Bar none

You answered my call
in a bar.

Bar none, you are my
favourite daughter.

I would text you but
I have no cellphone.

Rejoicing still, it matters not
who wins tonight, for already

I hold the cup aloft--no, not that one
but you knew that.

My choir

My daughter's first try at bread making (the lineage continues)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25596455@N00/3226406961/?addedcomment=1#comment72157613010112273

Bakerwoman God,
I am your living bread,
Strong, brown Bakerwoman God.
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf.
I am your rising
bread, well-kneaded
by some divine and knotty
pair of knuckles,
by your warm earth hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.

Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
put me in your own bright fire.

I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard,
brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.

Break me, Bakerwoman God.
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in your blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood.
Self-giving chalices swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.

I fall up
in a red pool
in a gold world
where your warm
sunskin hand is there
to catch and hold me.
Bakerwoman God, remake.

--Alla Renee Bozarth
as published in Celebrating Women's Spirituality

1992, The Crossing Press, Freedom CA (June)

MLK Day

One must go further,
one must go further.

- Kierkegaard
Fear and Trembling

Fachay Book (as in Versace, not my brilliance, thank you Max Rubin) doesn't cut it on MLK Day or 99.4% of the other 365. Music does. You know how on Face Book there's that whatcha doin' thingy? More important--what are you listening to. Me? This:

Image credit to http://www.bluesaccess.com/No_29/butter.html

I bought it in 1965 for $1.98, so I was one of the 200,000 who made this release go viral. I've made a CD so I don't utterly wear it out. Which brings us to tomorrow and the Chicago part. I hadn't known that Paul Butterfield's "Born in Chicago" was what made this release so huge.

http://www.bluesaccess.com/No_29/butter.html

At the end of 1964, on New Year's Eve, Paul Rothchild had taken an excited phone call from Fritz Richmond, a member of the popular Kweskin Jug Band, himself a founder of the Cambridge scene. "We're in Chicago," he said, "and we just heard Paul Butterfield's new band, and it's the greatest thing you've ever heard. Get on a plane right now and get to Chicago." Rothchild took Richmond seriously -- his first record had been with him in 1961 -- and held his musical opinions in high esteem. "So I left the party and flew to Chicago and caught the last set. I walked into Big John's and heard the most amazing thing I'd ever heard in my life. It was the same rush I'd had the first time I heard bluegrass. I said to myself, 'Here is the beginning of another era. This is another turning point in American music's direction.' " ...

Samplers were frequently released by Elektra, usually selling 20,000 to 30,000 copies. But not this one. "This sampler sold 200,000 copies," Rothchild says. "In a three-month period. Jac said, 'What's going on?' And I kept saying to him, 'This tune is going on: "Born in Chicago." Jac, we have a hit band on our hands.' "

So what's Obama spinning for the Inaugural Ball? The Dead.

My dad's birthday

De begraafplaats van de clan Macnab te Killin

Today would have been my father's 89th birthday. In 1971, his maternal aunt Sandy (Alexandra) Macnab took me to Killin, Scotland, and showed me the Macnab burial ground, where by ancestral right my father can be buried. His ashes currently repose in my brother's apartment. Maybe someday he and I and whomsoever else will revisit Killin and bury summat of me da therein.

Thank you Jacob Baartse http://www.flickr.com/photos/baartse/for permission to use the image.

Channeling David Fife

The Red Fife at 18 days. Jan Zadoks be my helpmeet and guide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadoks_scale

And OMAFRA, even if they get Zadoks' name wrong. Mason jars at night against the slugs and unseasonal cold. It snowed here yesterday. This a.m. minus 7 C with the windchill. They were sagging against the bitter wind so the jars will stay on today. Supposed to warm up to a whole 11 degrees by Saturday. Fingers crossed.

Stone Boat

Stone Boat
Originally uploaded by photofarmer

We could have used one of these last Saturday. The funny thing is, I was chatting with our neighbour Bernie as dusk fell Sunday. 'Twas then I noticed the humungous boulder in his front yard. His landscaper brought it in on a flatbead from Muskoka and craned it on to his yard. My how I laughed. Not out loud. Not I, descendant of stone farmers. Not I.