Dents de lion

I've got the urge for going. Not too far, just down to my personal band of gypsies in Iowa. Someone asked how long it takes me to get there. I just laughed because I don't know -- if I have time, time becomes irresistible and anything might distract me along the path. A month ago, I was looking for rocks (don't ask) and got caught on a road that had no houses and nowhere to turn around for miles and miles. I was on it for so long that I started thinking about how nicely graded it was. But then I came across this strange and wonderful stone bridge -- I think it looks like lion's teeth.

blackout poetry

Blackout poetry. My friend Juli did this on Facebook so I decided to try it. Here is the poem that resulted from blacking out words and leaving certain others. Try some yourself and share it.

Painting stars on a far-off sky.
Original music threads scenes together —
a riot of memory and
a search for meaning.

A riot, then.

Unrestrained freedom,
a concept joyous
but double-edged.
Remember wanting to soar into infinity?

step right up

If you love Tom Waits, step right up to this: he edits the 200th anniversary issue of "Mojo" and it's filled with great stuff including an interview with one of my own personal favorite singers, Harry Belafonte. AND a free CD with 15 tracks hand-picked by himself including Big Mama Thornton, Ray Charles, an old and strangely sad song by Bob Dylan and more. I found it at Barnes & Noble so hopefully you can too.

Really cool website: http://www.tomwaits.com

And one more gem: Harry Belafonte, singing "Jamaica Farewell"

Winter's Bone

I was so deeply into this movie that when I came out everything was sharp and clear and unrecognizable -- I was still there, in the Missouri Ozarks. It won top prize at Sundance and will definitely win other prizes. If you watch the trailer you can catch the drift of the story which involves poverty, meth and cocaine and an amazing heroine.

Next to the Rustavi Choir, the other music I love but always had to listen to by myself was High Lonesome. The soundtrack to this movie is music like that from the Ozark Hills, fiddle music, folk songs, lending a certain beauty to the starkness of the surroundings, a kind of gentleness running under the horrifying truth of the story.

Exactly one year ago, a book called "Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town" (see Carousel on the left to order the book) was on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. I was shocked to discover that the small town, Oelwein, was very close to where I grew up in Iowa. It's a good book, well-written and researched and it is no exaggeration to use, once again, the word horrifying. Methamphetamine is not a recreational drug, it's a working-class drug, and an incredibly dangerous one, eating away at the brain. And happening just down the road, so to speak.