Happy Father's Day

Glen A Hatton 1907-1982

I love you, Daddy!


















Special Souls

...
Each night I seek out the brightest of stars
and pridefully know that's my father.

by Wiley (AKA Johnny Hart, B.C.)

Leaves of Grass

I've been reading a lot of Walt Whitman the last few days. Some of it used to hang as a framed calligraphy on my daughter-in-law Amy's bathroom wall:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body... . The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured ... others may not know it but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches ... and shall master all attachment.

(From the Preface to "Leaves of Grass")

Purple Belt!

Starfish has had his orange karate belt upgraded to PURPLE! Bruce Lee once looked just like this!!!

A Book of Fours!

...finally finished at 2 am this morning, thanks to my son Pix! Beautiful cover art is by my friend Montana Raven, Maureen Shaughnessy. Thanks to you as well! To see it bigger, go to Lulu.com

Bending It Like Beckham

Simon and Jacob show off their soccer trophies! Congratulations, and good work, guys!

CONGRATULATIONS, BOOKWORM !

My best granddaughter, Ashley Natsuki, is receiving a special award tonight for staying all four quarters of the seventh grade on the Honor Roll! No small feat for someone who is also an awesome dancer, who plays both piano and cello, and is a beautiful girl, inside and out! I am so very proud to claim her as mine!

Don't be afraid to learn. Knowledge is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily. And ~ you should always own at least one table you can dance on! xo

Mother & Me

She was an artist and a musician. She played a mean piano during the depression for feed-the-kitty dances. She painted landscapes and flowers, and did commercial art work. She designed the label for Joe Apple's Whiskey, and she was the model for the promotional ads for Joe Apple's EZ Tire Changer (so easy even a woman could do it!). She had red hair, freckles on her face, and green eyes. She loved life, and she had a great reverence and respect for all living things. I love her still!

(Eva Pearl Wolfe, October 15, 1909 - March 12, 1992)


THE GIFT

Because I did not know
'til now the depths of me,
and heights I never saw, until
the traces of my childhood past
bore witness how my mother gave to me
the world: in infant hands...
a star, a ship, a tree.

Now I lift my hand
and call upon her name.
"Mother, it is I! Your gift,
so dearly held was not given in vain!"
Because I know this now
I give you back the world you gave to me:
the sky, and seas, unbound and limitless,

and never small again.


(My big brother Gaylen wrote music for this, a lovely, rocking melody in a minor key. Made it beautiful! As a boy, he thought she was the most beautiful person in the world, more beautiful than movie stars! So she was.)



Happy Mother's Day to all of you, and to all your mother's, wherever they are!

Big Brother

...and look how big the Rhiesling is now!

The Five Faces of E

All I Want For Christmas...

Starfish has lost both front teeth (and one bottom tooth) in the last few days. He left the tooth fairy a note saying, "I don't need any money. Please bring me a Bakugan toy instead."

The next morning the tooth was gone, and there was a note that said: "I am not Santa Claus. Ha Ha Ha."

She left a folded dollar bill. Ha Ha Ha!

Blessed Be

The universe resounds with the joyful cry I am!
--Alexandr Scriabin

...and thanks to Helen and Hugh for their great camerawork!

LMAO!

I really, really LOVE "Pickles!" Thank you, Brian Crane, from the bottom of my heart!

Give-away!

Remember these beautiful little girls? On August 7, 2006, four-year-old conjoined twins Maliyah and Kendra Herrin made history. Want to put your blog on the give-away list for a free copy of this book? Just visit Not Entirely British before Wednesday, May 6th to learn how!

Ding Dong...

www.pindroppress.com

...the bells are gonna chime ~ Pull out the stopper!
Let's have a whopper!...

Another great piece of news: two of my poems have been accepted for the 3rd issue of Ouroboros, coming out in July!

Happy Earth Day!

Jake and I were working in the back yard yesterday morning, and as the day warmed, the ants began to stir and climb out to let a little sun shine on their winter-stiffened legs and backs. I work a little, and rest my own winter-stiffened legs and back a little, and then work a little more. I was resting when Jacob ran to me with the news, "The ants are having a party!" He kneeled down for a closer look. "I wonder whose birthday it is?" He pointed to various ants in turn. "Is it yours? Is it yours? Is it yours? Look!" he said. "The ants are dancing!" And, in fact, they were.

We do not step on these remarkable little beings at our house. We figure that the earth is wide enough and room enough for all of us to live together peacefully. The Farmers' Almanac (where I found the picture) says if you want the ants to stay out of your house you can use a natural ant repellant, like catnip, mint, cucumber peel, or tansy. I have no idea what tansy is, but I intend to rub a little cucumber peel on my door frame if they decide to party in my house.

Happy Earthday to us all! Party on! And, may I have this dance?
.

Winnowing the True

Spell for a Poet Getting On

May your hipbones never die.
May you hear the ruckus of mountains
in the Kansas of your age, and when
you go deaf, may you go wildly deaf.

May the neighbors arrive, bringing entire aviaries.
When the last of your hair is gone, may families
lovelier than you can guess colonize
the balds of your head.

May your thumbstick grow leaves.
May the nipples of your breasts drip wine.
And when, leaning into the grass, you watch
the inky sun vanish into the flat page

of the sea, may you join your lawn chair,
each of you content
that nothing is wise forever.

--Lola Haskins


I just spent a fun week-end with poet Lola Haskins, listening to readings, workshops, giving and receiving awards for local poets. Stayed for a night in the white, king-sized bed at the Airport Hilton, ate dinner and lunch, embraced a lot of old friends and made some new ones. I learned that not every line in every poem you write is from heaven, and that most poems start too soon and finish too late. Thanks, Lola, and the Utah State Poetry Society for a grand time! When I go deaf, may I go wildly deaf, content that nothing is wise forever.

Vertu Engendered...

Whan that April with his showeres soote
The drought of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every vein in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flower;
Whan Zephyrus, eek, with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tender croppes, and the yonge sunne
Hath in the Ram his halve course y-runne,
And smalle fowles maken melodye
That sleepen all the night with open ye
(So pricketh hem Nature in his corages),
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. . .

--Geoffrey Chaucer

If You Could Hie to Kolob

My favorite Mormon hymn, all jazzed up! Text by W.W. Phelps (1792-1872), music by Ralph Vaughan, sung by Kirby Heyborne. Enjoy!

(Kolob, a word of Egyptian origin, is supposed, in Mormon theology, to be "the place where God dwells," mentioned in the Book of Abraham, possibly at the core of the Milky Way galaxy--a place of enormous energy, a high density concentration we now call a Black Hole. Sir Fred Hoyle and his associate Jayout Vishna Norlikar, have proposed... "the sheer amount of positrons [electrons with a positive charge, which occur in antimatter] observed toward the galactic center...[suggest] the existence there of some sort of exotic object." Kolob?

For you Battlestar Galactica fans, Kolob is also the inspiration for the planet Kobol, the distant motherworld of the human race, and the planet where life began. In Hebrew, Kokob = Star. W.W. Phelps grave marker is inscribed There is no end to matter/ There is no end to space/ ...etc.)

Who You Are

For all my family and friends: GOOD WISHES FOR A HAPPY EASTER! (Please click! Then choose Words and Music)

Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and feet. (Luke 24:39-40)


Nelson Mandella, in his second inaugural address.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are more powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually who are you not to be? You are a Child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the Glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it's in everyone. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Thanks to Patty Butts at Healing Body and Spirit.

He's Here!

Meet Evan, my new grandson, looking sharp in his new hat! 7 lbs 15 ozs, 21 inches. (BTW, Evan, I don't like hats, either!).