respite

i realize it's been a long time since we've talked, and for that, i apologize. things have been busy, busy, busy and in between a full-time job and volunteer work and general out-and-about-ness, i've decided to put emergency:possibility on a proverbial back burner and focus my writing energies solely on nahcotta's blog.

happy 2009 to all of you and thanks for staying tuned with my rants and unsolicited opining throughout the course of the last year and a half. . .

perhaps i'll be back sooner than you think.

until then, be happy and well and remember oscar wilde's axiom: "life is far too important to be taken seriously."

lots of love and best wishes -
rc

fall upon us

in new england, the onset of autumn is obvious. your windowpanes are encrusted with frost in the morning grey haze, condensation caught inside the glass. the heat needs to be cranked past 70 degrees to render the brewing of morning coffee a bearable experience. in my old portsmouth house, the drafty windows may as well have been open, they were so obsolete and relatively useless but my landlord, an artist and lover of all ephemera aged, worn, and slightly damaged by time, could not bring himself to send these windows to their slaughter. and so, every year, i would be forced to make a trip to the hardware store and spend an entire saturday afternoon taping taut plastic sheets to the ten or twelve windows in my home and feeling trapped for the ensuing five months. in new england, the onset of autumn coincides with the requisite hats, scarves, and gloves hauled from temporary storage. one is prepared for snow, for blizzards, frozen fingers, wet toes.

in southern california, the commencement of a new season is subtle. it might even be considered invisible, unless one puts forth significant effort to notice. in paying attention to the changing season's nuances, one can notice the edges of the santa ana winds bringing a new temperature. autumn is in the foggy morning that lifts by 10 a.m., the creeping darkness taking over a crowded farmers' market by 5 p.m., the fewer open apartment windows. in southern california's autumn, one doesn't pick apples, one picks persimmons. these bright bushels were picked from a rooftop.

my friends tim and hanna sent me these beautiful, bucolic photos of the new england autumn. it's this season that i love most, west or east coast. thanks for the pics, t+h. i'll see you soon...

oh, yes, we can

from east coast to west coast, doodad just sent me this shot from her iphone.

and i'm a bit misty-eyed watching the thousands of jubilant obama supporters celebrating in grant park and jesse jackson weeping without embarrassment.

our new president is barack obama. and i can sleep soundly tonight.

yes, we can

once again, my friend winters has sent me a noteworthy link. and i think if you have some time, you should check it out, as well. click here.

i spent five minutes watching this obama advert this morning and was rather moved, i must admit.

obama in portsmouth

my dear, dear friend michael winters, who is responsible for all the good photography in this blog, posted this banner of obama in portsmouth on emergency:possibility. to winters, i say thank you for sharing your talents (wait, does that make you a communist?) and to anyone reading this, i say, please, please, please make sure to vote on tuesday. unless you never listen to npr, never read the paper, never watch the news (excluding fox "news", of course), or simply live in a dark closet, deprived of any sort of cognizance about the state of our world, both large and small, you know that we are in troubled, difficult times. no winking, "you betcha", "joe the plumber" (i look forward to the day that these "name and occupation" declarations meant to identify the common people of america cease to exist. really, this day cannot come soon enough), anti-abortion-supporting, moose-slaughtering woman with, apparently, no concept of the depth and seriousness of her job as vice-president should be allowed such proximity to the role of president. and i think we all can agree that mccain, as nice a man as he may be outside of the political arena, is as unsteady as a two-legged stool. one irregular heartbeat and palin is "all mavericky in there", making decisions that certainly supersede her intellect.

i mean really...even if you don't love obama (albeit, i ask you, how could you not???), how could you be undecided? david sedaris says it best in the new yorker.

if you must, choose between the chicken or the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it, people.

as for me, i am hopeful, filled with fulgent excitement at the commencemet of something good and new. GO OBAMA! and to you, GO VOTE!!!

fields of gold

a bit of little britain to start your week good and proper. happy monday!

75 cents

at the gas station on lincoln blvd, where ned and i filled up our bicycles' tires today, it cost seventy-five cents for air and water. we took sam the jack russell for a run - he races ahead and barks at the bikes and looks back at us pedaling towards him and he is thrilled and irrepressibly elated to be chased - and the tires were soft, so we put sam's leash on for safety's sake and sam ran alongside ned and his bike until we reached the gas station on the corner. a homeless woman, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, a pair of butterscotch-colored corduroys, and huge sunglasses, holding a half-gone cigarette in her right hand and leaning somewhat on her shopping cart full of belongings, was about ten feet from the air and water machines. she was talking to herself. we ignored her as best we could. she ignored us, too.

but when the hydraulic kicked in as the three quarters entered the slot, sam started going ballistic with frenetic hopping and barking at the machine. and he started squeaking a bit, which is a strained intake of breath he gets in between barks when he's especially excited. so he's barking and i'm trying to get him to quiet down but he keeps bouncing on his front paws and looking back and forth between the machines and me. people are pulling up to the gas pumps and one guy who's just pulled in with two women in his van walks over near the homeless woman, who is literally in the very center of what would be the turnaround area for incoming and outgoing vehicles, and he lights a cigarette while one of the women pumps gas, the other enters the store. sam's still barking, the man is now looking at us, and ned's convinced there's something crack-related going on with him, though i can't quite gauge why, the homeless woman is talking more audibly to no one in particular, and we're now trying to get out of there because our tires are taut, sam's lapped some water, our duties are done. so we've started pushing off on the bikes, cruising past the homeless woman and the smoking man, but i need ned to go ahead of me in order to avoid sam possibly chasing after me while he's on the short leash, running alongside ned, so i stop short to let him pass and he nearly collides with me while frantically pleading, "go right! go right!" and desperately trying to brake quickly enough to avoid crashing into me. when i turn around, i discover that everyone standing at their cars parked at the pumps, is smiling at the scenario we’ve created - these two adults and two squeaky vintage bikes and one barking, bouncing dog on a leash and how amusing this little tableau must look.

this was most of my sunday. in short, it was good. and goofy. and sometimes those two words are completely synonymous.

be well and, as always, thanks for reading, thanks for caring, thanks for finding these random stories and opinions of mine to be of any interest whatsoever. and happy autumn! i saw some fallen maple leaves today and it truly felt like fall for a moment.