The Bookity Book & Tall Grass Salon

Yeah, I think you probably are, actually, the real thing.

Good morning.

The Writer's Almanac for April 25, 2015

Lovely poem this morning. (Antonin? Do you read here? Check it out. )

It's poet Ted Kooser's birthday, yet another poet who wishes more people could experience poetry and is saddened so many never do.

Also it's James Fenton's birthday. He says, “My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don’t regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects — love, death, war.”

Love, death, war. Those simple things. !

The Saint Lawrence Seaway opened on this date in 1959. Is that the one that has the Erie Canal as part of it, that the song is about? "You'll always know your neighbor, you'll always know your pal, if you've ever navigated on the Erie Canal."

Padgett Powell whom I think I have heard of maybe. Wrote three page novels, it says here.

And gosh. Howard R. Garis, creator of Uncle Wiggily. Why have I not thought of Uncle Wiggily in so long? Definitely a part of my childhood and gone down the stream there.

Have a good Saturday.

"Had an old mule name of Sal. Fifteen miles on the Eerie Canal!" Or was it fifteen years? Anyway we had a neighbor girl named Sally and for some obscure reason she would go ballistic if my sibs and I sang that song. So we sang it loud and we sang it often.

We'd probably end up on the internet as a viral example of bullying if we tried it today. In those days Sally and her sister would just sing back "Oh Shannon-Doah we long to slug you, far awayyy across the wide OHIOOOO" My name is Shannon. I've always hated that song. Kids. --s6

Wow! The Eerie Canal seems so far away and romantic. "The Death of Red Peril" took place on a canal. So much water, living on a boat, it was fascinating to this tumbleweed and dust kid. I used to read that story every time it came up in an anthology. Did any one ever read about the Santa Fe Trail? I grew up on it--BOOORING. --s6

Welcome back to Joe's, Shakey! Great to see you again.

The poem reminds me of how with Detroit's blight, they are actually bulldozing mostly abandoned neighborhoods and farming, some as individuals growing crops but also many community gardens. Community gardens are gaining popularity nationwide, and it's an exciting time to be interested in that type of effort. I stayed with someone in Springfield IL who's involved in one there. Instead of the old "Tragedy of the Commons," they're seeing a "Triumph of the Commons" where people now have an interest in abandoned areas that they previously would have ignored. This is fostering a sense of community, increasing communication among the residents and where bad guys feel like they're being watched and go elsewhere. The challenge in Springfield is getting long-time residents to participate. Most of the participants there are Gen-Xers and Millennials who grew up in the suburbs, so the perception exists that this is just another phenomenon of gentrification. So it's not surprisingly controversial.

Ow my peroneal tendons hurt.

Maryn said:

Oh, I get it. This here website says rest it, then work to stretch the ankle and increase ankle strength, or it'll happen over and over. Do you happen to have high arches? The site I'm looking at says that greatly increases the likelihood in runners.

Click to expand...

I think my arches are pretty normal. I'm pretty sure it's just too much, too soon in my case. Though I have been doing some exercises to try to strengthen my ankles. They've been bothering me for a couple weeks now.

I told myself I'd take it easy at today's 10K, but my body decided otherwise.

Walking hurt afterward, but I'm home now and after stretching, icing, and showering I feel a lot better.

Maryn, wondering if there's a shoe that helps

Click to expand...

Running shoe companies (and most runners you ask) would say yes. Scientific studies say no.

I absolutely value a good running shoe, but it's one of my pet peeves when runners parrot the party line when it comes to gait-specific running shoe "features", despite most scientific studies suggesting the best way to prevent injury is (surprise!) to simply choose the shoe that is the most comfortable.

Well, hey there Shakey!

I still don't know if the Erie Canal is part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway though. Guess Ima havta look it up.

ETA: Nope. Shoulda remembered the song better, says here "from Albany to Buffalo" which is a whole different hole in the ground.

oh well. Wonder if there are any songs about the Saint Lawrence?? and why not if there aren't?

Maryn, did you ever encounter the graphic novel Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in The Hudson? I read it while it was being serialized online, free. It was/is marvelous.

Dad is at the moment navigating from North Carolina to Long Island on his sailboat.

Oh is he? Well I wish him good winds and safe seas, then!

When I was in college in northern Wisconsin, we had a campus group called The Voyageurs who would dress up as 16th and 17th century Hudson Bay Company trappers and go on period rendezvous on weekends. They had tons of old folk songs, some in French, they'd sing. I'm sure some of them featured the Great Lakes and St Lawrence. The only one I remember was called Northwest Passage, which Wikipedia tells me was written in 1981 :/

There was also the children's book Paddle to the Sea.

I sympathize with foot pain. I have no arches at all, and I can only run for short distances if I have really great shoes. Put me on a mountain bike and I'll go all day. Running? Nope, can't do it without significant pain.

My ideal weight is still another 20 lbs away, but when I think I'm reasonably well-suited to running.

My problem is mostly doing too much, too soon, and hurting myself in the process.

Here we have Jedediah Smith clubs-- people who re-enact the early days of the Santa Fe Trail. They wear period authentic clothes and do presentations at historic places like Medicine Lodge, Fort Larned, Fort Dodge, Fort Hays.

One Saturday when I was in college in Dodge City, a friend and I were out on a particularly lonesome piece of the Arkansas, ducked down into some scrub willows, enjoying a bottle of Mad Dog, a joint and the afternoon.

It was a foggy autumn day, a genuine goodbye to summer. The mighty Arkansas, never more than knee deep even in the best of times, was molasses colored and gurgling away. Fish were flopping. Birds were chirping about their upcoming trip. There was a soft, liquid light filtering down through the golden cottonwoods.

Suddenly a figure in fringed buckskins and moccasins stepped out of the weeds on a sandbar across the river from us. He was wearing a powder horn, a stove pipe hat and was carrying an actual flint lock rifle. He waded the river, stepped past us and up the river bank, looking straight ahead. He never noticed us, or if he did, he knew better than to disturb the peace pipe ceremony.

Of course we had never heard of the Jedediah Smith club. Gave us quite a turn for a second or two. --s6

hahaha Maryn, I might have walked out anyway, on that one.

Good morning and here it is late:

The Writer's Almanac for April 26, 2015

I'm afraid I'm going to just drop the link and go. It's a wonderful poem and the rest of the almanac is surely interesting but I am weary this morning and not up to much verbal activity.

Good Sunday to all.

Glad to see Shakey back! Sorry about the ankles, Kuwi. Hi to all and sundry.

I'm going to be absent for a while. We're leaving tomorrow for a vacation in France - 2 weeks. I'm the tour guide (just me and hubby) - such a lot of planning. 5 days Paris, 8 in Chinon - did I already mention this? I'm pretty tired right now. Anyway, we're packed, lists checked, doggies go to the new kennel in the morning and we go to the airport. The weather looks to be kinda dreary, but that won't stop us. We've got ponchos. Umbrellas even. Plans to visit museums and castles until they come out our ears. Culture, here we come.

Have a great trip, Lacy! France is on my list of places to see. If you get to the Cambrai area and suddenly find it's 1917, say hi to my WIP characters for me. Tell them to start doing something interesting. I need to get writing about them again.

I'm meeting the GF's parents tomorrow. Her dad seems really cool, but her mom is still upset over the GF's previous relationship that went Big Time Bad despite her mother trying to warn her about the guy. The "I told you so"s are still flying over a year later, so the bar has been set pretty high and who knows what minor imperfection of mine is going to bring the whole mess up again. Sheesh. We're a couple years either side of 40 and still worried about all this. But of course nobody wants sour relations, so we're trying not to worry too much about it.