last day

 

Ms. Smith.

 

Dear Dodo Fans,

Your song for today comes from one of our dedicated readers, who comb the internet for the good stuff you to come to expect on this channel!

One thousand three hundred days.

 

Dear Readers & Rollers,

Guess what today is!  A very big day!  Today is day 1300 of consecutive roller skating!  To celebrate it, I hope you will roller skate.  If you can't do that, maybe watch this film of some damn fine skaters.

It is also time for my regularly scheduled enjoinder that you should roller skate too!  In 2007, when I got my first adult pair of roller skates, there was only one YouTube video on roller skating; made by a wonderful roller derby player named Cat.  Now, well, now you can take your pick of terrific and free video instruction.  It's a wonderful time to roller skate!   There are many shops, and a lot of skates to choose from, in a pretty large range of prices.  

If you are feeling shy about searching the internet, here are a few links for you to try:

A shop.

A tutorial.

Another shop.

Another tutorial.

A place you can rent skates.

A pop-up rink.

A manufacturer of skates.

Happy Nostalgia & Merry Tradition!

 

Ellsworth Kelly, "Green with Red," from "Suite of Twenty-Seven Color Lithographs," 1964-65.

Dear Culture Critics,

Here we are again, trying to parse this great lummox of a Christian Juggernaut Holiday, with our secret love for red and green wrapping paper, Las Posadas, and glittery gifts (remind me to tell you about the ne plus ultra of glittery gifts that I received this year).

Whatcha gonna say?  Happy Solstice?  Season's Greetings?  Merry Winter?  Who ya gonna call?  Elves?  Rudolph?  Frosty?  Zwarte Piet?  Kalle Anka?

Well, it may not seem kind of me to bring it up on this holiday eve, but be careful how much of that Tradition and Nostalgia that you drink: is it something you built, or something someone else receives power from your yoking yourself to it?  

Here's to a better world next year, filled with new traditions that you make yourself, from scratch.

barbed wire

Dear Observer,

The museum in my town has this beautiful collection of fence wire.  The museum, like all museums, might be considered boring: all these collections, all this saved rusty, dusty stuff that may have no meaning anymore.  Certainly, the meaning has changed.

I love this collection of wire because of its formal beauty- the lyrical lines, the punctuation of the bends and barbs.  It was on a painted plywood the last time I visited the museum, and of course, what did I want from my museum but frozen time.  I wanted to visit it and photograph the wire the way it had been formerly presented on the painted plywood, black marker detailing each wire segment.  But, the collection has been updated, and is now on some kind of plasticky board and these oversized tongue depressors hold the specifics.  The change has kept me from giving you these beautiful wires, but I am ready, now, after 2 years, to accept and embrace this change.

What we save, how we save it, and where and when we present it are all such fascinating things to ponder on a grey December day, in a collection of musings, in a virtual, visual format that is organized chronologically.

they made me happy

 

Dear Grieving,

Your song for today.  Once more.

Red Shoes

 

Dear Chance,

Pink & red?!  Yes, sometimes we just get lucky.  I guess that's what keeps us going on; getting out of bed and trying again: the hope that we might get lucky today.  

There's a heap of unlucky chance, too, of course, and that thought can keep you in your bed, hoping that it will pass you by, just this once.  It seems an odd sort of razor's edge to live on, and mostly we don't notice it and believe we are on a flat, smooth, level, un-cracked, surface. 

Let's talk about it some more; meet me at the drugstore, bring a raincoat and a suitcase, bring your dark eyes.

The backside.

 

Slipping

 

The String of Pearls, William Paxton, 1908.

(ghastly, isn't it?)

Dear Friends,

I have been slipping.  I have been remiss.  I have been playing video games instead of writing to you regularly.

I have some things I want to send you soon:  a cut and paste project I am working on, some photos, a complaint about Other People.  Maybe I won't send that to you, you know it all already anyway.  But, for now, there is this, a funny thing, a wry thing, that I hope you will enjoy!

related material

 

Mujer Latina

Dear All,

Are you busy this week?  Are you cooking & thanking?  Well, I have something that goes with that, and with a recent post on Murder Ballads:  A Narcocorrido.  I spied it next to Teenage Tragedy Song, and I think you are going to love it; it's the song of the day!

meandering

 

A project.

 

Poketo Wave Comb

Dear November,

I have not forgotten you!  Quite the opposite:  I know you are here, the time of the soft light and the low sun, and Orion lying on the ridge each evening.  I am happy to know you, November!  I have been busy, because you know how it is, December is coming, and November, as usual, is mainly used to prepare for December and January.  But, you remain a favorite, and I have been shopping for gifts for you!

This year, I thought you might like a pink tortoiseshell comb, a rain coat, and a jar of crunchy chili condiment.  I also thought you might like this link, to a wonderful poetry project at the MoMA.  I got it from a friend, and I hope you enjoy it.

Until later this month!

Play it Right.

 

Dear Radio Dodo Listeners,

What do you like best?  This or this?  Write me at the usual address in Pueblo, Colo., and let me know, won't you? 

Perspectives are Numerous.

 

Distancing Bench, Kimberly A. Kelzner, 2020.

Dear Listener,

I want it now, and that must be being in the moment, musn't it?  

I worked many years to learn to say yes to things, and now I find it was the wrong answer, and I have to train myself to say the much more difficult, but shorter, 'no.'  

I made a great confession; and I told how it made a lie of so much I had done; and my confessor answered that 'we need an ego, too, you know.'  Did I know that?

Join me, if you like, in asking yourself these questions, or, just play this song for the day, and read about the musical genre of the Murder Ballad.  Next week, we shall write our own Murder Ballads and put them in a safe place, like the Smithsonian, to be examined by the enlightened folks of the future!

Hum along.

 

Dear Listener,

Here is your song for today; I hope you have time to hum along with it.  Have the original, too; it's a lovely, cinematic song, with all kinds of musical references.

Starnies

 

Sketch, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

 

Dear You,

They are playing our song!  That has only happened twice in 22 years!  Still, it's worth noting, celebrating.  The starnies are shining bright, and I still believe it was the right song to choose.  Can you imagine?  The pressure of choosing just one song?  One song, to mean everything?  To mean for keeps, to mean 'love', to mean union?  I don't know that I could do it today, but I was younger and more confident in those days.

Now this is a bit of a digression, but I lived in Edinburgh for a summer once, and we studied Scots poetry.  Scots poetry means Bobbie Burns, for one thing, and a lot of translating for people like me.  I loved this, of course, because I love words in all languages.  I love that they have all these shades of meaning, and that starnies could equal little stars in basically the same language as my own.  If I could get anyone to listen, I might just spend every day talking about a beautiful word of my acquaintance.  Or, maybe I don't mean 'listen' so much as I mean 'get paid to.'

I have talked at length on working, jobs, vocations, and careers lately; and it has me asking you this question today: what do you wish they paid you to do?  It's only right, I feel, to answer as well as ask, and I think I want to be paid to run a roller rink and to encourage people.  Does that sound lofty?  What the heck do I mean by 'encourage'?  I mean that I want to tell people, often, and on a one to one basis, that they are okay, they are alright, they are here, they are fine, they are heard and valued. Yes, it does sound a bit lofty after all!

Jane.

 

Dear Jane,

Why do they always tell these stories about you?  Why is it always procrastination, break-down, and sorrow?  Songs of failure titled Jane.  Books of self-destruction titled Jane.  Well, Jane I want your story told right, so I will tell it myself.  

Jane stole for you, for you and your addiction.  She wanted nothing more than to make you happy, make you free.  Jane pulled all her punches, and she hid the body for you.  Jane's real story is that she never would settle for what was offered her.  Jane wanted something real, in a world of phoniness, or worse, apathy.  She tended a small garden, illegally, behind the big warehouse.  She gave the food away, and she lived in a little trailer.  She didn't have a car, but when she needed to move, she'd find someone who would do it for a knitted scarf.  

Jane's real story is that she mostly just keeps on, and no one even notices much.  She doesn't break down over death or losing a man, and she doesn't lose a step when a child is lost, because there is always another child that will need to be looked after, there is always another day, and she is not so selfish as you seem to always write her.  And, I'd like to think, that if anyone was listening, you could hear Jane say it.

Sweet

Says

Baby

Lady

Queen

B.

the wind in the trees

     

Young Pines and Sky, c. 1935

oil on paper

88.8 cm x 58.2 cm

Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust

Dear Nature-Lover,

Maybe I should have addressed this to the "word-lover?" because my letter today is to give you this fine word, psithurism.  I got it from a young man that I met at my job, and I have been saving it for you for nearly two years now.*  

It means the sound of the wind soughing through the branches- sounds like sawing, but also sighing, so a kind of back and forth movement seems to be indicated in thinking of this word.  Psithurism also sounds when spoken like the wind in the branches.  It reminded me of another favorite of mine, petrichor, which refers to the smell of the rain.  Here is a very fine list of words, including petrichor and psithurism.  

And so to your song of the day, In the Pines.

*

That might seem funny, folding up a beautiful word like this one in a little scrap of paper, like a saved slice of cake from a party, and then waiting so long to give it to you; and it is funny, and even a little odd, but I am big saver of things, a hoarder, even, if you like, and I was saving it for The Right Time.  The time when I might add another little something to this offering, in this case, it's the song of the day.

Pony in Striped Pajamas

 

reasons

 

Dearest Ones,

Are you feeling down in the dumps?  Under the weather?  Low?  Maybe just a mild case of ennui?  Well, as I have remarked before, without coffee, there is no reason to get up, but, I realize there are actually two reasons to get up:  One, coffee.  Two, Laurie Anderson.

If there is any love left over after showering it onto Laurie Anderson (because make no mistake, I love her with every cell; that kind of love where you desire only to be subsumed by the object of your love, the love that can only be satisfied by becoming Laurie Anderson), I send it to you, dear heart!

Until we next meet.