Welcome to Saturday ...

open thread.jpg

“The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life. Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"
~ Robert Browning

Watch out for power
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you’ll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor’s part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for it will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love,
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes,)
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won’t be heard
and none of your running will run.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I’d pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.

I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted on leaves and know you’ll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
O special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

~ Anne Sexton, Admonitions To A Special Person, 1974

Good times and bum times, I've seen them all, and, my dear,
I'm still here.
Plush velvet sometimes, sometimes just pretzels and beer,
but I'm here.
I've stuffed the dailies in my shoes,
strummed ukuleles, sung the blues.
Seen all my dreams disappear,
but I'm here.

I've slept in shanties, guest of the W.P.A.,
and I'm here.
Danced in my scanties, three bucks a night was the pay,
and I'm here.
I've stood on bread lines with the best,
watched while the headlines did the rest.
In the depression was I depressed? Nowhere near.
I met a big financier,
and I'm here.

I've been through Gandhi, Windsor and Wally's affair,
and I'm here.
Amos 'n' Andy, mah-jongg and platinum hair,
and I'm here.
I got through Abie's Irish Rose, five Dionne babies, Major Bowes,
Had heebie-jeebies for Beebe's Bathysphere.
I got through Shirley Temple,
and I'm here

I've gotten through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover;
gee, that was fun and a half!
When you've been through Herbert and J. Edgar Hoover,
anything else is a laugh.

I've been through Reno, I've been through Beverly Hills,
and I'm here.
Reefers and vino, rest cures, religion and pills,
but I'm here.
Been called a "pinko-commie tool," got through it stinko by my pool.
I should've gone to an acting school, that seems clear.
Still, someone said, "She's sincere,"
so I'm here.

Black sable one day, next day it goes into hock,
but I'm here.
Top billing Monday, Tuesday you're touring in stock,
but I'm here.
First you're another sloe-eyed vamp, then someone's mother, then you're camp;
then you career from career to career.
I'm almost through my memoirs,
and I'm here.

I've gotten through "Hey, lady, aren't you whoozis?
Wow, what a looker you were."
Or better yet, "Sorry, I thought you were whoozis;
Whatever happened to her?"

Good times and bum times, I've seen 'em all, and, my dear,
I'm still here.
Plush velvet sometimes, sometimes just pretzels and beer,
but I'm here.
I've run the gamut, A to Z;
three cheers and, dammit, c'est la vie.
I got through all of last year,
and I'm here.
Lord knows, at least I've been there, and I'm here.
Look who's here.
I'm still here.

Stephen Sondheim ~ I'm Still Here

Turn the volume up

~~~

Tired puppy here this morning, been a busy, heartfelt week, not sure if i wish to cry or laugh; sorrow, regrets mixed with blessings remembered tumble dry in the recesses of the soul.

Completed wonderful days taking care of Jackson Pollock, my grandog, and sharing with my only child, my son who becomes 37 next week and DIL (they are moving back to the DC area) and drove back to these gorgeous mountains from Knoxville on Tuesday. On Wednesday, shared a coconut cake with Mom, celebrating her 92nd birthday, she asked an aide who i was. Restarted two physical therapies, one for the lower back and the other pulmonary, and went fishing for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon soaking up golden rays and trying to find peace in the mountain's Fall splendor; the special light this time of year, wanting to catch it, preserve it, and rest in its warm solitude

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

smiley7's picture

Born: April 20, 1893; Barcelona, Spain
Died: December 25, 1983; Palma, Majorca, Spain
Active Years: 1912 - 1983
Nationality: Spanish
Art Movement: Surrealism
Field: painting, sculpture

The Smile of the Flamboyant Wings
Untitled
The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers
Man with a pipe

Fair Use ~ WikiArt

up
0 users have voted.

She still loves you even though she doesn't recognize you.

up
0 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Lookout's picture

still not much color though... leaves are falling (mainly due to drought).

Your story reminds me I need to go visit my mom while she does remember me. She's pushing 90, and has had a good life for the most part.

Fishing may be better rehab than the PT. Sending healing thoughts your way.

When the leaves are flying
Across the azure sky,
Autumn on the hill top
Turns to say good-by;

– Bliss Carman
Lines for a Picture

Have a good one!

up
0 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

mom, that can be tough.

Somehow, scrolling down, I got just a peek at the top picture, a little horizontal slice with just a bit of the circle and other figure and said to myself 'Miro". This is bewildering as I have no formal art education or training at any level and not that much museum and book time. I find myself wondering if that one is so famous that even I know it, or if it is perhaps "so Miro" that it signaled me or what. With that already setting my mind up for it, I think I actually already knew the second, from somewhere, and the rest had to be more of the same, after all. Now I wonder if it is Miro, and if he and maybe a few others are so uniquely special that they just leap out at you like some of Garcia's solos.

Well, today is farmers' market, rounding out another week and we switch cooking duties tomorrow and therefore shopping duties today. Inside the huge cycles of seasons, there are these little ones that have more reality than such things as what month it is. Weekends come and we wait almost anxiously for Monday, because that's when the majority go back to work and the kids go off to school and the town quasi-empties and errands become much less of a hassle again. Weekends mean that we must be out and about early in order to retreat and hole up when the crowds hit the streets, stores, and pavement. Big cycles and little ones and even epicycles maybe - enjoy your fall as it leads towards winter. Here, in this locale, it is muted, though next week we'll spend a few days at a nearby lake which might have more color, new to us as a campground and only birded it once, so can't visualize habitat.

Have a great one.

up
0 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

mimi's picture

you posted: Anne Sexton, Admonitions To A Special Person, 1974

Together with the art, it makes the perfect Saturday morning sunrise.

Sending best wishes to you and your mom. I believe that your mom wants to fool you a bit. She knows perfectly well, who you are, but thought that's not appropriate for a 92 year old.

Enjoy another cake with her In the words of Stephen Sondheim she tells you 'she is still here'.

You are still here, we are still here and we all want you to have the good times next, as it is the law that they follow the bad times.

Thanks and love.

up
0 users have voted.
Raggedy Ann's picture

for mom and smiley
The mother never forgets
the son in the room.
She looks left and right,
but sees straight ahead.
The son feels slighted, but
fear not, she's still there.
Keep cool in your head, for
she envelops you near her
even when you think she
has gone far from home.

Have a thoughtful and restful day, folks. Pleasantry

up
0 users have voted.

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Lily O Lady's picture

@Raggedy Ann

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

Raggedy Ann's picture

up
0 users have voted.

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

wendy davis's picture

for some odd reason, i'd have guessed paul klee, not even close. but picasso'd painted some abstracts kinda similar to the first one.

thank you for the anne sexton poem as well, although the sondheim one is a magnificent time-travelling one, as well.

hope your physical maladies are about to heal, as well. your mama? that must be hard. who called slow dementia 'the long goodbye'?

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

there have been lots of people that have wanted to privatize the national parks for years, but now they have their man in place and it just might happen.

Trump advisory council recommends expanding private business in national parks

A Trump administration advisory panel is recommending an ambitious plan to give private businesses greater access to national parks, according to a memorandum written by an advisory council for the Department of the Interior.

Some price increases could also in the works for park visitors under the plan.

Drafters of the plan say it amounts to little more than a much-needed modernization of aging infrastructure, and that the goal is to make national parks accessible to a younger, more diverse audience. Critics, on the other hand, see corporate influence at work.

There are 419 national parks in the United States, from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska. All are overseen by the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department. That department is headed by David Bernhardt, a former Republican operative and corporate lobbyist who has made no secret of his desire to increase the presence of private enterprise in national parks.

Private businesses — including concessionaires and tour guides — already operate in many national parks, but Bernhardt and a number of his deputies have argued that the parks have $12 billion in deferred maintenance, and that such funds are much more easily found from outside the federal government than within.

Now that plan seems to be rapidly taking shape, despite opposition from conservationists who say it amounts to nothing more than a corporate giveaway. They argue that the Trump administration has exaggerated the need to raise funds in order to justify the sale and lease of public lands outside the national park system, as well as favorable terms for concessionaires inside the parks. Some of the nation’s biggest concessionnaires, such as Delaware North, are headed by significant donors to Trump and the Republican Party.

Then make and EFFING donation to the parks you f'ckwad!!! But no... you want to get your greedy hands on another thing that is for the use of all of us and could actually price seeing national parks out of the budgets of millions of Americans who keep falling further behind. It was bad enough when some private company took over the Awhanee in Yosemite. And the other companies that took over reservations and stores inside the parks.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

The document also recommends that campgrounds on national parks permit food trucks, which have become highly popular in urban settings but tend to be rare in the wilderness.

Other proposals that Crandall floats include ending senior discounts during certain times of the year; a “market pricing” model that would have an adjustment for inflation and, in all probability, raise prices for all users of campgrounds in national parks; opening up more of the campgrounds to private concessions; and giving concessions operators free housing in the public parks.


Correction:
This story has been updated to reflect that the advisory council’s memo is a recommendation to the Trump administration, and has not been adopted as policy by the Department of Interior.

Yet??!!

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lily O Lady's picture

@snoopydawg

go wrong? /snark

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

snoopydawg's picture

@Lily O Lady

literally. Thanks, Lily!! I sure needed that.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

link

A video satirizing Ellen DeGeneres' defense of her friendship with former US President George W. Bush by superimposing her over Iraq War imagery has gone viral after DeGeneres' team got it booted off Twitter over copyright infringement.
up
0 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@gjohnsit

up
0 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

A huge powerful monster typhoon is hitting Japan this weekend. This was the color of the sky just before it hit.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lily O Lady's picture

@snoopydawg

although I believe they are currently in China. My daughter went through the earlier typhoon while her husband was away on business. It really scared her and this one was worse. I’m hoping they are still out of town.

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

More photos and tweets in the article. It says that 7 million people were told to evacuate.

Historic Typhoon Devastates Japan; Millions Told To Evacuate Amid Flooding, Widespread Outages

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lily O Lady's picture

@snoopydawg

watching coverage of the damage. It is awful! There is terrible flooding in Nagano Prefecture which is inland. There was a shot of a row of Shinkansen under water. Flooding is widespread across the country. Poor Japan!

up
0 users have voted.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

snoopydawg's picture

@Lily O Lady

I can't imagine how people deal with that much destruction and loss of everything they are used to. How many disasters does this make this year? And it's just going to get worse.
Glad to hear that your family is safe.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Anja Geitz's picture

sorrow, regrets mixed with blessings remembered tumble dry in the recesses of the soul.

It is still bittersweet for me looking at the past and wanting to go back there and appreciate everything I neglected to the first time around. And yet, this same awareness makes everything and everyone else I touch in the present so much more precious because I know how fleeting it all is.

Tumble dry of feelings. You couldn't have selected a better metaphor.

Be well dear Smiley. My heart is with you.

up
0 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
Unable to go back to change things.
Striding forward to possibly adapt.
Not just about reconciling the past.
Perhaps prep for future balance.

up
0 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

@QMS

Is so much more important to me as I get older then it was in my heedless youth. Adapting as we move ahead, yet always taking a piece of our past with us. I suppose depending on how we want to "write" our own stories that can be either poignantly comforting, or regretfully heartbreaking. I move in and out of each of those scenarios at times.

up
0 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

mimi's picture

There is an article on thruthdig by Robert Sheer that made my skin scrawl up. It is about an American villain with the name of Roy Cohn.
The American Villain Who Gave US Donald Trump.

There is also an article about him in the Atlantic.
The Mafia Style in American Politics - Roy Cohn connects the McCarthy era to the age of Trump across more than half a century.

In addition Sheer points to a new movie and documentary about him, whose trailer gets you the taste.
[video:https://youtu.be/lTrHL7Vo_SQ]

Cohn is not a household name. That might change once more people watch the bone-chilling documentary “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” Its director, Matt Tyrnauer, spoke with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer on the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.”

I just found that too interesting to not mention it here.

I am calling for all the alligators under the command of mon general Alligator Ed to chase and bite the heads off from those villains. (It's beyond my bedtime here, so I had end this comment with a silly note)

up
0 users have voted.

Hope your health regimen improves your quality of life.
I had the office cleaning lady there today when I went in to work. She is noisy, chatty, so I just gave up and left.
I went to the feed store to buy cat food. Some man, likely middle aged, with Down's Syndrome, walked up to me, gave me a hug, said he liked my boots. I complimented his cowboy hat. He then hugged me 'bye.
So, walking into the convenience store, a handsome young black guy opened the door for me, "Boots! You know how to wear boots! You got a glow, I want a hug!" Well, ok. I saw no downside at all.
Then, as I was getting into my car, a darling young lady in high school that I helped in some goofy juvenile delinquent case (I got it dismissed, the records sealed), and got a couple of hugs from her, and she loved the boots!
I have decided the world very often sucks, and that a lot of people in the world truly suck, old age sucks, dementia sucks.
But there are some lovely little places with lovely people, and when you least expect it, when you are the least prepared for it, something so kind and fun happens.
I steel up my courage and resolve every morning, expecting bad news, bad events, bad everything. That is my profession. I am never looking forward to the wonderful moments life brings.
And then they arrive in rapid fire.
I will wear boots more often.

up
0 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Unabashed Liberal's picture

positive vibes - hope your therapy sessions are successful/productive. I know that your Mom's health decline is very sad, but, hopefully, it'll serve to make the memories of her better days even more cherished.

Good luck to son, DIL, and, Jackson regarding their move. (Lived in metro DC area right over Key Bridge--Rosslyn--prior to Civil Service career.) Enjoyed it thoroughly--except for driving!

Biggrin

Thank you for the lovely poetry, visuals, and videos. Mr M has succeeded in extracting a promise from me to get a few more pressing matters taken care of, before resuming a heavy blogging schedule, so, will be scare for a bit. (Still negotiating the 'terms.' Smile ) Anyhoo, hope you keep us posted regarding the status of your therapy, how Mom and Son are faring, etc.

Truly dread selecting Part D plans for 2020. The Aetna/CVS merger has had a very detrimental effect on Part D plan offerings--in Region 12, anyway. Plan costs don't appear to have changed, drastically. Once I've completed the process, I'll pass along any info that I've gleaned, regarding the benefits--including drug tier pricing, formularies, pharmacy networks, etc.

Take good care of yourself.

Everyone have a nice rest-of-your-weekend!

Bye Pleasantry

Mollie

I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
~~Gilda Radner, Comedienne

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.
~~Cicero

The obstacle is the path.
~~Zen Proverb

up
0 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

music, and art, this morning smiley. As mimi said above, it made for a beautiful sunrise.
I'm glad you get to find peace and rest in your mountains and that the fall light there is spectacular. We have to acknowledge the marvelous things (sometimes it seems we only acknowledge the not-so marvelous).

There were so many beautiful comments in this thread, it was a joy to read. So many people wish you well.
Hope your PT is helpful and that you have a very good week. I do like Lookout's comment that fishing sounds like the best PT. Smile

up
0 users have voted.
smiley7's picture

This community.

Of the many great renditions of this, Glen Close breaks glass.

up
0 users have voted.