13: You Are HERE
1. We talk about our chickens almost as much as we talk about our grandkids, which is why I found THIS rant about how chickens are a gateway livestock very funny.
2. Ever since we lost two chickens to a vagrant dog last week, I check the remaining ones every time they make a peep or every time my crocs squeak and I mistake it for a faraway squawk.
3. It was my eldest son Josh’s birthday yesterday, which reminded me of something I posted in 100 Things About Me in 2005: “Being mother to my sons, Josh and Dylan, has been the highlight of my life. Marrying my husband, Joe, has been the reward of my life.” Watch a happy birthday video to Josh I made with Bryce and Liam HERE.
4. I am compelled to write poetry but I often forget how to do it and feel like the farmer’s daughter who had the task of spinning straw into gold.
5. I ask myself, if Oregon poet William Stafford could pull off writing a poem a day, why can’t I write even one a week?
6. Stafford was a WWII conscientious objector and teacher who died in 1993. His practice of writing a poem a day resulted in about 20,000 poems, of which about 6,000 were published. When his students complained that writing a poem a day was too hard, he would say, “Lower your standards.”
7. The first step to writing poetry is to stop and just be. But doing nothing is sometimes harder than doing something which is why my dharmacratic poet friend Will says, Don’t just do something, sit there.
8. Verve is more than nerve like zonk is more than conk.
9. I may use a computer more than ever before, but paper and pen is still my first language.
10. An Escher-like stairway to nowhere HERE.
11. I think they should pipe in THIS soundtrack or THIS one when people walk the stairway.
12. Portland poet Judith Barrington calls the daily writing habit “the little daily dog eager to be let out.” I have been known to call it “feeding a fickle already fed cat.”
13. See our hens in happier times HERE.
Post Note: The above photo was taken at an art gallery in the Wedge Building, while Joe and I were visiting Josh in Asheville, NC. __________Thirteen Thursday
July 11th, 2013 4:33 am
Enjoyed (as always), CR.
I finally managed a 13 of my own this week. Whew.
Additionally, Re #4 (forgetting how to write) and #9 (pen vs keyboard), I posted this earlier in the week:
http://rlavalette.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/critique-esque/
Ciao!
July 11th, 2013 4:49 am
As always, your T13 is filled with many varied things…. Some very good….and some not so very good—So sorry to read about those two dear Chickens….
I loved when you said you talk about your Chickens almost as much as your Grandsons….lol! I actually can understand that, my dear….!
July 11th, 2013 7:00 am
Those hens do look very happy. I’m sorry to hear about the vagrant dog. Has the attack upset their laying?
July 11th, 2013 7:14 am
Writing every day is a necessity, I think. When I don’t do something pertaining to writing, I know it. It’s like the slip of a knot in my soul.
July 11th, 2013 10:00 am
I have an Escher reproduction in my “office”. LOVE! My neighbor has chix and I enjoy having coffee with her on the deck and listening to the “girls”. She has had issues with raccoons and foxes this year. She trapped the coons but is at war with the two foxes.
July 11th, 2013 11:03 am
a poem a day is a matter of refusing to not do a poem a day. I’ve done it by plan for 6-8 months at a time. it’s brain training for cultivating better self as much as meditation or walks.
July 11th, 2013 12:17 pm
I’d say a poem a day and then work on the same one for a week or more!
July 11th, 2013 2:02 pm
I feel exactly the same way about my family. My life is marked before and after dh.
July 11th, 2013 3:34 pm
Sorry a stray dog got a couple of your chickens. Is the dog still around, or did someone catch/claim it?
July 11th, 2013 3:51 pm
I never saw it kill them but have seen it in the yard and chased it away several times. It (or something) killed another one yesterday. Now I can’t let them out to free range. Poor dears. We live in a rural place where dogs sometimes roam free. This makes 5 hens lost in a year’s time (three suspected to be from the dog) not a good record.
July 15th, 2013 8:23 am
I read this TT on my vacation and was unable to comment. Another Great TT!