Not too long ago, I took a flight from Frankfurt to Chicago just before Christmas. Apparently, the U.S. still has left over military bases around Frankfurt, quite a few in fact, just to keep an eye on those dreadful Germans. I got a chance to talk to a couple of America’s finest on the plane [...]
Archive for January, 2009
Poet Soldier.
Posted in current, historyish, places, tagged chicago, christmas, frankfurt, iraq, poet, soldier, sullivan ballou, the civil war, union, wilfred owen on January 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I had heard about hawaii.
Posted in favorites, short shorts, tagged baseball, childhood, hawaii, pineapple, sisters on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“Did you hear about Hawaii?” my father says. “What about Hawaii?” I say. I heard all about it last week, but tango on they say. “Your sisters are taking your old man on a trip!” “Oh yeah? You’re going to Hawaii with Caroline and Margaret?” They live in New York. Even I admit that it [...]
bikes and updikes.
Posted in people, short shorts, tagged bikes, peddle, updike on January 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I ride my bike a lot. Many people do here. There are the ones who peddle constantly, and there are the people who, like me, peddle hard with bursts and then glide the rest of the way. Peddle peddle glide… Peddle peddle glide… And I do this in every way in life. I work [...]
sleep to snow.
Posted in short shorts, tagged earl grey, snow, sugar on January 27, 2009 | 1 Comment »
She always woke at rain. She loved the energy of it. “Thunder always does what it does,” she would say. “Lightning too, without fail.” She listened to single drops as the sound delicately plunks down each of her vertebrae. She stays asleep though, at snow. God’s temperament changes as it chills. Soon she will awake [...]
Good Things Yesterday Late Afternoon
Posted in short shorts, tagged jed hawkins, pants, pay check on January 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Jed Hawkins woke up on Mr. West’s couch 20 minutes before Mr. West got home. Good thing, too, because had Mr. West come home 20 minutes earlier, he would have found his daughter, June West, asleep on the couch next to Jed. Jed would have had it coming, too, after that, what with the shotgun [...]
a wait.
Posted in poetry, tagged dusk, poetry on January 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
There was the time we were both laid off as they closed the restaurant, promising to give us two months pay to find something. We both took the news the same way, with a walk down the street to the tobacco shop. We both sat on the bench outside, rolled a cigarette each and smoked [...]
I like tall skinny eloquent Presidents from Illinois.
Posted in historyish, tagged britain, goodwin, lincoln, revolution on January 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Abraham Lincoln once said that a good story for him was better than a drop of whisky. For those of you have not yet joined the Doris Kearns Goodwin fan club, I wanted to share a story of Lincoln’s that she often recounts. Lincoln, of course, was known for his unparalleled story telling ability. He [...]
Boris the Boar.
Posted in people, places, tagged boar, castration, farm on January 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I had begun writing this post when the delivery came. I live with a family here in France and though all of my food comes from the local farmers’ market, the family gets a large delivery, eight or so full sized boxes, of processed food from the supermarket. There are yogurts and frozen pizzas and [...]
Because I got nothing else…
Posted in current, tagged inauguration, legos, obama on January 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I cried a lot today. Today was the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Hemingway/Fitzgerald
Posted in historyish, people, tagged fitzgerald, hemingway, jeremy, literature on January 19, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I have a misguided friend. He is smart, witty, funny and awfully cute, but tragically misguided. He recently posted on his blog asking the question of who exemplifies more perfectly the “American experience,” F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Miller Hemingway. He argues that Hemingway’s overly simplistic noun-verb structure simply will never be enough to bring [...]
