You Should Go To -

Alabama Goods in Homewood.

Get yerself some local gifts.

Who doesn't want an Alabama-shaped cutting board?

The Ham in the 'Ham

Rocking Kyle's sunglasses at Rojo

We don't have internet access these days, so it's extremely hard to get to a computer. But the babe is one, walking, talking, going crazy, and everything is great. And it's almost spring!

This was taken a month or two ago in Cheaha.

I'm never on here anymore.

Sorry - I'm just too busy.

But here's our little girl:

We love you, Danny.

I haven't been here in a while. Life gets in the way of my internet time, but that's ok.

Recently I received some really bad news about a friend. I am heart-broken at the loss of such a good man.

Perhaps the only thing to make me feel better right now is a poem. A poem by Ralph Waldo. Because he understands.

Water

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson
via poets.org

September

Clouds chase each other in the sky
playing hide-and-seek, at the corner
of the avenue, a little cat hooded
in black sniffs the air and
seems to think - it's the last day
of vacation. This pleasing summer
otium will end, I too will return to my
usual armchair. Summer's evaporating
in mists of memories. Who konws
if I"ll remember its last beams
under the dimmer city sun.

- Eugenio Montale

Love. Her.

Poesy: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to the West Wind

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

III

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

via poets.org 

Here I am/ Birmingham/ Here we go

I can't wait till I can share the new tracks Judge has been recording. So, so good.

Poesy: One-of-Mine Edition

Our Love

is akin to reading the language of the stars
or hearing God’s real name in a blinding,
piercing shriek. It is a wormhole,
death, and the reincarnation of a harijan.
I spend most days walking past it
as if to acknowledge the stranger
would make him real, and humming
clutters my head of its thoughts as I fail
to see the twinkling sky in its waxing
and waning glory.

Even so,
there are the moments I cannot ignore.
There are sighs filled with the immensity
of you, of fog within the valley pregnant
with rain, swirling between old buildings
dotting out the light. Musk and green seeds
and campfire and the fine, brown tendrils
of your hair are inescapable, are both
forever and never - wrapped up in
an external womb which I carry you
in protective, stealthy steps.

I whisper:
Live long enough to know the pain,
sing loud enough to hear the notes,
burn deep enough to know the want,
and always,
always
read the secret rhyme
within your own hymns. 

- RPJ

Lunchtime List

• Have you read the Southern Belle?

• Have you read the greatest book in the world? By Jove, I love you James Joyce.

• Have you read the newest Birmingham paper/online news source? I find this one particularly fantastic.

• This organization is amazing. Amen!

• If you're in Nashville, check out this blog. The fine lady who runs it just got engaged. Hooray!

• Are you crazy for football like me? Check out Jim Dunaway's page. 

• Teach your baby sign language. 

Poesy: Dylan Thomas

I think Dylan Thomas is sexy. I mean, look at this picture: 

Poem [Your breath was shed]

Your breath was shed
Invisible to make
About the soiled undead
Night for my sake,

A raining trail
Intangible to them
With biter's tooth and tail
And cobweb drum,

A dark as deep
My love as a round wave
To hide the wolves of sleep
And mask the grave.

- Dylan Thomas 

via poets.org 

It's National Honey Month!

September is a month that generally haunts me. I want it to be wonderful - enjoy the perks of college football and school in session - but generally it seems the same as August: hot, bland, and disappointing.

But here's something to look forward to - September is National Honey Month! I love honey and use it in all sorts of ways.

Make sure to visit the honey locator to see what honey is available near you. When I was living in Nashville I had really bad allergies every year, but when I ate honey from my area, I promise it helped.
BUY HONEY LOCALLY!

For more information on all things honey, visit the National Honey Board.

It is time for football.

I am very, very excited.

That is all.

E.T. Updates

Sigh. She's 7 1/2 months old.

She says, "Mama," "Dada," and "Hey."

She crawls and I can't seem to keep up.

Six teeth and lots of drool.

She wants to pull up next, and I don't know if I'm ready.

Help.

Ah, Ben Hawkins!

I am so disappointed this series Locke and Key didn't get picked up by Fox. It has one of my favorite actors, Nick Stahl.


Locke and Key Trailer 2:17 from some guy on Vimeo.

Here's an article about it. Did you ever see Stahl in HBO's Carnivale? That series haunts me to this day. I absolutely love it.  Here's it's trailer:

Thanks

Thanks to the Nashville Cream for featuring Cafeteria's album Knee Deep in a bandcamp roundup. You're the best!

....

It's 10:17pm and I'm the only one awake in the house.
Judge is passed out atop our bedclothes
and Lil is snoozing soundly after a day of playing with the cousins.
I have the television on in the background for company though I'm not watching it.

I cannot believe how quickly she is growing up.
I cannot believe how hard my husband works for so little.
I cannot believe how difficult it is to keep a house clean.

I find joy in chasing her around the house; she crawls so efficiently.
When she eats plums I made for her, or manages to say Dada as
she wakes in the morning, looking for him,
or simply gives me a smile, laden with those six astonishing
and knife-like teeth, it breaks my heart.
I think that is what love is -
having your heart broken everyday, over and over.

And he is Kinch, my knifeblade,
always soaring too close to the sun,
stuffed with so much poetry and backwards charm.

I revel in my life with them
because I am the luckiest.
I am nourished in their nighttime sighs.

Gardening

Thanks to Hillary for this great link:

Plant your Alabama garden on time! The AL Extension office is amazing.

Poesy: Ernest Hemingway

Along With Youth

A porcupine skin,
Stiff with bad tanning,
It must have ended somewhere.
Stuffed horned owl
Pompous
Yellow eyed;
Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig
Sooted with dust.
Piles of old magazines,
Drawers of boy’s letters
And the line of love
They must have ended somewhere.
Yesterday's Tribune is gone
Along with youth
And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach
The year of the big storm
When the hotel burned down
At Seney, Michigan.

- Ernest Hemingway
via poets.org

Things I Wish I Had Said

Wasn't it true, had he read it somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 a.m. than any other time...?

Stop! he cried silently.

"Charlie?" his wife said in her sleep.
Slowly he took off the other shoe.
His wife smiled in her sleep.
Why?
She's immortal. She has a son.
Your son, too!
But what father ever really believes it? He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean because we can't hold to the world or ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.
Three a.m. That's our reward. Three in the morn. The soul's midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair....Why?
"Charlie...?"
His wife's hand moved to his.
"You ...all right... Charlie?"
She drowsed.
He did not answer.
He could not tell her how he was.

- Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Magic City Post

I'm a contributor over at Magic City Post. Check it out!

Olive Thomas

I have become rather fascinated by silent films lately. They have always intrigued me, but checking out Silent Portraits by Anthony Slide has really furthered my obsession.

One particular actress caught my eye, as her portraits are simply stunning, is Olive Thomas. She was married to Mary Pickford's brother for a time and died a tragic death. She seems to embody all the wildness of the 20s. She was part of the racy Midnight Frolic in NYC and went on to star in pictures before her demise. Isn't she lovely?

Missing...

I have been absent lately from the internet.

Life has been busy, for sure.

For now I will leave you with the saddest movie in the world -

Broken Blossoms.

The Joiners

Our band is performing July 21st (Thursday) at the 5 Spot in East Nashville with Hands Down Eugene, Ole Mossy Face, and the Banditos. Then we play with the Banditos on Friday night at the Sipsey Tavern in Birmingham. How fun!

Thanks to Dixie Downturn for our great write-up.

Dear “Elizabeth Taylor,”

Your first doctor’s visit was when you were just a week old. I remember I hadn’t slept for longer than an hour, maybe hour and a half, since the day before you were born. You were nursing so much and so often that my sleep had suffered immensely. After the nurse weighed you and took your temperature, she turned to me and said, “You can put another diaper on her now.” I looked at Taylor in shock and whispered, “I didn’t bring a diaper bag.” I had my purse but not a diaper bag. He and the nurse both said, “You didn’t bring a diaper bag?” I flushed and couldn’t believe my idiocy. Judge covered for me and let her know I hadn’t slept in a week nor even left the house since she’d been born. The lady found me a diaper and I shuffled to the exam room with our new little you.

Once I told that story to my family, they all laughed at me and said I should put that bit of history in your baby book. “She forgot a diaper bag,” they all chuckled. Then it was funny, but at the time I felt like a failure as a mother. Who leaves the baby’s provisions at home? Was this a sign of how terribly I was going to do as a Mom?

Since then, things have changed 100%, for sure. I now have a diaper bag, and a second bag of “back-up” items for an emergency. Plenty of clothes changes, medicine, diapers, creams, wipes, blankets, toys, etc. Always a camera. You also have changed. The visit doctor visit we are scheduled for today is your sixth month visit. You are half a year old! You roll over, sit up, laugh, you have two teeth and are working on another one, you babble, you’ve said “Mama” a handful of times, you pull up when I give you my hands, and your soul, your beautiful personality, has definitely come out.

I appreciate my mother so much more now. I always loved and adored her for how I was raised but now, I can see all the hard work she put into making my brother’s and my childhood pleasant. And my father - all the hours at the job and the sacrifices he made just because he had little ones at home. I see them now and I hug their neck in thanks. There are no words for the love that goes into raising a family and keeping it close. I am forever in debt to them for the life they gave me.

And now I look at you. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, and there isn’t even a question about it. I do it not without a want for anything in return. You are this beautifully souled creature that I wished into existence and now we take pleasure in simply being with you. When I wake and you have made it into bed with your father and I because you woke at 4 a.m. and I was too lazy to get out of bed to nurse and I just brought you into ours, I smile. I see you cuddled between us in the wee hours of the morning and I believe honestly I can die happy at just seeing you. Nothing in my life prepared me for this, for the joy a little human can bring.

I just want to do right by you. I want to do a good job. I see your genuinely bright eyes and your two-teethed smile and I am done for. You are the poetry in my life and the inspiration for creating good art. You have changed everything.

I love you. Happy sixth month birthday.

Always,

Cabbage. 

Oxford American

Please, go check out the Oxford American. My favorite magazine has an amazing website and I want you to support them. Sign up for a subscription even if it's to just receive the music issue. Their cd compliations are always AMAZING.

Love to you, folks at Oxford American. Keep it up.