Joy Round My Brain

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Cheers!

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Edible Arrangements: Weekend Treat

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Letterbox Dog

Shades of the opening overhead letterboxed shot of Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia

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Omissions from the Great American Read Top 100 List

(Stevenson didn’t make the cut)

 

They picked Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn (called the Great American Novel by many) and left out:

Robinson Crusoe (probably for politically reasons)

Candide (too witty, satirical, and ironic?)

Madame Bovary (too mature and risque?)

Middlemarch (too sophisticated and mature?)

On the Road (no longer of interest?)

Fahrenheit 451 (no Bradbury at all)

Lord of the Flies (?! bizarre)

Hawthorne, Hardy, Faulkner, Brave New World (these don`t speak to kids today)

Dr. Jekyll (interestingly enough, no Stevenson–Treasure Island?)

Joyce, Woolf, Forster, Cather, Greene, Lawrence (predictably)

 

The other classic picks were representative, in any case, going back to Quixote

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Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely=

Trump.

A one-man wrecking crew on NFL anthem-kneeling. Caused all but 2 of the owners to cave in, by making the race protests a fake nationalistic, patriotism issue.

Trump has divided black and white America more than any other president since he came into power. MSNBC has a timely town hall show coming up this week on what’s going down with blacks in America this week which should clarify how serious this presidential muckracking has been.

That an NBA player should be tasered by Milwaukee police for a parking infraction shows how racist things are getting these daze. Likewise the black on a phone who got taken down in his own yard by over-zealous cops, while minding his own biz!

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The best of

love and sex is complete abandonment with a mutual giving and receiving intimacy. It is like an axe breaking open a frozen inner sea.

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At the Family Reunion

At the family reunion
Aunt Agnes sits
across from me
swilling her pilsener
and asking the time.

She bums cigarettes
from Uncle Al
to wear in her
chiselled lips–
her death-mask face
of granite bone.

Reptilian eyes
size us up as prey
in the smoke-filled kitchen.
She laughs at jokes
that are not really funny
and scares the hell
out of me.

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The Great American Read

viewable on PBS and online is the first, long-overdue tv program on books since the well-done Great Books series hosted by Donald Sutherland and PBS’s great Voices and Visions series back in the ’80s.

Well, it’s about time that something like this was issued for young people, young readers, library aficionados, and those looking for more from life and more using reading skills, imagination, and vicarious experience. Something inspiring and uplifting beyond the very deadening and dumbing-down digital world. Something to encourage individual freedom and autonomy via traditional reading skills and thinking.

It includes bios, book summaries, teasers, author info, reviews by authors and others, etc. There is n’er a dull moment as two hours of uninterrupted viewing fills in a lot of background about popular and great books going back to Don Quixote, generally considered the first novel.

Highly recommended. A great resource for teachers, too.

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As soon as the weather warms up,

another innocent kid or ‘beloved’ pet negligently left in a locked vehicle fries to death.

“An eye for an eye’ justice had its purposes and reasons. I would certainly understand the argument for leaving a dumb-ass parent in the same vehicle under the same conditions for the same amount of time.

I have long advocated for parental and pet-owner licenses. Some truly stupid people should not be allowed to have kids and pets.

Be prepared for another long summer of these incredibly unnecessary deaths because some dope wanted to go shopping sans kid or pet.

………………………..

E-Town, August    (by RD)

 

The robin’s rhapsody rebuts

“No, this is it. This is what matters.”

No smartphone sale or

cheap coffee queues today.

Only a 30 plus enhancement

designed by Nature.

 

Days forever change of late.

The 100 k winds will likely come,

flowers flattened by hail,

the continuous sirens

starting up anew.

 

But for now, cloudless blue

for some morning eyes.

A nuthatch yanking

the chickadees back in

eloquent app-less song.

I rock perpetually, clockless,

left leg crossed by right

on our garden swing.

A warm and welcome peace.

 

As elsewhere mad shoppers

fry their kids and dogs

in furnace-like SUVs

beside the swarming malls

in the phone-y, soulless,

mammon valley of death.

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