Love For Junie B

Does that classroom look familiar?

It's Room One from the Junie B. Jones books! The boys have been fans of Junie B. since Kindergarten. Sure, she overuses the words smelly, stupid and dumb but she's really a funny character. Especially when she's brought to life in theater. We loved watching Jingle Bells, Batman Smells back in December.

In the first Junie B. book she gets locked in the kindergarten building after school. I can remember reading this book one night to Thomas when he was in kindergarten and as I was turning off the light he said, "Mommy, I wish I could be locked in the kindergarten building with Mrs. D." (Mrs. D was one of the very young and pretty kindergarten teachers at his school.) Cute! Of course, nowadays Thomas doesn't think it's cute at all--especially writing about it my blog--more like stupid and dumb but in the words of Junie B: a journal is where you write your life.

A Dinosaur Poem...I Think

This is Screature. Santa brought him for Nathan back in 2009. It freaked him out so much that it has been sitting on a bookshelf in my bedroom ever since along with a fake tarantula and a poisonous Shrek glass that we were supposed to return to McDonald's but never did. It's the scary shelf.

And now for a scary poem by Thomas that no doubt disturbed his 3rd grade teacher.

Dinosaur

giant reptile, instinct

moving, roaring, drooling

hunt, kill, kick, jolt

killing, shooting, blasting

dangerous, hurtful

machine gun.

The Passion Continues

It's been awhile since I've posted but I didn't want to miss posting my usual Good Friday verse. You know, Dr. Seuss wasn't just concerned with the way words sounded but he also paid close attention to the way they looked on paper. I like the way this verse from Hebrews looks on the screen...like great drops of words. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!

Keep your eyes on Jesus,our leader and instructor.
He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross
because of the joy he knew would be his afterwards;
and now he sits in the place of honor
by the throne of God.

If you want to keep
from becoming
fainthearted and weary,
think about his patience
as sinful men
did such
terrible
things
to
him.

After all,
you have never yet struggled
against sin and temptation
until you sweat
great
drops
of
blood.

--Hebrews 12:2-4

Snow. A Poem.

Today it was 70 degrees but last week there was snow. Lots of wonderful snow. Perfect for heading into the woods and shaking trees. I used to love doing that when I was a kid. However, it's all fun and games until the snow starts seeping down your coat and then it's time to head in for hot chocolate.

Today's poem is by one of my favorite poets...that kid up there in the red toboggan.

Snow
White, fluffy,
Falling, hunting, running,
Snow falls from clouds,
Snowflake.

I'm Still Working On That Will Power Thing

When I was growing up I remember loving the Frog and Toad books. The one where Toad had a dream that he was on stage doing all these amazing things and Frog was in the audience getting smaller and smaller...oooooh, that was a scary one. And the one where Toad baked the most awesome cookies ever and they had to learn about will power by not eating them...so funny. Even nowadays when my sister and I are eating cookies we will often say in our most convincing Toad voice, "We. Must. Stop. Eating. These. Cookies!"

Last year when my mom was having a yard sale I was rifling through some items and there it was--Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel. What was left of it, anyway. The pages were yellow and it was missing its cover--front and back--as well as the first few pages. A beloved part of my childhood going for 10 cents! Thankfully, my mom let me have it for free:)

Where I'm From

That's my husband when he was a little boy. He left the cowboy boots behind but does carry a gun to work everyday. Maybe he's not exactly the Wild West sheriff he dreamed of being but a city cop is pretty darn close. He never dreamed of going back to college either but at age 33 that's exactly what he's doing. He's taking this semester slow--just one class, Composition I--to see how much he can handle with his work schedule. Eight weeks in and so far he's gotten perfect scores on all 9 assignments (a wife can brag a little, right?). So for today's Poetry Friday spotlight I'm posting a poem he wrote for a recent assignment, the Where I'm From writing exercise.

Where I'm From by my husband, WD

I’m from fishing on the river bank under a willow tree;
leaves blowing in the breeze.
I’m from dressing up like a Wild West sheriff
and mounting a large flower pot shaped like a mule
and chasing invisible rustlers into the sunset.

I’m from staying up late fighting heavy eyelids
and watching Star Trek episodes,
waiting for my father to return from working second shift.
I’m from making trips across the river
to a neighborhood fish market;
watching the owners pet chimps play for hours.

I’m from spending endless hours with my father
sitting on a levee watching rail cars move back and forth
in a rail yard,
asking time and time again where they came from
and where they’re going.
I’m from visiting my father at work and enjoying a Zero bar
and chocolate milk in the break room.

I’m from camping with my grandparents for weeks at a time in the summer,
waking before dawn to help my grandfather check trotlines,
and playing Skipbo with my grandmother all evening.
I’m from a time I dearly miss but can never return to.
A time traveler headed ever forward into an uncertain future,
missing lost loved ones that I’ll never see again.

I’m from taking my wife and sons’ hands
and traveling farther into the great unknown without regrets,
together growing old;
the best IS yet to be!

"To Remember And Rebuild"

Nine years. I can't believe it's been that long. Unbelievable and unforgettable. I just thought I would pass along the complete poem that VP Joe Biden recited at this morning's memorial at Ground Zero.

The Builders by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.

Number 17

Look at me, posting on a Friday night. It's past my bedtime but I just HAD to do a post on the brand spankin' new poet laureate of the USA: W.S. Merwin.

The announcement came yesterday so I began looking up some of his stuff online. It's good stuff, too. Turns out the 82 year old Merwin has racked up bookoos of awards including 2 Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. So now he has a year to further the cause, to expand our minds, to get us all to appreciate the written and spoken word, you know, to make poetry totally cool. Kind of like what I try to do here on Poetry Fridays, ha!

Anywho, here's a wonderful poem by the 17th U.S. Poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin, called For the Anniversary of My Death.

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star...(head on over to the Poetry Foundation to continue reading.)

Another Toothless Wonder

My Little Pup loves corn on the cob. This is an old picture, taken a few years ago when he was 3 years old. Look at that long, beautiful blonde hair! Now he's 6 and the long hair is gone but he still loves corn on the cob. This past Sunday he was almost in tears because he couldn't eat any--his loose tooth wouldn't let him. But look what happened yesterday...

...he lost his first tooth! And for his pain and suffering resulting from having to eat corn off the cob he got a dollar:)

And because this is Poetry Friday, here's one of my favorite poems and it's even tooth related:

The Usual But Meaningful

It's Good Friday. A day of fast and abstinence. I'm trying hard to focus on the Lord's Passion and not my growling stomach. On Friday's I usually post a poem that I find meaningful but lately I haven't found anything that meaningful AND in the public domain. Except for my usual Good Friday verse from the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. With an unknown author and an estimated composition date of 63 AD, I think I'm safe from copyright laws. Have a wonderful Easter!


Keep your eyes on Jesus,
our leader and instructor.
He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross
because of the joy he knew would be his afterwards;
and now he sits in the place of honor
by the throne of God.
If you want to keep
from becoming fainthearted and weary,
think about his patience
as sinful men did such terrible things to him.

After all,
you have never yet struggled against sin and temptation
until you sweat
great
drops
of
blood.

--Hebrews 12:2-4

"Nevermore" Times 5

Back in October I had planned to post a poem from Edgar Allan Poe after the people of Baltimore had a funeral for him in memorial of his death on October 7, 1849.

But I never got around to it.

Then I planned to once again post a poem from Mr. Macabre to celebrate Halloween that same month.

But I never got around to it.

And then I planned to post a picture of some birds in my backyard after thinking, "ravens or not, this pic would be a great intro to a Poetry Friday post of 'The Raven'."

But I never got around to it.

Until now.

Edgar Allan Poe's birthday was last week--January 19 (1809)--the perfect opportunity to lay this Poe post to rest.

I'm going to pick up toward the end of the poem where Poe has been asking numerous questions only to have the bird answer "nevermore." Kind of like when Spongebob and Patrick had a magic conch shell and whenever Squidward would ask it a question, he would always get "no" as a response.

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Then Poe writes about 60 more words that basically mean "GET OUT!!" And...

...the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Cute Boys And Bad Poetry

T.S. Eliot was wrong. April is NOT the cruellest month. For race fans it's December and January--the only 2 months of the year that are race free. Remember back in November when Jimmie Johnson was crowned NASCAR champion? My 7 year old son cried while watching the Victory Lane ceremony. Seriously. He was so sad it was all over. At the time, February 14th was an eternity away. But now there's just a couple weeks to go until the start of the season and the boys are getting excited. And so am I. And I know this isn't 'Poetry Friday' but I just can't hold it in any longer...

December and January are the cruellest months,

breeding weeds out of the cracks of the cold asphalt,

mixing exhaust fumes with hope and anticipation,

covering idle engines with snow and ice.

(With apologies to T.S. Eliot and his poem The Waste Land)

Best Book Of 2009

Happy New Year!

The past few days I've been working on my my reading journal. Not only does it help me keep track of the books that I read, but it's nice to be able to read back through my reviews to remind me of whether I liked a particular book or not. My memory. Pffft.

So out of the 13 books I read in 2009:

The Associate by John Grisham
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
This Just In by Bob Schieffer
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (4 books in the series)

...the Twilight series was my favorite! And now I need to start my list for 2010 and I need some ideas. What was your favorite book that you read during 2009?

Open For Business

I love my dogs. All 3 of them. And even though they are forbidden to ever leave me, I know that sooner or later they will--I'm just hoping it's later. There's an area in the back of our property that I designated as the pet cemetery and I didn't expect to break ground in it for several more years. But last month, my sister called early one Saturday morning to tell me that her boyfriend's cat had died and they were about to pull in my driveway. I rolled out of bed, started the coffee maker, and went into the garage to search for a shovel. Studley was in a box along with the ashes of Billy's other cat, Nub. And they became the first occupants of the pet cemetery.

I've been bad about keeping up with Poetry Fridays but I wanted to share this poem by Sue Ellen Thompson. It's one of my favorites.

No Children, No Pets by Sue Ellen Thompson

I bring the cat’s body home from the vet’s
in a running-shoe box held shut
with elastic bands. Then I clean
the corners where she has eaten and
slept, scrubbing the hard bits of food
from the baseboard, dumping the litter
and blasting the pan with a hose. The plastic
dishes I hide in the basement, the pee-
soaked towel I put in the trash. I put
the catnip mouse in the box and I put
the box away, too, in a deep
dirt drawer in the earth...

(Click to read more)

Ummm...Can I Get That In Paperback?

The big news in Nobel Prize winning today is that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

BUT the literary world is all hot and bothered over yesterday's announcement that the Nobel Prize for Literature went to the German writer Herta Muller. Some say the committee is too Euro-centric, some say the winners are too obscure, some say what about Stephanie Meyer, hmmm? But I'm okay with their choice. The 56 year old, Romanian born Muller sounds like a great choice. Her tales mostly deal with oppression and suffering under Communist dictatorship. Actually, I'm kind of in to that now that I just finished reading Jung Chang's account of living in Mao's Communist China. Heavy stuff but very interesting.

I'm not quite sure how to get a hold of one her books, though, as Barnes and Noble is currently sold out of her novels. However, they are offering a used hardcover copy of one of her most well known works The Land of Green Plums, for $599, in case you're interested.

And I'm interested. But not $599 interested.

10/2/79. EIGHTEEN Seventy Nine, That Is.

Nope, it's not snowing here yet. It's a beautiful, breezy 70 degrees here today. I just thought I would post this old picture of my boys and their snowman after I learned that it's Wallace Stevens' birthday. One of the late poet's most famous poems is called The Snow Man and I think that this picture represents the poem perfectly.

There's Big Pup, on the left, taking a human perspective of snow: cold, miserable, unhappy, pessimistic, negative, etc. Little Pup, on the right, views the snow from nature's perspective: comfortable,beautiful, happy, optimistic, positive, etc. He is the snowman. He is nature regarding humanity as nothing while the "listener," the "human," regards nature as nothing. We are all nothing. And nothing is all.

Or something like that.

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

"Unconquerable Souls"

What a day. I'm finally getting around to putting up a Poetry Friday post. I've been watching the memorials and ceremonies and videos all day of 9/11. Eight years later and it's still unbelievable. And the footage from that day is still so hard to watch. I wanted to pass along the poem that was read this morning during the memorial at the Pentagon. It's called Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

To All You Nuts Out There

It's Friday evening--the official start of Labor Day weekend. I will be kicking it off with a rum and Coke in just a minute--er, a rum and diet caffeine free Dr. Pepper, that is. But first here's a short little poem for Poetry Friday. And while "Anonymous" never leaves good blog comments, he sure does know how to write a cute poem.

Don't Worry If Your Job Is Small by Anonymous

Don't worry if your job is small,
And your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak,
Was once a nut like you.

Have a great weekend!

"Nesting In Broken Spines"

We made our last trip to the library yesterday.

During the summer, Tuesdays and Thursdays are No TV Days. We go to the movies, visit state parks, play in the pool, dig out long lost toys that at one time they just had to have, and we also go to the library. When school starts next Wednesday the boys just aren't going to have the time to read for fun. So yesterday was our last visit to the library until next summer. And I'm hoping that in between now and then, the library will accidentally lose their series of "Walter the Farting Dog" books so I will no longer be forced to read them.

For today's Poetry Friday poem, here's Branch Library by Edward Hirsch

I wish I could find that skinny, long-beaked boy
who perched in the branches of the old branch library...more

Until Eternity

It's a sad time here at the Home of the Lazy Dog. My husband's Grandma Freeda passed away yesterday morning.

We are in the middle of doing all that domestic stuff that comes with saying goodbye--getting haircuts, trying on dress clothes to see if they fit, browsing through cookbooks for funeral food, packing a suitcase, and prepping the minivan for a 2 1/2 hour road trip. Stuff that you do during stories of her incomparable chocolate fried pies, camping at Lake Merrisach and her love for the Chicago Cubs.

I'm doing Poetry Friday a day early this week and spotlighting one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson that seems fitting for today.

(Poem #1078)

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth--

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.