Song list: Yes, I was one who made tapes...

Get your head out of the oven from lesuco on 8tracks.

Things I want in my dream house

Here I will blatantly indulge in lustful consumerism: It's a side of me I don't show too often.

Mostly it's the color: In almost every space I've lived in, I've had a room this color. But I also love the table and the simplicity of the room.

I love hooks of all kinds; these are really kick ass:

And this rug:

Eva Cassidy

Who knew? Good God her voice makes me want to return to innocence, to seek out all that is pure. When I first heard her rendition of "Fields of Barley," I felt 1) that I had never heard it before (which I had, of course), 2) that my sins had been washed away. Can a voice feed your soul? She reminded me that I need to feed my soul with beauty more often, that escape can be achieved while sitting still at a stop light.

An Angel

This is my angel. She is the center of my world. I know I probably shouldn't put my child at the center of everything. She'll need therapy and I'll need therapy...blah, blah, blah...I just try to not have expectations like she'll be a doctor or an angel or a firefighter....

Audience and Anglo Saxon Prose

I've never blogged before, which is probably a universally stupid way to start out with this medium. But I wanted to have a space where I could write. Journaling is different. I don't know about you, but when I write in my journal, I always feel I am writing to God (Whomever I conceive God to be). This is much more public. There is a chance that some random stranger, or even someone that knows that I go by lesuco, will decide to read this, and then I will have an audience. So I have to keep that in mind. That's what we tell our students. That what we are told as writers. Keep your audience in mind. So I am picturing a 15 year old girl, bored, hypomanic, 2am, stumbling upon this space and reading it because, well, it's there (which was actually me 20 some odd years ago--minus the Internet). Or maybe it is a 42 year old woman who loves to read blogs because they give her insight into the way others think (which may be me in a few years). I can only imagine my audience. But I am a readerly writer: I write thinking someone will read it. I always have. Perhaps no one will read. Regardless, I will write.

I should be writing articles for publications so I can get tenure. But I am blocked. I can't think that intelligently or coherently for long periods of time.

But what I do want to talk about today is Michael Chertoff's comment about speaking "unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose." I can't get this comment out of my head. I read a piece by Asa Hilliard (RIP) that asks people to consider whether we think English is the superior language. Well. folks, here's a perfect example of someone who 1) has no idea what he's talking about--Anglo-Saxon is a debatable language and is most often referred to as Old English--even scholars separate those two; 2) is placing all things WASP up on a pedestal--I can just hear him directing FEMA to not put on any more fake press conferences in "Anglo-Saxon" : "Ic éom gód hierde: se góda hierde sęlþ his ágen líf for his séapum." (I am the good Shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his own life for his sheep.) It's not just the cover up. It's how he covers things up: Whitewash!