Sherry Chandler

Literateria has some links to unique examples of American oratory, including a YouTube video of Mr. Rogers’s 1969 testimony to Congress that brought tears to my eyes. When I was raising twin sons, I was very, very grateful to Fred Rogers for the quiet sanctuary he’d created from Transformers and Ninja Turtles.

Pocahontas County Fare shows us Blue-Eyed Grass up close and personal. We discussed that plant here, courtesy of Charlie Whitt, a couple of weeks ago.

Lance Mannion riffs on Fred Thompson who is not a President but he may play one on TV someday so vote for him in 2008:

The Mo Dowd Approved knock on Hillary is she is ambitious. She shouldn’t be President because she wants to be President.

Don’t they all?

Well, sure. But Hillary wants it too much. How can we tell she wants it too much? Why, she’s actually worked hard all her adult life to be qualified and competent to do the job.

By that standard, if working for the job is a sign you don’t deserve it, then not working at all for it must be proof that you should have it and therefore Fred Thompson is the candidate, of either party, who has most earned the job by doing nothing to earn it.

Eyewear puts two candles on its birthday cake today.

Eyewear is two today, friends. If that seems astonishing to you, imagine how it feels where I am sitting. On June 1, 2005, when I sat down to start “blogging” the whole fad was about as likely as riding around on those old bicycles where one of the wheels is giant and the other tiny - you know the ones. Parasols. World Fairs. 1902.

Helen Losse shares a special poem

The Cabin

—in memory of Earl R. Jones,
with much love

We kept HEMP in the gully
between the cabin
and the crude outhouse—
wooden on three sides,
burlap door on the other, a bucket inside.
Likely the heavy green boat was
worthless, except to us. Someone
stole it anyhow. …

Why a boat named HEMP? Read the poem. You’ll be glad you did.

Rocket Kids takes issue with a certain prejudice against “internet poets.”

This elitest stance and knee-jerk stigma hardly supports the spirit of art — discovery. I’m sure the same kind of thing greeted the first mass-produced book — “Look, it’s not a papyrus. What junk! Where’s the scrolling, the spindles?”

Poesy Galore recommends The Hype Machine for finding mp3s.

I See Invisible People points out that the Bush administration has invoked the law of unintended consequences in its supposed push for using corn-based fuel — the price of tequila is going up!

And it’s Friday afternoon, too.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Wherever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly—let me confess it at once—by absolute dread of the beast.

—E. A. Poe, “The Black Cat,” text from Roger Caras’ Treasury of Great Cat Stories (Galahad Books, 1987)