A platter of frogs; How's your weather out there?; Cryin'; Looks familiar; Enveloped

A platter of frogs

As our collection of Thailand frogs gathers steam

they now occupy a platter,

plus those we have sent out to family, friends,

and regular commenters on the Raccoon.

All others, contact Turtle Island Imports.

Our hope is that gatherers on street corners,

peaceful protesters against Humpty-Trumpty

will take the frog voices up in unison 

to negate the need for mounted horse riders

and other order-keeping forces

near quiet downtown's Cutler Park,

to foil  their raucous spoilage.

Who can complain?

Like delightful Spring Peepers in a marsh.

The usual many.

BYE-BYE SHAMROCK

In a froggish mis-leap

we note that the Trumpkin artful deal-maker

has ordered thousands of green St. Patrick's hats

but with  non-Irish FOUR leaf clovers on the back!

Another Department Store recall ahead!

^,^

Weather
by Faith Shearin

Listen Online


There is weather on the day you are born
and weather on the day you die. There is
the year of drought, and the year of floods,
when everything rises and swells,
the year when winter will not stop falling,
and the year when summer lightning
burns the prairie, makes it disappear.
There are the weathervanes, dizzy
on top of farmhouses, hurricanes
curled like cats on a map of sky:
there are cows under the trees outlined
in flies. There is the weather that blows
a stranger into town and the weather
that changes suddenly: an argument,
a sickness, a baby born
too soon. Crops fail and a field becomes
a study in hunger; storm clouds
billow over the sea;
tornadoes appear like the drunk
trunks of elephants. People talking about
weather are people who don’t know what to say
and yet the weather is what happens to all of us:
the blizzard that makes our neighborhoods
strange, the flood that carries away
our plans. We are getting ready for the weather,
or cleaning up after the weather, or enduring
the weather. We are drenched in rain
or sweat: we are looking for an umbrella,
a second mitten; we are gathering
wood to build a fire.

"Weather" by Faith Shearin from Orpheus, Turning. © The Broadkill River Press, 2015

^,^

Cryin'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNbnFVBVnz0

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uNoAp7RNUA
^,^

Been here before

Thy Spring Be Sprung

Thanks be to global warmin'

My premature mind bees swarmin'

To early thoughts of upshoots everywhere

Our mutual friends Sunny and Norman

Left for Florida yesterday mornin’

But gol-ding it, hits like Florida rat here!

I'm thinkin' of a thang so rampant

No rain or age can dampen it

A future totem's fixin' to join the other'n out there

Got to make a hole, cement and clamp it

When the temps are warm enough to dig and tamp it 

People are ask'n what these things stand for outside my lair

But I don't tell 'em nothin much about it

They're just painted 16 ft. poles, that's about it

The beauty is that now I'm going to have a pair

"But what do they stand for, Dave? Please.....

We gots-ta know, we're on our bended knees!'

~ They stand because they stand and they are rare ~

Oh, I hates to be so inscrutable

But on this I'm jus' immutable

I'm of an age now (64) when I don't care"

[David Zep Dix 2-28-2000]



Ed note
Now I am 81 and I still feel that way

^,^


Enveloped

When we were in seventh grade, Jr. High School,
1949, in The Lincoln Building, Waukesha
we were required to take one of several shop courses
along with our academic studies.

We opted for the type-setting course
not knowing that that form of printing
would soon be dead thanks to the prevailing 
linotype machines.  An earlier automation.

But now, in March 2017, we have found a set of type rubber stamps
which enable us to return to the days of seventh grade type-setting
 - sort of -
and we are making custom envelopes for our personal
correspondences.

Some examples below:

As we meld this older technology today (3/10/17)
with our our up-to-the-minute computer printer
KD Cat, printer's apprentice, waiting for the
mystery machine to begin its magic.

This event is reminiscent of our
poem, an oldie ~

Backwards In the Sun

From a man loathe to give up the manual typewriter

To bow to the age of computers

Who liked push reel lawn mowers

Wringer washers

And treadle sewing machines:

 We announce that

Something good happened here to mitigate

our reluctant accessions adopting the new over the old

while sitting as a machinist

 marveling at what the word processor

And color printer can do.

 We like to correspond with fountain pen

And then hang the letter backwards in a sunny window

For a while before sending

To study the line without the ability to read text

As if the right or wrong  will show

And save us from mistake or unmeant innuendo

Hand script, even supposedly horrible hand script

Sometimes dangerous from the front side

Takes on a loveliness when viewed backwards

And this is interesting when one thinks

Of evaluations involving all angles and facets

Rather than merely the most obvious surface

(How often have we sent letters not so carefully inspected)

The thinner the paper for this sunlit viewing

the better:

We remembered a box of old onion-skin typing paper

we had from when thinner meant more copies

Yielded by typewriters and carbon paper

Before clicks and double clicks and infinite production

We got this dusty box down and opened the lid

To find nearly a full box of crispy thin sheets

Audibly-crinkling onion skin paper

Talking paper very loud to the touch

After all that time being cooped up

Like a presumed useless ugly duckling

Or love-starved oldster getting dryer

It leaps to respond to the slightest tactility

And you cannot buy it anymore.

Who needs it?

On the word processor so novel to us

we can practically put cardboard through

And obtain glorious-looking pages

But they don't talk when we handle them

They are dead except for the images on them

Not so with onion skin

It says something.

You must be of an age to appreciate V- (victory) Mail

From World War II when loved ones communicated

Across seas on government-mandated crackling tissue paper

To keep the weight of transport down

And to reduce bulk.

 It was a practical and beautiful medium.

We inspected father's letters then on the flip side to the light

After we had digested all from the most obvious facade

We knew there must be more from him than that

Which showed on just one surface;

 We were six years old

We searched side-ways both sides and between the lines

 We became familiar with the look, feel and sound of onion skin

Our one contact with Dad and so much  preferred

To the dreaded telegram on yellow paper;

That bad paper never wanted never came here

And to find a whole box of  lively paper 65 years after

Those haunting hungry scrutinies was a blessing.

I

We had it among our high basement cobwebs

- Must have known it had value -

It had escaped years of throwing out

In silent peace like a covered bird

 Intact a perfectly good box of now off-white paper

backwards fountain-penned sheets in sunny windows

Will vibrate while this irreplaceable and

Obsolete box lasts

It will last long this, new lost art

Because there are so many dry leaves fitted in the old box

Like memories they are so very thin

But strong.

Tearing such gossamer  is  not as easy as you'd suppose

In our cyber-spacial kingdom there are many color images

In our computer's memory many favorite old snapshots

And vivid drawings we've committed to that realm

And our fountain pen will not quit till we do.

A way is pointed to a blending

Validating procedures and leanings  in the doing,

Printing computer-generated transparencies

On talking paper - with penned script -

 And  backlighting these marriages not on an electric monitor

But in the window, backwards in the sun

(DZD )