the ky version of the serengetti

ok, so on the way home from picking up chinese takeout, after church, we passed by a field that has changed it usual livestock mix...........these days...there is a flock of emu cohabitating with a herd of longhorn cattle.......such a strange sight.....emu with longhorns........both seemed to ignore the other.......there even appeared to be a few burros here and there, as well...........curious..............the hot and sour soup was especially good today.................

leap year

ok, so i understand the meaning of leap year....the tacking on a an extra day to assure that the calender falls in line with the seasons after 4 years of the 365 day calender being 5 or so hours off......but what i really need is an honest-to-god real extra day........like an extra sunday, not just an extra day in february.......like bill murray in ground hog day, only one time.....or maybe two times.......just enough to regroup, rest my weary brain cells, maybe get all of those pesky pictures in the albums.........

more on martha

ok, so it looks like martha can put away the measurements for her potential 10 year prison cell........she won't be needing those matching single sham/comforter/toilet seat cover now that the major charges against her have been dropped.......according to the comentary i heard on the way home yesterday, she will probably serve no time at this point.........

sign of the times

ok, so the best sign seen carried by protestors across the street from bush's big findraiser in louisville............somewhere in texas, a village is missing its idiot..............

more interesting birthday news

ok, so this is no longer about my birthday, as it is past, and i am over it for yet another year.......i enjoyed this entry on/in writer's almanac, about the writer who had what it took to be the bestest ever blogger, if only he was on-line.....

garrison k. has written.....It's the birthday of the great essayist Michel de Montaigne, born in Perigueux, France (1533). His father was a wealthy landowner and a devout Catholic, with innovative ideas about child rearing. He sent the infant Michel to live with peasant parents, so that he would learn to love the lower classes. Then, when Michel was a toddler, his father required everyone in the household to speak Latin rather than French, so that Latin would be his first language. Michel went off to college and became a lawyer. His father died when Michel was thirty-eight years old, and so he retired to the family estate and took over managing the property. His best friend had died a few years before, so he had no one to write to while living on his estate. He grew increasingly bored, so to occupy himself he began to write down his thoughts for an imaginary reader. He wrote about a wide variety of subjects: sadness, idleness, liars, fear, smell, prayer, cannibals, and thumbs, among other things. He called his short pieces "essays" when he published his first collection in 1580, because the French word "essai" comes from the word for "attempt", and he considered the short pieces he wrote to be mere attempts at addressing ideas.

Montaigne didn't think he had an extraordinary mind, but he believed that every mind was unique, and he wanted to leave a record of his own. He wanted to capture on paper the movement of his own thoughts. He said, "I take the first subject Fortune offers: all are equally good for me. I never plan to expound them in full. . . . Everything has a hundred parts and a hundred faces: I take one of them and sometimes just touch it. . . . I jab into it, not as wide but as deep as I can; and I often prefer to catch it from some unusual angle. . . . I can surrender to doubt and uncertainty and to my master-form, which is ignorance. Anything we do reveals us."

He lived at a time when religious civil wars were breaking out all over the country. The Black Plague was ravaging the peasants in his neighborhood; he once saw men digging their own graves and then lying down to die in them. Still, while he occasionally wrote about big subjects like hatred and death, he also wrote about the most ordinary things, like his gardening or the way radishes affected his digestion.

Montaigne wrote, "Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most."

And he wrote, "Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition."

Today is also the birthday of our good friend jeff thornton, who looks so much younger than 58..........interestingly enough, i discovered last night at supper, during the 'reasons to vote for kerry' discussion, that we should vote for him because he shares a birthday with our middle child, born december 11......... not in the same chinese new year cycle, but the same day................cayle shares a birthday with abraham lincoln, by the way............though his actual name/lineage has been called into question....seems nancy hanks may have been with child by the head of the household to which she was indentured in north carolina, and she may have been sent 'west' to ky with a husband(mr. lincoln) attained for just that purpose...........

oscar picks

ok, so mm has some oscar picks...having actually seen many of the films this year.......for best picture.....there is only one choice..the final installment of lotr.........no more need be said....for best director...peter jackson, for obvious reasons....it was his monumental undertaking to bring this epic to the big screen in a breathtaking way...........and therefore, he should be rewarded for best screenplay using adapted work....even though i am not so sure that he was nominated.......for best original screenplay....sofia coppola for lost in translation...which is as original as it gets.......best actor...johnny depp for pirates of the carribean......not the most dramatic performance, but by far the most memorable and the most enjoyable....charlize theron for monster as best actress......renee zellweger for best supporting actress, and tim robbins for best supporting actor.........the rest i have no clue about.......i am sad that american splendor was not represented well with nominations......i really liked that movie..............sunday night..........we shall see........

emptying nest

ok, so we had a taste of an almost empty nest, what with the middle child out of town at the nhs convention and the oldest at college.........supper with just one child at the table is just so strange.....especially one who wants to eat multiple servings of meat and no vegetables.......thankfully, said child will be back this afternoon......which reminds me of kind words that one of his teachers remarked as i left the big american studies project on wednesday.......'he is such a sweet boy.....such a sponge...he wants to absorb everything....how can you bear to let him leave home and go to college.....'..........gentle readers........these words are music to a mother's ears.............which brings me back to spring break......if we drive, we may be able to go to places we have never been......like winterthur in delaware, and similar historic homes.......few people in my circle of kin or friends enjoy going to such places as much as the middle child.......

spring break

ok, so mm is sketching out spring break, which will be a mother-son college tour up east.........southwest from louisville to long island/islip is about $200 r/t.........train travel from penn station to princeton junction, or grand central to new haven appear reasonable, but amtrak from nyc to boston is outrageous.......................i like the idea of flying to nyc and making forays out to select colleges, but i am unclear how to include boston area schools............should i rent a car from long island and drive? the estimated drive time from danville to 'upeast' is 17 hours.....everybody i ask says 17 hours..............that means 34 hours round trip....or several days out of my life............if anybody out there has an idea................frankly, i would prefer the train because i can read and relax rather than drive.................thankfully, my mother has already taken the child in question to the ohio schools....oberlin, wooster, kenyon, miami of ohio, and dennison..................centre is still in the running, but it is down the street...............

la dolce vita

ok, so one my birthday cards had a sweet roman mosaic of fruit in a basket on the front, with the sentiment.....Oh, the sweet, sweet pleasures of this abundant life................inside.....today and always, may you savor every moment..............sweet because the card was from my spouse, and sweeter still because it is so true....despite my aches, and pains, and petty complaints, i do live la dolce vita here in danville...............of course, a short visit to florence next january would enhance this conclusion................i am grateful for all of those dear people who called, or wrote, or sent cards........and i am looking forward to my birthday book club tonight.......where 17 of my special family/friends will dine on pecan encrusted honey-marinated chicken, bourbon and maple sweet potatoes, country-style mixed greens, cornbread muffins, red cabbage and blue cheese slaw, and a cold rice salad...................sound like enough?i hope the wine and beer is completely consumed, as i have to go 39 days or so without..................yeh, yeh, i know that lent started today, but on the kcw calender of life, it starts when my birthday is over..........................and i am not even catholic...................

birthday blues

ok, so you say it's my birthday....iam a gonna have a good time..........cut&pasted is the writer's almanac for today...i knew about anthony burgess, he of a clockwork orange, but not the others..i like the guy who wrote travel experiences.....he may also be kin, as may is a family name......sounds like february 25 is a good day for prolific people to be born.....i am not past chapter one in my novel.......

It's the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester, England (1917). He was an incredibly prolific writer: he wrote more than thirty novels, hundreds of essays, film and television scripts, translations, and a two-volume autobiography. He once said, "I refuse no reasonable offer of work and very few unreasonable ones." His first love was music: he studied music in college and tried writing symphonies without much success. When he became famous as a writer, he started writing music again with the hope that he would be able to get it performed because of his name recognition. He once said, "I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of as a novelist who writes music on the side."

After fighting in World War II, he worked for five years as a colonial education officer in Malaya. While he was there, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a doctor told him he had only one year to live. He later wrote: "I had been granted something I had never had before: a whole year to live. I would not be run over by a bus tomorrow, nor knifed on the Brighton racetrack. I would not choke on a bone. If I fell in the wintry sea I would not drown. I had a whole year, a long time. In that year I had to earn for my prospective widow. . . . I would have to turn myself into a professional writer."

Burgess wrote five novels in the year 1960 alone, and continued to write at a frantic pace for the rest of his life. He's best known for his 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, about a violent gang in a bleak futuristic world. It begins: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter."


It's the birthday of the "Father of Modern Pathology", Giovanni Battista Morgagni, born in Forli, Italy (1682). He's remembered today for his book On the Seats and Causes of Disease, published in 1761, in which he describes in great detail the results of 640 autopsies he performed on patients who had died from diseases. It's considered one of the most important works in the history of medicine.


It's the birthday of novelist Karl May, born in Ernstthal, Germany (1842). He's famous for writing dozens of novels about the American West at a time when not very many Europeans had been there or knew much about it. He was raised in poverty, and during the 1860s and '70s he spent a lot of time in prison for petty theft and fraud. It was while he was in prison that he began to read about American pioneers and cowboys and Indians. He got the idea for a series of novels about the adventures of a heroic German immigrant named Charley and his Apache Indian friend Winnetou. As soon as he published the books, they became hugely popular, especially among German adolescent boys. His novels became some of the most widely read books in Europe.

Many Europeans first learned about the American West through May's novels. All of his books were subtitled "Travel Experiences" rather than "Travel Novels", and most people thought that May was writing about his own travels in the West. But he had actually never been to America when he started writing the novels, and when he finally did go he never made it farther west than St. Louis.

May's novels are still incredibly popular in Germany. Since his death, about 100 million copies of his books have been sold. Many of his novels have been made into movies and TV shows, and in northern Germany, thousands of people still go to see an annual festival that puts on plays based on May's plots.


It's the birthday of comic playwright Carlo Goldoni, born in Venice (1707). He's one of the greatest playwrights in the history of Italian theater, the author of The Liar, The Coffee House, The Beneficent Bear and many others. In the eighteenth century, most Italian plays were farcical comedies in which the actors wore masks and fancy costumes, and improvised jokes on stage. Moldoni was one of the first playwrights to write more realistic comedies, with believable characters and natural dialogue.

kudos to edith wharton......

ok, so mm treated herself to the video for the age of innocence, starring daniel day-lewis and winona rider...and michelle pffieifer (sp).........edith wharton really knew how to construct a tear-jerker..................i walked on the treadmill during the first 30 minutes, then sobbed into the paper towels for the remaining hour.......................such a sad story of unrequited love................of course, this was not edith's best story..................i especially like a short story that has its crescendo in rome........2 former debutantes who lived across the street from each other, escorting their daughters on the grand tour......who discover that the brightest and the most beautiful is actually the 'daughter' of the husband of the most proud of the mothers..........................back to age of innocence................i really needed a good cry.............many thanks to edith for the catharsis.........................

ralph is running against my wishes...............

ok, so mm has a bone to pick with ralph nadar, who announced his run for president despite my plea for him to just sit back and be pro-consumer rights from the non-candidate section.................however, this time he is running without any backup....without the green party with organized state-by-state mailing lists/volunteers......he will have to figure out to to get his name on the ballot in each state by petition...................assuming he does not wish to go door to door getting signatures on his own.......

aging rapidly

ok, so mm went to the first of two birthday events of the season tonight........i am fortunate to share a birthday trimumverate of sorts with 2 of the running community....our birthdays fall in a 1-2-3 domino effect......and we have celebrated them as such for low these 20 years..................now that birthday #3 has gotten remarried, his new wife has chosen to celebrate his birthday separate from our usual bookclub birthday bash.........so tonight we drove to lex. for a nice dinner with the same friends we will see at our own house wednesday night........in fact...we will be setting up an auxilliary table, as our numbers have reached beyond the max. of what the stephan-family table can hold........my mother always told me that 14 was the most she has ever seen around the table when she was young......we expect 16 on wednesday.....and what to fix for dinner?......i am thinking about chicken breasts marinated in honey and dijon mustard, then encrusted with ground pecans then baked..............................though i am tempted use use my birthday grill for ther occassion........my mother and my spouse went together to buy for me the granddaddy of grills.......stainless steel, side burners.......the whole shebang.......our old grill decomposed after 17 years.....it was time for a replacement................i am also thinking about side dishes......maybe some sort of cole slaw, beet salad, and greens.....................again, i am unsure......so much pressure after having the book club at my house on my birthday for 5 straight years....................

poetry

ok, so mm has a soft spot for edna st, vincent millay..........i read this poem on line this morning, and was nearly brought to tears by its sadness.......

Poem: [What lips my lips have kissed] by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library).

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings so more

I can recall seeing a portrait of the poetess at the national portrait gallery in wash dc......which had a few brief lines of her verse as an epithet.........my candle burns at both ends...it cannot last the night...but ah, my friends, and oh, my foes, it makes a lovely light..................that really sums it all up for me......as a fitting description of what it means to be a working mother/business person in the ought-fours.......of course, millay was a bit more burning of her candle than i could ever desire to be....................

don't do it, ralph...........

ok, so the mm is praying that ralph nadar will not decide to put his hat into the independent ring in a bid for the presidency....which could take votes away from the democratic candidate............................didn't he do enough damage by getting the corvair taken off the market........i loved my burgundy corvair..................

w.h. auden

ok, so this poem was included on writer's almanac today, in honor auden's birthday, which he shares with erma bombeck, ja hin, anais nin, et al.........

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

the gospel according to mel

ok, so mm will not be watching the mel gibson passion of christ, or whatever he is calling it...........i have taught sunday school for over 15 years..........and i feel no need to see the 'realism' as mel gibson claims to provide in this saga...................the anti-semitism especially troubles me.........if we are to read our new testiment as written........god intended his son to be betrayed...and we cannnot blame either the romans or the jews for doing so..................really, issaih is quoted so many times..........

phase one of sign recycling-complete

ok, so the mm and her kin staged a daring daytime assault upon the only known kerr sign between town and our house.......it was in a public right-of-way......which explain why no one had yet bothered to remove it.......now all we need is a large 'y' to attach to the right side, and black tape to cross out the alice forgy and for congress parts...............saving the earth...one sign at a time...................

jane roe

ok, so the real jane roe, somewhere in texas, thinks that 30 years after the roe-v-wade decision, that she has reconsidered and wants to have a recount.......................a group of lawyers in texas has appealed/apllied to provide a dissenting testimony to this foolishness........................too much water has flowed under this bridge................too many good women's live has been revived/revitalized by that decision....................too late now for jane roe to reconsider...................

political recycling

ok, so mm has a briilaint idea.........af kerr could recycle all of her yards signs...for john kerry.....all she need do is to cross out the alice forgy part, and tape on a y after the kerr...............well, maybe SHE won't be so pleased, but i might just rustle up a sign and do it myself....................at least i can have one of my creations for my own yard..................