Mother-daughter- (great) grandmother; Dogs with real boots; Dr. Gregory's history; Misc. poetry

Laurie Dix Kari

Director of Family Promise

homeless shelter

in Wasilla, Alaska

serves coffee at 7:25

Ruth Kari

Mud wrestler

Colony High School Soph.

Wasilla, Alaska

Very good girl; cleans up nicely;

(Laurie and Phil's daughter)

Ruth Elies (Dix, etc.)
1931 Sun Prairie WI High School Sr.
Organized a dance band at age 13,  & many etcs.
(Mud wrestler's great-grandmother and namesake;
Laurie's grandmother)

......

Another photo of a dog team in the Iditarod long-distance mushing race of 2012.

Note: these dogs are wearing black boots.  We did not photo-shop the previous St. Patrick's Day dogs' feet in green.  Those were the color of the canine racing boots.  We presume the boots are to protect the faithful dogs' pads over the long and punishing course.......

......

A real find made by Dee when cleaning out her Sunday School office at the 1st Congregational UCC here in Waukesha.


A gathering of church history booklets collected by former SS head, Ina Guthrie, was discovered during an office cleaning..  Among these mimeo printings was a 54 page resume of Alfred E. Gregory DD's 25 years of ministry at the 'Congo', written by the good doctor himself.


Here is just the first page:

Confirmed by this gentle and erudite Englishman at the Congregational Church
in Waukesha, I nevertheless went on to lead a picaresque life with few of his strictures and  dictates followed.


It is never too late, until it is.......

......

From today's WRITERS ALMANAC:

March

by James Wright

A bear under the snow
Turns over to yawn.
It's been a long, hard rest.

Once, as she lay asleep, her cubs fell
Out of her hair,
And she did not know them.

It's hard to breathe
In a tight grave:

So she roars,
And the roof breaks.
Dark rivers and leaves
Pour down.

When the wind opens its doors
In its own good time,
The cubs follow that relaxed and beautiful woman
Outside to the unfamiliar cities
Of moss.

"March" by James Wright, from Above the River: The Collected Poems. © Wesleyan University Press, 1992.

......

That’s a Moray  (March 18)

Some days I may hook a lyric like the moon on a string;

Most days I must look for it to hit me like mud in the eye:

I dip inside and find the well dry,

Slip outside and find the moon winking.

The moray for today

May say that thoughts stray,

Words are out to play:  

We cannot capture what we feel;

Rapture is as slippery as an eel.  

Rev. Tom Bentz vows to write a poem a day for Lent, and so far he is making it.

St. Patrick's; Dogs, pulling not skating; Man operates raccoon finger puppet; Celtic Thunder

THE WEARING OF THE GREEN 

The recently completed Alaskan Iditarod dog sled race

again brought out fierce competitors:

man, woman and dog.

This dog team wore green foot pads.

An Iditarod woman and her dog

communicate. The blended effort

of the willing animal servants and their masters 

through miles of grueling wilderness, is a loving and

 - to a lower 48er - 

a mystical phenomena.

A racer of Viking stock?

All very beautiful to me.

See: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/03/iditarod_trail_sled_dog_race_2.html

...... 

Today we decorated our raccoon finger puppet

with a green ribbon around his neck

and took him down to meet Mark Doremus

at Dave's Cafe across the street.

Mark animated the puppet with his finger.

A neighboring child was amused.

...... 

From Oregon friend, Kate O'Neil,
a St. Patrick's Day gift,

these video clips of 

CELTIC THUNDER:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qni5bIN5qmU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3DcEgZTKpg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0KZjmiL7xs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPwAYFKFC6k&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36zLQ_TKllI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FExIWex_vc&feature=related

Great interims; Tom mixed metaphors

Look, we CAN all skate together

At the Congo church

our legs were sometimes uncoordinated

sometimes we were machines

disharmonious 

to the music going on 

under the great overhead light

but a woman came to 

show the the way

a committee of townsfolk

went out to get us

some protection

and like the Lone Ranger

she rode in; 

she did the job well

and rode out of town

leaving some to scratch

their heads,

saying 

"Who WAS that masked woman?"

A tentative answer: 

"We don't know

but she left this

silver (disco ball) bullet......"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qycZzfbQVRQ 

Sure,

there were falls

being human

but she always

ALWAYS

got back up......

......

and now....

Look!

A new teacher
with equal promise

gets her skates on

 at the Congo rink.

......

......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wrWw9lkfXk 

Guthrie at the Congo 3-13-12

Willis Guthrie addresses First Congregational UCC 

Plymouth Circle, Waukesha, WI

A Quaker himself, his parents were both Quaker ministers in Iowa.  There were nine children.

"There's NINE of us!"

First, he partakes of breakfast delicacies with the ladies,

then commences his lecture on some of his artwork.  A former chair of the art department at Carroll College (now University), the act of lecturing is just falling off a log-time for Wis.

Friend Libby Sellars listens intently, smilingly. Soft-spoken Wis at 94 has not lost any of his wry humor. 

Known widely for his assemby of found objects into art pieces, Wis, in his retirement at the Avalon, without studio or basement workshop, enjoys cutting magazines in his apartment and reassembling pictorial representations in amusing and sometimes justifying ways, to him  - and others in the world, for Wis is widely appreciated and celebrated.

He looks for balance in his art, always his underlying theme.  Above, a calm buffalo stands in the way of a roaring steam engine.  A toilet with its handle resembling to Wis an eye, gets another eye on the right side of the tank. (Enlarge these pictures for better seeing.)

Here, a cat-house is dragged through heavy traffic, kitten in mouth.  Policeman holds up traffic to let cat and entourage safely pass.

Guthrie adds an out-sized and nicely-wrinkled eye to elephant.  Places keeper/tamer within trunk crook.  All work he does with sharp scissors and careful fitting.  But not too much planning, for Wis operates foremost on spontaneous impulses.

A raccoon, added to a magazine representation of a shoreline florid 'fish' seems to suggest he's bashful being seen in the washing of his big meal.

Wis, whose wife Ina passed recently, now holds forth in an apartment at the Avalon Square. A picture on his front door is also a pictorial assembly he did.  In it, Wis and Ina stand on the porch of their long-ago residence at 'Maniac Manor', a former asylum and then convent at Hartwell and College Avenues, Waukesha.

......

Everything changing

MAP TACKS FOR EYES

Who says?

Says the raven

Yea, thou hast created me

But all your moves have

Rubbed spittle

In these tacky eyes

Of mine

Once I was blind

But now

I see

(With mud)

Says the raven

I nightly fly about

from this perchy chair

And in the dark

Some of my

you say

 painted feathers

Have chipped off

I say moulted

Look into my

You say

Painted copper black beak

And mark this word:

I shall be with you

Evermore

Like

So, I say

v.Z. 3-12-12

......

Less-still life

with mourning dove and stained glass:

Bird awakened us

with cooing

from its
it says
 real bill,

long enough, sitting on

 the circa 130 million year

limestone ledge,

for me to have time to photo

 from the loft

up here.
Taking camera down to window
dove would have flown.


Indeed, it took off
right after the shutter clicked
a second time from downstairs.

......

Jerusalem

A Lenten journey

worth the time

http://www.youtube.com/embed/H0DwOEVlHdg?rel=0&hd=1

A fine video from Hobo Tom


......

Daylight Losing Time  (March 11)

Tick     tock:    the clock

the heart          skips a beat

or thirty six hundred

Turn the clock ahead.              Who said?

I’d rather turn in another hour in bed instead.

Tick  shock:    a billion dollars of our time spent

changing half a billion clocks.

Why?

Buy an hour next fall?

Why can’t we all

Just live in the now?  

The sun did not stop today

to light the way to let Joshua smite the Amorites

or let us bear armor or be amorous. 

Nor will the earth stop

or all of the armies and all of us

would drop off.

Still I stop         to wonder

Where did that hour go?

That power over time

I thought I could make

or take?

(Also from Hobo Tom) 

Antiquities; silver and gold star mothers; elephant products; tidiness

The elephant

 a noble beast

is revered by some
and still slaughtered by others.

Pre-raccoon, we scrawled

a prehistoric mastodon

on a shelf bracket fungi

and put it out to dry.

It still reposes here
years later

at the Odd Fellows,

overexposed, next to 

a fish fossil from Silurian

limestone sediment

it suggests antiquity.


Our building, The Putney,
is made of limestone
that is circa 137 million years old.

The elephant became 

a Republican symbol

somewhere along a fuzzy line

but that's just fine, 

and we'll gladly use

paper from

Sri-Lankan elephant

dung (see below)

and be happy.


(I don't think donkey dung
would have the cachet that
elephant dung has, anyway...)

.........

A circus elephant,

made into a flag stand

rears pose-like on the loft rail

here at the OF,

greeting each new day

with old glory, a flag

donated by officer Hogan of the State bank

when I opened a senior account.

I asked if I could have the little flag

and Hogan, looking left and right
 said yes.

(Remember that:

State Bank = yes.)

A heavy teak elephant

grazes as a desk ornament,

OFian;

folks who visited Ruth and John Hale
in the old days

will remember this elephant.
He was theirs

and he is not for sale.

An old gourd horn,

playable even in its broken state

needs its non-bakery elephant ears

glued back on

The ears came from the back

of the skull so all of the gourd

- grown at 517 Arcadian -

was used.
Our scarce fringe hair 
decorates his forehead.
A worn Harlow Kneser cornet
mouthpiece, used with proper embouchure,
allows for great playing.

This elephant form presently

lies honored in the spare room

on a quilt, tattering but usable,

made by my grandmother

Myrtle Dix, Ray's wife,
http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/grandpa-his-post-office-to-sever.html

of Cedar falls Iowa.

She had a banner in the front window

at 2009 Clay Street in the 1940s

 holding four silver stars

signaling she had four sons

serving in WW II,

all in different theatres;

all came back alive

but damaged in varying degrees..


War no more....

Yes, they were silver, but I'm painting them gold, for they are all dead now, RIP

................

Pachydermal humous

Dee gave me some paper.
I love paper
--onion skin, and now this! -
from
The PLOWSHARES Center
in Waukesha


made from recycled Sri-Lankan
elephant dung.
See net link below.


I used it all up in letters and post cards
and went back for more yesterday.

For more information:


http://www.mrelliepooh.com/

True to what the advertising says
there is no smell to this paper
whatsoever
and it takes ink on both sides
very well.


Some of the sheets are thick enough
to cut up and send as post cards.
Reasonable prices.
Plowshares also has recycled ellie-dung
pins and refrigerator magnets.


Great gifts idea. Budget-pleasing!


........


Dawn of a recent morning, downtown
Tree branches, light-struck, are vibrating to bud out

It is imperative to exercise due diligence
to keep this charming Waukesha sector clean.
Street cleaners run regularly in these
early morning hours.


We know;
we see them.
Others not living down here
may assume everything is
automatically tidy all the time.

Not so.
Everybody, all stakeholders -
be they property owners
or tenants -
must play a part
in our lovely neighborhood
to keep it that way.


Lend a hand, please!

Caution:

Old children

I know where the carnival mounts

And merry-go-round animals

- Some of them -

have gone,

and the teeter-totter

saddled goats

and snails, too.

And some of the dwarves

And gnomes

And their cousins

The munchkins:

They’re out to pasture

No longer to withstand

The clamors of screaming

Children grabbing at their

Wooden or fiber glass

Horns and manes

I’ve seen them.

Their smoothened bars

For handles

Years behind them

Likewise their rusting springs

For former leapings 

Now at rest

But their mad grins

Still transfixed

Crazed eyes

Still bulging

And the colors

 Unpresentable

In any suburban play

Grounds or fairs

Chipped, delaminated,

Cleaned in their retirement

Pastures only when it rains -

These still multi-colored

Brightnesses

Capture imaginations even now

Of passing children

Walking through the tall

Grass or up on a porch

I know about.

Old children sometimes

sit on the calmer adventures

and are happy.

(v.Z.)