[As usual, the actual sermon was somewhat different than what's posted below, what with ad-libbing and on-the-fly tweaking, but the general gist is here.]


"The Poetry of Inconvenience"
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville
Earth Day sermon

( Today, April 22nd, 2007... )

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Miscellany:

* A voicepost of me reading Mary's poem is here.

* Listened to part of The Splendid Table during the drive home, which included a clip of Jonathan Gold talking about his twelve-year-old daughter's love of Italian squid feasts and about other food writers he admires. He sounds very cool and his "triumph of the proofreader" wisecrack makes me even more inclined to like him.

* However, catching up with Gold's writing is going to have to wait. The immediate plan: cook lunch (something with mushrooms and chicken), bake dog biscuits, and work on essays until my brain is goo.

* It's 78 F and sunny here. Here's the start of the Maura Stanton poem ("God's Ode to Creation") that was the meditation text for this morning's service:

Today's the kind of day when I feel good
about that dazzling stuff I've made down there,
everything so mixed up that even lies
turn out to be the truth...

[Apologies if it feels like I'm spamming you, folks -- it's "use my LJs as Pensieves" week chez moi...]

Title of this entry comes from Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves, OR, What You Are You Are," which she reads with much relish on Poetry Speaks to Children, a book-CD anthology I just borrowed from the library. [Link is to an NPR feature on the piece, which includes Brooks's reading.] Very lively illustrations and terrific selection of poems. Karla Kuskin's Knitted Things made me think of a bunch of you ("There was witch who kitted things: Elephants and playground swings..."). James Stevenson's poem "Why?" is cute. The CD includes Naomi Shihab Nye explaining how she came to write "How to Paint a Donkey" (her art teacher used to single her work out as an example of what not to do...) and Basil Rathbone reading "The Raven." James Berry's "Okay, Brown Girl, Okay" (also on the NPR clip) is moving.

From the "Not Your Grandmama's South" department, #5: Panties for Peace (profiled in last weekend's Nashville Rage)

From the "Totally Your Grandmama's South" department: my favorite title of the week? Somebody Is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn't Catch That Bouquet: The Official Southern Ladies' Guide to Hosting the Perfect Wedding. (Still haven't gotten around to Being Dead Is No Excuse, but I've heard a smart Alabama woman recommend it to a Massachusetts transplant suffering from culture shock.)

From the "Shit, That Didn't Take Long" department: was stuck behind a Jeep this morning that had the bumper sticker "Ban Illegal Aliens, Not Guns." *sigh*

Was stuck behind an Outlander this afternoon, but its bumper sticker read, "Make levees, not war."

From the obituary page of today's New York Times: "Conrad Spizz, 90, an Opera-Loving Master of Smoked Fish." The final sentence? "He loved Italian opera best of all. Puccini and Verdi, Mr. Spizz found, were superb to smoke fish to."

Too much writing and rehearsing to whale through tonight, so I'm at home instead of out. Hydras, hydras everywhere. On the plus side, I can now see my ironing board again, and I brewed a pitcher of tea using some of the mint I'd harvested and frozen last fall. Also:

The New York Times reports on how the palms for Palm Sunday are being harvested more responsibly. Which I found interesting (one of my chores when I worked at Christ Church was making sure they were stored properly), but I confess I was also amused by the final paragraphs of the article:

....exactly what they are used for up north [of Mexico] is not always clear.

"I know it’s used for decoration," said Moses Macal Maroukin, 69, a veteran palm chopper, who seemed somewhat mystified. He said he had no palm fronds in his home.

But then he revealed what the people here had long believed to be the real use of the exported palms. The juices in the stems and leaves are extracted, he explained in a conspiratorial whisper, and then turned into a special mixture that is used to stain greenbacks green.

"This is how you color your dollars," he said, waving a palm.

Via qassandra: A Little Birdy Told Me. Hee!

Also by Tatsuya Ishida: I Heckle You Now.

Over dinner, I finally read "Darwin's God", a NYT Magazine essay by Robin Marantz Henig that appeared on 3/4. ( Three things... )

Via mingbutterfly: a Harry Potter couple in costume. Double hee!

Led hymns at church this morning. The theme of the service was "forgiveness"; Marguerite led a discussion about Ford's pardon of Nixon as the "Story for All Ages." Rebecca's sermon included the line, "Forgiveness is giving up hope of a better past."

I'm at work, but this is ok. Some chores are easier to tackle after-hours (e.g., scrubbing out the microwave), I'd be stuck in stadium traffic if I were to try going home right now, and the hours I'm putting in will pay for the bottle of prosecco or Clicquot I'm going to pick up on the way. The hours I'm putting in tonight and tomorrow will go into the bathroom renovation fund. Also, I like the work -- as I was telling the BYM, scripting case studies is not too far removed from my favorite part of role-playing (the character-creation phase).

Other good things:

Received a surprise email from dkolodji - "The Stepsister" was runner-up for the inaugural Dwarf Stars Award.

A nice review of both the "The Stepsister" and the anthology at Roswila's Dream & Poetry Realm.

Just had cucumber-avocado sushi for elevenses. I remain elated that supermarket sushi is now mainstream.

Accomplished a fair amount of cooking and cleaning over the past two days, including a pan of carrots for Room in the Inn, another pan for home, roast beef with onions, cornbread stuffing with mushrooms, and chicken with orange sauce.

Getting paid for a freelance project within a week (from a vendor who usually takes longer).

Janet Wyman's Secrets, Lies, Gizmos, and Spies: A History of Spies and Espionage. This is my favorite kids' book at the moment -- good design, nifty anecdotes.

It's rainy, but it's also 66 F. It felt very good to be outside this morning. The dog agreed.

Mike Carson's "No Surer Heaven" at poems.com -- man, that's a good poem:

...It's fifty years since he and I eased down
In Geren's Woods, his own heart years now gone—
So quiet and quick-eyed, kind to love a kid
Not his, by instinct never saying I love.
He put instead the rifle in my hands,
Gave me the name and use of all its parts.

---

Every now and then I wonder how my husband puts up with my level of mayhem. For instance, last night I managed to knock my glasses behind the bookshelf that serves as my nightstand. While fumbling around to extricate them, I managed to knock over even more books, notebooks, post-it pads, etc. (I probably should have waited until morning, but it was all too probable I'd forget my glasses were still behind the shelf and end up hunting for them through the entire house instead. Therefore, it was imperative that I retrieve them then and there. Erk. It's past time to vacuum up there again...)

That said, as we were about to go to sleep, he "played" an extended tune on the half-dozen water glasses on his dresser, using his chapstick as the mallet.

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Woke up feeling somewhat cranky and bleak, in spite of nothing being terribly wrong -- lots of little impasses, detours, and out-of-my-depth flailings-about, but nothing unmanageable (at least, in the realm of what can actually be managed). Some of it is simply needing more sleep if I'm to avoid catching other people's colds, and some of it is simply needing a true day off...

...which is not an option today, but I did stay home from church in favor of writing and reading. The plan for the afternoon is to finish the morning's drafts, indulge in some cooking (pesto and shortbread, probably), take a walk, and then put in eight billable hours on assorted assignments. Onwards.

[More goodness: Last week's submission = two rejections + one acceptance, and last week's arugula-bacon quiche still tastes superb.]

By the by -- much as I like my life now -- I miss some of you more than I know how to say.

I'd intended to spend the day on work, but a long-postponed non-profit chore poked its way to the top of the queue this morning. That, and not being able to stand the mess in my kitchen. *sigh* On the other hand, I'd wanted an excuse to stay home, and I've got Rameau playing in the background (Les Boreades. Weird, creepy, and beautiful).

Other happy things:

Apple pie.

Yeah, it's over a month old, but I only now saw it and it cracked me up: Snapes on a Plane

I don't ship Lucius with anyone -- come to think of it, when he's mentioned in my fics, he's usually dead -- but this Jason Isaacs interview is wicked fun. (Via daily_snitch.) Interviewer: "Shared cell: Lucius Malfoy and Captain Hook. Who's the bitch?"

Also, from January, an article on Carol Ann Duffy:

This week the judges at the TS Eliot poetry awards were unanimous in awarding Duffy the £10,000 prize. The decision, they said, marked "a rare moment of agreement between the critics and the booksellers as to what constitutes great poetry".

In Duffy's case, however, this consensus is hardly new. Not since Philip Larkin has a living British poet straddled the commercial and critical arenas with such finesse. This has prompted several critics to seek common ground between the two authors, some thematic preoccupations to link the dyspeptic Hull librarian with his more expansive, approachable descendant. For her part, Duffy jokes that there is only one similarity. "We are both lesbian poets," she says.

ETA: What M'ris says, about context and sides of the coin and putting down what one picks up. Which is, not incidentally, why working on sermons is actually work. *knits brows, stares at stack of notes some more*

ETA II: Ok, Les Boreades - Paris Opera production, 2003? Music: gorgeous. Choreography: too hyperactive for me, mostly, but it had its moments -- particularly the pas de deux during the hero's reviving of everyone around him, and Apollo's descent from the heavens. Have minor crush on Nicolas Rivenq now. Some incredibly clever staging -- am glad the director got the largest ovation.

From an article on Carolyn Forché:

In 1987, Forche moved back to the United States. While her husband had to be away, she and her young son, Sean, took a small apartment in Provincetown, Mass. A friend, poet Daniel Simko, lived nearby. "He was upset that I wasn't writing ... and he said, `I'll take Sean for two hours every afternoon.... I'll take him out in the carriage, I'll take him to the beach.... but you have to promise to write poetry while I'm gone...."' And knowing she might succumb to the impulse to clean or shop during these respites, he added "And I want to see the pages when I get back here with him."

From Forché's "Return":

...Your problem is not your life as it is
in America, not that your hands, as you
tell me, are tied to do something. It is
that you were born to an island of greed
and grace where you have this sense
of yourself as apart from others. It is
not your right to feel powerless. Better
people than you were powerless.

[Full poem can be found online here -- mind, within a rant by someone who hates it. *shrug* What can I say? These lines spoke to me.]

Oof. The original plan for tonight had been to attend an introduction to Sufi dancing and then to dive into research ...but I was feeling decidedly shallow by the time I finished my accounting chores, so I went straight home instead. It became a "let's use things up" evening:

* finally got around to making gyoza with the wrappers that had been in the freezer for a couple of eons.
* finally threw out the rancid Crisco and veggie oil. Sticking with butter and olive oil from now on.
* made turkey meatloaf with the leftover gyoza filling, the dregs of the egg I'd used as sealer, the last of a canister of matzo meal, the last of last week's tomatoes, and some mushrooms I'd forgotten we still had.
* made cucumber toner with the sample vodka that was so bad I couldn't think of anyone I hated enough to give it to (topped off with the last of the bottle of Absolut, which isn't at all horrible, but I seldom drink cocktails and the BYM favors Pimms).
* baked an orange-pecan loaf, which used up most of the orange juice. Poured the last of it into the fruit tea I'm currently sipping.

Also managed to knock a full glass of Coke across half of the kitchen -- not so much fun for me, but thrilling for the dog. It was on the flat side anyhow, so I'll likely dump the rest of the liter over the impatiens tomorrow morning.

Although I didn't get any writing done tonight, I did at least finish outlining the next service I'm leading. For the meditation, I'm going to use Alison Luterman's "Morning in the Mission: Grandpop Comes to Visit." There's another poem in her book (The Largest Possible Life, 2001) that some of you might dig:

( Dear Michael )

Still out of sorts: last night's nightmares featured knitting supplies instead of office doodads. Although I rate this as a sort of improvement, rest-enhancing they were not.

Am amused by el_christador's comment at rezendi's regarding "the seething, unknowable depths of the brain."

(No, I don't actually believe in "fundamental dichotomies," but it's still good grist for the mental mill.)

It's been less than a stellar week professionally (three rejections). Slog, slog, slog. On the happy side, my contributor's copy of Rhymes for Adults arrived yesterday. Three excerpts:


...But my full-lipped mouth
Loves aileron, chandelle, empennage.
So while I file the flapper's smoke-stained nails,
I practice aerodrome and fuselage.

- from Patricia Valdata's poem about Bessie Coleman

"No 'gator love for me tonight"
sighs saurian Horatio,
"No change of lizard lewd delight
or crocodile fellatio..."

- F.J. Bergmann's "ode to endagered species everywhere"

Not one of them was born a fool---
They measure stars and isotopes--
But not one looks the least bit cool
To Hooters girls beyond the ropes
and might as well be lycanthropes...

- from Mike Snider's "When Worlds Collide (Optical Systems Group at the Hooters Swimsuit Shoot)"