O Ceallaigh's Observations

Listen up, people. I am going to use words of one syllable here.

I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING MORE ABOUT RUSSIAN BRIDES!!

Read this. Right Now.

By promoting the Russian Brides crap, you Blogitive types are likely promoting the international sex trade, once known as "white slavery". A trade that can and has led to the death, maiming, and torturing of women throughout the world.

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For a number of years, the great American state of Maine sold itself with the slogan “The Way Life Should Be”. It’s changed now, the tourism board’s using “It Must Be Maine”. I wonder if they’ve replaced the signs at the state border crossings yet.

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I begin to wonder if it's time when I see, here on Bloggerparty, the seventh iteration of the "Russian wives" post in a week. If ever there was an excuse for Polonium 210 ...

I begin to wonder if it's time when I reach for the "flag" utility here on Bloggerparty to drive off the seventeenth plagiarized post today. And find that the utility is gone. Guess that means plagiarism is ok, if it gets hits.

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The news roared through the city like Superman out to crush a Playstation baddie. Cell phones flipped open everywhere, shouting their confusion, outrage, and apologies for being late to the world. Palms, Blackberries, and notebooks pounded the Internet, while their batteries lasted, with frustration and demands for explanations.

Rush hour traffic in the Metropolis had been a one-way ticket to Hell for as long as anyone could remember. But on this Monday morning, the jams surpassed the maddest imaginings of the darkest pessimist. Lines of stopped vehicles stretched deep into the suburbs. Freeway ramps 100 miles from the city center were strewn with broken glass from the cars that had sped onto them, expecting the usual clear sailing, only to ram into the backs of the queues that had formed. Many a half-asleep creature of commuter habit was jolted awake, not by the morning's Starbucks, but by the frantic squeal of brakes and the fury of raised voices, yelling at each other and, above all, at the lack of motion.

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selah

in maine’s late november,
the asters are straw,
the comfrey has fallen.
they have entered into his gates with thanksgiving.

          she sits in a desert with the cactus flowers
          and dreams of green grass

the pasture glints frosted
beside the salt river,

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Last night, while I was supposed to be doing something constructive - sleeping would have been good - I was touring blogs. And came across this item by a 5th grade teacher from Las Vegas, who calls herself "Quilldancer". Her write is an op-ed on the state of teaching in these United States, a topic I've been guilty of writing about a few times myself. Like here, and here, and here.

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when you took my arm
the very first time,
that night on the waterfront,
our closeness effortless,
our steps seamless -
how could you have been here all along,
and i never knew? -
and you nattered away with our companions
like it was the most natural thing in the world,

i wanted to summon an old jack tar
from the ghosts of the tall ships,
and, with calloused hands and hempen rope,

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I was researching the fable "The Grasshopper and the Ant", one of the many attributed to the ancient Greek fabulist Aesop, for a comment I was making elsewhere in the blogosphere. Some of you might recall the Walt Disney Silly Symphony of the same name, in which the Grasshopper of the title, a lazy fellow, is constantly singing:

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This is not all there is (the literal-minded are hereby cautioned). And, for me, the take-home message of the "sensitive man" falla... er, era is Stand. Serve. Support. Say nada. So I suppose I should delete this before it escapes. But a guy has moments. Like it or not.

Last post until the weekend. I'll be on the road.

*   *   *   *   *

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The news reports all proclaim that the “leaf season�? in Maine is over. “Past peak�? blazons from all the TV news reports and weather websites. The leaf peepers can all go home now. Or south to the next big display.

None of them tell you that there isn’t one leaf season in Maine. There are two.

The first one starts rolling down from the high hills in early September, and reaches the Maine coast around Columbus Day. It’s the maple season, the time of the gaudy reds and day-glo yellows and pumpkin oranges. The headliner showgirls of the fall extravaganza. The ones that bring in the cars from the cities, and the Winnebagos from places where “frost�? is no more than a hoary old metaphor. Their display is vibrant, brilliant, famous, brittle.

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I was driving in to work this morning, and a news story flashed by on the radio.

A school in Maine has banned “chasing games�?: tag, touch football, that sort of thing. I can’t tell you which one, the story was done and gone too quickly, and it apparently hasn’t hit the electronic media yet.

But the tale is apparently not new, this school is merely the first in Maine to have adopted the policy and come to the attention of some media person. One who is willing to believe that money can be made by breaking the story.

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It’s pledge week again on public radio – they call it the �?public broadcasting network�? here in Maine now. I reckon it’s probably pledge week where you are, too, if you’re in the USA. Broadcasters financed by plain begging instead of spamming. And the begging is in full cry.

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purple asters

purple asters defy the fog’s first-light assault on an october meadow.

rank on rank they stand, the rear guard, purple and blue and magenta, surrounded by the browned, the broken, the fallen. they are the last challenge to the shortening days.

but they were brighter yesterday. straighter. even they will sue for terms, knowing what the offer will be.

they will accept and retire from the field, grateful that the grapeshot of an early freeze did not flatten their fighting retreat before it began.

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doryman (as rodin might have sculpted it)

wondering
what would happen
when two dories
open brine riders
come together in a nor’easter

the boats will swamp in rain and rill
unless one rows and one bails
but the dory’s sides are rounded
the point of contact is small
and who will risk possession

   - O Ceallaigh

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By the time Hotel Subaru had rejoined Interstate 80, and Interstate 80 had quit Ohio and plugged itself into Pennsylvania, the twilight was in Illinois, racing towards the California that was now four days in my past. The car plunged into the black tunnel of tree-shrouded highway that the twilight had left behind.

The end of the drive was in sight; just as well, because people were expecting me to be in Maine the next evening, and what would prove to be a $950 hole in the exhaust system was beginning to make itself heard. But the Keystone State would not be crossed this night. The tankful of gas taken on in Ohio would last only as long as midnight and as far as State College. Happy Valley for me would be a 24-hour gas station with a convenience store, and one last overnight at a rest area.

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