If I were to call them by name they would not reply.
See, they are wild and untamed without need of a name for (in truth) they answer to no one.
The State Flower of Texas
Texas Wildflowers
How’s That Rx Workin’ for Ya?
Promotion Turned Rant
Anyone that’s read my puny little bio knows that I spent my prime working in the medical field as a licensed nurse. One necessary evil in said profession is staying current on medications. I still tend to do that. Old habits die hard. Maybe they don’t die–they just get flaccid and crusty along with our aging bodies but anywho.
Has anyone had to fill a prescription for Doxycycline lately? Were you totally blown away by the price increase? I mean, my lord that drug was approved by the FDA before I started first grade. Seriously it was over 45 years ago. The last time I checked (February 2012) it was $10 for 30 capsules/tabs without insurance. That was 33¢ per dose. Today it is sixty eight bucks for twenty tablets at Wal Mart! Yes, $68. That’s what… $3.40 a dose?
It is a fabulous drug with a wide range of benefits but it is old. Remember once upon a time when the cost of a drug went down after the pharmaceutical company recouped their research costs. So why the heck has this one (and there are others) skyrocketed?
This was the very argument I had with the pharmacist at one of the drug stores I called searching for a better price. Just FYI I was trying to help an uninsured individual get the medication they needed.
The professional behind the counter explained there was apparently a shortage of said drug, maybe a matter of supply and demand. I don’t believe that. The next explanation was that they were possibly losing money, to that I feigned a BS cough.
“You are a writer, right?” he asked. Damn small towns everybody knows your business.
“Right. What does that have to do with price gouging or hoarding if that is the case?” I replied.
“After you have recouped what you think your time and effort is worth on a particular book do you systematically lower the price?”
“A person’s health is not affected one way or another by my practices”. I argued.
“I’m sure their budget is. Why don’t you apply that same philosophy to your business?”
“I have!”
“How’s that prescription workin’ for ya?” By the looks of his crooked little grin I don’t think he believed me.
“It is too early to tell but I will let you know.”
We exchanged the usual pleasantries and I hurried home and got busy just in case he checked my story. It wasn’t a lie really; I (like many Indies) have cut prices before and offered a free title from time to time but has fiction or poetry ever healed bronchitis? Has an antibiotic ever offered a leisurely break from the stresses of reality?
I believe his comparison is ludicrous but a stiff necked redneck with Irish ire tends to take everything as a challenge. Of course we also celebrate the smallest victories. Just this morning I found 75¢ in the dryer. Woo-hoo. I love me some shiny quarters- it’s gonna be a good day.
So anyway I cut prices, made a couple of titles free at Smashwords and I am off to track down the real reason behind the astronomical increase in this drug and then I shall rant elsewhere.
Aside: I have a (paranoid?) suspicion the government is stock piling Doxycycline in the event of germ warfare or an anthrax attack. Maybe the pharmacy should start loading up on e-readers and books. If you can’t afford the medication or cure what ails you by reading you may be up a thick smelly creek without a means of propelling yourself.
Go ahead and share this.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Up
What’s Up?
The cost of living, this week’s photo challenge, hot air balloons and floating babies…
A shot of the latter two would have been nice but all I got was a Corn-snake with a belly full of Mud Martins.
I might have been dreaming about hot air balloons surrounded by cherubs when someone apparently looked up and the commotion started. I rose from my place of leisure and watched as everyone headed toward the excitement. “Get the tongs and steady the ladder. There’s a snake up here along the rafter.”
I (of course) grabbed a camera and the rest is pictures.
The throng and tongs
Hold her steady.
An oral anatomy lesson.
Tongue lashing
Hmm…
Go ahead and share this.
Yoo-hoo It is Still National Poetry Month
Yoo-hoo. It is still National Poetry Month and today I am highlighting Shel Silverstein.
I rarely think of Mr. Silverstein without remembering Johnny Cash and that delightfully ridiculous song A Boy Named Sue.
He (Silverstein) wrote a lot of nonsensical poetry/lyrics but like all humans he was multifaceted. His writing ranged from silly to somber with something for everyone as evident in the introduction to Where the Sidewalk Ends as he seems to say “welcome all.”
If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!
And we did. We opened the pages and entered the world he created and we returned again and again for the flax-golden tales that never grow old all the while wondering if he found that place Where the Sidewalk Ends…
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Go ahead and share this.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Change
Weekly Photo Challenge: Change
A few shots from last weeks trip to the southern end of the Colorado River. It was a welcomed change except for the cold front, I could’ve done without that. Thankfully the chilly gloom was short lived.
A change in scenery. Ahhh.
A change in the weather. Arrggh.
The change left over from the trip. Oh well.
Go ahead and share this.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Color
Oxalis and G-ma’s
Sun Set on Oxalis
My grandmothers are deceased but I still think of them often. As a matter of fact thinking of them prompted this post. I was sitting here nibbling on a handful of wild clover (Oxalis to be exact) and thought first of my maternal grandmother. I loved them equally yet they were as different as night and day.
It’s funny how certain things send us flying back in time where we awake to find ourselves strolling down memory lane.
My mom’s mother was somewhat prissy and constantly scolding me for eating wild things. If she didn’t know what it was I wasn’t allowed to eat it. “Mustang grapes and blackberries are okay but everything else is poisonous.” she warned. I didn’t care much for either and I generally ignored her warnings, tasting every berry and leaf I came across. It drove her to fits.
Once she threatened to tan my hide if I ate from the Black Persimmon tree behind the house. I of course did exactly that when she wasn’t looking. The soft shiny berries were too irresistible. To my surprise she wasn’t angry; I suppose she laughed so hard she made herself tired after seeing my lips and teeth stained black.
My paternal grandmother on the other hand would cook, can or consume just about anything that grew, moved or acted like it wanted to bite. (Yes, that one)
After I had settled down and started a family she would sometimes visit. We would walk through the woods in search of an undiscovered herb or animal. She’d scan the ground for changes and jab her cane in every hole until a rabbit ran out and she’d say, “Lookie there Jennavenay- there goes supper.” And we would laugh.
We ate a lot of wild vegetation throughout our years together. We didn’t know the benefit or threat or even the name of most of the wild plants but we learned to avoid the ones that tasted bad. Our walk always ended with her sitting by a large Oak and saying, “This is how I want to die. Like an old Indian I’m gonna set down against this tree and just pass away.” She wasn’t an Indian and that isn’t how she left this world. But that’s how it goes. Life, bittersweet like the Oxalis.
Go ahead and share this.
Pilgrimage
Photo Source: Wikipedia Commons
What I love about this poem is how easily it flows. You don’t have to be a Mississippian, a historian, a scholar or even a poetry fan to appreciate the smooth and simple beauty of Pilgrimage.
Sometimes we get so busy with the day to day ritual that we forget to read and that is a shame. It is also another reason to appreciate National Poetry Month. It serves as a reminder (at least for me) to seek out new poetry, to step away from the keyboard and open a book or a webpage or an audio device and go along for the ride if only for a few moments. This was certainly a ride worth taking.
Pilgrimage
by Natasha Trethewey
Here, the Mississippi carved
its mud-dark path, a graveyard
for skeletons of sunken riverboats.
Here, the river changed its course,
turning away from the city
as one turns, forgetting, from the past—
the abandoned bluffs, land sloping up
above the river’s bend—where now
the Yazoo fills the Mississippi’s empty bed.
Here, the dead stand up in stone, white
marble, on Confederate Avenue. I stand
on ground once hollowed by a web of caves;
they must have seemed like catacombs,
in 1863, to the woman sitting in her parlor,
candlelit, underground. I can see her
listening to shells explode, writing herself
into history, asking what is to become
of all the living things in this place?
This whole city is a grave. Every spring—
Pilgrimage—the living come to mingle
with the dead, brush against their cold shoulders
in the long hallways, listen all night
to their silence and indifference, relive
their dying on the green battlefield.
At the museum, we marvel at their clothes—
preserved under glass—so much smaller
than our own, as if those who wore them
were only children. We sleep in their beds,
the old mansions hunkered on the bluffs, draped
in flowers—funereal—a blur
of petals against the river’s gray.
The brochure in my room calls this
living history. The brass plate on the door reads
Prissy’s Room. A window frames
the river’s crawl toward the Gulf. In my dream,
the ghost of history lies down beside me,
rolls over, pins me beneath a heavy arm.
Go ahead and share this.
In the Aftermath of Plath
Just in case I missed telling one person in the far reaches of Idonwannaherit (which is my husband’s country of origin) April is National Poetry month.
And guess what?! I was informed this morning that I have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize Award. I’m thinking OMG! Am I so special they called me early? Turns out it was an April Fool’s joke. Damn you cruel jokester and may the winning of Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes forever be just out of your reach.
With the fool’s business out of the way I’d like to talk about Plath.
Not because of her life’s work. In all honesty it is/was her chronic obsession with death that compels me.
In reading Lady Lazarus with or without knowing Plath’s history I could have imagined a poet scribbling thoughts that were just that- thoughts.
But the [reportedly] last two pieces she wrote and the two small children she left behind. I became strangely fanatical.
photo by Rollie McKennaI tried hard not to judge her as a person and to focus only on the writing but I fell short. History, rumor and suspicion clouded my judgment.
When I read Nick and the Candlestick I imagined premeditated recklessness beyond her own ending.
In Balloons all I could see was her surveying her child at play – a child she would [knowingly?] soon leave motherless.
And in Edge… it would have been eerily sufficient without knowing Sylvia Plath Hughes had made for herself a gas chamber.
In doing so she had eliminated the need for an executioner so I became her judge, juror and examiner.
It wasn’t enough for me to obsess over the tragedy I insisted my husband partake of the mind numbing fixation.
His first response was, “You know I don’t read poetry. I don’t read anything that doesn’t have live game, a stock symbol or a machining program written on it.”
To that I handed him a beer and smiled, “Okay. I’ll read it to you and you tell me what you think.”
He agreed, though once I finished reading Edge aloud he held out his hand and ordered me to give it to him.
I graciously obliged.
Here it is in its entirety. Our discussion will follow.
Edge by Sylvia Plath 1963
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
When he finally looked up I asked, “So what do you think?”
He took a long drink and shrugged, “She obviously wanted to be dead and she’s happy about it.”
“Yes, yes. Go on.” I urged, “What about the scrolls of her toga?”
“Sounds like the Clinton – Lewinsky thing. You know with the stained dress.”
I laughed and he continued. “Here where she says ‘it is over’ means just that – she’s finished.”
“What about the lines ‘each dead child coiled, a white serpent, one at each little pitcher of milk, now empty’ what do you think about that?”
“The Exodus? It sounds like the first Passover and the last plague in Egypt to me.” He looked back at the page in front of him and read,
“She has folded them back into her body as petals of a rose close when the garden stiffens and odors bleed from the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.”
He shook his head and returned the poem, “Did she plan to kill the kids and take them with her? I guess it doesn’t matter- It was fifty years ago, she was mentally ill and she’s glad she’s dead.”
“What about ‘the moon has nothing to be sad about, staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag’ – what are your thoughts on that?” I asked, watching as he became more uncomfortable.
“It sounds like craziness. She was obviously mentally ill. Did you say she stuck her head in an oven?”
I nodded.
“Was it butane or natural gas?”
“I have no idea. Why would that matter?”
“Well one falls and the other rises – natural gas rises. Did she live in town or in the country? If she lived in town it was probably natural gas.”
“She lived in London, a town residence once occupied by Yeats.”
“Hell, it might have been coal fuel.” He paused as if it took added effort to ask the next question. “Did she kill her kids too?”
“No.” I answered.
His face relaxed a bit until I added, “The youngest, a boy named Nicholas hung himself in 2009. The daughter who was less than three years old when it happened went on to become a painter and poet.”
“Dammit! How’s the girl doing?”
“I don’t personally know her but she was still alive the last I heard.”
“Poor thing. Damaged people leave a lot of garbage in their wake. Hopefully she’s not too messed up.”
With that he bent and twisted the empty can indicating the discussion was over.
I mumbled a thank you, delighted I had snagged him into reading a poem yet a little ashamed that I had disturbed him with the past of Sylvia Plath.
Next week maybe I will entice him with a new poet, a living poet.
I’ll choose something lighter, funnier and maybe drag out the frayed old book Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. The kids and I always enjoyed that one.
I will probably [silently] take a closer look at the works of Ted and Frieda Hughes, dissecting their psyches and torturing myself in the aftermath of Sylvia Plath.
Go ahead and share this.
The Bluebird’s are Here
A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo (Marching Into Spring) of a Bluebird’s nest. I’m excited to report that they have hatched and their appetites are intact. 
Aren’t they a wriggling lump of ugly? Yes they are but that will change soon. I may try for a better shot when the father is not flogging the back of my head.
The Real Janna Hill in 