Jan23

it fell from the sky.

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after last week’s surprise package of tempting treats

another food surprise arrived

 a couple of breakfast meals

seem to have fallen from the sky

right to my front door

this time delivered by grub hub 

with no address on the receipt 

delivered in the morning when i was at school

 huge portions of pancakes and eggs benedict

i’m sure they were hot and delicious when they arrived

another set of challenges to my healthy eating

testing my temptation limits

is my door the common delivery area for every address on my street?

what will appear next?

should i leave snacks and drinks out for all of the delivery people yet to come?

—

“when fortune knocks open the door.”

-proverb

Jan22

quit.

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the ever-sweet, caring, overworked, underpaid, and passionate manager
of the local dollar store
left this sign as he headed out
for one last time.
(below is what i wrote about him in a post a couple of years back)

when one local dollar tree store closed

my favorite enthusiastic manager

moved to the new location

and judging by my recent visit

he has not lost one bit

of his dollar store fervor and expertise.

this was a conversation between bob (the manager) and evelyn (my cashier) as i was checking out:

E: “bob, you’re really good at remembering all of the balloon numbers to ring up and knowing each one of them without looking.”

B: “well, i’ve been doing it a long time. once in a while a number will change or a new shape will come in, like a unicorn, but it’s part of my job to keep up with it.”

E: “when i worked at the grocery store, i knew all the prices for the cucumbers, the peppers and tomatoes. the easy ones”

B: “some are trickier, like avocados, and for some of those things you only see sometimes it’s harder to remember the all the plu’s.”

E: “it’s really a skill, bob. to be able to do that.”

customer john interrupts:

J: “hey bob – so this is where you’ve got up to – how are you liking the change?”

B: “hey, john. good to see you. it’s great. every day is great. i’m so lucky to be here.”

and how lucky is dollar tree to have bob as a manager?

a man who truly loves his job

takes pride in all of it

is always smiling and helpful

knows exactly where every item in the store is located

and who happily learns the number for the new unicorn balloon.

“so tired you want to quit, then you get more tired, and forget to quit.”
― charles bukowski,
Jan21

memoir.

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the kinder wondered what happened to the big, old tree they used to play under

it was a good tree

we sat under it when it was hot in the sun and its shade kept us cool

we collected pretty leaves that floated down from it in the fall

it was on a hill and we ran by it in the winter when we were playing in the snow

pieces of it had been falling off for a very long time

we guess that maybe it was very old and very sick and it was getting too tired

 the kinder began to put its little pieces back on to decorate it

we hope that in the spring

a new sapling will come up near where the old tree used to stand so tall.

—

“a tree’s wood is also its memoir.”     

-hope jahren

Jan20

unexpected.

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last night when i walked outside

i tripped over a bag left at my front door

it was filled with treats

cookies, candy, and ice cream

(the three c’s, the holy trinity of sweets, cake can be subbed in as needed)

i had no idea who it was from, no note inside, such a great surprise

then i noticed the address

guessed the delivery person had just reversed it

i could go and deliver it myself

 tried to imagine who was waiting for it

maybe

it was from a parent

who sent it to their child/college student cramming for an exam?

the victim of a recent romantic breakup needing sugar therapy?

a parent who just needed a break and a treat?

a dieter on a sweets bender?

a family waiting for dessert to go with their board game?

a hallmark movie night for friends?

was it a test from the universe

to challenge my recent healthy eating resolve?

cadbury is my favorite chocolate

 the cookies aren’t that big

 i could eat one spoon of ice cream a day

i had no idea how long it had been out there

no one had knocked

the ice cream was beginning to soften

i felt for whoever was expecting it

called the company on the bag

they said the customer had reordered when it didn’t arrive

they had already sent them out a new bag of treats

 i was welcome to eat it or throw it out

i chose a third option

i delivered this unexpected gift to my daughter

at her house in the light of day.

—

“life is always bringing unexpected gifts.”

-may sarton

Jan19

raining popcorn.

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popcorn is art and one of my favorite snacks

(though it’s no flamin’ hot cheetos!),

something to consider on national popcorn day.

Raining Popcorn (2001) is a piece commissioned by the Faulconer Gallery of the Grinnell College in Iowa. The commission would take artist, Sandy Skoglund many months to complete. In Skoglund’s art practice, the conceptual subject matter works in conjunction with the physical materials she uses, drawing on historical references, and instilling them with psychologically complex meaning.

Produced in 2001, just before the September 11 attacks, Raining Popcorn references the complex roots of American contemporary culture and overconsumption. The unifying subject throughout the piece is popcorn, so pronounced and repetitive it replaces nature. The popcorn becomes an all-encompassing reality, lining the walls, the floors, the subjects, and alas growing from trees. This obsessive environment constructed by Skoglund derives from the artist’s desire to combine sculptures of animals, live humans, and nature into a space that involves thought and play, as part research and part recreation.

The abundance of Popcorn acts as a reflection of the cultural environment, being noisy, excessive, universal, and part of popular culture. Currently, Americans eat 13 billion quarts of Popcorn a year, produced mostly in the heartland of America, from Illinois to Ohio. The piece is a response to memories and experiences Skoglund felt as a graduate student in Iowa.

The painstakingly handcrafted quality of the endless popcorn creates a fantasy landscape, one that raises questions about climate issues and our surrounding environment, as well as fantasy and reality. In Raining Popcorn, Skoglund’s objects and composite staging have a base in truth; they are not a product of photoshop or digital manipulation. It is critical for the artist that the photographs evidence something genuine. The constructions are explicitly staged to be photographed from one unique viewpoint.

—

“americans love popcorn, and their love doesn’t quit.”

-rosecrans baldwin

 

—

Credits: Sandy Skoglund, Raining Popcorn – Holden Luntz Gallery

Jan18

what?! a follow-up to my exciting ‘huh’ post?!

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Because sometimes periods, commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes, hyphens, apostrophes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks, brackets, parentheses, braces, and ellipses won’t do, here is another punctuation mark to work into your everyday communications:

INTERROBANG

You probably already know the interrobang, thanks to its popularity (You did what!?). Though the combination exclamation point and question mark can be replaced by using one of each, they can also be combined into a single glyph. The interrobang was invented by advertising executive Martin Speckter in 1962, who said “it is the typographical equivalent of a grimace or a shrug of the shoulders. It applied solely to the rhetorical, when a writer wished to convey incredulity.” The name is derived from the Latin word interrogatio, which means “questioning,” and bang—how printers refer to the exclamation mark.

—
“symbols are nothing but the natural speech of drama”
-tennessee williams
—
source: mental flosss
Jan15

creativity doesn’t wait.

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when you try and try

to make a snowman

 the fluffy, sticky, wet snow is gone

the icy, hard, dry snow is here

 you think and think

of another way

  just decorate a bump that you find

make a flat-puffy snowman

and there you go.

 

—

“creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. it fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.”
– bruce garrabrandt

Jan14

moved.

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today a ladybug stopped by our classroom veterinary clinic

the kinder docs looked at it closely with a magnifying glass

 decided it might be having trouble flying

after much discussion, more close looks, a few notes on a paper, a phone call,

and a blood pressure check of one of the other docs

 their good care and magic worked

and the ladybug flew away home.

—

“true compassion means not only feeling another’s pain but also being moved to help relieve it.”

-daniel goleman

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