You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
I wish he hadn’t said it. My former landlord in the Yakima Valley, visiting us here in New England, remarked on how many of the houses he saw that were in need of new paint. That was before he saw ours, too.
Now, in this seemingly picturesque location, everywhere I turn, I see houses with peeling paint. Or worse.
I wish he hadn’t said it.
At least he said nothing about roofing.
The older I get, the less I know.
It’s not just a matter of recall, either.
At least it’s no longer called “absent-minded.” Or just plain “spacing out.”
Two women were overheard talking about relationships.
“He said he couldn’t live without me,” one told the other. “So I said, ‘Why aren’t you dead?'”
~*~
And you wonder what happened to the traditional English love poem? Please think again.
A reporter assigned to cover a large singles scene mixer returned to the newsroom with a telling image.
Three women had been remarking about an earnest young man who wore a tag proclaiming himself an “Incurable Romantic.”
As they snickered: “Sounds like a venereal disease.”
~*~
And you wonder what happened to the traditional English love poem? Please think again.
At a party one night in our Smoking Garden, a friend was telling about a fundraiser her church youth group had done back in Massachusetts.
“That’s a great idea,” I said. After all, she was a United Church of Christ pastor with all kinds of connections. “UCC,” for short.
Next thing I knew, a big sign and box appeared in our Quaker meetinghouse, warning Friends to buy flamingo insurance. This is New Hampshire, remember, not Florida.
One night after our party, our renowned sculptor Jane and her husband had come home to find her flock of pink flamingos missing from their yard and garden, but a sign stood in their place: “They needed to be quarantined.”
Uh-huh. I was as baffled as anyone that Sunday as we entered the meetinghouse and faced that big sign and its box of warning.
Here’s how it worked: you could donate any amount for insurance, but if someone else trumped that figure by offering more, you could still get flocked. And if you were flocked, there would be an envelope for another donation for their removal. In other words, you could get hit coming and going.
Then the plastic birds – and wooden cutouts – began appearing in Friends’ lawns. Folks living in apartments weren’t immune, either: the birds showed up strung around balconies or in the backseats of cars left unlocked or wrapped around cars that had been locked.
For the most part, it was great fun – even for the police officers called out to investigate rustling sounds in the night. We had no idea who was in on it, and nobody from our Smoking Garden party guest list was looking guilty.
When we were hit, one of our neighbors laughed and explained why she knew we hadn’t selected the birds as permanent decor: “You’re too organic.”
(Ouch!)
The Sunday morning the operation came out in the open, a guest to Meeting told me, “We did the same thing, down in Connecticut.”
“UCC?” I countered.
“Yes, how’d you know.”
“Just a lucky guess.”
So it had been the Meeting’s kids who were keeping the secret, along with a couple of very, very discrete adults. The money we raised went to the Heifer Project. Our children had to decide what kind of animals they’d send to the Third World – something big, like a cow, or something smaller, like a lot of chickens? And then they took a field trip to the project’s New England farm to check out all the options.
It’s a much better story than the one about my ex-wife’s two birds – the ones a friend of hers stole from my yard after the separation.
our Lady of Pink Flamingos keeps taunting
“Have you been flocked?”
where’s it going, our summer of plastic flamingos?
poem copyright 2014 by Jnana Hodson
The earth itself is set to erupt.
~*~
Thunder pealed again, and everybody packed up. Outside, Roddy and Erik danced in the eerie dusk. A soft drumming in trees sounded like drizzle, but instead of water, powder fell. Everyone appeared amazed, even elated. Weren’t we fortunate to have a volcano blow up in our face! Then Jaya recalled history: “Oh, Pompeii! Will guides conduct tours here, showing the world exactly how we victims perished? Is this the way our world will end?” Something gripped her, insisting they get home or die in the effort. She dragged Erik, protesting, to the car and raced through the grit. Autos in front of them were invisible, even their taillights, until Jaya was almost atop them. The ink blot overhead closed in on the far horizon, sealing off the last natural light. Plunging through this tar-paper snowfall on a route they knew so well, Jaya recalled the many times she had joked about being able to drive it blindfolded.
~*~
To learn more about my novel, go to my page at Smashwords.com.
Looked up as I drove by a big green lawn the other day and saw it was dotted with pink. A bright pink unlike any flowers we grow in these parts.
Then I smiled, realized the house had just been flocked – there was even a note stuck on a stick.
In a flash, even at a distance (this was the kind of place that has a small pond between the house and the highway), I sensed the two dozen flamingos were all uniform, likely brand-new, unlike the motley band we “quarantined” for our own use all too many years ago now. Why, ours even multiplied in the course of their service – some of the dads were making new ones from plywood, rather than plastic.
Flocked, you ask? Oh, I was sure I’d told that story, somewhere.
Yeah, I know that seeing the first robin of the year is supposed to be a harbinger of spring, but the reality is that it’s possible to see them all winter, even where we live.
Just consider the day we looked out the window in the middle of February and saw 10 flocking together in our driveway – and believe me, we were a long way from the end of winter. There were more on the snow on the other side of the house, too.
The true bird of spring tidings is the buzzard. That’s right, the one more properly called a turkey vulture, back from wintering in Florida. (I happen to think there’s a lot of symbolism there. And they call the senior citizens “snow birds”? Maybe a better term would be “bait.”)
Yes, you can observe the stray vulture around here in the middle of winter, but they arrive in numbers just as the air’s turning from the depths. Sometimes it’s just as the last snow of the year is melting, in years like this when we’ve had a heavy and sustained pack build. Doesn’t matter, really. Somehow, they know.
Unlike the robins.
Or is it Our Lady of the Puck?
New England is hockey country, and Boston Bruins fans are legion. Rest assured, Bobby Orr would no doubt lead their pantheon of saints.
While statues of Mary are common across the country, I know of no others like this. Behind the mask, the face looks feminine. This repurposed icon icon overlooks Chauncey Creek Road in Kittery, Maine.
Relying on survey results alone can be dangerous. One paper I worked for launched a very successful Sunday edition after a survey had told them, Don’t do it, it will be a disaster. Instead, the publisher trusted her gut – and won.
Around the same time, when Doonesbury was the hottest comic strip across the country, another paper’s survey told them it was the most hated item in the paper. Fortunately, another survey found that it was also the most popular.
I’ve learned to regard an intensity factor – not just whether something is popular, but how high in ranks on a scale. Yes, in those days, everybody read Peanuts, when you were looking at your top ten comics, but when you weighted for top-three intensity, it was easily topped by Garfield, Far Side, and Cathy.
So when it comes down to most hated or most loved, if you listen to the complaints, you turn boring and bland. There’s nothing to excite anyone.
I can look to symphonic programming with the same message. Yes, works by living composers upset a lot of listeners. But when you rely on the chestnut classics, you quickly turn stale.
Jnana's Red Barn 