In a recent blog post, loyal friend of RAMH Froog dredged up a name I hadn’t seen or heard for years: “cartoonist” Hugh MacLeod.*
I no longer have any idea where I first encountered MacLeod and his interesting work. At the time, though, he was struggling to forge some sort of business from his creative output while [...]

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From whiskey river:
A Word on Statistics
Out of every hundred people,
those who always know better:
fifty-two.
Unsure of every step:
almost all the rest.
Ready to help,
if it doesn’t take long:
forty-nine.
Always good,
because they cannot be otherwise:
four — well, maybe five.
Able to admire without envy:
eighteen.
Led to error
by youth (which passes):
sixty, plus or minus.
Those not to be messed with:
four-and-forty.
Living in constant fear
of [...]

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From whiskey river:
Have you been to the source of a river? It’s a very mystic place. You get dizzy when you stay for a while. An especially big river has several sources, and the real source, the farthest point which turns to the major stream, is moist and misty, with some kind of ancient smell, [...]

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[Photo above, "Standing Still," is by Beth Dickman. Click to see the larger original.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Moment
In the Romanesque church round stones
that ground down so many prayers and generations
kept humble silence and shadows slept in the apse
like bats in winter furs.
We went out. The pale sun shone,
tinny music tinkled softly
from a car, two jays
studied [...]

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Okay, I know I’m at risk of exhausting your patience with all the recent round of congratulations, thanks, trophy-giving, and so on. I just want to point you in the direction of one more nice little feather in the cap of an RAMH regular. It’s especially nice to be able to do so via a [...]

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(hat tip to Janet Reid)

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["Crossroads," by Hungarian artist István Orosz. For more about this image, see the Note at the bottom of this post.]
From whiskey river:
A Note
Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;
to be a dog
or stroke its warm fur;
to tell pain
from everything it’s not;
to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to [...]

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A recent Murderati blog entry by Toni McGee Causey just knocked me out. Her “simple” premise: our designing and constructing the imaginative world of a book resembles an architect’s designing and constructing a real-world building.
Excerpting it here would not do justice to what the piece says about buildings and books. But her conclusion is worth [...]

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[Image by Jan Piller at redbubble.com. Click the image for the original/to purchase.]
From whiskey river (italicized portion):
Taking a walk with you
lacking the wit and depth
that inform our dreams’
bright landscapes,
this countryside
through which we walk
is no less beautiful for being only what it seems.
rising from the dyed
pool of its shade,
the tree we lean against
was never made to [...]

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[Image: "Autumn Grasses," a two-panel folding screen by 19th-century
Japanese artist Shibata Zeshin. Click image for more information.]
From whiskey river (which has been on a William Stafford binge for a few weeks, not that you’ll find me complaining):
Assurance
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or [...]

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