The Thing About a Typewriter…

No Telling

…is you can write on almost anything. I’ve been digging through some so-so poems and surgically removing keeper lines here and there. In the middle of this, I got a package in the mail filled with all manner of clipped bits from old magazines. Add to this my house full of typewriters and there you go. Now the keepers have someplace to go and all is right in the world.

It takes so little to make me happy. I mean that.

They’re impossible to read as-is, so click on each one to make it bigger.

The other thing about a typewriter is that you can’t correct anything, so all typos are “beauty marks.”

Keepsake

No Telling

Well, I’ve been on Ebay again. And look what I found…this is a tee-ninsy woman’s address book – just 1 3/4″ by 2 1/2″. It literally fits in the palm of my hand and is so shiny/classy I almost feel like a dimestore starlet. The button beside the letters slides up and down, and when I push the little cigarette case-like button on the bottom the book opens up to just that page. This little address-keeper has no scribbling in it whatsover, and a 1955 calendar on the back of each page. An unwanted gift, maybe, from a beau she didn’t love. Or the one who couldn’t buy her something better.

His name might have been Roger, or Jim, or Richard – nothing dashing enough, really, for her to write in the little book. Maybe the gift was a disappointment, a decision made, not enough. After she left him outside the door, she may have tucked it away in a scarf drawer with the other almost-but-not-quite things from perfectly nice gentlemen who wore the wrong hats or didn’t quite manage to shine their shoes. Another trinket from a fellow working behind a counter instead of a desk.
I’m sure he knew she was too good for him. He knew when she opened the box.
And he was such a nice one, too. Awfully sweet. That’s why she didn’t have the heart to throw it away or fill it up with other men’s addresses. It’s a heavy guilt saying no to a worthy man who falls short in ways you’re ashamed to admit matter. But they did matter.
Oh my.
It’s mine now – the address book and the story. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter – it’s true enough.

A New Toy: Wasting Time as Art

No Telling

Since I’ve been banging around doing almost nothing for the past few days, there might as well be something to show for all of it. Get yourself to Wordle.net immediately and make some of these. All you have to do is copy and paste a little text and voila.


I just copied and pasted my “Lucy has a Vagrant Heart” poem into the Wordle creator. You can make so many changes to color and form and such. Here’s “At the Hillcrest,” my dragonfly-infestation poem:


I’m still playing round with it a bit, but you do have to know how to screencapture to turn these into .jpg or .pngs. They give you a sweet little piece of html so you can place these forever on your blog or site, but they are small.

No go make one and leave me a link so I can find your Wordle.

Damn, it’s hot outside . . . and a visual found poem

No Telling


The high today was an unbearable 104 degrees. My favorite thing is when the Weather Channel also give us the “Feels Like” temperature as well, because when that bad-boy reaches 111, like it did today, I’m not leaving the house. Enough, I say.

I know, I know. I’m actually old enough to remember when scads of people had no AC at all down here in Arkansas. In the evening, the attic fan would suck the living room curtains right up to the ceiling. People spent more time outside than in because the inside of a late-July Arkansas house was a steam bath. At least you could get a little breeze on the porch, even if it did smell like bubbling road tar.

I remember once watching my grandmother’s black hair rinse sweating all around her face in little back rivers from this kind of heat. She was also deathly afraid of rain and that made perfect sense. I use permanent color deftly and regularly applied at Athena’s Salon, and so have no fear of melting.

This heat is making me wander off-topic.

And since I’m whining about the weather, I guess I’ll indulge myself a bit and whine about mosquitos as well. They are numerous and biting. Sooner or later we’re going to have to experience Winter down here just to put a dent in the mosquito lifecycle. We could sure use a break on that.

For your summer viewing pleasure, a visual/found poem I call Skeeters. I couldn’t add music, so you’ll have to just hum something while you watch it. Just let me know what song came to mind.

Dolores, Our Lady of Sorrows – a Make-over

Fresh Ribbon

“Our Lady of Organic Cheerfulness”


“Our Lady of Perpetual Disco”


“Our Lady of the Lost Barroom Fight”


Just Dolores, bless her heart. Ugly as she is, my photography only makes things worse. She deserves better. (And a special shout-out to the techno-magicians at Photobucket for making this reveal possible. Such as it is.)

Typewriter Glamour or How I’m Staying Off of Ebay This Morning

Fresh Ribbon

Oh, I’ve been rummaging around a bit and find all sorts of glamorous oddities. Some gorgeous, some just plain entertaining. The first of the goodies is this Medieval Helpdesk video, and although it’s subtitled, it’s a scream.

The glamour comes from Elizabeth O’Neil Photography and her old typewriter photos. She’s asking readers to choose a favorite. Couldn’t do it. I just wanted the typewriter.

Typewriter: Relic of Wisdom is a little must-read. It just steels our resolve to, well, spend entirely too much money on old manual typewriters. Sometimes we have to give the whole collecting thing an elegant spin to make it all worthwhile. Tactile nirvana.

Finally, a little thing I almost missed. It’s a vintage childhood typecast and I wish I could get my hands on all the crazy business I typed as a little girl. I doubt ANYTHING I could find would be as plot driven as this little rabbit’s daily schedule.

There. It’s Saturday and I’m in Complete Goof-off Mode. No telling what I’ll find next.

Itsy Bitsy Spiders and Capturing Arkansas

No Telling

Let me begin by saying this is NOT the spider I found crawling out of my shoe last night. No. The one I found was black and fast and leggy and THIS big. With fangs and such. If a diamond spider had wriggled willy nilly across my floor, I’d have killed myself to snatch it. I wasn’t so inclined last night when the creepy one came calling. And it haunted me all night, because an unkilled spider in the bedroom is the stuff nightmares are made of.

I know there are some who understand spiders to be Ecologically Important and such, but I’m not one of them. In England, it appears folks go to great and expensive lengths to catch and release their little in-house arachnid friends. Can you imagine? This little contraption from Eurocosm swears spiders will be snagged unharmed so they can then be released out into the garden where they become Quite Beneficial.
Are they kidding me? I can still remember a few Sherman, Texas tarantulas capable not only of wrestling the business end of that catcher away from a grown man, but also chasing him around the house with it.

I’ll admit the spider that climbed out of my shoe and into God Knows Where last night wasn’t a tarantula. It was big, though, and alive and crawled hastily under my antique dressing table. Like any good Southern woman, I blindly blasted hairspray under there. Laugh all you want, but it works. I’ve killed many a creeping and flying varmit with aerosol hairspray and they drop in their tracks, as I’m assuming this one did.

Not knowing for sure made for some uneasy sleeping last night, though. A woman can get tired of killing her own spiders.

On a more positive and self-promoting note, there’s a little photography contest going on right now called Capture Arkansas. The winners are chosen in a variety of ways, but mostly by viewer votes and I’ve decided to play. Winning photos will be published in a coffee-table book, so you’ve got to take a minute or two to vote and look at some of the pictures. Anyone out there unfamiliar with Arkansas will find this an interesting visual vacation. Those of you from around here need to throw your own pictures onto the heap. It’s just good clean fun, folks.

You can either click on one of the photos over <——there, or click HERE to vote and admire. Note: my girlfriends from the Branson Trip have no idea I’ve done this, so sshhhhhhh