Problem Solved

Fiorella was half-watching a special on climate change last night as she worked on revisions of WHAT THE HEART WANTS, and it seems to her that improved and less costly methods of the desalinization of sea water would allow us to remove enough water from the ocean to counter the rise in sea levels while also providing water for areas dealing with severe drought.

And, yes, thank you--Fio will accept the Nobel.

Fiorella's Inspiration

This is one of my favorite poems.  Have I presented it to you before?  It's one of the most powerful things I've ever read and is what set me on my present course of reflecting reality in my poetry.  The title refers to Shakespeare's admonition not to over-act.  The references are all to WWII.  Hecht is Jewish.

"It Out-Herods Herod.  Pray You Avoid It"

Anthony Hecht

Tonight my children hunch

Toward their Western, and are glad   

As, with a Sunday punch,

The Good casts out the Bad.

And in their fairy tales

The warty giant and witch

Get sealed in doorless jails

And the match-girl strikes it rich.

I’ve made myself a drink.

The giant and witch are set

To bust out of the clink

When my children have gone to bed.

All frequencies are loud

With signals of despair;

In flash and morse they crowd   

The rondure of the air.

For the wicked have grown strong,   

Their numbers mock at death,   

Their cow brings forth its young,   

Their bull engendereth.

Their very fund of strength,   

Satan, bestrides the globe;

He stalks its breadth and length   

And finds out even Job.

Yet by quite other laws

My children make their case;   

Half God, half Santa Claus,   

But with my voice and face,

A hero comes to save

The poorman, beggarman, thief,   

And make the world behave   

And put an end to grief.

And that their sleep be sound   

I say this childermas

Who could not, at one time,   

Have saved them from the gas.

Act Now!

When she goes to an opera or a musical, Fiorella wants to sing along.  She'd rather write books than read them.  And her favorite part of the trip the family took to England years ago was walking through Harrod's, turning her ankle at Castle Urquhart, eating fish and chips in the rain at Greenwich and again at Bath, and encountering a group of exuberant school children yelling for echo effect as they ran through the tunnel under the Thames.

For all her artistic eye, Fiorella is a doer rather than an observer.

Behind the Times--Again

The television in Casa Fiorella has been on the blink for several days now.  Husband figured out how to get some sound out of it yesterday, but then lost it again, along with the picture. And all because of the new remote.

Guess remotes have gotten more complicated lately, just like the TV, the computer, and everything else. As Fiorella has often said, she'd like the world to slow down for a while so she can catch up.

Hydro Phobia

Fiorella does not trust water.  It's okay in small quantities--bath tubs or swimming pools or poured into drinking glasses, but large uncontrolled amounts of it--oceans, lakes, rivers--make her nervous.

She is astounded at the people on HGTV who want to live on the ocean shore--haven't they ever heard of hurricanes and tsunamis? And lakes often  hide tree branches one can get snared in, or dangerous microbes, or piranhas, or crocodiles. And rivers can flood at a moment's notice.

Perhaps that's the root of Fiorella's phobia.  When she was a child and her family was driving from Texas to Ohio one year, they crested the hill at Cairo and looked down to see the road in front of them diving down beneath the Wabash River.

There was no land in sight on the other side

The Visual

The new remote isn't letting Fiorella hear a thing so all she could do was watch the action on The Little Couple last night, and she was struck again by what a sweet relationship Bill and Jen have with their children, hugging and kissing them every chance they get.

Her own mother would have regarded all that physical contact as soppy.  Fio always knew Mother loved her, but hugs were reserved for someone going or coming home from a long trip, and one kiss a day at bedtime was the limit.

Times change.

Round Up

This is so exciting!  We had cow patties on our driveway!

We also had a note on our door asking us to call if we spotted two runaway calves, but the babies were long gone by then. Fiorella was disappointed not to have seen the calves up close, but when she and Husband were coming home from grocery shopping, there they were, being tended to by neighbor till their owner claimed them.

Only in the boondocks.