MATT TANNENBAUM'S BERKSHIRE IDYLLIC ~

When next in the Berkshire hills — Lenox, Massachusetts to be exact — stop-in at one of the better small town bookshops and meet a pro at work: kept small, kept shiny.

RONALD BAATZ ~

Winter grass

finds its

own style

After many years

I bump into an old lover

and we look at one another with

the shock of two shrunken heads

in hell









All night long

over and over

the owl asks who

left the oars

in the boat








Putting a

bowl of water

by the river

to allow stillness

to have a say








So extreme —

this hill of

bug bite










A young man

watching blossoms falling

is an old man when

 they reach

the ground









Broken cup

still capable

of holding rain










A dragonfly

more beautiful

than Europe










Crows —

always just

back from a funeral

___________________

Bird Standing

Ronald Baatz

Blind Dog Press

12 Larool Street

Tamworth, NSW, 2340

AUSTRALIA

POSTCARD 42 ~

Lost Arrow Spire

Yosemite National Park, California

Yosemite mountain guide and party on

Lost Arrow Spire. Once "the impossible peak",

the thrilling summit may now be climbed safely

with a skilled guide.

photo by Ed Cooper

PETER LAMBORN WILSON ~

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/06/art/hakim-bey-with-jarrett-earnest

Portrait of Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey, 2012.
 Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.

JIMMY THE VOICE ~

JIMMY SCOTT  |  1925-2014 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/arts/music/jimmy-scott-singer-whose-star-rose-late-dies-at-88.html?hp



I just wrote this on the Birdhouse comments to my good friend Mike Luster, and then couldn't live with myself, or go to bed, before putting something up for this sweet singer.


"Mike,

Just heard Jimmy Scott passed away at 88. The stunning singer, interpreter, vocal genius. We're just too busy right now on the road with errands and long travel bouts to get anything correct in place on the Birdhouse for Jimmy Scott the master. I'll make up for this, and him.

all's well, B."

SUBCOMANDANTE MARCOS ~

Monthly Review Press

1995

RUBY TERRIFIC ~

RUBY DEE | 1922-2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/arts/ruby-dee-actress-dies-at-91.html?_r=0


http://variety.com/2014/film/news/oscar-nominated-actress-ruby-dee-dies-at-91-1201219148/

THE RETRO MAN CAVE ~

(Wisconsin)

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/travel/john-waters-on-hitchhiking-across-america.html?hpw&rref=travel

 (Arcade)

(Chicago)

(Ecco)

"We humans have always defined ourselves by narration.  What's happening today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our stories for us.  The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform.  Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow sociology, and insidious lies.  Individualism is bad for business  --  though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent.  And yes, it's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism."

Tom Robbins

Robbins is a direct descendant of Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

Think about that a moment.

 recommend all

THE ANNIVERSARY TRUCK ~

THE ANNIVERSARY TRUCK

This whole odyssey of looking for a new truck started two weeks ago. Before that, we were a couple watching our 25 year old (1989) Toyota truck come to its end. Regular road-use end; we still have plans in the woods for the old warrior. We bought the original truck, our 4 year old son Carson with us, from the Keene, New Hampshire Toyota dealership, and we kept it as a loyal family companion all these years. Truck grew old, marriage grew with it, and now we're 40 years married together and an easy enough reason to call the new truck purchase we want a "40 year wedding anniversary.” So be it.

We start the hunt for a new truck. Knowing little about what is currently out there.

We haven't bought anything new in the vehicle department for 25 years. We've been driving hand-me-downs all that time around the ’89 truck, beaters to get in out of town, but when driving a long distance we've rented a vehicle for an excursion. While the Toyota pickup has aged, and its capability to serve for a long secure drive lessened, we've picked up the rentals and have had a short string of mechanics dealing with the beaters, but this has now grown old. We've lost the mom & pops rental agencies that made renting a kick and a blast and cheap enough to do, and we've likewise lost the faithful old-timer mechanic with a bell on his door when we walk in. The mechanic who was there to work when he said he would be. We're facing a changed world of fly-by-nights, shady mechanics, wheeler-dealers, and suddenly everyone thinks they are worth $90 an hour. Let's take the 40 year anniversary impetus and get rid of the rental agency hustle, and dump the shady mechanics into one oil drum, buy a new truck and try to get back to a world done right. It's possible. Plus we've been saving all those 25 years since we bought the ’89 Toyota for a new vehicle.  No loan, no lease, no borrowing, clean.

We start off, knowing very little, by looking at a Ford F-150, used, cheap, but we can see it's falling apart, rotting at the seams. It only has 50,000 miles on it, 2003, suspicious already with those numbers not quite adding up, body tumbling, shiny on the outside/rotting on the inside, and the dealership is talking about having it mended and undercoated for us overnight. A nightmare. We run away.

Across the street another dealership is selling one of the notorious Toyota pickups with the suspect frames, same time period as the F-150. 2005. Very high mileage. Susan takes a look while she is in town but I'm not interested.

One or two days at this rigamarole, and there was other tomfoolery but I'll spare you, we head back to the Toyota dealership where we bought our ’89 Toyota in Keene, New Hampshire. The dealership has since moved up the road, been expanded immeasurably (the corporation also owns Honda and Subaru dealerships) and it looks very solid. We've lost some of the key elements at the dealership we once knew and we're fond of, like the foreman in the mechanic crew — a good guy we met during a dicey situation with the '89 truck out of his work crew and he handled it beautifully and professionally. We had taken the truck over for service work and it was picked up by Susan with an unknown at the time gas leak. The other work was accomplished fine but the gas leak was undetected, and there was the long drive home to Vermont from the dealership for Susan, through road work, machinery, sparks etc., with this unknown gas leak. By the time she returned home, now with a migraine from the gas fumes, we noted the leak, the danger, called the dealership and met Mike Bresnahan, the best kind of fellow you'd want to meet in this sort of scrape. He drove all the way over from the dealership personally that day and we figured things through. He admitted the mistake was from his end, and he did his best to square up with us both the economics and our future with Toyota. He had the good sense to know there was a future to maintain. This attitude and solid character is precisely what we search for in a relationship, any relationship. It comes before money or any salesmanship; it's the backbone of a reputable company. Any reputable country. Any reputable individual.

So now Mike has retired, or at least retired from Toyota and moved northward to a new location, and in fact it’s his dream spot and new home and from what I hear he's still got his hand in with servicing vehicles up where he lives. I'm happy for him. He used to share with us his plan to one day retire to this location with his family and maybe it's happened for him. I like hearing he's still helping people with vehicles because he's very good at it. At his old location in Keene Toyota, where we are now returning to, I only hear good things about Mike.  From the sales folks to mechanics. We're about to meet the sales folk and mechanics, and there's one of the original mechanics there from 30 years ago and he remembers us and plans to take care of things. You'll see.

So with the prospects for a used F-150 out of the way, we're quickly moving aside a used Toyota pickup because of the so-so body frame, and despite the steep price to the new trucks, it's starting to look like the direction to move in. We've now been at this a few days. We have visited a half-dozen dealerships with new and used vehicles, our eyes pinpointing more and more at Toyota. There happens to be an employee at Keene Toyota by the name of George Thompson whose phone number we’ve stumbled upon, and lucky us, because George takes the time to introduce us to Fenton Auto Sales with the care of hand-shaping pottery — he doesn’t have to, nobody has to, but he does. We're getting around in our 2001 Subaru Forester. When we get to the dealership our car is the crummiest one in the parking lot. Kind of funny. Kind of dawning on us.

We've stretched our wings now from Northampton, MA Toyota, up to Greenfield, MA (like night and day as far as the management: you get slick in Northampton and a little more down-home in Greenfield), we also receive a general manager on the floor of Northampton you want to avoid. He may be making the sales and numbers for the bosses, but he's horrendous with the public. We haven't met the hidden away manager in Greenfield yet, but we’ve met Mike Dubour, a salesman. He's been there 25 years. Easy going with all the get-up-and-go of walking that extra mile with you, he's eager to find us what we want. We like him and his energy, but we're still fumbling through the roster of Toyota trucks: do we want the access cab, regular cab, or now the 4-door; how about the off-road, definitely not the Tundra: it would never fit down the alley way woods roads we chopped out 40 years at home in our woodlot fit for the smaller '89 Toyota pickup and the Willys jeep we used to draw wood and haul fieldstone for our work. Toyota is thundered with "packages,” so there's lots to learn. We fuddle now between dealerships and the two best, by far, are Greenfield Toyota (MA) and Keene Toyota (NH).  Keene is where we bought the '89. Its scope and rise has been a large success over the years since we've been away. Both dealerships worked on our '89 pickup truck, but the truck was mainly worked on at Keene. On a cool late May day we happened to wander back over there and just happened to buy a 2014 FJ Cruiser. Don't ask me how, except I used to pull wood out with all sorts of jeeps and Land Cruisers in the 60s & 70s, always loved jeeps, owned and worked for years the '57 Willys (now rotting away in a corner of the dooryard back at home), liked very much the look of this new one; the model was about to be discontinued by Toyota (more of our fate — what we seem to like, goes away) and we weren't leaving the dealership without it. Bought it.

It can be done. In a few long days of research and doing our homework.

It also helps a great deal to personally get to know the staff at the dealership. At Keene Toyota this is possible. We knew no one when we arrived — two days later when we leave we know — let's count it up: at least four sales people, cashier, mechanic bunch, business manager or two, and as soon as you walk in the door at the dealership there's a fellow who knows to greet you having watched you paw around out in the warm sun parking lot for over an hour and he wonders if you'd both like a cold bottle of water? He'll get the bottled water for you.

We'll spend six hours one day looking for our truck and this outfit will make sure during this time it is indeed special. This is plain fact. Look around at the other salesmen's desks, it's busy, other couples are also being treated sort of special. In the long run this is better than money. Even better, it stretches straight back into the large garage where mechanics are tooling away. It's Mike Cushman who you look for back there, 30 year veteran, New Hampshire boy, he takes our new vehicle and treats it with kid gloves. You can't even believe the shady mechanics you've met and tolerated in your past. They all disappear right before your eyes when you're with Mike.

If you think this is a sales pitch, I feel sorry for you. I'm a stonemason in the woods who cares next to nothing about automotive mechanics. But I know stone and stone is like a Land Cruiser is like a good and knowledgeable mechanic is like a business staff that can communicate and move some parts of the whole mechanism for you is like a success story. End of story.

We need a second vehicle, but we're loyal, and we'd like to give Greenfield Toyota the business if we can. Mike, the salesman we first met at the start of our journey a week earlier is there, and we started off with Mike after a dreadful visit with Lia Toyota in Northampton. Keene is ideal but their trucks are priced a little too steep for the second vehicle and Mike seems to think he can muster our plans for us. What Susan likes about him — and it's always important what Susan (or any companion) likes — is when she talks to Mike over the phone seeking a vehicle, Mike is already surveying the Internet and Toyota inventories, the possible draw from dealer swaps, digging and rooting out what he can while he talks with us and gradually moves dreams into ideas and plans. Keene will do this for you with their eyes closed, too; it's just we were stuck loyal to New Hampshire for the first vehicle and we wouldn't leave them until we had it, and we feel the same about Mike. Otherwise, it's a putrid, sorry business and nobody's having fun. That "sorry" part is about to meet us in Greenfield, hang on.

So Mike swiftly finds the vehicle we’re after from a Berkshire hills dealership, where I was born and raised, so we like this good omen. We drive down to Greenfield immediately to have a look at the truck. It has 44 miles on it. Our New Hampshire purchase had 73 miles. You can't get much more 'brand new' for a wedding anniversary gift. We begin to talk with Mike over price and options and we end up with a very fair price. It all looks sealed and now he has to take the figure to the business office, the dreaded business office, where knuckles are cracked. We wait.

Out comes the manager from the business office. We meet and greet and then start to crunch numbers and comparisons from other dealerships. This fellow wants to at first please. Whatever magic has been performed by Keene Toyota with our first vehicle package (remember Toyota's packages and dealership packages: it's where they make their bread & butter), this fellow would like to match . . . he can't quite, but he comes close . . . add in Mike's hard work and hustle, plus dedication to us, and we agree to purchase the vehicle. Susan has a lifetime of employment as a secretary and book-keeping experience and is keeping extensive notes. What anyone is saying, Susan is writing down. I'm listening to everyone from the ground up. We tell Mike we're very close on a decision but we first want to head south and climb Sugarloaf Mountain where we think the best when in this region and we'll be back before closing time for the truck. We leave a deposit with Mike, and he's probably wondering what in the hell it is about this mountain.

In less than two hours we're back; we've also managed to fit in some grocery shopping. Susan hasn't said anything to me but she's already feeling something is growing ominous. I'm feeling all is moving ahead. Probably because I asked Mike about the possibility of finding a welder in his garage and he took the time to take me out to meet Andy, one of the mechanics, and like Mike Cushman back in Keene Toyota, Andy's a good guy. Ready to talk. Ready to help. You see I'm still working on a chance to get my '89 Toyota pickup back in shape with a welded rear frame. Not for road inspection. Just to keep as a firewood and stone hauler in the woodlot at home. Maybe Andy can assist us from where he is and where my truck is stuck (water pump and clutch are momentarily shot), so we put our heads together, he’s helpful, and blocks the short conversation up with good advice. Has it stuck in anybody's head yet that this good attitude and grace is better than money? The guys that do it, know it is. I want to believe the corporate owners at Greenfield and Keene know its value.

Unfortunately, the business manager at Greenfield doesn't get it. Here's the scenario:

We've worked some days with Mike on a vehicle purchase. He's basically been patient with two novices learning the ropes of Toyota's new products. He's listened to our silly, but sincere plan, for a wedding anniversary vehicle gift. He's taken seriously our finances and figures. We thought we had everything ironed out with the business manager and according to Mike, we have. Deposit left. Mountain climbed. Groceries in the back of our old Subaru. We've returned obediently a half hour before closing time to mint the deal and write the final check. Now watch this part people: the business manager shows up and changes his tune. In his bravado to chase and meet the terrific warranty from Keene Toyota, in our earlier meeting when he agreed to an 8 year/125,000 warranty "bumper to bumper" extended package from Toyota, which almost equals what Keene has offered, in the very last minute — the difference of $180.00 — this guy is actually ready to stop the sale if we don't agree to an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty package. Even his dealership brochure shows "8 year/125,000 mile" warranty and he's quibbling over $180.00. In Susan's notes she had written down when the business manager spoke of the "8 year/125,000". I heard him say this.  He quickly admitted he did say these figures but didn't mean to! Not seeming to understand that EVERYTHING everyone is saying are facts toward a solution. A purchase. A sale. We go home with the truck, they keep the bags of gold. The world goes round.

Then he makes a bigger mistake by saying, "I'm not lying and I'm not saying you're lying."

Lying? Who's talking about lying?

I correct this mendacious comment and remind the man "lying" is never a word one brings up in conversation with any customer, or any transaction. What we have here is a misunderstanding. I'm also starting to register the ominous and creepy crawly prospects (what Susan sensed) of a professional actually wanting to railroad a perfectly fine transaction (Mike's in the background listening with his sorry head dropped down) either because he thinks we got too good of a deal, or else he has personal prejudice with the likes of us: two people wanting to buy a new vehicle from Greenfield Toyota. I'd actually like to have the owner of the company sitting with us right about now listening to this all going down. All over a mere $180.00. I mostso would like the owner there when the business manager finally gets frustrated and says, "I don't think I want to sell you the truck."  And then he forecasts and projects even further, “I don’t think you will be happy with anything.”

He doesn't think he wants to sell us the truck? I can't imagine why not, unless he's troubled, because we're about to write a pretty big check. Imagine days of work by Mike, Bob and Susan. A swap taking place by Mike who had the truck driven over the hill & dale of the Mohawk Trail, in the rain, to his dealership. Our money is good and the deposit is down. We had Greenfield Toyota install a new clutch into our '89 pickup years ago; we have a solid record of maintenance with this dealership. A logger buddy just bought a new Toyota pickup this spring, and I asked him who he dealt with: Mike. I took Mike's name. Other neighbors have their new Toyota pickup serviced in Greenfield, they like the place. The word of mouth is rampant and friendly. The only person not friendly is the business manager, who for some unexplained and last minute psychotic reason doesn't want to now sell us the truck. And he feels we won’t be happy about anything. We’re the very same people who have been working the last two weeks with many people, at two different dealerships, on landing two vehicles and have already written the check for this second one. What’s happy got to do with it? We walked in happy! The clock is inching up to closing time. Friday. If you're the owner of this establishment, keep reading because this is what is going on.

The business manager now decides to stand up and walk away; he leaves us, abandons our prospects on this note. Nice huh? I want this vehicle for my wife and she's sitting beside me sick to her stomach watching and listening to this guy. I don't want to get Mike in trouble but I have to believe he doesn't know what in the hell is going on either. I'm not moving but I'm also not watching a lot of hard work and negotiation that was fair and honest get shot to ribbons by an arrogant individual. Mike's going to lose this sale because a business manager can't live up to his word on an "8 year/125,000 mile warranty package" that we've accepted, paid for in full, on this man's decision two hours earlier? I'm supposed to leave without the truck I bought for my wife as a gift? It's come to this?

No, what it’s come to is this — it has nothing at all to do with money or miles. We’ll never drive 125,000 miles in 8 years. Not happening. Our 1989 Toyota has 192,000 miles on it and the oil still looks like grade B maple syrup dripping off the dip stick. It’s never been black. It doesn’t matter that the water pump and clutch are shot, the truck is still very much alive. We’re loyal to the truck. Hell, we’re still loyal to the guy we bought it from 25 years ago and 12 years after that he was out of sales and we ran into him at a photocopy shop making small posters for his current yoga teaching class. Life is bigger than any money, although money is going to buy this new truck, and so is a bright and fraternal attitude from a business manager and an entire business department.

If you’re at Keene Toyota right about now peering in to this fiasco you’re saying to Bob & Susan: “We told you guys to stick with us.” We know, we know. But we have trouble with loyalty and Mike’s been very good at trying to drum up this truck, so we stuck by him and took our licks. Learned the hard way. We stuck with Keene and will stick there again.

55 years ago I met a gentleman by the name of Sweeney who was a colleague of my grandfather and father, both lumbermen in the Berkshires, and all the lumber company's trucks were Fords and Chevys. Sweeney was their insurance man and banker, and he may have been related to the Sweeney who once owned and operated Sweeney Ford where this Toyota dealership is now located in Greenfield. There's some hollowed ground here. A handshake was a handshake. Not only does this business manager think he has the power to "not sell [us] the truck" in the last minute, he walks away! And by the way, please keep note, he never clarified or apologized for these punk, rude acts.

In the closing minutes of a work day we hung with Mike at his desk and we're left to piece together a selfishly busted apart puzzle. What a rotten spot to leave any customer in.

And, a second “by-the-way” — and curiously — tell me that the unfinished and large plastic and tarpaulin blowing haunted half-built new garage, left dormant at Greenfield Toyota, isn't a symbolic showcase for a dealership that could do better? This is why we're throwing our very small shoulder into the company's direction. It's positive. They’re right down the road from us as the crow flies. We say, help out the little guy and all that. Our salesman is one of the good guys working with care; the mechanics we've met are on the up & up; so what's happening in the spooky middle ground with management?

My wife and I don't at all appreciate the bum's rush and outright personal assault by a business manager who left us high and dry, twisting on a rope, and then — just as mysteriously, and arrogantly — changed his mind and went ahead and approved our sale like it’s all been a personal whim. A game. This is sadistic stuff. Unprofessional by a mile. Way too easy to read.

I advise the business manager to take a page out of Steve Hill’s sound managerial book over in Keene. You’re all “Toyota” — learn from one another why don’t you!

As my wife said on the ride home with the truck — thanks to us holding our ground for fairness — while at Keene Toyota you get for the time you're there to buy a vehicle, and you damn well get your vehicle, it's a magic carpet ride. At Greenfield Toyota, it's a jail break.

It's a shame. But thanks, Mike, Andy at Greenfield Toyota. Thank you all at Keene Toyota.

Bob Arnold

7 July 2014

 

GENERAL ORDER NO. 9 ~

Robert E. Lee

Confederate General Robert E. Lee issued his Farewell Address, also known as General Order No. 9 to his Army of Northern Virginia on April 10, 1865, the day after he surrendered the army to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Lee's surrender was instrumental in bringing about the end of the American Civil War.

Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, 10th April 1865.

General Order
No. 9

After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources.
I need not tell the survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them.
But feeling that valour and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you his blessing and protection.
With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.

— R. E. Lee, General, General Order No. 9

http://www.generalordersno9.com/

http://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/39660/

DESCENT ~

John Haines
Descent
CavanKerry Press
Fort Lee, New Jersey

After the book dealers scarfed a book sale, pushed into their boogie corners with their stashes, counting and mounting their hardware, the scanner-monkeys with their hand scanners and adding up the treasures, I found this book left behind on one of the tables. It was inscribed to Scott Walker, John Haines publisher once upon a time at Graywolf Press. It was then fully signed by the author on the full title page. It was a fine and dandy presentation copy.  We were all in a high vaulted gymnasium on a Friday morning, plastic sheeting covering the hardwood floor. I had read everything by Haines, or so I thought. Somehow I had missed this book from late in the poet's life. Essays. Some reviews. A few endearing memoirs.

 It was a lucky day.

[ BA ]

 

POSTCARD 41 ~

"Lunch Break"

Basil Rathborne, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre,

Vincent Price,

Hollywood 1962

photograph by Allan Grant

GERARD BELLAART ~

once in vermont films © bob arnold

ANDREW SCHELLING ~

For the Birdhouse dozen readers or so — and you know who you are — let's not beat around the bush: this is the book you want to read, want to own and want to do what I am doing: promote it. The essays are mainly western USA based, with one long adventurous foray away from the west and into Sweden and the Nobel Prize for the author's father, and the author is family oriented in just the right way for the essay — of the father — to be the last word. There are other fathers, wisdom fathers, in this fine shaped book from deep forest seekers and inhabitants, to Jaime de Angulo, east India mystics, poets and similar seekers, other poets, and even a time out to discuss awhile baseball. Babe Ruth was a poet, and if you don't think so, then his name was poetry. 
Please read the back cover blurbs shown above, they mean well.

MICHAEL HETTICH ~

The Measured Breathing



And so I understand, at least for a moment,
how something and nothing can sometimes be reversed,
as I understand nothing: The black in a crow's wing
works like my deepest sleep when I wake
beyond mere self, that black like the waves
lifting their shoulders in a sudden swell of memory
or just a sudden swell. If everything we needed
were real, those delicate yellow-bellied birds
might fly through this thicket without brushing anything
and I might come home to a house full of absence
and meet all the people I've loved, sitting there
in the bodies they had then, but stuffed now with straw,
propped up and grinning. As my body too
is stuffed with dry grass, which pokes through my clothes.
I was hungry and you fed me — just enough to survive
until I was only what I am now, disappeared
into the music behind all this sound,
as the trees are connected to the trees of their past
through roots and branches and leaves — without thinking
anything we'd ever recognize as thinking,
anything we'd recognize: a place beyond this air.

Michael Hettich

Systems of Vanishing

University of Tampa Press

2014

for more Michael Hettich at Longhouse

please go here ~

http://longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/search/label/Michael%20Hettich

DRAGONFLY ~

Back Road Chalkies

photo © bob arnold

PATRIZIA CAVALLI ~

Two hours ago I fell in love

and trembled, one tremble still,

and haven't a clue whom I should tell.

(translated by Mark Strand)







Don't count on my imagination, no,

don't count on that, I won't preserve you,

won't put you on the shelf till winter,

I'll open you now and swallow you whole. 

(trans. Geoffrey Brock)








Just hearing a verb

that sounds true to me

I feel my blood spurting

towards salvation. Like coming home

and finding the merciful fresh sheet.

(trans. David Shapro & Gini Alhadeff)







Oh really, she's with somebody?

So she's with somebody.

Is she really with somebody?

I guess she's with somebody.

So she is actually with somebody?

Well then, she is, she's with somebody,

so you're saying she's with somebody?

Okay, then, she's with somebody.

(trans. Mark Strand & Gini Alhadeff)







Here I am, I do my bit,

though I don't know what that may be.

If I did I could at least let go of it

and free of it be free of being me.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)







Lame pigeon. Ridiculous

lame crooked pigeon.

When they have defects animals

suddenly resemble humans.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)







How sweet it was yesterday imagining I was a tree!

I had almost rooted in one place

and grew in sovereign slowness there.

I took the breeze and the north wind,

caresses, blows — what difference did it make?

I was neither joy nor torment to myself,

I couldn't detach myself from my own center,

no decisions, no movement:

if I moved it was because of the wind.

(trans. Jonathan Galassi)







It's all so simple, yes, it was so simple,

it is so clear I almost can't believe it.

Here's what the body is for: you touch me or you don't touch me,

you hold me or send me away. The rest is for lunatics.

(trans. Gini Alhadeff)

Cavalli was born 1947 in Todi Umbria and resides today in Rome. 
She has published six collections of poems. 


______________________

Patrizia Cavalli
My Poems Won't Change the World
(Farrar 2013)

DAN SNOW ~

Dan Snow is a New England builder of stone walls and stone structures, also well known in the British Isles where he has practiced his trade.

This is the second of his two books on the trade, lush with landscape photographs from job sites, and both books are mandatory reading for the stone crazed one, builder of anything, seeker of the improved spot on earth.

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTION 2014 ~

It wasn't going anywhere until Cat Stevens showed up and sounded like he had never left. The sincerity he spoke of his mother, and then his father, was quite moving in the supposed hotbed of sex drugs and youknowwhat. Then there was too much Springsteen, but a deserving nod to his spirited E Street Band. Finally, we got to a beat-up and perfect tribute to Nirvana, with its rainshadowy songs sung by a crew of women musicians from Joan Jett (right on the money) to a stage flopping Kim Gordon in a great dress & shiny boots, oz-haired Annie Clark, and closing with pink suited New Zealander, Lorde.

 That made me look toward Monday.

annie clark

JIM RINGER ~

Jim Ringer

Go out any where now, I dare you — cityscape, small town, village, pathway, dirt road byway, alley, bike path, motorboat, jet ski, swimming wharf, canoe, park bench, work field, train car, train rail, train yard, foyer, hallway, elevator, stairway, windowsill, schoolyard, parking lot, driveway, grass levee, and you're likely to see, now or one day soon, the people and presence of everything said and sung in this song.

 I can't imagine anyone singing this song as well as Jim Ringer.

Born 29 February 1936, Yell County, Arkansas, USA, d. 17 March 1992, California, USA. In the mid-40s Ringer’s family fled the poverty-wracked Ozarks in hope of a better life elsewhere. After a brief stay in Oklahoma, the family settled in Clovis, California. From his parents, Ringer learned folk songs and traditional music. By this time he could play guitar and he also sang. In his teenage years Ringer drifted, got into trouble with the law, and later married, had two children and then separated from his wife. He played and sang folk and bluegrass, working in bars around Berkeley and Fresno and he also toured for a period with an ad hoc folk band. He then settled into a job at Sweet’s Mill, a folk music camp near Fresno, California, where he was with Kenny Hall And The Sweet’s Mill String Band. This was in the early 70s, which is when he also made his recording debut with both Hall’s band and under his own name. Also at this time, he signed with Philo Records and met singer-guitarist-songwriter Mary McCaslin. From the mid-70s, Ringer and McCaslin worked together, she was also a Philo recording artist, and they married in 1978.

Among songs Ringer composed are ‘Waitin’ For The Hard Times To Go’, which has been recorded by the Nashville Bluegrass Band, ‘Open Door At Home’, ‘Good To Get Home’, ‘Rachel’, ‘Tramps And Hawkers’, the latter recorded by Tom Russell, ‘The Band Of Jesse James’, ‘Dusty Desert Wind’, ‘Tulsa’, ‘Linda’s On Her Own’, ‘Still Got That Look’, ‘Any Old Wind’ and ‘Rank Stranger’. In the early 80s, Ringer switched labels but although his first release for Flying Fish Records gained cult status his career was undergoing a difficult time. So too was his marriage and by the end of the decade he and McCaslin had separated. Ringer’s health was poor and he had a serious problem with alcohol. After the divorce, he returned to Fresno, apparently making no more appearances during the last few years of his life, although he did compose at least one song during this period, ‘If I Don’t Miss You’, which McCaslin would later record.

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin