Game nite - we couldn't find Pictionary - Poem: Tarp in Winter

This post is super-long. Here's what happened. My friends left and I went on the computer. As oft happens, once I go on, I can't get off.

Breadmaking time. How bout a flavorful Pumpernickel? Easy to make. Rye flour, whole wheat, honey, caraway seed...all kneaded w/white flour.

Made a quick trip to give Matt a loaf. He's the proprietor and camera tek at Authorized Camera Repair who is incredibly helpful each time I go in w/a prob with my camera.

Ya know what he said to me when I went in today? And I blush to repeat this.

Come back anytime, he said.

He had a roomful of customers. One old guy had just walked in w/ an old movie projector in his hand.

Rejoice! The snow melted and the foliage stretches its shiny leaves toward the heavens. Acuba says hello to y'all.

Caitlyn and mom Dana sell Girl Scout cookies in front of the Hatboro post office. Smart ladies, they had a sample plate of Shout-outs for passersby. I declined but bot a box of Peanut butter patties or Tag-alongs. I relaxed while cooking for Game Nite by munching on 7 of em. And reading an article about my new father, the father of transplantation Dr Thomas E Starzl.

His favorite organ seems to be the liver. He and other transplant surgeons contracted hepatitis from working w/infected patients.

He's also alive b/c of modern medicine, having had a major blockage in one of his heart arteries, fixed thru bypass surgery.

This photo does little justice to the silver tarp protecting an ornamental tree. Every time I pass I give it a brief glance, not surprising for a poet who wrote The Tarp in Winter. See poem at end.

What shapes dyou see in the tarp, a la Rohrschach?

I see a little girl w/ a hood on. BTW, once when I was manic-psychotic I looked out my window in the middle of the nite and thought a tree across the street had changed into a giant little girl. I was terrified and gulped down my antipsychotic.

Now the tree just looks like ... a tree.



When the first guest arrived at the party - Jim - he saw a deer in my backyard. We went downstairs onto the back porch and I snapped two shots, one worse than the next. Click a couple times on the pic and you can see the fawn in her brown winter camouflage staring at me thru the trees.

Jim is a hunter, a family tradition. He knows lots about these critters. I agree that we need to thin their population thru hunting.

He made a very astute comment on the subject of scatology. I'll share it w/ Scott whose birdfeeder is always licked clean by a family of 6 deer.

Jim said that deer are up before daybreak, depending on the weather. If it's windy or raining, they won't move. They try to find cover.

Usually when they're ready to sleep, they find a flat surface, under cover, and lie down. The next nite they'll travel somewhere else.

You can see where they slept

They sleep, they eat, they play, and they go back to sleep. Sorta like a cat. And when they sleep they just plop down.

They eat at nite.

Ellen and Tracey talk over Tracey's fruit salad.

Mike and Fontaine flank Noam who's checking scores of the pre-season Phillies. I know one fact about them: they've got four great pitchers. (I overheard Scott say this to his dad.)

Tony won the Scrabble game beating Linda, Ellen and Mark. Maybe while I'm recooping in April I'll play.

Z J X Q

I had prizes for the winners. Tony chose a jigsaw puzzle of Ocean City NJ.

Tracey brot an electronic version of Name that Tune. We had three teams. My question to you is: who was the orig. host of the show?

I'll give you a hint. It was not Bill Cullen, who I used to watch as a kid.

Here's a hilarious account from Wiki of when Mel Brooks was a guest on one of the many game shows Cullen hosted.

The week of October 17–21 in 1966 - that would make me about 40 - was a special celebrity week on Eye Guess. Bill Cullen was the host. The game was very similar to Concentration. I was teamed up with Julia Meade. Remember her? Actress, very pretty young lady, blonde... Okay, never mind.

I don't think I won, but I did get the take-home game. Anyway, the show is over, and I start walking toward the podium to say good night to Bill, to thank him for having me on.

He starts coming toward me cross-stage, and I don't know what he's doing. His feet are flopping. His hands are flying everywhere. He's doing this kind of wacky walk-of-the-unfortunates that Jerry Lewis used to do.

So I figured, what the hell, I'll join him. I start doing, I dunno, this multiple-sclerosis walk, flapping my arms and doing the Milton Berle cross legs - my own Jerry Lewis impression... And Julia is whispering, "No! He's crippled, Mel!" I don't even hear her. Finally we meet in the middle, we hug, and he says to me, "You know, you're the only comic who's ever had the nerve to make fun of my crippled walk. Everyone's so careful, it makes me feel even worse." And I realize, Oh, my God, this guy is really crippled! It was my worst moment - and if you weren't me, probably the funniest thing that ever happened.[3]

Actually, Cullen, who was thrice married, was the second out of seven Name that Tune hosts. The show ran from 1952 to 1985.

And, yes, we did play Trivial Pursuit. Clare read the questions. Her name is spelt the Irish way like the county Clare.

Mike was the winner of Name that Tune. I offered him the bag of prizes and was so happy he picked a Chinese cut-out of a little red rooster.

The classic blues song by the same name is closely asso'd w/Howlin Wolf, tho credited to Willie Dixon. No good YouTubes were available of either of them, they were all 'stills' rathan singing live, so my next-best choice to listen to was the Grateful Dead.

I much prefer the in-your-face versions by Howlin Wolf or Big Mama Thornton.

Ron brot a portable chess set and taught Elena to play. Ron's daughter Zoe just switched jobs. From Google to Facebook.

Elena, who loves opera, looks a little like Maria Callas. What dyou think?



I always enjoy photograffing mom n daughter Fontaine and Veyonna. They came with little Sarah, who gave a beautiful diatribe against - oh no - Sarah Palin.

Linda brot a fascinating man to the party, her friend Dan.

I asked his last name.

Levy, she said.

Why, that's a Jewish name, I replied.

Yeah, he used to be Jewish.

But, hey, one day the Lord God Jesus Christ spoke to him. And Jewish Danny heeded the call. He's now a fine Christian man - who converted his parents - and quoteth the New Testament forevermore.

As for me, I quoteth my old poems.

TARP IN WINTER

Masculine.
Feather-light folds.
Beating back rain and
rain-becoming-snow.
Knots tied by quiet hands.
Open at the bottom like a
flapping tent, sucking the
wind with bluejay plumes.

Nearly every neighborhood its tarp.
Blue tarps, black tarps,
Wide-shouldered silver tarps
to catch the falling snow.
A little wind, and puff -
the snow rides the wind.

Tarps confer a gritty grandeur
to our block: Porch furniture shrouded in blue,
ornamental trees trussed and pinioned;
boats, marvelous boats, like airplanes, docked,
and blanketed in the rain-soaked yard.

A bedroom, aloft during an
autumn facelift, got stuck with its walls wide open.
A mirrored closet reflects
The roofs of houses, silver maples
caught in the mirror, while
a kneeling man in work gloves
knots the tarp before winter comes.

From my warm bed, I hear them all,
All the tarps in the neighborhood,
flapping in the night air:
Whoo-hoo,
Whoo-hoo.