mitchell_hart, the creator of Inkscrawl (which is now in the capable hands of rose_lemberg and samhenderson), is launching a new poetry zine



Submissions guidelines here

NPR has had a series of reports from Mongolia over the past four mornings; I've caught bits and pieces of them. I really enjoyed this morning's segment, about Bat-Erdene Badam, who raises cashmere goats (along with sheep and camels) in the Gobi. His daughter attends college in Ulaan Baatar, and one of his sons works in a coal mine. Bat-Erdene's life is a mix of elements that seem worlds away--living in a ger, with rugs spread for flooring and an iron stove for heat--and elements that seem familiar, like his motorcycle, cell phone, and satellite television.

Story link here; links to the rest of the stories in the series here.


A veterinarian rides in on a motorcycle to check on the family animals
(photo by John W. Poole/NPR)


Amin-Erdene Galkhuu pumps well water ... and blows a bubble
(photo by John W. Poole/NPR)

Traveling Salesmen

Have you ever had a traveling salesman (or woman) come to your abode? What is the strangest thing a traveling salesperson has ever tried to sell you? Did you buy it?

I can recall one time, a traveling encyclopedia salesman came to my abode. I didn't by any encyclopedias. Another time--this one I tell people a lot--when we lived in Japan, a traveling miso salesman came by. I bought a giant thing of miso.

Young Flash Mob

Last week we went to have some coffee at the ice cream store (which, if you think about it, is kind of funny). All of a sudden, a classroom's worth of kids materialized in front of the counter, ordering ice cream--and then just as suddenly, they vanished.



...And then they reappeared! And this time they had music, and they did a dance! It was great.

They are glowing red beacons, one here, one there, leading into the woods.

"That kind of flower doesn't like shady places," says Magnus, frowning. Magnus and Kelsey's parents run a landscaping business.

"They're growing in sunny patches," says Kelsey, pointing at the splashes of sunlight.

"They're not wildflowers, either," Magnus says, turning one of the blossoms so that it looks him in the face.

"Then I guess somebody planted them," says Kelsey idly. Over there, another one. The kids follow the path the poppies mark out.

"Sometimes flowers escape from the garden," Gwen says. Her dad told her that. Who wouldn't like to escape into the woods, everyone thinks--everyone except Ryan, the final member of the foursome. He's down with the escape part, but not the woods part. Woods equal mosquitos and poison ivy in Ryan's mind.

"These flowers know where they're going," Kelsey says, as the four of them thread their way through ferns and over rotting logs. Kelsey's in the lead.

"We're probably in the state forest by now," Ryan says. Their adventure started in the woods behind their houses, but all the kids know those woods back up against the state forest. "Keep in sight of the shed," Magnus and Kelsey's parents always say when they go out back. "Don't go so far you can't hear me if I call," Gwen's dad says. Ryan's mother never says anything to him about not wandering into the state forest; she doesn't need to.

And here is a pool of bright sunshine, a place where there are no trees standing. Instead there is a little house, surrounded by nodding red flowers.

"Here's where the flowers came from!" Kelsey says, turning round to face the others.

"Is it a real house?" Gwen asks. Something is not right.

"It can't be a real house; it's not connected to anything," Kelsey says, waving her arms expansively for connected to anything.

That's what's wrong, thinks Gwen, no driveway. No road.

"It's not a hunting cabin," says Magnus, stating the obvious. The little house is built of pale green-brown wood, unpainted, but its door is bright red, and on either side of the door are windows with lemon-yellow shutters.

"Maybe we should leave," says Ryan.

The door opens, and yes, a woman comes out. "Hello children," she says. "Thank you for accepting my invitation. Won't you come in?"

The other day I found myself unaccountably irritated by an online persona that I felt made false claims. Wakanomori, Little Springtime, and one online friend got to hear me fume and rage, the lucky ducks. Eventually, with coaching and encouragement, I took deep breaths and got over it. It’s the Internet, after all.

But this morning I was musing on identity claims again. Consider the following hypothetical scenarios:

The Firefighter

A blog by an operations section chief of a fire management team in British Columbia. This blog chronicles wildfires and firefighting operations and features photos. The blogger is actually a librarian in Los Angeles, who has never been involved in forest management or firefighting. She’s done the research, and the information about wildfires and firefighting is accurate, but the events she describes are invented.

The Computer Expert

A blog by a sixty-something retired computer programmer who has worked for both Apple and Microsoft. This blog explains things about computer software and hardware, talks about new advances and developments as they occur, and provides answers—with a dose of snark—to simple questions. The blogger turns out to be a twenty-six year-old call center employee. He really knows his stuff; his answers and information are accurate, but he is entirely self-taught and has never worked in the computer industry.

The Foster Mother

A blog that chronicles a mother’s experience fostering, and eventually adopting, an HIV-positive child. The mother already has two children; the blog entries talk about family dynamics and issues relating to fostering, adoption, and HIV, and feature lots of self-reflection. The blogger turns out to be a father with two healthy children, neither of whom is adopted. The facts about HIV--and about fostering and adoption in the father's state--are accurate, however.

How do you feel about these bloggers? Does one bother you more than the others? Does one bother you less than the others? Why?

The song of the wood thrush: it’s entrancing, enchanting--and nourishing? Consider the case of Brian Blessing, the new music teacher at Powell Middle School. Maybe being a music teacher had something to do with it, or maybe not. Maybe it would have worked out the same for you or me, if we’d been in Brian’s position (God willing, we’ll never be in Brian’s position).

And that position was, bundled into Allan Wilson’s car, with one of Allan’s brothers on either side of him, headed for the spur of track that serves the sawmill. There Allan intended to make Brian understand, in a visceral way, that it was a bad idea for Brian to flirt with, let alone go out to dinner with, Allan’s ex-wife Marnie, who taught seventh grade in the classroom next to the music room.

Just when it was seeming that assault and battery might progress to homicide, a police car turned onto the sawmill access road, spooking the Wilson brothers, who shoved Brian into a decrepit shed beside the tracks and took off.

Back in town, no one knew what had happened to the music teacher, and as for Brian himself, even when he managed to find his way back to consciousness, he couldn’t muster the strength to lift himself up, and his broken jaw and cracked ribs precluded the sort of loud hollering that might possibly have caught someone’s attention, if they had happened to be walking along the spur line behind the sawmill.

So Brian lay in that shed all night, and all the next day, and the following night, and the day after that. No food, no water. Several times a day the shed shook as railroad cars loaded with lumber rolled from the spur line to the main tracks. The rest of the time, Brian could hear the sounds of the sawmill’s operations--and birdsong. From before the sun rose, cardinals and song sparrows, catbirds and starlings, robins and orioles. And the wood thrush. Adrift in a sea of pain, Brian clutched at the wood thrush’s song. It soothed his wounds and thirst like springwater; it filled him and satisfied him like bread.

Finally, five days after the Wilsons had grabbed him, Brian was discovered, a delirious wreck, so the medics first assumed, when Brian tried to tell them how he had subsisted on thrushsong, and yet at the hospital the doctors confirmed that he was not dehydrated. His blood sugar levels were normal, and there were no ketones present. Very strange, everyone agreed.

Brian was never quite the same after that, and I’m not talking about the limp. I’m talking about his diet. He’d always bring a sandwich to school for lunch, often something from Subway. But during the green months, from May to September, if you caught him at home in the early morning or around suppertime, you’d see him sitting outside, facing the trees, an empty plate balanced on his knees and an empty mug in his hand, listening to the wood thrush.


photo by Lloyd Spitalnik

I tell you, my friends list contains some incisive essayists. barry_king defines society, colonialism, and culture to explain where we find corrosive tensions and where we find fruitful ones. Essay is here

ann_leckie has a wonderful extended metaphor in story form to explain how it all works: entry here.

The bullfrogs are twanging, like bass rubber bands, in the wide, still drainage ditch by the supermarket. Their big heads poke up from the muddy water.

All along that ditch, broken trees are in thick leaf, because even when a tree is as broken as this...



...it can still make leaves and flowers. Here are the flowers of the broken tree photographed above:



And here, some fairy glamour from the meadow...

Remember the houses made of Emily Dickinson's words? Well, it seems I will be able to interview their creator, so watch this space!

Meanwhile, I was back at his website, and I found a list of all the quotes. Wonderful treasure. With rearranging they could make a renga...

• Morning without you is a dwindled dawn
  
  
• Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door
  
  
• The soul should always stand ajar
  
  
• One need not be a chamber to be haunted
  

There are some surprising quotes that must come from letters rather than poems. I liked these:

• I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
  
  
• Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

This one on death makes it sound like an adventure:

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Then too, there are aphorisms for writers and other creative types:

• The Possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination.
  
  
• Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned.
  
  
• Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

And this I loved:

Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.