Tomorrow is Patriot’s Day, otherwise known as the day the Boston Marathon is run and if you are interested in the marathon as I am then here’s more info: Marathon Central.
The HOBART baseball issue is live (has been for a while I think) with a couple of stories from two of my favorite writers:
Sinker in the Hole
by Bob Arter
&
Barrie Blonz
by Randall Brown
Okay. I’ve been following this Wendy’s-finger-in-the-chili story and it just keeps getting weirder and more disgusting–Wendy’s offers $100,000 reward for “chili finger’s” original owner:
Wendy’s also has hired private investigators, set up a hotline for tips and doubled its reward yesterday to $100,000 for information leading to the finger’s original owner.
“Our brand reputation has been affected nationally. We are determined to find out what really happened,” said Tom Mueller, the president and chief executive. He said Wendy’s employees have passed polygraph tests, and “there is no credible evidence that Wendy’s is the source of the foreign object.”
Fabulous Flash Fiction by the one and only, Ellen Meister. Read it here: A Crack in the Foundation
this is pretty damn cool (and funny): YaGoohoo!gle
Here’s what the book quiz says I am:
You’re The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe!
by C.S. Lewis
You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you’re re-enacting Christian theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust in zoo animals.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Our friend Darron sent Allen a photo of one of the 1950s American Flyer engines he’s restoring. Isn’t it gorgeous? He created his own font and decals using CAD.
Here are some interesting notes regarding an upcoming “film” (I wonder why it’s called a film instead of a documentary?) on Sylvia Plath (also there is information at the bottom of the column about an exhibit of Plath/Hughes papers starting in September): The latest chapter on Plath:
Trachtman’s hourlong tribute to the Wellesley-reared, Smith College-educated Plath successfully navigates some of the trickier shoals of the young poet’s biography. (Plath committed suicide at age 30 in 1963.) For instance, Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, is portrayed as a literary Lothario, but not as a murderer who drove his wife to suicide. That revision may owe much to Diane Middlebrook’s more sympathetic portrayal of Hughes in her 2003 book, ”Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage.”
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is a novel I won’t soon forget. Set in Seattle and Montana, it tells the tale of three Native American women—Rayona, Christine and Ida—each in her own voice. They are related, a family, and their worlds intersect and tear apart, span out and braid back together, but it is not until the ending that the reader fully understands how the events which start the novel have come to pass.
It is told in reverse, starting with the youngest, Rayona or Ray for short. At first, her strength lies in the unconditional love she has for her mother but after her mother deserts her and she is forced to fend for herself (and is molested by a priest), she shows that her strength does not come from others. She is a warrior and by the end of her story, she comes to embody the spirit of all those missing who came before her—all those we don’t truly know about until the end of the book.
Christine seems weak, diseased and tormented with feelings that her mother did not love her. These lifelong feelings led her down a path of promiscuity and jealousy goaded her into pressuring her beloved brother to enlist. And when he does and dies in Vietnam, it is as if he is reborn in her daughter. The same feelings of unworthiness consume her until her health fails and she returns home to find love again—love in an old friend, love in her daughter and love in the woman who raised her.
Aunt Ida is the true enigma and the undying and unexpected source of strength. She has martyred herself and because of this, the lives of others have turned sour. But her goal was an honorable one. She wanted love and to be loved. She wanted safety. She wanted to weave together disparate parts and form a whole. As shown at the end of the book when Ida takes the one man who never hurt her to the roof of her house, she wanted to braid her loved ones together and have them be stronger for it.
The cold was unbearable because the air was so still. I let the blanket slip from my shoulders, lifted my arms about my head, and began.
“What are you doing?” Father Hurlburt asked.
As a man with cut hair, he did not identify the rhythm of three strands, the whispers of coming and going, of twisting and tying and blending, of catching and of letting go, of braiding.
Speaking of addiction, my household is addicted to the nanny shows–Super Nanny and the lesser, Nanny 911. We love Super Nanny especially because of Jo, or “Jo Jo” as she is often called, the star of the show. She is the most excellent nanny ever (indeed, she is the super nanny!). She is smart, empathetic, strong and helpful. Each week we watch as she whips another family into shape. Typically, it is the parents who need more help learning how to behave than the children.
Nanny 911 has rotating nannies and at the end of the show the family is awarded a trip to Hawaii or somewhere of the sort. It just doesn’t have the same emotional appeal that Super Nanny does.
Okay, so I’ve started to wonder what is it about these shows that appeals to us, a childless couple? I think it is some smug twofold belief that a) if we ever have children they will be perfect and we will never need Super Nanny (but HA HA! I know this would not be true and that everyone thinks this before they have children) and b) that if we can’t have children it will be a relief because they won’t turn into little spitting, swearing, peeing in street beasts who need a super nanny. OR is it some latent Puritanical appeal–do we like watching people be taught proper manners? And what are proper manners anyway? Maybe it’s none of these. Maybe we watch to learn because I have to say that Jo Jo does teach skills that apply not only to rearing children but to conducting successful human interaction on a whole. Basically, it’s about mutual respect.
I could go on and on… but maybe it’s not something I should try to deconstruct.
I would love it if the shows would follow up with some of these families and show how the kids are doing several months later. I hope they are still managing because some of them were in pretty rough shape at the beginning of the show and I truly feared for their safety (one family in particular comes to mind because the older kid was putting pillows on the face of the younger kid. Also, choking him I think. It was scary).
myfanwy collins 