Perchance

“Sleep was no consolation to him. Dreams lifted his top lip off his teeth in a frightened snarl; in the mornings he looked at himself askance in the mirror. What was there to see? What kind of inner resources could he have, with such an indifferent start to life? Invented and set in motion as an extension of his own father, he had flung himself into the void as a way of validating himself. He had done that mad thing among many other mad things, and got so worn out by them he crept away and spent ten years putting himself back together, while war came closer, and the big secrets got more remote instead of less, and the galaxy fell apart a little more, and everything strayed that bit farther from being fixable –“

from Light, M. John Harrison

Song For Obama

"(Time) Time is Now"

"Whatever you've got . . . "

"Well I'm against it," he said. "If we haven't done it before, it stands to reason that this is the first time we've done it, which mean that, relative to what we've done in the past, this is different, which I am very much against, as I have always been, as you well know. I have consistently been very very consistent about this."

Capable's dad 

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

George Saunders

3/5 of a mile in 10 seconds . . .

Enjoy!

NYC Begins Pet Recycling December 1!

The New York City Department of Sanitation announced that it would begin a landmark pet recycling program as early as December. As part of the program, pet owners in all five boroughs would be able to parcel up their tired tabby's and petulant pooch's and leave them along with the current unending stream of bottles, plastic, paper, and cardboard. For now, felines will be commingled with paper (above) while canines will be bundled with the glass and plastic. Sanitation spokesman Vic Naverrone cautions: "While we are expecting some growing pains with this, we have some initial concerns. We are cautioning residents to avoid bagging their pets too tightly as there may be intermittent delays between pickups."

Happily Exhausted

"Soon I was running across the moor to a distant part of the coast of Kintyre . . . I felt I was running back to all the primitive joy that my season had destroyed . . . The gulls were crying overhead and a herd of wild goats were silhouetted against the headland. I could barely distinguish slippery rock from heathery turf or bog, yet my feet did not slip or grow weary now -- they had new life and confidence. I ran in a frenzy of speeds, drawn on by an unseen force. The sun sank, setting the forest ablaze, and turning the sky to dull smoke. Then tiredness came on and . . . I rolled down a heather topped bank and lay there happily exhausted."

Roger Bannister

Happy Birthday!

November 11

"It's the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., born in Indianapolis, Indiana (1922). He joined the Army, and in December of 1944, he was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was imprisoned in a slaughterhouse in Dresden. On the night of February 13, 1945, British and American bombers attacked Dresden, igniting a firestorm that killed almost all the city's inhabitants in two hours. Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners only survived because they slept in a meat locker three stories below the ground. In 1967, he published Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). "

From The Writer's Almanac

I was told early on that you would always remember the person who turned you on to Vonnegut (cf. "pulled your coat to", "let one in on") And I do. I think. It was one of two people, which narrows it down without actually having to single out one person (and give credit to same). But more than that I remember the writing. I felt like I was being spoken to directly rather than reading words off a page. He truly revolutionized my love of reading and my notion that literature could speak to me as easily as, say, Zap comics could.

Read him!

Look Only at Yourself

The way you react to what you face in life is of great help to learn to know yourself. To judge or blame what you face do not help you at all, instead use this opportunity to look at yourself, see and understand why and how you have reacted. The others are what they are and by judging you cannot change them, but you can certainly change how others and external events affect you or not.

Dharma

Satchmo

"What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere."

Louis Armstrong

By way of . . .

Welcome.

Works for doormats so maybe it will work here. Perhaps if I just turned it upside down or at least gave it a good shake. Leave the mukluks by the fire and set a spell. It is a work in progress to be sure. A movable feast of epigrammatic wisdom, a celebration of low expectations and the willingness to meet them.

The first edition of The Tenderfeet Times has arrived!