whistling pig farm (ah the places I have lived)

Groton, Connecticut

I had a ground hog (his other name: whistling pig, wood chuck) named Woody.  He wasn't afraid of me but he wasn't a pet.
I came home from work and found him sitting in front of the clothes dryer, which was in the garage. Apparently someone had gnawed and eaten a hole from the crawl space (maybe) into the garage behind the oil boiler/furnace.
The crawl space (dirt floor) was home to family of skunks, too.
Yes, I had a critter farm in the city of Groton, CT.
I didn't feed Woody, my grass did.  (Or the skunks ate the mice/rats in the crawl space, as I was told by the Skunk Lady (via email).
One night we heard little baby skunks having a squealing match under the floor. (Not good) Those little fuckers could spray as bad as their parents. (It was totally impossible to sleep with that smell.)
So I bought bobcat urine. Yes, there was a hardware store that sold it. (Don't ask how they harvest it. I have no clue.)
You dip toothpicks and cotton balls in that urine and put them around the yard and crawl space.
They told me a bigger predator would make the skunks rethink living under my 100+ year old cottage. Maybe it would scare off Woody, too.
No chance of that.

Groundhogs in the Garden

Woodchucks or Groundhogs

Here are tips for identifying and getting rid of groundhogs or woodchucks.

(I have a more of this story in the chapbook BECOMING as Laramie Harlow)

Read more

language virus

Every writer needs a hobby. When he isn’t writing bleak, bloody fiction or exploring the primal violence at the heart of the American experience, Cormac McCarthy likes to unwind with a little theoretical scientific research. Who doesn’t? His work at the Santa Fe Institute has led him to write a new treatise on the nature of the unconscious and the emergence of human language: “The sort of isolation that gave us tall and short and light and dark and other variations in our species was no protection against the advance of language.  It crossed mountains and oceans as if they weren’t there.  Did it meet some need?  No.  The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it. But useful?  Oh yes.  We might further point out that when it arrived it had no place to go.  The brain was not expecting it and had made no plans for its arrival.  It simply invaded those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated.  I suggested once in conversation at the Santa Fe Institute that language had acted very much like a parasitic invasion … The difference between the history of a virus and that of language is that the virus has arrived by way of Darwinian selection and language has not. The virus comes nicely machined. Offer it up. Turn it slightly. Push it in. Click. Nice fit.”

VIA

Appreciation Friday: YOU

sometimes you need to sit and do nothing... YES, I'm talking to YOU   ---BOOM

and turn off your phone

I am

Art Appreciation: Nick Cave

VIA

For Cave’s MASS MoCA installation, Until — a double play on the phrase “innocent until proven guilty” or in this case “guilty until proven innocent” — Cave addresses issues of gun violence, gun control policy, race relations, and gender politics in America today.  Can't wait for MASS MoCA's expansion to open #intheberkshires.

Current installation UNTIL by Nick Cave at Mass Moca (until Sept.)

Download the Nick Cave: Until press release

Courtesy of James Prinz Photography

ARTSY has more

are you missing pickle?

Pickle? We have posted about pickleball on this blog and we are thinking HARD about short stories on a new website (short stories about being in a pickle.) Coming Soon!

poetry rituals

OUT OF PRINT

I use a pen-name for poetry/prose/short story... (aka Laramie Harlow)

Writing Rituals

As for rituals, I recall writing a poem about my mixed-breed dog Bubbles when he died; I might have been 10 or 11 years old. 
I was grieving very very hard, crying and so miserable, I had no choice but to write something down. Honestly, after that, I knew (for me) writing was therapeutic. It’s was about the same time I started a diary/journal. 
Losing Bubbles was my first “serious” poem about death, losing my best friend, my dog. No one ever read that poem or any other lovesick poems that followed.
Actually I was a closet writer most of my life!

In the years that followed, I filled many cheap spiral notebooks with all kinds of poems, rants, quotes, other author’s poems, like Judy Garland and Lois Wyse  (http://www.poemhunter.com/lois-wyse/). Both ladies: remarkable poets!

(This was before blogs.)

OUT OF PRINT

It might be therapeutic to go back now and reread those old notebooks? Maybe, not.

 I'm always working on something, like a new chapbook Mental Midgets: Am I Supposed to Be Doing This?

Poetry book contributor:
TENDING THE FIRE 2017
IN THE VEINS 2017
POET'S SEAT 2017  FINALIST

“I didn’t choose poetry, poetry chose me.” —Philip Larkin https://t.co/RQ06CDaCHL

— The Paris Review (@parisreview) May 7, 2017

Ah, the places I have lived | Drugstore Cowboy

PORTLAND OREGON

Way back in 1988, at least I think it was, the William S. Burroughs - Gus Van Sant film Drugstore Cowboy was filming in Portland Oregon and a friend of mine, Ray Monge, was in it. He brought actor Matt Dillon to my gift store to meet me and GUESS WHAT? I wasn't there that afternoon.

WHAT THE___!!! I was really messed up when Ray told me. But Matt and Kelly Lynch signed a publicity photo for me. And my photo was stored by a supposed-friend in Tillamook and I never saw it again. So that's my bad story for the day.

My first store was l'quix fix, when I was 30.  My last store was ZOOLOOZ in Old Town (located in the New Market Theatre) (1986-1990). I worked seven days a week back then. 

That makes me tired now.

Movie Clip: google DRUGSTORE COWBOY

art.roadtrip: the womb

If you want a roadtrip to Oklahoma City (of course you do.. go here first... THE WOMB + Flaming Lips )
The Womb is at 25 NW Ninth Street in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 
LISTEN

the early genius Mary Ellen Bute

***“We submerged tiny mirrors in tubes of oil, connected [them] to an oscillator, and drew where these points of light were flying. The effect was thrilling for us—it was so pure. But it wasn’t enough. Finally we got a Bolex camera and started… to make my first film, Rhythm in Light.” –Mary Ellen Bute

Bernie Krause | work sleep relax #soundscape

The sounds of nature help us work, sleep, and relax — and now it's all just a click away. https://t.co/Sk421zTnvm via @onsraco #soundscape

— Katherine Krause (@KatKrause) April 25, 2017

CLICK THIS for a rain app

"someone was here"

Go get more ideas

Treasures in the Trash Museum

THIS will be a very inspirational roadtrip, obviously.
Tucked away on the second floor of an East Harlem garage, the Treasures in the Trash Museum features items saved from the landfill over three decades by Nelson Molina (the ultimate dumpman).

Upcoming programs for Open House New York’s Getting to Zero: New York + Waste 2017 are listed online.

you are not the content

In 2013, I spoke to a class in New Hampshire about writing and learning and ended with this:  

You are not the content.

I wanted them to understand that they are not the books they read. They are not the grades they earn or the jobs they get. They (and YOU) are more, much more and somehow that thought is being lost in today's world.
We are more than a grade. We are more than a wardrobe or haircut. We are more important than any technology that exists. We are indeed a soul in progress. And each of us has to be more.

Old lady pulled by a dog

I can't stop laughing

Ah, the places that I lived" : Las Vegas 51s

VEGAS
When you live on Gipsy Avenue, you and your roomies have crazy parties and dress up. This party we were celebrating Mexico. I'm on the floor and Emily is right behind me. That girl was a party all by herself.
I remember MTV was brand new. I was mesmerized. I couldn't stop watching. Yes, that was in 1983, a very long time ago.
In Vegas, I got a temp job doing demo's for liquor candy - yup, fancy chocolate candy that had liquor in each piece. (This was not my first demo job) (Paid well)
Marty, back row left, and Jeff, center, were minor league semi-pro baseball players, recruited from Minneapolis to Vegas.  (On Sundays, Marty and Jeff had "pro-fun tours" in Minneapolis/St. Paul sports bars. I met Marty and Jeff when I sang in Tropic Zone.) Emily was from New Orleans.
Those were fun times.
The group of us went up to Mount Charleston Lodge often -  a very hip hangout with live music.

[The Las Vegas 51s, formerly known as the Las Vegas Stars, are a Minor League Baseball team of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) and the Triple-A affiliate of the New York Mets. They are located in Las Vegas, and are named for Area 51 which is located near Rachel, Nevada, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas. The team logo jokingly depicts one of the grey aliens thought by UFO believers to inhabit that base. They play at Cashman Field which has a capacity of 9,334 people. The 51s won the PCL championship as the Stars in 1986 and 1988.]

Spooky AREA 51

READ ABOUT BASEBALL THERE