It is February, but not, and we are all waiting for the other shoe to drop. Allen and I made bets: I said we would have one only more big storm (of 12 inches) this winter and he said we would have two of eight inches each.

But today it is once again in the 40s. The snow melts, the brooks rise. We passed a tree that looked like it was ready to bud. My mother-in-law has daffodils coming up already. This is not February. And I’m not complaining but you must understand that what I fear is we will get used to these mild days and then the wind will whip down from Canada and we will be lost in icy fingers.

It is February but not and I am unhinged and seek solace and inspiration wherever I can find it. When I feel this way, I turn to Annie Dillard for she never disappoints. Here from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

It snowed. It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffuse and hueless, like the light on paper inside a pewter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface the sky, and comparing by sight this value to that of the snow. This is all very well, even conclusive, but the illusion persists. The dark is overhead and the light is at my feet, I’m walking upside-down in the sky.

As you know, I am a Frey’d knot at this point but Kenneth Harvey sent me a link to his funny piece The facts. Don’t give me the facts and it made me smile so I am sharing:

AFTER READING JOHN BANVILLE’S Man Booker prize-winning The Sea, a slim volume trumpeted as fiction, I was startled to discover, upon perusing my hefty atlas, that this supposedly fantastical place named Ireland was an actual island. While reading, I thought it sounded familiar, yet I let it slide, not wanting niggling particulars to ruin the experience.

Please save me from myself. I made the mistake yesterday of buying a bag of Sweet Tart hearts–something I do around every Valentine’s Day.

When I buy the bag, I have no intention of sharing it. It’s all for greedy, greedy me. This bag is no exception.

I opened it around 3PM yesterday and have not stopped grabbing handfuls since. Now there are just a few left and my tongue feels coated in poison. What is wrong with a woman who does something like this? Is it not greedy and shameful behavior?

All I want is for you to hug me, kiss me. Because you are yours and I am mine.

Which news item are you more sick of?

1) Brangelina

OR

2) Frey-gate

Let’s hear it for Robin Slick whose novel Three Days in New York was chosen #11 Mainstream Novel in the P&E Readers Poll.

Congratulations, Robin!!!

P.A. Moed invites you to join her Literary Feast:

Now it’s time for me to invite you to a literary feast, inspired by Ivonne from Cream Puffs in Venice, a fabulous baking website. When? Valentine’s Day. What are we going to eat? That’s up to you. Send me your literary tidbit via email or send me the link to your entry posted on your website and I’ll assemble the menu, which I’ll post on Valentine’s Day. That way we can share an unforgettable meal together.

He’s making a movie about the US health care industry and would like you to send him your health care horror stories:

Have you ever found yourself getting ready to file for bankruptcy because you can’t pay your kid’s hospital bill, and then you say to yourself, “Boy, I sure would like to be in Michael Moore’s health care movie!”?

Or, after being turned down for the third time by your HMO for an operation they should be paying for, do you ever think to yourself, “Now THIS travesty should be in that ‘Sicko’ movie!”?

Or maybe you’ve just been told that your father is going to have to just, well, die because he can’t afford the drugs he needs to get better – and it’s then that you say, “Damn, what did I do with Michael Moore’s home number?!”

Ok, here’s your chance. As you can imagine, we’ve got the goods on these bastards. All we need now is to put a few of you in the movie and let the world see what the greatest country ever in the history of the universe does to its own people, simply because they have the misfortune of getting sick. Because getting sick, unless you are rich, is a crime – a crime for which you must pay, sometimes with your own life.

About four hundred years from now, historians will look back at us like we were some sort of barbarians, but for now we’re just the laughing stock of the Western world.

So, if you’d like me to know what you’ve been through with your insurance company, or what it’s been like to have no insurance at all, or how the hospitals and doctors wouldn’t treat you (or if they did, how they sent you into poverty trying to pay their crazy bills) …if you have been abused in any way by this sick, greedy, grubby system and it has caused you or your loved ones great sorrow and pain, let me know.

Read the whole appeal

I am a lover of seafood and it’s likely that some of what I buy is from Canada, but still I have signed this petition and I would urge you to as well, my friends–Protect Seals:

Make Canada’s Fishing Industry Pay the Price
Even though most Canadians oppose the commercial seal hunt, their government and seafood industry continue to support the slaughter. The ProtectSeals campaign believes that while Canadian officials can afford to ignore the public outcry, they will ultimately listen when money talks. So far, nearly 140,000 individuals from around the world, and more than 400 restaurants and other businesses, have pledged to boycott some or all Canadian seafood until the hunt is ended.

If you are willing to take more action, here is the list of businesses who have yet to join the boycott (many of these will not surprise you)–send them a message via their contact pages and if you frequent their businesses, consider going to their fish counters and telling them why you will not buy the products OR just stop shopping there entirely (easier said than done when just about every grocery chain is on this list–including, shockingly, Trader Joe’s!??!?! Et tu, Trader Joe’s?).

AND here is the list of businesses who HAVE supported the boycott–you can thank them by supporting their business and when you do, tell them why. (YAY, Legal Seafoods!!! Not only does your food kick ass but so do you!).

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Thanks to a reminder from my pal Kat, I am posting a link to the Million Writers Award for Fiction–nonminations begin on February 15th, with the notables being released on March 15th, and the top ten on April 1.

Here are the RULES (which I suppose are the same this year except the new dates are reflected above). Basically, you can nominate any story (1,000 words or more) published in 2005 in an online journal (which has an editorial process).

I don’t know about you but I’m going to start rereading some of my favorite online stories from last year and decide which to vote on. If anyone who reads this post has any recommendations or stories they are considering nominating, please post a link in the comments and I will collect these and make a separate post of eligible stories.

All I have to say is this–the word is pronounced NU-CLEE-AR not NUKE-CUE-LER.

Is there no one who can teach him the difference? Condi? Dick? C’mon! You two know the difference. I’m sure of it.

I sure as fuck am! So what better to counter the sour taste in your readerly mouth than to pick up the latest issue of The Missouri Review and read the first thing in it–a luminous, brilliant, and heartbreaking essay about a sister, her brother, and his sad addiction. It’s called “Imagination and Grace” and it’s written by Wendy Wacker and it will turn you inside out:

I look into my brother’s eyes–the sheer delight I want to last–and truly see him with his torn clothing, visible track marks, closely shorn salt-and-pepper hair, burn scars on his fingers, dancing around to what we now call “the fuck song.” Laughing his ass off. We are laughing our asses off. And I know we’ve got it–complete abandon. Like little kids with the world at our feet.

(There’s also an interview with A.M. Homes, which I’m going to skip ahead to and read next).