Come Visit the New Blog...

He's baaaaack! Come visit me and my new crew in my new digs...

The Idea Garden

Hope to see you there.

P.S.

One last thing, for those who may be depending on the Daily for this information:

March 20, 1:48 a.m. EDT

Farewell, Gentle Reader!

It's time to move on. I think I've exhausted this format for myself (though hopefully not so much for you!) and it's time to A) take my more personal musings private, and B) explore other formats and venues. Something will be forthcoming, though not sure when. I will post info here on where and how to find me; check back in a couple months if you like. Or let me know, send me an email, call, whatever and I'll be sure to alert you if there's something to see. You know I am Roger at the rrbrand address in the dot-com domain. Mid- to late-May might be a good time to check, to see the new Utah photos — southeast this time, Cedar Mesa.

All of these ramblings will still be here if you ever want to browse them again; there are a lot of brilliant "gems of others" to be found here! Meantime, I've been reading one Mary Oliver poem every night of late, and so will leave you with these two...

The Ponds
by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided—
and that one wears an orange blight—
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away—
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.


Morning Poem
by Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches—
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead—
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging—

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted—

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Take A Minute To View These:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/11/mccainobama-parody-like_n_86017.html

Look at both of them. Well worth a couple minutes.

Yes, you can!

Note to self...

...I may need this again someday. Or you, gentle reader, may need it now:

Reinventing Date Night for Long-Married Couples

From the New York Times. An exerpt:

"And recent brain-scan studies show that romantic love really can last years into a marriage. Last week, at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Albuquerque, researchers presented brain-scan data on several men and women who had been married for 10 or more years. Interviews and questionnaires suggested they were still intensely in love with their partners. Brain scans confirmed it, showing increased brain activity associated with romantic love when the subjects saw pictures of their spouses."

The Daily Crisis

"Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

— Anton Chekhov

Which will it be?

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

— Edith Wharton

Me, too, Edith. Me, too.

In Slovakia

Can we deny what the tea leaves say? Or other signs?

In Slovakia they grow potatoes
and cabbages
and women with strong backs and hearts.

The gypsy woman with her breasts pushed up pale
through a baggy dress printed with flowers
and a faded fringed shawl
takes his hand in hers and spreads it wide.
Her crooked finger traces his lines.
From underneath the knotted scarf
(that holds her golden hair off her
pale aquiline face and the gold hoops
of her earrings;
odd
this gypsy milky white and fair-haired)
her eyes narrow and she sighs.

It is not quiet here. There are
night noises, insects, dogs,
and on the other side of the wooden wagon
near where the horses are tethered
laughter and singing and a mandolin.
The fire crackles, too, nearer, and casts an unstill
glow in the gypsy's eyes.

"What?"

Her eyes look into and through him and then,
away.
Almost imperceptibly, she shakes her head.

This ending isn't quite right yet, I know, though I've tried several things. I'll keep working on it.

Prostrate in Prayer

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

— Rumi

Speak in Me

Speak in me this day, God
Echo in my heart
And resound through all creation:

Voice of Love
Voice of wonder
Voice of praise
Voice of thanksgiving
Voice of kindness
Voice of patience
Voice of encouragement
Voice of blessing
Voice of truth.

Snow

IV.

No sound
Where sound always is
Snow falling.

Double-Good Day!

What could be better than a no-drive day, except a no-drive day spent watching six inches of snow fall?

This town is beautiful, and strikingly so in the snow. I walked up to the cemetery to watch the snow and the night fall. Deliciously quiet. I could see the lights of Taneytown, and Oz (the Lehigh plant in Union Bridge), but not the trails at Liberty.

The darkness descended ever so quietly — there was no space between the day and the dusk and the dark — even as the snow stopped falling.

You Go, Girl!

"The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for."

— Maureen Dowd

I, Slovak...

Interesting (from The Writer's Almanac, where else?)...

It's the birthday of novelist, short story writer, and playwright Karel Capek, (books by this author) born in Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia (1890). A writer of novels, visionary romances, travel books, stories, and essays, Karel is best known for his plays, especially R.U.R. (1921), which introduced the word "robot" to the world. He got the idea when he was reading while riding in an automobile. He looked up from his reading and suddenly the crowds looked to him like artificial beings. At the premiere of R.U.R., audiences and critics were both fascinated and terrified by its vision of a technically advanced society unable to control its ultimate labor-saving creation, the robot.

Why, why, why?!?

"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order."

—Eudora Welty

Happy New Year!

Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power —

For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

—Kalidasa
India, 4th century A.D.

2008: The Year In Review

It was the best of years and the worst of years. But then aren’t they all?

The kids are doing well, and that’s the best.

The family is getting by OK despite health problems of my siblings, and Mom is doing well.

The dogs and cats are good; the dogs are wonderful, actually, as always, though they’re showing their ages. Charlie’s snoring and wheezing is unreal.

It was the (second) best year for love (2006 was better, or was it 2005?), but ended up being the worst. All the king's horses...

It was the best year ever for Double R Brand, way beyond expectations. So I’m closing it down. Makes sense, right?

It was the best year for travel. Utah is the memory of a lifetime. I hope soon it will stop being so painful.

Good old friends are still around, and that’s the best, a blessing. To quote one, “It's easy to have good friends...but much harder to have old friends.”

It was an excellent year for new friends and neighbors.

It was the best year in the garden for peppers, but not so great for tomatoes. The figs pulled through in the end, sweet jewels.

It was an OK year for dancing — at least a start. Hoping this year, starting with Salsa again, will be better. Not ready to give up yet.

It was the best year ever for gas mileage, and 2008 will be better still.

It was the best year ever for company in Uniontown; there were more people at Brambly Hedge over the holidays than in the entire two years prior. (It’s nice to have the quiet back, though.)

It was nearly the best year for hunting. The freezer is full, and the wealth is spread around.

It was a lousy year for writing. Nothing significant accomplished, other than these feeble missives on the Daily.

So here's to the year about to begin: May it be the best ever for you, gentle Reader! May your life be blessed with health and love and contentment and prosperity enough.

Happy New Year!

Tragic Ending...

It would be disrespectful not to salute and bid adieu to Benazir Bhutto. I don't know what kind of leader she was — it looks like mixed reviews to me — but she certainly inspired the love and admiration of many people. And her beauty, the dark hair, the dark eyes, the heavy make-up typical of the elite classes of central/southwestern Asian Muslim women, was just breathtaking.

The Pakistani leadership has certainly learned something from the Bush playbook. If they repeat "Al Qaeda" enough, they can count on the media mindlessly parroting it, and it will become de facto truth. Shame the media can't figure out for itself and repeat, "Musharraf, Musharraf..."

May she rest in peace. And may God help the people of Pakistan, and all of us.

Photo: T. Mughal/European Pressphoto Agency, as published by The New York Times.

"Choosing A Dog"

by William Stafford, from The Way It Is. © Graywolf Press, 1998. Reprinted without permission, stolen from The Writer's Almanac.

"It's love," they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

Some people never find
that half, or they neglect it or trade it
for money or success and it dies.

The faces of big dogs tell, over the years,
that size is a burden: you enjoy it for awhile
but then maintenance gets to you.

When I get old I think I'll keep, not a little
dog, but a serious dog,
for the casual, drop-in criminal —

My kind of dog, unimpressed by
dress or manner, just knowing
what's really there by the smell.

Your good dogs, some things that they hear
they don't really want you to know —
it's too grim or ethereal.

And sometimes when they look in the fire
they see time going on and someone alone,
but they don't say anything.

Solstice!

See you bright and early tomorrow, 12/22, at 1:08 a.m.