Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts.
There are some really creative folks out there. P.S. There will be a Special Birthday Edition of LOLz on Friday this week!
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP FOR 23 AUGUST 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
NEW POEM
She hated gym except on days
when rain kept them indoors
to learn English Country Dancing
paired with another girl, hand in
hand, one body following another
and there was no need for showers
afterward, no exposing her flat chest
to public assessment. She had not
yet guessed at any benefit from
an all-girls school, but fallow soil
and seed were joined already,
waiting for miracles. Which we
now in middle age will harvest
naked, sweaty, music loud and
laughter brash. I have loved her
long before we met. We were
those shy girls together.
© Maggie Jochild, 10:16 a.m. on 20 August 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
TEAM COLOURS
Except to remind me I am a child of the Cross-Timbers, of a particular place and time whose meaning may now exist only to me.
Mama told me when she was a child, she read a book called The Blue Bird of Happiness whose plot revolved around the idea that those who have passed on live in a frozen, static paradise most of the time. But duing the moments someone still alive remembers them, they are able to spring into warm-fleshed frenzied activity, able to move and talk as long as they are being thought about. She said even after she found out it wasn't true, she kept pushing herself to remember whose who have gone on, because in fact that is the only immortality they'll ever have.
I think she handed that compulsion right into my desperate hands.
This photo of her is from December 1964 in Dilley, taken with a Polaroid and somewhat the worse for that film's deterioration. She was sitting with her sister, my Aunt Sarah, talking about they parents they didn't get to have growing up, sharing bits of memory. I know well that sad look on her face. Behind her, to the left, is a fold-down desk in the built-in next to the fireplace. It was at that desk, that year, sitting on the arm of the chair she is in, that I wrote my first poem.
LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP FOR 16 AUGUST 2011
Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts.
There are some really creative folks out there.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
HANDING ON THE PAST
So I decided to spend the gift on something other than grim necessity. I could hear each of them in my head saying "Yes!" Consequently, I now have a combo scanner/printer/copier that networks with my new laptop, including the ability to scan from slides and negatives.
During the 1980s, at the height of my genealogical travels, everywhere I went I asked folks I visited if I could copy their family photos. I had a camera with a special lens and stand that made this easy. Most of these photographs were in danger of being lost and did not exist elsewhere, certainly not in negative form. I also photographed places and gravestones, keeping detailed notes. I have hundreds of these negatives safely stored in labeled sleeves.
I was also inspired by JEB, Lynda Koolish, Cathy Cade, Tee Corinne, and many others during the 1970s to document my own life and community. I have dozens of albums stuffed with photographs of the wimmin and events I knew. Few of them have ever been scanned.
So, my goal for the next couple of months is to render all these images to a digital format that can be easily shared and reliably preserved. It's a monumental project, something I think of as part of the heritage I want to leave behind. I will post later on the question of privacy and distribution, asking for your feedback.
This weekend I have embarked on the oldest images, family going back to the first advent of photography. As I scan, I am definitively identifying each photo, running it through editing, and posting it at my online genealogical tree -- instant sharing. I will share a few of these in future posts with stories attached as I write them.
And it frees me up for the brave new world I have embarked on with Margot.
For now, the photo above shows me at age 9 (on the left) with my cousin Sally and little brother Bill in Dilley, Texas, December 1964. This is in our dining room, which was also my only space in the house. I was being abused by Craig though not quite sexually yet. I had just written my first poem and found out I was a lesbian. Sally is my cousin, Mama's sister's (Aunt Sarah) younger daughter, 4 months apart from me in age. The stuffed lion was called Leo. We are sitting on my bed.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
NEW POEM
CYBER LOVE
When we skype, my girlfriend holds
her laptop in her eager hands
the better to imagine she can cup my face
or lace her fingers through mine
She has a dimple in one wrist, and
gestures often, leans toward the screen
when we laugh, which is a lot
She rolls her own and smokes 'em strong
Puts balm on her lips after, flashing
a clunky deco watch. She'll lift her
gorgeous calves to show me the latest
non-les-fem shoes she had to have
while ranting about racism or telling
tales of her punk days at the uni
We are so hot for each other, the line
sometimes melts and turns us into blurs
She scowls at mention of my latest ex
My mother will never meet her
She hectors me to write, to sleep, to
cherish my friends, to fight the fuckwits
and emotionally retarded out there
After we click off, I lie back in the dark
and think of England.
© Maggie Jochild, written 10 August 2011, 7:05 p.m.
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