Friday, June 12, 2009

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.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

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)




Monday, January 19, 2009

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.