bedtime reading

Well, the news from Lake Woebegone (ie, Roztoky) has been passing fair. We had a 2nd or 3rd annual municipal event--twice at least for us--on the left and right banks of the Vltava River, north of Prague. Contextually, that's like Stillwater and Bayport for our Roztoky and Klecany, or St Croix Falls and Taylor Falls in the geological reverse. We in Roztoky enjoy the permanent museum and medieval castle and draw of some thousand; those in Klecany enjoy the peace and pride of being on the Troya side of Prague, where the zoo and the royal vineyard reside. Anyway, the rivalry is nil on nights in mid-September, when this new tradition glows and the ferries transport revelers non-stop and the music is from Radim Hladik's Blue Effect, whose music spans five decades and as many genres and restores my faith in the one thing Czechs haven't done so well, 'til now.

School's in full swing here, and we cast our prayers to Syria and Chicago, differently, for their aggravated starts. Teachers defy definitions, even from the empathetic, and so we hope students also learn without presuppositions of their lot. We're thankful for what we all have got. And in this space I want all to know that Ben (especially) knows six-times-seven is forty-two minus ten is thirty-two, God bless the Czechs who teach him well. I'll also say he throws a baseball like my cousins Jim and Paul. That is to say the blood line works in more than mysterious ways.

He was, by the way, the first to say that one of our parakeets died last week (the cage had happily hung from the rafters of our Russian Orthodox Chapel through the summer which, alas, ended coolly). He prayed as I dug it into the earth, not quite a see-you-later, but a thank-you-for-your-worth. The pet store had a replica, and now the other parakeet is either placated or confused. I don't have time for such a poem on Lost Menagerie, so guest poems would be welcome.

And though I needn't say, because I scarcely know, the tiny police patrol had to stretch their tape across two ends of a tiny street in town. We know two people on that street, and so we know they know what next week's news will necessarily report. An argument, a woman runs away, a return to what no one could remotely say, a hanging, a fear of worse, a settling for what is unimaginable if not quite worse, a very blue effect we hadn't counted on...

In our mailbox today is Thirty Birds, flown in by Amazon and local post. Its heft is more in pages and in print than I thought as blogspot made it. I'm happily surprised that canonized poets are adumbrated to the prevailing need to hear another voice. Jon's done his homage, as those forbearing poets had done theirs, and the hints are worth the haunting (in the hallowed sense of the term). I need this bedtime reading. this upward denouement. And if by coincidence I've begun one class with Prufrock--"I do not think they will sing to me"--and another class with Gwendolyn Brooks, who could've/shoud've/would've explained in Maine South's auditorium 1982 what "We / Sing sin" means in the pantheon of theology--if Amazon delivers independently...I'll go to sleep not so etherized, but completely filled with what is a call to cheer, a deeper reason for the rhyme.

Yes, the expanded format 2012 means the World Series Cards are in the play-off hunt--the Braves have their back against the wild card wall. The White Sox can only win within--the AL East too strong... And though this news is least what is really on our minds, I like the news of Woebegone: insular, outgoing, sublime.

thank you, Jonathan, for the book that will always grace our shelves.