The Electoral College has voted--Trump will be president

It got wild the last few days, didn't it?  Wasn't sure the Electoral College system for protection against mobs and cabals was going to work.

I saw this clip several times. . . "This is my America," a 40-ish woman kept screaming giving the Hitler salute (what it is called when Republicans raise the fist) when the electors did the legal and moral thing--respected the voters of Wisconsin. I'm guessing that will go viral. Hope her mother wasn't watching. Or her kids. Not sure why she thought her one vote mattered more than all the rest of the Wisconsin voters.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBTAN3VlADA

The Left is really ramping up the Russia paranoia.  The Democrats are getting all prissy about Russia without knowing how the Russians will respond to strong leadership by our country. I would have guessed Putin would have preferred Clinton--it's been proven she can be bought.  Trump is probably too rich.  Obama seems to like Cuba and Iran--any others?

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/18/obama-democrats-decry-trumps-ties-to-putin-after-o/


As a blogger, I get the strangest offers and announcements. "To many the election of Donald Trump brought confusion and despair, but it also roused new energies of political engagement. Convinced of the power of poetry to shape the way we understand and intervene in political life, Boston Review is proud to announce the publication of "Poems for Political Disaster." Sweet. So if you've been writing poetry in your safe space, here's a place to send them.

"Thirty percent of Democratic women reported cutting off online communication with someone for political reasons since the Nov. 8 election, according to a Public Religion Research Institute poll published Monday. They are more than twice as likely to blot out dissenting points of view from their social media timelines as Democratic men, who reported doing so at a 14 percent rate." Washington Times, Dec. 19, 2016.  Of course, if they've blocked me, they can't see this. My female Democrat relatives beat the rush--blocked me in 2015. I don't mind dissenting viewpoints, but it really bothers the soul of some people. Of course, I was a Democrat for forty years and understand the mindset.

Books are not dying!

They all agreed. People really prefer holding a paper copy of a book, especially the kids who may be on their phones all day. E-books are nice for traveling, but not much else. And the sales of their books show it. This is a panel of Ohio authors, novelist Mindy McGinnis (a school library aide), David Meyers, a non-fiction and history writer (formerly worked in academia and corrections) and a poet/novelist Amit Majmudar (doctor) with the library director of Ohioana who spoke at Upper Arlington Public Library Thursday evening. Arlington's Tremont Road is so badly torn up, I almost gave up and went home due to the detours, and I'd lived in that neighborhood for 35 years! Two of the speakers were about 30 minutes late. I'm sure some potential members of the audience also gave up. What a mess!

Mindy has a blog "where she stores her extra words" and gives advice to aspiring writers. (Get an agent, she says.) She is an assistant YA librarian who lives in Ohio and cans her own food. She graduated from Otterbein University magna cum laude with a BA in English Literature and Religion. She told us she's a single mom of two.

I've known David and his wife Bev for about 16 years, and we sometimes go to the Rusty Bucket together to celebrate our September birthdays. He is a "lifelong resident of Columbus, Ohio. A graduate of Miami University and The Ohio State University, he has had an abiding interest in local history since childhood. In the past eight years, he has written two novels, a handful of works for the stage, and eight books of local history including Wicked Columbus, Ohio; Kahiki Supper Club: A Polynesian Paradise in Columbus; Inside the Ohio Penitentiary; Ohio Jazz: A History of Jazz in the Buckeye State; and Look to Lazarus: The Big Store. Two of his crime stories have been dramatized on Curious and Unusual Deaths on Discovery: Crime Investigation and Jerry Springer’s Tabloid on Investigation Discovery." David is also on Facebook and used to have really wonderful blog on his music collection, but I don't think it's been updated for awhile.

The son of immigrants, poet and novelist Amit Majmudar grew up in the Cleveland area. He earned a BS at the University of Akron and an MD at Northeast Ohio Medical University, completing his medical residency at the University Hospitals of Cleveland.  He also has a blog with links to his other writings.

Mother's Commonplace Book

Both my mother and grandmother clipped things from magazines and newspapers or copied them, pasting and saving them in notebooks. When I was a little girl I would sit in a quiet spot and read what she had saved--poems, articles, proverbs, sayings. Most reflected what she believed. The earliest clipping was 1946--a cartoon of Father Time holding the leftovers of WWII handing the bewildered Baby 1946 a broom with an apology--the latest 1999. My niece Julie copied her notebook and distributed it among family members. I just noticed tonight that the size notebook she used, about 6 x 8, is the size I use for my blogging notes.

This one she typed out, and titled it "The Watcher-Mother." I looked it up on the internet, and found it with the author's name and a different title. This poem doesn't reflect Mother's parenting style--but it's pretty accurate for her own mother.

Watching for Us [The Watcher-Mother]

She always leaned to watch for us,
Anxious if we were late,
In the winter by the window,
In summer by the gate;

And though we mocked her tenderly,
Who had such foolish care,
The long way home would seem more safe
Because she waited there.

Her thoughts were all so full of us--
She never could forget!
And so I think that where she is
She must be watching yet.

Waiting till we come home to her,
Anxious if we are late--
Watching from Heaven's window,
Leaning from Heaven's gate.

-Margaret Widdemer

Margaret Widdemer (1884-1978) graduated from Drexel Institute Library School in 1909. She wrote both protest poetry (some still used in women's literature classes) and sentimental verse. She also wrote novels and short stories. Looking through some things she wrote, I also see an interest in death and "the other side." The wife in her novel "Rose Garden Husband" is a librarian. In 1919 she shared the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with Carl Sandburg.

Sleep soundly

Baldilocks says, because SSgt Lawrence Dean, USMC, is watching out for you. See the interview.

Poetry Thursday #14

Today's challenge has two parts. I think I've met it. I'll keep this at the top of the page, but scroll down for other important topics like the weather, fashion, recipes, and global warming.

Part I: Write a poem to, for, or about a poet.

Part II: Write a letter to a poet and then share it with the Poetry Thursday community on Thursday.

I'm writing about and to Wendy Cope, a popular British author and former teacher, who wrote a very brief poem about giving up smoking.

Oh Wendy Cope,
I sure do hope
you still can write
with such delight
and words so tart,
with poems that smart
and clever rhymes
just for our times.
Dear Ms. Cope,

It's difficult for me to fathom the cigarette addiction. When I go to that smoke-free place called Heaven, who will be left on Earth to nag my son who says he was hooked after that first cigarette? I shake my head because I don't understand how anyone could allow shredded, dried up vegetation burning right under the nose to control his life, health and finances. However, then I read the love poem that you wrote a few weeks after giving up smoking in 1985, and the last phrase said it all,

I haven’t finished yet--
I like you more than I would like
To have a cigarette

and I began to understand. And that's what poetry can do. You wrote, "People who have never been addicted to nicotine don’t understand what an intense love poem it is." Oh, and by the way, Ms. Cope, I also want him to find a love like that. Your poem's a two-fer.*

Thank you for your service,
Norma

*A two-fer is slang meaning "two for one." Sometimes it has no hyphen.

3632

On this day in 1883

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote from Dublin to his old university friend Alexander Baillie (British politican): "It is a great help to have someone. . . that will answer my letters, and it supplies some sort of intellectual stimulus. I sadly need that and a general stimulus to being, so dull and yet harassed is my life." [from today's selection in "A Poem a Day," ed. Karen McCosker and Nicholas Albery]

Do you need to write a letter today? Thought so.

682 Nebraskan chosen Poet Laureate

Next to my own family, I've known Nelson (Tom) longer than just about anyone else on my Christmas card list. We used to ride our tricycles around the block together, and had our photo taken together at graduation for the school yearbook. His Christmas letter this year mentioned that 26 years ago he asked a friend, a local poet, to write a wedding poem for him and bride Kathy (a librarian). Now that friend, Ted Kooser, has been appointed Poet Laureate of the United States. I'd say Nelson had a good sense for poetry (he is a philosopher) to recognize this man's talent a quarter a century ago. Library of Congress announcement here.

The Washington Post article states: "Kooser, says former poet laureate Billy Collins, "is a poet who has deserved to be better known. This appointment will at least take care of that problem."

Collins says Kooser is distinguished from the rank and file by two things. First, Kooser has spent most of his life in the corporate world. "I won't be the first or the last to compare him to Wallace Stevens," says Collins, referring to the sublime Connecticut poet who was also an insurance executive.

And Kooser is from the Midwest. Collins suggests that Kooser's appointment is "an intentional pick." He says, "The middle section of the country needed greater poetic representation."

Kooser, he adds, "is a thoroughly American poet laureate."

Enjoy Ted Kooser's poetry here  Ted Kooser | Poems.