Beach, But

After Remarkable Creatures, I really wanted to find fossils, so we decided to day-trip to Petoskey. It turned out that Scout and Huck weren't allowed on the beach, so we picnicked in the woods and took turns going to the beach. 

I called the warden who gave me directions to a "dog-friendly beach" in Harbor Springs... but that turned out to be mostly marina, huge houses, and Betsy DeVos lookalikes. So we turned around and came home. Actually, the kids were  ready to do that once the picnic had been had :D. 

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Did She? Didn't She?

I took the day off today, found a magazine I hadn't read yet, and gave it a read.

Some of the news seemed... a bit off, so I checked the cover and realized that it was from 2015. 

2015!



Anyway, there was this article about Amy Poehler, at the very end of which she talks about wanting to take up drums in 2018.

That's this year... which is almost two-thirds gone. I want to whisper to her: Do it! Do it! You can do it! There's still time!








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The End

Is it the end of Sunday? I've done nothing all day but work on something I was supposed to have finished nearly a month ago. I guess I might have actually felt like I accomplished something if I had met my deadline. Instead, this is just reminding me that term will be upon us soon, and there are still so many OTHER things I have to finish.

One good thing I'm happy about today is that I signed up to work with the poet Doug Anderson one-on-one. The other good thing may be the gnocchi-primavera I invented for dinner from the pantry/veggie drawer.

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How Full is Your Basket?

I know about toddlers + laundry baskets 

but these two much older ones

thought this was the height of hilarity

for nearly half-an-hour this morning.

I was giggling most of the time too, 

but who knows if I was just relieved 

that they could dress in their rooms

rather than by the washing machine.

(Kidding; it was awesome.
The title is from when Kindergarten Nu
told us to consider: "How Full is Your Basket on Kids"
her misremembering of this thing she'd heard at school.)

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Keeping up with the Klansmen

Nu and the puppies stayed home, but the other half of of the family, went to various showings of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman. It is a thing of beauty from the way the title is spelled to the tongue-in-cheek super troll move of having Topher Grace play David Duke.

At went with his old H.S. newspaper editor/boss/prom date in the afternoon, and Big A and I headed out later in the day where I had a brief moment of "if someone was going to shoot up a movie theater this weekend, this would be a the one." I did have to take a 15-minute break in the bathroom because it's tough to watch the banality of racism up-close and uninterrupted, but the end was sweetly satisfying.

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"One whale mom/ did all our crying for us"

Paul E. Nelson: Elegy for Tahlequah's Calf

These are the stories the children of our
children will tell if there are storytellers
in their time. How we slept at the switch
ignored the clear signs of doom, how we
were scholars of war & good tweeters

had nice dinner photographs and saved ourselves
from Muslims, immigrants and every vague
threat the cruel majority could conjure
while the world burned and one whale mom
did all our crying for us.

Paul E Nelson
9:24am – 7.28.2018

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Muse

I imagine entering bodies:
kissy     wormy     secret
tendrils bloody, tender,
cobwebbed.

Rejection gathered like:
skirts  breezes  friends
smiling achily, saying
farewell.

Still until creation erupts:
caves      calls      papers
becomes melody, menace,
practice.

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