L'aura del Campo

May you have a long life and wrinkles? Sycamores.

Would you want to live to 200? Consider the wrinkles ! Not happy about U.S. detaining people contrary to Geneva Convention. I read a plethora of blogs ... not much else done. It's quite cool outside. 2 poems. Image of a whirlwind.

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███████          L'aura del campo
███████          SUMMER: 10 'Izzat (17 September)
███████          Weather outside: cool and pleasant.
███████          Weather inside: calming down.

'é a lua,  é a lua,  na quintana dos mortos'          
~    Federico García Lorca

How long should we live?

Our deaths are a blessing. It allows others to be born and experience the gift of life. We pass down what we can, but things change and new generations must change with them. How flexible are we at 30? At 50? Would we be better or worse at 200?

Our knowledge as a species expands and we consider this wonderful, but it is the wisdom we fail to impart that may doom those to come. And they will need this wisdom to face the challenges of a changing environment.

For instance, the Arctic is melting. Polar bears are starving. Islands are reappearing. Whether this is merely part of a cycle or a fundamental change we don't know and even those living 500 years from now may not be sure.

A link on Arctic warming: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060915/sc_nm/enviroment_arctic_dc

Aging may be wonderful, but wrinkles are only nice to a point. At 200 I'd be thankful to be too blind to see myself in a mirror.

Contrary to the Geneva Accord

I'm not happy to be living in a country that has little regard for Human Rights and personal freedoms. It is not acceptable that 14,000 are being held in prison with no charges, no lawyers, no recourse. If these were Americans in other countries, we'd be bombing them back to the Stone Age.

This is the link to a news article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060917/ap_on_re_mi_ea/in_american_hands

McCain, Powell, Warner and others are trying to correct this travestry. Personally, I think the commander-in-chief should be impeached for breaking the law if he continues to rule in this autocratic manner. Secret Prisons? Shit ... what Age do we live in to allow that!

Color me unhappy.

Cold? Think Caribean cruise
Temperature where I am: 62º on a pleasant evening.
Weather in Austin, Texas: 86º and flooding.
Weather in Bismarck, North Dakota: 41º and a wintry mix.
Weather in Adventdalen, Svalbard, Norway: 31º and windy.

IMAGES

Outside Hobbs on 7th at Mass.:

A whirlwind of price tags, red petals, pieces of plastic and assorted leaves: green, brown and yellow. They swirl then skitter, blow west then east on the northside of the stone building that towers over the southside of Seventh. An uprising of dust, of cigarette butts. Their ascent: a mini tornado of foam and feathers.

Around the corner on Mass.:

Bubbles blown by the breeze; red geraniums; a black circle stamped 'water'; music from Bloom above Rudy's pizzeria. Eamon walking his 'bus'.


MY LIFE

What life? I spent the whole weekend reading blogs. Stayed up til 3 a.m., until it rained. Need to be careful about getting enough sleep.

I did hear the bells ring today. Met Alex, a four year old who had heard our carilloneur play in-utero when his mother was visiting Florida. He went up to see the instrument and got to play!

I cooked rice-a-roni adding sliced chicken breast. I should cook more often. I watched t.v.! Saw 'The Full Monty'.

Sent a postcard of a hippopotamus to a friend. I really need to lose weight. BMI is c. 32.

FOOTBALL

Bills beat Dolphins in Miami. **doing the happy dance**

Jayhawks sucked against Toledo. Incredible mistakes! Got to watch it on t.v. once I remembered we have one . 'Ouch' describes it best.

And if you have never seen a blue football field:
http://news.boisestate.edu/beyondtheblue.shtml

POULTRY? YOU CALL THIS POULTRY?

A List of Five, if you must read what WDC raters consider my best :

"Zmitri" 
"'heart's home'" 
"Speak soft my name" 
"A radiant moon has set" 
"Clematis on the flagpole" 

Two sketches:

At Border's Café

In this hush, it's the noise
that annoys, the unexpected cough,
the siren of the sherriffs racing,
the voice that shouts across the room
to a spot where no one sits.
         It's this,
                             this silence
punctuated by the scrape of metal legs
against the tiled floor,
cold nails on chalkboard.
And it's the alarm going off at the exit door,
this voice inside me screaming:

QUIET!

         Silence.


                   ... hush ...

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No sycamores

At eighty-four,
my mother speaks of a sycamore
that fills her childhood,
dappled shade from leaves that grew
bigger than her head.
Her thread of thought
is climbing
and I stare in wonder
at the women who gave me birth
who took me to the zoo when I was eight,
who when she took a shower
from an elephant
just laughed.
At eighty-four,
she's more careful now
on her daily stroll to the corner store.
I sigh relief.
Along the path there are no sycamores,
no elephants,
no ladders.

[163.363]

BLOGVILLE

In order to do a column for the Blogville News, I've spent the weekend reading and commenting:

malaya mentions raising goats in the Phillipines and has some beautiful pics of her birds in "Invalid Entry" .

I like the way Lauren Gale took a cue from Mavis Moog and got out her crayons and colored her blog. "Invalid Entry"  is an inspirational entry on how she and her husband work together.

AJ wants U 2 meet The CanMan! reminds us of the devastation of name calling and bullying with a link to http://dontlaugh.org

obwan finally had the Fire Department burn the 100 year old barn down. Pictures in "The Barn is Gone" 

chalaedra is relieved to have a place to move into, but sultry may have to live out of her car with her dog Milton. I worry a bit about that. We are the same age and not getting any younger.

JoshCham has a magical entry about a monk "Last Entry on my China Stuff"  and a most wonderful photo in "More on the Monk" .

aamie put a new entry in but I came across an old one I liked from a year ago, an idyllic entry about the Ohio river in Kentucky, "Invalid Entry" . Same with AL about her memories of playing with kids, with her cat "Invalid Entry" .

onthebathroomfloor [stressed] has a tribute to his English professor worth reading "Dear Mister..." .

Also: chyna_doll, GoCartCherub- St Louis U , SueBear , Solitary Man , celestial, vcarce, Morty- Never Mind , Crys-not really here , Silver is 2 to the 5th Power , alfred booth, wanbli ska , liquidmirror, tahubley, Melissa is fashionably late! , AnnaFassbender , Scottiegazelle , vivacious , karabu, therealcrow, galinago, kelly1202, Molly , Darla is BAAAAACK! =D , Prosperous Snow celebrating , Wenston , tom , Silence and laurie_o. Who knows who I left out .

Finally:

Lady D is back and esperaza is back! But where is susanL ?

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Oaks are really hard. You have to get a boost into them. Sycamores are extremely easy. We like those. We don't do pines -- too many needles."

Andrew Flanery, Tree Climbers Club, Kansas University