Tag: less fun things

It’s Thursday

May 31, 2012 /

It’s also May 31, which means I will be standing in line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles today, waiting to renew the car registrations I had totally forgotten about until I was cleaning off the counters late yesterday afternoon.

But back to the Thursday thing, that means it’s everyone’s final chance to enter the fabulous Contest Contest! Or not. I’m pretty flexible about things like contests, given my general lack of winningness.

If you do want to enter, please do so by 5:00ish, Eastern Standard Time. There is every likelihood I will remember to come back and close comments by dinner, provided I’m not still in line at the Registry. I will definitely remember to announce winners before bed tonight.

See you back here later today!

Another Sunday

May 6, 2012 /

No reading today. I suspect this is the way it will be until June. Things are busier than I like them to be, and my focus is on much less fun stuff. I promise, I’ll come back to recommendations once everything has died down.

I’ll leave you with a bit of a poem instead of a recommended story today. I think this is possibly the most often quoted of Mary Oliver’s poems, but there’s good reason for it.

from The Summer Day

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver (reprinted in The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays. Beacon Press, 2008.)

If you like this, go here to listen to her read the entire poem (and others).