Children Helping Children (And Animals)

Please buy, Madame, child vendor selling clay whistles in Hoi An, Vietnam, December 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. My oldest daughter, Dee, made 48 brownies this morning for a bake sale today. She and two other seventh-graders are doing a “pay it forward” class assignment, whereby they identify a worthy need [...]

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Can You Believe That I Wore This Green Jacket?

In the current decade? I did. Many times. I wore it to dozens of work meetings. It’s not even vintage yet I thought it was stylish. I used to wear a bright pink long-sleeved t-shirt underneath it. To pick up the threads of pink running throughout the fabric. Or a bright cyan one. How subtle. I tried [...]

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Bloggie Shout-Out

It’s kind of cool when someone you know gets recognized for a job well done, and someone we know has done something pretty darned impressive: stevo from Asian Ramblings has become a finalist in the 2009 Bloggies! The Bloggies are to bloggers what Addys are to advertising folk and the Emmys are to TV-biz folk. More [...]

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Chaco’s Creature Comforts (10 Cat Care Tips)

Chaco Bell, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. It’s still the dead of Winter in Minnesota, and we’ve got the temperatures to prove it. How do you know it’s January in Minnesota? it’s -8 when you get up in the morning (that’s on a good day, without wind chills) running [...]

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PRACTICE: Velveeta Cheese – 15 min

What I know about Velveeta cheese is the color. More pale orange than most cheeses. The texture. A gelatinous blob, jiggles when you shake it. The taste, well, not so much uncooked as cooked. One would be hard-pressed to get a slice of Velveeta, taken off the block, to melt in the mouth. It’d take [...]

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PRACTICE — Velveeta Cheese – 15min

Velveeta drizzled over broccoli, slathered over corn tortilla chips, melted inside a loaf of homemade bread with pimentos and mayo and peppers, an open-loaf dip. I don’t remember specific Velveeta recipes as a kid. But I remember liking Velveeta on open-faced toast. Comfort food. Like buttery mashed potatoes, real vanilla milk shakes, homemade pizzas, macaroni [...]

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Get Your Yellow On

Ha Noi Opera House (one), detail of a portal at the Ha Noi Opera House in downtown Ha Noi, Vietnam, photo © 2008-2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. I know it’s only the third week in January, but today is feeling like a yellow kind of day. Maybe it’s the unusually warm temperatures we’ve been [...]

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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Mr. President, pen and ink on graph paper, based on a photo in Mother Jones, doodle © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. Elizabeth Alexander shared her poem, Praise song for the day. Reverend Joseph Lowery offered his benediction. What words do you have for the 44th president of the United States? Share your poems, blessings, hopes, [...]

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Presidential Poetics — Elizabeth Alexander

Tickets, mural outside the vintage Riverview Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, all photos © 2007-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. A few weeks ago, our monthly Poetry Group read the work of Elizabeth Alexander, the poet selected to read at the inauguration of Barack Obama. When we sat down to dinner the next day after work, [...]

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WRITING TOPIC — VELVEETA CHEESE

  MILK, WATER, MILKFAT, WHEY, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, ALGINATE, SODIUM CITRATE, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, ALGINATE, SODIUM CITRATE, APOCAROTENAL (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE, MILK, WATER, MILKFAT, WHEY, WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SODIUM PHOSPHATE ANNATTO (COLOR), ENZYMES, CHEESE CULTURE, MILK, WATER, MILKFAT, WHEY, WHEY [...]

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Out With The Old, In With The Old (Recycled Fashion Goes To Washington, DC)

Santa Fe designer Nancy Judd and her recycled “trashion” (trash fashion) are headed to Washington, DC, to Saturday’s Green Inaugural Ball honoring President-elect Barack Obama. Judd, a former Recycling Coordinator at the City Different’s Solid Waste Department and current owner of Recycle Runway, has expanded her gorgeous line of “Dumpster coutre” to include pieces inspired by Obama [...]

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The Hot, Spicy Meat Of Isabel Allende

For Christmas I got the 2009 Page-A-Day Book Lover’s Calendar, which features a different book each day. Guess which author turned up on the page for Wednesday, January 14? Isabel Allende and her book Inés of My Soul. I’ve never read that book, but based on the Page-A-Day write-up, it is a passionate love story [...]

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dead of winter haiku (moon trilogy)

one rises, one sets Moon cradled in snow branches Sun births a new day click! snaps the shutter fingers frozen to the bone nose running away Wolf Moon howls at me survival of the warmest she wins every time Note:  Woke up to -18 degree temperatures in our zip code (-32 wind chills) and saw [...]

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Fiction: The Smarting Up Of America

In a cultural moment when we are hearing nothing but bad news, we have reassuring evidence that the dumbing down of our culture is not inevitable. ~Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Good news from the National Endowment for the Arts. According to a report it released today, “Reading on the [...]

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The Discipline Of Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende, a portion of the book cover from Allende’s memoir Paula, (colors manipulated), photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. Yesterday all day I thought about author Isabel Allende. In 2008 I read two memoirs from the large collection of fiction and creative non-fiction that she’s written: The Sum of Our Days—published last [...]

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Keeping The Faith

Da Nang Cathedral, built for French residents in 1923 and today serves approximately 4,000 Catholics in the city, Da Nang, Vietnam, December 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. I went yesterday to get an adjustment after the holidays, and I heard Dr. L tell someone that patients help heal one another. That in the [...]

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Goodbye Apache (aka Letting Go)

1958 Chevy Apache pick-up truck, December 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved. When I was 39 years old I let Jim know that for my 40th birthday I wanted an old truck. I wanted a truck that was about my same age. Something big, bulbous, and roomy. I wanted a truck that [...]

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