one thing today

Hi Rickie …  I' m spending this new years eve day listening to you and thought … lets google how to contact RLJ … and alas and lo and behold … Emily … hope this gets to you.  Besides almost a half century of taking in your gift  … I kinda have two connections to you … my old pal Jim Baggett interviewed you for some mag way way back in the day and gave me the enclosed fab pic of the two of you … all young and alive and pretty and glad to be where you were with wide eyes and hearts.  And I worked for a time at Saturday Nite Live and was lucky enough to witness you becoming an over week star sensation ... maybe on the cover of Time Mag ... if I recall correctly.  leaning on your parking meter.  Just want to thank you for your work. I am a writer and have always been more  inspired/influenced/impressed by stellar music artists ...  zimmerman/joni/Laura/van/you ...  than plain old scribes with just words at the ready.     Have a splendid...

  Every Christmas while visiting my niece … I feel a pang of jealousy as I take in her beautiful tree … adorned with keepsakes … including many dolls from around the world my mom brought back for her from their travels. They're well made and remind me of how little I liked  anything my mother gifted me.  I can recall only one gift which was the exception. When I was in college she gave me a toy movie projector that ran films about The Three Little Pigs.  It fascinated me and my hippie friends when we took acid. She had bought one for a grandchild, I admired it and very surprisingly, she bought for me. I doubt she ever said to herself … boy, I bet Paul and his tripped out hippie housemates would enjoy playing with this toy when they watch Yellow Submarine and listen   to  Tommy.

5th day on Long Island Flo Nightgaleing my sister Suzie and am leaving today for home after finally figuring out where things are in countless cupboards and cabinets and crazy complicated seven televisions and medications, travel trouble and snow snow, watched the two god pa movies, Holiday with a great drunk Lew Ayers,   Inglorious Basterds ... pancakes and eggs, Chinese dumplings, dreams set in student Paris, slabs of naps, text checking in on who's sick and who's not ... o what a tangled web this deck the halls time now here ... but good to feel needed and dedicated to task. Bardot died, a new niece was born, trucks crash, pretty girls go missing, heroes stop killers  .. . world swirls. 

  I'm Long Island holidaying with family and the snow is descending big fat n fast and we're about to sit down and teach under movie educated youngins about It's a Fab Life and  Mr. Potter and the Bedford Falls contingent.   and above - my 25 year old nephews Christmas bulb from 2007 - with charming Chinese fortune cookie yuletide wishings in 'em ... three of which I share here.  -  I wish my dad would come home at 6:30 instead of 7:30  -  I wish my mom would let me play outside during the week  -  I wish my dog would play fetch me with 

  Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  ...  LIFE. It grew into a very sad day this day … began with my computer failing me and calls and calls to Apple and Spectrum and texts and e mails and incorrect passwords and low batteries, recorded voices and stupid stress inducing muzak and erasing everything on my machine and reinstalling and promises bout retrieval and on and on and I lose everything at first except fotos… documents folder is empty ... including my plays and seventeen years of journal ... twelve hundred pages and it feels at first like my memory was erased and then I thought about this year and people losing their lives, and homes and livelihoods and minds, loved ones and so many things more ... and it grabbed hold of me and made me contemplate tonglen. Compassion and empathy. Turn things round. Utilize adversity. Yes, that's the way too proceed but still blue and feeling stupid for not having been more taking care and I go to genius bar at Apple and say to a long haired smart guy with good teeth ... I'...

I spent yesterday reading patti smiths latest book Bread of Angels.  when she is good she is sensational. delivering a concept, an idea, in and of itself worth rumination - and how she lands it is so wondrously wonderful it sometimes reaches sky heights. but as one review noted - one hundred pages in and we're still with ten year old sickly Patti channeling Blakeian phantasmagoria roaming round garbage strewn. abandoned lots somewhere in Nowhere, New Jersey. She can take any worthless found object or random imagining and ascribe facetted talismanic properties to them. It moves towards tired and precious and corny and maybe even invented.     But ...  her life is like no other I can think of. A scrawny little walleyed girl with not a single maybe prospect moves to the city, works in a bookstore, meets her idols who just happen to be current day Pop culture makers and shakers, talks, works and screws with them. She holds fast to her worth and know how, writes awar...

 . .. were on tv this week and talking parents. O said when her friends told her about their moms who put sweet notes in their lunchboxes and made sure they wore galoshes to school when it rained ... she didn't have a single memory of things like that.  Sly talked about winning the Best Picture for Rocky  after being mega poor and it being a big high and low event. Neither of his parents attended the ceremony and he deeply wanted them there. He cried on camera.  O family. Forever.

  Leg aches with a cold are from your immune system releasing   inflammatory chemicals - cytokines - to fight the virus, causing widespread inflammation and muscle pain (myalgia) .  F ocus on rest, staying hydrated (water, broth, tea), using gentle heat on muscles, and take ibuprofen or acetaminophen for comfort.

  ... looks like Sean Hayes on Ozempic. Rock Hudson is great in Vadims All the Pretty Girls in a Row.   Jane Fonda is 28 and beautiful in The Game is Over. She speaks French and almost drowns herself because her husbands son won’t run away to Greece with her and she got a very bad, unfinished haircut.   Zouzou is a French actress, model, singer and icon of the 1960s and early 1970s. She is known largely for her lead role of Chloé in Éric Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon .  She’s new to me. She has IT. Still can’t catch a football but I can still catch a cold. ugh.

Babies and children have more brown adipose tissue, i.e. brown fat - than adults.  This specialized fat is a highly efficient heat producer, warming the body's blood, especially around the neck and shoulders.   Children have a naturally higher metabolic rate than adults. Their bodies generate more heat from the start.   Children are much more active than adults, and physical movement generates body heat. Children have higher skin temperatures and their bodies recover blood flow and temperature more quickly after cold exposure.  

  The Veil of Veronica  is a Christian relic  consisting of a piece of cloth said to bear an image of the holy face of Jesus  produced by other than human means (an acheiropoiton   "made without hand"). Various existing images have been claimed to be the original relic, as well as early copies of it; representations of it are also known as vernicles. I so loved it as a holy kid.

5.4 minutes ... average time people boink

  A titan of steel, a finger of light, Piercing the clouds, a harbor at night. The Empire State, a needle in the gray, Where hopes ascend to greet each day.  From a city that dreams, built on a shore, You rose from depression, and asked for more. A peak of progress, a symbol so grand, A testament to what we can build with hand.  A modern-day colossus, built with sweat and stone, Your silhouette a legend, on a strong throne. From the summit's height a shepherd sings, While Manhattan below dances and swings.  You have seen the world's dramas, its laughter and pain, From a whisper of hope to a tempestuous rain. And still you stand, a constant, a view, The grand city spire, forever anew.  A titan of steel, a spire of light, Against the sky, you stand so bright. A monument to hope, a dream made real, And even in a sad country, we can heal.  From clouds you rise, a rival to the sun, Where steely workers made you one. You've hold the city's pulse, its rush, its di...

 

  I'm thinking of painting this photo of my father -  he's twenty and about to be married and he's darkly dashing and soulful.  I think I'd like to see it everyday on my art wall. blurry black and white paint only- the only question is how big or small.  and this bowl with the faded over fifty years flowers. it belonged to my friend Bill who I apt shared in the Village soon after we were hippie housemates in Ohio college. I think of him whenever I wash it, much like my plates that were my best friends until he died in 1990. Maybe thats why I like them so much.  If bowls and plates remind you of someone you think of them often because you see and touch them all the TIME.