HillyHundred2010Best (3)
Originally uploaded by Sylva.Johnson

Just how much is a bushel and a peck?

My parents have told my sister and me from the time we quite young just how much they love us. If you're wondering the details of that amount, I'll tell you. They loved us one bushel, one peck, and one hug, specifically located around the neck.

I later learned we were not the only children to be loved in such quantities,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNjv1WDGxt8
but like other things I didn't understand (What kind of metal is aleeeoooooh-minum, or was it al-YOU-min-ee-um? Which grade is A-levels? You were a prefect?!? At Hogwarts?!?) I didn't fully grasp just how much love my parents held for me. Even if I generally knew how much a peck amounts to, "What boy or girl is there who, when sent to buy a peck of apples, has not felt as though peck measures were getting smaller all the time?"

Luckily, I found a website which teaches how to make one's own peck measure and never be ripped off on love or apples again*!

http://chestofbooks.com/home-improvement/woodworking/Things-To-Make/How-To-Make-A-Peck-Measure.html

*In the course of this study, I realized that my parents had grossly underestimated their love, but I'm hoping this works like a bank error in my favor, and that the amount received shant be reduced upon comparing measurements.

Street (and everywhere else!) Sounds

This week I'm nutty about The Small's new interactive map which invites users to upload sounds to a map which is searchable by location/tag/user.

Their idea is that the sounds can be used as stock for film-makers, but I think that's just one option.

http://www.thesmalls.com/StreetSounds/

Search for slingers, an upload by my friend Becca. You might also enjoy some Hobo Music I posted.

Some are straightforward, some are cryptic clips of conversations which might inspire you.

It's just kicking off, with a fun film-making competition to boot, and they're hoping to get 5,000 sounds by the end of March.

So at least check it out, and maybe capture some sound and upload it. If you're a mac kid, shoot some video on your phone or camera, pull it into garage band and delete the video track (>Tracks>Delete Track) then export as mp3.

Go to it!

Because I'm tired of starting and never continuing with blogs when the content doesn't make sense together, I'm going to admit that my life doesn't make sense together and post whatever wherever.

Today I walked around downtown inviting people over for cereal and bananas with a girl who found out yesterday that she's 6 weeks pregnant. She showed me the picture, which I could make neither heads nor tail of. It didn't even really look like a peanut. She found out, she told me, because yesterday she was raped, so she went to the hospital. Conversationally, she told me this. Adding, "you, you know, it was one of those date rape things." I didn't know how to say, "No, I don't know."

I wouldn't have been there, but last night when Allen cooked me some amazing chili, WorkerBee knew I had arrived by car and asked if I'd run to the grocery to buy him some bowls and spoons to feed people breakfast. I foolishly said yes, although I had neither been the driver nor had the time to do said task. So to not go back on my word, I offered to bring the things tomorrow, now today, which meant getting up at 6 am to run to the grocery store where I bought 100 bowls, 100 spoons, and 20 bananas. Then I drove downtown.

When you pick up trash in a park, it's likely that someone will approach you and ask you what you're doing. They might squint their eyes and ask caustically if you're with some church group. When you explain that you're not with any group, that you're just there, picking up trash, they might smile and say "God bless you."

Ivory says to me "Hey, College Girl, you can slow down, you ain't walkin' to class or nothing." And I slow down.

Mole Hunting.

I'm finally fighting the not-so-good fight. Can't we all just live and let live? Ummmmm. No. Not when he's nibbling the roots of my oh-so-freshly planted nasturtiums, nurtured from seeds and then transplanted to the fresh tilled soil of dark earthy from-a-bag goodness, exported from Lowesdom. I don't want to kill the mole, but he's just wrecking everything. I stomp the soil back down, go take a shower, and come back to find the entire garden re-churned. I simply can't abide it. Thus, I leave a poem as warning.


Woodchucks

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.

Ten minutes later I dropped the mother.She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next.O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form.I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.

Maxine Kumin

Moldy roses.

Superstitions after all? I never thought I was superstitious, but I may have to reevaluate this standpoint after a few things I've found shocking. Number one, that there was a small chick fallen and splattered on the sidewalk on Easter morning. That just shouldn't happen. Number two, that my easter rose grew mold. I didn't even think of roses as something that might grow mold, although I know it makes sense. And everything grows mold in Italy. Number three, I'll think of when it happens. It's probably something like being depressed while in the most beautiful country with a loving Italian family and making art. It just shouldn't happen.

Sleep Chronicles, Part 1.

Last night was one of the worst nights of sleep I can remember. Maria gave me something for sleeping, as she has once before, and both times it just seems to make me over alert. All night, I was obsessively rearranging the pillows and sheets and my body within the bed. Getting up and closing the shutters. Getting up and changing clothes. Getting up and tugging at the curtains. Back in bed, turning this way and that, trying to find some perfect position where I might fall asleep. With my eyes closed, I saw the room before me but various photoshop effects were in constant motion over the landscape as I tried to get it just right. Some burning, then dodging, and then the stamp tool would move my pillow from one place to another. Very strange. Finally a short dream about college, running into Y as we were both moving back in, talking about housing and driving to school and at some point there were two boys who hit the descriptions of Austrian host brothers although they were American and I don't know how they came into the picture. Maybe we were at a museum. Anyway, no. We were at a random old junk warehouse, with especially a lot of toys. And there were lots of these mirror books in different themes. They had usually only 2 pages that folding out on either side and looked in general like those things people hold to their face when lying out in lawn chairs, all silver and shiny. Only the front cover would have something else, like Mickey mouse and at the time I didn't even think about the tanning objects. These had some other use, I don't know what. Anyway, I was there and was searching through all the flea market sort of stuff with them and park ranger looking cop comes and up and says something like "Did you think I wouldn't catch you?" And details how everyday she watches them pull out on the highway and take it to about 90, that she's always there and tracking them and that she's given them enough tickets they they should know better than to drive the way they do. I thought I was awake for this. Finally I fall asleep just a little, where I know I'm kind of sleeping, and I'm feeling calm. And I dream that it's a sort of critique and someone else and I have very similar patterns in our work, and the teacher comments on the design and we both shrug and say "Bedsheets." Soon after that, the alarm. I wonder if any of the troubles of tossing and turning were due to my sorely bruised bottom from riding for an hour along cobblestones and bumpy river paths with my rickety second-hand bike?