I hadn't looked ahead on the birthday schedule when I posted a John Cale cascade this past Monday. Lucky you, lucky me. He's seventy-two today. Here's one of my ten most air-guitared songs ever:
- There goes the dream of 102 points. I took my camera, took three shots. The point of renewing my DC United season tickets for this season was to be sure my waning fandom wasn't over-affected by United's suckage last season. When driving to the stadium last night the excitement wasn't there, when I walked around the stadium before the game the excitement wasn't there, before the kickoff the excitement wasn't there. It is both a blessing and a curse to be reassured it's not United's suckage on the field that's primary cause for my ever decreasing damn. Will give it the season - and United might turn out not to suck so much, though it will take firing St Benny, who might not make it until April, to make that happen - but....
- The Swarmachine, part one.
- Maggie's weekly links.
- { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
- The Battle of White Flint!
- Earthgirl and Ilse must have been fourth and fifth.
- On Teju Cole's assertion the novel is overrated.
- What to eat, what to drink, what to leave for poison.
- Mr Alarum and his band Queen Wolf interviewed on radio tonight! Listen in while Alex says nothing! and his bandmates yap wittily!
- More Robert Ashley.
DRIVING TO CAMP LEND-A-HAND
Berwyn Moore
The day we picked our daughter up from camp,
goldenrod lined the road, towheaded scouts
bowing on both sides, the parting of macadam
as we drove, the fields dry, the sky lacy with clouds.
A farmer waved. A horse shrugged its haughty head.
We stopped for corn, just picked, and plums and kale,
sampled pies, still warm, and tarts and honeyed bread.
Sheets on a line ballooned out like a ship’s sail.
Time stopped in those miles before we saw her.
For eight days we hadn’t tucked her in or brushed
her hair or watched her grow, the week a busy blur
of grown-up bliss. It came anyway, that uprush
of fear—because somewhere a child was dead:
at a market, a subway, a school, in a lunatic’s bed.
