Poetry Time

There has been some poetry showing up in various blogs lately, and none, so far is original. I'm stealing the idea for today. Or at least borrowing it. My poetry selection is not original either.

This is a poem that KS took to class in high school for poetry sharing day. I admit that I led her to the poem, but she was comfortable using it and even found it quite amusing. I wonder if it made any impact on the class. Maybe KS will comment. It always makes me chortle. Its a poem by Richard Brautigan, a hippie poet from San Francisco who died in 1984. He was briefly famous and still has a following according to his Wikipedia article. He wrote this poem in 1968 and it was part of his book of poetry, "The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster."


Albion Breakfast

For Susan

Last night (here) a long pretty girl
asked me to write a poem about Albion,
so she could put it in a black folder
that has albion printed nicely
in white on the cover.

I said yes. She's at the store now
getting something for breakfast.
I'll surprise her with this poem
when she gets back.


*Albion is a quaint name for Great Britain.

Today's photo was taken yesterday and demonstrates that there are burning bushes in St Paul that have not yet surrendered to winter. We had flurries today, but they all melted immediately. The photo was taken near the St. Thomas Seminary at the western end of Summit Avenue.



**Two straight blogs containing the word "chortle."

Domo-Kun

There were a few other things memorable about the curling adventure last night. There was a photographic exercise going on, too. It's an ongoing attempt by Wireless to place Domo-Kun, the culture maven, in lots of photos. There is a rumor that she's taking the little cutie to Paris for more pics. I have a photo of the posing of Domo-Kun, on the ice at SPCC, who is being aided by Mr. Moohoo.


There is also tennis news. There is a report that Germany's top player, Tommy Haas, was poisoned before the Davis Cup match with Russia in Moscow. The Russians won the match and moved on to the finals. If the poisoning is true, it is a very shocking incident, and something that no sport wants to be part of its events.

And another news report that I stumbled upon and which I'd like some more expert opinion. The translation from French to English in this piece is odd and resembles the fractured Engrish that sometimes emanates from Japanese translations. The quote follows:

(AFP) AFP.com | Agence France-Presse, a global news agency had this quote from French tennis player, Marion Bartoli when told that Pierce Brosnan was watching her play:
"'The world's most beautiful man was here, actually taking an interest in me!,' she said. 'And I'm here playing like a spud. I thought it would be a good time to actually play some tennis.'
Brosnan risked being misunderstood if he had made his amusement known publicly, but he is said to have laughed like a drain secretly."

The last part is the perplexing part. What phrase was translated, " laughed like a drain secretly"? How did they get to something so nearly meaningless? I have a theory, but it is perhaps puny. Wireless??

There was tennis, mixed doubles with the hard core girls at Wooddale tonight. It was the last Thursday night before our opponents. Jerry and Becky, are off to the 7.0 mixed doubles national tournament in Las Vegas. We split sets tonight, 4-6, 6-4, and ran out of time before we could get very far into the third. It was a draw, and the hard core girls went home satisfied with the result.

[My theory about "laughed like a drain secretly" is that it means "chortled to himself" in some sort of Frenchy jargon.]

Curling, Curling

It was curling night and I had to rush home to get in the daily blog and thus stay in the challenge. I curled twice tonight. The first was with the John Serier Rink. We won a tight game 6-5 by scoring two points in the 7th and last end. It boosted Harold's record for the year to 1-8. Harold was the skip tonight. He is a 75 year-old former two-time national curling champion, just slightly past his prime. Below is a shot of sheet number two when I was warming up before the first game. There are two of the 42 pound rocks on the ice.


This is a photo of the other three members of the Miller Rink before the Metro League game at 9 pm. We started about fifteen minutes late because the Bonnie's game went to O.T. We lost the coin toss and had to curl first. We didn't give up a point until the 6th end and by that time we were ahead 8-0. We finished the last end after giving up 4 points and now are 1-1 in the league. We were pretty much in the zone, a fine place to be once in a while.


It's 11:36 and the blog is done.

Election Day 2007

The first Tuesday in November is the traditional time to vote in this country. I heard some explanation today about why November and why Tuesday were selected for the day to vote. Apparently the choice was made in the 1840's when most of the people in the country were engaged in agriculture. There could be no voting during times when the agrarian economy required labor. Thus November. Tuesday was chosen because it was far enough from the Sabbath, when good Christian farmers couldn't travel to town to do anything including to vote. Also Tuesday was good because then everyone had enough time after Sunday to travel to the polling place by horse and buggy. No one has seen fit to change the standard election day since then, so voter turnout is always low compared to civilized countries. This may explain our current political leadership.

This is my polling place, Linwood Community Center. I walked there this afternoon in about five minutes.


This is the door to the building with the sign indicating that I had arrived at the right location.


The voting area, a gymnasium, was devoid of other active voters when I arrived. There were five or six poll workers to make sure that my franchise was not compromised.

There was a race for city council, Ward 2, for which a single vote was expected, and the school board race in which I could have voted for up to four aspirants. I voted for three, all minorities in one way or another. I guess, in the larger sense,we all belong to one minority or another. I, for instance, belong to the geezer minority.

I expect to report results when they become available, unless I forget, or it seems just not important enough.

Flurries

My email provider contained a brief message from the Kagami Sensei this morning. She sent it using her cell phone, a common practice in the Land of the Rising Sun. I knew it was from her cell phone because of the subject line, "don't reply to this address!". This is a necessary warning because her cell phone input queue will only receive about 30 characters of text before it overflows and causes great consternation. (I have, in the past, negligently replied to a cell phone message and caused consternation and a possibly higher cell phone bill for KS.) The short message, "i have another request: picture of me skating if u have one. ASAP!", also was evidence that she was on her cell and didn't want a photo file arriving on her underpowered phone. I was able to round up six photos from the 7 or so years that she figure skated and participated in the Roseville Ice Show, "Everything is Coming Up Roses". I scanned them in and mailed them off to her yahoo email site and then decided to include one of them on this blog. This is from April of 1998 and shows her doing a spin while weearing her costume for that year. You may notice in the background, her "baby cousin" doing a similar manuver.


There were snow flurries today as I ventured out to the Parc de Comeau to get some walking around time. The wind was fierce and the omens seem to point to an old fashioned Minnesota winter.

There was geezer tennis tonight at Wooddale. We had a sub for one of the regulars and it made for an interesting and strategic match. I had Tennis Dennis as my partner for both sets and we won both by very skimpy margins, 7-6, 6-4. We had to rescue two set points against us in the first set and the tiebreaker was nip and tuck. (I think we were nip!) There was much good natured taunting and guffawing, and at the end of the evening the turkey trophy for lowest score went home with someone else - Bill, I think.

Central Standard Time Arrives

The first day of CST - Central Standard Time. I awoke early to chat with Kagami Sensei from Ogaki City in Japan. The normal 8 am time here moved back to 7 am, so I pretended that the clock hadn't changed until after the chatting concluded. She's been having some trouble with one of the Japanese teachers she's trying to help. He makes up lessons for the English classes and tends to use wrong English expressions without checking for authenticity with KS. He made up a song in English and used the word "clothes", but pronounced it like it had two syllables "clothe - es", and then taught it to several classes. KS objected, but he wouldn't change it because it changed the rhythm of the song. Americans are not the only nationality with obstinate old men.

In any case KS is still doing well.

The photo is a lovely oak tree on Summit Avenue that still owns its leaves.


I took an afternoon walk in the late fall sun with Herb. The evidence of the just passed Halloween holiday is still around. There are lots of sunken cheeked jack o'lanterns, many that have been gnawed by the herds of squirrels who are getting ready for winter.

I'll be playing tennis tomorrow and voting on Tuesday.

Bright Saturday

It's a bright enough Saturday and the temperature is hovering around 50 degrees. After playing some tennis at Wooddale this morning and eating some lunch, Herb and I had a stroll around the neighborhood. The tennis, I'd just as soon forget, an off day, and get on with the blog.

The school board election is next Tuesday, so I won't have many more chances to use campaign signs as a relevant subject. This sign is an ad for the only current minority member of the St Paul school board. Kazoua Kong-Thao came to the USA as a refugee child from Laos and is a member of the St Paul Hmong community. She was elected in 2003 and is running for reelection this year. She is the Vice-chair of the school board and a strong representative of the minority community in St Paul which makes up 70% of the student bodies. I am likely to vote Tuesday and likely will vote for her, too. We are electing four members this year.


It's November and soon there will be no more flowers growing in the outdoors. These black-eyed susans are still going strong and may be the last flowers to survive. I'll be watching them, because they are near my garage, and they are native plants from the variety that KS planted in the back yard before hoofing to Japan.


I have put the tennis scores out of my memory banks.

Campaign Season

I've been thinking about the challenge to blog every day. It seems like it might be easier if there were a theme for November. After walking around the neighborhood, mostly to the west, it became clear to me that it is political season. In St Paul there is an election next Tuesday to elect school board honchos and city council members. There should be fodder in that to fill up a couple of day's blogs. There must be a campaign sign or two that is odd, or perhaps uniquely St Paul in some way. I'm posting this campaign sign for two reasons: 1. It is a blue sign and thus fits yesterday's "blue" theme. 2. I had an uncle David Peterson, but I know that it is not him running for school board. This Dave is a 60 year old Republican who has retired from printing industry consulting. I may have to cast a ballot for Uncle Dave. St Paul, a strongly Democratic city, has only one Republican on the school board.


Another of my possible schemes to fill dead space on this blog is to do some restaurant reviews of the eateries on Grand Avenue that are within walking distance of home. I'd have to do it from some odd vantage point, like maybe look into its vegetarian offerings. This is just a work in progress at the moment.

I have a two picture commentary on Halloween and wildlife, squirrels in particular. I ran across this creature eating on a jack o'lantern on a porch somewhere to the west of here. Any squirrel with a taste for pumpkin is in hog heaven this week. There are so many former jack o'lanterns in front of houses that will feed the squirrels, that I sense a population surge of these creatures in the near future. Maybe there is work for a squirrel Jenny Craig.


Another shot of the squirrel, chewing on his feast, while the damage to jack is readily apparent behind him.


Squirrels are vermin.

There was no tennis for me today. I'll be on Wooddale courts tomorrow morning with the geezers.

November Blues

We have come up to theme day again and I have been informed that the theme is "blue" (thanks, Santini). I live close enough to an international airport to be able to get a photo of an airliner against the blue sky. And as luck would have it there was enough blue sky to make a whole nation of Dutchmen a closet full of blue trou. Thus the first photo of the day, taken a block from my house where there is a pretty good view of the heavens.


This photo was a little more effort. It's one of those Mallards over at Lake Como. (There used to be a pretty good town team baseball team in Marble, Minnesota, known as the Marble Mallards). The water wasn't blue enough after perusing it on the laptap, now resting on my lap, so I added blueing with my vanilla flavored photo shopping software, iPhoto. It is not quite natural coloring, but all will admit that it is blue. Duck for scale.


Thirdly. I will attempt to blog every day this month in response to the challenge thrown down by the youngest, and I dare say, most attractive member of my curling team (not much competition for either classification). It may be a long month, but I think I'm up to the challenge, since there are several other bloggers doing the same - Santini, gzmoohoo, and the blogging Wireless. This is the first of the thirty days of November blogging.

There was some curling last night, but as Gino said of the other team, "they are better than us at every position."

I also have tennis to report on. It was Thursday night mixed doubles at Wooddale. I'm suffering a bit from a cold that came on just after I got my 2007 flu shot, and a sore big toe on my right foot. My excuses are readily available, but I was also enthused about playing - it was the hard core girls, to be sure. The scores were close 6-4, 7-5, but we were able to win again. Our opponents are going to the USTA nationals in two weeks in 7.0 mixed doubles, and they are undefeated this year in 7.0 level league play, so they aren't exactly minced meat.

Tennis was fun, but now I have to go lie down.

Halloween Pooh

The neighborhood elm sculpture was redecorated for Halloween. Appropriate for the day.


Another October fades to black.