Archive for May 2012

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Transit Rip-offs – Nickel And Diming Proceeds Apace

May 11, 2012

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It is mother’s day weekend and I am flying across major swathes of the country today to pick up my mother and bring her back to New York City, meaning that I am feeling very daughterly and also that I will be spending virtually all day in an airplane.

I am happy to do it on the daughterly side, but what’s driving me crazy is the transit side.  Geez, what a rip-off flying has become!  (Actually,  let’s make that what a rip-off the whole culture has become, with a particular emphasis on airlines. Especially those airlines that  sell you a ticket and then make it impossible to check in without paying extra for a seat!)

And exactly how are you supposed to fly without a seat? (Last time I checked there was no place in the plane for straphangers.)

I do not truly believe that an airline can force you to buy a seat over and above the cost of your ticket.   I am quite sure that if you have a confirmed ticket but do not  select a seat in advance of flying, they will have to, eventually, finally, place you in a seat before take-off; maybe they will even have to place you into one of those seats with extra leg room. (Ahem, make that SOME leg room.)

But the airlines can make it extremely difficult for you to win at this game of chicken.  Hard enough that you may end up just giving in and buying the stupid seat because you want to check in online and you are too busy and stressed to hang out on the phone with them endlessly, much less curse your computer all night long.

Wearing down the consumer seems lately to be a common business technique. The basic approach is to put up so many hurdles that the customer just gives up on the idea of ever collecting their rebate, pursuing their insurance reimbursement, returning their faulty product and collecting any kind of refund, or otherwise insisting on what they paid for.

The world of transit has become particularly adept at hidden charges.  For example, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has recently begun pricing subway fares and fare cards in a manner that virtually ensures that most travelers will end up forfeiting about 5% of every purchase.

MTA commuter trains have, in turn, recently instituted expiration dates on train tickets, with extremely short windows of usage.  Oh sure, you can return some of there some expired tickets, but only if you pay a set $10 processing fee (no matter that the ticket itself only cost $11.)

And in the meantime, it’s getting chilly on this plane–except that oops!  Blankets are $6.00.

Oh mama!

PS- and now even my free bag of “fancy nut mix” has come filled to the brim with little wheat sticks.  Sheesh.

 

 

(Addendum:  I have a certain amount of sympathy with airline companies – the employees are working extremely hard filling all kinds of function.  My objection here is the sneaking in of costs.  In my particular case, I felt forced to pay extra for a leg-room seat because of a “glitch” in the online check-in, which did not feel like a true “glitch.”   But the point of the post is that there are all these nickel-and-dime extra charges put on average consumers and citizens lately –and it’s the sneakiness of it that gets to me.)

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Comments: 11 Comments

“Rain, Snow, iPhone” (Villanelle Against the Machine!)

May 10, 2012

Rain Melting Snow

Rain, Snow, iPhone

It rains today. What was a scrim of white
unspools to fraying sequins, silver thread,
as browning fields bring softness to the eye,

and rumpled folds of brush and weed deny
the brambles that should later stalk my tread.
It rains today. What is a scrim of white–

the screen that fixates, all two inches wide–
like a stalker, strictly ties me to my bed–
though browning fields bring softness to my eye

as they sneak in from windowed world outside,
trying to prise digitalia from fogged head–
It rains today; what was a scrim of white

white snow (white noise within), lies
now as clear as any water over mud,
while browning fields bring softness to my eye,

since battery dying (at last). I sigh,
rebooting my own spark, my drive, and shred
the reins for today–that scrim of white–
as brown-out brings felt softness to my eye.

 

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Here’s another revised villanelle posted for dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar challenge, hosted by Charles Miller alias Chazinator, to write about “technology.”

Check out my books,  all!  1 Mississippi (children’s counting book with elephants), Going on Somewhere, poetry, and Nose Dive, escapist fun.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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Comments: 29 Comments

“The Nap” (Villanelle With Non-fitting Elephants)

May 10, 2012

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The Nap (Post Fight, Post Reconcilation) 

Side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place.
It was not a woeful drought of age or dust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

We never used to find this quiet space.
Any closeness quickly clambered into lust.
But side by side, we slid to a dry, still, place

where hands touched in a sweat-free interlace,
fatigue overwhelming pheromone fuss
with the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

Some other time we’d find that moist embrace
where pleasure mounts to such synaptic bust
I find myself side-sliding to a place

as blank as emptied well, as capsized chase.
(My brain reacts so badly to heart’s trust,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.)

But today, we two, exhausted by the pace
of time and life and words like ‘should’ and ‘must’,
side by side, slid to a dry, still, place,
the softer dryness of a tear-trailed face.

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First off, want to say how gladdened and moved I am by Obama’s statements re gay marriage.  (Hurray! And Finally! But mainly just plain Hurray!)

Secondly, I am posting the above villanelle for Imaginary Garden With Real Toads.  (If you like villanelles, do check out that category on this blog.  I’ve done a lot – I’m not sure this is such a good one, but  it hasn’t been circulated very much.)   (And no, the elephants sitting up in bed do not really fit with either the poem or gay marriage!  I just liked the picture.) (And no, they are not Republican elephants.)

Finally, thanks as always for your patience and ongoing support.  It is much appreciated on this end.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, villanelle
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Comments: 9 Comments

Beyond Fleece-Enlightened Use Of Used Plastics

May 9, 2012

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400 pounds of used bottles, cake tins, egg crates, and assorted packaging made light by Katharine Harvey. At the World Financial Center, downtown NYC, through May 11.

Categories: New York City
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Comments: 13 Comments

Bonanza (Beneath the Bench)

May 8, 2012

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Bonanza (Beneath the Bench)

When I think of poems about music, I want to write about a boy lying beneath his mother’s piano.

He stares up into the dark overwhelm of board and sound, his mother’s ankles at the top of his head like another protuberance of ears.  He pictures her fingers above the keys, her knuckles as sculpted  as St. Sebastian’s musculature–the chiaroscuro of ribs, thighs, endurance.  He has seen a painting of St. Sebastian in a book, and a child of the early twentieth century, he has studied it at length.

As the music swells, aches surge through the boy’s heart, the minor tonics filling him with an inarticulate sense of love thwarted, death premature–it must be Chopin that his mother plays–

And then his mind moves to a foot soldier in an eventide of olive drab, and, one finger tapping the other wrist, he imagines himself as hero–humble, destined. Perhaps he’ll even save her.

I’ve snuck this boy from the piano poems of Lawrence and Rilke, though when I picture him in the light and shadow of mahogany furniture, trembling crystal, a coal fire, and the impending cataclysm of World War I, I feel his memories as my own.

Which is impossible, grandiose, for in truth, I am a woman of a much later time, who, as a young girl, had an upright piano (impossible to fit under), so that what I lay beneath was the piano’s tan and shiny bench, and the only reason I lay there was not because my mother played–she didn’t–but to stay up late Sundays, a school night, and to watch, hidden from my parents, the TV just around the bend in the wall.

Bonanza was the show, starring leather-vested Ben and his ranch sons, Hoss, Adam and Little (curly-haired) Joe.

And talk about music! Tumpdada-dadadum-dadadum-dadadum-dadaduuuumdaaaa–there was music that galloped, along with the big-hipped steeds, right through the screen.

By the time my parents noticed me, they’d usually relent, letting me watch to the end from a more unobstructed place where I could jump up whenever the horses dadadummed and gallop along–more or less in place–but with enough bounce to make my long hair flap against my shoulders, imagined reins.

How strange it is, I think now, that it was the horses that I imitated. Then again, I was a mid-twentieth-century girl, not imagined boy, who had just come out of her hiding place.

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I am posting the above “prose poem” for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night, hosted by the incomparable Hedgewitch (Joy Ann Jones.)  But this particular poem was actually inspired by Stu McPherson’s “Music” prompt for dVerse’s Poetics challenge of the other day.    (Also by two wonderful “piano” poems respectively by D.H. Lawrence and Rainer Maria Rilke.)  I urge you to check all out.   And, if you are in the mood, also check out my books,  1 Mississippi  (children’s counting book with elephants), Going on Somewhere, poetry, and Nose Dive, escapist fun.

PS – the picture is a bit of a joke, not quite my vision of any of the characters here!  Also SO SORRY THIS IS SO LONG.  I really appreciate your reading!

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 34 Comments

Sad News Today – Death of Maurice Sendak – Portraitist of the Wild and Wistful, Disconsolate and Redeemed.

May 8, 2012

Sad news today – the death of Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), incomparable illustrator and children’s book author.  I hope to write more about Sendak – but just wanted to mark the loss that I’m pretty sure must be felt by anyone who loves the fierce, the wistful, the ashamed, the lonely, the disconsolate, the proud, the wild, the adventurer, the kind, the redeemed, the joyful,  and wants to know just what they look like.  Here’s the link to the NY Times Obit.

Hard to imagine anyone who grew up in this country over the last several decades who can truly say “I don’t care.”    If there is such a person, he or she must not have seen the books and pictures (or the zillions that have copied and been influenced by Sendak).   They should hurry up and check them out – Sendak’s books, that is.  I personally recommend The Nutshell Library.

Categories: children's book, children's illustration, Uncategorized
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Comments: 4 Comments

“Here Sounds The City” (A Fleurette? Maybe. Agh!)

May 7, 2012

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Here Sounds in City

Here sounds in city; hard to tell
each source, as if a starting bell
triggered buck-shot reverberation,
a clanging-to sensation from a scattered knell–

Neighbor?  Or a siren blocks away?
A din downstairs? Or, in ceiling’s sway?
But some tones sound inside the heart–
we hear those with a grasping start; they break our day,

not just with decibellic pierce
(though tuned at times to volume fierce):
a neon cry, you bitch, a crack
of sob; a dog’s strained bark, its back fur raised in tiers;

the loud and hipster’s swank and file;
the dumpster 3 A.M.–the pile
of what we were last week acrashing–
and (at it again) the smashing of coupled bile.

But the sound I’m trying to get
at–that gets to me–that, when met,
uplifts me to a golden mean
(present perhaps in every scene though I don’t let

myself much feel such measured calm)–
is that softly intervaled psalm
of a somehow-urban mourning dove–
a healing pulse that sounds in love though every balm

seems petrified where blocked cement
must be pushed by.  Yet, the call’s ascent
makes all that forces its stubborn way
through brick—weeds, worry, will—say ah, nest the moment.

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This is my attempt at a Fleurette – a rather odd form – AABA (with a extra long fourth line that internally rhymes with B – the third line.)  I wrote it as part of a challenge posted by the poetry blog With Real Toads.

The mourning dove is that wonderful bird whose call lilts so wistfully and that can, amazingly, be sometimes heard even here in New York City.

Categories: New York City, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 22 Comments

“At Water’s Edge” – The Mag 116

May 6, 2012

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At Water’s Edge

My name is green, I
edge the scene,
each leaf and stalk–I
am the talk
of vines and tips,
loose lips sink
ships, but me, I grip
their hulls with slip–
(the plankton of my disposition
also including decomposition.)
That said, my stock in trade
is spade, uproot of stone–I will
be grown–though I bend too, oh yes, I do,
like a river paying tributary
or a sigh upon a moonlit prairie
(for I’m still green
in site unseen–
when darkness reigns,
or it fails to rain–)
So irrepressible am I
that even when river swallows sky
and blue shines out in sparkling twinkle,
you’ll find my shade in every crinkle
of wave and tide,
the river wide,
the river’s narrows too.

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The above is a poem and iPad painting based on Tess Kincaid’s prompt for The Mag 116,  a beautiful photograph of the River Irwell by R.A.D. Stainforth, who besides being a photographer has an incredibly great voice and reads Tess’s poems on her blog, Willow Manor.

Speaking of rivers – check out my children’s counting book 1 Mississippi -for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms.  Or, if you in the mood for something older, check out Going on Somewhere, poetry, and Nose Dive, escapist fluff.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 28 Comments

Porter Poetics (Double-Barreled) (And Now With Elephant!)

May 5, 2012

Admittedly, Fred Astaire and not Cole Porter. (Fred more picturesque.)

Into Porter

The trick of Cole Porter,
other than the high order
of wit, is the double rhyme.

Sure, he writes of bubble time–
champagne and effervescence,
an age’s evanescence–

But true magic’s in his lexicon,
a lingua so complexly on
it targets at once the steppes of Russia
and also the pants of a Roxy usha’.
(Mahatma Gandhi, Mickey Mouse–
all hold hands in Porter’s house.)

The man is just so archly cunning
that our banal’s his sparkly stunning,
the double-barreled foot-long rhymes
not paralleled by Steve Sondheim’s.

Easy to love, delightful to dance to,
delovely to sing, also romance to–
When times are hard, hard-timers croon,
oh Cole, my man, rhyme me a tune.

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I, who am proud to number myself among the hard (and old) timers loving Cole Porter, am posting the above (a revision) for the dVerse Poets Pub Poetics prompt, which today deals with music, and is  hosted by Stu McPherson.  Check out the wonderful poems at dVerse.  (Mine, I suspect is one of the sillier ones.)  

However, if you are in the mood for more silliness (especially silliness associated with Broadway musicals), also check out my comic novel NOSE DIVE.  A great deal of fun at a very cheap price. 

Not quite Fred or Cole!

Categories: poetry
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Comments: 33 Comments

Weeds?

May 4, 2012

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Enjoy the unplann(t)ed.

Categories: Country weekend
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Comments: 8 Comments

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