rhododendron

 

Dear Garden,

Today I have two songs for you, with the title of rhododendron.  One, two.

 

surf guitar

 

Dear Listener,

I have a nice version here, a kind of surfed up, rockabilly Lust for Life.  It think it is just grand; I hope you do, too.  It's your song for the day!

Well, will ya look at that!?

 

Debbie Harry

Dear Whom it May Concern,

Every once in a little while, upon a time, so to speak, I get so ebullient, so touched by something I read that I cannot bear not to share it; and so I get a little pile of the book* to give to friends, or I email everyone with the essay.  Well, once upon one of these times, I was filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  Well, no, that isn't quite right, because I am still filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  I think she is a great, great mind.  I feel my cells changing when I read her books.  I adore her, and when I went to share a thing she'd wrote, on cloud nine with my affection, I said that it wasn't just that I loved her, it was that I wanted to inhabit her, to be her.  One of my friends said:  You cannot be her; she has blonde hair and she smokes!  A pause while we consider.

I still wonder at what that means, that rebuttal.  There is, I think, an irony, in that being blonde and smoking is actually available to anyone with, hmm, say 20 bucks and a few hours?  So, those are not the things preventing me from being Helen DeWitt.  The obvious reason, is that someone is already being Helen DeW.  Namely, Helen DeW.  And all of this is crazy self-evident, so what am I saying to you today, exactly?  I am saying:  what are we doing if we are not trying to be like the humans we admire?  Where else can you go for the teachings?  (And yeah, I will give you cats as role models, as mentors, as idols, and in fact you can take the whole of the fauna, and the flora too, and take geo physical while you are at it, but it seems to me to make a lot of sense to emulate those we admire, in any and every way.  And you know, sure, you can model yourself on the cosmos, too; it seems a good design).

You might wonder, though, what has become of my topic: the impulse to share things I love.  Well, it takes an occasional beating from clumsy responders, but even now, I have three very fine poetry books stacked up and ready to give to what I hope will be a receptive and open heart, and I am so excited about it!  And, if they land poorly, that is fine too, because a book lives a long life** and many other readers will come upon these three specific copies and maybe one of those readers will want to be Sandra Cisneros, Ada Limón, Olivia Gatwood.  They won't even need bleach.

* e.g:  Faux Pas, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Hare with the Amber Eyes, Cold Comfort Farm, Cary Grant's Suit. 

** the used copy of Wuthering Heights I read was 76 years old.  I read a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the library that was 100 years old!  It worked just as good as new.

today

 

Dear May Day,

I expect you are at home, observing the national strike.  As your day unfolds, in solidarity and resistance, you might listen to this wonderful song, your song for the day.  My DJ played it a few weeks back and I was smitten.  You might be smitten, too, but wait until tomorrow to buy it!

because, because, because

 

Prop food from Wallace and Gromit animated film A Matter of Loaf and Death.

Dear Reason,

Because of Covid 19, I had to get a cell phone, and because I had a cell phone, I had to get on social media (did I have to, though?), and because of that, because I am now giving entirely too much of my screen time to the tiny, absurd, glassy, smudgy finger-printed cell phone surface (when I could be at the Drive In watching 30 foot high heads in close ups with 8 foot wide lips!!!), I have seen some mighty fine recipes.  One of them is this one, from Poppy Cooks.  She calls it the Ultimate Girl Dinner.

A little day music.

 

teardrops & sighs dress

Dear Listener,

A while ago I sent you the Faye Webster song "But Not Kiss" and today I am giving you a nudge to the longer Tiny Desk Concert from Faye Webster, because it is very fine!

pan-fried

 

Still Life with Frying Pan and Eggs, screenprint, William Scott

Dear Dinnertime,

This is really good- I think you should try it.  I added an egg and breadcrumbs, cause that's what I thought it needed after the first time I made.  I put in a lot of minced chives.  I also left out the salt and ground in an obscene amount of black pepper.  I think you should think of it as a concept, and not a recipe.  Mix some stuff up, make little mounds on the pan, cover them with won ton or dumpling wrappers and then pour on the water/cornstarch/flour mix.  Oh, and cornflour is the British word for cornstarch, so don't let that stop you from making these!  Eat it with sliced cucumbers with vinegar sprinkled on them, and maybe some sesame seeds.