I learned a new word today: sobriquet. It’s a fancy word for nickname, a kind of nicknamefor nickname. Because the scientificnames are difficult and hard to remember, people have given sobriquets to flowers and plants: baby’s breath, bleeding heart, poppy (known most commonlyas Papaver Somniferum), even the word lily is shortfor something. We give nicknamestoContinue reading “#757: Sobriquet for Jeff”
Monthly Archives: April 2026
#756: J is for The Worst of Jefferson Airplane, or the Worst of American Airlines
Coming home from Dayton with a short layover in Chicago, our flight, scheduled for take-off from O’Hare at nine, is delayed because of “technical issues.” That’s just the thingyou want to hear waiting to boarda plane. Your thinking goes to uglyplaces. And then, on the other hand, statistically speaking, you are safer ina plane thanContinue reading “#756: J is for The Worst of Jefferson Airplane, or the Worst of American Airlines”
#755: From Drums to Flowers and Turtles
After three days in the Dayton arena listening to drum line after drum line in the Winter Guard International Indoor Percussion World Championship, we have time to kill before our flight home. We decide to visit a place completely void of drum lines and find ourselves at the Cox Arboretum MetroPark. That place was freshContinue reading “#755: From Drums to Flowers and Turtles”
#754: Thousands of Percussionists, Drummers, and Dancers . . .
. . . converge on the University of Dayton Arena. They are from California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Arizona Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, and nearly everywhere else, and they come in groups of anywhere between 30 and 60 young people with an entourage of adult coaches and technicians and parent volunteers in vans and buses andContinue reading “#754: Thousands of Percussionists, Drummers, and Dancers . . .”
#753: No, THIS Is Just To Say
This Is Just To SayBY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold You sonofabitch, now what am I supposed to eat for breakfast? There’s nothing else in the fridge. I might haveContinue reading “#753: No, THIS Is Just To Say”
#752: Dayton, Ohio, 2026
There are drummers everywhere in Dayton, Ohio, behind the Target, in the parking lots of hotels, inside and outside churches, in the lots of abandoned shopping malls, in the lobby of the Hampton where we’re staying, and tomorrow morning, they will be at the free continental breakfast. There’s no escaping them. They’re like the beesContinue reading “#752: Dayton, Ohio, 2026”
#751: J is for Japanese Breakfast
Even though the two albumsI have from Japanese Breakfastare titled after opposites on the emotional spectrum, jubilation and melancholy, when I listen to Michelle Zauner’s music, my own emotions run to the former of the two. Even the sadsongs evoke joy for me. I maybe wiping tears from the corners, but there is at theContinue reading “#751: J is for Japanese Breakfast”
#750: I Know a Poet
I know a poet who (years ago) createda software program that could write poems. As an experiment, he brought those poemsto a workshop and pretended they were his. People were pissed at him. They invested their time and their critical acumen to helpthis writer with his poetry and they felt hoodwinked and were not atContinue reading “#750: I Know a Poet”
#749: Landscapes
You and your landscapes! Isn’t that a quote from Beckett? I don’t know, but that’s how I feelthis morning after looking at the poetry prompt from NaPoWriMo,after that dream I had last nightabout doing a show to which noone came. When I was a teacher, I had dreams about failures in the classroom. I sometimesContinue reading “#749: Landscapes”
#748: We Called Him Uncle Meany
Jerry was wild and funny, had a tremendously deviouslaugh, joyful, playful, but for some reason we all called himUncle Meany. He was Dad’s uncle, really, but only a year or twoolder, so there was nothing second or great uncle about him,and there seemed to be nothing mean about him either.In the summer he’d take usoutContinue reading “#748: We Called Him Uncle Meany”
michael jarmer 