Kitty in Death's Driveway

Our sickly kitty.

We are waving our arms like lunatics, chasing her up the sidewalk, and diving under the azaleas to steer her away from Death's actual Door, but she's hunkered down on Death's Deck wedged between a pretty swank Weber and a glass-topped table that still has ice-tea glasses on it maybe from sitting outside in the evening listening to the robins chortle across the yard and whinny goodnight, and the cardinals zoom like Cupid's arrows across the yards and fences home as the arborvitae blackens and the cool comes up from the earth and ferns. The ice-tea glasses on Death's glass-topped patio table all have slogans on them. They say, "Florida! The Sunshine State" and "Connecticut: The Nutmeg State," and "Arkansas! The Toothpick State," which is odd in a way, but not if you think about it, I guess.

Tomorrow we go to the Annandale Animal Hospital where Dr. Paradise, which is her real name, will teach us how to administer fluids subcutaneously.

I hadn't really grasped the gravity of the situation, and said, "Oh. I'll bring the cat then." And they said, "Good idea, Ms. Kirchner."

Be Bio-Logical

Barefoot, bespattered, and fuming at the door - dead bees in her hair, a bloody lip, and a fistful of black coral - I think it's for you. Earth Day is here and wow, is she mad. Appease her by mulling birds, bees, air-miles, and fish-smothering phthalates -
then, be bio-logical.

Here are some ways to Eat, Drink, Think, and Love deeply this weekend that will make her happy.

Think:
At the Phillips tonight, my friend, Ann Yonkers, moderates the discussion: "Earth Day, Landscape and Local Food"
Maryland winemaker Robert Lyons, chef Nora Pouillon of Restaurant Nora, and Pennsylvania farmer Mark Toigo of Toigo Orchards talk about art, food, and the Terroir that makes it good. The brochures says " a light tasting follows," which means something wild like: Crispy nettles and Chili Roasted Asparagus, Fiddleheads, and Ramps.

Drink: Deep six sensibly disaster-plastic bottles, and don't buy any more. What are you thinking?

Love:
Memorials by Moonlight with DCTours: Moonlight, marble, a general glowing
"How the Sinking of the Titanic Changed Washington" Bike Tour: He would go down with the ship for you in that helmet.
MOCA DC Art and Film Space at M and 31: Wander, ponder, brush fingertips

Bee-keeping classes are everywhere

My Friend, Kim, Plays the Harmonica

Kim Addonizio is a poet

...and by "friend" I mean, at the end of a party in a Houston art warehouse, I once stood next to a woman who smelled like roses and Marlboros, who turned-out-to-be-her, and a table, which earlier that night had been loaded with hors d'oeuvres, and on which during the height of the evening, someone had rolled, making a point in a conversation. Smashed - really smashed - pastry, bunches of exploded black grapes, their skins spewing guts and seeds, and the green grape cracked, and pineapple chunks and carrot shards like shrapnel, and tiny pink crab quiches dumped in piles like girls with their petticoats up - pink kneecaps and cream.

So, we were standing there staring at the wreckage, she-who-turned-out-to-be-her and I, and I was embarrassed to be associated with it, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I said to her, this woman who smelled like blossoms and leather, "Crab quiche?" and she looked at me, or sort of probably at my chin because she was small, but even standing beside her, she didn't give that impression, instead, she said, ".......don't mind if I do." So I leaned over the table, curving my body over the juice and pulp, shoved through a mound of broccoli floret with my palm, and found the last, battered crab quiche, pink, frothy, kind of oozy, and I brought it out holding it by its crumbling buttery edges, carefully, like a old compass or a lens, placed it on a soggy paper napkin that said, "Starlight" on it in gold, and wiped my hand on my dress. Then we went to get mojitos.

"Contemporary Day" - Wipeable Elegance Documentary

Washington DC's Textile Museum, is up to its usual effusive "We Are Wrapped in Beauty, Are We Not?" revelry as it announces the screening of the documentary, "Contemporary Days: Robin and Lucienne Day Design the UK."

The ninety-minute film premieres at 7:30pm on May 15, 2010 at the National Geographic Museum’s Grosvenor Auditorium in Washington, DC. Tickets are only gotten on-line and in advance.

Here is the site for tickets and a little about the designers R and L Day post-WWII British furniture designers who brought modern design to everyday life, which one can imagine, would have been rather grey in 1951.
But these two were not daunted and carried the light and hope of bold prints, plastic, steel, and plywood (materials no body had used before) into our homes, offices, and schools.

Sixty years later, like illuminated letters, their "accessible elegance," their wipeability-meets-modernist-sensibility twinkles most obviously in our own grey little worlds in the form of those liquidly-curved, plastic chairs with aluminum legs and, if you're lucky, the chair is turquoise or mango or lime. So iconic, the British put it on a postage stamp. Lovely.

In fact, for many of us, when we think "cafeteria" it is those Day chairs we think of: wipeable, bash-able, quickly stack-able when clearing the floor for dances or neighborhood association meetings. Designed designed with that hole - low in the back both useful as a handle, and (horribly, but humanly) as a drain. If you're anything like me, circa '62, when you think of those chairs, you think simultaneously: "What a lovely curve...Are we having Tater Tots today?....Shiny legs....oooh grapes..."

Ah modernist sensibilities.

The film has not much to do with Tater Tots (although....one might argue...), but everything to do with the pleasure of form and the beauty that surrounds us.

Much love and bold print to you, L

Garden of Grrrlz: Roller Derby in DC

This morning, planting lettuce, I was mulling my Roller Girl name...Having some trouble...
Some were:

Loca-vore
GardenDammerung
Peace and Carrots
Mother Dearth
Sunbeam of Doom
Spring Rain of Terror

Peter'd out with "Alexander the Skate"? Completely ran out of steam and went nautical with:
"Tell it to the Marines," which I just like to say.

"A Few Screws Lucy" and "A Kate 47" are already taken, but Ms. Anne Thrope was offered by the World Famous Roller Derby Girl Name Generator under the "Smart" category. I'm guessing Edith WarTon and is too....