Van Gogh in Auvers

Robert C. Jones

"Outside, the cicadas are singing,"
he wrote to Theo.
"Scorched grass takes on
lovely tones of old gold.
I have no other news to tell you,
except that the fields here smell of thyme,
and the cicadas
still sing in ancient Greek."

I have been looking for this poem for a very long time.

I don't identify with the setting (lake houses on the east coast?) but this is a wonderful late summer poem.

When August Becomes a Whisper

Cristina M. R. NorcrossFeeling her underwater mermaid hair ( Read more... )

by orange fell

Tomato Tart
Sautéed Greens with Cannellini Beans
Bratwursts
Mexican Coke
Goat Cheese and Raspberry Tart

We haven't even eaten dessert yet, we're hanging out on our laptops because we're too full.

My family sent me birthday cards!

I was afraid it would make me cry, but it made me grin!

I watched the Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics while eating berry streusal brownies with my fingers. Now I am reading about the Peloponnesian War.

COGNITIVE DISCONNECT!!

Also: my family is sweet and lovely for visiting me yesterday.

1. Flogging Molly is the music for packing boxes and scrubbing the kitchen. For cleaning my bedroom, Garbage from the 1990s ( Read more... )

The season for jacarandas is over. No more amethyst--July sizzles in fuschia-pink clumps of oleander, crape myrtle, and bougainvillea, and the red-orange flashes of those almost neon summertime dragonflies, as bright as the beginnings of brush fires up in the hills. Ash is the color as well--the smoky haze that rose from the Goleta Fire now ( Read more... )

Summer baking continues apace: plum cake, lime muffins, and blueberry corn muffins so far. Tomorrow, chocolate cake!

Alternate history of the day: Al Gore goes back in time to the eighteenth century and invents the Internet in collaboration with Voltaire! The entire Salon then gets carried away editing encyclopedia entries. And Gore convinces ( Read more... )

I do not recommend the 2003 Australian movie "Japanese Story," starring Toni Collette and Gotaro Tsunashima. Her tough Aussie geologist and his enigmatic Japanese businessman are thrown together for vague reasons and drive into the vast red desert of Western Australia, where his inexperience nearly gets them both killed ( Read more... )

Four Seasons in Jerusalem: Summer

F. M. Black

In the Jewish Quarter
laundry blows in the wind--
prayer shawls drying.

My Yemenite friend
is grinding hummus for me
this sweltering night.

Past the battlefield,
a man walks his two collies--
longtime companions.

Volley of gunshots--
the Arab boys keep playing soccer
in the Muslim Quarter.

I ( Read more... )