Governor's Smack Down

California: The Governor of California is jogging with his
dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps out, bites the
Governor and attacks his dog.


1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects
upon the movie "Bambi" and then realizes he should
stop; the coyote is only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control captures
coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases
and $500 for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects the dead
dog and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends $3,500
getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on
getting his bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for 6 months while
Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure
the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds
implementing a "coyote awareness" program for
residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million to study
how to better treat rabies and how to permanently
eradicate the disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor's security agent is fired for not
stopping the attack somehow and for letting the
Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California: $75,000
to hire and train a new security agent with additional
special training re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote's relocation and files suit
against the State.

Arizona: The Governor of Arizona is jogging with her
dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out and
attacks her dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with her State-
issued pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has
spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP hollow point cartridge.

2. The Buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that's why California is broke.

***Sent Anonymously from the web.

Outscape

Outscape

There's no way to describe
how the light splays
after the storm, under the clouds
Still piled like Armageddon
Back to the west, the northwest
intent on incursion.

There's no way to picture it,
though others have often tried to.
Here in the mountains
it's like a ricochet from a sea surge,
Meadow grass moving like sea stalks
in the depths of its brilliance.


Charles Wright

Posted over on The Writer's Almanac

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

I grew up gypsy-wild,
my father changing jobs
like he changed shirts.
Schools, friends, neighborhoods were
a panorama of mental postcards,
flashing past my merry-go-round
in a constant stream of imagery.

Home was just a word, an illusion,
used flippantly, sounding hollow,
like saying love
when you meant lust.
Home was just a place, a feeling
that I witnessed in others,
not something within my
personal dominion, so
I just looked at my city,
Seattle, as home;
the place I was reared,
a seven-hilled city by the Sound—
even though it was
like pointing to a great hotel
and speaking
of the 40 apartments
I had lived in.

I found myself spending time
residing in the vast halls
of my imagination,
haunting movie houses, libraries, parks,
finding solace in the memory
of past lives and past homes.

One day I noticed by parents were gone,
the familiar landmarks had changed,
my friends had swapped faces
so often I could hardly recognize
any of them. I wandered for a time
naked, solitary, vulnerable,
chasing ghosts and shredded memories.

But I was lucky.
A tall woman waltzed into my life
twenty years ago and miraculously
decided to grow old with me.
We drew up our contract
with the State and with God,
and soon became the twin occupants
of a two-headed love beast,
and together grew into one
complete organism.


Finally
the word home
and the word love
inhabit common ground
midst the limitless confines
of that golden beast—
and it feels like home
every time
I hold my wife’s heart.

Glenn Buttkus June 2010

I Do Not Mean To

Image by Yi-Ching Lin


i do not mean to

i do not mean to
gawk, but when
there is some form of
steam entangled
in the roof
of your beat-up
van, it is definitely
time to hone in
on the target, size
up the situation, and
consider whether
or not a bucket
of water is a
realistic solution
.

Yi-Ching Lin

Posted over on Yi's Bits

Where Home Is

Where Home Is

A woman stands at the side of the road
staring up at the night sky. Questions
about desire have made her stop her car:

how it’s born, how to tend it, how it dies.
She has read of people killing for it.
She knows a woman who almost disappeared

under its weight. Places return to her –
Belleville, Sweetwater: beauty, something
to quench the heat of her tongue.

It is June, the nights are warm.
One star shines too close to the moon.
She is still so far away from home.

Lynne Rees

Posted over on Applehouse Poetry Workshop

Life Magazine

A weekly news magazine launched by Luce in 1936, with a strong emphasis on photojournalism. Life was published until 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978; and as a monthly from 1978 to 2000.

In 1936 publisher Henry Luce paid $92,000 to the owners of Life magazine because he sought the name for Time Inc. Wanting only the old Life’s name in the sale, Time Inc. sold Life’s subscription list, features, and goodwill to Judge. Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text, Luce launched Life on November 23, 1936. The third magazine published by Luce, after Time in 1923 and Fortune in 1930, Life gave birth to the photo magazine in the U.S., giving as much space and importance to pictures as to words. The first issue of Life, which sold for ten cents (approximately USD $1.48 in 2007, see Cost of Living Calculator) featured five pages of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s pictures.

he Luce Life was the first all-photographic American news magazine, and it dominated the market for more than 40 years. The magazine sold more than 13.5 million copies a week at one point and was so popular that President Harry S. Truman, Sir Winston Churchill and General Douglas MacArthur all serialized their memoirs in its pages.

The format of Life in 1936 was an instant classic: the text was condensed into captions for 50 pages of pictures. The magazine was printed on heavily coated paper that cost readers only a dime. The magazine’s circulation skyrocketed beyond the company’s predictions, going from 380,000 copies of the first issue to more than one million a week four months later. It spawned many imitators, such as Look, which was founded just a year later in 1937, and folded in 1971.

Perhaps one of the best-known pictures printed in the magazine was Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a nurse in a sailor’s arms, snapped on August 27, 1945, as they celebrated VJ Day in New York City. The magazine's place in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing. Luce purchased the rights to the name from the publishers of the first Life but sold its subscription list and features to another magazine; there was no editorial continuity between the two publications.

Life was wildly successful for two generations before its prestige was diminished by economics and changing tastes. Since 1972, Life has twice ceased publication and resumed in a different form, before ceasing once again with the issue dated April 20, 2007. The brand name continues on the Internet and in occasional special issues.

I guess most of we boomers remember the famous Life covers that came out when we were growing up in the 50's, coming of age in the 60's, and watching the mostly demise of the magazine by the 70's. So for fun, I found 250 images to those covers I remember and love; enjoy.

Glenn Buttkus