Dive In!

. . . continued

Judge ~ July 1934

Magazine Covers
by John Holmgren (1897-1963)

Judge ~ July 1936

"First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element. . . ."

from "Diving Into the Wreck"
by Adrienne Rich (1929 - 2012)

Springboard (2015)
by Charlotte Evans (b 1981)

I especially like Springboard because
it reminds me of this long-time favorite:

Romantic Enters World
by Richard Stine

Additional Connections

"The Swimming Pool"

"The Summer You Learned to Swim"
by Michael Simms

The "Lost Lagoon" Challenge

Swimming Pool"
by James Arthur [not struck by lightning]

Between July and Dawn

Diver (after Alfred Roller, 1864 - 1935)
by Chuck Sperry (b 1962)

Here is the perfect poem for the end of a long July,
spent mostly reading, writing, blogging and lap swimming:

The Swimming Pool

It goes under, the cursor, whenever I place my finger
on the space bar and hold it like this for a minute.
The blue screen shimmers the way a pool’s sunlit
floor moves after the splash of a lone swimmer.

As long as this minute lasts, the season is somewhere
between July and dawn: the soundless underwater
of sandals left out overnight and garden furniture,
that will end, but could just as easily go on forever.

I could be forgiven for forgetting that it was ever there.
The pool is only still again when I take away my finger.
Unthinking, and unable to hold its breath any longer,
as much as two pages further, it comes up for air.

by Conor O’Callaghan (b 1968)
in Seatown and Earlier Poems (2000)

A note from artist Chuch Sperry: "I noted in the credit line of my poster: After Alfred Roller. The figure of the diver in my print is influenced by a figure in the work of Vienna Secessionist artist Alfred Roller, the brilliant early 20th Century graphic stylist and inventor of the free, flowing typographical fonts that inspired artist Wes Wilson to create psychedelic lettering in the 1960’s."

Maybe this one:

MoMA & WikiArt & Facebook

To be continued . . .

Little Pieces of Heaven

What's the odds that these two posts would turn up
one right after the other in my Facebook feed?

Whimsey and rage
Small comforts and despair

More Poetical Connections

From Allesandra Olanow

"Happiness" by Jane Kenyon

"A Brief For The Defense" by Jack Gilbert

"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

~ and ~

"Any Morning" by William Stafford

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won't even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

~ William Stafford

Potato Salad

~ Thanks ~
StoryPeople!

Summer Potato Salad Ideas!
with good comments & connections:

As Anne taintor says:

Patriarchy, I Hate You

So it's totally time to review Homer's Odyssey
before going to see the awesome new summer movie!

Thanks to John & Hank Green
for summarizing
A Long and Difficult Journey, or The Odyssey:
Crash Course Literature 201

Particularly this excerpt:
"Speaking of contemporary perspectives, one of Odysseus’ least stellar qualities is his attitude toward women. He’s really big on this sexual double standard in which the exact same behavior types women as sluts and men as studs. Actually the whole epic in general is incredibly—wait, why is my desk moving? Oh, the secret compartment is open. It must be time for the open letter. What have we got today? Well, it’s Medusa, a representation of woman as a monstrous serpent.

"An open letter to the patriarchy: how are you so incredibly resilient? Also, please explain something to me. How is it that the only way for someone to become like a good heroic strong man is to have sex with lots of women, but if a woman has sex with lots of men she’s like tainted and impure and horrible? Now patriarchy, I don’t want to get too deeply into math but in order for men to have sex with a lot of women, a lot of women have to have sex with men. That’s it, that’s the only way, patriarchy! So basically you’re saying that the only way for men to achieve manliness is for women to fail at womanliness! It’s bad! Actually, it’s evil! I hate you! Best wishes, John Green.

"Yeah so the whole epic is incredibly paranoid about female sexuality."

Ask A Spider

Spider Woman (2005)
Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010)
~ famous for her giant sculptures Spider & Maman ~
but I think my favorite is this red Spider Woman

What are the odds that I would discover
two amazing spider poems,
two days in a row?!?
Which is your favorite?

Snow Country Weavers

A time to tell you things are well.
Birds flew south a year ago.
One returned, a blue-wing teal
wild with news of his mother’s love.
Mention me to friends. Say
Wolves are dying at my door,
the winter drives them from their meat.
Say this: say in my mind
I saw your spiders weaving threads
to bandage up the day. And more,
those webs were filled with words
that tumbled meaning into wind.

James Welch (1940 – 2003)
from his book Riding the Earthboy


Spider

All of my pain is a spider
I’ve learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe

but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass.

I ask questions about
its life, its purpose
as I walk careful

out to the garden and rest
it down on the earth.
My pain—how happy
it is to leave me
whenever I treat it
kind.

Andrea Gibson (1975 – 2025)
from Begin Where You Are:
The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology

Never Ask a Zebra

Zebra (1937)
Victor Vasarely (1906 - 1997)

Zebra Question

I asked the zebra
Are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Or you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I'll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again.

Shel Silverstein (1930 - 1999)
[on facebook]

And a little Pokemon ~ to cheer you!

Colorful Crayola Cups

Did anyone else have these Crayola cups in the 1990s?
And are we the only ones who didn't realize
-- until 30 years later! --
that the bottom of each cup features an alphabet letter
and a matching toy or animal?

Ellie was using the green one and said,
"Quick, you've gotta see this,
there's a horse at the bottom of my cup!"

They came with sippy - style lids and flat lids:

Colors of Summer

Summer yellows,
lilies, dandelions.

Summer greens,
cucumbers, peppers.

Summer reds,
tomatoes, bee balm.

Summer whites,
trousers, hats.

Summer blues,
delphiniums, jazz.

Summer,
lazily drifting
into September.

by Robert Manchester (1943 - 2022)
Read more at Your Daily Poem

Sacred Rosemary

Still Life With Rosemary
From the Backyard

As Shakespeare reminds us,
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance . . . "
Hamlet, IV, v

"As for Rosemarie, I let it run alle over my garden walls,
not onlie because my Bees love it,
but because ‘tis the herb sacred to Remembrance,
and therefore to Friendship,
whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language
that maketh ye chosen emblem at our funeral wakes
and in our buriall grounds."

by Anne Manning (1807-1879)
from The Household of Sir Thomas More (1851)

********************

Read more
about Manning's fictional diary
of More’s daughter Margaret

A couple of other bloggers look at
rosemary & misattribution
[It happens!]

Teasdale & Eliot, Begin & End

Floor Mosaics
at the Kansas City Airport

"There will come a time
when you believe everything is finished.
That will be the beginning."

from Lonely on the Mountain, 1980
by Louis L'Amour (1908 – 1988)

The L'Amour quotation is new to me, and
very similar to these two old favorites
from Teasdale and Eliot:

1. Sara Teasdale
"Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun"

and

2. T. S. Eliot:
"to make an end is to make a beginning"

As I mentioned on my earlier post,
"Body Image, Again and Still,"
I keep mixing them up.
You can see why!

Thus I am creating here a permanent reminder:

1.
At Midnight
Now at last I have
come to see what life is,

Nothing is ever ended,
everything only begun,

And the brave victories
that seem so splendid

Are never really won.

Even love that I built
my spirit's house for,

Comes like a brooding
and a baffled guest,

And music and men's praise
and even laughter

Are not so good as rest.

by Sara Teasdale (1884 - 1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

2.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them. . . .

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. . .

by T.S. Eliot
from "Little Gidding" (Part V), 1942

About the Kansas City medallions:

“We all exist in an electromagnetically charged existence through the dynamic of going around in this circular pattern. . . . it’s a new iteration for the medallions as relics or mementos of what has been. They’re a fragment of a whole. So they’re sort of in a limbo state, like passengers are in an aircraft.”
~ Artist Andrew Ginzel

Also ~ on Facebook

Red, White, and Wheelbarrow

How about a teal wheelbarrow
with red tomatoes?!
(Photo July 2024 ~ also appears)

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

~ William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)
See also "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"
and Fault in Our Stars

Aidan a couple of summers ago ~ see April.

It was so sad to see these American poetry clues
go unanswered or incorrectly answered in the
Jeopardy Tournament of Champions:

1. William Carlos Williams’ “The Red ?this?”
was inspired by the sight of one surrounded
by white chickens in a backyard?
[Wheelbarrow]

2. Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” asks,
“What happens to a dream deferred? . . .
Maybe it sags like a heavy load.
Or does it” ?do this?
[Explode]

There ya go Jeopardy "Champions,"
I did your homework for you!

Last August (2025)
there was a question about the word
for both a copy of an ancient Grecian urn
and the means of human propagation.
Not one of the three so - called champs could come up with REPRODUCTION!

And then a week later
no one could guess
OUR BODIES OURSELVES.

Are we surprised?

See comments here for a
running list of worriesome knowledge gaps!

Memoirs and Mysteries

"When I'm rich, my mother'll have a garden and a gardener . . .
And we'll have champagne every evening when she's tired . . .
champagne and a gardener!" (71)

Memoirs and Mysteries
on my recent posts:

May: Memoirs in May

June: Bloomsday

July: Summer Sleuthing

@Kitti's List

Family History Project

Now is the Time!

Gathering as much information as I can
concerning the not yet forgotten relatives.

See my recent posts:

Family History #1:
Lindsey & Haddix

Family History #2:
Hartman

Family History #3:
Shank & Heideman
Birkinbine & Miller

Family History #4:
Catherine Shank

Going Forward

Family History #5:
Heideman & Lindsey

Family History #6:
Lindsey & Carriker

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

Midsummer

Midsummer
traditionally celebrated
a few days after the Solstice,
especially if you count May Day
as the beginning of summertime

Rain Light

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

W. S. Merwin
(September 30, 1927 – March 15, 2019)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A May Crown
for our Lace House Ghost

Happy Days in the Garden

Fathers Of

"LA FÊTE A PAPA"
A Sweet French Father's Day Greeting
& Le Bon Marché ~ advertising card
Thanks to my friend Jes for this little treasure!

Sons Of
Sung by Judy Collins

Sons of the sea, sons of the saint
Who is the child with no complaint;
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own
The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears
The cries at night, the nightmare fears
Sons of the great, sons unknown
All were children like your own

Sons of tycoons, or sons from the farms
All of the children ran from your arms
Through fields of gold, through fields of ruin
All of the children vanished too soon
In towering waves, in walls of flesh
Amid dying birds trembling with death
Sons of tycoons, sons from the farms
All of the children ran from your arms

Sons of your sons, sons passing by
Children were lost in lullaby
Sons of true love, sons of regret
All of your sons you can never forget
Some build the roads, some wrote the poems
Some went to war, some never came home
Sons of your sons, sons passing by
Children were lost in lullaby

Written by Jacques Brel (1929 - 1978),
Eric Blau, Gérard Jouannest, & Mort Shuman

The Irony of Racism vs Race

A. C. Grayling (b 1949)
on amazon / pdf

A Meditation for Juneteenth

"Almost everywhere one looks among present societies, race and racism make angry welts and deep wounds on the body politic. It is an irony that although racism is a reality, and a harsh one, race itself is a fiction. The concept of race has no genetic or biological basis. All human beings are closely related to one another, and at the same time each human being is unique. Not only is the concept of race entirely artificial, it is new; yet in its short existence it has, like most lies and absurdities current among us, done a mountain of harm. . . . But advances in genetics have demolished such taxonomies, by taking DNA [and species] as the criterion of classification. . . . ‘Race has no basic biological reality,’ says Professor Jonathan Marks of Yale University; ‘the human species simply doesn’t come packaged that way.’ Rather, race is a social, cultural and political concept based on superficial appearances and historical conditions, largely those arising from encounters with other peoples as Europe developed a global reach, with the slavery and colonialism that followed.

. . . The physical diversity of human populations today is purely a function of geographical accidents of climate and the isolation of wandering bands. The distinctions which have since been drawn between peoples are therefore arbitrary and superficial, even those relating to skin colour – for as a moment’s attention shows, there is simply no such thing as ‘white’, ‘black’ or ‘yellow’ people; there are people with many shades and types of skin, making no difference to any other aspect of their humanity save what the malice of others can construct."

~From Sections 68 & 69

Bloomism For Bloomsday

Happy Bloomsday to All!

Check out this mystery
~ and review in The Guardian ~
for numerous fun allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses.
Quirke even sees a "lanky-looking galoot
in a gabardine raincoat" (148).
[also on KL]

Bloomsday Eve

Back in April ~ on Jeopardy!

My brother gave an excellent guess:
"What is the destruction
of Martello Tower #3 in Quebec City?"

And so close, he nearly had it: " . . . the cedar-shingled roof of Martello Tower #3 was destroyed by fire on June 6, 1857 by fire and replaced with a metal roof. The tower was demolished in 1904 to make way for a hospital pavilion."

Appropriately, a Martello - themed answer -- about Canada rather than Ireland -- constitutes a classic "Bloomism", which is "a term coined by scholar Richard Ellmann to describe a characteristic mental habit of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses: 'an uneasy but scrupulous recollection of a factual near-miss.' It refers to moments when Bloom accurately recalls the gist or context of a fact, name, or phrase, but gets the specific detail slightly wrong, resulting in a funny or almost-correct error."

Previously on Bloomsday . . .

Update 2025:
The Forty Foot & The Martello Tower

Raise High the Roof Beam

Flag Day

One Week Later

Remember the shed,
back in the winter . . .

Gerry's summer DIY project:
raising the roofline

Not really raising the roof
so much as straightening the sides
for more airspace inside
and flat wall space instead of slanted,
more useful for hanging things.

Built in workbenches.
New doors and windows to follow.

Finishing Touches

"Raise high the roof beam, carpenters.
Like Ares comes the bridegroom,
taller far than a tall man."
~ Sappho ~
(c. 630 – c. 570 BC)~
[see fragment 27]

See also J. D. Salinger
(1919 – 2010)