20 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in Glynda's Writings, Poetry
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The earth lays aslumber as
Mother Nature pulls her white coverlet
Across the browning fields.
Though nearer now, to Sun’s burning
Than in those blooming days
The globe averts her visage now,
Shying for the Dreamtime,
A time of garnering warmth and
Exhilarating in the chill.
A standing still time.
A time for recollecting
And of foretelling.
The time of offering friendship and
Of Wishing well.
-Glynda Shaw
10 Sunday Dec 2017
Posted in Lenore's Writings
I start to type “Its an odd time of the year for me” then loop into what exactly is odd? If one of my hens were to lay a square egg, that is odd. Otherwise, what if this is just a natural state and stage; an in between time that occurs in the getting older process? (I realize that I started getting older the second I was born but you’ll truly appreciate what I mean when you hit sixty.)
This morning I woke from the effects of a dream. The dream scape left me deeply sad. Its vague now but I remember wailing to a school mate that I was about to go live in the Chicago suburbs. That meant that I was about to give up what I had now. And why must I give that up? Because getting out in the wide world would embrace the Inner Me. I wonder if this is the angst that Moley felt in The Wind and The Willows when he left Mole End?
Specifically, this time of the year, this YuleTide, is marked for me by first the birthday of the brother nearest to me in age then his death date. There. Its said. Brother Frank celebrated forty-three birthdays. He did not celebrate forty four. That almost marks him as a Charles Dickens character.
I am on the cusp. The edge of the cliff that all good people come to. Shall I stay in a country setting though I have health problems as well as emotional needs? I do love the room, the space, the pride of being part of a three acre weedy entity. For it is an entity. A being that we call Dunne Alba.
My partner; my person that I’ve stayed with for thirty nine years, bless us, indeed, he also needs the wider world. Or at least it would be good for him. This brings me to the decision to buy a toaster oven! My Love can not use the large electric stove very well because its controls are made for those blessed with sight. There are no dials or buttons to punch. The toaster oven has dials. Hubby has enjoyed and employed the toaster oven and is back to being on his own when it comes to all manner of cooking, including pizza creations. Our move from this Dunne Alba, this would mean the larger, open road of bus lines and train connections, trails that share space with trees, blessed green limbed trees, and of course rain.
Christmas is a quiet season for us. We rarely head out into noisy, boisterous parties. We rarely head out into large, human congested department stores. Instead we are at home, listening to books, reading to each other, doing what needs to be done. If we step out away from this current sheltering island that scenario could shift a little. Perhaps it is time to shove on a back pack and head out? Perhaps its time to air out the poet, to allow her to fly into dusty reading rooms and book stores, ears open to others as they too share their inner poet?
04 Monday Dec 2017
Posted in Holidays, Lenore's Writings
In case anyone was on tenterhooks about this, I actually decided to celebrate the winter holiday this year. We made a pretty neat tree with more lights than I thought possible to put on one, topped off with a stuffed penguin. There are gloomy days right now, even here in sunny Arizona and the lights […]
28 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Holidays
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Originally posted on December 24, 2012 at 12:30 PM
Well tonight’s the night and NORAD makes it official. Santa has 24 hours to visit something like one billion homes, some of them Down Under and in South America where it’s summertime now. There’ve been some cute items on NPR lately, an interview with United Postal Service administrators concerning the size Santa’s organization must be to transport and eviler so many parcels. Another item was a physicist asserting that Santa must use wormholes to reach our houses as even travel at the speed of light couldn’t get him everywhere fast enough to get the job done in one day.
I think I was pretty young when I decided that it just wasn’t on to visit all of the houses in one night for one man no matter how magic. I hadn’t thought yet of parallel time lines allowing a person to loop back in time and perform a lot of things simultaneously but I’d heard of Santa’s helpers and had pretty much decided that there was a large crew of sleighs out there in the Christmas Eve sky going down chimneys and bringing cheer. When it came time to bring our daughter somewhat out of the open-eyed fantasy of childhood and a bit at least into the Adult Conspiracy we told her that Santa was very very busy and we needed to help Santa do some of his work so we delivered presents to certain neighbors. Later at a feminist gathering in Seattle we learned of Ms. Claus and how she was about bringing food, clothing and feminist literature to deserving children large and small.
However we imagine it happening and however we picture the personage himself, don’t we all still believe at some level in Santa and if someone comes to our house, down our chimney, through our window, out of our closet, however he gets there, that we were singled out to have a visit from the Real Santa?
It’s been said that Santa doesn’t come to poor people’s houses. Jesus does. That’s a fine sentiment in it’s way but I’ve known Santa to visit the homes of Jewish, Budhist, Islamic children- in a secular way perhaps, but bringing joy all the same. Christmas is overcommercialized. Of course it is. We’ve known that for decades but there is still magic in Santa, in those gifts that are small, nearly incidental, yet having the ability to charm as much as the big-ticket items.
I gave my friend a pack of modeling clay in Seventh grade and we spent hours making things together, two blind kids sort of coloring together in a way but shaping rather than crayoning. When I was much, much older I got one of those bendy rubber animals which you can pose. Mine was a bull I believe. My daughter and I spent I don’t know how long doing the most non PC things to that poor bovine that we could think of; having it take a poop, thumb it’s nose, anything a child and an often childlike adult could imagine.
Yes, Santa is out there. We all know him/her but Santa’s a busy person and can always use the help. Try sneaking a crate of Manderins onto your neighbor’s stoop or mailing an anonymous package of Anything to someone you hardly know. Use the address of the corner store of local tavern as return. Buy a kid a gyroscope. Learn how to make butterscotch. It can be secular as hell but still magic. It really is better to give than to receive because generally it’s more fun but we need to know how to receive and that’s really what Santa is all about.
24 Saturday Sep 2016
Posted in Holidays
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Originally posted on December 21, 2012 at 12:15 AM
I attended an office gift exchange yesterday and my Secret Santa gave me the same thing I’d given her: Starbuck’s gift cards. That was okay except I’ve pretty much given up drinking coffee except in one or two contexts and I don’t need the sweets. The whole thing got me thinking about Holiday gifts in general and how stocking stuffers have transformed from oranges and Yo-yos and decks of playing cards when I was a kid (yes folks, really, truly) to palm pilots and cell phones.
A great deal has been said and written about how electronics pretty much rule the lives of young people in particular from computers large and small to personal communication devices to online networks which I don’t even particularly want to comprehend. Recent events which I’ve already spoken of in this blog again strongly suggest that among our most dangerous neighbors is a propensity for certain kinds of militaristic video games. Of course I’m not saying that anyone who plays a mass destruction video game is a sociopath or will become one but in the last 20 years or so I have noticed a tendancy toward turning Inward among younger people.
What I mean by Inward is a tendency to look into the system whether it be a computer game, a communication network such as Facebook, or a cellpphone which plays games with you and shows you the weather while you’re waiting for that all-important call. All this is going on Inside the system, network app, whatever.
I’m not decrying electronics. I’m a technologist myself and electronics are one of the most enormously transforming growth industries of the last century or so but shouldn’t we expect even more? Computers, phones, cyber nets do stupendous things within electronic memory. They certainly flummox me and I’m a reasonably good programmer. If you look at some of the things a person can dooutside the network, by this I mean from the network outward, we can see that we might be unnecessarily limiting ourselves.
This Christmas I bought matching lasers for my grown-up daughter and her friend. This is something I could only (and did) dream about when I was younger. What do you use a personal laser for? Hell, whatever you use a laser for, burn stuff, melt stuff, pop balloons! Take a look at The Cupcake CNC at makerbot.com and you’ll see a way to externalize a computers thoughts into something you can hold in your hand and use for many, many purposes. There are teaching robots which are essentially mobile erector sets with access to PC brains which can be modified and augmented in myriad ways. It’s possible to fly a model airplane a hydroplane or a helicopter from the computer. All these things get give us the gritty, challenging, often frustrating texture of real world experience and since the science fiction days of the 1950s I haven’t heard of a roboticist who committed mass murder.
Certainly let’s give our kids, spouses, students, computers and communication devices but for Goddess sake let’s give them also things to hook up to them which help them understand and utilize the wondrous variety of phenomena, effects and processes going on in the world around us. Let’s build a miniaturized, electronically controlled winery with the output of which we may toast the future!
Glynda
