Poem for November: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I had a different poem in mind for November. It was a good one. I just kept forgetting to copy it onto paper so I could have it with me for memorizing. More and more time passed and I was suddenly left with only one good week’s worth of memorizing. So I switched it up. I googled “short poems to memorize” and came up with this one. It works.

Abandoned shop

So downtown Kenton, home of the empty or derelict shops, has been getting a bit fancier over the past few years. There’s the Library, which is fabulous and there are also several restaurants as well as an alternative health clinic/flower shop, a scrapbooking store, a home brew shop and a children’s clothing resale shop. I’ve heard that in the past few decades, a lot of landlords just used their shop buildings as storage space or let the spaces sit empty. With so many good things happening., it was only a matter of time before someone turned on the old way. The following sign in the store next door to the library caught my eye.
However, the author of said sign, also included a way for people to make suggestions of what they would like to see in this space. As you can see, people had a lot of suggestions.


The interior space.

A sign of previous prosperous times:

The exterior

It has been fun to watch the transformation of Kenton, even in just the three years I’ve been here. I shall look forward to seeing if the sign has any results.

Three Sentence Movie Reviews: The Fabulous Baker Boys


A little slow at the end, but mostly fun. It might even be more fun to compare and contrast Seattle then and Seattle now for people who know the city. I didn’t know that Beau Bridges was such a good actor!

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1989/fabulous_baker_boys.html

You’ve caught up your blog. Now what?

I’ve received the following email from one of my regular readers:

Dear Patricia You’ve now caught up your blogs. Well done! I’ve enjoyed reading all the interesting observations you have about the world but I’m curious, how will you keep your blog caught up? Won’t you just fall back into your slatternly habits? Do shed some insight into your plan.

Sincerely,
A faithful reader*

Dear faithful reader,

I’m glad you asked, as I’ve been planning a blog post about this since before I finished catching up the blog. Your timely email has propelled me forward to actually write it.

Here’s the plan:

First off: I have a specific time (and a back up time) planned weekly to do basic set up for the blog. The official time is Saturday morning post-run/pre-8:00 gym class. That block of time usually gives me 45 minutes to an hour to do the Blog Blessing Hour. More on that below. The backup time is Sunday from when I haul myself out of bed to before I go to church. Having a scheduled time each week to get things in order helps tremendously.

The Blog Blessing Hour. This is an adaptation of the FlyLady’s Weekly Home Blessing Hour in which you spend an hour once per week and get your house in reasonable shape. My Blog Blessing Hour (written down and posted next to my computer) is as follows:

  1. Update books read, post to Goodreads
  2. Update movie posts
  3. On camera, delete all bad pictures
  4. Upload pictures to archive
  5. Rotate pictures the right way
  6. Copy select pictures to the “to print” folder
  7. Copy pictures to blog folder
  8. Erase photos from camera
  9. In blog folder, open with picture manager
  10. Compress all photos
  11. Rename
  12. Put pictures in blogger

It looks like a lot of work, but each step takes a few minutes. Except for the renaming of photos. That can be rather lengthy if an event has happened during the week. Before I was caught up and had this handy list, I would delay doing all of these steps for months. Trying to catch up the reading posts and cross reference it with the Goodreads stuff alone drove me crazy. Plus, I was often afraid to post things because I wasn’t sure if all the movie posts were in their right place and I like to publish in order.

Yes indeed, those of you who think my anal-retentive nature might be hindering my ability to get anything published and contributing to the huge backup are correct. It totally did. But now that I have a weekly list of tasks, I know finish the weekly Blog Blessing Hour with a list of posts IN ORDER to write and publish. All the pictures are in a named post with the right date, all the movies are caught up and in their place and the book post doesn’t get totally out of control. During the week I can spend fifteen minutes here or there writing the posts and then editing and publishing them.

Combined with the above I have two hard and fast rules:

1) Do the Blog Blessing Hour every week or, at the very least–and rarely–every two weeks.
2) If a post is in draft form and is over one month old you have not made this post a priority and I MUST DELETE IT.

Because I don’t ever want to not post a post I had intended to post, hopefully the draconian rule number two will keep me on the up and up.

And that, dear reader, is the plan. Keep reading and see if it works.

*The above letter was entirely made up by Patricia. It was manufactured so she could write a blog post about how she intends to keep her blog caught up. She never has anyone email her with questions about her blog, though she would be happy to answer them if she did.

The secret club

One of the most delightful things about memorizing poems is when you encounter poems you have memorized in other contexts. There is a flash of quizzical recognition, “Hey, that sounds familiar! Why?” and a happy realization. “They know the same poem I do!” It’s like being in a secret club. This editorial discusses the poem I memorized last December. She enjoys reciting it this time of year as much as I do.

“New” Comforter

That yellow thing on top of my normal red comforter is the comforter from my childhood bedroom. My mom made it to match my yellow room and my love of Holly Hobbie. It was packed away when I got my more sophisticated teenage room and comforter, but I wanted to bring it along to college, in lieu of buying new bedding for my dorm bed. It was warm and comfortable and I slept with it through college and into my early twenties. Due, I’m sure to my need to wear things out before I discard them, right?
This comforter even has an ink stain on it from when I got my first tattoo. It has been packed away for the last few years, but I recently unearthed it to have on hand for when I get cold watching movies. It’s starting to fall apart a bit, but it is still warm and has much nostalgia attached to it. It’s also not in good enough shape to give to anyone. What’s a girl to do?
Ha-ha! Matt’s mother Linda gave me an Ikea gift card for my birthday and with it I bought a duvet cover. I placed that over my old comforter and the comforter lives on to keep me warm. It mostly lives under the bed where Antares sleeps on it, but I pull it out when I want to take a nap and need a bit of warmth.

I think it looks great and I’m pleased with my re-imagining of this object.

Three sentence movie reviews: Proof


Proof that Gwenneth Paltrow deserved her best actress award, she plays her character with a good sprinkling of unsteadiness. Hope Davis also rocks her role as controlling older sister and Jake Gyllenhall is always fun to watch. You don’t have to like math to like this movie, indeed, if you tune in just for the math you might be disappointed.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2005/proof.html

Three sentence movie reviews: Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth one)


I spent the first disk of this miniseries not getting the whole Mr. Darcy (he’s kind of a snotty jerk) thing. This made the “getting” the Mr. Darcy thing in disk two that much more dramatic and fun. This was an incredibly delightful movie to watch the actors act and Mr. Collins (so repulsive!) and Mary Bennett (so sour!) were my favorite minor characters.

poster from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112130/