Category: baby boomer
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MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MOVE OVER!
An Op-Ed Rhyming Essay and Collection of Scattered Random Thoughts, Questions, & Current Events for Our Time “A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” ~ David Brinkley Tweeting a bloggy podcast thingie now, and my muted show follows for all the…
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“THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS” — Navigating in a Sea of Zombies
“Health food may be good for the conscience but Oreos taste a hell of a lot better.” “The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it’s all in the story.” “It’s an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul.” ~ Robert Redford Linked…
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Subject: a need so impossible?
sometimes lives can intersect. often hearts and minds connect. (not to be too circumspect) internet travels spark fun. street corner chats once were done. communication begun! either format much the same. human to human the game. face to face? laughter the aim! therapeutic screen to screen. type language to those unseen. instructive but never mean.…
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INTUITION AND INSTINCTS AND BUMBLE BEES! OH, MY!
“What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep!” ~ current Supreme Court nominee As I lounged sleepily on a lawn chair three summer seasons past, I devoured a ROLLING STONE article about this blondish fellow named Donald Trump, a guy presently stacked in my musty basement, he being featured on umpteen PEOPLE Magazine covers highlighting zippy, scandal-hinting essays…
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RACHEL AND THE STRANGER — a “Current Events” Poem, plus a Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, Too (the Past in Prose!)
“Donald Trump should build his wall out of Hillary Clinton’s emails since no one ever can seem to get over them!” (borrowed from cute and witty Chicago friend Barb’s Facebook page where she can be seen hugging her dear friend Rahm Emanuel!) Been penning a “nostalgia” column for nearly a decade! Thought I’d recycle a fun previous backyard escapade— The…
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TRANSITIONS–“Through the Decades”
Quite like a restless King Tut, I yearned to avoid a rut. Wide-eyed, toured a marketplace so Victorian Everything everywhere, yet no DeLorean! Repurposed bricks, mortar — transformed from Presbyterian church– Its irony hurled me into conflicted “museum” lurch. Realizing tombs, spires, stained glass, pyramids and kitty cats Cannot be “taken with you” unto the great hereafter–(RATS!)…
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A FEW APOLOGIES, SOME “SUNSHINE ON MY SHOULDERS”, AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
We got married in…a… December Colder than we care to remember! (Apologies to Nancy Sinatra and Lee Greenwood and Johnny Cash and June Carter!) First, a brief backstory highlighting a “Happy 45th Anniversary to Don Sexton” — BTW –whom I married on December 28th, 1968. My mom hexed me with a spell that my own…
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STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TRAPEZOIDAL HAIKU RIFF/RAP
(Impressions of the Season) “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to … let it rain.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Never forget that old adage — April showers bring May flowers!) Spring & Wing Ages & Stages Trampolines & Magazines Nestlings cuddle & Raindrops puddle Bicycles whizzing & Lemonade fizzing (Limericks? Sonnets? …
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PET PEEVISHNESS…PLUS THE REDEEMING GLORIES OF THE CAT IN THE BOX
“I’d be a terrible superhero. I’d see the signal calling in the sky from home and be like, ‘I literally just sat down.’ ” Credit: darling fellow blogger Beth Kennedy! People who bore us all with their pet peeves? THOSE very dopes are MY pet peeves. Granted that life overflows with inconveniences, annoying humans, political shenanigans,…
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CHRISTMAS GIFT! CHRISTMAS GIFT!*
(*title borrowed from a chapter of a “Miss Minerva & William Green Hill” a dear old Southland book my mother once read aloud to me–seems like only yesterday…) Sat straight up in bed…me, the eternal free-lancing archivist…and woke up my slumbering cat friends…hobbled downstairs garbed neither in kerchief nor stocking cap but definitely clad in…
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DISILLUSIONMENT – PIPE DREAMS, PUPPET MASTERS & POPPYCOCK!
“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die: whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.“ ~ Gilda Radner “If a man does not keep pace with his own companions, perhaps he hears a different drummer. Let him step…
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ESCALATORS, AGITATORS, VARIOUS HEELS, VILLAINOUS REELS, CEILINGS OF GLASS, PLENTY OF SASS!
Urban Dictionary: nelipot “Top Definition. nelipot. One who walks without shoes; one who goes barefoot. The nelipot walked slowly, letting the mud squeeze up between his toes.” SURE, SURE, I drove over to Ft. Wayne, Indiana for Tarantino’s HATEFUL EIGHT–in the dead of winter! I became submerged…immersed beyond redemption…inside realistic, gritty, merciless cowboy land and…
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GUILTY PLEASURES During This Presidential Election Year of Living Dangerously
Fortuitously this past Sunday evening, I received an email parable from a shirttail relative, a beautiful lady who played championship bridge internationally and who is the mother of a talented musician and was once married to a Sexton and taught ballroom dancing…I love Bev whom I have not seen in several decades. She sends me…
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“A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse of course?” (A Journey from Competitiveness to Graciousness…and At Long Last, Love!)
“I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human for God’s sake.” ~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Editor’s note: Pardon J. D.’s French!) Time to admit the truth. Choosing authorship as a pastime or a passion or a means of making a living is fraught with frustrations such as:…
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SINGING (and sighing) OUT LOUD!
“She is a successful woman…who has a zest for life and a feeling of kinship with all living things…” ~ from Lou Porterfield’s 1956 Scrapbook Uh-huh! To say the least, I wonder why I ever entertained the idea to write out loud…to record my innermost thoughts, to devise plots and characters, to reveal truths, to…
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UPTON SINCLAIR, LET’S RAKE MUCK ONE FINAL TIME – To Restore Biodiversity
Thankfully, an increasingly dwindling number of Homo sapiens seem to be revealing these days that they remain unfathomably ignorant, foolishly stubborn and downright awful about an appropriately changing world. Well, hoo-ray for diminishing stats and fewer and fewer dim bulbs! Vacuous apathetic dead-heads and sniggering bullies certainly sense that they are on the losing end…
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“The Times They are A-Changin’” — We Can Only Hope!
I love where humans are coming from when intelligence and compassion combine. Intelligence=compassion…the only way to roll! The absolute only way to roll! There are not two sides to animal abuse and an accompanying apathetic approach to such…there is only one…and that is to pursue the correct path throughout our lives. Admittedly, it took me…
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Disillusionment -Writer’s Block, Christmas 2014
Brothers Duncan(evsky) not posing in southern Russia but in Duncan, South Carolina the town in which these displaced Scotsmen all were born – Bill, Esso Gas Station owner; Linder, WW II veteran; Roy, Wrangler Jeans Manufacturer; Mac Clifford Duncan, WWII Army Air Corps Veteran (CBI, China, Burma, India) and a member of 10th ABCD and…
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REUNION REVELATIONS
“It’s a shallow life that doesn’t give a person a few scars.” ~ Garrison Keillor Dental floss, Vicks Vaporub applied to both flaky ears, Q-tips, copious facial creams, and tweezers rise rapidly to the top of the list of personal beauty products when tempus fugit(s)! Comfortable yet quasi-tailored clothing — which covers every square inch…
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JONI, I HARDLY KNEW YE…Confessions of a Dormant Hippie!
www.youtube.com is my second home…my escape from the madness of life…a retrieval of song lyrics that inform while simultaneously lightening my soul. Interest is revived in continuing to endure the pitfalls of life. Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut swore that music all by itself proves the existence of heaven. Despite such photographic YouTube video-clipped time-warped evidence as…
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IN A CIRCLE AROUND MY HOUSE
As I gleefully recall, I honestly believe that Walt Disney’s Cinderella provided my maiden voyage into the wonders of cinema. That event occurred so very many yesterdays ago when American animation would never be surpassed–a uniquely authentic and creative time arguably lost to us in our 21st century. To this moment, whenever our courthouse clock issues forth…
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ONE FROM THE HEART–TO “CAROL & CORKIE” WHEREVER THEY MAY BE…
Time passes too quickly. More than 60 years ago, I rushed home from another tedious yet edgy school day, quite impatient with our West Ward School’s patrol boys (crossing “guards”) always impeding my progress. So impatient to rip off their plastic yellow banner-straps strung across their little, puffed up chests! Your 15 minute show, “Carol & Corkie” sponsored…
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COMPETITIONS, CONTESTS, PIPSQUEAKS & POPPYCOCK
“Great poem, let’s publish it! Sue…Imagine your poem featured on a page by itself within a beautiful coffee-table edition! You are a semi-finalist for a major prize!” Prices for leather-bound editions ranged from $49.95 to $194.00 depending upon how many enhancements such as photographs, bios, and vanity-illustrations might be added? “Society of World Poetry”…
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“LET IT NEVER BE FORGOT…” *
My “rite of passage” from age 12 to nearly seventy Boasts inclusion of a collection labeled “Kennedy”… Magazines: LIFE, LOOK, NEWSWEEK, TIME, SATURDAY EVENING POST… My mammoth old trunk filled with ghost after valorous ghost! Bookshelves lined with biographies of Profiles in Courage Starting with Honey Fitz — a patriotic entourage! Dawning upon me a…
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RONALD REAGAN’S JELLY BEANS & MY FAVORITE DENTAL APPOINTMENT EVER
Certainly, I am at that grand advanced age of entitlement! I deserve to savor jelly beans even more than I once did as a kid, so I visit Dr. Jim McConnell and his beautiful assistant Trudy (Sullivan) Deutsch about four extra times between each biannual smile maintenance effort performed by dental hygienist, and proud mother to…
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JUNK FOOD ADDICTIONS & GOURMET PRETENSIONS
Yes Ma’am and Yes Sir! Immersed in the Old South for longer than a half century, I applauded a steady stream of what I perceived to be genuine sweetness and the spirit of both uninhibited jocularity and spontaneous fun. Lately, I figure my approval of Southerners ended at my own front door…through an accident of…
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Who Knew? Ricky Gervais and I on the Same Page!
“The creative adult is the child who has survived…” – Ursula K. Le Guin (borrowed from my Marshall Memorial Middle School Language Arts student circa 1968, Robin Zeigler Walker) “Hey, now you’re acting like…Jesus!” A younger than young feminine voice registered in the highest decibels from the backyard trampoline immediately on the other side of…
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BIG MAC & “LITTLE ME”!
My brother-in-law, a “Goodfellas” type from rugged Youngstown in Ohio, met my sister Sarah in 1958 at Indiana University in Bloomington where he played rugged football courtesy of an athletic scholarship just after serving as a rugged MP stationed with the rugged U.S. Army in rugged Alaska! Go Big Red! One of the foremost reasons…
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Blue Bell ‘Choraliers’ lead me to reveries of Jones Bakery
Hi, readers! On March 18, I sent an e-mail to Jennifer entitled “AN EARNEST REQUEST FROM THE OLD TYPE WRITER WHO ADMITS TO KNOWING NOT EVERYTHING THERE IS TO KNOW!” My letter and genesis for this column follows here: PART ONE — Hi Jennifer! Remember when you discovered one of your missing school medals around…
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WEST WARD STORY: BRAVE HEARTS & BULLIES READY TO RUMBLE
Born and raised in Indianapolis, author Kurt Vonnegut attended Shortridge High School, a setting which contributed to his wit whilst only marginally damaging and corrupting his sprightly soul. My favorite of his novels announces Kurt’s intent via its one word title, “Slapstick” — which provided my most beloved quote in all of literature and which…
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We Only Own One TV, and My Husband Hid Gloria Steinem’s HBO Documentary from Me on Super-Bowl Sunday
“In a world full of people who couldn’t care less, be someone who couldn’t care more.” ~ Author Unknown Here I sit. Here I have sat always. In the center of farmville. In the center of gothic religious-ville. In the center of adultery-ville. In the center of hunting … for easy casual red-neck rough sex. …
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Rebel…With a Cause
“You are who you are meant to be. Dance as if no one’s watching. Love as if it’s all you know. Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.” ~ James Dean Quirky dame that I am, I admit to never swooning over Elvis Presley…with one exception. His rendition of “Battle…
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“Dear Old Golden Rule Days…”
“Grandma Louise” Easterday frequently exchanged original poetry with my mom, as the two ladies seated themselves beside one another in the exact same Jackson Street Methodist church pew each Sunday morning. Mother composed her creative verses via a script typewriter, since she held little self-confidence in her usually hasty handwriting, and slipped her compositions inside…
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THIS HAPPILY HAUNTED HOUSE
Each month delivers the angst of writer’s block, i.e. seeking a column idea. What story do I tell that I have not already shared? My preference, for the approach of September, focused on animals’ rights to thrive until old age, via a treatise heavily populated with many like-minded heroes I encounter in my activism. Local…
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BOO, LEW & NORMA
Milling about within the same household year upon year, voices rise and fall and chatter and go silent and joke and reminisce. Sawing a couch into three parts prompted an ongoing interior design fest. Sawdust and also a unique upholstery-powder, resulting from gigantic rips in a seriously tough durable fabric, both continue to permeate the…
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“WISHING YOU WERE SOMEHOW HERE AGAIN” *
Treasured memories linger in our minds to be nourished in our hearts. Frequently, retrieved thoughts — centered on those who nurtured us, laughed at us and with us, instructed us, cared about our welfare, and encouraged our talents — sustain and strengthen us. Blood relatives flood genealogical charts and function as pen-and-ink illustrations upon family…
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HEY, Y’ALL! NO SUCH ANIMAL AS A “CIVIL” WAR…
Allow me to explain myself. I am located at the conclusion of a lengthy direct line of lineage piled up with (Carolina) Southern Dixiecrats and talcum-powdered ladies. I’ve lived my life as the lone Damned Yankee seeking to cauterize subtle family dissensions and outrageous stereotypical mind-sets, as in “enough is enough!” I admit that I judge…
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Lessons Learned in Kindergarten –Twice!
“Just what makes that little ol’ ant think he’ll move that rubber tree plant? Anyone knows an ant can’t move a rubber tree plant!” ~ Sammy Cahn “No, Uncle Jim, I do not wish to start going to school to learn to be smart. I’d rather stay at home and be just like my mommy…
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Passing the Baton
“Live each day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find ‘tomorrow’ on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday’s defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow… Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care…
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Thankful … to Think Outside the Holiday Box!
Christmas arrives but once a year — and years fly by too swiftly! We are manipulated and subliminally motivated by commercialism, expectations, obligations, traditions, and mounting hysteria—and then after an ulcer-producing build-up, the party’s over and next year zips forth toward a repeat performance. Senator Al Franken often spoke at collegiate commencements, as an adored…
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Headed Toward an iPADDED Cell?
Headed toward an iPADDED cell — Carly Simon’s VAIN fresh new HELL! Intervention’s around the bend. Let’s admit defeat, friend to friend. Facing each other in real time, Oh, abandon the “pantomime”! Technology’s fun and quicker, But we’re too drunk on THIS liquor? All that I ever required of a clunky old manual typewriter and…
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How Many Roads Must a Person Walk Down?
“How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind…” ~ B. Dylan Slap. Spank. WAAAAAAH. Boy? Girl? Free will? Predetermined fate? Conform? Challenge the status quo? Live until you die? Hide yourself…
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Variations on Bell Jar
Requisite TELL (it like it is) JAR (At long last sharpening the blade…for spearing and shish kebabbing ping-pong balls.) For fully six years, driven composition Of essays, letters, couplets and some quatrains! I fade away—become an apparition Recording persuasive nostalgic refrains. Audiences both applaud…yet criticize: “Radical nut” from a “faraway planet!” “Keep ‘em coming. Through…
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Personal Theories, Houses, Dirty Words, Childbirth, Misjudged Gargoyles, Overrated Angels
Poets Sandburg and Frost never leave my side; Carl is fun and positive and bans all adjectives, while Robert is melancholy and depressed. Whitman sings himself and celebrates himself. Dickinson must have been male…her profundity gives her true gender away – depth disguised inside terse lacy language. Truman Capote, however, reveled in his femininity so…
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All for One, One for All
Curmudgeonly humorist-artist James Thurber treated the “war between men and women” harshly, looked askance at human foibles and pomposity in his “Thurber Carnival”, sketched countless hippopotamuses, and could not exist without canines in his life. His famous cartoon of ……humanity scurrying across the page — destination: cemetery – provides perspective as to how short and…
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Jock Interrupted by Philo
Sure, sure, so Joanne Peabody Bates performed cartwheels alllllllll the way home after school. Her mom, Phyllis, would peer outside and then swing wide the screen door, judging that her freckle-faced, double-jointed grade school kid might land somewhere inside the kitchen shortly after her daughter’s sneakered feet sailed wildly past the window above the sink!…
Misunderstood Gargoyles and Overrated Angels 