storyline

I found this porcelain doll leg in my yard.
OK, you write the story.

words with friends

I have a new addiction. I know, like I needed another one! At any given time, I am likely to be playing games with five different people, most of them family members.
It is so worth having an iPhone in order to be able to do this. However, my niece had to go cold turkey because it was taking up, she told me, time that should be spent doing homework. omg! Same here. . .
Meanwhile, Bear wants to have a word with friends who are thinking of challenging me, and here it is:

bear's trove

This is what Bear does. He lives on corn meal mush, deer meat and dried beans. He plays "solitary," as he calls it. And if it's nice he looks for arrowheads in the river bank. He gives most of them to his niece. This winter, however, the weather was too cold, and with the pickings getting slimmer every year, he started making his own. It's kind of appropriate as he's one-eighth Cherokee—"or something, my mother's mother was Indian anyway and had hair down to her feet." Below is his most recent find, from last fall. "Pretty, ain't it?"

cover girls

This is all rather convoluted, but I have these friends in Alabama who have a son who lives in New York who works for this website who interviewed Hannah. So here she is, today's cover of The Daily Single (which, obviously you don't have to be since she isn't which is a little confusing), and she would like you to vote for her today!

And in other web news, a lot of us wasted a lot of heartbreak on this hilarious site, where one is seduced into believing that there could  in fact be such a thing as a lap giraffe. Don't miss the Direct TV ads on the site, which were, of course, the point. Sigh.
Please note that Hannah and the giraffe strike similar poses.

arkansas knap-in

Perhaps you've never heard of knapping. You take a piece of flint or chert or obsidian or some other kind of flaky rock and you flake pieces off of it until it becomes an arrowhead or a spear point. Yes, just like the Stone Agers used to do, only now.
   They sell or trade them to each other and get together for knap-in weekends  where they come from all over to camp out and trade with one another and initiate newbies into their Ooga-Booga tribe. (Some of you may remember a phase when I used to try to teach children around the world to say "ooga booga" in hopes that they would shock adults and strangers with this utterance.)

    They remind me of nothing so much as the Rocket Men, who gather to shoot off their missiles and are as happy when the other guy's goes really far as when their own doesn't fizzle. They're spreading the dream. And so they were happy to talk to Bear, who has just started making his own points after finding fewer real arrowheads than he would like.

this is why

desolation row

Rural poverty looks like a junk truck in the yard and plasticked windows. Yet people here in the Ozarks seem no worse off than usual—they've always had it rough. And in the nearest big town (not that you've heard of it) there are new signs of cosmopolitanism since I was here last year: Walmart's now carries frozen edamame and seltzer. I was able to find fresh grapefruit juice and arugula at another grocery, the same one that also has a fill-your-own-drinkingwaterjug-at35centsapop stand. Rich and poor here have the same uneasy inequality as everywhere in the U.S.— writ small. I carry in my water like these folks next door, but also my seltzer. And my truck runs.

well

 

Not well. At least, not now. Having gotten a bid that would run me $4000-$5000 if all went well with the well,  it seems too steep to put a deep water well in for my month or so in residence in the Ozarks a year. You pay by the foot, and the 150-foot well of my reckoning is not a given in this neck of the woods. "If I heard that my well was going to cost $5000, I'd be tickled titty pink," says my plumber. "My well is 900 feet deep!" He's talkin' five figures, practically the entire cost of the Goose.

     So, no new well. I'm investigating the possibility of a new pump and tank for better water pressure and continuing to carry in drinking and cooking water.

    Note gallon jugs in the background.

it takes all kinds

Lest you doubt that there are weirder people in the world than you, consider the case of Goose Clothes Galore. where you can purchase your standard plastic goose ($29.99 with free outfit!) and then a giant wardrobe for your goose. The Easter bunny outfit (left) appears to be the seasonal favorite. Now you know what to get me for a Goosegift.

news roundup

Last week, the clan made appearances in The Media.
Eva was honored by Smokey the Bear for her prizewinning poster. You can read about her here and don't forget to click on the video link and the link to the poster itself.
Hannah and Chris entertained the Governor of Rhode Island in their patch of downtown Woonsocket, which you can read about here and here, though I don't have the TV link.
  In addition, an Alabama connection is interviewing Hannah about her business for his new website The Daily Single, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.

big moon

alla you kids, get outa my yard

"Ma'am, our trampoline is on your yard, is it okay if we leave it there?"
What was I gonna do, figure as the neighborhood witchwoman from New York (as if I don't already)? I was tempted to say, "If you clean up all that plastic shit from the back of your house and move that junk car from your front lawn," but this is the Ozarks and I am in Rome so instead I said, "Sure. If it starts bothering me I'll let you know."
  Later the same day: "Can we play soccer on your yard?"
  And today I slept wonderfully late, only to realize that the reason I was able to was because the school bus didn't stop in front of my house to load up all those eager young voices.
   I think I'll just sit around on the porch mumbling spells.

talk of the town

I expressed an interest in some hyacinths from Bear's yard, and he brought me a bunch. Unfortunately, he was sighted crossing the street to my house (that's his in the background) with his nosegay. Two different neighbors caught him purple-handed. I want some daffodils and forsythia too, but he might have to deliver in the dark of night. Or would that be worse? This is a very small town.

Goosing the web

Just checking out ability to post remote. View from the deck of tree being taken down.




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Location:Moore,United States

why do you call it the goose?

Making corned beef and cabbage today. Must overcook on account of Bear's fangs seem fewer and farther between.

the big muddy

The Ohio, the Wabash, the Mississippi and the fields of Indiana, Illinois and the bootheel of Missouri were all in flood as I blasted through yesterday. Rain, traffic, construction and rubbernecking made it a slow trip. I was, of course, concerned that the Eleven Point River might be flooding too, in which case my Goose was cooked.
   When I arrived at the Goose, a strange shadowy figure loomed inside: An almost unrecognizable Bear, who really looks like one now. After my initial terror (not), I was very happy to see that the water was on, the heat was on, the yard was raked and seeded, the house was cleaned, I didn't need to dig for my keys—and, thank fortune, my river, at least, was within its banks.

what's in the big black truck?

Taking off from NYC this ayem in my new truck. Well, not my truck, but the rental behemoth a brand new crew cab F-150. And I don't even have that many substandard chairs to haul.Guess how many?
And also. . .
Hint: mostly artwork.

crack hotel

Another view of my favorite flophouse in Woonsocket. On the road this morning and off to Missouri.

boilers

There is a peanut-roasting place in Providence, RI, that has been in business for 99 years. It is called the Virginia and Spanish Peanut Co. We went there the other day to buy raw (green) peanuts, so that I could make boiled peanuts, the topaz in the crown of the South. Chris was real disappointed that they were not actually green in color (maybe prepping for St. Patrick's Day?) but they did boil up nice, and I've been living on them since.

me and my laundry

local color

May I just say how deeply I am into old mill towns? Leaving beautiful downtown Woonsocket today.

before the fall

This silhouette is unmistakable wherever you see it, whether near Three Mile Island or, as in this case, Fall River, Mass. And every time I see it, I can't help wondering whether Jane Fonda did us an enormous disservice. Yes, we haven't had a Chernoble, but our air is filled with emissions and our war zones with oil wells. Europe runs on nuclear power. And, in a great big ironic loop,  in the U.S. so-called "clean energy" can't get off the ground on account of environmentalists talking about view sheds and noise pollution and fish. I wonder how much of the aversion we feel for these towers is that they look slightly sinister. Or do they only look sinister because we know what they betoken?

sweet potato

At its most basic, life is lungs breathing, heart beating, eating, sleeping and elimination. But then there are smiles and sweets. . .

three women

The Artist came to town bearing art—this mother/daughter portrait with his favorite portrait at 98 Riverside.

do i have to dress like this?

guess where I am

that time of year

Johnny says the crocuses are up. . .

farewell to ny

Goodbye cop at 72nd street, goodbye warm station at 96th street, goodbye good-in-good-weather-at-morning-rush-hour 79th street. The subway singer is packing up her kit bag of songs and going away for the weekend. And so am I.

tout va

 There we were, like back in the old days of LIFE magazine, sitting in the booth in the bistro where we spent so many afternoons and evenings. The decor is not much changed. Nor is the food. But the son of the original owner now runs the place, and someone who wasn't even born when we first began dining here joined les vieux this time.

the princess dream

It never really goes away. Whether it's royal- haired "Katy Perry" or your purple bedroom, or the tiara on your wedding gown, the princess thing just sticks around  until you have your own little heir to the throne. Or, like some girls, were more into being the prince.

gussying up the goose

So if I were putting in a bar at the Goose, I could serve Goose Island's Honkers Ale, Grey Goose vodka, gooseberry pie, roast you-know-what—and probably make the big goose egg!
Any other menu ideas?