#36 Robin Roberts

When Big J was a boy, Papa and Perky gave him a weekly allowance of 25 cents.  He started his Brae Springs Train Fare Fund with that money, and over a period of several years, he saved up the $17 or $20 necessary to purchase a train ticket from Columbia, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to visit your great, great grandparents, Lee Leslie MacLellan (Dad Mac) and Irma Baker MacLellan (Mom Mac) at their home in Bethlehem, PA.  (I met Mom Mac several times when I was very young.  I called her Mom-mom.)  When Big J was 9, he purchased the ticket, Perky and Papa put him on a train in Columbia, and he made the trip up the East Coast all by himself.  At a changeover in Richmond Perky's sister, Aunt Sally, met him for a hug and a snack.  Then Dad Mac picked up Big J in Philadelphia when he arrived and drove him back to Bethlehem to their home, Brae Springs.

That week, Dad Mac and Mom-mom paraded their first grandson all over town.  Big J went to work with Dad Mac.  He and and his brother, Uncle Alden, owned Plymouth car dealerships in Bethlehem and Allentown.  They visited the Bethlehem Steel Company farm, the owners of which were Dad Mac's and Mom-mom's good friends, to see their champion Labrador Retrievers straight from Scotland--one of the original Lab bloodlines to come to the United States.  They frequented the storied Saucon Valley Country Club where Dad Mac and Mom-mom golfed and socialized with Pennsylvania's educated elite.  And Dad Mac took Big J to his first professional baseball game in Philadelphia to see the Phillies and the Chicago Cubs.

The game was at Connie Mack Stadium (formerly Shibe Park), by that time a decrepit old place.  Big J called it a "barn,"  even though when it was built in 1909 it had been America's first concrete and steel stadium.  He said he sat behind a post because "there weren't many seats in Connie Mack that weren't behind posts.  You were lucky if you didn't get a splinter in your ass, too! [from the weathered wooden benches]"  That ballpark witnessed 7 World Series and 2 All-Star Games and was the site of the first night game in the history of professional baseball.  Your Dad Mac and Big J watched the great Philly pitcher, Robin Roberts, defeat the Cubs 3-1.  The only run he allowed was a solo home run off the bat of Cub-great, Hall of Famer, Ernie Banks.  Your grandfather said he left the stadium "thrilled cause our team had won."

#36 Robin Roberts.  6-00, 190.  Throws right.  Switch hitter.  The Phillies' greatest right-handed pitcher ever.  In his 19 year, Hall of Fame career, he won 287 games and had an ERA of 3.41.  The game's toughest pitcher for most of the 50's, he had 6 consecutive 20 win seasons.  He worked with a great fastball and incredible control.  He challenged hitters, keeping the ball over the plate, so he gave up some runs.  Roberts claimed that he never slept after a loss.  He'd watch the sunrise, the pitches, hits, and runs playing out over and over in his mind.  Critics say he hung on a little too long.  The end of the career was rough.  Several seasons of lack-luster ball hurt his stats, but there aren't many folks around who don't believe he was one of the great right-handed pitchers of all-time.  Big J is convinced.

Yes, We Can.

My buddy The Wiz sent me this note.  I highly recommend that you click on the link and put it on the "full screen function" by clicking the window box near the bottom right-hand-corner of the video screen:

Dude,
I've just been goofing off on my computer and I ran across this.  I know you've seen it and you have the location saved, but this is just a reminder to look at it every now and then.  I have been and I'm still as inspired by it as I was when I first saw it.  I'm going to try and listen to it tomorrow morning before going to work.  Everything is gonna be alright.

Love you bro,

The Wiz

PLEASE WATCH IT AND THINK ABOUT IT.  TURN UP THE VOLUME.

Elizabeth Alexander and Colbert

Elizabeth Alexander and her inaugural poem "Praise Song for the Day"  have been raked across the coals by just about everyone I know and everything I've read.  I was not horrified by her poem.  I even liked it.  She.  could.  have.  done.  a better.  job.  with the.  presentation, sure.  But remember, she was following up Obama's speech.  That's like Jimi Hendrix opening for The Jonas Brothers.  She has fun and even briefly explains what she was doing with the poem in this interview on The Colbert Report.  Check it out.  It's funny. 

Natural Burial

I started 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry this week with my classes, and yesterday one of the poems we discussed was "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne.  It goes like this:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The poem is one of Donne's Holy Sonnets.  He had unenthusiastically entered the ministry at the insistence of King James, and his quick wit, his flair for the dramatic, and his rolling intellect had established him as the mega-rock star preacher of his era.  In the poem, the speaker condescendingly confronts Death and personifies him as a tool, a cocksure pawn of Fate, Chance, and desperate men.  For the believer, death is really a peaceful little nap at the start of eternal life.  Yet he runs around like a bluffing bully.  The cacophonous  couplet at the end reveals that the joke is on Death.  While we wake eternally, death dies.

I'm not sure about all that, but what I do know is that I dig the gist.  

So naturally, I had a dream last night about my death.  It wasn't a morbid or a disturbing dream.  It was one of those dreams where I was thinking, sort of awake.  I was contemplating my own little nap and how I hope it goes down.  Here's what I dreamt:  

When I die, dig a hole in the woods about two meters deep in Newton County, Arkansas or in the Blue Ridge somewhere, 20 or 30 yards away from a waterfall or a bluff or a big, old tree where woodpeckers hang out.  Wrap my body in a linen shroud and place it in the hole.  No embalming fluids, no incineration, no concrete vault.  Cover me up with some soil and relocate a dogwood, a wild blueberry bush, blackberries and raspberries for the bears, some dwarf lilies, mayapples, and ferns.  I love ferns.  Or just spread some rich duff and fallen leaves; it doesn't matter.  One short sleep past, I'll wake eternally and death shall be no more.  Visit the waterfall, the bluff, the tree and see what I become. 

I'll send you off with a tune in your head if you know the Dave Matthews Band:

Gravedigger,

When you dig my grave,

Could you make it shallow

So that I can feel the rain?  

                                 --David John Matthews 

Gangsta's Paradise

Here's an update on a previous post:

Big G was expelled from school last week for bowing up to a security officer who was conducting a random scan and search in the library.  When they finally immobilized and searched him, they found nothing.  He had already used his last chance.

He had a B in Senior English Literature and Composition; data strongly suggests he'll be in prison by the time he's 25.  

#8 Carl Yastrzemski

In the summer of 1982 I was nine.  I had just finished fourth grade at Bradley Elementary School in Columbia, and my best friends were classmates named Tucker and Rob.  

A typical day in 4th grade was pretty dang cool from what I can remember.  I was one of the older kids in the K-5 school.  A proud Bradley Bee. Big J was the President of the PTA.  I had one of my favorite teachers ever, Mrs. Vaughn.  I wore cowboy boots.  I had a crush on a cutie named Lela, and she even had the same last name as me.  Everywhere we went at school, we were together.  While I sat in class, stood in lines, was pictured in yearbooks or checked for lice, she was there.  But the best part was that Tucker, Rob, and I rode our BMX bikes to school rain or shine.  When the bell would ring at the end of the day, we'd race out to the bike racks and tear outta the parking lot like a three-car bullet train and run a course that we had carefully plotted at recess.  The route varied from day to day but always included several distinct obstacles.  One was a long stretch by a chain-link fence with a barking Husky with one brown eye and one blue eye.  One was a ramp in the sidewalk where a water main had busted and a city work crew had torn up the sidewalk into a perfect launching pad.  The last was a wash in the street that collected loose, fine Carolina sand.  After landing the jump clean, we'd stand on the pedals, bikes violently thrashing back and forth beneath us, and in the middle of the wash, slam on the brakes for a big, long skid mark in the sand and at the end sling the back tire around to a perfect perpendicular stop right in front of Lela's house.  We'd wave and then coast on down Dalloz Road to the house for a pick-up baseball game in Scott and Chuck's backyard or turns on the ski rope swing Dad had built us in the oak tree whose limbs reached out over the street from our sloping front yard.  Although we lived in the city, I had free rein on the whole area surrounding our neighborhood.  My home range on bicycle or skateboard was a 2 or 3 mile radius from my house in any direction by the time I was 9.  As long as I checked in every now and then.

That summer, Tucker invited Rob and me to visit his grandparents at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  Rob spent summers at his dad's so he couldn't go.  But for two weeks, Tucker and his family showed me one of the best times of my life to this day.  Their place was on the ocean and they had a boat and a floating dock about a quarter-mile out in front of their house.  We'd swim out to the dock in the mornings and do flips off the diving board and go for rides on the boat.  His aunt was a college student, and she liked to skinny dip in the sea.  Didn't even care if her own parents were watching.  Hell, I think all of em did it at one time or another come to think of it.  The highlight of the trip though was a trip into Boston for a Red Sox game.  We sat directly behind home plate about ten rows up in the shade, and the sun shone on the Green Monster of Fenway.  We could here the players talking, see into the dugouts on both sides, practically smell the pine tar.  Before the game, we went behind each of the team's dugouts with our gloves to solicit autographs.  Don Sutton was pitching for the Brewers that day and when Tucker asked him for his autograph as Sutton descended into the dugout after warm-ups, he said something like, "No time kid but have this."  And he flipped him the ball he had thrown his warm-up pitches with.  Tucker stood stunned and stared at the ball for the rest of the game.  I ran over behind the Sox dugout determined to get my own souvenir, and I did, but it wasn't a ball or an autograph.  Yaz spoke to me for a second.  He has been one of my favorite ball players ever since.  

#8 Carl Yastrzemski.  5-11, 182.  Bats left.  Throws right.  CF, LF, 1B, 3B.  Second-best Red Sox player of all-time behind Ted Williams.  452 career home runs.  In his Hall of Fame induction, he told his fans and peers, "I can stand before you today and tell you honestly that every day I put on that Red Sox uniform I gave a hundred percent of myself for my own.  I treated it with dignity and respect in deference to our fans.  A high regard for my teamates, coaches, and management.  Anything less would not have been worthy of me.  Anything more would not have been possible."  I didn't get to watch much of his career.  He retired the next season in 1983.  And I don't remember what he said to me exactly, but in my imagination, it goes like this: "Where you from kid?  That's a long way away.  Listen.  You don't always make an out.  Sometimes the pitcher gets you out."     

New Beginnings--New Hope--New Era

from the memoirs of Mary Rome Foster

January 20, 1993

written at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland

"New Beginnings--New Hope"  

               ...Inauguration Theme, Bill Clinton, 1993.

"Remarkable response."  The words are in my chart  

It's legal--we can really rejoice

The CT scans show no cancer activity in any other

       part of my body

And marked and significant reduction, both in number

     of tumors and in their size, in my lungs

We can really rejoice--I remain on taxol alone as an

     outpatient--will be treated today, return home

     tonight, back for my next cycle February 8 & 9

Inauguration Day!  It's most exciting being in 

     Washington on this historic day

The city is a-twitter and I can feel the excitement

     in the air

It's really quite electric in a subtle and sophisticated way

I do sense a caution in the cold, crisp January air

For today, in many places around the world

There is war and there is rumor of such

Madmen continue to roam and to hold the planet

     hostage at their will

Injustice everywhere abounds--hunger, fear, homelessness,

     anxiety, hopelessness--all forms of oppression

Yet, it's encouraging to watch a veritable parade of

     Americans from every segment of the society

Taking part in and being part of the new order

Presently, I sit next to an HIV-positive, full-blown

     AIDS patient

He played left defense, high school football, could

     bench press his weight

Now weighs 110 pounds (prob'ly soaking wet!)

He coughs and struggles and his only thoughts 

     are of the disease, with occasional lapse into 

     memories of football

He is oppressed and--he is one of the people

I pray he'll be allowed in the parade

Of course I've watched the Inauguration and

     the parade

And I've been moved by the number of times

     the word "hope" has appeared--in speech,

     in music, on posters

Hope--it's one of those elusive words

And it is the stuff of which life is made

Hope is available even in the midst of tragedy and trauma

     and it's usually evident in the lives of those

     who have it

It's late in the afternoon; it's been a perfectly gorgeous

     day in the nation's capital

The brilliant blue sky is beginning to soften as the

     pinks and purples of sunset move across the landscape

Lights are coming on and they add to the spectacular

     beauty as night descends

Strains of "God Bless America" and "America, the Beautiful" 

     pass through my sleepy mind

God bless doctors and nurses and research scientists

God bless Bobby and Sherry and Pam (my Columbia 

     oncology team)

God bless Charlie and Grace and Ron and Winnie

God bless Phillip, Roland and Gena, Carolyn, and Judy

God bless Jack, Gene and Jim, Kathy and Bernie

All these folk and countless host of others--

     they--we are America--we are in community 

     with the world

And so, tonight, even as the lights twinkle and the Capitol 

     and the Lincoln Memorial exude a deeply

     spiritual presence on this day of new beginnings

I celebrate new hope for myself, for my

     country, for my world

And I pray for for every individual who inhabits

     this planet

For we all touch whether we wish to or not

And we, each and all, in one way or another,

     determine the todays and tomorrows of

      one another

May we joyfully embrace the opportunity to be

     involved with living

New Beginnings--New Hope

Uh-hm-m-m.  Works for me

God Bless John and Matt and Mary Catherine and 

     Janis and Pat and... God bless...

Mom continues to teach me.  I always reflect on words that she spoke and sang, but just recently I have begun to clue in on her writing.  Whole volumes--personal essays, poems, theology projects--were dumped on me right after her death.  I wasn't able to read any of it at the time.  Just made me too sad, too angry.  She had written as a hobby her whole life.  Dad reminded me of this piece yesterday morning so I pulled it out and read it and several things leapt out.  

Obviously, it is poignant today, Inauguration Day, 2009, knowing where we have been and what all has unfolded since her hopeful poem.  Still, Mom would be delighted with America today like so many of us are.  She would insist that we get it right this time like so many of us do.  "No distractions.  No hubris.  Most importantly no vendetta.  Take nothing for granted.  But breathe in justice, and move forward," she would say.  She'll be singing "Amazing Grace" at the celebration for those of us who still hear her.  Listen for it.  

Less obvious to most readers is her experimentation with a form of poetry called oracular free verse, a verse form characterized by long, rambling lines channelled by the poet from some mystical or divine source; syntactical parallelism, repetition of sentence structure from line to line; cataloging, or listing; and hanging (or "reverse") indentation, used to delineate line length since paper-pages are only so wide.  Does she allude to Whitman at the end?  Walt Whitman, the American master of oracular free verse?  "I celebrate new hope for myself, for my country, for my world...For we all touch whether we wish to or not," she says, and Whitman: "I celebrate myself;/And what I assume you shall assume;/For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you."  

Could she?  I never knew.  I did not edit her piece at all except to correct her spelling of "innauguration."  She drafted it in her beautiful handwriting while she was hooked up to an IV pumping experimental God knows what into her veins.  She never revised it to my knowledge; it's just a draft.  As a Creative Writing teacher, I was impressed with her willingness to experiment with verse form and her knowledge and application of the appropriate poetic devices.  She was obviously researching and studying the art more than I realized.  A mountain girl from Madison County, NC who learned how to sing and made sure she got herself a good education.  No advanced degrees so she studied on her own.  Couldn't get the man to ordain her so she went straight to the Source.  She never quit growing, and she never quits growing.  

We're on the same plane of light this new day, Mama.  I love you.

--MJF

#3 Dale Murphy

Big J moved your grandmother and me from Chattanooga, TN back home to Columbia in 1977 to work with Papa in the Family business.  Your grandparents had lived all over the country while he was on active duty in the Navy, and after I was born they were ready to settle down for a while.  When Aunt M.C. was born in '78, Big J converted a big, screened-in porch on the back of the new house on Dalloz Rd. into a family room and rewarded himself and the family with a new, color TV and cable service.  The year was 1981, and I was eight.

That season, Dad and I started watching TBS games, and manager Bobby Cox moved a struggling catcher named Dale Murphy into center field.  Murphy had a great bat, but his confidence (and 6 foot 5 knees) had suffered as a catcher.  Dad said Murph led the league in "throwing out center field." In 1982, Joe Torre took over Cox's team, named Bob Gibson as his pitching coach, and they won the division.  That's the year Dad took me to my first game so I could see Murph hit a homer in person.  I remember it well.  Several friends and I were begging to go so he loaded us up in our Datsun stationwagon and took every kid in the neighborhood.  We lugged our entire baseball card collections and gloves along to get autographed.  At The Varsity restaurant in Atlanta, it became apparent that the game against the Mets was gonna be rained out.  So we headed on out and toured Fulton County Stadium in the rain and then drove home to Columbia in the middle of the night.   From 1982-1987, Dale Murphy hit between 36 and 44 HRs a season and was named to the NL All-Star team every year.  Dad watched all the games in his new family room on his new color TV with his new cable service, and I missed fewer and fewer the older I grew. I owe a great deal of my love for baseball to Dale Murphy, my first hero.  It seemed like every time I saw him at bat, he hit it over the fence.  I practiced his pigeon-toed batting stance and unique bat-waggle in backyard pickup games with neighbors Scott and Chuck, T.W., and R.S.  We played two on two, taking turns at all-time pitcher. 

#3 Dale Murphy. 6'5", 215.  Bats right.  Throws right.  Center Field.  Murph was a natural lefty, but his folks made him learn to hit and field right-handed.  Dale Murphy was best known in baseball for being Mr. Clean.  He didn't drink, smoke, or cuss--or use steroids as they gained prominence in the league.  With a .265 career batting average and 398 HRs, he's not a Hall of Famer--yet, but he'll always be one of the best in my book.  Seven-time All-Star. Twice voted the NL MVP. Best player in the 80's?  Great human being on and off the field.  If only-if only he coulda laid-off the curve ball down and away...   

--MJF

#44 Hank Aaron

This series is dedicated to R.L. for your first birthday.

Kshof took me to my first baseball card show yesterday.  Several tables set up with striking sports memorabilia.  Cards, coins, pictures, balls, autographs, jerseys and the like.   I was looking specifically for a Chipper Jones rookie card for R.L.'s first birthday, and Kshof found one for us, professionally graded and encased, preserved forever.  Larry "Chipper" Jones is my favorite baseball player of all-time.  

It got me to thinking.  My personal standards for greatness have a lot to do with the baseball players that I watched and/or heard about growing up.  Baseball was paramount in the "F"amily home.  Longtime Braves voices Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, Pete van Wieren, and Don Sutton helped Dad raise me.  From the day that he subscribed to cable TV in Columbia, through my Camden High School and Mars Hill College summers, until the day that H and I left for Arkansas, we watched more TBS-televised Braves games than we missed.  We were dazzled by Phil Niekro knuckle balls and Dale Murphy home runs.  We saw Glavine and Smoltz and Maddux pitch most of their games in Braves uniforms.  He would fall asleep upside-down in the lazyboy and snore, and I would sneak upstairs usually about the eighth inning unless there was a chance for a complete game or a save.  He tried to take me to games in Fulton County Stadium every so often too.  We'd stop at The Varsity on the way into town and then go to the game wearing baseball gloves and binoculars and listening to Skip on headphones,and we'd eat boiled peanuts and hot dogs.  He got a smile out of Chipper once with his booming game-voice.  We were sitting in right field, and Chipper was warming up out there, playing catch with Deion Sanders and "Crime Dog" Fred McGriff.  Then, he'd drive us home safely while I slept, east into the early-morning Carolina summer air.  My buddies and I danced in the halls of the dormitory when Smoltz shut out the Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS in '91 to go from worst to first in the National League.  He was the first person I called.  We couldn't even talk over all the ruckus.  That started a run of fourteen consecutive division championships for our Braves, the most stunning feat in the history of sports if you ask us.  We had watched the whole thing develop from the ground up, across two decades, and that's how we learned to communicate with one another, and it's how we became best friends.  We still attend games almost every year at Turner Field.  My standards for greatness stretch beyond Atlanta Braves.  Dad taught me about lots of players and teams.

Today I'm starting a series on greatness through baseball based on the Family way.  Things I learned from Dad and Skip and Ernie.  

#44 Hank Aaron.  We have to begin with him.  6', 180.  Bats right.  Throws right.  Right field. Best Brave of all-time.  Purest power hitter ever.  Under-appreciated as a fielder.  Humble.  Determined.  Serious and often silent ambassador.  He got to where he was with talent and hard work, not performance-enhancing equipment or drugs.  Hand-eye coordination and strong wrists.  755.  A complete man, R.L.

--MJF

  

Wisdom

"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."

--Buddha

The way that Buddha intended this and the way that I apply it in my life don't match up, I don't think.

MJF

Latest Hypotheses and Suggestions

• "Maybe it's the bird flu."
• "Dude, I'm gonna put you down like a lame horse."
• "Do you have that black mold growing in your walls?"
• "Have you considered chemotherapy?"

--MJF

from Still Life With Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins (1980)

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.  Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.  Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.  There is only one serious question.  And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?  Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.  Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time."

--MJF

Vitamin C and Neti Pots

I'm just gonna to tell you, this post falls under the category of too much information.  But it's too good to pass up.  

As I've expressed, there has been a plague on my home for about the past two months.  Every time we all get well, someone starts coughing again or wakes up with a scratchy throat, and the whole cycle resets itself and descends upon us like a mudslide.  Doctor flippantly calls it "Daycare Nose," but we know it as The Scourge.  (And we're counting on this to be over the precise day R.L. turns one, one month from now, February 14th, just like she promised.) 

We haven't been passive victims in this war either.  We've actively resisted the evil forces at work here.  For instance, I've become the vitamin king.  Every morning I'm religiously taking a whole foods supplement, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, an Aspirin, and Glucosamine Chondroitin just in case cartilage and colds are interconnected.   I know the very best over-the-counter cold and cough medicines on the market right now.  Extra Strength Mucinex DM for the cough with a tall glass of water.  Take it to the bank.  I've taken two different kinds of street-sweeping antibiotics.  I've had a steroid shot.  I'm using a Symbicort inhaler for bronchial dilation.  I've taken Tussin w/Codeine capsules, and as a result we had a midnight fire drill because I saw and smelled smoke filling the upstairs of my home and ran into the street in my underwear clutching a discombobulated boy and screaming fire. I've taken more sick days than the previous 3 or 4 years combined.  Whined and complained.  I've tried sucking it up, being the tough guy, using the power of positive thinking.  I've slept for hours thinking rest might be the key.  None of it has worked.  H has experienced similar frustrations.  

This past weekend, we hit the wall.  We started reading up on alternative therapies for the common cold.  "What would they do in India," we asked ourselves, "or ancient Greece?"  

Yogis pour warm saltwater through their sinus cavities to wash away impurities.  In one nostril, behind the eyes and ears, into the back of the throat, and out the other nostril in a steady stream.  It feels great, and it has the most immediate gratification of any cold treatment I've ever tried.  After a Neti Pot (the name-brand that's sold at Walmart) I feel great for an hour or so.  I highly recommend it, twice a day.

Hippocrates invented a version of a treatment that we in alternative medicine now call the Ascorbic Acid Flush (also known as a Vitamin C flush).  This one takes the cake.  Generally the way that it works is that you take a teaspoon of Ascorbic Acid diluted in some water or juice every fifteen minutes until it induces fully fledged diarrhea.  No soft stools here; it has to blow.  The "evacuation" as it is known by some (the "event" by others) is supposed to be an expulsion of all the toxins in the body.  The ascorbic acid molecules bond or something to toxins and take them away when they leave.  As we grew closer and closer to the event, the stuff started tasting nastier and nastier.  H wasn't sure whether she would puke first or just die.  It began with a little rumble in the gut, and then after a mad dash to the can, it was over.  For H anyway.  Me?  I must have been purging demons dating all the way back to my rock-n-roll days cause I'm still experiencing cleansing blasts, and it is Tuesday morning.  

The cool news is that H feels great.  She said yesterday that she feels five pounds lighter, and her cold symptoms are almost gone.  I am finally on the mend.  At first, I think I let myself get dehydrated during the flush, and I had to learn to pound water nonstop.  Ever since I've been loading up on l'eau, I'm feeling better and better.

The latest lesson in Parenthood 101:  Water is the nectar of the gods.  The Truth.  Drink it like your life depends on it cause it does.  

--MJF

10-12 Colds

The pediatrician told us yesterday that it is normal for kids in daycare to have 10-12 colds in their first year of life.  After that, she said, it's all gravy.  H said, "Gravy.  Good, cause its about to kill Mama and Daddy."  We've all been sick a good 6 out of the last 8 weeks with sniffles and coughs. 

--MJF

Romulus: Part Two

by Plutarch

translated by John Dryden

"Others think that the first rise of this fable came from the children's nurse, through the ambiguity of her name; for the Latins not only calledwolves lupoe, but also women of loose life; and such an one was the wife of Faustulus, who nurtured these children, Acca Larentia by name. To her the Romans offer sacrifices, and in the month of April the priest of Mars makes libations there; it is called the Larentian Feast. They honour also another Larentia, for the following reason: the keeper of Hercules's temple having, it seems, little else to do, proposed to his deity a game at dice, laying down that, if he himself won, he would have something valuable of the god; but if he were beaten, he would spread him a noble table, and procure him a fair lady's company. Upon these terms, throwing first for the god and then for himself, he found himself beaten. Wishing to pay his stakes honourably, and holding himself bound by what he had said, he both provided the diety a good supper, and giving money to Larentia, then in her beauty, though not publicly known, gave her a feast in the temple, where he had also laid a bed, and after supper locked her in, as if the god were really to come to her. And indeed, it is said, the deity did truly visit her, and commanded her in the morning to walk to the marketplace, and, whatever man she met first, to salute him, and make him her friend. She met one named Tarrutius, who was a man advanced in years, fairly rich, without children, and had always lived a single life. He received Larentia, and loved her well, and at his death left her sole heir of all his large and fair possessions, most of which she, in her last will and testament, bequeathed to the people. It was reported of her, being now celebrated and esteemed the mistress of a god, that she suddenly disappeared near the place where the first Larentia lay buried; the spot is at this day called Velabrum, because, the river frequently overflowing, they went over in ferry-boats somewhere hereabouts to the forum, the Latin word for ferrying being velatura. Others derive the name from velum, a sail; because the exhibitors of public shows used to hang the road that leads from the forum to the Circus Maximus with sails, beginning at this spot. Upon these accounts the second Larentia is honoured at Rome." 

--MJF

Mr. Head

from "The Artificial Nigger"

by Flannery

"The thing to do with a boy," he said sagely, "is to show him all it is to show. Don't hold nothing back."

--MJF

Friends Do

A precious friend of mine wrote and sent me this letter dated 04 jan 2009:

i was walking in bryce canyon today. 

years ago.

and i sat under a ponderosa pine tree. 

on a bench. on a solid bench. 

i looked up while the snow fell on my face. 

the sky was covered in grey. 

the snow stopped. 

and a ray of sunshine fell upon my face

to warm it. 

to let me know that i needed to be strong for you. 

that i needed to be there for you. 

to connect us. 

she was saying it was ok. 

she wanted me to tell you

that she was where she needed to be. 

even though she couldn't be there for you. 

and then the sky was covered again

as quickly as it had broken. 

i walked up that canyon. maybe. 

i don't remember. 

i may have floated to the top. 

maybe i was carried. 

she was always that strong. 

just like you. 

--Jay B.

My friend, T. Wiz, would destroy him.

Bruce Lee playing Ping Pong with nunchackus.  

School starts back today.  

I'm ready to go.  No soul-sucking P.D. (Professional Development) this time before the students' return.  The District took our day(s) of winter holiday teacher meetings away from us this year because so many teachers failed to take advantage of the opportunity in years past.  Awww...

Timeout.  Idea:  I will compile a list of acronyms in education for you.  We're [they're] getting worse than the military.  You're not going to believe it.  I hate acronyms.  Obama, can you criminalize acronyms in education?  Executive order?  That's CHANGE I can believe in!  

We have a week until semester exams, time for intensive, style analysis, writing workshops.  Then we get down to the business of Poetry.  Dead white dudes first:  John Donne (DUN!), George Herbert, Andrew Marvell; Ben Jonson, Suckling, Lovelace, Herrick (We laugh at him.  Probably shouldn't, but we do.); Thomas Gray, Robbie Burns, William Blake (My favorite.); William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (My other favorite.); Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats.  I've never made it any further than this.  But this year, I sit poised to hit some modern American poets.  Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Roethke, Ginsberg (I had wine and cheese with him after a reading at UNC Asheville and gave him my poem, "Ginsberg Wears Gap Khakis."  We were both obviously out of our elements at the time.  He read the title and folded it in thirds and put it in his tweed jacket-pocket [over his heart].  He was kinda cross-eyed up close.  I think he threw it away.  It wasn't mean.  Not nice.  (See Rolling Stone advertisement, mid-90's.)  As he was tucking it away, he half-smiled and took time to tell me a story about two times that he visited with W.C. Williams.  In hindsight, the point of the story must have been that he didn't use the precious time to criticize W.C.  He was mumbling awful all night, like the whole right side of his face wouldn't work, so I might have missed something.), Michael Harper.  Gimme some women, please some diversity.  Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, Margaret Atwood.  And I'd love to find time for Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, W.H. Auden, Henry Reed, Dylan Thomas, e e cummings, D.H. Lawrence, John Crowe Ransom, Anne Sexton May Swenson, Jean Toomer, Richard Wilbur!, James Wright, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Philip Larkin, Archibald MacLeish, Rita Dove, Billie Collins, Jorie Graham, Gary Soto, Robert Penn Warren, Adrienne Rich, Cathy Song, Lawrence Ferlenghetti, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, and Louise Erdrich!  

I can't wait, but I need help; I need to cull the list, and I'd love specific suggestions.  How can I group those guys after the Romantics to get them all in? 

Influential poets and poems from your own secret educations?    

Y'all have a great new year now.  I may vanish like peanut butter fudge.

--MJF

The bounds of the Universe are thin on January the 4th.

[if there are any heavens]

by e.e. cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have

one.  It will not be a pansy heaven nor

a fragile heaven of lillies-of-the-field but

it wll be a heaven of black-red roses

my father will be (deep like a rose

tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her

silent)

with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which

is a flower and not a face with

hands

which whisper

This is my beloved my

                                        (suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow.)

                                                                                                          MRF and MJF

Burn a candle today if you have the time.

--MJF

Romulus: Part One

Recorded by Plutarch

Translated by John Dryden

Ransacked by MJF

Folks won't agree on how or why the illustrious old city got its name.  Shocking.  

• Some say Cretans.  They roamed all over that place.  Lol.  Or it mighta been Trojans on the lam while the homeland burnt.  Stowaway, Miss Roma, was sick and tired of the bumpy odyssey and torched the getaway ships to the ground on the bank of the river Tiber.  The other women placated the wroth wussyboys with sweet talk and kisses.  Didn't take long for the guys to suss out the bonanza: women acting beautiful and the real estate rich.  So the fickle cowards named the lot after the bold woman who put her foot down.  But ever since, their male descendants expect their chicks to grovel over the burned boats with lots of good crazy-love.  Doubt that's what Roma had in mind.  
  
• Some again say Roma was half-goddess and like any reputable half-deity was just fucking around with shit.  And some say Roma might really have been a god named Romanus or Romus.  But most anybody that knows anything admits it is probably the safest bet that it was Romulus who really named the place.  They just can't agree on who Romulus's progenitors were.  Another one of those darned oracular and prodigious virgin birth-riverside abandonment-evil twin-great flood-handmaid's tale murder mysteries.  But dude's name was definitely Romulus, and he had a twin named Remus.
• Story goes, a fortune teller notified a power-hungry local that the twins would get in his way, so all paranoid, he ordered the twins' infanticide.  Poor Teratius just couldn't do it and put them down by the river where a she-wolf suckled them while birds of various sorts brought them morsels of food to eat; till a shephard spied the weird scene and took the boys in.  They grew big and strong and whacked that sumbitch that tried to off them.  All this according to some unreliable Promathian that wrote a history of Italy.  

• A more credible version, one with the most vouchers, was first told by the Greek, Diocles.  It's pretty convoluted, but here's the gist.  The kings of Alba reigned in lineal decent from Aeneas eventually to two brothers, Numitor and Amulius.  Amulius suggested that in order to be fair, they should divide everything into two equal shares:  1) the booty from Troy and 2) the kingdom.  Well, of course Numitor chose the kingdom as planned and Amulius used his riches to overthrow his brother.  The wealthy king was so insecure he locked his daughter, called either Ilia, Rhea, or Sylvia, locked her up so tight she'd never have sex.  Straightaway, like clockwork, she was knocked up and had twin boys with superhuman size and beauty.   When the king saw the boys, he was sore afraid and had Faustulus take care of them.  Fausty laid them in a manger and headed for the river to toss them in like puppies in a sack, but the river was roaring and rising, and he feared for his own safety and dropped them off as close as he could get.  I swear Amulius, if you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself.  The river did come up enough to float the trough, but the water wafted the boat to a safe ground called Germanus, perhaps from Germani which means "brothers."  
• Germanus had a wild fig-tree in the shade of which the cattle ruminated.  The tree's name was Ruminalis.  The tree was named for the following reasons:  1) Ruminalis sounds like Romulus; 2) cows chewed cud the there; 3) ancients called the dug or teat of any creature ruma; 4) Rumilia is the tutelar goddess of the rearing of children, in sacrificing to whom they use no wine, but make libations of milk.  Anyway, under the fig-tree, a she-wolf nursed the boys, and a woodpecker constantly fed and watched them.  'Peckers and she-wolves are esteemed holy to the god Mars.  Ilia/Rhea/Sylvia had claimed Mars was the one that got to her by the way, and that would make more sense than the claims of the perves who had her daddy coming to her disguised in armor.

To be continued... 

--MJF  

Neddy Merrill Swims The Lucinda River

The narrator examines Neddy Merrill in John Cheever's short story "The Swimmer."

"Was his memory failing or had he so disciplined it in the repression of unpleasant facts that he had damaged his sense of the truth?"

--MJF

Don't Shoot 2

--MJF

Unpublished Photos

--MJF

This year, I resolve to

keep doing what I do.

--MJF

Open-ended Invitation for 2009

Please send stuff for me to post on Dirt Bombs.  

I'm soliciting original stories, poems, articles, digital images (photography and art, comic strips and political cartoons), letters, essays, philosophy, music, short film--anything else you think of.  Something new or something old.  I want material that will inspire ideas and motivation for future posts and that may evoke a laugh or epiphany in Dirt Bombs readers.  

I'm specifically looking for pieces concerning your attitudes towards and experiences with boys,  growing up, nature, parenthood, public policy, sports, and/or education.  I try to keep Dirt Bombs posts under 400ish words.  But if it's off the hook, feel free to send as much as you like.

One more thing:  I pledge to give you credit however you would like or to preserve your anonymity if that's what you would prefer.  

Here's how it will work:  Email your piece to thelabyrinthmagazine@gmail.com, preferably as a Word or Pages document attachment.  You and/or I will work up a discreet little introduction of some sort (or not).  I'll send it back to you as it will appear on the site for your final approval.  And then, and only then, after you give me the go-ahead, I'll post it to the blog.  If I decide not to post your stuff, I'll try to give you some feedback as to why. 

I even have a long term goal for this.  Using the sweet, new graphic design/publishing software(CS3) I got at school for the fine arts magazine I sponsor and a goodbuddy-printer-friend here in LR, I plan to design and publish a "best posts of the year magazine" and mail out copies to its contributers.  All for fun!  Course, I am what I am so it may never materialize, but you have to admit, it is a neat goal.  

Imagine, you could be a published author!

--MJF

Auld Lang Syne

for H

by Robbie Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

  And never brought to min'?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

  And days o' lang syne?

We twa rin about the braes,

  And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd monie a weary fit

  Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,

  Frae mornin' sun till dine

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

  Sin' auld lang syne.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere,

  And gie's a hand o' thine;

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught

  For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,

  And surely I'll be mine;

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 

  For auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,

  For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 

  for auld lang syne.

 

for all my homies

by Jimi Hendrix, Live at the Fillmore, 1/1/1970

(Click on the link and scroll down to the music player.  Hit play.)

http://www.playlist.com/HAPPYNEWYEAR2009

--MJF