This Has Already Not Ended Well ...

from Esquire's Charlie Pierce who says what I've been thinking and says it 100 times better:

The sawhorses were comforting because the events of the past week are now getting fed into a number of gigantic maws, none of which are likely to do the rest of us any good. They are being fed into the big media maw, with speculation now completely rampant as to what launched the Tsarnaev brothers on their crime spree. While Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was still at large, with a few notable exceptions -- coughNewYorkPostcough -- big media went out of their way to appear responsible. Now, though, with the younger suspect on a respirator at Beth Israel, all the shackles were off, and we spent the day hearing wild speculation of what may have been behind the murderous doings in and around Boston last week. The events also are being fed into the maw of big politics with the federal government invoking the "public safety" exception to the Miranda ruling in connection with a 19-year old who is, at this moment, breathing through a tube and who, anyway, by all the evidence available at this moment, appears to be still little more than Dylan Klebold with a funny name and a pulse.

Women of a Certain Art: Shelley Hainer

We are all many things; not all at once and sometimes not for long.  But some things that we are, we are.  I moved to New York when I was 37.  I thought of moving there for years, and though it wasn't an inevitable migration; when I did in 1990 I knew I'd come home.  New York is the people I know, the artists I worked with and the friendships we made.  I'm here, they're there still doing the work.  I celebrate my friends.

Today I share Shelley Hainer -- poet, headhunter, seeker, dancer, actress, impresario.  She founded Bamboo Jacket in 2008.

Saturday Poetry: Feet (an excerpt)

Next thing I know he said,

Girl, I need a break.

I called Mother right away:

You got to help me out.

What she sent me was a pumice stone

wrapped in a brown paper note:

                Scrub all ten of those toes.

                The shingled, smarting soles.

                Scrub them like I once cleaned your clothes

                In a washtub

                filled to the top with so much lye

                it was foolhardy to breath through

                my nose.

When I could slide pantyhose on

by the count of five

I called him to say

I want to talk.

I'll meet you wherever,

If you want, halfway.

When I got there I sat down

making sure that he saw me

slice off my shoes

giving him a nyloned glimpse

of my crimsoned toes

while they tickled my instep and

caressed perfectly rounded heels.

Gold heels, browned,

like freshly baked loaves

of bread for the starving man.

In Between Bouts of Math Proofs

I quilt.  Quilting is to me what cooking and eating is to Foodies.  An obsessive passion.  If I had all the world and time this is what I'd be doing with much of it.  So, I got one done.  It's small -- about 3' x 3', created to cover the front door window:

Photo courtesy of Cuthbert.

Life's Precious

Just ask anyone who knows their's is ending in a few months.  They'll tell you.

It's spring:  Trees and people have sap coursing through their veins.  I fall out of my bed in the mornings and there is daylight of which I'll never get tired.  (At my funeral I want Bobby Womack singing, "Daylight Has Caught Me Up Again".)

Guess what I've been doing?  Parallel parking.  No seriously, I do math like a bad driver parks.  Over and over and over again until I ram something into the space and the bumper in front of me and the bumper in back of me be damned.  Aaaargh.  In about a month It Will All Be Over.  Got a take home to do today and my goal is to be finished with it before the sun sets or before Cuthbert sues me for loss of marital companionship or some such phrase one uses in divorce.

Bloggers Gotta Blog ...

... or not which only partially explains the lack of outrage/commentary about anything on what is definitely God's Green Earth (and I can send my winter jacket to the cleaners).  It's spring.  Taxes will be due.  Death is not far behind once this year's bill gets determined.  I do nothing these days except trim my beard and mustache (oooooh, perimenopause that continues for 12 years introduces one to all sorts of delights!) and crack my skull trying to prove the following:

A ∩ (A U B) ≡ A

and I am almost at the point of Who the Hell Cares?  Typical this-semester-is-dragging-on-and-I-am-so-tired-of-spending-all-my-time-studying blues.  It's spring.  I got fever.  It's that simple. But, were I writing here's what interests me:

1.  The Atlanta public school cheating indictments and the future of NCLB-fueled educational policy
2.  The commemoration of the onset of the 2nd Iraq War
3.  The New Pope, same as the Old Pope
4.  The long odds of getting a job after 50 years of age
5.  and last, but not least -- the political changing of the guard in New Haven.

But, I'm not writing, so that's as far as those ideas get for now.  Won't make any promises except that after this course has had its way with me, and after I pass this emm-eff so that I can pleasepleaseprettyplease enter graduate school and go through this All Over Again, and after we've filed our taxes and I've scraped my libertarian husband's brain off the ceiling, well, I'll be writing more.  'Cause you know me:  I won't be cooking.