Note on the Fridge to Senator McCain

No Telling

areyoukiddingme

In deference to your age, Senator, and with the highest regard for your military service, I’ll keep this clean and brief.

All women are not alike, and they aren’t interchangeable. I’ll admit that when we were little girls, some of us popped off Barbie’s head and swapped it around with Skipper’s body. Maybe even Midge’s, you know, just for fun. But we knew it wasn’t real. Barbie was always Barbie and Midge, well, she had freckles.

Please understand if we’re completely, utterly, hopelessly insulted.

Warm regards,

Every Woman Who’s Ever Drawn Breath
Since Seneca Falls

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.

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

A Bunch of Writers, a Pot of Coffee, and a Box of Donuts walk into a bar . . .

No Telling

The month-long Writing Project Summer Institute is over. I’m still overwhelmed by the stunning teachers who came, who wrote, who conquered. We began as a class and ended as a writing family. Sandra, Becky, Carolyn, Verlyn, Renee’, Janice, Barabara, Nan, Jennifer, Janet, Stephanie, Jane, and Mary have all become my sisters and favorite aunts. Mike, bless your only-man-in-the-room heart, you’re the scribbling brother I never had.
That’s what the NWP Summer Institute does. It wears us out, it makes us dig and find our words. It makes us forever connected as teachers and writers. We’re scribbling kin now.
It also makes us eat food we shouldn’t. Good Lord. I’ve got four weeks until classes begin and it’ll take every last day of that to undo the Sugary-Donut Damage. And then some. I suspect there are only a couple of us – the strong ones – who came out on the other side unscathed.

Letter on the Fridge to Emily

No Telling

How is it possible? Twenty-two years ago right this minute I was screaming at some unsuspecting night-nurse to BRING ME MY BABY NOW. And she did. You were three hours new and a tiny Snow White blinking up at me. I spent the rest of that night memorizing you. It was the finest night of my life, just you and me and the occasional night-nurse making sure I wasn’t post-partum crazy. I wasn’t.
I spent a lot of time that night wondering about the woman you’d become, and here you are that woman. I’m proud of everything you’ve become and I’m thrilled to see what’s next. I’m a spectator and your biggest fan, gal. Always have been, always will be.
I love you high as the sky, deep as the ocean, as long as a mile. YOU are my sunshine.
Happy Birthday, sweetie.
oxoxoxoxox
Mom

Woman with Head Cut Off Resurfaces

No Telling
I think it should be “like a chicken with its head cut off,” but I don’t like chickens much. Unless they’re on a plate and I didn’t have to cook them.

The point is, I’m Entirely Too Busy. Those of you out there who for even a fleeting moment considered teaching because “you get summers off” should hang out with me for a week or so in July. Or June. And August.

The National Writing Project Summer Institute is going beautifully and I love every single second of it. I just haven’t had a minute to gather my thoughts for a while. I haven’t done the laundry, either, which is what I’m going to do right this very minute.

In the meantime, I’ve found this video on killing creativity in the schools. Yes, it’s long. Yes, it’s worth it. My little gift to you while I separate handwashables from the towels.

The Writing Project, Canasta, and Donuts

No Telling

I’ve been one busy gal. Just finished up week one of the Writing Project here at UCA after spending the glorious week before In Ozark doing the same thing – writing with public school teachers from Arkansas. This past week has been a scribbly one indeed, and the writing is good. I’ve almost filled a brand new Apica notebook already.

Because the National Writing Project isn’t about talking-head workshops, and IS about writing with your students, I’ve got quite a few pages of “starts” to work on after the last donut is gone in mid-July. I’ve fiddled around with the idea of a National Floating Rewrite Month (NaFloReMo), and it looks like I’ll need to implement that just as soon as this Summer Institute comes to a close. I’d love to rewrite as I go, but directing the SI tends to put a cramp in my rewrite style – there simply isn’t world and time to do it all. So keep your ears to the ground, because come July 18 (ish) there’s going to be a rewrite frenzy. Paper will fly, printers will eat ink, and no one can stop me.

I’ve included a snippet from a morning warm-up scribble below that needs a little dedicated time. I’d better go now and order some more Apicas, because – while aestheically delightful – they are mighty thin for what I’m throwing down right now.

canasta

Oh! Tick-tock, and such. The next Ultimate Self-Cleaning Book Giveaway drawing for three free books is Monday night. Be sure to put your name in the salad bowl, because I’ve got more books coming in here at a fairly fast clip. Please enter before I reach critical mass.