Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich

Advice to Myself

By Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.

Except one word to another.
Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator.

Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.


~From: "Original Fire: New and Selected Poems", by Louise Erdrich, page 149


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"There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Portable Emerson", page 228, 'The Over-Soul'
 
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I'm trying to take the advice here today.  It's not working.  I want to clean house, do laundry, sort junk and not write.  Not writing is easy.  Housework is hard.  I want to write and I've got nothing, zilch.  I'm tabula rasa, blank.  Maybe the puttering will inspire me, jump start my engine.  Later, friends, 
 
xoxo,
 
~Marion

The Language of the Brag by Sharon Olds

This poem has been floating around in my head all day today, so I guess it wants to be here.  I love this poem and how powerful & proud it makes me feel as a woman.  I found the photo online and it's just perfect for this poem, as most of the photos had men throwing knives at women.  NOT!

Read and enjoy.  Blessings!  ~Marion


THE LANGUAGE OF THE BRAG
By Sharon Olds

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

my belly big with cowardice and safely,
my stool black with iron pills,
my huge breasts oozing mucus,
my legs swelling, my hands swelling,
my face swelling and darkening, my hair
falling out, my inner sex
stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.
I have lain down.
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and feces and water and
slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,

I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.

"The Language of the Brag" is from SATAN SAYS by Sharon Olds.
Copyright © 1980

Leaves Compared With Flowers by Robert Frost & Moonflowers!

July arrived in Louisiana wearing Moonflowers in her hair!  The heart-shaped leaves are so large this year that they brought to my mind this Robert Frost poem that I love and have memorized.

LEAVES COMPARED WITH FLOWERS

By Robert Frost

A tree's leaves may be ever so good,

So may its bark, so may its wood;

But unless you put the right thing to its root
It never will show much flower or fruit.

But I may be one who does not care
Ever to have tree bloom or bear.
Leaves for smooth and bark for rough,
Leaves and bark may be tree enough.

Some giant trees have bloom so small
They might as well have none at all.
Late in life I have come on fern.
Now lichens are due to have their turn.

I bade men tell me which in brief,
Which is fairer, flower or leaf.
They did not have the wit to say,
Leaves by night and flowers by day.

Leaves and bark, leaves and bark,
To lean against and hear in the dark.
Petals I may have once pursued.
Leaves are all my darker mood.

Backside of opening Moonflower, wet with early evening rain.

She looks to be made of delicate silk unfolding, with a starfish inside.

Tiny, sweet-smelling stamens that drive the Sphinx Moth crazy.  We await their return eagerly.

A frilly Moonflower, freshly open, dripping with raindrops.

I have to say flowers win over leaves, to me.  But then I think of my 3 Weeping Willows and have to recant when I see them dancing with a wild wind or flowing on a gentle breeze.

Blessings!

~Marion

Do you prefer leaves or flowers?

"'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!"
~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," Lyrical Ballads, 1798

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"If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom." ~Terri Guillemets

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"Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity." ~John Ruskin

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A Few Movies I Watch Over and Over

My favorite movie of all time:  "Harold and Maude".  The soundtrack by Cat Stevens is worth getting the movie.  When I grow up I want to be just like Ruth Gordon's free-spirited, bohemian character and live in a house made from a railroad boxcar.

Every time I watch this movie, I cry my eyes out.  What an awesome story of love, sin, hypocrisy and redemption!  It has no equal.  If you've never seen this movie, then add it to your MUST-SEE list.

I take back what I said about the previous movie.  "Babette's Feast" is a moving, beautiful redemption story and a classic, also.  It was written by the amazing Isak Dinesen and will take your breath away.

Being a lover of all things Anais Nin, I got this movie when it first came out.  It's fabulous and  follows the first diary perfectly.  Uma Thurman became June Miller, Henry's first wife.  And Maria de Medeiros was truly Anais Nin.  I've never seen a movie that cast characters so perfectly matched to their real life counterparts.  It's also pretty hot and steamy.  If you love Nin's diaries, then you'll love this movie.

I have a huge crush on James Spader.  And this movie is absolutely wild.  Ray brought it home from the library and after we watched it we both said, "Do ya think they even know what goes on in this movie downtown at the main library?"  LOL!  I also adore Maggie Gyllenhaal who steals the movie from Spader.

"Northern Exposure" has no equal.  I bought it one season at a time and have watched them all until I have entire passages memorized.  My favorite character?  Chris in the Morning played so handsomely by the illustrious John Corbett.  I am madly in love with him as the literature loving, motorcycle-riding, Freud-quoting DJ in Cicely, Alaska.  Seldom has a televison show been filled with so much poetry, philosophy and just plain fun.  On of my favorite lines is "It's not the thing you fling, it's the fling itself," spoken by Chris when he flings a piano with a catapult.  He was going to fling a cow originally.  (Someone had already done a cow to his dismay, but from thence comes the quote.)  If you've never seen this series, put it on your list, too.

And last, fittingly, is "Six Feet Under".  This is my 2nd favorite TV series after "Northern Exposure".  It's about the dysfunctional (i.e. normal) Fisher family who owns and runs a funeral home and that's like saying "Gone With the Wind" is about the South.  I can't do it justice with mere words.  Frances Conroy as the uptight mother, Ruth, is amazing and fun to watch.  Before Michale C. Hall became famous as the serial killing blood spatter expert in "Dexter",  he played the part of David Fisher in this show.   I only wish they'd gone on for a few more years.

On that note, I hope you all have a happy & safe 4th of July weekend.  It's raining here, so I'll be hunkered down reading.  I'm into Bram Stoker's "Dracula" at the moment.

What are a few of your favorite movies?

Blessings,

~Marion

"Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off." ~Author Unknown

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"Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover." ~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

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Dharma by Billy Collins

My dog, Cody, and one of the many kittens he's rescued from feral catdom and given to us.  He cares for them like a mother cat until they're grown.  A truly kind, compassionate, loving being!!!

Dharma
by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her dog house
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Ghandi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

from "Sailing Alone Around the Room".

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Who can not love Billy Collins?  He's the poet of the average man/woman.  I own all of his books.  My only bitch is that he doesn't write fast enough.   :-)  Happy Friday!! 

Blessings,

~Marion


"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives." ~Sue Murphy

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"Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat." ~Oxford Union Society, London, Rule 46


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"The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue." ~Author Unknown

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Slow Dance by Matthew Dickman

SLOW DANCE
By Matthew Dickman

More than putting another man on the moon,
more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga,
we need the opportunity to dance
with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance
between the couch and dinning room table, at the end
of the party, while the person we love has gone
to bring the car around
because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart
if any part of us got wet. A slow dance
to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people
rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant.
A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey.
It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting
on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck.
Your hands along her spine. Her hips
unfolding like a cotton napkin
and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky
are dead. The my body
is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody,
Stairway to Heaven, power-chord slow dance. All my life
I’ve made mistakes. Small
and cruel. I made my plans.
I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine.
The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children
before they turn four. Like being held in the arms
of my brother. The slow dance of siblings.
Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him,
one of my great loves, he is absolutely human,
and when he turns to dip me
or I step on his foot because we are both leading,
I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer.
The slow dance of what’s to come
and the slow dance of insomnia
pouring across the floor like bath water.
When the woman I’m sleeping with
stands naked in the bathroom,
brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit
into the sink. There is no one to save us
because there is no need to be saved.
I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed
the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress
covered in a million beads
comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life,
I take her hand in mine. I spin her out
and bring her in. This is the almond grove
in the dark slow dance.
It is what we should be doing right now. Scraping
for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.

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I love this guy's poetry.  I own this book and each and every poem is amazing.  And guess what?  His brother, Michael, is a poet also!  I have his book, "The End of the West" and it's also a fabulous book of poems. Imagine being able to share poetry-love with your brother?  It must be like magic....

It's sweltering-hot & clammy-humid here in the deep South.  I know, I know, I should be used to it and expect it, right?  It's like childbirth.  You forget the pain after the birth when they hand you that precious baby.  Every year, I forget the heat-pain until it hits.  The heat slaps you in the face and sucks the air from your lungs the minute you step out the door.  (Multiply the heat-pain times a hundred if you're anywhere near menopause....)  And to top it off, we're having a drought here in my part of Louisiana.  (But oh, I have some luscious, lovely, luminous tomatoes on the vines!!!) 

On that note, I'm out of here.  Stay cool and take time to smell the flowers and the tomato leaves....and if you get the chance....slow dance.

Blessings,

~Marion~

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"What is one to say about June,
the time of perfect young summer,
the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months,
and with as yet no sign to remind one that its
fresh young beauty will ever fade." ~Gertrude Jekyll

The Seven of Pentacles by Marge Piercy

The Seven Of Pentacles

By Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

~ Marge Piercy ~

Thinking of Night Poems

Night Song
By Philip Booth

Beside you,
Lying down at dark,
My waking fits your sleep.

Your turning
Flares the slow-banked fire
Between our mingled feet,

And there,
Curved close and warm
Against the nape of love,

Held there,
Who holds your dreaming
Shape, I match my breathing

To your breath;
And sightless, keep my hand
On your heart's breast, keep

Nightwatch
On your sleep to prove
There is no dark, nor death.

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Plaque for a Brass Bed
By Charles Philbrick

Everything else is just furniture.  This  bed
is frame on which, in light or dark, forgiveness
weaves itself, and failure fails to matter.
Here love has worked, and pain has visited;
here life has struck; here death may still the sheets:
this bed our garden, altar, engine-room,
the tablet of whatever testament our blood
has written in our more than twenty years.

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Quote by Miranda July

Rant on Dragonflies, Crude Oil and My Louisiana...

A dragonfly has a life span of more than a year, but very little of that life is actually as an adult dragonfly. There are three stages of the dragonfly life cycle, 1)  the egg, 2)  the nymph, and 2)  the adult dragonfly. Most of the life cycle of a dragonfly is lived out in the nymph stage and you don’t see them at all, unless you are swimming underwater in a lake or pond with your eyes opened, of course.

The Egg Stage

A male and a female dragonfly will mate while they are flying in the air. After two dragonflies mate, the female dragonfly will lay her eggs on a plant in the water, or if she can’t find a suitable plant she will just drop them into the water.

Mr. and Mrs. Dragonfly doing their acrobatic mating dance.

The Nymph Stage

Once the dragonfly eggs hatch, the life cycle of a dragonfly larva begins as a nymph. A nymph looks like a little alien creature. It hasn’t grown its wings yet and has what looks like a crusty hump hanging onto its back. Dragonfly nymphs live in the water while they grow and develop into dragonflies. This portion of the dragonfly life cycle can take up to four years to complete, and if the nymph cycle is completed in the beginning of the wintertime, it will remain in the water until spring when it is warm enough to come out.
Dragonfly nymphs live in ponds or marshy areas because the waters are calmer than in a stream or river. Sometimes they can be found in the calmer backwaters of rivers, too. Dragonfly nymphs may eat smaller dragonfly nymphs as they develop. 

If their habits are covered in oil, an entire generation or more of dragonflies will be destroyed.  SHAME on BP for not taking care of this travesty.  The president should have the entire Coast Guard out there mopping, sopping, shoveling or just sucking up that oil.  WHERE IS THE HELP??  This disaster is making Katrina look small.  An entire ecosystem is being destroyed for only God knows how many generations and the oil is fast spreading to beaches and wetlands down the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The Adult Dragonfly Stage

Once the nymph is fully grown, and the weather is right, it will complete the metamorphosis into a dragonfly by crawling out of the water up the stem of a plant. The nymph will shed its skin onto the stem of the plant and will then be a young dragonfly. The skin that the nymph left behind is called the exuvia and you can find the exuvia still stuck to the stem for a long time after the dragonfly has left it.

Once the dragonfly leaves the exuvia it is a full grown dragonfly. The dragonfly will hunt for food and begin to look for a mate. Once the dragonfly finds a mate, the female will find a body of calm water that will be a good place to lay her eggs, and the life cycle of the dragonfly begins all over again. Adult dragonflies only live about two months.  And we are so fortunate to be able to watch these flying jewels and live beside them.

An aerial view of the Louisiana coastline & wetlands, a delicate ecosystem full of life.  This is in the Grand Isle area.  For years when I was a kid, we'd drive down to Grand Isle with our crabbing nets and chicken necks as bait in the ice chest and we'd go crabbing, catching ourselves several ice chests full and cook them right there in a rented cabin on stilts on the outdoor cooker.  Nothing has ever tasted better to me than those crabs cooked fresh and eaten right out of the Gulf of Mexico with a few fat shrimp tossed in for the litle kids who didn't want to beat the crabs and pick the sweet claw meat out.  All of my childhood vacations were either on the Louisiana coast, the Biloxi, MS coast, or the Texas coast. They were easy drives and we never had much money, but could always scrape up enough to rent a no-tell motel and fish, crab and lay out on the beach and enjoy the breezes.  These are all of my childhood vacation memories.  This summer both of my children and my sister have plans to vacation on the Gulf coast.  They're watching the situation closely and pray for BP to get busy cleaning up this mess.

A pink and purple dragonfly, one of the hundreds of species of this delicate bug.

My first tattoo, a dragonfly on my shoulder.

I've lived in Louisiana most of my life.  I remember catching dragonflies as a very young child and getting them to land on my tiny fingers.  They are creatures of water, earth, then air.

Our swamps and their delicate ecosystems are in danger.  I pray for everyone to still boycott BP until they somehow manage to stop that oil from billowing into the Gulf of Mexico and put together a clean up plan that involves all of the areas affected.  God help my beautiful State and all of it's coastal wildlife.

Blessings,

~*~ Marion ~*~ 

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ~Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923

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In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. ~Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971

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The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. ~Ralph Nader, quoted in Linda Botts, ed., Loose Talk, 1980

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When you defile the pleasant streams
And the wild bird's abiding place,

You massacre a million dreams
And cast your spittle in God's face.

~John Drinkwater

How to Stuff a Pepper by Nancy Willard

-Baby Belpepper growing in my garden yesterday-

How to Stuff a Pepper
by Nancy Willard

Now, said the cook, I will teach you
how to stuff a pepper with rice.

Take your pepper green, and gently,
for peppers are shy. No matter which side
you approach, it's always the backside.
Perched on her green buttocks, the pepper sleeps.
In its silk tights, it dreams
of somersaults and parsley,
of the days when the sexes were one.

Slash open the sleeve
as if you were cutting into a paper lantern,
and enter a moon, spilled like a melon,
a fever of pearls,
a conversation of glaciers.
It is a temple built to the worship
of morning light.

I have sat under the great globe
of seeds on the roof of that chamber,
too dazzled to gather the taste I came for.
I have taken the pepper in hand,
smooth and blind, a runt in the rich
evolution of roses and ferns.
You say I have not yet taught you

to stuff a pepper?
Cooking takes time.

Next time we'll consider the rice.

From:  "Cries of the Spirit, A Celebration of Women's Spirituality" edited by Marilyn Sewell, Pages 202, 203

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My newest anthology of poetry, "Cries of the Spirit, A Celebration of Women's Spirituality" edited by Marilyn Sewell.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I'm so glad to be back to Blogland.  I MISSED YOU ALL!!!  I felt like I'd lost a whole village full of friends while I was offline!  I hope to visit everyone and get caught up by this weekend.  Thank you all for your comments.  I read them all and cracked up when I saw the tomato perfume recipe.  Believe you me, I plan to try it out.  It just might make me rich and then I can open a used book store and give Tarot readings and sell coffee, books, cats and exotic Tomato perfume.  I'll have several black cats milling about as my one female cat just give birth to 3 black kittens in my closet.  Anybody want a black cat?  LOL!

I took my 14 year old bookaholic grandson to the local library sale last week.  (I'm passing along my best tightwad secrets to him, one at a time.)  Our library has a sale twice a week and most of the books are priced at a quarter or fifty cents.  It's truly a godsend for a tightwad bookaholic such as myself.  I call it good book karma....There are books culled from the nine library branches and books that are donated to every branch from individuals.  We're after the donated books.

I gave him a crash course in how to 'work' the sale.  First, you quickly look over the books on the big center table as they are newest books.  Then you pick up any books that look new whether hardback or paperback and put them in your stack.  Hardbacks must have the dust jacket and be in good shape.  Then you peruse the books on the shelves, again choosing any that look newer.  The next thing you do is check the publication dates to make sure the books are less than 3 years old and make sure there is no writing in the books. Discard any that are book club books or library books unless you want to keep them.  Pay for the books.

Next, we throw our haul into my truck and boogie on down to Hastings Book Store and sell the books.  Hastings buys and sells used books, CD's and movies and I've got their buying system down to an art form.  (At Christmas one year I made almost $200 in one trip).  Last week we paid $2.50 for our books at the library sale and sold them for $22.50.  I had a $5.00 off coupon from the Sunday paper, so we were in the black for $25.00.  I have to say that my grandson was astonished and amazed at his Grammy's talent, especially when he got 6 new Naruto books 'free'. 

I managed to sneak in the anthology of poetry shown above.  It's an awesome book and has most of my favorite female authors in it, many that I've shared here.  It's one of those anthologies that just keep on giving.  (I saw it used at Amazon, but it has a different cover if any of you go to look for it).  I highly recommend it.  It's going right next to my other two favorite anthologies, "Staying Alive" and "The Best Erotic Poems from 1800 to the Present".

We came home extremely pleased with ourselves.  Since school is out, he said he planned to raid the library sale twice each week and teach his Mom my system.  There's nothing like a good deal!

While I've been offline I've been attempting to relieve my life of some clutter and have also been hunting down some important papers.  It's an ongoing job due to my system which is to open a drawer, pull out the contents, then spend the next 2 days perusing the photos, cutting out stuff from the magazines for use in my altered books and then finally discarding the junk after sorting.  I may get done before I'm 60 years old.   For instance, last week I found a little box holding my oldest daughter's baby teeth.  Awwwww, right?  NOT!  She'll be 37 in November!!  I called her and asked her if she wanted her baby teeth.  She was laughing so hard I couldn't tell if she said yes or no, so I put them back in the little treasure box. 

I could go on and on for hours, but it's thundering and I'm praying it turns into a real rain storm.  We've had a drought of sorts here with little or no rain for many weeks.  I've had to water my garden almost daily.  (The heat index today and for all next week is predicted to be 105 degrees!)

Wishing you rainbows, sunshine, blessings and love,

~*~ Marion ~*~

"Do you have doubts about life?  Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble?  Look at the sky: that is for you.  Look at each person's face as you pass on the street:  those faces are for you.  And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground:  all these things are for you.  They are as much for you as they are for other people.  Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing.  Stand up and face the east.  Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky.  It's okay to be unsure.  But praise, praise, praise."  From:  "No One Belongs Here More Than You Stories by Miranda July", Page 11

A decoupaged page in my newest altered book.  (Many thanks, Carmen, for the buckets of inspiration, and for the materials to get me going.  You rock!)