Har

Front Garden Pics

My favorite! Cardinal Flower!


A Morning Glory about to unfurl!

Purple Coneflower, Culver's Root, Prairie Blazingstar, Coreopsis, etc...

More Cardinal Flower

Razzball

I've started writing for the fantasy sports site Razzball. I write under the name Doc.

Go Caucasians!

Famous

The King of Pop

I, like most, have mixed feelings about MJ, but his music was the soundtrack of my childhood.

Zion!

Got a few old rolls developed. Zion National Park is probably my favorite place in the world.

Strawberries!

Here are our first strawberries of the season!

Iran

Dottie's Day Out

Give me treats!

Go Cubs Go!!

We had a great time at the Cubs game on Saturday. Ramirez hit a home run to win it in extras!

Getting closer!!!

Half Acre Beer Co.

Looks like there is a new microbrewery in Chicago!!! Half Acre Beer Co. has a blog. I have always been bewildered at the lack of microbreweries in Chicago. Can't wait to try it!

Evanston Library Peregrine Falcons

I saw a Peregrine Falcon flying around the library yesterday so it must be time to check out the falcon cam.

Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat

Quote O' The Day

"One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat [the Democrats] is with better policy ideas," - Rush Limbaugh.

More Bob Marley Poems please!

Here's one from Waccamaw

by David Kirby

These Arms of Mine

Sometimes interviewers want to know what
dead people I’d like to have dinner with,
but my answer to that is nobody;
I mean, I wouldn’t mind following Dante around
and see who he talks to and where he shops and what

his writing schedule is, but can you imagine
trying to have a conversation with Dante?
Yeah, he wrote the greatest poem ever,
but his world view would be totally different from mine,
plus his temper was supposed to have been terrible.

Shakespeare wouldn’t say anything, probably;
he’d be storing up bits for his next play. Whitman
would probably talk your head off, and then
you’d be bored and not like his work as much as you
used to. No, I don’t want to have dinner with anybody.

But if you’re serious about time travel, I’d like
to go to Jamaica in 1967 and be sitting at a table
and drinking a Red Stripe in the after-hours club
where Bob Marley is playing, and Otis Redding,
who is touring the island, comes in “like a god,”

according to eyewitness accounts, and Bob Marley
looks up and begins to sing “These Arms of Mine.”
Wow. I tell you, I wouldn’t be myself.
I’d be Troilus or Tristan or Lancelot,
crying my eyes out for Cressida or Isolde

or Guinevere. She’d be on the battlements
of a castle in Troy or Wales or England,
all beautiful and sad-eyed, and I’d be clanking
up a storm as I drop my lance and brush
my visor back and pound the table with my mailed fist

while all the rastas look at me and say “I and I a-go
cool out wit’ a spliff, mon!” But my arms
are burning, burning from wanting you
and wanting, wanting to hold you because
I need me somebody, somebody to treat me right,

oh, I need your woman’s loving arms to hold me tight.
And I . . . I . . . I need . . . I need your . . . I need
your tender lips, and if you would let these arms,
if you would let these arms of mine, oh, if you would
just let them hold you, oh, how grateful I would be.

Write to your Illinois State Senator

Make it easier to compost food waste in Illinois.

Go here.

Submit your poetry using the new fangled intranets!

Here's a list of links to poetry journals that have some kind of easy submission program or accept email submissions. This is mainly for me (so I can be lazy) but you all can look too.

After Hours (email)
Agni
American Poetry Journal (email)
Anti- (email)
The Baltimore Review
Barn Owl Review (email)
Bat City Review
Bateau
Barrelhouse
Black Clock (email)
Blue Earth Review
Born Magazine (email)
Boston Review
Buffalo Carp (email)
Caesura (email)
Caketrain (email)
Coconut (email)
Columbia: A Journal
Copper Nickel (email)
Crazyhorse
Dossier (email)
Diagram
Diode (email)
Drunken Boat
Ep;phany
Fence
42opus
Gargoyle
Greatcoat (email)
Gulf Stream
Hawk and Handsaw (email)
The Hollins Critic
Indiana Review
Keyhole Magazine
Kenyon Review
The Literary Review
The Lumberyard (email)
The MacGuffin (email)
Many Mountains Moving
Massachusetts Review (fee)
Meridian (Fee)
Missouri Review (Fee)
National Poetry Review (email)
Naugatuck River Review (email)
New Madrid
New Orleans Review
Ninth Letter
Pebble Lake Review (email)
Ploughshares
Poetry
Post Road Magazine (email)
A Public Space
Puerto Del Sol
Quarterly West
The Raintown Review (email)
Rattle (email)
Redactions (email)
redivider (email)
Reed Magazine
Sentence (email)
Spinning Jenny (email)
Terrain.org
Third Coast
Tiferet
Tin House
upstreet
Valparaiso Poetry Review (email)
Versal
Virginia Quarterly Review
Waccamaw
West Branch
Whiskey Island Magazine (email)
Windfall Pacific Northwest (email)