Magellan Street, 1974

This is the year you fall in
love with the Bengali poet,
and the Armenian bakery stays open
Saturday nights until eleven
across the street from your sunny
apartment with steep fo'c'sle stairs
up to an attic bedroom.
Three-decker tenements flank you.
Cyclone fences enclose
flamingos on diaper-size lawns.

This is the year, in a kitchen
you brighten with pots of basil
and untidy mint, I see how
your life will open, will burst from
the maze in its walled-in garden
and streak toward the horizon.
Your pastel maps lie open
on the counter as we stand here
not quite up to exchanging
our lists of sorrows, our day books,
our night thoughts, and burn the first batch
of chocolate walnut cookies.

Of course you move on,
my circumnavigator.
Tonight as I cruise past your corner,
a light goes on in the window.
Two shapes sit at a table.

-- Maxine Kumin

... HEAVY SNOW WARNING EXTENDED FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO NOON EST SUNDAY...

SNOW WILL BEGIN ACROSS SOUTHWEST NEW HAMPSHIRE AS WELL AS NORTHWEST AND NORTH CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS BETWEEN 3 AND 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON. THE SNOW WILL BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES TONIGHT.

THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR LATE TONIGHT INTO EARLY SUNDAY MORNING... WHEN THERE IS THE POTENTIAL OF SNOWFALL RATES FROM 2 TO 3 INCHES PER HOUR. GUSTY NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS WILL ALSO PRODUCE AREAS OF BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WITH POOR VISIBILITY. IN ADDITION WIND CHILLS WILL DROP TO BETWEEN 15 AND 20 BELOW.

SNOW WILL TAPER OFF AROUND MIDDAY SUNDAY. TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS OF 10 TO 20 INCHES ARE EXPECTED... WITH THE HIGHEST AMOUNTS ACROSS NORTH CENTRAL MASSACHUSETTS. THE COMBINATION OF SNOW AND WIND WILL CAUSE HIGHER DRIFTS.

SNOW SHOWERS MAY LINGER THROUGH MUCH OF SUNDAY AFTERNOON AS THE COASTAL STORM DEPARTS.

Z is for Zillah who brightened my day

Soundtracks to us, my dear. Thank you.

*

Light & Day/Reach for the Sun - Polyphonic Spree
Crispin Glover - Scarling
Standing Outside... - Primitive Radio Gods
Silent Lucidity - Queensryche
Incense & Peppermint - Strawberry Alarm Clock
Goodbye Mr. Ed - Tin Machine
Jockey Full of Bourbon - Tom Waits
A Sorta Fairytale - Tori Amos
Opera Singer - Cake
Fashion (Live at 50!) - David Bowie & Frank Black
Children of the Revolution - Violent Femmes
In the Garage - Weezer
5 & 1/2 Minute Hallway - Poe
Bukowski - Modest Mouse
Kiss Them for Me - Siouxsie and the Banshees
Life on Mars? - David Bowie
Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus

*

The Stars of Track and Field - Belle & Sebastian
Gloomy Sunday - Billie Holiday
Cry Little Sister - Carfax Abbey
Tango de Roxanne - The Narcoleptic Argentinean
Haunted - Poe
Young Pilgrims - The Shins
Toy Soldiers - Martika
When I Was a Boy - Dar Williams
Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
Boadicea - Enya
Ocean Breathes Salty - Modest Mouse
Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money) - Pet Shop Boys
Here Comes Your Man - Pixies
This Mess We're In - PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke
5:15 The Angels Have Gone - David Bowie
The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen
Eye - The Smashing Pumpkins
Hee hee hee (Ed. -- I will be strong and stand with thee -- love, E)

Courtesy of Jac:

I recently got an email informing me that the Bush Administration no longer wants keep track of how gendered employment is in the US. Here's the info:

A Proposal by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to Discontinue Collection of Gender Data

"A December 22, 2004, Federal Register (Vol. 69, No. 245) notice by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Current Employment Statistics program (CES) proposes that the CES discontinue collecting and publishing data on female workers beginning with the release of the May 2005 data scheduled for publication in July 2005. (See announcement on BLS website.) Thus, BLS would no longer track the number of women workers in the United States in its monthly survey of 400,000 businesses."

I don't do statistical stuff. I have serious problems not only with collection and measurement, but how "realness" comes to only be numerically identifiable.

And yet this seems equivalent to bombing ancient Babylonian sites. How can we change the world if we don't even know it? It's the same feeling I have about Kinsey's work--I don't treat his findings as the gospel, but want it there to be challenged and problematized and engaged. We all need empirical research, even if half of what we do with it is explain how it produces and distorts particular ways of being in the world. What doesn't?

Here's how to challenge this proposal:

"The public has a 60-day 'comment period"' during which to submit reactions to BLS's proposed action (i.e., through Feb. 18). ASA encourages sociologist members to visit the BLS website, contact your congressperson (ask to be connected to your member of Congress by calling the Capitol switchboard at 1-800-839-5276), and politely [sic!] urging that these important data continue to be collected and distributed."

"Also consider sending your comments directly to BLS, at the following address:
Amy Hobby
BLS Clearance Officer
Division of Management Systems
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Room 2080
2 Massachusetts Ave., NE
Washington, DC 20212
(tel: 202-691-7628)"

Much Laughter

      Boswell's only note after an evening with Dr. Johnson

Nothing about the food, the wine, the subjects
Of that night's passions. Nothing even about
The weather—rain most likely, the damp seeping
Under doors. Just those two words for a night
When everything else slipped into the vacancies
Of the unrecorded. That's all that's left. We know
Now the more complete story that Boswell chose
Not to tell: the good doctor's wearied martyr's gaze
As he walked the alleyways where the poor remained
Poor, the blind, blind, where the only lesson learned
From suffering was how much better it would be
Not to suffer. We know, too, that Johnson wanted
About this time to rest in God and yet could not
Imagine how to surrender himself to a future
He couldn't anticipate; he couldn't help but believe,
To his dismay, that all life needed to go wrong was
The hope it would go right. Too many could not see
How evil fouled the gears of the century's benign God.
He was headed for another breakdown; Mrs. Thrale
Had already been secretly entrusted with a padlock
And chain to restrain his fits when the time came.
But on this particular evening, happiness must have
Arrived when he least expected it. A few hours
When everyone's burdens were shouldered, when
There was no tomorrow sprouting its thousand forms
Of grief and humiliation and defeat. Just jokes
And small talk, and wine sweetened with oranges
And sugar tumbling down the doctor's throat.
A night, perhaps, when all the timorous and beaten
Faces suddenly brightened in their common temple
Of laughter. A night when even a stray black dog
Might have been allowed to lick clean a patron's
Greasy hands and warm its flea-bitten belly
Near the fire. A night caught in the genius and irony
Of Boswell's two words—what they left unsaid
And what they say, the simple phrase like a pardon
After our sins have been listened to one by one,
And there is nothing left to remember but "much
Laughter" after another day on earth is done.

-- Robert Cording
The Paris Review No. 169, Spring 2004

with a song in my heart, head, etc.

[14 Jan 2003|02:36pm]
and it's how many years ago?and you are on a bus and I am on the kitchen floor where we burned that stupid pizza and thus discovered Turkish pizza and patched us together, and it was before Charlie and before crying in the middle and stopping, it was borrowed from the USF library on a whim making up nostalgia without precursor even then, and that was years ago and I shouldn't be able to say it that way. Like an amputee whose lost limb still itches. Lost lamb? Indifferent wolf. More a hider-in-foxhole. Missed.

...

We are for today
we are for the moment

We are a crusade
but we are invalid

1 a.m. rummaging
stained my hands on her antique
2 a.m.

Reverend girl

I am so indifferent
I am whatever

3 a.m. cellophane
suffocates my favorite things
4 a.m.

The reverend girl
seems that the more we're achieving, the less chance of leaving this world
with a reverend girl

Another lover wakes me
head upon a window pane
before the thunder shook us
she could always smell the rain

A year is dissipating
another hail cannot disdain
never mind the thunder
now my lover smells like
now my lover smells like
now my lover smells like rain

And if the Cup you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in—Yes;
   Imagine then you are what heretofore
You were—hereafter you shall not be less.

R of OK (t. Fitz.)

The wheel turns, the great red wheel with blue above and green below. A certainty, a remembering, a waiting.

three-obscenity cold

This morning I was warm in Florida. Tomorrow morning I will layer to keep out the frostbite.

...CENTRAL MIDDLESEX COUNTY MA-CHESHIRE NH-EASTERN FRANKLIN MA- EASTERN HAMPDEN MA-EASTERN HAMPSHIRE MA-EASTERN HILLSBOROUGH NH- NORTHERN WORCESTER MA-NORTHWEST MIDDLESEX COUNTY MA- SOUTHERN WORCESTER MA-WESTERN AND CENTRAL HILLSBOROUGH NH- WESTERN ESSEX MA-WESTERN FRANKLIN MA-WESTERN HAMPDEN MA- WESTERN HAMPSHIRE MA- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF... AMHERST... CHICOPEE... FITCHBURG... FRAMINGHAM... GREENFIELD... JAFFREY... KEENE... LAWRENCE... LEOMINSTER... LOWELL... MANCHESTER... MILFORD... NASHUA... NORTHAMPTON... SPRINGFIELD... WALTHAM AND WORCESTER 1131 PM EST SUN JAN 16 2005
... DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILLS EXPECTED MONDAY NIGHT INTO TUESDAY MORNING OVER PORTIONS OF INTERIOR SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND...

THE COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON IS EXPECTED TO INVADE SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY.

THE COMBINATION OF SUSTAINED NORTH WINDS BETWEEN 15 AND 25 MPH AND FRIGID TEMPERATURES WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILL READINGS MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING. WIND CHILL READINGS ARE EXPECTED TO DROP AS LOW AS MINUS 15 TO MINUS 20 DEGREES OVER MUCH OF INTERIOR MASSACHUSETTS FROM LOWELL AND LAWRENCE TO WORCESTER TO SPRINGFIELD AND WESTFIELD... AND FROM GARDNER TO GREENFIELD. THE COLDEST WIND CHILL READINGS ARE EXPECTED OVER SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE... INCLUDING MANCHESTER AND KEENE... WHERE THE COMBINATION OF FRIGID TEMPERATURES AND SUSTAINED WINDS WILL MAKE IT FEEL MORE LIKE MINUS 25 DEGREES.

ACTUAL TEMPERATURES DAYBREAK TUESDAY MORNING WILL PLUMMET INTO THE NEGATIVE SINGLE NUMBERS ESPECIALLY NORTH AND NORTHWEST OF INTERSTATES 90 AND 495... INCLUDING MUCH OF INTERIOR NORTHWEST MASSACHUSETTS AND SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE... TO THE SINGLE NUMBERS AND LOWER TEENS ELSEWHERE.

WINDS WILL SUBSIDE TUESDAY AFTERNOON. HOWEVER... EVEN UNDER BRIGHT SUNSHINE TEMPERATURES WILL ONLY RECOVER INTO THE SINGLE NUMBERS AND LOWER TEENS.

WIND CHILL ADVISORIES WILL LIKELY BE NEEDED MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING. FROSTBITE CAN OCCUR WITHIN MINUTES... SO PREPARE ACCORDINGLY BY DRESSING IN LAYERS. HATS... EARMUFFS... SCARVES AND GLOVES WILL BE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED....