Lifted (with edits) from fullygoldy):

The first seven people to respond to this post will get something made by me.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

- What I create will be personalized and intended for you.

- It'll be done this year (2009).

- You will have no idea what it's going to be. It may be something to eat, a drawing or painting, a ( Read more... )

The mortality rate among children who subsist entirely on home-grown and home-prepared "basic" foods is more than 20 times higher than it is among those who eat junk food.

If we accepted a 1948 standard of living (in terms of goods and services and levels of resource consumption), we could have a four hour work day or take every other year off.

And ( Read more... )

Our local altweekly has as its cover story this week an article on home versus hospital births, with the sensational subhead "Inside Baltimore's Home Birth Underground." Lay midwifery here is illegal, so the midwives interviewed for the article are given pseudonyms, like drug dealers.

This has got me thinking about Floppy's birth. I've told his ( Read more... )

I've researched the subject thoroughly, and I am now ready to share my results ( Read more... )

This lovely drink, which I invented (although it wouldn't surprise me if someone else did, too), looks like the ice cream truck confection and tastes pretty good, especially with good ingredients. It makes a great fourth-of-July drink, but I was making them this weekend as mid-move refreshment, and DH had three of them. Then he said he didn't feel ( Read more... )

My soon-to-be new address does not exist in Google Maps, despite the fact that the colorfully named road it is located on must certainly have been there, with its present name, since well before the advent of the refrigerator. Yahoo Maps doesn't have it either, but thankfully (and strangely), Mapquest does. So at least if you come to visit me I can ( Read more... )

 
I was fascinated by this article, which talks about the difficulties some Israelis of American ancestry are having proving to the Israeli rabbinate that they are in fact Jewish. Apparently you have to have official proof of your Judaism from an Orthodox rabbi -- and not just any Orthodox rabbi, but an Orthodox rabbi whom the Israeli Orthodox ( Read more... )

After the reading, we assembled together for a silent march to Lafayette Park. A silent march struck me as another bit of irony (poets marching silently?) but the organizers pointed out that there is enough screaming in the world, and in DC, and perhaps we could be more powerful in silence.

Floppy saw that they were handing out signs that read "War ( Read more... )

The final reading of Split This Rock was supposed to have been the one I was looking forward to all weekend, because it was when Sharon Olds was slated to read. Olds is one of my poetic heroes, and I was excited to see her read in person, since I never had. But she didn't show. She was apparently sick, although a famous poet sitting near me who ( Read more... )

I dragged myself out of bed Easter morning to go to the final panel of the conference, an evaluation and wrap-up session with some of its organizers and DC Poets Against the War founders, Sarah Browning, Melissa Tuckey, Joseph Ross, and Esther Iverem.

The program started late, so I had a crab eggs benedict and good tea and ended up joined for ( Read more... )