The Bread of Idleness

My friend Daisy wrote me late Sunday asking if I am doing okay. I’ve not posted at H&Q for most of a week, a sure sign I’m off my feed as they would say if I were a cow or a kitty. I wrote her back that I was on the verge of posting an explanation for the short hiatus.

Vachel Lindsay wrote a poem describing how “Mr. Moon” invited him to “Come eat the bread of idleness,” which from a poet’s perspective doesn’t mean being “idle” at all; it means sitting still and writing a POEM f’ goodness’ sake. Writing anything requires me to compose details of thoughts, and it’s not a matter of finding time. CHEESES, I have all the time in the frikking world. It’s a matter of wanting to compose details.  But that is the final step. I’ve not wanted to engage that final step until Sunday morning after lying in bed until 10 a (insanely late for me), watching “This Week With George Stephanolpolous” while straightening up my living room which hasn’t seen a vacuum cleaner since mine broke in 2002, and toddling into mon office with my third cup of Folger’s Instant of the morning. It was then that I decided I would write one more blog posting than I had posted in July before then end of August.

It wouldn’t be hard. I had been conceiving blog post titles all week. The “Incident at Rock City” was 90% ready and came out of my fingers like draft beer coming from a keg into a frosted mug. It flowed. I could have written it with one arm tied behind my back. Pretty much ditto with the Buffington post. I knew last night, returned from the reception and feeling like I was back into the hog wallow of navel contemplation much earlier than I SHOULD be on a frikking Saturday night . . . . that I should write about my interaction and just “let it all hang out.” So I did. “Summer” was inspired by my friend Wendy McCrosky’s post about making chili for the first time in months.

My friend Rick Falzone Facebook chatted to me Sunday night, “Job, you are the poet.” and I wrote back “Try cutting the quiet respect of friends and strangers with a knife and fork;” the point being that warm regard won’t pay my real estate taxes and keep my electricity connected this week. The encounter with this respected videographer did focus my brane on the gulf between aspiring writers (those who aren’t successful, like moi) and normal people, and further focused my resolve to write a final, record posting at H&Q today.

It’s 11:40 p as I write these words.

I’ve seen what happens to good people who do far better as writers than I suspect I will ever do, and yet pass from this mortal “stage” to the next just as inexorably. Writing is a blast when I want to write. Today I also wanted to work on model airplanes, trim my backyard fence vegitation, go grocery shopping (I have the cash for it), file articles in the basement, call an acquaintance about some aviation magazine promised to me, respond to an Arkansas friend’s delightful e of a few days ago, run a load of laundry and take my camera on a leisurely stroll through Washington Park. I wrote from 11:05 until a little after 7, ate breakfastlunchdinner, watched a little “Nature” on PBS, napped in the easy chair about 50 minutes and returned to this computer after the local news on the station I vowed I would never watch again. (How great intentions crumble when you want to watch a weather report!) I am a creative wri ta ta.

This is what I am. This is who I do.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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Totally Awesome Right? Predators and White Hunters

If you read my post about guns for $1,299.99 earlier, you can skip this one. I posted it earlier today (Sunday) and appeared on Facebook with no problem. But after I revised it slightly, the posting did not appear. I hope it will appear with the new title. . . .

The older I get, the fewer things surprise me. Take medication commecials . . .  PLEASE. Pharmaceutical companies spend as much time explaining the unhappy side effects some people may encounter after purchasing and ingesting their cures for what ails us — “May cause nausea, diarrhea, short term memory loss, tone deafness, fear of Woody Allen,  erections lasting more than four days (men only), drowsiness, do not take when pregnant or even day dreaming about rolling in the hay with a healthy, interested human male, incapacity to pass meaningful health care reform. . . . these adverts don’t surprise me any more. They annoy me, but they don’t surprise me. Wednesday’s State Journal-Register advertising supplement for Gander Mtn., the brand nm for a new otdrs store.

At the top of the page, the slogan reads “WE LIVE OUTDOORS” and below it  a terrific photograph of the coolest thing  an outdoor-loving person should have. Low-light binoculars you may axe?  A collapsable canoe?  A tent made of recycled bark? No, hickory nuts, it’s a SPECIAL OFFER! (their exclamation point because simply  PUTTING IT IN ALL UPPER CASE LETTERS MIGHT NOT HAVE IMPARTED FULL IMPACT TO THE DREAMY NEWS) that if you buy a “Citori” you get $150 in free shells.  Trade in any gun and buy a Citori and get $150 back! And pictured below is the Browning (Registered TRADE MARK — my uppercasing) Citori White Hunter. It’s on SALE! But it doesn’t say it’s on sale; it says “Compare at $1799.99.” That doesn’t mean the gun sells most days for $1799.99. It says “compare.”

I don’t believe that ranting about this advertising supplement (16 pages including the small insert insert pages) will help Gndr Mtn sell guns. I am neutral. But there are PAGES of guns for sale in the supplement, from a budget priced revolver ($549.99 to  a “Bushmaster (Registered trade mark) Predator Semi-Auto” rifle that looks like something you want to take to Kabul with you. They say “Semi-Auto” because they don’t want those pesky libras — make that liberals — to come down on them for advertising semi-automatic guns. It’s almost like calling an African Amrcn a nigge — WAIT! I didn’t say it, did I?  And I won’t because as everybody knows, THAT word, which I will NOT say, is inFLAMMATORY. I’m much too nice a fellow for that, and if you don’t believe me ask my mothermaysherestinpeace. OOOOOOOOOR maybe the gun is NOT a semi-automatic, and that’s why they don’t say it is. If you like the rifle, a perfect fashion accessory when sashaying through the wilds of the inner city or Allerton Park, you will be aquiver with delight to know GM offers “HOT BUY” 5.56mm and 2.23 Centerfire ammunition. How totally awesume is that, Mr. Thoreau? Oh, yeah, Hank, give me some of those HOT BUYs too!

Aaaaaah NAcher!

The one thing which will ensure I visit their store next week is “20% OFF All Canoes and Kayaks!”

I’m all in favor of selling guns. The Sears catalog that came to our house ever November for decades running had pages and pages of guns, including the JC Higgins brand and other respected names. They described ammunition too. I don’t remember that kind of county fair ballyhoo (some would suggest ballyhooey) spread across the newspaper advertising suppliment like our city’s new buddies at Gender Mtn.

Let me tell you how I will know this country, which I love with all my heart, is fair and balanced with its wonderful mercantile ethos: I will know whan CVS and Walgreens start putting flavored “cigarette” papers on the front pages of their advertising supplements along with humidors for maintaining the specially harvested Columbian combustables people enjoy rolling in those papers and ingesting into their lungs the smoke from said conflagrations on a stick. We could call those humidors “Bong Shelters,” what do you think? How about some HOT BUYS with those? Buy a humidor at regular price and get a HOT BUY STONER VARIETY PACK of Doritos, corn chips and Pringles for only $5! More munch for the punch!

And I don’t even smoke . . . . anything.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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Summer

Summer
By Job Conger

Summer visits spring, a guest
fragrant from the field and stream,
fragile as dawn’s fading moonbeam,
sincere as rooster’s farm scene reveille.

Summer comes, not readily –
the cannon ball dive into the swimming pool –
as spring departs, reluctant, cool,
but inexorably beneath the rain drops.

Summer: cats on hot tin roof tops
as the striding saga of elegant profusion
with torch of blazing sun at noon’s infusion
is tempered by gentle breezes through the night.

Summer, cherished, too soon must take flight
with passionate but fading strident call
as sadly, autumn leaves begin to fall.
We harvest glad what summer leaves behind.

With sky of sun and storm and state of mind
the magic of her feel and form
her raging madness and her charm,
summer is a woman warm.

written 10:45 am, June 19, 2002
published in Bear’  sKin by Job Conger
======================================

Though Japanese haiku all present a “season element” few describe the seasons. Instead they reveal aspects of nature which are unique to each, revealed in each. This poem, inspired at a time when I was learning about haiku and was particularly focused on matters of interest beyond my navel, nevertheless brings me to humanity rather than beyond humanity. It seems that all of nature beyond navels is either similie or metaphor for ourselves.

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Quilty Pleasures: Rod Buffington Retrospective at Springfield Art Association

I told a friend I would not take my camera to the reception for the new exhibition “Paint and Patchwork, Rod Buffington Retrospective” which continues at the association gallery through October 31, 2009.

Rod Buffington talks with talented Springfield painter Lorraine Pilcher

I changed my mind. I’ve decided to return to my old camera toting ways as a regular blogger, which I hope H&Q readers will appreciate and for sharing the glory at my Facebook photo albums. Illinois Times and Springfield Business Journal may not be interested in featuring my arts writing regularly, but not all my friends read those two excellent publications, and I’m considering them as well. I’m doing this MOSTLY to bring people into the visual arts community who have not set mind in it before.

The Springfield Art Association receptions in their fab gallery at 700 N. Fourth Street begin, commendably, at 5:30 and conclude at 7:30 on Saturday nights when they are arranged. This allows folks to visit, prime the appetites for dinner downtown at a decent weekend hour, take in the late movie at the Senate, the Orpheum, the Roxy, the Lincoln –OOOPS, that was a bygone era. TODAY we can do the reception and take in excellent theater or concert at the Hoogland or UIS Auditorium. We are blessed today, but differently, which is not to say lesserly.

I arrived about 5:40. Rod Buffington, a MAJOR midwest artist, was greeting everyone who signed the guestbook at the door that opened directly into the gallery. I signed in right after Randy Witter’s wife. Rod was just a few steps inside where he remained until a little after 6, an excellent touch! He’s a good fellow and more meticulous in his art than some neurosurgeons are at their profession and some politicians are at their trade. At a typical SAA reception (and this was probably my 20th) one finds an older demographic than typical receptions for Prairie Art Alliance, Sangamon Watercolor Society and UIS Gallery events. The numbers of incredibly well-dressed trim 80-something widows just about knocks my socks off. I saw probably 10 people under 30 and about three people under 20. Few politicians (that I could recognize) were there. Bill Cellini was there, and because I saw him, I KNOW his beautiful wife, journalist Julie was there as well. So too were Gerold Groebel  and Mark McDonald of Public Television Station WSEC. Artists came in droves, Gloria & Jerry Josserand, Lorraine Pilcher, Rachel Hasenmayer, Jan Sorenson, a gentleman who teaches at Quincy College who recognized me and actually engaged me in conversation, chair of Prairie Art Alliance’s board and several others.

The ground floor of the Edwards Place mansion is open and part of the event. Finger food and wine are served therein to all comers. The numbers of visitors to the Buffington event topped any I’ve attended in the past five years. Probably more than 1,000 visitors, most circulating in slow motion, emulated squares on a Rubic’s Cube worked by a neophyte. At least 80% moved slowly, going nowhere in particular from room to room, chatting with associates & friends in polite reception conversation for maybe 45 seconds and moving on to lessen the risk of embolisms from legs that stand still too long. There were also clumps of people who haven’t seen each other since the last charity auction at the club. Like islands in Lake Springfield they stay for sometimes five minutes at a time before navigating, gingerly to the next clump.

I found the greatest personal challenge was to take four steps in a particular straight line — ANY direction — without brushing against someone while making the circuit from the dessert table on the far west side, to the finger foods in the living room, to the wine serving in the north end of the parlor, to the gallery and back again. I was not a camera jerk –at least I hope I wasn’t. I had two glasses of white wine early into the evening and circulated then with food only (it was my flipping DINNER after all) and then camera only, “focusing” on pictures I knew were appropriate for Honey & Quinine and public perusal..

Rod Buffington is an icon in the arts community. He was director of the Illinois State Fair Visual Arts Gallery for years, and a name, not unlike Howard Hughes or Arianna Huffington, why fly closer to God than many of the rest of us. He is an incredibly successful artist with an original voice inspired by his grandmother’s quilting. But to pigeon-hole his art, displayed and owned nationally, as “quilty” is to oversimplify. Suffice to say here at H&Q, visit the gallery and see it to believe it and savor it for yourself. A six-page program that briefly describes every example displayed is available, free, to all visitors. I intend to return to the gallery soon, sans camera,  to savor more and schmooze less.

I could have spent the evening photographing the Edwards Place and surrounding neighborhood in the fading dusk. I spent far more time with an abandoned quadruplex across the street than with any single individual engaged in conversation at the reception, Outside, carrying the glow of a successful artist’s body of work, I wanted to be more of the “artist” I  know dwells in me. Without the reception, I would not have been led to pay attention to my camera between leaving the house and driving away. I do want to go back to that house in the fading light to take more pictures of that neighborhood and probably the most famous home in our historic city.

I departed about 7. I would eat nothing for the rest of the evening until I had a night cap of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich washed down by a glass of Carlo Rossi’s Burgundy about 2 am.

Kudos to Springfield Art Association, Rod Buffington and the many good people who attended a most memorable reception. If you like visual art, and appreciate local history, you should get involved with Springfield Art Association.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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Incident at Rock City

Sometimes a breeze wafts into Rock City that allows me to inhale in a few star-blessed moments, all that is beautiful about life. So it was August 22.

When the door from the parking lot into the showroom is closed, a mechanism on the hinge sounds a bell anytime someone enters or leaves. When I’m laboring over a hot computer, writing a new post for Honey & Quinine, revising a poem, updating aviation history files for AeroKnow, revising a poem/song lyric, or (almost as often) addressing concerns linked to the success of the best natural stone business in the tri-state area, the BELL SOUNDS, alerting me to the likelihood of good people entering the joint to look at granite or marble. On days when the door is propped open and the fan in the back pulls cool air through the place, there is no bell alert. As a result, a polite clearing of a throat at counter’s edge or conversation between a gentleman and lady as they look around the showroom let’s me know it’s time to get my head out of the computer and turn to the happy possibility of selling some stone. Sometimes there is no hint. I idly look up from the screen and gaze into the warm countenance of a patient visitor who’s been watching me type for maybe the past 15 seconds or so. I used to react as though touched with a cattle prod or the voice of Lindsay Graham. These days, I’m used to it, and the visible, brief convulsions generated earlier from such encounters are “history.”

That’s how it was on August 22. When I first glance at a woman, standing alone on the other side of the counter, my first question I ask (to MYSELF) is “How old is she?” Then I ask myself “Do I care if she’s married?” My best encounters with this kind of customer occur when I assume she’s married regardless of age as proven by a ring on a finger. But there are times when I see a ring on a finger and I assume it’s a Captain Midnight TV Show secret decoder Kellogg’s Cornflakes cereal premium she purchased with five box tops and 50 cents for postage and handling — even though the diamonds and gold strongly suggest I am mistaken in such an assumption.

That’s how it  was on August 22. I looked up and into summer sun and a picnic at Lincoln Memorial Gardens by the lake. She said she had talked with another fellow behind the counter earlier (that would be Ned, not his real name, but a fine fellow and a fine name just the same) and she was back to learn some more about the process of ordering a granite countertop. She did not mention a husband or a family, and the gold and gems on her finger might as well have been a decoder ring. We spoke in harmonious meters. We commented peripherally about matters of mutual interest. When I showed her the postcards protesting the use of the Third Street Corridor for high speed rail and urging implementation of that plan on the 10th Street corridor, her eyes lit up like “The Midnight Special” locomotive made famous by “Lead Belly,” more formally known as Huddie Leadbetter. YES, she would take a packet home with her, sign, stamp and mail them! YES she was an artist.  When I told her my name and of the visual arts column I used to write for Illinois Times and my arts web sites, she said “YES, I KNOW YOUR NAME. I have read your articles and visited your web sites. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” Polite hand shake. Since a sale of some beautiful granite was riding on a successful outcome to our discussion, I did something I didn’t want to do: I let her have her hand back.

She described her art. Acrylic. I described my art: poetry and the book I had published about local aviation history. Grabbed one of the copies I always have on hand for sale at Rock City and showed it to her. She wanted to buy it. I apologized and said that’s not why I showed it to her. (True. Anything I own I would have given to her during this encounter.) She insisted and wrote me a check.

In the meantime, Rock City’s owner (a terrific hummin’ bean in many ways) came in and I introduced her to him. While he helped some other customers, we chatted, and when he returned to us, I passed the “baton” of convivial discourse to him, returning to the computer. As she left a few minutes later after arranging a visit to her home by business owner to work out details of a likely purchase of granite, she carried with her an inscribed and autographed copy of Springfield Aviation. She stopped briefly to share her e-mail address with me. She was smiling the smile of a thousand suns. “I’m floating,” I said. “I will be floating for a long time.”

“I am too,” she said, turning and returning to her car.

That’s how it was on August 22.

HOME. A fast e-mail to her, thanking her for buying my book, explaining I was still floating, and that was true even if she was married with three kids. Invited her to the Vachel Lindsay event the next day, saying it would be terrific if she could come and it would be terrific if should could not come. True words. There would be ample joy and happiness at Vachel House (and I was correct in anticipating such.). It was hard not to be a totally naiive idiot in my state of mind. On the “Total Idiot Scale,” my e probably scored 88% of 100. It was a miracle I didn’t go off the scale, considering what I felt.

Silence for days. I debated whether or not to cash the check she wrote and just to keep it as a souvenir. The address didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to write her again until she responded. As Winston Churchill ones observed, “It is better, sometimes to remain silent, and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” Thank you Winston!

A week later, I received a terrific e-mail that brought news I didn’t want to read. She is married. . . . . . . .

Enough said, almost. She said she had read and enjoyed my web presence and had glanced over my book. She felt some excellent feelings as I had the week before; said she hopes she can hear me play guitar and sing some day. And she wished me well.

End of story? Not quite. I’ll likely not e her again. No reason to quarrel with contented status quo of one; hey? I am happy she’s okay and happy. She will likely read this posting here at Honey & Quinine, and she will know and appreciate my appreciation of her sunshine. Any more from me would just un-necessarily sully a polite contiuum. There’s nothing to be gained from more than that.

I am happy for the encounter, exquisite sympatico and the beauty..

That was August 22.

That is August 30 as well.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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Join the Wednesday Protest Against High Speed Rail on the Third Street Corridor

This message, is shared in the belief that a large piece of future happiness affecting every citizen of Springfield, Illinois and nearby is at stake. Fat beuraucrats in Washington, DC and our own Illinois Department of Transportation who think they can jam their will down our throats are mistaken. If you favor a BETTER Springfield, please read what follows. . . .

IDOT and Union Pacific have been making back room deals since January to locate an additional freight line along the Third St. corridor, instead of consolidating the rail lines at 10th St. as the city, county, and every major plan has recommended for years. IDOT and Union Pacific wanted this to be a done deal before the citizens of Springfield knew what was happening. Now we know about their plan, and just a few of the changes that it would bring to our city:

* A second set of railroad tracks would be installed along Third St. to run a freight line in addition to the existing passenger line.
*40-60 trains (mostly freight) would pass through Springfield each day, resulting in traffic tie-ups and long delays in downtown Springfield and any neighborhoods near the rail line.
*Some crossings along Third St. would be permanently closed, creating dead end streets. Business districts and neighborhoods would be divided by the constant flow of train traffic.
* Other crossings would have overpasses built, leading to concrete walls 24-30 feet high in the midst of historic neighborhoods and downtown Springfield.
* The medical district would be split in two, and vibrations from the passing trains would prohibit research facilities from being built.
* Much of downtown Springfield and neighborhoods all along the train tracks become inaccessible for all practical purposes, driving development even further out to the edges of the city and discouraging future growth and revitalization.

Send a message to IDOT officials, Union Pacific, and Senator Durbin by joining us on Wednesday, August 26 at 5 p.m. for the second in a series of “Rail Rallies.” We will meet at Fourth & Jefferson and form a human chain stretching from Second St. to Fourth St. to represent the length of the proposed overpass for JeffersonSt. (just one of many) and show how it will impact the businesses and traffic far beyond the railroad tracks alone. The media will be invited to see this visual representation of the impact of using Third St. as the primary rail corridor, as IDOT has proposed. We will be also handing out postcards to be mailed to key officials to let them know that the citizens of Springfield want their voices to be heard in this process!

For additional information, contact Steve Combs at 494-6668 or Michelle Higginbotham at 553-4629.

I will be there to report on this rally for Honey & Quinine. I hope you will be there too.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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The Vehicles Were Nestled All Snug By the Curb

The newcomers upstairs spent most of Sunday moving in. They’ve had the keys for the past three weeks after agreeing to pay rent for the last week in August, and they’ve brought things over a little almost every day. This is how I prefer to work with good people upstairs. I’m going all-out for this family — invested almost a month’s worth of rent repairing and improving the place since the former residents moved out — and they’re going all out for me. He intends to pressure clean the aluminum siding on the porch for no charge because a friend of his has an apparatus that’s idle on weekends. It had been years since any residents had swept the outdoor green carpeting on the front porch, but they swept and improved it two days after we signed the lease. The bride’s mom is replacing a toilet that overflowed onto the floor everytime they flushed it and not charging me labor. We’re going to deduct the cost of the new bowl and tank . . . .and floor linoleum and sealer . . . . from the first month’s rent.

Which brings up a misconception. When I was renting, back in my halcyon yoot, I assumed the owners of the properties where I lived wore $100 underwear. The head of the family who departed July 8 felt the same about me. When fingers snapped upstairs, there was an expectation that I would respond immediately if not sooner. She didn’t know — or didn’t appear to know — that when I didn’t respond, chop-chop, it was not because I had a mean streak down my back. It was because I didn’t have the dollars. I was trying to work more — still am — but “trying” doesn’t pay for a new central air unit. Renters sometimes don’t realize this.

What I didn’t imagine about renters, and I do not understand today, is how long-term renters (they had lived upstairs five years) allowed some things to break, and didn’t tell me. The malfunctioning toilet, the linoleum coming up off the bathroom floor, breaking drawers, broken sliding doors, torn screens, these were surprises I should have known about before they departed in July. The loud bumps that penetrated their floor and my ceiling, as though they were dropping console televisions from an eight foot step ladder should have prompted my investigatory initiative, but frankly at 10:30 at night on a Sunday, there are things I simply did not want to investigate. I understand the logic now. If I had reacted, they would have been liable for the damage they caused.  That liability, by and large, was not a factor following their departure.

Four renters before, I saw the kids of the family roughhousing in my front yard. That’s great. The best sign of a secure neighborhood is children having fun, even tossing a volleyball in the open street when there’s no traffic. This means LIFE to me, happy kids and residents. My joy inspired by the earlier renters twice removed was tempered when I looked out my front door ten minutes later and discovered a sizable dent in the door or my Ford Escort. Of COURSE none of the kids living upstairs did it. It was an act of a vengeful God who intended to shake up the anorexic 13 year old smoker who probably puffed upstairs as much as when sitting on the front porch steps and decorating the environs with her butts, allowed the priviledge of ensuring premature demise her exceedingly Reubenesque and distracted forebears despite my no smoking proviso in the lease contract. But God’s aim was off and he hit my car. But I digress.

Sunday was an exceptional day. I’m still swearing off the national news shows and using the time to accomplish some things  around “Casa de Poetguy.” I had made my run for a big jar of Folger’s Instant and hair spray in Casper. My neighbor down the street who had purchased my Ford Escort in July even came over at my request and drove it over to  his house where he will fix it and give it to his daughter (age 11) who he anticipates will be driving age when he’s done with it. He will give it to her then. I had uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Vachel Pages and AeroKnow Home, but there’s a hiccup in the file transfer protocol that my friend Donna at Interactive Data Technologies (522-5050, DYnamite owner and staff!) will fix in about 18 seconds later today. I could hear the new residents moving in upstairs and recognized the happy squeal of the daughter, whom is spending her first day in Third Grade today. I knew when I heard her, that her mom and dad were probably going to spend their first night upstairs, and I was right.

I confess to a nap after late lunch and on arising, felt like the rest of the night was for chilling and not working. Read the rest of the weekend papers and a fab article in the latest The New Yorker.  Had a late dinner, ate the last of the ice cream and drank . . . . almost, the last of the Rossi Burgundy.

Round midnight, I quietly opened the front door, walked out onto the front porch and stood slowly soaking in the breathless tableau.

Not a creature was stirring.

Two vehicles which had never graced the curbside out front at the same time were parked, motionless, embraced by the stillness, one in front of the house and the other to the east. No traffic was heard on South Grand, no trains, and even the streetlight seemed not quite as bright, as though dimming down a little to be at one with the eventide. I sighed a little sigh, thanked Dame Fortune, Yahweh, Jehovah, The Force, for the day, stepped back inside, locked the door and went to bed.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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Two Items Two Supermarkets, 40 minutes, No Sacks

Daisy set me straight about Shop’n Save Thursdays. They don’t announce what Thursdays there special discounts are going to be in force, so their game is to get you to their ballpark EVERY Thursday so you don’t miss your chance to save extry-big, even if it means buying $35 of your favorite salad dressing to save $20. Memo to self: shop there when you care to on Thursdays but NOT if it means missing another hour and a half of um . . .Mark McDonald um . . . and the terrific ad . . . um . . . ad-lib extraviganza everyone calls . . . um “Illinois Stories.” I discovered today it takes at least three supermarkets to make me a happy American consumer, and I’m rather ticked off about it.  Maybe I should shop at S’nS just to save enough money so I can afford to drive to the other two without wearing a bee in my pants.

I needed coffee Sunday because I had left the last of the generic instant at Rock City where I can inflict it on the print shop owner who shares his fresh Bunn-O-Matic brew with me in the mornings. I reciprocate in the afternoons with my usually-Folgers instant, but it’s been nutty out there in August and I had to cut back on the better-brand brew. Saturday morning I departed leaving a cup of coffee at my desk and none in the kitch since I was taking it to RockC.

On arriving home from the fab poetry reading at Vachel House Saturday afternoon, from force of habit, I almost walked the cold cup’o'jav’ to the microwave for a reheat, but I caught myself and saved it for this morning. It would get me through until I HAD to head out for some more Folgers. Not that I was sitting in tall cotton: I had $14 including eight quarters to my name and a hankering — or is it hunkering? I can never remember — for some instant upperness. Having enough for a LARGE jar of F’instant was not the problem. I had vowed to bring something into the house I’ve not had for almost 14 years: pump action hair spray. Could I get both for $14?

A big day with an important mission.

I could draw a good picture of the last Vitalis bottle I owned and used whenever I left the hoose. The last time I used hair spray coincides roughly (but non-violently) with the year my life started going to hades in a handybasket, but I don’t thing there’s a provable connection. I knew I didn’t want to hit Shop’nS’ because I had looked for spray there Thursday. My heart had been bent when I stopped at North Grand Schnuck’s, liking my lips in antikipation of a $6.39 rotisserie chicken, only to find none waiting. The rotisserie stood like an abandoned launching pad at Cape Canaveral, shorn of its big birds and bright lights. When I asked the courteous woman behind the counter if they were no longer being produced, she explained the cooker had broken, and she didn’t know when it would be fixed.  DANG!

Buying hair spray didn’t occur to me at Schnuck’s. It would be too expensive anyway. I’d look at Shop’NS where it would surely be less expensive, and I would use those pennies to purchase a $6.97 eco-unfriendly rotis’ken to save a drive to the southwest Schnuck’s for a two-meal bird. I was, however, dismayed in not finding simple finger pump acttion hair spray. Where was that Vitalis anyway. I saw more hair care products than I’d imagined — two sides of an entire half aisle — with enough mousses to fill the Alaskan wilderness. (You saw that one coming a mile away, didn’t you?) I wasn’t even thinking coffee Thursday, but I should have been.

Sunday I sipped the warmed over generic instant as though is was the last of the single-malt Wild Turkey in the house while riding the computer like a domesticated moose. At 11:30 I moved out to County Market, a place I don’t visit often because their rotisserie chickens — the tastiest in the city right after they re-named the store from Jewel — have gone south; not for me. I just knew I didn’t want to drive all the way to S’nS or S’h'uck’s.

Unfortunately I had forgotten, County Market doesn’t stock the larger jars of F’Instant, DANGIT. As long as I was in the store, I’d see about hairspray. Finding the aisle was easy enough, but finding simple hand action (NOT comptessed air aerosol) spray was beyond me. I saw everything BUT and I intentionally paid little attention to the array because I have more important things to pay attention to. I wondered if they had simple hair spray FOR MEN (tell me I’m not being a chauvenist OINK about that) in another part of the frikking STORE. I went to the pharmacy counter to ask. The 15 year old (based on his looks. He made Doogie Houser look like Methusula) asked his associates. No, it would be IN the hair care aisle. Gradually my eyes grew accustomed to the small print. Hair care products are grouped by BRAND; not by function. If you want anything Suave, you to to the Suave collection and then sort things out with your eyes. I don’t fault them for the approach. Folks are loyal to their brands. It took 15 minutes to hit and miss the coffee and find a product I hope I can enjoy: TRESemme Heat Tamer Hair Spray. I know it sounds French (and I do love French art; especially the Mona Lisa <— just kidding; I know she’s a Paisana) but the package looked male-ish, just like me. I didn’t boehter with a sack, but I held my receipt as I beat a hasty exit, as though it was a trophy.

BOOM south to S’nS. Instead of paying $5.33 for the smaller jar at Count’et or $5.39 for the smaller jar at S’nS, I paid $7.57 for the jar I had to have. Again no sack. I don’t need the clutter in my kitchen plastic sack hamper where previous residents had probably received deliveries of coal.

Home, savoring that fresh Folgers and looking forward to some civility in the bathroom again when I get ready to return to Rock City, a better grommed fellow.

It took a little more time and effort, you know, but. . .

I’m worth it.

Live long . . . . . and proper.

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Wine After the Poetry Reading

Wine After the Poetry Reading
by Job Conger
written 7:00 pm on the front porch, Saturday, August 22, 2009

To let it sink in deeper,
the echoes
the redeeming laughter
from the woes of the daughter,
the page turned to us
to show
words
sculpted
on paper before
spoken in the linear by the voice.

Wisdom in prose and two poems
by Lindsay – Vachel; not Lohan.

Of Alzheimers crescendo to
inevitable, whispered
DISCONNECT
and more of it
and more of it
and more of it
ears and heart ringing with it
stopping with the poem cut short
by incipient tears . . . .

Recovery.
Sequinned reveries.
Crafted recollections of assorted delights
. . . two to go
the last poem and then . . .

Polite applause
for words that
playedtoofast
too subdued
for words that must be seen
to impact, almost as fully,
as the passionate inspirations
which created them, and then

Outside to the day tent
for cake, coffee, convivial conversation
with smiles and sparkling eyes
just desserts after a hearty main course inside,
exiting politely with warm goodbyes
the girl talk
between featured guest and students

Home to sit in late afternoon sun on the front porch
with wine in silent contemplation of the poetry reading,
fading echoes amplified,
sustained with wine,
embraced in the silent interlude
to let it sink in deeper.

===============================
Nancy Genevieve Perkins gave a memorable reading of her poetry Saturday afternoon at Vachel Lindsay Home State Historic Site, 603 S. Fifth Street on the fringe of lyrical downtown Springfield. I’ve enjoyed many presentations from the audience and from the lecturn at these events, but I’ve written what I hope passes for poetry at only one: this one. It was the second or third time I’ve heard Nancy share her poems, so I knew she was a good ticket when I heard she’d be featured. Maybe I paid more attention. It was time well-spent. You missed a good one.

Live long . . . . . . and proper.

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When Blogs Collide

I want to learn how staff and freelance journalists who also blog separate (which is not to say segregate) one from t’ other. How much can be revealed in a blog without risking offense (through perceived mis-appreciation) for same or similar subjects covered? Does even posting this question at Honey & Quinine place me at risk of missing writing assignments from valued publication editors, the way right-wingers presume that if you even discuss birth control in public outside a confessional booth or a witch burning, “those scrappy yun guns are going to start making babies?”

The dilemma is real. Wednesday I committed myself to attend a rally protesting the construction of a high speed passenger rail bed along Springfield’s Third Street Corridor. I have strong feelings about what appears to be a fait accompli if you intend to swallow what the US and Illinois Departments of Transportation are pumping into our faces. More than a candidate’s announcement rally or even a concert in melodical downtown Springfield, I wanted to BE THERE on Carpenter Avenue to witness and yes, to be a part of what was slated to happen.

Then the rains came. The news saturated the Wednesday State Journal-Register and rightfully so. Super coverage! Still, at 3:30 with the worst of the cataclysm safely out of our sky and northeast bound, on a whim, I shared my intention with an esteemed editor. I told her I was going to attend for ME, with camera and tape recorder. I did not mention “for the benefit of Honey & Quinine readers.” She reads H&Q sometimes anyhoo, so the possibility of my rally experience shared here I’m sure was obvious.  In a heartbeat, she responded “wonderful!” and explained where the media would gather, that there would be people ready to talk to the media, and things were looking good.

As you have probably assumed, your diligent Hon’ ‘n Qui’er was a different kid with the name of the best business news monthly in the tri-state area riding my name like epaulettes on an admiral’s parade dress uniform. Suddenly, I was not the inglorious iconoclast who nobody wants to hire full-time. I was blazingly Legitimate! And I was delighted, though I would have been almost as delighted to be there as little old moi. I was delighted also because I was more than a crusader for my conscience; I was likely to transform the article I’d write into a rotisserie chicken and more in a few weeks when the check arrived in the mailbox.

There was a down side. It hit me upalongside my integrity a few seconds after I accepted a banner sign from one of the sponsor organization volunteers. Before I put 15 feet between us as I moved out to stand with sign on the north side of Carpenter, I realized I had a publication riding my epaulettes. Maybe five people at the rally knew me from “Langhorne Funnymustache” and no one seeing my face at 35 or 40 miles an hour driving west on Carpenter would recognize me, but five good people and my second thinking turned me around to return the banner to the fine person who had given it to me. I was representing a news publication which, by standards I believe in, should remain neutral everywhere but on the editorial page.

I took pictures, I talked to many interesting people and in every first sentence said to the five who knew me at all and every stranger, I said “I’m wearing my Springfield Business Journal hat this afternoon. Could I talk to you about this rally?” And everybody I asked, talked; some on record and some not. I was responsible “reporter guy” for 98.82 percent of the time. For about 18 seconds, visually and mentally intoxicated by the conviviality of some of the rallyers, I took a gag picture, staged in fun with their cooperation, and two hours later posted it at Facebook. I did not post my picture of the Illinois Times photographer or reporter or editor who were there. Nor will I. Wouldn’t be prudent, no sir . . . . wouldn’t be prudent.

So here I am, waiting to hear from my esteemed editor who gave me a happy GREEN LIGHT to write the story, to respond to my pictures and story concept before I write word one. I have some time before deadline, so I’m not being impatient. I’m just so happy with how things went and what I learned, I am bursting to tell someone..

Not here, at least not now. I want you to read all about it in the best business news monthly in the tri-state area first. Then and only then will I recall a unique aspect to the story that will not have been shared therein, and ONLY if it is obvious to me that esteemed editor will not become “a steamed editor” and disinvite further contributions from me. This writing bidness is more than a joyride with me. To be clear, often it IS a joyride. I love journalism as much as I love writing poetry (though some would disavow any connection of one with the other) and songwrithing. When money is involved (my teeth won’t fix themselves, you know) the dollar trumps the timid pretext of personal integrity. And that’s just how it muz be . . . .

when . . . . . . blogs . . . . . . . collide.

Live long . . . . . and proper.

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