it wasn't Merchant-Ivory,

and it was only over the last hour, but I got to sit in bed (while waiting for the heating guy to come out and wishing I had those gloves with no fingers for easier keyboard use) and read "America's Stay-at-Home Feminists" followed by these two very different blog responses (with all their comments): "We hate mommies" and "My radical married feminist manifesto".

it would have been a good day...

to have stayed in bed, listening to the snow and watching Merchant Ivory films. I am melancholy, for no clear reason, but when the outside matches my emotional state I want to wallow my way through it.

And now it appears that the furnace in the house isn't working -- again. The heating guy had to come out on Saturday (charging us weekend rates, of course) when the furnace stopped working. It is now Wednesday, right? One would think the furnace -- after being fixed -- would not have stopped tonight, when to call the heating guy again means he has to come out for night-time rates. It is 18 degrees F outside.

access to smallness

something on the art at Tiny Showcase, all the stuff linked from Camilla: art that is small physically but also in terms of what it shows, generally. No great beauty, no big themes, daily objects, pretty birds, happy little stuff.

Drawn: the 50s retreads

a thought...

a book page, full of "word" and nothing but "word," laid out like a poem. Mouseover: different little videos (?) appear?

and it continues.

but dropping temperatures

= snow.

(From the front door to our house.)

rain erases snow

8:30 am

snow + rain

= fog.

A Polite Winter

from Anna Swartz, whom I am lucky to know, this site for disappearing into for a while.

The Palmer Method

Karen asked about the Palmer Method, which is one explanation of why our grandmothers write alike. (If Foucault had grown up in the States he would have included the Method somewhere.) The Wikipedia entry describes in a little detail how this handwriting method was developed and taught in the US from the late nineteenth century into the 1960s. Here are some pics:

from The Write Event

from a review of Tamara Plakins Thornton's book Handwriting in America: A Cultural History; the review article also has some words about the Palmer method.

mating slugs

Found via Obsidian Wings, surprisingly lovely video from the BBC of slugs being poetic together.

I begin imagining the effects of other music, other voiceovers. And perhaps because of the solemnity of the BBC presentation (and perhaps because of the tenacious adolescent white boy tenor of this country and my upbringing) my imaginations are solidly Van Halen, Molly Hatchet, Metallica -- and then there's Afternoon Delight, too. Sigh.

Get out of my head, radio of cross country drives.

this morning

Having looked at the photos from the last few days, I understood that my memory of these days in Houghton also needed this, the next-to-the-bed.

this evening

The splendid Liz and Moe came over for dinner, and I was domestic with cranberries, pears, brandy, and sugar for a short while beforehand:

today

Mary Jo & Marty's house shortly after 8am this morning.

Campus, 9am.

Our yard, 3pm.

the upstairs window...

the one by the phone, the one into which someone carved his name in fancy Palmer script at a time when Palmer script was still in existence:

and tonight...

and tonight...

Michael came over for dinner.

and then tonight

I am no longer thankful for anything except running hot water.

tonight

the sound of a tablecloth

Unfolding and waving the tablecloth over the table slows me and puts me into mind of other women doing wash, hanging laundry on the line, ironing, folding, sewing. I am in the dining room -- once Dennis's office -- by the big window looking out to the snow, the apple tree, and Lisa's house and I am happily stepping away from the anxiety and peevishness of trying to catch up on so much writing that I am behind on. And I must go baste the turkey again, now.

Many years ago, some months after my mother almost died from pneumonia -- after which she finally stopped smoking -- she told me about the drug-induced dreams she had had while the doctors were trying to lower her temperature. She hadn't told my father, she said, because he wouldn't understand, but she dreamt that she was floating among unfolding bolts of fabric, the fabric waving and undulating in the air all color, texture, patterns, and sheen and her face was calm and away while she spoke and I could see what pleasure it had been in her eyes.

My friend Laurie and I lose our selves when we go to the scarf carts in the markets in Florence. My mother learned -- after years of me watching me at birthdays and Christmas peevishly opening her gifts of clothes that I never wore -- that I am easily sated on the linens she finds at garage sales, all the napkins and runners and tablecloths that many people don't want because they require ironing. I now have drawers full of her found cloth, and ironing it on Thanksgiving morning in preparation for others eating at our table is good.

The smell of the turkey has insinuated itself around and up the stairs now and into our bedroom where I write and it's time to go baste again. I am thinking of you.

and so it begins, lushly

Our road, our apple tree, our power line...

I am...

now the square of a prime (happy birthday to me) and I figure this is the last year I ever get to say this unless the longevity miracles that are regularly promised by popular science magazines really do pan out.

and then...

This past Saturday was ZZTop and Fleetwood Mac Day in Upstate New York, at least on the Lite Classic Rock of August 1974 channel that I could get in the rental car. I drove up to Potsdam to see Johndan, Kelly, Carolyn Rose, and Brent, and to do some presentations at Clarkson on Monday. There was a wild turkey in the highway median just south of Pulaski. The sky was grey and so were the trees and it was good to have time alone but by Gouvernor I was very happy to catch an NPR Afropop presentation on The Blacks Unlimited.

I sank into dinner with K, Jd, and CR on Saturday night: my memory is that my chin was on the table in the total relaxation and comfort of their company but still when Jd pulled out the good tequila we talked until pretty close to 2.

Time: CR is thinking about what college to attend. When they left Houghton, like last week, she was 4.

Place: Michigan Technological University has a better library than Clarkson University.

Time: And tomorrow is my birthday.

this past week

I got to hang out with the cool kids. The Syracuse Writing Program had a little symposium on visual and digital rhetorics, and so I got to enjoy the company of a whole bunch of fine people. Jenny Edbauer and Jeff Rice presented their smart work: they are both using documentary in various sharp ways to bring theory and classroom practice into each other. I got to meet Alex and Derek, finally, and go through the unsettling shift from preconceived images based on others’ writing to their 'real' faces and movements. Oh, and Collin was there, too -- and Alishia, Elisa, Ruby, Denise, and Tamika. Good folk, and I wish I hadn't been so sick, darn it.