13 Thursday: A Matter of Poetry and Death
1. Will Planet X collide with earth and tip it on its axis? After watching 60 Minutes last week and seeing the rate that the Antarctic icebergs are melting, I’m more worried about the reality of that than a bump from a possible planet knocking us out of existence.
2. Was THIS John Lennon’s idea of an Elvis jumpsuit?
3. I regularly make peanut butter balls (peanut butter, oatmeal, honey, chocolate chips, and sesame seeds) and carry them with me for survival food whenever I go out. They make a handy high protein, quick energy snack, and I can get really set back if I get over hungry. My husband doesn’t do well missing meals either but he doesn’t digest peanuts well, so we make him almond butter balls. Last night we cracked up when he said by mistake: “Honey, I’m out of Almond Brother balls.”
4. Scott Kirkpatrick, a Northern Virginia Slam Poet turned Sergeant, died in Iraq last week. On his website he said, “I don’t think arty poet boys join the infantry a lot.” In 2000 he won a slam in Washington DC. You can hear him read one of his poems HERE.
5. Poetry is older than the alphabet … before commas there was only the breath… is an excerpt from a line in a new poem called “A Poet’s Punctuation Proclamation,” which addresses why I don’t tend to punctuate my poetry.
6. Poetically, I’m in the minority, riding in the back of the bus. In the poem, Nikki Giovanni, who is driving the bus, turns to me and the other riders and says: You don’t need punctuation … let the line break tell the reader when to stop. Natalie Goldberg, William Carols Williams, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Bob Dylan show up in the poem too. I don’t even mention E. E. Cummings, who didn’t capitalize words and used punctuation sparingly and playfully. Billy Collins has called Cummings poetic style “typographical high jinks.”
7. I’m happy to welcome a new Floyd blogger into the local mix. When she emailed me to let me know she was blogging, I answered, “So glad you got in touch and are catching the blog bug. Excuse me while I sneeze and go to check out your site now.
8. My father was a prankster. Whenever he sneezed, he did it loudly, and clearly said, AH SHIT!
9. Something I don’t miss about the ocean HERE. (You won’t believe your eyes. Scroll down to see the most amazing photos you’ve seen all year.)
10. Top strange way to die: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed in 458 BC when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone.
11. We’ve been talking about death (prompted by THIS) and burial choices on the Love Link (family group email that was started when my brother Dan was sick) ). Did you know that burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year and that cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air?
12. A wake is a time for mourners to sit with a recently passed loved one. Traditionally, it was also the last chance for the dead to “wake” up before burial, which is how it got its name.
13. Poet’s epitaphs: “Called Back,” Emily Dickinson; “I had A Lover’s Quarrel With The World,” Robert Lee Frost; “Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted,” Sylvia Plath Hughes; “Nothing of him that doth fade – But doth suffer a sea-change – Into something rich and strange,” Percy Bysshe Shelley. More HERE.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here. Thanks to my brother Bob for sending the sea foam photos.
August 30th, 2007 9:11 am
WOW! Such great list! Thanks for sharing:)
Mine’s Up to!
🙂
August 30th, 2007 9:18 am
I try not to be but am very angry that the slam poet or any other young man or woman died in Iraq last week. I am not dealing well with this war
August 30th, 2007 9:34 am
Thanks for the info regarding the word “wake”. I love discovering the origin of words. And thanks for the mention. As I am getting familiar with your blog, I’m wondering how you came to having Thursday 13. Why 13 and not 10? Any significance or just what came up as a random number?
August 30th, 2007 9:45 am
So sorry about Scott Kirkpatrick, I’ll keep his family in prayer. Your dad sounds cute with his sneezing. Awesome ocean pictures and who knew John Lenon would want to emulate Elvis in dress?
August 30th, 2007 10:06 am
I enjoyed reading your list. Those pictures of the foam are wild! And thanks for that info on the origin of ‘wake’.
Happy TT!
August 30th, 2007 10:06 am
June, you can click on the 13 Thursday Headquarters at the bottom of my post and learn more about it. It’s a meme that was started by Leanne at Artist by Nature (on my blog list). She has since given it up, but others have carried on, and it has grown to include many bloggers who play along. A meme is described as a contagious kind of thought. In this case it’s a a way for bloggers to connect with each other by posting the same game on the same day and visiting each other. I mostly do them because I like to tie random bits of things together that I don’t want to do a whole post about.
August 30th, 2007 10:12 am
Awesome. It’s always interested me about the evolution of punctuation. Music has punctuation too. At one time, someone had to invent the rest.
August 30th, 2007 10:26 am
Another fine 13, Colleen. I sometimes get so sidetracked by following your links that I forget to come back and comment! You always do such great “research” for all of us to enjoy, thanks!
August 30th, 2007 11:02 am
The picture under #9 are incredible!! what a strange phenomenon! Thanks for the explanation on #12, the name makes sense now! It’s called “velatorio” as referring to many candles (“vela”) because the dead was surrounded by them…
Your home-made energy food sounds great. I carry granola bars because I need a snack between breakfast and lunch. I try to avoid it (to save calories!) but sometimes I just need it to get rid of nausea feelings, I feel instantly better after I eat something…
My son has allergies and sneezes very, very loudly. I’ll make sure not to mention what your father used to do, lol!
Happy thirteening!
August 30th, 2007 11:17 am
OMG! Those pictures. Would you let your kid in that? I wouldn’t….all I can think is scary things are in that foam.
We watched that 60 minutes report. Scary Stuff.
I did not know number 11. There are so many ways we could take care of the planet and ourselves in a kinder way. SIGH!
#4: I cannot stand to think about all the creativity that is dying on the battlefields. Breaks my heart.
August 30th, 2007 11:30 am
I love your T13s, I always either learn something new, see something new (although I COULD’VE done without #2, Oh, Johnny, what WERE you thinkin’?) and think of something in a new way. I’ve always wanted to be cremated and my ashes scattered by friends, and reading #11 cements that decision.
August 30th, 2007 12:11 pm
What a great list, Colleen – as for that John Lennon jumpsuit – I think it should have stayed on Elvis!
And I do think there’s more chance of us drowning before Planet X gets here. As for wakes – the Irish really know how to do those in style!
August 30th, 2007 12:29 pm
this was a great list! full of neat stuff! the sea foam is crazy and #8 cracks me up….sounds like something my dad would do, too.
i’d like to know how you make your peanut butter balls…i love them and so does my son.
August 30th, 2007 12:32 pm
Mix all the ingredients I listed to the right consistency, form them into balls and roll them in sesame seeds. They are delicious and nutritious!
August 30th, 2007 12:44 pm
What an informative and eclectically thematic TT! Thank you for this.
August 30th, 2007 3:25 pm
I have never seen anything like that foam before in my life! AMAZING and a bit scary too…..God knows what is in that…I mean Germs and such….! Sorry, but that’s where my mind goes these days,….! It is BEAUTIFUL in a way though, isn’t it?
August 30th, 2007 4:03 pm
All I could think about while John Lennon was singing was: Imagine the sweat pouring down his skinny frame under that leather jumpsuit, with all those hot lights above. EWWWW
August 30th, 2007 4:14 pm
I sort of remember this period of John’s dress and I was hoping he wasn’t going to go the way of Elvis. I wonder if Yoko picked it out. It made me wonder, was he playing for the Queen? At least it was pink. I can’t imagine Elvis in pink.
August 30th, 2007 4:42 pm
So nice to catch up with you by reading one of your Thursday 13s. Always so much to enjoy.
Your peanut butter balls sound like a great idea that I may just borrow.
August 30th, 2007 6:18 pm
That ocean was UNREAL! Never seen anything like that. It looked just like snow!
I’ve wondered ALL my life how the heck “wake” got it’s name and WHY. NOW, I know….lol
August 30th, 2007 9:13 pm
In the wee hours of this morning I finished reading Zecharia Sitchin’s 1990 book Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up with Ancient Knowledge, which has a slightly different take on Nibiru. Okay, after 17 years Sitchin may also have a different view. How interesting that you posted this video as part of your Thursday Thirteen … today! … on the day I’m pondering the very same thought.
Yes, global warming may get here first, but what do you think of Planet X (Roman numeral X = 10)? Sitchin thinks it will be more like “the gods” revisiting our planet after the long trip around the sun … OUR sun … because he thinks it is the 10th planet in our solar system. He was counting, of course, Pluto which is no longer officially a planet.
How did you run across this video, Colleen?
August 30th, 2007 9:58 pm
A friend sent it to me in an email and asked me what I thought. In the past I have read from several different sources about predicted apocalyptic events slated for this century (The Mayan calendar, Hopi prophecy, the photon belt). Some moved to Floyd during the back-to-the-land movement in the late 70’s prompted by Edgar Cayce’s predictions of an earth pole shift and VA being a safe area. I decided I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened or if it didn’t happen. I do think we are in for some devastating changes related to earth changes (the rate that the polar icebergs are melting is concrete evidence of that) which is one reason why I do try to live with some degree of self-sufficiency, having land, water, growing food and learning how to preserve it.
We seem to be on a similar wavelength.
August 30th, 2007 11:16 pm
That was a pretty incredible 13 — and the ocean foam is unbelievable — absolutely wild!
Michele sent me,
N.
August 31st, 2007 12:32 am
Hi Colleen,
Well, you know my love and affection for John — but I have no excuse for that red thing he’s wearing. Maybe Yoko made him wear it???! And I also cracked up about the tortoise being dropped on the poor guy’s head. Guess they didn’t have toupee’s back then!!
August 31st, 2007 9:52 am
wow, that is some freaky way to go. I did not even hear about Planet X, so I am like you, more concerned about melting then colliding
August 31st, 2007 11:29 am
10 isn’t funny, except that it is. 4 and 5 are interesting. Always look forward to new poems from you.
August 31st, 2007 2:10 pm
thanks for the recipe….then do you refrigerate them or keep them at room temp?
August 31st, 2007 2:57 pm
I keep them in tupperware in my pantry if I’m going to eat them fast enough because I like them best at room temperature. But in the summer when it gets hot they should go in the fridge because they sort of melt and then re-harden and are not as good.
August 31st, 2007 5:04 pm
My husband is the only person I’ve ever met who actually says ACHOO when he sneezes. And every time he burps, it comes out sounding like, “Buuuuuurrrrrp”. It’s very strange.
Did Sylvia Plath ever actually use Hughes in her name? If so, I’d forgotten, or never knew.
September 1st, 2007 12:27 am
The epitaph site was interesting. I’ve actually been to several of those graves in the two Forest Lawn’s (near me).
The peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal balls sound divine. Why didn’t my mother know about these?
~S
September 1st, 2007 3:24 pm
To read my thoughts about Planet X and Sitchin’s book, go here:
http://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2007/08/genesis-revisited-by-zecharia-sitchin.html
September 2nd, 2007 12:24 pm
#9, who knew that seaweed excretion was such powerful stuff? Maybe they should start putting it in bubble baths, or adding it to lattes.
September 3rd, 2007 1:02 pm
# 3 I can relate too…funny!