Birthday Wish

The thing is that I'm turning 35 this year. Thirty. five. As kids, we never really made a huge deal out of birthdays. Now, however, gifts always seem to be a big deal in my family because we are rarely near each other to celebrate. And while I love love getting gifts, this year I was challenged to consider donating my birthday. You can read about it here. If you're one of my favorite people who gives me a birthday gift, please donate instead so people can live.

Yes, yes I am

The thing is that I never decided to quit blogging. At what point does writing for a very long time turn into quitting? I'm not sure. But I do intend to come back here at some point. Like when I have something to say. Or when I have some time to say something worth saying. Which I have hopes may be sometime soon. In the meantime, here's what has filled my life in the last few months:

Summer camp & fall retreats

Reading great books

Spending time in my favorite place - Little Marais MN

Checking facebook endlessly while never posting

Knitting, a bit

Time on the farm & out in Rapid City

Listening to Pandora (did you know you can max out monthly? i do)

Planning trips to Atlanta (next week!) and NYC (spring?)

Meeting my new foster niece

Joining the world in welcoming a crazy amount of babies (with more on the way!)

Greek Yogurt (Seriously. It's that. good.)

Kari Jobe

Camping with my seester Sara in beautiful WI

Working through a serious case of dog-envy


So, since the world revolves around this blog, what is your favorite thing that you've done since I last posted on May 6th.

Awesomeness

The thing is that I have a new favorite website. Most. Awesome. Thing. Ever. I'm going to suggest "South Dakota" next. What are your suggestions for the most awesome thing ever?

Another Poem

The thing is that I actually stole this from my friend Eva Brandes' blog. She's been posting a different poem every day in April, but this was one of my faves. She found that the word "portmanteau" is "a blend of two or more words or morphemes and their meanings into one new word" and then the title made more sense.

Portmanterrorism

Would it make a difference to say we suffered
from affluenza in those days? Could we blame
Reaganomics, advertainment, the turducken
and televangelism we swallowed by the sporkful,
all that brunch and Jazzercise, Frappuccinos
we guzzled on the Seatac tarmac, sexcellent
celebutantes we ogled with camcorders while
our imagineers simulcast the administrivia
of our alarmaggedon across the glocal village?
Would it help to say that we misunderestimated
the effects of Frankenfood and mutagenic smog
to speculate that amid all our infornography
and anticipointment, some crisitunity slumbered
unnoticed in a roadside motel? Does it count
for nothing that we are now willing to admit
that the animatronic monster slouching across
the soundstage of our tragicomic docusoap
was only a distraction? Because now, for all our
gerrymandering, the anecdata won't line up for us.
When we saw those contrails cleaving the sky
above us, we couldn't make out their beginning
or their end. What, in those long hours of ash,
could our appletinis tell us of good or of evil?

-Nick Lantz, from The Lightning that Strikes the Neighbors' House

Patriotic Gift List

The thing is that it's a national disgrace that there isn't a gift component to the 4th of July. Over Easter my sister Babe proudly displayed her patriotic assortment of wrapping paper. Upon further discussion, however, my family realized with shock that no holiday has been designated to give American-themed gifts. How has this escaped the flag industry? The bunting industry? The temporary tattoo industry? As a nation founded on capitalistic principles (some say), how is that capitalism hasn't capitalized on our nation's birthday yet?

So the Kock family is taking it upon ourselves to begin a new national tradition. We are going to celebrate our nation's birthday by buying things and giving them to each other in patriotic-themed wrapping paper. How can this not take off?

My 4th of July All-American Wish List ($15 spending limit):

*flag or flag-like display*
*bunting*
*temporary tattoo, patriotic themed*
*book by David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose, etc*
*donation to some American organization, such as the NRA or NPR (or similar)*
*calendar with photos of amber waves of grain, purple mountains, etc*
*American-made product (beer or cars or sugar-laden food-like items)*
*cds (Lee Greenwood, Elvis, Toby Keith, anything rap, jazz or blues)*
*firearm*
*gift certificates to WalMart, McDonalds, Old Country Buffet*
*5 gallons of gas*
*autobiography of someone who has or will run for President*
*dvds of movies about our national disgraces (Nixon, JFK, Platoon, Mississippi Burning, etc)
*bratwurst or cheddarwurst*
*self-help book*
*freedom*

Coveting Coziness

The thing is that I want to live here. And I want this place as my summer home. Can anyone help me out with that? Also, I think they're in Scandinavia, so does anyone know if the 1st-time home buyers tax credit works on foreign properties?

(Thanks to a fave site for the links.)

April and Poetry

The thing is that I think I love poetry. Not all of it, but some of it, and the more I read it, the more I like it. My sister Babe has been a poet forever, but I've always been a prose girl. However, I started reading poetry after I heard Robert Bly read on NPR, and then I started not skipping over the poems in the New Yorkers that I read, and then I started requesting poetry books from the library (which are always available, by the way). Anyway, in honor of April being National Poetry Month, here's one from my (slim) files. I think I love it because Michigan is kind of like Minnesota or like South Dakota so it feels like it might be about me. About us. And I think we all know what it might feel like to want to marry a daffodil.

A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michgan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
thought it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive though Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

Bob Hicok
The New Yorker, May 19, 2008