some other songs....

Its All The Same
I, Don Quixote
I'm Only Thinking of Him
I Really Like Him
Aldonza

There was the older

brother that she met in gym class, and the following year, the younger one was in her typing class. And her neighbor friend was in her art class. She kind of got fascinated with the older brother in the gym class. She'd had a few conversations with him. She knew a few things about him. Then she'd go to into art class, sit across the table from her neighbor friend, and sing some of the songs from the the latest musical she had been listening to, which was, in this case, The Man of La Mancha.

Little Bird Little Bird

Dulcinea

Once in the spare bedroom of an old house I found an old wedding photo of two hippies (or hippie-ish) looking people on a beach, except I think the man's hair might have been longer than the woman's (?) She wore a mini-dress and a shell around her neck. They both had bare feet. It looked so nice, so happy, so optimistic. I asked my mother about it, and she told me that this photo had been taken in the early 70s and that they were distant relatives. These two people were married and had a daughter. But the marriage didn't last. It broke up and the woman moved to Las Vegas, and unfortunately, she was murdered. But somewhere, I have a distant relative, presuming that the girl grew up all right, named Dulcinea.

To Each His Dulcinea

Dulcinea

Best way to pill a cat

If you've got 3 pills and one is too big for his little throat to gag down and you're administering these 2x a day...
(that's 6 pills total)

Don't cover them in butter (he'll just hide 'em in the corner of his mouth and spit them out somewhere in the corner)

Don't grind them up and put them into his catfood. (He's too wise for that).

The best way to administer the medicine is to pulverize these pills into a very fine white powder, and add just enough liquid vitamin C (flavored for kids) to cover the very bottom bowl of a spoon, mix with a few water droplets, stir until the powder is mostly dissolved, then suck it all up into a syringe/eyedropper thing. Squirt this as quickly as possible down the back of his throat.

The liquid Vitamin C has a fairly palatable aftertaste, so he'll only be mad at you for about five minutes. Even less if the medicine is administered before mealtime and in front of friends. (He loves the sympathetic comments!)

Interesting Women

Of medieval France...

CHRISTINE DE PIZAN

Of the Italian Renaissance...

VERONICA FRANCO

something else funny...

Once there were these 2 friends/neighbors in art class. Who were not at all stingy (in their affections). They could like each other and also like other people, too. (Exes, cute Jewish girls, these 2 fabulous Latino brothers...) She (the girl) liked to draw pictures of peoples' faces. Him...not so much.

There was this one day when she was on the bus talking to him. "So," she said, "theres this one girl at school and she's really tall and pretty and she has long black hair and she's really beautiful..." "Oh, really." "Yes. I'd really like to draw her...You know, I noticed that I like to draw pictures of girls a lot, for some reason, I don't know...maybe, I'm not that into male beauty..." she stopped because she sounded quite awkward. It was not such a nice highschool, it was easy to say something weird-sounding and get made fun of, and she had a feeling she'd just said something kind of weird, so would he make fun of her? But he did not. "Oh, yeah, I know what you mean, me too, I'm not into male beauty either, I'm into female beauty, all the way." And then they both laughed and she felt better.

But later, when she was in art class, she thought she might like to challenge herself. Why do I always just draw pictures of girls? She thought. Maybe I've just swallowed some kind of a societal standard. I think I will draw one of a guy. So she did. Maybe she at first was trying to make the guy look like one of the Latino brothers (who both cute, in different ways, the older one, she met first in P.E. class, she liked him. The younger one, in her typewriting class the next year, also seemed interesting, but it wasn't quite the sort of intense kind of like that she'd felt for the older one). Anyways, maybe at first she thought of him, but then the person she was drawing actually just became a figment of her imagination. She used her pencil and did all of this smudging, so the skin became darker and the eyes and the nose were a bit different, and she made it kind of look like it was nighttime in the sky behind the person and made this sort of vague, stormy landscape. She was quite please with the result. He was of uncertain ancestry, like maybe he was part Latin, part Arabic, part Indian or something.

Other people came over to look at it. Who knows, t first they might have said things like, "Well, thats very nice, but you know, smudging is so unprofessional for an artist, I don't recommend you do that." "Thats a very interesting drawing, you know, so and so's drawing is more technically accurate, but yours, well it really seems like it tells a kind of a story." And then, some people said, "Hey, do you know who we think that drawing looks like?"

And she looked at it and thought...Uh-oh...

Actually, thats not true. I did see one...Dr. Zhiavago.

something funny.

My mother once told me, when she was in college, she had a date, and the girls all told her "Omar Sharif is sitting in the lounge!" But actually, he was not Omar Sharif, he was just a guy from West Point.

So. I never found a picture of him before. I've never seen any of his movies. But I just googled him. Here's a picture of good ol' Omar Sharif!

quote

Here is one I got from this website

Water says to the dirty one, "Come here."
The dirty one says, "But I am so ashamed."
Water says, "How will you be made clean without me."

Rumi, Mathnawi II, 1366-7

trying to remember...

what would be a Spanish word for "little comments?" I can't remember.

I have been distracted because my cat is sick, but...I see that I have gotten a few "little comments" some of which might have come from "little moments"

The Spanish word for that...is...I think..."ratitos!"

Story about Watada's father

stories, the order of things

My first trip to Peru was made possible via the May Term study abroad program during my sojourn at Mary Baldwin which was where I made up my mind to focus on literature. I remember reading a story called The Guest by Camus, and I was much affected by it. Though I also remember that the professor asked if/pointed out that some of the author's rendering of the facial features of the "Arab" character seemed racist. Also, this was where I first read Meatless Days by Sara Suleri, when I took a course on Asian American Women in Literature, during May Term. At the time I found the language in the book to be rather difficult, and I was not very focused on it. Actually I just started to appreciate that book about one year ago. I like stories about weird grandmothers; my mother's mother was a weird grandmother.
The next May Term I did not take a course on campus. I went to Peru instead, which was absolutely the best thing I did in college.

songs/lyrics

I am remembering back in the late '90s when I made all these trips to Peru. I sent mixed tapes to Peru, to Roland the Peruvian rainforest guide. I was just learning Spanish so I was grasping around for some references, and I thought of some songs by The Pixies. But maybe I didn't realize how tongue-in-cheek some of the lyrics were, or notice the sounds of jail bars slamming in the background on Vamos. Nicknames were big in Peru, and he had a lot of them, including "Chino." So in English, that roughly translates to "Chinese man." Fujimori was the president of that country and they used to call him "Chinito" (little Chinese man). But he was part Japanese, not Chinese. I thought, in English that probably wouldn't sound very good. "Why?" he (Roland the rainforest guide) said to me. "They are not insulting me. The Americans must not be really carinosa. When they call me 'Chino,' its because they like me."

Vamos

Isla de Encanta

Oh, day's date...

Much is being made of the day's date being 6-6-06. I would just like to point out that according to Wikipedia's Philo of Alexandria entry that Philo thought 6 was merely "the product of the masculine and feminine numbers 3 × 2 and in its parts equal to 3+3, is the symbol of the movement of organic beings." Good old Wikipedia. Where would we be without it?

It is interesting to me, because some religious folk were quite alarmed when, in my very young years (I don't even remember this), I apparently ran around telling people "my favorite number is 6!" If only they had been familiar with Philo of Alexandria! Then they wouldn't have been so rattled.

Fun Art Website

Very interactive. National Gallery of Art.

http://www.nga.gov/kids/zone/zone.htm

meow meow meow

My old cat is not very happy with his mean old guardian, who shoves pills and antibiotics down his throat and takes him to the the vet to get operated on. In honor of his irascible yowl, I think I'm going to make a tiny list about military or militant types who become guardians.

Here is my short (limited to two-a-piece) list of dos and don'ts. The don'ts first.

Don't:
(1)Decide to utilize special pressure point technique you were taught to use on "the enemy" as a form of subduing a child that aggravates you.
(2)Make your child (esp. if she is a girl of a certain age) ride around in a car half naked in public for a long time, (very embarressing) because you are that mad she spilled a milkshake all over her shirt and the backseat or whatever.

So, those are two "Don'ts."
But...here are some "Do's!"

Do:

(1) Teach your kids to jump off the diving board like a paratrooper
(2) Teach them to sing:

I have a pretty girl
She is an army girl
And I'd buy her anything
to keep her in style
She has a pair of eyes
just like two mud pies
Soldier, that's where my money goes...

I have a pretty girl
She is an army girl, etc...

She has a long long nose
just like a garden hose
Soldier, that's where my money goes

She has a pair of hips
just like two battleships
Soldier, that's where my money goes.