Just Before April Came

In honor of the last day of National Poetry Month 2008, a poem by Carl Sandburg:
THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows [...]

Product Review: Domo

Dark Horse Comics is releasing a new line of Domo products, and they were kind enough to send a few items for review.  Domo is the plush brown monster-like creature who serves as the gentle mascot for Japan’s NHK television station.  Not surprisingly, Domo’s favorite pastime is watching TV.
He lives in a cave and shares adventures with his friends [...]

A Noiseless Patient Spider

A poem
By Walt Whitman
A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to [...]

Jelly Shoes

Do you remember jelly shoes, those rubbery inter-woven bendy flats that came in all sorts of bright colors, from the 80’s?  I saw them in the store a few days ago.  My four-year-old daughter begged for a pair, and since her foot had grown a full size and she needed new shoes, I decided to buy them for her.
Later [...]

Book Review: Crazy Fool Kills Five by Gwen Freeman

Crazy Fool Kills Five, the second installment in the Fifi Cutter mystery series, features sarcastic L.A.-local Fifi Cutter as an independent insurance adjuster who takes a temp position for the law offices of Wong, Wu & Chu to assist with data collection for their sixty million dollar wrongful death lawsuit against Skyblu Charter Jet Service.  She [...]

Earth Day

April 22 is Earth Day, and in honor of the occasion, I’ve asked environmentalist Sean Jasperson to write a guest post with some easy tips to help us preserve this planet we call home. Sean received his B.A. in Environmental Studies from U.C. Santa Cruz, and is currently working in commercial real estate on [...]

Bad Mommy

There are days when I feel that I am the enforcer, like I have to take on the role of the ‘bad guy’ in order to get my kids to behave like civilized human beings.  (Are children civilized?)  It’s a role that is daunting and brings no pleasure, for both them and me.
It’s good to [...]

Andy Warhol Exhibition at the Wexner

The Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, OH will host the only U.S. installation of Andy Warhol’s “Cosmos” through more than 700 works. The exhibition, titled Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms will be available for public viewing Sept. 13, 2008 through January 4, 2009. Organized by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam [...]

Swing Set

My husband has spent the past several days installing a swing set in the yard for our kids.  It gave him a chance to use his Bobcat for excavation, which naturally captured the interest of our four-year-old.  He wanted the swing set installation to be a surprise, so when our daughter inquired about what he was up to, he told her [...]

Book Review: Armageddon In Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

On the anniversary of his death, Kurt Vonnegut’s son, Mark Vonnegut, released this latest collection by the famous author.  It includes several of his early short stories, along with an essay, a speech, and a letter to his parents written from a prisoner of war repatriation camp in France towards the end of World War Two. Armageddon In Retrospect [...]