Friday, March 29, 2024

Shopping

I need to go grocery shopping today. I’m working from home today and have nothing on my schedule, so I could run out anytime and do my shopping. I’ve put it off for a few days. After my Botox on Wednesday, I just wanted to get back home. Yesterday, I had a migraine, so I didn’t go then either. Today, I have to go. I’m not excited about having to leave my apartment today, but maybe once I get out, it won’t be too bad.

I use an app called AnyList to make my grocery list. the app allows me create grocery shopping lists and collect and organize your recipes. I use it all the time to add recipes I think I might want to cook, then when I want make that recipe, I can pull it up and then add the ingredients and how much that I’ll need to my grocery list. 

So, my list is made out, and I’m ready to go buy groceries, but I’m not excited about it. Normally, I enjoy shopping, but I’m just not today. Oh well, we do what we have to do.

I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead! Maybe you even have Good Friday as a holiday today, in that case, enjoy an early start to your weekend!

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Pic of the Day

Slept In

I went to bed at 11 pm last night after I finished a book I was reading (A.J. Truman’s Out of Bounds, the 7th and last of his Browerton University Series). Isabella woke me a little after 4 am, and since I knew she would not give up until I fed her, I got up, fed her, and went back to bed. Since I’m working from home today and tomorrow, I was able to sleep until 5:30. As I write this, I haven’t fully woken up, but I’ll get there before I need to set up my laptop and start work by 7:30 am. 

I’m a bit sore from the Botox injections yesterday, but everything went fine. I’m hoping it continues to help.

A Thursday Isabella Picture

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Pic of the Day

Botox

Every three months, I get Botox for my migraines. My latest appointment is today. I never look forward to getting the injections, but I do look forward for the results. Typically, Botox is injected into muscles of the forehead, scalp, neck and shoulders. It’s not that pleasant of a procedure, but it usually takes about five minutes.

Exactly why Botox works is not known, but it’s believed that the injected Botox is absorbed by pain receptors in the muscles' nerves. The medication then deactivates those pain receptors and blocks pain signals that the nerves send to the brain, that’s why the procedure is officially known as denervation. Those nerves in the head that cause migraine pain are basically turned off for a period of time.

Migraine pain does not go away permanently, however. After several months, the nerves sprout new pain fibers, and the headaches tend to return. The Botox effect usually lasts about 2½ months, which is why I’ve had an increase in migraines for the past two or so weeks. Some migraine specialists will give the Botox injection every 2-2½ months, but my neurologist does not do this because eventually, the bodies immune system adapts to the Botox and makes the procedure ineffective. By keeping it to 3 months, they are prolonging the long term effectiveness of the Botox.

The injections are mostly not that painful, just a quick prick, except for those in the back of the head, those hurt a lot because they are given closest to the occipital nerve. However, the injections become more painful over time. As the nerves sprout new pain fibers, they become more sensitive each time they come back. This makes the procedure more painful each time it’s performed. No matter how much it hurts for the five minutes of the procedure, it’s worth it for the lessening of the migraine pain for most of the 3 months until the next set of injections.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Pic of the Day

Steps

Steps

By Frank O'Hara

 

How funny you are today New York

like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime

and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days

(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still

accepts me foolish and free

all I want is a room up there

and you in it

and even the traffic halt so thick is a way

for people to rub up against each other

and when their surgical appliances lock

they stay together

for the rest of the day (what a day)

I go by to check a slide and I say

that painting's not so blue

 

where's Lana Turner

she's out eating

and Garbo's backstage at the Met

everyone's taking their coat off

so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers

and the park's full of dancers and their tights and shoes

in little bags

who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y

why not

the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won

and in a sense we're all winning

we're alive

 

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple

who moved to the country for fun

they moved a day too soon

even the stabbings are helping the population explosion

though in the wrong country

and all those liars have left the U N

the Seagram Building's no longer rivalled in interest

not that we need liquor (we just like it)

 

and the little box is out on the sidewalk

next to the delicatessen

so the old man can sit on it and drink beer

and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day

while the sun is still shining

 

oh god it's wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so much

 

1961


About this Poem

 

“Steps” is from Lunch Poems, a book of poetry by Frank O'Hara published in 1964 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights, number 19 in their Pocket Poets series. The collection was commissioned by Ferlinghetti as early as 1959, but O'Hara delayed in completing it. Ferlinghetti would badger O'Hara with questions like, "How about lunch? I'm hungry." "Cooking," O'Hara would reply. O'Hara enlisted the help of Donald Allen who had published O'Hara's poems in New American Poetry in 1960. Allen says in his introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, “Between 1960 and 1964 O’Hara and I worked intermittently at compiling Lunch Poems, which in the end became a selection of work dating from 1953 to 1964.”

 

The poems in this collection contain O'Hara's characteristically breezy tone, containing spontaneous reactions to things happening in the moment. Like “Steps,” any of them appear to have been written on O'Hara's lunch hour. The poems contain numerous references to pop culture and literary figures, New York locations, and O'Hara's friends. One common theme is a desire for personal connection, whether the one-on-one connection of two friends or two lovers or a broader connection to strangers, in the face of tragedy, for example.

 

O'Hara's "Steps" is an ode to New York City in the 1950s. It captures the city's energy, diversity, and humor in a series of vivid vignettes. The poem walks the reader through various scenes in New York City and alludes to a wide variety of places and people. The poet begins by describing waking up and getting out of bed. This is followed by references to Lana Turner, Greta Garbo, and the Seagram Building. 

 

O’Hara makes jumps between images that are sometimes hard to understand but that work to help readers interpret the ever-moving chaos of New York City that the poet cared so deeply for.  The poem moves quickly from one image to the next, creating a sense of urgency and excitement. O'Hara uses everyday language and pop culture references to make the city feel both familiar and surreal. It also reflects the social changes of the time, as well as the city's role as a hub of creativity and culture. 

 

Compared to O'Hara's other works, "Steps" is more optimistic and straightforward. It lacks the irony and darkness of some of his other poems and instead celebrates the simple joys of life in New York City. The poem's brevity and lack of punctuation contribute to its sense of immediacy and spontaneity. The reader is pulled along by O'Hara's enthusiasm, sharing in his experience of the city. "Steps" is a love letter to New York City, capturing its energy and beauty in a way that is both personal and universal. 

 

 

About the Poet

 

Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in the New York School, an informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz, surrealism, abstract expressionism, action painting, and contemporary avant-garde art movements.

 

O'Hara's poetry is personal in tone and content and has been described as sounding "like entries in a diary." Poet and critic Mark Doty has said O'Hara's poetry is "urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny" containing "material and associations alien to academic verse" such as "the camp icons of movie stars of the twenties and thirties, the daily landscape of social activity in Manhattan, jazz music, telephone calls from friends." O'Hara's writing sought to capture in his poetry the immediacy of life, feeling that poetry should be "between two persons instead of two pages."

Monday, March 25, 2024

Pic of the Day

Stayed In

I stayed inside all weekend, just me and Isabella. From Friday night through all day Saturday, we got about 15 inches or so of snow. I wasn’t going to go anywhere. The weather can sometimes be strange in Vermont. We haven’t had a lot of snow this winter, but now that it’s officially spring, we got our only major snowstorm of the year. Then, it was sunny, without a cloud in the sky yesterday. Today, it’s 10 degrees outside as I write this, however, by midafternoon today, we are expected to reach temperatures in the low 40s. With this type of weather, it’s no wonder that I’ve had sinus issues all weekend and still this morning. My nose feels like it’s on fire and my sinus cavities feel like they could explode at any minute. Hopefully, it will get better as the day goes on.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a great week!

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Pic of the Day

The Donkey


Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.
—Zechariah 9:9

The first recorded Palm Sunday dates back to the 4th century in Jerusalem. The ceremony wasn't introduced to Western Christianity until about the 9th century. According to the gospels, Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem and people welcomed him as their king thinking he'd release them from Roman oppression. Days later, he was crucified. When I think of Palm Sunday, I think of Jesus riding on a donkey and entering Jerusalem. While Jesus is the central character of the Palm Sunday story, the image of the young donkey that carried Jesus into the city makes me think about what the donkey symbolizes in our faith.

Palm Sunday commemorates the story of Jesus’s triumphal entry on the back of a young donkey into Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to the Gospels, people lined the streets to greet him, waving palm branches and shouting words of praise. Conquering kings typically rode in chariots or on the back of stallions, but Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey going against what people would expect from a king. The people of Judea would have been familiar with another king who rode on a donkey to prove his humility before God. When King David was very old, he wanted to establish his favored son Solomon as his successor. So he arranged for Solomon to ride on David's own mule, in the company of Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet. 1 Kings 1:38-39 says, "So Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the Cherethites, and the Pelethites went down and had Solomon ride on King David’s mule, and took him to Gihon. tabernacle and anointed Solomon. And they blew the horn, and all the people said, ‘Long live King Solomon!’”

While in modern American culture, donkeys are often considered to be a stupid animal and are commonly the pun of many jokes. When people are made fun of, they are sometimes compared to a donkey as an insult. For the Jewish and Christian faiths, the donkey is a symbol of humility and peace, but it also represented the fulfillment of a prophecy from Zechariah 9:9. In Judaism, this passage from Zechariah is taken to refer to the Messiah, a spiritual king who would peacefully redeem Israel. The donkey expresses the idea of peace and ordinariness, as well as God's omnipotence who, if he wants to, makes something great of the most ordinary thing. In Christianity, the donkey becomes a symbol of Christ himself, given how the animal patiently suffers and bears others’ burdens. Horses, on the other hand, tend to be associated with royalty, power, and war.

The donkey in the stories about Jesus’s triumphal return to Jerusalem was tied up and had to be untied by the disciples. Why does Luke and Mark emphasize the word “untie” several times? There is a lesson we can learn from this. We are often tied, aren’t we? We are tied down by many things — by guilt, anxiety and concern. Some of us are tied down with the need to forgive, but we cannot bring ourselves to do it. Others are tied down to obsessions or addictions. We may be tied down to our smartphones and tablets, unable to put those devices down. We need to let go and let God untie us from our fears and give us boldness to show love, peace, faith, or joy. We need to be untied from whatever weighs us down. Palm Sunday is not just a celebration of Christ as the King of Kings, but a celebration of Jesus as our liberator from dependencies and afflictions — a celebration of the role Jesus plays in our lives. We need to be free to experience Jesus in our lives. We are meant to ride with Jesus: to follow him on his journey into the very presence of God.

We cannot fully commit to God when we are tied. We must be released by Jesus like the disciples who untied the donkey. We must surrender our burdens and our weights to God, much like the owner who surrendered his donkey to the two disciples. By relinquishing our own burdens, we can help others in their time of need and worship God freely by living a life exemplified by Christ.