2010 Looking Back

A  Looking back on the year ending ....

  

We said Hello to: 

• Health Care Reform
• Inception
• Toy Story 3
• Ipad
• Chevy Volt
• Groupons
• Glee
• Hot in Cleveland
• Rand Paul
• Bailouts
• John Boehner 
• Tears
• Orange skin tone
• Joe Miller
• Scott Brown
• Lady GaGa
• Katy Perry
• San Francisco Giants
• Body Scans
• Branding (not cattle)
• Cupcakes
• Jerry (Moonbeam) Brown - again
• Redistricting
• Borrowing from China
• Tax breaks for the wealthy
• Bill Clinton - again

We said Goodbye to:

• Joe Miller
• Witches
• Christine O'Donnell
•  Toyota
• Texting while driving
• San Diego Padres
• Texas Rangers
• Sheen in the Gulf
• Crashing State Dinners
• Tom Delay
• Jobs
• Failed Banks
• Privacy
• Trading Chickens for Health Care
• Census
• Immigration reform
• Swine Flu
• BP
• Hallaburton by any name
• Dick Cheney
• Don't ask don't tell

A Few People Who Passed On in 2010

• Barbara Billingsly
• Art Linkletter
• Tony Curtis
• Eddie Fisher
• George Steinbrenner
• J.D. Salanger
• Joan Southerlans
• Edward M. Kennedy
• John Forsythe
• Lech Kaczynski
• Lynn Redgrave
• Lena Horne
• Peter Graves
• Tom Bosley
• TeddyPendergrass
• Bella Akhmadulina
• Robert Dana
• Andrei Voznesensky
• Robert Byrd
• Lucille Clifton
  
  
  
  
  
  Your List? - Who and What did I miss?
  

Magpie Tales 46- Poem: No Choice

No Choice-
You left me
like a hand removed
from gloves—
flat and limp.

What could you do?
The bird had no tweet;
the stem lacked any bud.

I was poison;
you water—

you could only dilute me
but always there would be venom.

2010© Michael A. Wells

Magpie Tales

Confession Tuesday - It's Right Where I Put It Edition

The year is nearly over.  This will be my last Tuesday of 2010 at the Cyber Confessional.

Dear Reader:

For a long time I would save my floating holiday for the 29th of December to be able to have to day off to celebrate our youngest daughter's birthday.  Since she is out of the area now, there is no need to do this. I've taken it already this month.  So tonight I set here reflecting upon the fact that her mother and I won't see her tomorrow and I confess this leaves this year ending on a flat key.

Year endings often seem melancholy to me. It's seems like it has been a while since I recall feeling upbeat about a year that has passed or particularly excited about the new one we are embarking on. 

I confess that I try to approach each new year walking a fine line between seeking to improve myself and yet shying from specific New Year Resolutions.

I've talked before about my obsession with organization and my challenge turn it into action.  This year I hope to tackle one thing at a time get things in better order.  Starting with cleaning up my laptop and better organizing the files on it, especially my writing files.  I also want to organize my paper files better.  But these are just starting points.  I confess that I often put things in places where I think I can easily retrieve them only to find that I can't quite recall where that place was.  Ugh!

Tonight I checked out the annual debut poets roundup in the latest edition of Poets & Writers.   This is one of my favorite features in P&W because I'm always interested to see if I know anyone who made the list. This year none of them were familure to me.  Still, I enjoy reading the little bullet information about each one of the. How old they are.  How long they were working on their manuscript. How long it took to find a publisher. Number of contests, etc. Their advise to others. I confess that reading these makes me wish I had started writing at least 15 years earlier.

Wishing my daughter happy birthday! Wishing everyone a safe and happy New Year.   See you at the confessional in 2011!

On Winter Days Like These

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours."  ~Robert Byrne

Crumpets and a Movie

Sunday morning, someone is drawing bath water, the dogs are quiet and my stomach to talking to me. I hear, but ignore.

I haven't blogged in days. I started to late last night  but ended up deleting before I was finished and went to bed.  That's kind of how I've been these past four days. Sort of here but not really.  I have not felt well and until Christmas eve I was in denial that I was sick (a common defensive tactic of mine) and simply wrote it off as sinus related stuff - but I've decided now it's some kind of upper respiratory thingy.

My loving wife made me homemade crumpets and ham on Christmas and I watched Il Postino (recommended by Kelli Agodon) - which I enjoyed in spite of following the subtitles in my fuzzy head.  I will watch it again soon and probably enjoy it more if my eyes and brain are working better together.

I've written already this morning, so the day has started well. Holding off on breakfast as long as I can - my blood sugar numbers are a little elevated as a result of being sick.

Have several things I want to get done today - but I don't want to push myself. I really have too much to do at the office not to go in tomorrow, so I don't want to overdue things today.

I pulled my copy of Unmentionables by Beth Ann Fennelly  off the night stand to read a few poems this morning. Feel like a cup of coffee, but not till I have something else in my stomach first.  Off to read now. Maybe, just maybe I'll have something more profound to say when I rejoin the world in another post later today.

Patriotism

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

~ Joseph Brodsky

Confession Tuesday

Tuesday again? How did that happen? I’m off to the confessional.

Dear Reader:

Another week has passed, as well as an office Christmas luncheon. Additionally, Office treats trays and a family dessert gartering. All of these add up to carbs, calories and sugar.

I confess these are trying times for diabetics. A fruit cake arrived at our office last week. You know those things people joke about using as door stops or re-gifting and sending on and on into perpetuity. Well, I confess I actually like fruit cakes. There, I said it! I can already here the Facebook friends unfriending me and twitter followers vanishing into thin air.

During this past week, there have been periods when I’ve found my Blackberry alerts annoying. I confess this morning is one of those times. This is a new thing to me as I am not normally bothered by this. It’s probably an extension of becoming annoyed at getting three and sometimes four e-mails a day from places like Borders, Barns & Nobel, and Bass Pro.

I will confess that I thought this past week about doing one of those crazy year-end/holiday letters. You know the long ones people send out that go on and on about their year in review? It was a devious thought on my part and actually the only reason I decided not to do it was because it would be so pitifully boring unless I made stuff up.

Hum…. maybe I should rethink this idea, the year isn’t over yet.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for listening. Everyone stay safe and enjoy the holiday!