POETS Day! Charles Mackay of Extraordinary Popular Delusions Fame
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] My kid can type. I don’t mean he just knows how. He dropped into a conversation about something else that he started fiddling with a typing tutor website and “plays” the exercises between games or watching videos when he’s messing around on the computer. He’s been at it for…
POETS Day! “The Waste Land” Lees
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] I went on longer than I’d planned this week, so to the point without preamble: Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Get out of work. Run and be free. You’ve done your part, slaved the workweek throroughly enough. Escape the office and hit a happy hour, still sunlit park, catch a ball…
POETS Day! Ernest Dowson
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] In New Amsterdam, kids played hoekje spelen, or “playing corner.” Basically, it was hide-n-go-seek. And that’s how we get the phrase “playing hooky.” Or not. There are other, more boring, etymologies, but they’re boring. So hoekje. Truant comes from Middle English “truand,” which in turn comes from Old French…
POETS Day! Ovid and the Rape of Europa
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] My favorite librarian is missing. He’s been gone ever since I asked about a collection of James Dickey poetry. We couldn’t find it in the Jefferson County system or through inter-library loan systems with universities and other institutions (I have no idea what other institutions participate in library loan…
POETS Day! Edwin Muir’s “The Horses”
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] Mississippi is where I pass on the right. Folks come from all round to make me pass them on the right in Mississippi. I saw tags from New York, and I passed them on the right in Mississippi. I saw tags from North Carolina driving 70 mph, and I…
POETS Day! Katharine Tynan
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] Smoking looks cool. The converse is true as well. Not smoking is awkward. P.J. O’Rourke wrote, “People who don’t smoke have a terrible time finding something polite to do with their lips.” I’d say the same about their hands. Few have the Italian gift for gesturing. If there’s a…
POETS Day! EB White
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] In the Victorian Era, the Brits were very competent. They had dispatches and requisitioning to attend along with all the other mechanism of empire, but suddenly they had real mechanisms in unseen number as the Industrial Revolution gained… sorry… steam. To maintain competence, a person of import suddenly had…
POETS Day! Emily Brontë
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] I have an uncle who is never bored. He’s always up to or up for something. One of the collateral benefits of restlessness is that he banks interesting places and activities he discovers wandering around. There’s rarely a “What do you want to do?” because he’s got a backlog…
POETS Day! Robert Bly
The last time I had a flat tire, I took a picture. It’s still in my phone ready to be deployed should I be disastrously running late for something I can’t be understandable tardy for. Years ago my wife got a call from work on a morning we’d forgotten to set the alarm. She darted…
POETS Day! Katherine Mansfield
[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com] Is it birthday season where you live? Lord, we have a passle of them going on right now. August is supposed to be the most popular month for U.S. births, but the bleed into September is more Romanov than slight. We’ve had four in the last two weeks with…
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The Columbo Game 