13 Thursday: How Does Your Garden Grow?
1. Ruth from Spilling Out (no pun intended) recently told a lovely story about getting her first period at camp. It involved “two old roan-coloured nags plodding,” which made me comment, “I’m not sure what it means but it’s poetry to my ears.
2. She called her period “the curse,” which reminded me that we called it “our friend” and made me wonder how many other code names it went by.
3. THIS video of Roy Zimmerman singing “Jerry Falwell’s God,” found at Out and Back, is top notch HILARIOUS and so are the rest of his Youtube posted songs.
4. Roy’s first album is called “Comic Sutra. Fellow satirist musician, Tom Lehrer, said, “I congratulate Roy Zimmerman on reintroducing literacy to comedy songs. And the rhymes actually rhyme, they don’t just ‘rhyne.'” Joni Mitchell has said, “Roy’s lyrics move beyond poetry and achieve perfection.”
5. “What kind of punctuation mark are you?” Christine at Chicken Scratch recently asked. I was thinking that an exclamation mark seems too eager and a question mark might indicate that I don’t know anything, so my answer has to be this …
6. The ellipsis could mean: Read between the dots. I lost my train of thought. I’m not sure how else to punctuate this. Or, guess what I’m leaving out?
7. I recently mentioned that Patry, blogging friend from Simply Wait, and I share a most unusual connection. After reading each other’s blogs for more than a year, we discovered that her first cousin’s daughter is someone I know very well because her son and my sons are brothers. I had barely recovered from that revelation when another one unfolded …
8. My blog friend Susan has been going through a challenging time. While on a retreat recently, her life coach hostess gave her some resources to work with, one of which was a little poem titled “Flowers.” Her coach had found in a small publication (the Museletter) 15 years ago while visiting the Smokey Mountains. Susan kept saying, “I think I know who wrote this.” Sure enough, it was me. When she read it to me later over the phone, I could tell it was mine but it was so old that I had no memory of it.
9. FLOWERS: I’m cleaning up … the inner environment … I’m plowing the fear … to prepare the soil … I’m mixing the elements … to make my heart fertile … I’m weeding the hurt … to care for the love … I’m coming up flowers.
10. Although I didn’t remember the poem, I can see that it was first in a series and the predecessor to THIS poem and THIS one.
11. Dirt-free gardening: How fast can you fill up THIS page? (Click anywhere to bloom where you are planted.)
12. What’s this world coming to? Every day a new medicine is found to create worse side-effects than the symptoms it’s treating, more people die in Iraq, and a new Antarctic glacier melts. “The bees are disappearing, independent bookstores are closing, and they’re selling Botox on TV to women in their 30’s!” I recently ranted to my friend Alwyn when she asked me how I was.
13. Bumper sticker to think about, recently found in my email box: “You Can’t Be Pro-War And Pro-Life At The Same Time.”
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
May 24th, 2007 9:18 am
I’m laughing because I am totally … 😀
May 24th, 2007 9:32 am
interesting lists….lots of cool links to check out! thanks for sharing!
May 24th, 2007 9:47 am
You really do live in a small world Colleen! How do this things keep happening to you that connect you all over the universe? I like the ….too. I use them all the time in my posts are comments. I know they bug grammar critics but I just like the way they look and they make the flow seem more real. Would italics count? Cause that could mean you have great curves, ha ha…I had to laugh over that thought!
I hate people referring to our periods as the Curse. It puts us in the stone ages for Pete’s sake. It is anything but a curse. Women should feel powerful not second rate…we can carry life in our bodies. How can that be a curse? Please!
May 24th, 2007 10:01 am
I think italics might mean that you have an unusual SLANT on things.
They have new pills now that stop your period because it’s considered inconvient … makes me cringe … right up there with the botox to 30 years olds.
I also just found out that Leslie at Squirrel Spur in Meadows of Dan and I used to babysit the same kids!
May 24th, 2007 10:19 am
Good Morning: Your TT postings are always chock full of info, poetic, spiritual and earthy. Love the bloom where you are planted website you found. And your poems –
Leaving my fingerprints on poems written down
like roots taking hold in a plot thickened
Those words are going to linger for days . . .
BTW, thanks for the shout out! I have become a regular reader of your too. 🙂
May 24th, 2007 10:44 am
i use the ellipsis a lot…too much in fact.
it’s my dad’s fault…when i was a kid i would read through his sermon outline books…and they were filled with dotdotdot…
i thought it was the coolest thing i had ever seen…so now i use them religiously…EXCEPT when i am writing an english paper of course! 😉
great post…as always!
May 24th, 2007 11:19 am
That’s amazing about the poem. We really are all connected aren’t we?
As for punctuation, I’d have to say that I am the –, whatever that is called. I am forever intersplicing thoughts within my thoughts.
May 24th, 2007 11:42 am
#12: Sigh…just … sigh.
May 24th, 2007 11:46 am
I like this one too “–” I wish it wasn’t broken in two though. Sometimes my computer will correct it.
Years ago I hardly used any punctuation except for … I had to teach myself the rules all over again to break the … habit. Also, I credit Nuala O’faolain for giving me the guts to write “The Jim and Dan Stories” after reading her book ‘Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman’ which was written in such a conversational manner with lots of — and — within sentences … very much like injected (thoughts) but spoken out loud, I think.
I guess & isn’t considered punctuation.
I hear ya, Janet.
May 24th, 2007 12:06 pm
I just always called it a period.
May 24th, 2007 12:09 pm
Funny pussreboots, you could be commenting on #1 or #5!
May 24th, 2007 1:57 pm
Hee hee, whatta great list! And ha, a friend of mine and I jokingly refer to our periods as “visits from Aunt Flo.”
Happy TT, and thanks for visiting my blog!
May 24th, 2007 2:04 pm
I am still shaking my head and rejoicing over the poem. In fact, I reread it at Starbucks earlier and a new meaning came forth. Poems are like that…one needs to read them over and over.
Let’s see…punctuation…hmmm…I am an …too!
Susan
May 24th, 2007 2:18 pm
Yeah, I thought about the &. And googled to see if it was considered punctuation, but alas it’s not. I’m nothing if not thorough in researching my blog comments :).
(type five on the enneagram?…check!)
May 24th, 2007 4:11 pm
As teenagers in Chile we called periods Mr Rojas (which is actually a last name and means red…) among other names…
It’s truly a small world after all!
I think I am an … too…
May 24th, 2007 4:14 pm
Me and my girlfriends used to call it “coma or baby Huey”…….do you remember.
I loved doing the flowers. xox
May 24th, 2007 4:54 pm
But it should be Mrs. Rojas!
I guess comma is an alternative from saying period. I do remember Baby Huey…but only from you, She. I think you and your girlfriends made it up.
May 24th, 2007 6:24 pm
Loved the flower thing.
It was always my “time of the month” until a hysterectomy made the lack thereof permanent.
May 24th, 2007 8:05 pm
You sure do have a lot of coincidences in your life with people. Hey, wait a sec…you’re from Hull, Mass. I’m from Salem….could we be distantly related? lol
I always called it a “period” from age 11 till the end. So maybe that’s also my punctuation….a period, to indicate I’ve made my choice/decision and that’s the end of it.
Great list, as always. Ditto on #12!!!!!
May 24th, 2007 10:05 pm
Hi Colleen!
Great 13 you’ve got there!
Michele sent me past today even though it looks like I skipped you!
May 24th, 2007 10:09 pm
Colleen, believe it or not, I know someone who professes to be pro-life and also pro-death penalty. Explain that one to me…..LOL
May 25th, 2007 4:21 am
I read your tag line and I’m thinking, “How did Montaigne know so much about blogging?” I love that!
May 25th, 2007 7:39 am
I saw a great bumper sticker the other day!
JANUARY 2008
AN END OF AN “ERROR”
Don’t u just love it?
May 25th, 2007 7:43 am
I loved that poem too! I’m posting it on my cubicle at work. Now your writing is in the pages and in the office of Roanoke Times.
May 25th, 2007 12:46 pm
Well, I guess ech month gets punctuated by a period for sure until you reach the final period for the period, call it friend or whatever. I can understand why many referred to it as the curse when it gave them such grief, myself included. My friends and I called it, “cantelope” so no boys would clue in. It was just fun…”Did you get cantelope yet?” If you wanted your friend to check your dress for signs of overflow you’d sing Stevie Wonder’s, “Baby, everything is all right, uptight, out of sight!”
This generation seems different in that parents celebrate it openly. My sister’s twins had red roses on the table at super the night they got theirs.
I loved your #13. Perfect.
May 25th, 2007 7:19 pm
Sorry i was late posting to your Thursday Thirteen. It was a great list, this is what happens when the Evil Day Job gets in the way. 😉
Happy belated TT. Thanks for dropping by mine.