Hello, Poland? Are you there?

One of the odd pieces of information available to the blogger is the language used by visitors. In other words, I can tell if a person using a Chinese program (for example) logs on. (That is, I can sort of tell: the stats have an error rate of I'd say 50%). It used to be that the Polish contingency was right up there, keepin’ up with the English and the Italian (the Berlusconi factor – see January blogs), with an occasional nod toward Hungarian (I have no idea where the Hungarian comes in). But lately – it’s as if all that bla bla bla about Kerry this and Dean that really was over the top. Either the Poles all went on a vacation last week, or they switched their computers to English (Hungarian?) programming.

It’s been a rough week here in Wisconsin, but tomorrow – I promise a snippet of something for the Pole in each and every one of you.

Such stuff as dreams are made on

A former student and a current good friend wrote today asking if I was okay. Apparently she dreamt that I was down in the dumps. She was also concerned that no man in my family should go near any church because she dreamt that a church had crumbled, taking my man (husband? father? brother? no, there’s no brother) down with the rubble.

I assured her that the men I knew were not likely to step into holy territory in the next 24 hours (so far as I know), though I admitted to staying up until 3:30 last night staring at a computer screen and reading movie reviews of films I’d never in my life want to see. I think she must have read that blog yesterday about the squeaky shoes and saw great meaning in it (I’m not denying that there was such meaning).

I’m one of those persons that is only very marginally interested in dreams. I have yawned my way through many a dream story told by pointlessly excited dreamers on the next day. I just can’t take the stuff seriously. But my friend reminded me of a dream in the past that had elements of reality and so brushing it off made no sense.

I’d be remiss not to suggest that if you’re a guy who is even half-way a good acquaintance of mine with some organized religion in your life, and you’re reading this blog, skip church this week-end. I mean, why mess with the heavens?

How low can you go?

Well now, this is exactly why I cancelled my subscription to the Wisconsin State Journal – for printing headlines such as today’s: “Two sides to minimum wage hike” No, Ms. Beth Williams of the State Journal, there are not two sides, no matter what you’re being told by the business community. The minimum wage in Wisconsin is insanely low.

I can understand, BTW, Ms. Jennifer Alexander from the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce attempting to articulate the “other side” at the public forum held here yesterday. She knows who butters her bread. Besides, no slander intended, but that is NOT a name I’d generally associate with one who gets her elbows dirty.

But Sandi Torkildson ( owner of “A Room of One’s Own”), how could you? Don’t you ever let us hear you say again that you need to keep wages low (and take away benefits) to keep that extra part-time employee. The problem of mega-bookstores swallowing the little guys is not going to be solved by your paying less than a living wage to your staff. Or, maybe you want to display the tip jar more prominently so that you could argue that they are only entitled to the tipped employees’ $2.33 (to be increased to $3.88) an hour? You do that, and A Room of One’s Own is going to become a Room of Your Very Own. To think I once liked hanging out there (before I switched to Border’s).

Literati schmati

Once again a reader wrote to let me know that she felt my blogging about European poets was pretentious and that it made her feel that there was something wrong with preferring to watch a DVD over reading poems about dead men (see blog, February 5). Some explanations are in order:

1. Bukowski, though born in Germany, moved to the States when he was a toddler, and so he doesn’t qualify as a European. Mary Oliver is, of course, beyond a shadow of a doubt American. Born in Ohio – how American can you get!
2. I didn’t put a Bukowski bumper sticker on my truck (for one thing the truck’s too dented and rusted, insofar as plastic can get rusted), I was just reporting on what I saw.
3. Anyone can find any info on Bukowski on the Net, which is the source of much blog wisdom after all. A reader would have no reason to suspect that I’d heard of "Hank" Bukowski [um, those in the know call him Hank] before yesterday, and few people know that I occasionally glance at small press literary journals – usually at the table of contents and at their submission policies should it ever strike me to write something good enough for their worth.
4. In order to pander to the odd person with a 4th grade reading level that would find my blog (I’m thinking of the one who found my blog yesterday by googling ha+ha+ha+ha), I make a point of avoiding words with more than three-syllables in all posts that have the possibility of appearing high-brow.

If you’ve nowhere else to go, look outside and watch the snow

Once you get your mind wrapped around this poetry thing (see yesterday’s morning and post-midnight blog), it’s hard to move away from the topic. Today, looking outside, I thought about the different ways to blog about what we in Madison are seeing. I went so far as to write a header for this post, just to show how bad a blog entry could be.

But if you want cadenzas that are more palatable, there are options. For instance, you can usually find something in the (Pulitzer Prize winning) poems of Mary Oliver that’ll give you an appreciation for natural beauty. Sure enough, the following lines are worth printing out. I think knowing that she was about 65 when she wrote it makes this even more "joyously unrestrained":

Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better
myself.

(permission from author to cite this was not available at the moment since she is preoccupied with feeding the homeless in Bethesda, but to avoid infringement on copyright, I want to link to a site available to the public which will bring up the same poem)

Ouch, that hurt!

According to CNN.com, Laura Bush says she takes political attacks on her husband personally. Note that we're talking about political attacks. Isn't it true that a person holding the office of president will always have dissenters who express opposition to administration policies? If the presidential spouse is personally offended by this, does that mean that political confrontation must cease? Or does Ms. Bush regard her husband as having a hegemony on political ideas? There's a frightening thought.

For Laura Bush, going through the political process leading to elections must be akin to rubbing coarse salt on bleeding, exposed sores. One has to feel sorry for her. Perhaps she should seek counsel from Judith Dean on how to get a medical degree and turn off the TV.

Ending the day with author-worship

A reader (I assume from Iowa) was surprised that I was surprised that Iowans are literate (see post on Charles Bukowski, February 5). Actually, I want to correct that: I did not intend to favor Iowans in this regard. Credit for lack of interest in esoteric indie-market poetry (I think they call it small-journal poetry but I’m not sure) should be extended way beyond Iowa’s rural borders. Most anybody would rather flip on a CD/DVD/TV than read about withered leaves, revenge-driven cats, and dying men. Except for the woman in the white car cruisin’ along University Ave this morning with that bumper sticker. Her man is the 73 year-old writer who drank away the first half of his life, and wrote, they say, some 60 books in the second. Amazing, on all counts.