10, it was a toss-up whether I was going to be a writer or a painter, and I discovered by the time I was 16 or 17 that paints cost too much money, so I became a writer because you could be a writer with a pencil and a penny notebook. Frank O’Connor

Pecking Order

The fish eyes and cheeks were a delicacy saved as an honor for the chefs in his country. Yet when Andrew made his signature sesame noodles dish it was ignored by his American sisters-in-law. Andrew ran a restaurant for over forty years, and no matter what he brought to the holiday table they snubbed him, refused to taste his creations. In their minds they were the only ones who could bake and cook.

freshly bagged ends:

You can buy discounted deli meat ends and cheese pieces in the self-serve pre-sliced coolers or bargain display bins right at the Market Basket Deli.

Delicious on homemade sourdough with mustard and home made sauerkraut. 

Reginald lived alone in Blackridge on Montfarm Avenue. His wife and daughter abandoned him last fall. His crazy dog Dagger was still there and his wife's recording on the security cameras still shouted Get the fuck away from my trash, when you walked by. He was the only resident who left his bins out all week as bait, so he could use his wife's voice to shout at passers by. Everybody in Blackridge knew it wasn't just the dog who was psychotic. People suspected Reginald was the Blackridge bomber. 

Summer's Ending, Painting by Jared French 1939

 

Think of many things; do one. Portuguese proverb

Stop NOT writing. Just do it, badly. Just write the thing you need or want to write, that you are avoiding. That avoidance is costing you greatly, isometrically, and in general well-being. So can you find one measly hour, to write, badly?

ANNE LAMOTT

 “When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.”
― Molly Ivins

“I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

― Molly Ivins

“Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.”

― Molly Ivins, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. Sigmund Freud

The First Hour after Waking is Sacred Space

The first hour after waking is neurologically distinct from the rest of the day. Cortisol is naturally elevated, the prefrontal cortex is fresh, and the brain is in a state of relative openness before the day’s demands have begun to accumulate. 

Dr. Judy Ho

https://drjudyho.substack.com/p/how-to-focus-when-everything-is-designed 

Whoops!

The other day I was practicing on my saxophone and it was making strange noises. I panicked. The upper notes were fine but the lower notes were not. I examined the horn and was puzzled. And concerned.

The next day I bloodied my reed fighting my horn. I turned the horn upside down to see if there was blood on the reed, and an empty plastic water bottle fell out. I laughed. This bottle was from after the last parade when I had no place to put it on the ride home. So I put it in my horn! What a relief. I would have been even more embarrassed had I driven to the repair shop.

When completely relaxed, we experience the essence of our being, the deep silence that knows everything as it is. Haemin Sunim

Thinking too much can make it difficult to act. If you just do it, then it is done. But if you give in to your thinking, your mind will get in the way, telling you “you can’t,” “you shouldn’t,” “you don’t want to.” In that case, get up early the next morning and just do the thing you’ve been putting off. If you give yourself time to start thinking about it, inaction will take hold again.
― Haemin Sunim, Love for Imperfect Things: How to Accept Yourself in a World Striving for Perfection

Vitamin D and Dog Ownership

https://shadowmap.org/learn/the-vitamin-d-advantage-of-dog-ownership-how-your-furry-friend-boosts-your-health

The most important thing in human life for one’s sanity is to be able to be playful or to be able to do things which are sublimely useless. Alan Watts

Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe. Alan Watts 

A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself. Until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position. Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. Alan Watts

 You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now. Alan Watts

If you make where you are going more important than where you are, there may be no point in going. Alan Watts

Lacking self-acceptance, we are always at odds with our point of departure, always doubting the ground on which we stand, always so divided against ourselves that we cannot act with sincerity. Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you’re doing in the here and now, and instead of calling it work, realize that this is play. Alan Watts

 We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. […] But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played. Alan Watts

Dream

I was at a big Italian dinner party outdoors. My husband and I were assigned to sit at the kids table. After the meal I gathered up all of the cheese graters and danced around holding them in my hands.

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.

Sarah Orne Jewett

 Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction. Alan Watts

I drove to Blackridge this morning to walk my dogs early in the quiet. A woman pulled over in her huge black Suburban, "Haven't seen ya in a while," she said. I introduced her to my new dog. She said my son had a rescue like that and someone broke in an bashed his dog's head in. After she left I was sorry I came to Blackridge. These pretty small towns are deceiving.

“Did it ever occur to you, Charlie, that tolerance can reach a point where it is no longer tolerance? When that happens, the noble-sounding attitude on which most of us pride ourselves degenerates into weakness and acquiescence.” ― Grace Metalious, Peyton Place

It was on this day in 30 B.C. that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony.

The Putinization of America

 Open your eyes, kids.

Henry David Thoreau: What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Richard appears to have aged 20 years in two months. He was a tall muscular man in June and now he's a shriveled apple doll on a stick. He's a terrifying sight especially when you realize that it's Richard, that guy who was taking and selling drugs a few months ago. He was going strong until the Feds came and shut down the ring. He lucked out that day and was not caught in the sweep.

It will insist on being told

Sit and quiet yourself. Luxuriate in a certain memory and the details will come. Let the images flow. You’ll be amazed at what will come out on paper. I’m still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don’t worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told.

FRANK McCOURT

Celebrate the New YMCA Pool

 * The swimmers are hand made from sugar!

A great advantage can be found in accepting hard truths faster than others. 

Shane Parrish

 a poem by David Shumate.

Passing Through a Small Town

 

Here the highways cross. One heads north. One heads east

and west. On the corner of the square adjacent to the

courthouse a bronze plaque marks the place where two Civil

War generals faced one another and the weaker surrendered.

A few pedestrians pass. A beauty parlor sign blinks. As I turn

to head west, I become the schoolteacher living above the

barber shop. Polishing my shoes each evening. Gazing at the

square below. In time I befriend the waitress at the cafe and

she winks as she pours my coffee. Soon people begin to

talk. And for good reason. I become so distracted I teach my

students that Cleopatra lost her head during the French

Revolution and that Leonardo perfected the railroad at the

height of the Renaissance. One day her former lover returns

from the army and creates a scene at the school. That evening

she confesses she cannot decide between us. But still we spend

one last night together. By the time I pass the grain elevators

on the edge of town I am myself again. The deep scars of love

already beginning to heal.

__________

Passing Through a Small Town by DAVID SHUMATE, from High Water Mark, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Stories lightly disguised. If you see yourself here, you should have behaved better.

 Motto on the town newspaper header.

Blackridge Massachusetts

In this area using a turn signal is a sign of weakness as if one's masculinity could leak out onto the road with each blink, forever depleting the driver. All the men drive trucks.

The women on the other hand always use their turn signals. Many borrow their husbands trucks or drive Dodge Caravans or Subaru wagons. They do not want to crack them up.

The town of Blackridge has no laws except one. You can't park on the dead end of Ridgefalls Road to visit the water. If you do the dozen suburban Ring cameras are triggered and the residents call the one cop, officer George Mink. He immediately drives down on his police issued Harley Davidson motorcycle to ask what you are doing.

The Blackridge residents are all escapees from nearby cities and fight hard for the illusion that they are in the wilderness. God help you if your dog barks or you put up a fence or hang out your laundry. If you break the illusion of wilderness you are scorned. 

Some battles have gone on for generations. The Wilder's turned a paper street beside their house into their driveway, a common practice in a town with no laws. The kids ignored the change but Old Man Wilder would come out in his plaid bathrobe waving his shotgun over his head when he saw them walking up his driveway. They just laughed. The McDougal's claim it's still a real street and the battle is ongoing to this day.

Bovines are a Blessing

 "I can't drink milk in a box. No way," says JP Sagahutu, who consumes about four 8-ounce glasses of milk a day.  He tries to think of the best adjective to describe the beverage. "I don't know the wording in English, but it's something sacré," he says — using the French word for sacred. Many Rwandans speak the language because the country was a Belgian colony until 1962.  Other customers nod in agreement: Milk is holy. In fact, as a sign of respect you must only drink it while sitting down. Bovines are a blessing  The sentiment comes from the respect people here have for cows, seen for many generations as providers of sustenance and prosperity.  "A very long time ago, there was no currency. To see if someone is rich, they were counting cows. If you have 10 cows, it means you are rich," Sagahutu says.  So precious is the cow, that in Rwandan culture, when you want to wish someone well, you say "may you have a cow" — kajirinka in the local language of Kinyarwandan.

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/g-s1-139914/milk-rwanda-milk-bar 

The Siblings

The siblings were in competition. They both thought travel was a virtue but it was merely a display of money spent. One more stamp on the passport, one more sticker on the suitcase. All for bragging rights. They never noticed anything when they arrived except how good the cocktails tasted. Secretly it was a pain in the ass and they couldn't wait to return and tell everyone where they had been. As if it mattered. As if it changed them. It did neither. 

The Countdown Clock for the OGRE

 is here.

Romanian Mititei

 https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-romanian-mititei/

Mititei is street food in Romania The Famous Romanian Garlicky Meat Sausages

 https://www.ramonascuisine.com/homemade-mici-the-famous-romanian-garlicky-meat-sausages/

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.

Dolly Parton

My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order. Dolly Parton

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out. Dolly Parton

I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else. Dolly Parton

I don't like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone's life is different, and everyone's journey is different. Dolly Parton

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it's just depressing to me. The poor little kids. Dolly Parton

Fence-post's wife, Venus of Willendorf adopted a white teacup Chihuahua. She snuggles him on the patch of grass at the back door of the tenement. Venus lives over where the Tilted Lady and Willard just moved after the Feds tore up their drug ring apartment across the street. 

My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening. Alice Roosevelt Longworth

She had one of those wearable calculating devices only this one tracked her dreams and recited them back to her upon awakening. It also told her what to cook that day, what to wear, and the best route for today's dog walking. It also told her the weather and which windows were left open when she left the house. It was called her brain.

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it. Anaïs Nin

Eva accidentally left her door open yesterday and her big dog Walter wandered into the yard. I figured she was home just being casual. Our dogs ignored him and he ignored our dogs. Later Eva was distraught and breathless jumping outside to tell me her house was wide open all day. 

Luckily Walter stood guard, I said. 

We were at the beach. Thank God Walter didn't bite anyone, she said, visibly anxious over all that could have happened. 

Meanwhile two houses away the contents of the drug house is being emptied and sold out on the sidewalk, I said. They got evicted finally. The local scoundrels have grabbed anything that wasn't nailed down to make a buck, even the fridge and stove!

The landlord had it coming.  According to folks who grew up here that house has been a drug house for over 50 years.

I believe it, I said. And took my opportunity to go inside and resume making potato salad. I was glad that we try to take care of each other as neighbors. 

Then I heard a scream. I ran back outside and saw a man in a blue shirt running across Eva's yard, Walter chasing him. I phoned the police.

Did you see him? Eva shouted, pale as a ghost, There was a man in my kitchen closet.

I called the cops, I said. We stood there hearing sirens in the distance. 

Where's Walter? 

He was chasing the man.

Oh my God, she said, holding her head. 

Dorothy Boggess and Velma Long have been friends for over 80 years. They exercise and eat well, but when asked about the secret to their longevity, they say it’s being social. https://wapo.st/4xLd9jQ

I love Gustave Flaubert

I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Information is Currency

It can be incredibly draining to deal with a competitive sibling who uses information as a power dynamic. When a sibling deliberately holds back updates about their children, it is often a defensive tactic to control the narrative, prevent comparison, or make their life seem exclusively superior. Bypass the gatekeeper by building direct relationships. Drop the rope!

Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

NIKKI GIOVANNI

stop obsessing over what other people think, say, or do

He may as well have tacked two gigantic ears on opposite sides of his house because the contents were like the inside of his chaotic brain. He'd lived there since he was a child with all of the family ghosts and traumas. Now the vines climbing over the side of the house were trying to cover his balding head.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. Stephen King

Go then, there are other worlds than these. Stephen King, The Gunslinger

The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

― Stephen King

Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life. Stephen King

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. Stephen King

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory. Stephen King, Misery

stop trying so hard to make other people happy

the the compulsion to be in control isn't a conscious, rational choice, but one based on deep-seated, unresolved emotional wounds and needs.

 As a rule, people who crave control are reacting to their past; to a childhood or adolescence in which they felt that they had little or no control. They're attempting to compensate for this uncomfortable experience by being overly-controlling in their adult lives.

The whole problem with control is that it denies the existence of the unconscious. It assumes that we're all solely rational beings, capable of using the power of our minds to guide every aspect of our existence. The idea of "mind over matter" is erroneous, seeing as how the compulsion to be in control isn't a conscious, rational choice, but one based on deep-seated, unresolved emotional wounds and needs. 

 Why It's Impossible to be "In Control"

 By  Marcia Sirota, Author, speaker, coach and MD

 The other day, one of my patients described herself as a "control freak," and an unhappy one at that. Certainly, she's not the first person I've worked with who's been frustrated in their attempts to be "in control," but it always saddens me to see someone wasting her time on something that's neither possible nor necessary. 

 As a rule, people who crave control are reacting to their past; to a childhood or adolescence in which they felt that they had little or no control. They're attempting to compensate for this uncomfortable experience by being overly-controlling in their adult lives. 

 The problem with control is that it's an unattainable goal. No matter how hard a person might try, nothing can be controlled; not the weather, politics, world financial markets, one's own body and certainly not other people. People are under an illusion when they believe in control, and they risk being deeply disillusioned if they keep on trying to achieve it. 

 I've noticed that "control freaks" come in two versions: the benign and the malignant. The former are more focused on self-control. They repress their emotions, restrict their food intake and drive themselves toward impossible standards of perfection in their career, hobbies and self-improvement.  

The latter group are invested in controlling others. They might choose such ostensibly helpful professions such as psychotherapists, doctors, police or military officers. Alternatively, they might be bullies at their school or workplace, or hyper-controlling in their intimate relationships. Their goal is to have power over the people they're associated with, either personally or professionally.  Whether benign or malignant, all these individuals eventually come up against the painful reality that it's futile to try and be in control. 

Those who want to control themselves suffer terribly as they become locked in a life-long inner conflict between the part of the psyche that seeks utter control (the super-ego, or internalized parent) and the part that wants to be free (the id, or child within).  

Those who seek to control others eventually see that no matter how much they manipulate, coerce, threaten or implore, they can never have absolute control over another person, because even if they imprison the other person's body, they can never imprison their spirit. Also, it should be pointed out that the person being controlled cannot be in control of their responses toward the controller.  

Those who are subject to bullying or coercion, even if ordinarily meek and non-confrontational, will eventually tire of being pushed around and will find a way to rebel, whether this is done consciously and directly, by protesting, or indirectly, by being passive-resistant or even passive-aggressive. 

 Even someone in an abusive relationship who knows that she'll be verbally or physically assaulted if she stands up to her partner will still find it hard to resist acting out against her controller. It's not that they want to be abused, but eventually they become so indignant toward the abuser and so unhappy with their situation that they won't be able to resist the urge to be spiteful. The angry id will out. 

 The whole problem with control is that it denies the existence of the unconscious. It assumes that we're all solely rational beings, capable of using the power of our minds to guide every aspect of our existence. The idea of "mind over matter" is erroneous, seeing as how the compulsion to be in control isn't a conscious, rational choice, but one based on deep-seated, unresolved emotional wounds and needs.  

Those who attempt to control themselves often end up with two types of reactive behaviors: what I call backlash and leakage. Both of these reactions are driven by the child within, who becomes so frustrated and disgusted by the whole exercise that she sabotages it to the best of her abilities.  

An example of backlash is when a person who's been on a strict diet begins to binge uncontrollably, regaining any weight that he's lost, plus a few extra pounds. An example of leakage is when a person who prides himself on his impeccable social graces suddenly begins to blurt inappropriately. The "inner boor" has leaked out, replacing the former, more appropriate persona.  

Within the psyche of every person, there's a constant battle between the forces of chaos (id) and the forces of control (super-ego). Those of us with a well-developed adult identity can usually manage to maintain a reasonable balance within our personality, being neither overly impulsive nor excessively repressed.  

Those who are overly-invested in self-control, however, find themselves swinging between the extremes of rigidity and explosiveness, as the inner conflict ends up being played out in their public behavior. The more the internal forces of control try to make the person buckle under, the more the forces of chaos resist and act out in fury.  For those who try to control other people, chronic unsuccessful attempts to bend others to their will can only have one result: intense frustration which will cause them to intensify their attempts at control and will likely result in increased resistance on the part of those being controlled. The controllers may or not succeed in getting others to tow the line, but they'll certainly create a lot of drama and suffering for all parties. 

 Those who attempt to control themselves will spend their lives see-sawing back and forth between extremes of perfectionism and inappropriate acting out. Their lives will be miserable, both for what they must give up in their attempts to achieve "perfection" and in the personal and social consequences of their backlash and leakage.  

Control is impossible, and the past can never be compensated for by present-day actions. It must be faced, grieved, healed and released. Those enamored with the idea of control would do better to see that instead of trying to be "in control," they can make conscious, empowered choices about their lives right now.  Making such choices will bring the best possible outcome in all endeavors and relationships, and will demonstrate not only the futility but the irrelevance of trying to be "in control." 

He had to keep moving to out pace his demons. He wanted a life of perpetual summer camp, the only joy he ever experienced as a child. It wasn't working. He was getting old and gray haired and the plan was rickety. He continued using drugs and drink at the rate of his teenage years, to try to pep up and be happy and then more to sleep. He tried distracting himself with more vacations to mountains, beaches, and foreign countries. He bought more plates of exotic and rich foods. Nothing helped and nothing stopped him from the next boat plane and wheel, until he died.

Car-dependent suburban design often creates chronic isolation and a lack of spontaneous social spaces, which researchers and online communities link to high rates of loneliness, depression, and coping mechanisms like heavy drinking.

Shoot up, Shoot Out

Every day we pick up dirty needles and clothes on our granite garden stairs. The addicted homeless folks shoot up and shoot out of their clothes.

Men will clutch illusions when they have nothing else to hold onto. Czesław Miłosz

I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy. Czeslaw Milosz

Language is the only homeland. Czesław Miłosz

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

 ― Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley 

To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life. Czesław Miłosz

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
― Czeslaw Milosz

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished. Czeslaw Milosz

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. Czesław Miłosz

The Curse

She deprived her child of food, one meal a day as a toddler. His growth was stunted. All because his father had been a fat boy. The mother soon kicked the father out and took all of her rage out on the boy. He was her experimental guinea pig. She deprived him of the alphabet and colorful books to read because she believed some quack about discouraging preschool literacy. Mother and son did not share meals at the table. She bought a case of canned soup and told him his meals were in the pantry. Help yourself, she scowled. I blame the mother for causing her son to shoot himself. She should be jailed but instead she hangs up his handprints on paper plates from nursery school all sentimental having never done such a gesture while he was alive.

What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all . . . as long as you tell the truth. What you know makes you unique . . . Be brave.”

 Stephen King

The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.

 Stephen King

In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

 Stephen King

Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.

Stephen King

DNA Evidence Leads to Cold Case Arrest

Rhode Island

History of Hortense

She insisted on stirring the rice counterclockwise by candle light when she visited. And when we went to see her I couldn't believe the outhouse was attached to her home. It stank up the whole place. I remember that it was August and she served us hot oatmeal. 

The tide has turned and like a lapsed Catholic everything became the opposite. Now she's all about convenience bad take-out Chinese food gloopy galore and a big TV stuffed with Netflix opposite a couch the size of her house. I don't read, she shouts if you tell her about a book.

She adds cream cheese and bacon to everything and gloms it up with shredded cheese. The worst of it is she thinks she knows everything and she will dive right into your conversations and offer her unfiltered opinion to maintain her illusion of superiority.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. Anne Lamott

Rude and Ungrateful

Criticizing someone's home-cooked food without being asked is widely considered rude and ungrateful, as cooking is an act of time, care, and personal expression. Most agree that unsolicited critiques hurt feelings, while constructive feedback should only be offered gently if the cook specifically asks for your opinion.

Why People Do It 

Control and ego: Some people use criticism to feel superior or show off supposed culinary expertise.

Insecurity: Projecting personal anxieties about diet, health, or upbringing onto others.

Habitual negativity: General dissatisfaction that spills over into everyday interactions.

The Critic Should

Pause before speaking: Ask yourself if your comment is kind, necessary, or helpful.

Focus on gratitude: Remember that someone spent time and effort making a meal for you.

Practice neutrality: If you do not like a dish, simply eat what you can or say "thank you" quietly without giving a review.

Keep preferences to yourself: Save specific recipe changes or tweaks for your own kitchen.

The closer to street level you live, the more you have lessons thrust upon you.

 Robert Stone

Last night someone walking down the street got shot in our neighborhood. Luckily a passers by gave him a lift to the hospital. 

This morning I found three hypodermic needles in the shrubs at my garden stairs. I carefully disposed of them by dropping them in an empty plastic water bottle. Then I started trimming the shrubs to make my garden stairs more visible and less like a cave for hiding. 

I went swimming and when I came home I made salmon cakes for the first time and they came out great. 

Salmon Burger Inspiration or Cape Cod in a Can

 I was swimming and thinking of what I had in the cupboard. 1 can of salmon, eggs, panko and Adobo and a few other things. So when I came home I glanced at a recipe and then jumped into improvisation mode. I used  1 can of salmon, panko breadcrumbs, some leftover brown rice, Adobo seasoning, my homemade cilantro sauce, 1 large red onion minced, 4 eggs, a bloop of mayo, dashes of Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and I put a small sample in the microwave to taste test. Then I formed patties and fried them in olive oil. After I made all nine, I added 3 chopped green bell peppers and 2 large white onions to the leftover olive oil and sauteed them with Adobo, I added Chianti to deglaze the pan. These were delicious. I will make them again.

The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the “normal,” the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.

HARLAN ELLISON

 “Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you–as if you haven't been told a million times already–that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.” Harlan Ellison

“There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!” Harlan Ellison

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell. Rebecca Solnit

Your Best Ideas Don’t Come When You’re Trying

Tapping Into the Other Mode of Thinking Where Creativity and Insight Lives. 

Dr. Judy Ho Aug 19, 2026 The Shower, the Walk, the 3am Moment  

https://drjudyho.substack.com/p/your-best-ideas-dont-come-when-youre

By writing, in other words, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.

 https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/how-writing-leads-to-thinking-february-2010/

Silence gives answers. Rumi

Lemon and Orange Zest can be made and saved in the Freezer!!

I am a writer and my faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances. Art reminds us that we belong here. And if we serve, we last. My faith in art rivals my admiration for any other discourse. Its conversation with the public and among its various genres is critical to the understanding of what it means to care deeply and to be human completely. I believe.

TONI MORRISON

Our mother did not like children. She couldn't be bothered. She hired a string of nannies to be the mother and then she could take off on vacation with my step-father. We did not eat together except on holidays with a large crowd or a weekly Sunday crowd.

I now realize how bizarre this was and the secret as to why my siblings are so damaged.  

"Your sexy boots."

I walked passed graffiti on the side door of the Chester Street Chinese restaurant. White crayon scrawl on a flat mat metal gray door. "Your, sexy!" I wanted to add an apostrophe in your to correct it or add boots to read, "Your sexy boots."

I love signs and there are two in my neighborhood that I must photograph. Hand written scrawl about where to leave packages resembling an assassins handwriting. 

I found a fun article about correcting grammar in graffiti.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/ecuador-graffiti-accion-ortografica-quito-grammar

It all comes down to this: the simplest way to be happy is to do good. Helen Keller

I’d rather pluck my eyes out and feed them to the birds. Than go to a meeting of any kind.

Dream

There were new neighbors from Africa sleeping in body-contoured beds of mud in garages. I spoke to a policeman about it. As we spoke he pointed out that a rat was biting my leg.

Seeing strangers sleeping in mud: You worry about others or feel disconnected from people going through hardships.  A dream about a rat biting your leg often symbolizes a hidden worry, a sense of being undermined in your daily progress, or a fear of betrayal from someone close to you. Because the bite targets your leg—the body part that moves you forward—it often reflects an obstacle or anxiety stalling your path.

Folie à deux

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_%C3%A0_deux

Being close-knit is not the same as being enmeshed. A close-knit family cares about each other and stays connected, but everyone still has their own space, opinions, and independence. Family members support one another without trying to control each other’s choices.  An enmeshed family, on the other hand, has very blurry boundaries. Love and loyalty may depend on doing what the family expects, and saying no can lead to guilt or conflict. In a close-knit family, closeness feels supportive — in an enmeshed family, it can start to feel suffocating.*

Control disguised as love

When a family member treats traditions as non-negotiable, it often stems from a deep emotional need for security, control, or connection. However, rigid demands can create heavy guilt, stress, and resentment among other relatives who feel their own time, autonomy, or changing lives are being ignored. Why They Do It: Fear of change: They view alterations to a routine as a loss of family unity or a personal rejection of their values. Anxiety and nostalgia: The tradition represents a safer, happier past or a specific identity they are desperate to hold onto. Control disguised as love: They may use guilt or obligation to keep everyone orbiting around them.

The rainforest also keeps everyone breathing. You are needed and wondrous just as you are.

 https://rainforestmind.com/your-rainforest-mind-the-book/

Josephine "Jo" Nivison Hopper insisted that her husband, Edward Hopper, not use any other female models for the women in his paintings. After they married in 1924, Jo served as his exclusive model and muse for decades, posing for iconic works even into her late 70s.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/apr/25/art1

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-missed-in-histor-21124503/episode/josephine-nivison-hopper-86115823/

The word for a person who reads in bed is a librocubicularist.

Word Origin: Made up by writer Christopher Morley in his 1919 book The Haunted Bookshop. 

Latin Roots: Combines liber (book) and cubiculum (bedroom).

Pronunciation: ly-broh-kyoo-BIK-yoo-ler-ist

Fascinating: Table Manners, Teeth, and Reading in Bed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_manners

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/braces-dentures-history/397934/ 

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/reading-in-bed/527388/ 

Talking Points Memo: Reader Supported not Billionaire Controlled

 https://talkingpointsmemo.com/

 

Welcome to poet George Bilgere’s online newsletter. Every day George selects a poem by a writer he’s crazy about and he says a few words about why he picked it.

Here’s a poem for today, August 16, 2026

God Bless the Experimental Writers

by Corey Mesler

for David Markson   “One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with.” —Flann O’Brien from At Swim-Two-Birds   God bless the experimental writers. The ones whose work is a little difficult, built of tinkertoys and dada, or portmanteau and Reich. God help them as they type away, knowing their readers are few, only those who love to toil over an intricate boil of language, who think books are secret codes. These writers will never see their names in Publisher’s Weekly. They will never be on the talk shows. Yet, every day they disappear into their rooms atop their mother’s houses, or their guest houses behind some lawyer’s estate. Every day they tack improbable word onto im- probable word, out of love, children, out of a desire to emend the world.

__________

From Some Identity Problems, FootHills Publishing, 2008, by COREY MESLER.

Photograph: David Markson, whose Wittgenstein’s Mistress was published to critical acclaim in 1988, though the original manuscript was rejected fifty-four times.

Why I Chose This Poem One night a few years ago I attended one of the weekly meetings of the Finnegans Wake book club here in Cleveland Heights. There were eight regular members. A lawyer, a retired history teacher, a newspaper columnist, an actress, a few others. Someone poured a round of Jameson, Joyce’s favorite whiskey, and for the next hour we all puzzled through one single page of the so-called “greatest novel no one has ever read.” The novel is over 600 pages long. The group had been meeting for three years and they were only on page 85. At the end of our discussion nobody had understood a word of what was read or said. We hailed the book as a work of genius and poured ourselves another Jameson.