She looks like she's asleep; Another instance; Secret garden; Morning swim; Cages, circumscription (non-sic); Tomatoes from Amelapay

"She looks like she's asleep

it's a shame that she won't keep

but it's summer

and we're runnin' outta ice....."

(OKLAHOMA, Rogers and Hammerstein)

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

There KD was, on top of the china cabinet

and me with no camera.

Wait a minute, the cell is in my pocket!

Whipping it out I take this picture above,

knowing she surely would not hold that pose

while I ran upstairs to get the better camera.

Fetching the good camera

and sure enough,

she moved.

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

Another instance of only having the cell phone camera in my pocket

occurred last Sunday, when I arrived in the Peanut Gallery

- my preferred seating area -

to find a puzzling scaffold set up near the pulpit.

Asking another early arriver what was going on,

Christian Ed speculated that he'd heard Rev. Brittany

was going to deliver herself of an especially profound sermon

and that maybe she was going to address us from on high.

Or no,

maybe I said that to Christian Ed.......

..........

NOT

an example of a 'secret' garden

but perhaps a lunch-break site 

in back of a downtown building

affords us a quiz, raccoon-related.

Guess where this is.

If there were a wall in the foreground

which there isn't

it might be a real secret;

Passers-by find it in plain sight

but the feeling of seclusion

is present anyway.

Downtown occupants

- habitues -

are often good at making use

of available nooks and 

crannies.

(Hint:  this site is found very near a main gathering place

- albeit subterranean -

of the sewer raccoons of Waukesha.)

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

Morning Swim

by Maxine Kumin

Into my empty head there comes

a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nude

through mist, in chilly solitude.

There was no line, no roof or floor

to tell the water from the air.

Night fog thick as terry cloth

closed me in its fuzzy growth.

I hung my bathrobe on two pegs.

I took the lake between my legs.

Invaded and invader, I

went overhand on that flat sky.

Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame.

In their green zone they sang my name

and in the rhythm of the swim

I hummed a two-four-time slow hymn.

I hummed "Abide With Me." The beat

rose in the fine thrash of my feet,

rose in the bubbles I put out

slantwise, trailing through my mouth.

My bones drank water; water fell

through all my doors. I was the well

that fed the lake that met my sea

in which I sang "Abide With Me."

"Morning Swim" by Maxine Kumin, from Selected Poems 1960-1990. © Norton, 1990. 

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

BRUCE COCKBURN

Canadian songwriter and singer

first introduced to me by daughter Laurie Kari

of Wasilla Alaska

Pacing the cage

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it's pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage
I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in
Hours chatter in high places
Stir up eddies in the dust of rage
Set me to pacing the cage
I never knew what you all wanted
So I gave you everything
All that I could pillage
All the spells that I could sing
It's as if the thing were written
In the constitution of the age
Sooner or later you'll wind up
Pacing the cage
Sometimes the best map will not guide you
You can't see what's round the bend
Sometimes the road leads through dark places
Sometimes the darkness is your friend
Today these eyes scan bleached-out land
For the coming of the outbound stage.
Pacing the cage.
Pacing the cage.

Play http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAcqr3MYMmM

Pour Tom et Moineau

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

This week we got a load of tomatoes

from Pam who used to be a waitress

across the street at Dave's (Jose's) Cafe.

This one was an heirloom tomato -

not much to look at

but delicious to eat.

See:  http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/08/yes-go-to-daves.html

A tree comes down; Peace in the neighborhood (that WOULD be a fine thing); Tagged for Wis, puzzle-doer; Happy days; Souls; Heard that song before

We had a tree

on the Five Points

surgically removed

on a hot and steamy day

 Wednesday

7-17-13

It appeared healthy

but in the thinning out

of things downtown

maybe it had to go?

Timber!

there it goes!

What's coming for downtown Waukesha?

Questions posed by warring factions
 varying weather reports

cloud the atmosphere

at times

But we are hopeful
and look for the ultimate V (...-)

Peace in the neighborhood

by Paul MCCartney

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

.........

To SRN:

Seeing Sir Paul live was an experience. So glad we talked ourselves into it when we heard tickets were going on sale months ago. That boy certainly doesn’t need to be touring at this stage of his life. He must enjoy doing it, is all we can figure. And that’s exactly how the entire show felt. We got the impression that he feels he owes it to us to be entertained and he was happy to do it. As quickly as they transitioned from one song to the next, he still took time to joke and tell little stories about playing for and with Hendrix, Clapton, etc. He reminded us to tell our family and friends we love them as often as we can, as he regrets not saying so to John one more time. He played for three hours straight without a break in 100° heat, although I’m sure they were blowing what cold air they could on the stage. And even when his band did take a break, he continued to play acoustic sets alone with his guitar or piano. He may have lost just a tad of high range, but his voice is just as clear and wonderful as ever. How does he do it? It was quite amazing.

Love you all!

DAVID LEE DIX JR.

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

Baccalaureate Hymn

6-14-08

Earth was given as a garden, cradle for humanity;

Tree of life and tree of knowledge placed for our discovery.

Here was home for all your creatures born of land and sky and sea;

All created in your image, all to live in harmony.

Show to us again the garden where all life flows fresh and free.

Gently guide your sons and daughters into full maturity.

Teach us how to trust each other, how to use for good our power,

How to touch the earth with rev'rence. Then once more will Eden flower.

Bless the earth and all your children, one creation makes us whole,

Interwoven, all connected, planet wide and in most soul.

Holy mother, life bestowing, bid our waste and warfare cease.

Fill us all with grace o'er flowing. Teach us how to live in peace.

[Words: Roberta Bard (b. 1940); Music Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811-1887)]

That was the peace theme

sung at daughter Erin's graduation

from Lawrence University in June of 08

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

Avalon puzzle-worker

Puzzle Dust

by Dorianne Laux

When the final piece is lifted and set in place,

completing the field, filling the hole

in a grove of trees, a jagged gap

in the ocean or the flat, black sky.

When the scene is whole before me:

tiny men, arms thin as wicks, walking

briskly along a gray rain-riven street,

the woman bent to her dog under an awning,

his wet head held up with trust,

one white paw in her hand, tip

of his tail I kept trying all day

to press into the starry night, ruffled

hem of her blown-up skirt

that never fit into the distant waves

breaking along the shore,

and the bridge, its rickrack of steel girders

I thought were train tracks or a fallen fence,

when it all, at last, makes sense, a vast

satisfaction fills me: the mossy boulders,

pleasing in their eternal random piles,

the river eased around them, green

with its fever to reach the sea,

a ragged bunch of flowers gathered

from the hills I've locked together,

edge to edge, and placed in a glittering vase

behind a window streaked with rain

which the child in his woolen cap

looks into: boxes of candy wrapped

and displayed, desire burning

in his belly, precursor to the fire

that could have broken his small heart

open like a coal someday

in his future, which for him

is nothing but this empty box

layered with a fine dust, the stuff

from which he was born and will

die into, carried, weightless,

to summer's open door

where I bang my hand against

the cardboard, watch the particles,

like chaff or ashes, vanish in wind.

"Puzzle Dust" by Dorianne Laux, from Facts About the Moon. © Norton, 200

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

Happy days will come again

Click this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYpcFHtxm60

In 1963, Judy Garland was a forty-one year old fading star just a few short years from her own premature death from a drug overdose, while Barbra Streisand was twenty-one and an emerging star who already had a cult following. Garland, always broke, needed her new television show to be a hit -- and Streisand had a reputation as a guest star who could bring standout ratings and reviews. And so it was that Garland pieced together her own fragile self-confidence and invited the irrepressible Streisand to be a guest on her show:

"At forty-one, Garland looked a decade older. Pills, alcohol, heartache, illness, roller-coaster dieting -- and the recent ongoing battles with her husband over their children -- had all taken their toll. This television show, for which she'd now taped eight episodes, was supposed to make her rich. That was what Begelman and Fields had promised. Garland was always broke, due to bad financial management and overspending. She envied male contemporaries such as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope who were rolling in the dough, much of it earned in television. This show, she hoped, would change all that. Her agents had never been wrong before. But problems had arisen almost from the start. ...

"Barbra [Streisand] was the most exciting, most talked-about guest they'd had on their brand new revolving stage since they'd started production. Everyone was hoping Barbra could bring a little of the razzle-dazzle she'd bestowed upon [shows like] Brasselle and Garry Moore and Dinah Shore -- and the ratings and the reviews as well.

"In her trailer at the end of the mock Yellow Brick Road, Garland, wasn't unaware of the excitement being generated by the arrival of this Streisand kid. She was 'nervous and anxious and jealous,' one friend, Tucker Fleming, observed. Looking at her face in the mirror, Garland ran her fingers down the wrinkles and creases she saw there, clearly aware of the youthful features of the singer she would soon be rehearsing with....

"To Garland, Barbra wasn't ugly or funny-looking. She was young, fresh-faced, her eyes undamaged by the battle between insomnia and sleeping pills. David Begelman had introduced his two clients in Lake Tahoe, where he'd brought Garland to see Barbra perform at Harrah's. So the old pro had witnessed firsthand the confident, youthful energy Barbra exuded onstage. No wonder she was insecure. While Garland still conjured an exquisite alchemy in front of an audience, youth and confidence were two attributes she definitely did not possess. Barbra also had a voice that everyone was raving about, in ways Garland 'could only remember people raving about her.' ...


"No wonder Judy Garland's hands were shaking as she headed down the Yellow Brick Road to meet Barbra Streisand, who was waiting for her on the soundstage. By rights, it should have been the other way around. It should have been the twenty-one-year-old kid, the neophyte singer who'd been performing for barely three years, who was trembling to meet Judy Garland. But Barbra's nerves were steady, her manner calm, as the cameras began rolling on Friday, October 4, for the final taping of the show. ...


"The veteran star kept taking Barbra's hands, touching her, putting her arm around her. She was trembling. Barbra was flabbergasted. Garland was older, successful, venerated. Why should she be shaking when meeting a girl who was just starting out? Barbra didn't get it.

"Her heart went out to Garland. An 'instant soul connection' was how Barbra described her encounter with the older woman. She probably didn't know the full story of what was going on behind the scenes, or the sense of trepidation that Garland lived with nearly every moment on the show. If the fragile star made one false step, she feared that they'd give her the ax. ...

"Barbra sang two solo numbers that night. ... Yet as good as her solo numbers were, it was the duets with Garland that everyone was waiting for. ... The familiar piano introduction for 'Happy Days' began [familiar to audiences from Streisand's first album]. 'Happy days are here again,' Barbra sang, as Judy matched her with 'Forget your troubles, come on, get happy' [a legendary Garland number]. The older woman seemed to be holding on to the younger one for dear life; Barbra felt, once again, the trembling of Garland's body. During rehearsals, the two had developed a tender chemistry that emerged now in front of the cameras, real and vivid and palpable. It may have been borne of sympathy on Barbra's part and competition on Judy's, but it was genuine, and it made for fascinating television. Masterfully arranged, the counterpoint of 'Happy Days' and 'Get Happy' riveted the audience, including those hard-to-please network execs."

Author: William J. Mann 

Title: Hello, Gorgeous 
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Date: Copyright 2012
..................

Un-met acquaintance bears soul
Our cat does likewise

A woman presently in Greece 
who has been sending the Raccoon
for years
words of encouragement off and on
sent a lengthy and welcome Email last week
which we printed out
 -invested ink in.

After showering we sat down 
in the Mona memorial chair

and read the collection of terse comments
stapled together to this lengthier exposition:

Placing the sheaf of paper on the floor
we sat and reflected on this receipt of the day,

And Mona's inheritor of this Odd Fellows residence
- a sublet supreme,
KD Cat rolled over on her back at my feet
and exposed something of her own:

She bared her underbelly white 'V' (for Victory)!
Something she's been previously loathe to do.
She held the pose for me to get the camera.

No messages were lost on us that day.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhH2mIWStIw

^.^

On sea, on land; You look good to me; Slow as the hands on a schoolroom clock; What she puts her mind to; Tizzuvthe; A tribute; To the ends of the earth

MUDSKIPPER
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudskipper

Sing it, fellas.................

go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8myK93FqbYc

or, this is suggested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bOjrl9Qxzg&feature=endscreen
.................

Sunday Jul. 7, 2013  LISTEN At the Cottage of Messer Violi by Paul Violi The mailbox, painted dark blue, sits atop a tilted cedar post. It has a little red flag on one side and it is altogether remarkable. The Toyota in the driveway is very old and is said to have come from Japan. There is in the hallway an immense dogfood bowl. It is made of iridescent pink plastic. It is, as I have said, immense and it is hideous. In the kitchenette is a statuette of Ceres, Goddess of Wheaties. The dishwasher is a Kenmore and altogether worthy of praise. In the foyer the over-sized painting of a porkchop provides visitors many opportunities for conversation. In the servants' quarters there are many impressive works that stress the imminence of death and the probability of hell fire. Placed on the broad maplewood table beside bottles of cognac there is a recording device with a silver megaphone into which natives are often invited to shout the oral histories of their people. We whose hearts have been gripped by life, scoff at the idea of art as mere ornamentation: So they seem to proclaim, the three statues that adorn the neighbor's lawn, plaster deer with real bulletholes in them. "At the Cottage of Messer Violi" by Paul Violi, from Breakers. © Coffee House Press, 2000 ........ OR, THIS IS SUGGESTED:

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

Monday Jul. 8, 2013  LISTEN Request by Lawrence Raab For a long time I was sure it should be "Jumping Jack Flash," then the adagio from Schubert's C major Quintet, but right now I want Oscar Peterson's "You Look Good to Me." That's my request. Play it at the end of the service, after my friends have spoken. I don't believe I'll be listening in, but sitting here I'm imagining you could be feeling what I'd like to feel— defiance from the Stones, grief and resignation with Schubert, but now Peterson and Ray Brown are making the moment sound like some kind of release. Sad enough at first, but doesn't it slide into tapping your feet, then clapping your hands, maybe standing up in that shadowy hall in Paris in the late sixties when this was recorded, getting up and dancing as I would not have done, and being dead, cannot, but might wish for you, who would then understand what a poem—or perhaps only the making of a poem, just that moment when it starts, when so much is still possible— has allowed me to feel. Happy to be there. Carried away. "Request" by Lawrence Raab, from Visible Signs. © Penguin, 2003.

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

Lobsters in the Window

by W.D. Snodgrass

First, you think they are dead.
Then you are almost sure
One is beginning to stir.
Out of the crushed ice, slow
As the hands of a schoolroom clock,
He lifts his one great claw
And holds it over his head;
Now, he is trying to walk.

But like a run-down toy;
Like the backward crabs we boys
Splashed after in the creek,
Trapped in jars or a net,
And then took home to keep.
Overgrown, retarded, weak,
He is fumbling yet
From the deep chill of his sleep

As if, in a glacial thaw,
Some ancient thing might wake
Sore and cold and stiff
Struggling to raise one claw
Like a defiant fist;
Yet wavering, as if
Starting to swell and ache
With that thick peg in the wrist.

I should wave back, I guess.
But still in his permanent clench
He's fallen back with the mass
Heaped in their common trench
Who stir, but do not look out
Through the rainstreaming glass,
Hear what the newsboys shout,
Or see the raincoats pass.

"Lobsters in the Window" by W.D. Snodgrass, from After Experience. © Harper Collins, 1968

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

………………………………………………….

What She Puts Her Mind To



A girl on the smallish side flying above the clouds

And into clouds and out of clouds

Plummeting, soaring

Diving until the last possible moment

And pulling back on The Stick

Skimming rooftops

Evening out and rising once more

Nearly straight up

Until momentum stalls



Then rolling over and recovering  power

By dropping like a stone in the sky



And just generally living like that

Kind of upping and downing it



Decides to play tuba and bass fiddle

And does it because she can do just about

Anything, anything, anything

Anything



Casts a quick smile at her mother

Unseen by most but me

In the audience of the high school auditorium

- I hope her mother saw it, too -



Then addresses the tall bass she just took up

On a whim a couple years ago

And plays intricate and fast runs  up and down

As a Flying Jazz Musician 



She can do just about

Anything, anything, anything



Anything



[Zep 11-1-2002]

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

Tizzuvthe

Tizzuvthe, Tizzuvthe?

Where  is that located, exactly?

They had us singing about in grade school

In the 40s, a country evidently

Called Tizzuvthe

We were ‘Merukins yet

They had us calling it our country

And they had us singing about it;

Witness:

“of thee I sing’

Of Tizzuvthe I sing?

I don’t think so

As a patriotic boy ‘Merukin there was only

One country I sang about during WW II

And only one country

I would call mine

And that would be only

The United States of America

But sometimes the teacher would

Have us put our hand over our hearts

When we sang this tribute

To an unknown country

Tizzuvthe?

I didn’t want to spot myself out

In a roomful of kids who seemed

Either to know where it was

Or didn’t care enough to stop

Thinking about upcoming recess

But at night I would take an atlas

Under my covers with a flashlight

And try to look up Tizzuvthe

Being somewhat embarrassed

That I appeared not in the know

And right about then I started to

Look at the atlas’s whole pages

And the improbable shapes of the countries

And then at a globe, regarding it

As a whole sphere

Instead of pieces of planetary patchwork

Borders which made no sense

Names of countries I couldn’t understand

And couldn’t in the case of Tizzuvthe

Even find

And I formed an opinion then

As I looked down at the atlas pages

From the top of my blanket tent

In bed in my darkened bedroom

Or from outside space

When regarding a globe

At a distance, and that was

That what mattered to me anyway

Was the whole thing as One!

Was that just being a lazy boy

Who tired of not being able to  find

Tizzuvthe?

As a rationale if indeed it was

Indolence operating I took another

Anthem I was accustomed to

From Sunday School

This Is My Father’s World

(as it still was my “Father’s” world in the 40s)

and adopted a world view

Instead of obscure circumscribed pieces of it,

And I still have that broader vision today

Which has helped me with perspectives

Many times

Yet I still sometimes wonder, and now

In a broader sense

With my still imperfect brain more filled out:

Just where, in the scheme of things,

Is or was  this Tizzuvthe?

And, if it exists, what does it do? 

Does it do things, to be so sung about,

- Land of the pilgrims’ pride -

To please My Father of the World?

Is all nature singing

And round me ringing

The music of the spheres?

[Zep, Memorial Day Weekend 2003]

..........

Steve Grutzmacher | “It’s All Worth It” – Remembering Norbert Blei

12072013

As I grow older and remain here on the Door Peninsula, one of the unpleasant realities I must face is the loss of friends and valued community members. Since the last issue of the Peninsula Pulse, our county has suffered three irreplaceable losses – none quite so significant to me, personally, as Norbert Blei.

Norb was a man full of contradictions and moods. He built and burned bridges with a rapidity that could be staggering. But Norb was, first and always, a writer.

My first meeting with him occurred in 1978. My parents had just opened Passtimes Books in the tiny cabin in front of the Toppelmans’ art gallery in Ephraim. Norb had just released a book of short stories titled The Hour of Sunshine Now – before the Door County books and Chicago books garnered him a measure of fame – and my father was hosting an autographing party on the patio in front of the store. Norb and I talked for a time, between customers, about books and writing, the first of what would become many such conversations over the years.

One year later, my college graduation present from my parents was a weeklong class with Norb at The Clearing, titled Zen and the Art of Writing. On Thursday morning of that week, Norb had us load into vans and took the entire class over to Toft Point for a few hours. The afternoon before we had been discussing Japanese Sumi paintings that consist of a single brushstroke across a white canvas and on that morning at Toft Point I chanced upon a dark grey rock with a single orange-red line running its length. When the opportunity afforded, I took the rock over to Norb and commented, simply, “Nature’s Sumi.” He took the rock from me, ran his fingers over the surface, then looked up and said, “If it were in my power, I would bestow a Ph.D. on you right now.” The rock from that day – “my Ph.D.” – sits on a shelf not far from where I write this column.

As the years passed, Norb and I, like many who knew him for an extended period I suspect, had our ups and downs. I was never a fan of his column in the Door Reminder, a viewpoint I shared with him on more than one occasion. Likewise, he was less than thrilled when I replaced him as the Door Reminder’s columnist. Still our love of the written word, and particularly the printed word, gave us ample material for long and engaging conversations.

Back in 2011 I was asked to write an appreciation of Norb for the Go! Guide. It was a task I struggled with, just as I have struggled to write these words. But some of what I wrote back then (with a slight update for time) seems appropriate now:

In the 44 years Norbert Blei has called Door County his home, he has been its faithful chronicler, its conscience, its critic, and its celebrator. In his attempts to capture the essence of the peninsula he has been a short story writer, a novelist, a poet, and painter, and – perhaps most importantly – a teacher.

He has been himself, he has been Coyote, he has been Salvador Prague, and many others. He has garnered a loyal following of admirers, and irritated others to the point of anger – but he has never been ignored or overlooked…

Like few writers of any time or any place, Blei has served a single muse: Door County. The land, the water and the people of this peninsula speak to him and he, in turn, has tried to faithfully record what he hears, what he feels and what he sees. His record of this place, in whatever form he captures it, has been shared with the multitude of us who have cared to listen as we, in turn, try to understand our abiding attraction to this tiny sliver of land – an attraction Blei defined in his book, Meditations on a Small Lake, in this way:

I guess what continues to fascinate me about this place – and I’m now speaking as a writer who lives here – is that after many books and all the years of living in it, I’m still not able to really define the place. Water defines some of it, but not all. The light here is different because of the water that surrounds everything, but that’s not all of it either.

There’s a spiritual aspect to the landscape. When you try to write what Door County is about, it’s about something as elusive as that: spirit.

That is the mystery that is all compelling.

With the due respect Door County’s community of visual artists deserve, and acknowledgement of the cliché involving pictures and words, no one artist has ever come closer to capturing the essence of Door County than Norbert Blei.

On a whim just now, I pulled my copy of The Hour of Sunshine Now off the shelf and read the inscription Norb wrote that day on the bookstore patio when he was a young 42 years of age and I was all of 20 years. And I was struck by how I, after all these words to memorialize the man, have been outdone by Norb’s three short sentences:

“To Stephen, I wish the hours of sunshine, the writer’s life for you. Tell it all, experience everything. It’s all worth it.” – By Steve Grutzmacher, April 25, 2013

,,,,,,,,,

Thanks to Steve G for a shimmering tribute and exposition on Norb Blei the late.

I have a post card he wrote and painted for me

which encapsulates our plight at the raccoon news.

I'd sent phrases of a haiku attempt to Norb.

He corrected my arrangement and embellished it.

Now it's is a treasure not to be parted with.

DZD 7/12/13

Norb the generous even gave the byline to me on his postal.

..........