- So. The above on US 36 heading into Delaware Ohio, the below the creepy avatar for the Ohio Wesleyan University Fighting Bishops. Anyone know how to take a folder of photos and create a rapid slideshow that can play like a youtube. I've two folders full of Earthgirl photos that'd each be a good movie.
- Though it needs be said that other than the loyalest of loyals, these travel posts are wildly unpopular, easily the least read posts here, even taking into consideration they are posted mostly on weekends. They're my favorite.
- And while I'm bleggalgazing, I'd love to give you links, but Blegsylvania is quiet. Dead even. Happened in 2008 too in weeks before the election. This seems completely counter-intuitive to me, but I'm a dope. Anyway, I've saved the few I have for today, will post tomorrow with new ones if there are new ones.
- Twitter's been weirdly slower, quieter too. Freaking weird.
- BTW, since two of you asked, Planet is registered to vote in Ohio. She's going to vote for Obama. Yes, we talk about it (three of you have asked). I tell her what I think, not what she should think. She thinks it cool that her vote counts more there than it would at home. And yes, Prunella, the Obama Kills Coal (or whatever varying language) signs up everywhere.
- As for Ohio signage, all the counties we were in other than Franklin (Columbus) voted McCain heavily in 2008, Romney signs outnumbered Obama 10-1, which means nothing.
- Oh, on watching Fox News yesterday morning with a room full of hunter in the breakfast lounge of the Holiday Inn Express in Zanesville Ohio. Fox went full bazooka on Obama and Libya, the hunters goddamn Obama-ing, expressing praise for Darrell Issa (who of course is a mendacious shitsmear) for blithely sacrificing the lives of brown men working for American imperial interests by releasing documents on the Benghazi clusterfuck to advance Republican election prospects. I say this not to support brown men who work for American imperial interests but to reiterate what a motherfucking mendacious shitsmear Darrell Issa is.
- So expect Romney to go all-in on Benghazi at the debate tonight I'll not be watching.
- Expect everyone to reach the conclusions post-debate they had pre-debate regardless of hwat happens at the debate.
- Fuck blaager, btw. I'm sure some % of the new deadness in Blegsylvania can be attributed to people confronting the new motherfucking blaager interface and saying fuck it.
- But yes, it's not that I don't care about POTUS 12, it's that I'm interested different.
- And yes, I am enjoying it more than I think I am, I bet.
- This is true: when eating at Bun's we were boothed next a table with a dozen of Delaware County's elderly white members of the Delaware County Republican Party who gathered to eat and discuss the election. They smiled at us, wished us pardon when the needed to squeeze by, and visa versa. They wished us a good night when we left.
- Adding, THANKS! Robert for The Necks CDs. Awesome.
- So, more tomorrow. Or not.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALL TOWNS
David Baker
1. THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALL TOWNS
It never stops raining. The water tower’s tarnished
as cutlery left damp in the widower’s hutch.
If you walk slow (but don’t stop), you’re not from nearby.
All you can eat for a buck at the diner is
cream gravy on sourdough, blood sausage, and coffee.
Never lie. The preacher before this one dropped bombs
in the war and walked with a limp at parade time.
Until it burned, the old depot was a disco.
A café. A card shoppe. A parts place for combines.
Randy + Rhonda shows up each spring on the bridge.
If you walk fast you did it. Nothing’s more lonesome
than money. (Who says shoppe?) It never rains.
2. GRAVEYARD
Heat in the short field and dust scuffed up, glare
off the guard-tower glass where the three pickets
lean on their guns. The score is one to one.
Everybody’s nervous but the inmates,
who joke around—they jostle, they hassle
the team of boys in trouble and their dads.
It’s all in sport. The warden is the ump.
The flat bleachers are dotted with guards; no
one can recall the last time they got one
over the wall. The cons play hard, then lose.
And the warden springs for drinks all around—
something he calls graveyard,which is five kinds
of soda pop poured over ice into
each one’s cup, until the cup overflows.
3. COUNCIL MEETING
The latest uproar: to allow Wendy’s
to build another fast-food burger shack
on two acres of wetlands near Raccoon Creek,
or to permit the conservationist
well-to-do citizenry to keep their green
space and thus assure long, unsullied views
from their redwood decks, picture windows,
and backyards chemically rich as golf greens.
The paper’s rife with spats, accusations,
pieties both ways. Wendy’s promises
flowers, jobs. The citizens want this, too,
but want it five miles away where people
don’t care about egrets, willows, good views.
Oh, it’s going to be a long night: call
out for pizza, somebody brew some tea.
Then we’ll all stand up for what we believe.
4. CHARMING
The remnant industry of a dying town’s itself.
Faux charm, flaked paint, innuendo in a nasal twang.
Now the hardware store’s got how-to kits to make
mushrooms out of plywood for the yard,
and the corner grocery’s specialty this week
is mango chutney, good with rabbit, duck, or spread
for breakfast on a whole-wheat bagel fresh
each morning at the small patisserie across
the way from the red hotel. Which reminds me.
Legend has it that the five chipped divots
in the hotel wall—local lime and mortar—
are what remains of the town’s last bad man.
His fiery death’s renowned, but don’t look now
Someone with a camera’s drawing down on you.
