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April Come She Will
April come she will When streams are ripe and swelled with rain; May, she will stay, Resting in my arms again June, she’ll change her tune, In restless walks she’ll prowl the night; July, she will fly And give no warning to her flight. August, die she must, The autumn winds blow chilly and cold; September I’ll remember. A love once new has now grown old. ~Simon & Garfunkel, April Come She Will. Listen. God, I really do love them, and the poetry of their lyrics. It’s April already…how did that happen? Not sure. But April makes me think of this song, and of my mom, since her birthday is…
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Happy 14th Birthday, Maya!
Maya is 14 today, so obviously this picture is an oldie but a goodie. I have been thinking about the difference between those times when she was a preschooler, and these times, getting ready for high school next year. Sometimes I miss those times, because she was so sweet and said some pretty funny things sometimes, and if only I had had a blog then….but these times are wonderful and special as well. Watching her grow from a little girl into a teen, not too long from now into a woman…it’s amazing. Seeing the things she’s interested in, that I never was. Seeing the things she doesn’t really care about,…
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The Good Thief
Ren is a twelve-year old, one-handed orphan, living in 19th century New England. He was left at a Catholic orphanage as an infant, pushed through a wooden door in the gate one rainy night, and spends his time wondering who his parents are, why they left him here, and if he will ever be adopted. The gate was hinged to open one way – in. When Ren pushed at the tiny door with his finger, he could feel the strength of the wooden frame behind it. There was no handle on the children’s side, no groove to lift from underneath. The wood was heavy, thick, and old – a fine…
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Coconut and Lime Macaroons
(This is NOT a photo of my macaroons. I found this picture on Foodnetwork.com, here. My macaroon recipe differs in that it does not call for any dairy, and it is frosted with a delicious lime icing and pistachios as well. Pretty good stuff. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture. Oh, right, because my pictures rarely come out the way I want them to.) My friend Cherry is planning to have a baby in about 6 weeks, so we decided this last weekend was a good time for a baby shower. Baby showers have come a long way from the horrid bets about how big your stomach…
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Breaking Her Fall
One summer night in July of 1998, Tucker Jones drops his 14-year-old daughter, Kat, off with her (slightly older) friend, Abby, in front of a movie theater. But the girls meet up with a group of older boys, one of whom is Abby’s boyfriend, Jed. Jed’s parents are out of town, and he invites the girls back to his place for a party. The party is big and gets out of control, and a few hours later, Tucker receives a phone call from the parent of another girl, telling him that Kat has been drinking shots, has gotten naked, and gone into the pool house to give oral sex to…
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Friday Randomness
Diving right on in here… I am sick to death of TVs every-damn-where. (If you’re not supposed to split infinitives, you’re probably REALLY not supposed to split a word in half, but I don’t care. Sue me.) I hate going to restaurants where they have a TV set up, and it’s happening at more and more places. Some decent places even. Not that Carls Jr is what I would call a decent place, but really? TV? And California Pizza Kitchen, and so many other places. There was a nice pasta place down the street, and they put in a big TV, and then it closed. Wonder if the TV did…
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March Forth!
Today is National Grammar Day! To celebrate, I’m freely cribbing a list of grammar myths from Grammar Girl, for your enjoyment. Full credit to Grammar Girl, though I might add a few comments here and there… Grammar Girl’s Top 10 Language Myths: 10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. Wrong! They can actually be quite short. In a run-on sentence, independent clauses are squished together without the help of punctuation or a conjunction. If you write I am happy I am glad* as one sentence without a semicolon, colon, or dash between the two independent clauses, it’s a run-on sentence even though it only has six words. 9.…
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Linguine with Herbed Shrimp
(photo found at a yummy cooking blog, Kevin at Closet Cooking, along with a really yummy looking recipe for a different shrimp and pasta combination. I tried to find a picture from a cookbook or something, but none looked anything like what I made. I should have taken my own photo, clearly. This looks similar, though mine had tomatoes.) My mom gave me a great cookbook years ago, Pasta Fresca. I think that was when Ted and I first moved in together in 1990. It is one of my very favorite cookbooks, partly because I love pasta, and partly because the recipes are all delicious. When cooking with recipes, my…
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Day After Night
The nightmares made their rounds hours ago. The tossing and whimpering are over. Even the insomniacs have settled down. The twenty restless bodies rest, and faces aged by hunger, grief, and doubt relax to reveal the beauty and the pity of their youth. Not one of the women in Barrack C is twenty-one, but all of them or orphans. Their cheeks press against small, military-issue pillows that smell of disinfectant. Lumpy and flat from long service under heavier heads, they bear no resemblance to the goose-down clouds that many of them enjoyed in childhood. And yet, the girls burrow into them with perfect contentment, embracing them like teddy bears. There…
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At The Cusp of Woman and Black
February is Black History Month, and March is Women’s History Month, so here at the cusp I’m going to repost an oldie from my early days of blogging, about my personal hero, Harriet Tubman. Originally posted April 13, 2006. In yesterday’s post, which was a meme of six weird things about me, I mentioned that my personal real life hero is Harriet Tubman. I admire her for her grace, her courage, her determination, and her strength of conviction. She was a woman who wanted freedom, and found a way to attain it…once she had tasted the sweet flavor, however, she determined that she must free others, so she went back…
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Sunday Morning Randomness
My heart goes out to the people in Chile, in light of the 8.8 (!!!) magnitude earthquake that hit there this morning. 8.8 is HUGE. The largest I’ve felt was 7.1, later downgraded to 6.9, in October of 1989 in San Francisco, and I seriously thought we might die. So 8.8? CRAP. The difference in initial death estimates between this earthquake and the Haiti earthquake speaks to infrastructure and building code, I think. Meaning? Money. Countries that aren’t dirt poor have a better chance of surviving huge catastrophes than countries that are dirt poor. Same as it ever was. Um, what about the trainer who was killed by a killer…
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Healthy Choices
I recently read a book that I thought might be good for the parents of any teen. Especially girls, but boys as well. It was recommended to me by a friend, who was particularly impressed by the section on how dieting does NOT work, and that especially in teens who are still growing, it usually leads to the body ‘resetting’ at a higher weight. So teens who diet are likely to end up weighing more than they might have otherwise. Any teen thinking about going on a diet might think twice if given this information. This books appears to be mostly common sense, but completely against what the consumer culture…
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Strange Fruit
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs[/youtube] Strange Fruit Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. I had never heard this song before, nor did I know the story behind it. I was listening…
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Gung Hay Fat Choy!
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Mavericks
Down near Half Moon Bay (yes, very close to where we took the girl scouts to the beach a few weeks ago, but under totally different conditions) there is sometimes held a ‘Big Wave’ surfing competition called Mavericks. This year the waves appeared to be right, so the elite big wave surfers voted to hold the competition, and it was on, February 13, 2010. HUGE waves, 50 ft, which is five stories tall. You might think that if waves are going to be that big, people might stay away from the shore, but a couple of hundred people were swept off of their feet on Saturday morning, 15 of them…