The Little Words Mean the Most

Visitors to PVD

 

Downtown Providence, RI is pretty interesting, actually.

You can see, via the merchants, the influence of the RI School of Design (aka RISD: Riz-Dee; also considered the world's greatest design school; and the resulting heavy concentration of artists) + the influence of Johnson & Wales (a global culinary institute; headquartered in Providence) + the strong ethnic influence: RI has always been an immigrant state; every wave hit here hard ... the latest are Latin-American and African and the occasional Ukrainian. Ethnic dining options abound, as a result.

Brown is on the top of a very steep hill. Your elders will be panting. Compulsive pickle-ball players will not.

There is a gentler way, though. Let me be your guide? I know the softer route.

And though I'm no academic, I'm probably slightly better than a new-ish cab driver (with all due respect). Maybe I can fill in some blanks. Since I've lived in RI since 1965. Since I read local history for pleasure. Since I've worked with all sorts of charities hereabouts ... including the state's foremost Indigenous-led museum (see case brochure attached; I wrote it ... and it only took a year and half to beat my white-man's preconceptions out of it).

I promise to stick to the truth, as I know it.

We'll take in downtown murals (big here). Wander across the new pedestrian bridge (named for a one-time client; lands you at Plant City, BTW). Up super-funky Wickenden Street; along the waterfront a bit maybe. Then into the Brown area, which is historic, vibrant, architectural, thought-provoking (some of the Brown family's wealth was built on the slave trade, which was legal at the time; it's gets complicated, since another Brown brother was a devote Quaker abolitionist). THEN downhill (the right direction for those who pant) through RISD.

Oh, yeah: America's industrial revolution started on these very rivers, the ones you'll be crossing. What are now pricey lofts and condominiums upstream were once factories making STUFF. A blatant, infamous act of industrial espionage got the whole thing rolling.

 

How to douse a fruit-fly infestation?

 

Step #1: Drink an open glass of chardonnay.

Step #2: Any fruit flies in the vicinity will dive-bomb into your glass.

Step #3: Drink them. They're protein.

 

Sim One & I run/ran global businesses off a small brown cable lying on the ground. Then a shovel severed it....

 

Wednesday: the incredible Sam was here, trying to turn some of our acreage into meadows (for bird and deer support and amusement) ... and so she excavated a pest shrub (wild fake-olive takes over if you don't control) ... and with one foot-propelled slice of her pest-popping shovel (a.k.a., the shovel of death) she severed my fiber-optic feed.

Sam knew about this danger. It was danger #1 for me/us to carry on a global consultancy from this obscure rural nest. But a momentary ... some lapse ... and I was done; machine says: "can't find the router" ... >>> [timing is everything] thank goodness this calamity happened an hour AFTER I'd presented a smokin' 40-minute webinar on cases to the Nashville AFP.

Sent a request for repair into Verizon immediately.

After navigating an hour's-worth of "customer service" artificial (QUITE artificial) intelligence, I finally reached a responsive human ... who scheduled a fix. And then that scheduled repair person never showed.

So another 24 hours without phones and Internet fluttered out the window. Tried again this morning (I'm learning how to play the artificial intelligence customer "not-real-service" game)  ... & miracles!!! (yes, prayers work) >>>

I once again reached a human! (Saint Sim One, resident in existentialist heaven, be praised) ... a superior being who checked on everything and rescheduled a repair visit. A visit that arrived early!!! And featured a genius.

And now I'm back online. Thank you, St. Sim One.

 

 

 

Power outage from this latest storm >>> The good news?

 

Estimated time of restoration is now 11:45 PM.

The BAD news?

TWO days from now, grid be cursed!!!

 

[cue screaming, descending violins]

However (sing along):

 

Don't cry for me, generator.

Many do not have you. But we do.

Thanks to you-know-who, you are ...

... humming, producing power. And I must say

Sim One brought you to our door!

So ... don't cry for me, generator.

You keep me warm.

You keep me fed.

You keep me soaped and showered.

And I love her ...

... even more!

 

Broken's good

 

Fly herding.

Thing?

Not at 12:49 PM this Saturday.

Nudged by John Haydon, starchy Buddhist

I hand-tried my second-best to sweep a

boing-boing confused fall fly

out around (yeah, almost!) past my office screen

 

instead dislodging Ashley's hanging by fishline

blown-glass Northern Cardinal trinket

which broke across my work desk like a junkyard of pointless adjectives

as I herded the fly to

no end I ever saw

tally: one blown-glass cardinal wing

now some feathers shorter than the other opposing

 

Broken's good, right?

 

Brush grooming in a blizzard

 

"Are your feet wet?" >dripping/swampy< "Are your feet cold?" >no<

 

How you know that you have good winter boots.

After a 3-hour brush-grooming session during a blizzard? All of the above: wet, not cold.

My winter boots are made from the same stuff as wet suits.

Window Open poems

 

there's so much to learn about patterns

you need to listen ~ I forget

crack a nearby window ~ I forget

a goose squadron transects the silence ~ I forget

a who-who will arrive and ask

a nudging wind will say breathe please

it's good for you

 

 

What I scratched into the stall wall, then to bed

 

        

That global NGO "industry" is an untidy skein of causes; thick, messy cable: a surging (unstoppable?) movement which (I believe) just MIGHT — in the end — save (no guarantees; it's up to you and me and billions more) our savagely suffering planet — as government and the so-called "adults" who "run" that part of our lives prove themselves inadequate, inept, shortsighted, self-absorbed, corrupt and emotionally-stunted cynical assholes no better than their 5th-grade selves.

         And since (I suspect) many FOR-profit corporations should simply be quarantined as infections ... as several Nobel-laureate economists will (MORE suspicion) demonstrate via research a half-century from now (that gargle you hear? me praying) ... when they prove that a benign-seeming modifier such as "industry interrupter" is in truth a synonym for "sociopath."

         Ear buds aren't what they seem. But, yeah, you knew that.

 

 

I poisoned my trails tonight

 

Mostly vs. poison ivy

poison v. poison

PVP

 

It doesn't hate us. Know us. And in autumn

it's sunset gorgeous. But it breathes and it drinks

and has this oil that's easily spread from towels

across skin

into your lungs if you burn it

 

i want paths anywho can tramp

with a minimum of danger

So on a hot day like today

spray some multinational's science-breakthrough deterrent on its leaves

wch it drinks wch it beathes and the company promises

in a week the roots will die

 

Poison ivy is a human-denominated pest

and will return, because it thrives in global warming

and someday this poisoner nor multinational won't

return nor you

 

not too late, though