Dear girl child in a world of men,

**I usually keep it light and easy in here but this has been on my heart…

A poem:

This is a moment for you,

Never mind what he has to say…to explain it away.

Let me say to you that it’s not OK.

Your innocence–even “fast tailed” girls who scribbled their love in notebook margins–to have it swept away?

Glittering un-guarded prey?

It’s not OK.

Too many secrets to keep,

Too many touches and whispers to sweep,

Under the family rug,

Well that got damned rug is lumpy!

And yeah I’m feeling jumpy and might just jump cuz,

It’s not OK.

Too many roses with too many thorns cuz somebody thought

It’s OK…one word, un heard, it’ll be OK…

One kiss, who’d miss the light in her eyes when I steal it away? When I drain it away?

Girl child know that it was never OK,

It was never OK.

It was never OK.

And you shall inherit the earth someday.

A Sunshine Award on a cloudy day!

Hi guys!

I have been M.I.A. and was actually kicking around the idea of going black (no racist) permenently.  Yup I was gonna fold up my lil’ popsicle stand and go back to a life sans blogging.

Imagine my surprise when in a chance checking of my WP stats and comments I spotted a little missive from a fellow blogger, Aquah *Lekker* Garla, a “free spirited, adventurous African girl” with a sparkly pink blog packed with insight, (African!)  fashion and humor.  Miss Aquah bestowed me with the following honor and as such I will do 3 things; proudly place the Sunshine award icon on my page, pay it forward by sprinkling around a few awards of my own and lastly I’ll inwardly pledge to get back in the blogging saddle…because what was I thinking ‘abandoning writing’? I’ve always been better with pen and paper…

Thanks for tuning in 🙂

Here are the instructions to receive and nominate others:

• Include the award’s logo in a post on your blog
• Answer 1o questions about yourself
• Nominate 10 other bloggers
• Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blogs, letting them know they have been nominated
• Share the love and link the person who nominated you!

Q & A on yours trulay (still can’t resist bustin a rhyme):

1. My favourite color: BLUE…Bleu…BloO
2. My favourite animal: I don’t desire to be up close and personal with any animal.  Many of them are beautiful from afar but favorite animal? To do what with? Really question makers? Really?
3. My favourite number: Huh? Ok I’ll play along. 2.
4. My favourite drink: Water
5. Facebook or Twitter: FB
6. My passion: It waxes and wanes but I’ll always come back to writing…
7. Prefer giving or getting presents:  I love them both equally. Today I’m in a getting mood. Why?? Whatcha got?
8. My favorite pattern: I love a good plaid.  Not to wear, just to look at.
9.  My favorite day of the week: Friday
10. My favorite flower: I love a good sunflower

Here are 10 bloggers that I think you all should check out! (in no particular order):

Anansi The Poet keeping poetry alive…

Picki Niki eat (or pick) vicariously thru Niki!

Grown and Curvy Woman  She’s a breath of fresh air!

The Proverbial Lonewolf Librarian He’s got great little digestable chunks of info perfect for my (quicky) professional developement needs!

Chocolate and Raspberries When I’m feeling unabashedly girly I go here 🙂

Topicless bar  :)!

A Writer’s Voyage Fantastic voyage…Hope She come back and drops a few lines soon!

Life on Tuesday got nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award!!!

This was such a pleasant surprise!!! Thanx a million to Miss Jey over at http://missjeyonline.wordpress.com.  She’s got a whip smart fashion blog over there.  She’ll make a fashionista of you yet! 😀

When given this honor you, the bestowed upon,  have to do a few things.  With VBA-dom comes great responsibility. I aint mad.

Here are the rules for the award:

1.Add the award to your blog.
2.Thank the blogger who gave it to you and include a link to their blog.
3.Mention 7 random things about yourself.
4.List the rules.
5.Give the award to 15 or more bloggers

Here are 7 random things about me:

1) I’m not a good gossiper.  Good gossiping requires the gossiper to remember details about past gossip sessions.  I’m horrible at remembering details.

2) I have my own crayons and coloring books (off limits to my kids).  They’re my Rx for stress relief.

3) I have a huge bag (the kind you get from Ikea) filled with un-matched socks. What gives?

4) I have a re-occurring dream about my high school English class.  The details are fuzzy though.  Told ya I suck at details.

5) I still have trouble remembering my 7 times tables.

6) I have a grandma named Queenie and a grandma named Clementine.  Both missed and loved with all my heart…

7) I’m not. that. innocent.

Be sure to check out these 17 Bloggers I’ve nominated:

1. http://mooretalkja.wordpress.com/ Hilarity and sage insights in Jamaican patois! Doesn’t get any better.
2. http://patrickandersonjr.com/ This young man can write. If I do say so myself.
3. http://variegatedstacks.wordpress.com/ My old school chum, a cataloging librarian. She’s living the dream! And blogging about it!
4. http://k1ngeljay.com/ Music reviews.  Smart music reviews.
5. http://thegangstayogiizthembinakea.wordpress.com  She’s got heart and soul…
6. http://bethtourek.com/ Good stuff here. Unwanted house guest? Pshaw! Come over anytime!
7. http://mysoulforsale.wordpress.com/ Sharp reporting from the front lines of cubicle-dom.
8. http://newswithnipples.com/ She’s giving the people what they want…and slipping them what they need.
9. http://ellayourbella.wordpress.com/  Carrie Bradshaw meets…Janey Glenn? This girl has a lotta fun. And writes about it pretty good too.
10. http://earthcandyarts.wordpress.com/ She’s granola chick 2.0.
11. http://tillimfamous.com/ Good vibrations.
12. http://grammaticallybuffpoems.wordpress.com/ Funny, punny poems.
13. http://beckyyk.wordpress.com/ She’s clever with the Photoshop.
14. http://loveinshallah.com/ Muslim love stories.
15. http://crustula.wordpress.com/ Funny guy + Smart guy (pop culture student guy) = this guy
16. http://visitingmissouri.net He’s from across the pond somewheres and he’s musing on life in the USof A. And I like it.
17. http://apocketfulofnotes.com/ She’s sweet and sage.

Food for thought. Goebel this one up.

Day/title 59

WTH?

Bibliographic info:

Torture the artist : a novel

Goebel, Joey

MacAdam/Cage Pub. 2004

Summary (Library Journal Review):

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you will never be happy.” So opens this surprisingly funny, anything-but-predictable story about a hapless, perpetually miserable young artist named Vincent and Harlan Eiffler, the manager being paid to make sure he stays that way. Foster Lipowitz, the ailing CEO of the world’s biggest media conglomerate, feels guilty about his company’s hand in churning out dreck disguised as entertainment. Dying from a slow cancer, Lipowitz tries to redeem himself by inventing an experimental company called New Renaissance.

My reaction: 

I looked at the cover of this book and got that churning feeling in the pit of my stomach.  This churning was reminiscent of the churning I experienced right before Marsellus Wallace had the misfortune of un-willingly being made into a pawn star.  What kind of world would I be plunged into within these pages?

Here’s what kind of world: “Depressed by the bad weather, you cry yourself a little river but the tears evaporate and form into another cloud that rains on you even more.   You can’t win”.  It’s an angst-y world.  The writing is pretty good, I just don’t think I can it give more than a cursory glance, me being a reformed pessimist and all. It’s billed as comedic, but any more of Lipowitz’s (the mentor/manager in the book) doom and gloom pep talks (to Vincent the mentee) and I’d be off the wagon again.

A little haiku to light up the dark

Shhhhh!!! I feel like maybe we’re supposed to be covert and quiet like up in here.  You may have noticed that many of my fellow WordPressians blog pages have gone dark in protest against SOPA.  And rightly so,  SOPA deserves to be protested.  It probably had good intentions but it has the ability to go horribly wrong.  Bloggers are impacted because we write, and when we write we may link. What if we link to a blacklisted site. Could that spell trouble for us?  What if our beloved WordPress itself is blacklisted?  I’m really not familiar with all of the fine print but it just feels like SOPA is doing too much.

All that said I didn’t have the heart to totally go dark for a few days.  Although I’m all about solidarity (see the black ribbon I’m sportin? Upper righthand corner?) I just couldn’t shut up for a a whole week! I hafta keep chugging along or I’ll come to a complete stop and go cold.  Can’t do that. Just getting warmed up!

So with out further ado…

Day 10!

Bibliographic Info:

The Classic Tradition of Haiku : An anthology

Bowers, Faubion

Mineola, NY : Dover Publications, 1996

ommmmmmmmmm........

Summary (library website):

Unique collection spans over 400 years (1488–1902) of haiku history by the greatest masters: Basho, Issa, Shiki and many more, in translations by top-flight scholars in the field. Editor Faubion Bowers provides Foreword and many informative notes to the poems.

My reaction:

.

Confession.  I couldn’t hunt this book and physically hold it in my loving hands because our branch didn’t have a copy.  So  I headed over to books.google.com (great resource!) where I was able to find a digitized version of the book.  Sure its not the entire text but there was enough there to inspire me.

.

An excerpt from the book (that I had to manually transcribe because of course, copy/paste is not allowed.  See how hard I work for yall?! :D):

.

“Haiku lovers look for specific words and images to help reveal the deeper layers of meaning that expand the layers of each poem.  These fall into three categories : What, Where and  When. (pg. ix )”  Hey! Didja know that haiku are songs “meant to be  uttered in one breath(pg. ix)”?  Cool huh?

.

.

A haiku from a poet by the name of Iio Sogi (1421-1502):

.

everything that was

has vanished from my aged heart

leaving not a trace

.

.

My humble attempt*:

.

to remember You

is respite from injury

harbor from myself

.

.

*I’m kicking myself for offering any type of explanation as art should require none but in my haiku You=The Creator/GOD and myself=ego

Don’t let your language become roadkill

Day 4

Hi there! Lets get straight to it.

Bibliographic information:

Vanishing Voices : The extinction of the world’s languages
Nettle, Daniel

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2000.

Call Number 417.7 NETTLE

Yoink!

Summary (Library website):

Few people know that nearly 100 native languages once spoken in what is now California are near extinction, or that most of Australia’s 250 aboriginal languages have vanished. In fact, at least half of the world’s languages may die out in the next century. What has happened to these voices? Should we be alarmed about the disappearance of linguistic diversity?

Reaction:

This book is pretty neat. I rarely meet a book that doesn’t have something to offer but this one’s got it in spades.  In the 1st few pages you get the stories of 3 different individuals who—upon passing—took their tribal language to their graves.  Ubykh.  A dead language once spoken in Turkey.  Catawba Sioux. A dead Native American language.  Wappo.  Also a dead Native American Language.

The concept of benign neglect is discussed.  Essentially this concept is the focus of the argument that these languages just sort of died out voluntarily.  The crux of the argument of the naysayers is this: Languages die. Who cares? The authors do an excellent job of making you care, pointing out that the loss of languages also results in loss of “community structures which would have still had benefits” to the individuals.

Class dismissed! Oh! For extra credit, who wants to take a stab at the top 5 languages of the world (in terms of  number of speakers)?*

photo from U. of South Florida website

*Maybe the stats have a changed a little. This book was published in 2000.

749.7 STEP right up and DIY

Welcome to Day 2 of a Dewey A Day!!!

Bibliographic Information:

Step-by-step Frame it Yourself : Matting & Framing

Creative Publishing International

Summary (Library Website):

Readers can achieve professional results and enjoy substantial savings by learning to frame artwork themselves. This handy resource discusses designing, preparing, and assembling mats and frames and details all the necessary tools and materials. 175 photos/illustrations.

Get with the program. D.I.Y.

My Reaction:

This book is old so there may have been major changes, I’m talking leaps and bounds, to occur in the framing industry.  State of the art stuff.  You really can’t take your eye off the ball in the exciting world of carpentry.

Condescending tone aside 😀 I really do like this book.  And I learned a new word.  And  if you tuned in yesterday you know how I feel about that. And hey!! For my WWF  (Words With Friends) people or even my HWF (Hanging With Friends) people these word gems that I drop on you might be your ace in the hole one day!

rab·bet/ˈrabit/

Noun:

rabbet– A step-shaped recess cut along the edge or in the face of a piece of wood, typically forming a match to the edge or tongue of another piece.

You too can mat multiply!

Good word right?! Anyway this is a short read at 59 pages.  And when you’re done you’ll know how to frame a mirror, do a raised or multiple mat and frame a needle point—Oh Lord.  I’m a librarian pushing needle point.  Will the granny-ness ever cease?  Ah well.  Hope you kiddies learned something! Don’t forget to get some hard candy outta the candy dish on your way out.  You might need a chisel.  And hand me my Bengay will ya?

photo from Ivan Tutorga flickr

Get your daily dose-o-Dewey right here

Inspired by the 365Project,  I (a mild commitment-phobe in a 12 step program to recovery) have decided to jump in with my contribution.   Yes I’m a few days late but I didn’t start my 12 step program for procrastination yet.  I’ll leave that for 2013’s resolution. God Willing.

I thought about creating a whole ‘nother blog for this project but was concerned about my digital foot-print.  I’m sure it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things but still I’d rather my footprint to be in the dainty range rather than Sasquatch-ish. So I’m gonna blog this project right here on Life on Tuesday.

The premise of their project is that participants should “Document a year of your life by taking a photo a day”.  I wanted to do something a tad more involved and after a few days of brainstorming I came up with this ——->

A Dewey A Day

My 365Project—er 356Project (as it were) will involve 3 of my loves:

1) books (I could’ve said reading but didn’t because while I so love reading I also love books. I love the way they look on a shelf, on a night stand and how they feel in your hands.)

2) writing

3) the random (chance)

What kinda derring do is this you ask? This kinda derring do!  I’m gonna use a unique identifier generator to get 6 digits (the first 6 out of any string generated) and this will be my Dewey for that day.  I will then go retrieve that book (physically whenever possible but I’ll resort to e-copies if I must) and then I, your courageous (sometimes curmudgeonly) neighborhood librarian will post a mini report for that book! I’ll do this every day **gulp** for 356 days. Who will stick around to gawk at my antics? Whats’ the profile of a Dewey-A-Day audience member?

• The curious; those who want to see what long forgotten gems might be unearthed

• The Cliff Note scholars; those who wanna wax philosophical on themes and interpretations of Homer’s The Odyssey (no joke, that’s the book I got on my dry run, Dewey number 883.01) by just tuning in to my briefest of summaries

• The librarian who wants to get more intimate with the Dewey system since everyone assumes we know it like we know our own phone number (seriously, who knows anybody’s phone number these days?)

So that’s the plan.  Some days I might have more to say than just my Project356 stuff so I might do a couple of entries on that day.  My entries will include the bibliographic info for the book, a summary and my reaction (could be a poem, picture, a drawing or a blank stare).

I’m gonna stick to this even when I don’t care to.  I’m gonna do it even when I’m fairly certain no one else gives a… **search mental Rolodex for something no one cares about**—> 1000 Grand candy bar.  Here we go folks! I’m excited! Are you!?  I know the books are!!!! 😀

Seriously, we were gonna sue for alienation of affection. Signed, The Books

Two-Kinds-of-People-Tuesday er Thursday

Hi there faithful few!

Of course I was supposed to post this offering on Tuesday but things happened so I waited ’til Thursday to post so as not to mess with the alliteration.  Alliteration is a big bad biyotch. You don’t wanna mess with her.

OK! There are two kinds of people in the world:

1. Those who have something to blog every. single. day.*

2. Those who have bupkis.

Can I borrow an idea? I'm kinda short. photo from kellymarion.com

Also! I might be on the verge of getting bonded out of my writers block bid.  I’ve got an idea brewing for me to participate in 365Project.   The premise is to blog something every day for a year.  Sure I’ll be a few days late but better late than never!  Yall keep koming by to kall on me!

I know, I know, but hey lets reclaim K’s! They wanna dump these zeroes and get with some heroes! Yay K! 😀

*It’s good reading! I aint mad at her, I love her blog!

photo from printfection.com

My heart breaks for the Mothers who don’t…

grateful haiku (for my 4)

how sweet it is that,
i get to lay my eyes on
each dear one of them.

photo from buttonlust.tumblr.com