House Democrats Name Hoyer to No. 2 Post

Democrats picked Rep. Steny Hoyer to be House majority leader on Thursday, spurning Rep. Nancy Pelosi's handpicked choice moments after unanimously backing her election as speaker when Congress convenes in January. A Marylander and 25-year veteran of Congress, Hoyer defeated Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania in a vote of 149-86.

iTunes is currently playing: Slam from the album Close-Up by David Sanborn.

American Life in Poetry: Column 085

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The Illinois poet, Lisel Mueller, is one of our country's finest writers, and the following lines, with their grace and humility, are representative of her poems of quiet celebration.


In November

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.


Reprinted from "Alive Together: New and Selected Poems," Louisiana State University Press, 1996, by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 1996 by Lisel Mueller. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

iTunes is currently playing: Brand New Day from the album Brand New Day by Sting.

... and all the rest of our brave young people.

iTunes is currently playing: My Country from the album Bad Love by Randy Newman.

Ted Kooser was U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 through 2006. During his tenure, he started a weekly poetry column called "American Life in Poetry". Current and past columns can be read online here. You can also sign up to receive each column via email.

The point of the column is to promote poetry. To this end, Mr. Kooser selects poems that are particularly accessible. He wants everyone to read and enjoy the weekly columns, not just people with advanced English degrees.

When one of his selected poems appears in my inbox, I stop whatever I am doing and give it my full attention. I am never disappointed.

I wrote to the folks at ALP to ask permission to include the column in my blog and my request was granted. I hope you all enjoy the poems as much as I do.

iTunes is currently playing: One Of The Things I Do So Well from the album Life Is Good by Livingston Taylor.

American Life in Poetry: Column 084

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Many of this column's readers have watched an amaryllis emerge from its hard bulb to flower. To me they seem unworldly, perhaps a little dangerous, like a wild bird you don't want to get too close to. Here Connie Wanek of Duluth, Minnesota, takes a close and playful look at an amaryllis that looks right back at her.


Amaryllis

A flower needs to be this size
to conceal the winter window,
and this color, the red
of a Fiat with the top down,
to impress us, dull as we've grown.

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb
half above the soil
stuck out its green tongue
and slowly, day by day,
the flower itself entered our world,

closed, like hands that captured a moth,
then open, as eyes open,
and the amaryllis, seeing us,
was somehow undiscouraged.
It stands before us now

as we eat our soup;
you pour a little of your drinking water
into its saucer, and a few crumbs
of fragrant earth fall
onto the tabletop.


Reprinted from "Bonfire," New Rivers Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1997 by Connie Wanek. Her most recent book is "Hartley Field," from Holy Cow! Press, 2002. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

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American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.

iTunes is currently playing: Hearts And Flowers from the album Hearts And Flowers by Joan Armatrading.

... and so much to think about afterwards ...

If you have been in a cemetery lately -- at least one in which people have been buried in the last several years -- you have probably seen stones with laser-etched designs on them. Etching has become quite popular and these newer stones give cemeteries a very different look. Supposedly, this technique will last 500+ years in an outdoor setting. I guess that seems like forever to most people. Or maybe they figure in 500 years nobody will care who is buried in these graveyards anyway, so they don't worry that the design will disappear eventually.

As I walked among the stones, I was surprised to see so many of them decorated for Halloween. It has never occurred to me to go to the cemetery and put Halloween decorations up. I think that if I did, some of my relatives would totally understand and some of them would think I was bonkers.

Anyway, a few stones, in particular, caught my eye today.



Ryder was just two and a half years old when he died. I assume his death was accidental, because there is a small, round plaque below his picture that indicates his organs were donated. I love the etched images of a little boy angel playing football and swinging in heaven. :)



Arionna was less than five months old when she died. I always want to know what happened to the babies.



Most people who die before the age of 40 are the victim of an accident, right? I wonder if Robert Altman's motorcylce was involved in his early death. But wouldn't that just be too weird, if he died in a motorcycle accident and the family still chose to include that image on the stone?

iTunes is currently playing: Light Above The Trees from the album A Drop Of Water by Keiko Matsui.

I was wandering around in a drug store the other day and I saw this in the pet department:



There are many things that can be purchased in either "stylish" or "boring" versions, but I didn't think a cat litter box was one of them.

I didn't buy it.

iTunes is currently playing: Walls Come Tumbing Down from the album The Singular Adventures Of The Style Council by The Style Council.

I have been very bad about blogging. I guess that is better than being bad AT blogging which would mean that my writing sucks. I don't think my posts suck. I just think they are too few and far between.

Since I last wrote I formed an LLC (Catland Enterprises LLC) to deal with some business ventures I am starting up. I have owned the domain catland.com for years and will continue to use it for the new business.

As you will see from the web site, I am available as an eBay trading assistant, which means I sell stuff on eBay for people who don't want to bother selling their own stuff. I will also be teaching eBay classes in the near future. Stay tuned!

If you don't have an eBay account but think you might want to buy or sell something in the next 30 days, please consider signing up by clicking on the eBay banner below. It doesn't cost you anything and I get a few bucks. Thanks!




I used LegalZoom.com to set up the LLC and was very happy with them. LegalZoom was started by Robert Shapiro. (you might remember him from the O.J. trial.) The web site has tons of helpful information that you can read before you decide to initiate any legal process. Once you do, they keep you informed every step of the way with emails and phone calls. I can't recommend them highly enough.




iTunes is currently playing: Money Mile from the album Alf by Alison Moyet.

... and sometimes I am embarrassed that I ever lived there.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California filed suit against Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp. and three other carmakers on Wednesday, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have cost the state millions of dollars.

State Attorney General Bill Lockyer said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California was the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions.

The lawsuit also names Chrysler Motors Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's DaimlerChrysler, and the North American units of Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

iTunes is currently playing: Lonesome For A Place I Know from the album Idlewild by Everything But The Girl.

i just bought an ironing board from Target that hangs over a closet door. i thought i might be more inclined to iron the things that need to be ironed if i just had to pull the board down rather than drag a (larger, heavier) model out of a closet and find someplace to set it up.

i almost didn't buy it because this was written on the package:

"there's something rather magical about ironing. you take your rumpled up life. spritz a little water on it. run an iron over it. and presto. everything's new again. the wrinkles of yesterday have vanished right before your very eyes. and there you are. looking fresh. feeling sharp. ready to take on the world."

they actually paid someone to write that crap? clearly, it was someone who has never ironed, because anyone who has will tell you there is nothing MAGICAL about it or any other form of domestic drudgery known as housework.

hmmm.... could the field of marketing possibly be dominated by ... men??

iTunes is currently playing: We Work The Black Seam from the album The Dream Of The Blue Turtles by Sting.