[nagdu] Fw: Garrison Kielor's Daily Almanac for today

[Ed Meskys]

of note to dog users and SF readers--Ed Meskys
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Louis Gosselin" <gosselin_louis at MYFAIRPOINT.NET>
To: <NHBLIND-TALK at LISTSERV.ICORS.ORG>
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 8:23 AM
Subject: Garrison Kielor's Daily Almanac for today


Cute poem for dog lovers here.

The Writer's Almanac for February 17, 2010

Cleaning up after the Dog  by Jason Tandon


Pull plastic bag from pocket
and wave it like a flag

or diploma. Make sure many people
congratulate your care
for the community.

Check bag for holes.
Double check.

Inspect stool for odd hues.
Greens, blues, blood.

Evaluate consistency.

You don't want to leave smears
on the sidewalk or grass--no prints.

Getaway must be clean.

Prepare to go in for all of it.
Hold breath.
Grab, clamp, reverse bag, twist, knot, cinch.

Smell hands.

Hold loaded bag high in the air,
assure onlookers that Everything is Okay.

If a cop should cruise by,
his crew cut bristling
in the sun,

hold that bag higher,
so he, too, can salute
your contribution.

The bomb diffused,
the world a little safer, a little cleaner,

will not offend the deep treads
of someone's shoes.

"Cleaning up after the Dog" by Jason Tandon, from Give Over the Heckler and
Everyone Gets Hurt. (c) Black Lawrence Press, 2009. Reprinted with 
permission.




It's the birthday of Chaim Potok, born in the Bronx (1929). His parents were
immigrants from Poland, and he  grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish culture.
When he was about 14 years old, he  happened to pick up a copy of Brideshead
Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and it changed his life. He said, 'I lived  more
deeply inside the world in that book than I lived inside my own  world.' And
over the years, he read as much as he could, and he moved away  from his
parents' strict beliefs. But when he started to write fiction, he went  back
to his childhood, and he wrote The  Chosen (1967), a best-selling novel 
about
two boys growing up together in Brooklyn in the 1940s. One of the boys, 
Danny,
is  expected to become a Hasidic rabbi like his father, but he is more
interested  in Freud and psychology. The other, Reuven, is more integrated
into mainstream  society. Potok continued their story in The  Promise 
(1969),
and wrote about similar conflicts between religious and  secular communities
in many more novels, including My Name is Asher Lev (1972), The  Book of
Lights (1981), and a group of three related novellas, Old Men at Midnight
(2001).

It was on this day in 1904 that Puccini's opera Madame  Butterfly had its
premiere at La Scala Theater in Milan, Italy.  The audience hated it so much
they hissed and booed. Puccini closed it after  one night, revised it, and
opened it later the same year. The second time  around it was such a hit 
that
there were five encores, and Puccini had to come  out in front of the 
curtain
10 times.

It's the birthday of the man who said, 'A good sermon  should be like a
woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough  to cover the
essentials.' That's writer and priest Ronald Knox, born in Kibworth, England
(1888). He wrote and  translated theological works, he gave regular BBC 
radio
broadcasts, he wrote  crime fiction, and he published satirical 
scholarship -- 
his academic essays included  a piece treating Sherlock Holmes as a 
historical
figure, and another claiming  that Queen Victoria wrote Tennyson's 'In
Memoriam.'

It's the birthday of poet Jack Gilbert, born in Pittsburgh  in 1925. He
flunked out of high school, worked as a door-to-door salesman and  in the
steel mill. A clerical error got him admitted to college, and he started
writing poetry. He went to Europe and then back to San Francisco, where he
hung out with the  Beat poets. His first book of poems, Views  of Jeopardy
(1962), was a hit. It won the Yale Series of Younger Poets  award, and was
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and he won a Guggenheim  fellowship. He 
was
all over magazines, and even had photo shoots in Vogue and Glamour. He was
talented, he was handsome, and everyone expected  great things.
  And then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, he dropped  out of the
limelight, moving to Europe with  the money from his fellowship. For 20 
years,
he lived abroad -- in Greece with his first wife, the poet Linda  Gregg, in
England and Denmark, in Japan with his second wife.  Finally, in 1982, he
published Monolithos, which was made up of poems from his first book along
with new poems. He has  published just three other books: The  Great Fires:
Poems 1982–1992 (1996), Refusing  Heaven (2005), and Transgressions:
Selected Poems (2006).

It's the birthday of science fiction writer Andre Norton, born Alice Mary
Norton in Cleveland,   Ohio (1912). She wrote adventure  stories in high
school, and she wanted to be a history teacher. But she got her  first book
published when she was 20, and so she stuck with writing, and for  years she
wrote spy novels and adventure stories. She legally changed her name  from
Alice Mary to Andre in 1934 because she thought she could sell more copies 
as
a man than a woman. Then she got asked to edit an anthology of science
fiction writing, and she decided to try writing science fiction herself. Her
book Star Man's Son (1951) was a  success, so she turned her attention to 
that
new genre, and she became a  best-selling and beloved author. When she died 
in
2005 at the age of 93, she  had written more than 100 novels. Many of her
books were for young adults, and  they were some of the first young adult
science fiction novels to be embraced  by adults as well.


Be well, do good work, and keep in touch

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