Daddy-O

In honor of Father's Day: audio links to Li-Young Lee's "My Father, in Heaven, is Reading Out Loud" and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays."

Green Things

Loving this article by my dear friend K., who's not only raising two kids with her husband, M., but also a throng of plants and vegetables. I've watched her garden (more like small farm!) evolve from its first seed forward and the results are thrilling! Editor / writer / wife & mother / garden ninja / cook extraordinaire -- K.'s my own personal superhero! Following is a bit of her testimony at Offbeat Mama: 

When I was 15 years old I landed my first job working in a greenhouse. At the time I wanted to become an ethnobotanist and I just knew this was the perfect first step in my brilliant career. Instead, all I did was get dirty. In March, when it was barely spring, there were hyacinths to coax in their cold, dark cave. June found me misting hundreds of tomato plants, their stems and leaves staining my hands and leaving them pleasantly scented for days. In the heat of August I irrigated a sea of fall chrysanthemums on a blazing black tarp. I loved every minute of it....

(Un)Sportsmanlike Conduct?

Women's National Football Team in training
(photo: Jordan Football Association)

Because CNN was the only non-German language broadcast I could find while on a recent vacation and the network repeatedly loops the same content for its early and late shows, I learned more about FIFA -- and its scandals -- than I'd ever hoped to know. Thanks to an article in The Jordan Times, however, I now see things even more clearly: corruption? bribery? what issues are these for an international sport's organization when compared with female athletes' head gear? Here's an excerpt from Muath Freij's report:

"Jordanians have voiced concern over the International Federation of Association Football’s (FIFA) decision which requires female players to replace their traditional headcover (hijab) with caps. The recent step taken by the FIFA raised an uproar among the local female players, especially after three players were barred from joining the women’s team in the Round 2 qualifiers for the 2012 Olympics, which was hosted by Jordan.

FIFA has justified its decision by arguing that hijab threatens to cause a choking injury and allowed players to cover their hair with specially designed caps which covers their head to the hairline, but which does not extend below the ears to cover the neck, an outfit that is not accepted in Islam, players and clerics say.

In addition, according to FIFA’s Article 4, players are not allowed to wear clothes representative of religious and political symbols, and can penalize players for doing so..." 

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"Choking injury?" Really? However you feel about the hijab (in Jordan, it's a woman's right to choose whether to cover), it seems hypocritical to forbid players from hiding their hairlines. As for "religious symbols" on the field, I seriously doubt refs are scouring players' necks for chained crucifixes and the like. I also doubt they're entering locker rooms to deter pre-match prayer, etc. And barring women from potentially participating on an Olympic team because they choose to wear the hijab? I suppose in light of the "caps vs. headscarves" issue, investigating whether Qatar really did buy the World Cup isn't quite a priority.

(Un) Happy Meal

Weirdest things witnessed at fast food joints:

A. Throughout childhood (en route to Sequoia National Park): Roadside stand fashioned as giant red steer whose side opens to customers ordering hamburgers and loose meat sandwiches

B. Circa 2000: sometime after 3:00 a.m., customer on horseback rides through Taco Bell drive-through, trots off struggling to balance three bags of food and an extra large soda

C. Summer, 2010: "McLobster" menu option advertised throughout Nova Scotia. Lobster. At McDonald's. Really?

D. This afternoon. Sweileh, Amman: man leaves family in running vehicle to attack drive-through attendant from outside building, wedging his body through the window to pummel the worker for what, exactly?? A half dozen employees then rush to stop him while said-attacker's wife and child munch french fries in the car...

Q & A

Oodles of thanks to the crew at r.k.vr.y for reprinting "Two-Headed Nightingale" (first published by Gulf Coast) and featuring me as part of their interview series. Here's an excerpt from my conversation with the poet Bruce Snider:

BS: Would you call your drafting process for ["Two-Headed Nightingale"] typical for your work?

SL: The poems of my own I'm most married to have come rather urgently from start to finish in some approximation of what will be their final form. In other words, it's extremely difficult for me to piece together fragments, lines, and phrases culled from different periods of time. If I can't find my way out of a draft during the first sitting -- even if the ending is temporary and reworked a hundred times over -- it's unlikely that piece of writing will survive. I envy poets with a gift for hoarding, those whose talents include rescuing and recycling a sentence here, a stanza there. I, on the other hand, remain chained to my desk hour after hour in an attempt to chisel the air.

As with all things, I suppose, there are exceptions. "Wintering," for example, was written over some odd months during long walks across Stanford's campus. "Already winter makes a corpse of things," rang in my ear for days until it was joined by the phrase "Snow reshapes what ice has taken." When an emotional declaration later emerged to counter the initial sentences' descriptive impulse, a breakthrough occurred: "You've lost interest in letters. So let sunrise come." Frankly, this psychological turn left me perplexed. Letters from whom, I wondered? And why had their author "lost interest"? After a few more weeks of running the lines in my head, the speaker's identity revealed itself: a woman abandoned and left to fend for herself somewhere in the unforgiving northern plains of the late 1800s. Particular and peculiar as it seemed, I didn't question it. The rest of the draft followed shortly.

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Hope you'll click over to read the rest of our exchange!

Note to Self

"In the Spring of the Year, In the Spring of the Year"

bye-bye rose bush

Just when I got used to pollen and bloom, another season sneaked up upon me. First, D.'s weeks-long visit. Then, an across-town move followed by twelve days in Vienna and Prague, respectively. Is it really June? Am I unpacking suitcases and boxes once more? Yes. And, yes.

We traded our ground-level "apartment-with-a-garden" for bigger digs, a.k.a. a homestead more appropriate for those in the family way. Jabberwocky Chewbacca, our seven pound Brussels Griffon, continues to mourn the privacy of the grass patch she left behind in the old yard. She now pees curbside, either on concrete or dirt.

With new paint and some repairs, the new-to-us-place is coming along. My office is still a disaster, although deadlines call. I've moved so many times that I can usually set up shop with the speed and stealth of a ninja. Punch, kick -- that's it, everything's in its place. These days are different. Pregnancy has its own plan.


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The title of today's brief entry is taken from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "The Spring and the Fall." Although I'm reluctant to copy poems from online sources, my copy of Millay is currently boxed and well out of reach. Here's to risk-taking! Hopefully, there aren't any errors (to be corrected later):

THE SPRING AND THE FALL

In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The trees were black where the bark was wet.
I see them yet, in the spring of the year.
He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach
That was out of the way and hard to reach.

In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The rooks went up with a raucous trill.
I hear them still, in the fall of the year.
He laughed at all I dared to praise.
And broke my heart, in little ways.

Year be springing or year be falling,
The bark will drip and the birds be calling.
There’s much that’s fine to see and hear
In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year.
‘Tis not love’s going hurts my days,
But that it went in little ways.