“Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah…”

Posted on October 5, 2011 | 2 comments

As some of you already know, this blog is called the “Wordfeeder” because I do most of my writing sitting at my kitchen table, looking up occasionally over the screen of my laptop, out our bay window at the birds that live in the woods behind our house and who hang out at the bird feeder on our deck. They’re my buds, these birds, friends of the family whose presence somehow makes writing make sense no matter how much other stuff I should be doing.

I’m not a birdwatcher mind you, but I do enjoy seeing different kinds. This Blue Jay, for example, has been stopping by on and off for the past few days. He’s too big to eat from the feeder, but enjoys the black oil sunflower seeds I spill along our railing. He’s fast, and doesn’t stay long, but today I managed to get two reasonably good pictures of him.

My thanks to Uncle Remus for the lyrics. He had an Eastern Bluebird on his shoulder. Me and my Blue Jay, we have a more modern relationship.

“…Zip-A-Dee-A. My oh my, what a wonderful day!” …Ok, press “Publish” and now I have to do the dishes.

-wf

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Posted in Birds, Blue Jay, Life, Writing

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New York, New York

Posted on October 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Hi. As those of you who follow my blog know, my favorite daughter – Don’t panic. I only have the one, daughter that is. – has very recently given birth to her first child, my first grandchild, Miles. (Miles is 11 today. 11 days old, that is, but he’s very bright, so just in case he’s reading this, “Hey, Miles. Wuzzup?” Note to self: Get Miles his own iPad2 so we can FaceTime each other.)

Miles was born in New York, the city of big signs, great food and teaming hoards of wonderfully diverse Americans. The place literally oozes with people, in a good way. As soon as my daughter went into labor, my wife and I went into gear. A few hours later, most of it on the New Jersey turnpike – “And they’ve all come to look for America,” according to Paul Simon – and we were at the hospital setting new records for fawning over a sleeping baby. To Miles credit, he’s own man and pretty much ignored us.
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Posted in Life, Miles, New York, Writing

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“Gesundheit!”

Posted on October 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

Short fiction for guests of the Wordfeeder
Saturday, October 1, 2011

The street was busy that evening, as usual. Three narrow, unmarked lanes, one of them for alternate street parking, the one on the other side blocked by a delivery truck here and a service truck there. The pavement was still damp from the late afternoon rain, just a bit of steam rising where the sun breaking through the clouds was doing its job. There was still and hour or so of daylight. People, mostly young in this neighborhood, were coming and going in between and around each other, avoiding garbage bags that wouldn’t be collected until late that night, and the occasional piece of throwaway furniture left at the curb. Racks of fruit, flowers and other stock protruded from the front of stores that were thriving on the flow of locals coming home from work. It was noisy with the sound of traffic and of people talking, too many to hear what any of them were saying.

Stepping quickly across the street, between two badly parked cars and onto the sidewalk, she walked up to the door to the right of the Gyros place that was in the bottom of the converted tenement where she lived, five tall flights up. Without looking left or right, she put her key in the lock, the key with no chain to help find it, turned it, pulled back the heavy metal door and stepped into the dimly lit hallway, looking ahead to a brighter light at the bottom of the staircase.
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Posted in Life, Romance, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Writing

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Today is Miles’ birthday. He’s 0 years old.

Posted on September 21, 2011 | 2 comments

A personal note.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Congratulations to my amazing, my favorite daughter – I have just the one, but I’m nonetheless crazy about her. (You too, Son.) – and her wonderful husband. No simple explanation mark at the end of that first sentence can do the love, respect, the hopes and dreams I have for them justice. An already very clever, highly creative person, as I noted in a post 9 months ago, she has now successfully completed her most ambitious arts and crafts project to date, the making of a human being. Very well done. Now comes the hard part.

Yes, today, at 8:04 AM ET, my grandson, Miles, all 7lbs 10oz of him, gave up the security of my daughter’s womb to dive head first, literally, into the tough, relentlessly anxious, generally wonderful world of the “air-breathers,” aka you and me. He is now among us, and life, for not just my daughter and son-in-law, but for everyone Miles touches will never be the same.

(Have you ever noticed how we always give the weight of newborns when we introduce them? Maybe I should add my weight to the “About” tab of my blog. ..Maybe not.)

Despite Miles’ tumultuous transition – which culminated in his having been born only a scant 14 minutes after my daughter and son-in-law arrived at the hospital, Miles seems very cool about it all. Very poised, very collected. This bodes well for the future of civilization in which I am certain Miles will be a major player.

For the better part of 8 hours today, I hung out with the three of them, Miles and his parents, plus my wife and Miles’ other two grandparents watching him sleep and occasionally open his eyes and smile at us. I’m told he’s not really smiling, but probably has gas to which I reply, “Get lost. I know a smile when I seen one.”

By the way, did you know that “Miles” is an anagram for “smile”? I told you my daughter was clever, didn’t I? Madison Avenue’s best couldn’t have picked a better name for this kid if they had made it up from scratch.

The highlight of the day, other that just plain seeing Miles and my daughter – proof positive of how beautiful a woman can look without makeup – was watching my son-in-law change his son’s second diaper, a courageous act if ever there was one. It wasn’t easy and the results were a tad imperfect, but with encouragement from his wife and Miles’ grandparents, and under the supervision of one very experienced nurse, he got the job done. Good work. Between you and me, I’ve seen fewer people change all four tires and fuel-up their team car in less time, but then that’s NASCAR, a walk in the park compared to cleaning up what Miles did in his pants. Miles is staying on the 11th floor of the hospital. Even so, I’m fairly certain several pedestrians passed out on the sidewalk below during this particular pit stop.

And so tomorrow, Miles takes on day 2 of his life. With the same fearless verve and courage that will characterize his long and wondrous life, he’ll try to make sense out of everything, from how his part parts work to those noises everyone around him keeps making from their mouths. Go Miles! You can do this. How do I know? Because I had two of you once and look how great they turned out.

I love you. Happy birthday! Let’s do lunch, as soon as you can eat solid food.

-wf

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Posted in Babies, Life, Miles, Newborns

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The Simple, Obvious, But Nonetheless Powerful Way To Get People Back To Work

Posted on September 16, 2011 | Leave a comment

Friday, September 16, 2011

What usually happens when we have downturns is that our President and elected representatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, flail about while they wait for the economy to get better on its own, not because of and often in spite of the billions we may have wasted with misdirected, ineffective policies and programs. Whoever’s in office when the recovery occurs takes credit for it, and we move on. That’s not happening this time, that is, the economy isn’t recovering fast enough on its own because there are structural issues, big things wrong with the economy which will take time for it to fix, time we don’t have.

Every now and then, I take myself way too seriously. I find myself facing what appear to be difficult, complex problems, the kind that make your head hurt when you think about solving them. But then eventually, thank goodness, there comes a moment. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the one when I blow my diet on the grounds that stress is more harmful to my health than fat, after an hour or two of mindless TV, followed by a pass-out nap on my couch. It’s the moment when I realize that the problem wasn’t that complicated after all. I strip the problem of its extraneous detail and focus on its core elements, and a simple, reasonable, often elegant albeit sometimes radical sounding solution presents itself. This is one of those times.
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Posted in Economic Policy, Economic Recovery, Economy, News, Politics, Unemployment, Wuf

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Imperfect Together

Posted on September 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Short Fiction for Guests of the Wordfeeder
Monday, September 5, 2011

“You know,” Greg mumbled into his pillow, wondering if he’d been drooling, “I can feel you staring at me.”

“That’s not possible,” Georgia responded from where she was sitting up against her pillows, her knees up, one hand on the TV’s remote control waiting to see if she should change channels.

“Are you staring at me?”

“Well, yes. Sort of.”

“How did I know?”

“Because you can feel the intensity of the anguish emanating like laser beams…”

“Like red laser beams.”

“Right. Like red laser beams out of my electric blue eyes.”

“That’s it exactly.” Sitting up, Greg grabbed and stacked up his pillows against the headboard, fluffing them just so, scrunched his tush up and interlocked his fingers while staring mindlessly at Jimmy Fallon’s monologue. “Okay, I’m up. What’s bothering you?”
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Posted in Life, Love, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Writing

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The Child Safety Seat for New Grandparents

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 6 comments

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Hi. As you can see from the picture, we’re having a baby. ..Wait, I need to explain.

By “we,” I mean my daughter and her husband. And that’s not the baby in the picture. It’s my daughter’s Cabbage Patch doll that my wife insisted we save, in the warehouse we call our basement, for our grandchildren. It’s been a while. I had no idea cabbage would keep that long.

I’ve been using the doll to make sure I know how the car seat works. It comes with a 68 page manual. The one we got our own kids years ago had a sticker that said, “Insert baby here,” with an arrow. “This end up.”
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The Desk

Posted on August 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Short Fiction for Guests of the Wordfeeder
Monday, August 22, 2011

As is the case with everything I write,
except for a few details, this is a true story.

Prelude –
(To a short short story? Why not?)

As you may already know, there are literary historians who contest the notion that William Shakespeare (4/26/1564 – 4/26/1616) was, in fact, the prolific author he is reputed to be. (Yes, he died on the same day of the same month on which he was born.) It is their theory that, acting as a front, Shakespeare took credit for the works of one or more of his contemporaries, namely Francis Bacon (1/22/1561 – 4/9/1626) and/or Christopher Marlowe (2/26/1564 until he was stabbed to death on 5/30/1593 at the age of only 29). Most scholars believe this debate is unwarranted and that William Shakespeare was, in fact, the genius creator of the works to which he signed his name.

In any case, relationships among these three men – Shakespeare, Bacon and Marlowe – varied from cordial, even warm, particularly between Shakespeare and Marlowe, to angry, resentful and distrusting. Some have even suggested that Bacon – who was known to have a nasty disposition, generally lacking any sense of humor and occasionally ruthless – may have arranged for Marlowe’s demise, envious of his closeness to Shakespeare and angered by certain blasphemous remarks, quite shocking for their time, made by Marlowe about Bacon which Sir Francis took personally. Who knows?

What is known for sure is that Shakespeare’s remarkable productivity stalled abruptly in late 1599, with no output – no play or poem – through most of 1600. The best he could manage was some reworking of Hamlet which he had first written in 1589. Why? Could it be that Shakespeare was distracted and, instead of writing, chose instead to spend the year rolling around with Gwyneth Paltrow? (Who wouldn’t?) Of course not. That was the movie. In fact, no one really knows, but there is a school of thought that believes Shakespeare, who was a superstitious person, was affected by a gift he received about that time from none other than Francis Bacon himself. Alleged by Sir Francis to have been presented to encourage a reconciliation between the two, there are those who believe the gift had a much more sinister purpose.

—————

It was early on the perfect Saturday morning, Jake’s favorite day. He’d been up for a while, wrapping up one of the columns that would one day make possible the nice house in the country which was their dream. For now, their one bedroom city apartment would have to do. His nimble fingers were flying over his laptop’s keyboard, until they stopped abruptly, for just a moment, before hitting the final period. “Done.”
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Posted in Life, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Spells, Witchcraft, Writer's Block, Writing

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Congressional Dorms

Posted on August 18, 2011 | 2 comments

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Remember college? How the dorms had a way of making all freshmen equal regardless of what their parents did for a living or how much money they made? The way they forced the intermingling of nerds with the cool guys, the English majors with the engineering and science tools – and eventually, in more recent years, the girls with the boys, the blacks with the whites, the straight with the gay? It was nice, because dorm life helped open our minds, encouraging us to relate to others who were different than we were, to appreciate these differences and not get bent out of shape by them.

Maybe we should take the same approach to growing a better, more civil, more effective Congress.
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Posted in Campaign Financing, Congress, Dylan Ratigan, News, Politics, Voting, Wuf

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Schmutz* Patrol

Posted on August 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

Short Fiction for Guests of the Wordfeeder
Sunday, August 14, 2011

*According to the Urban Dictionary: Used by Jewish mothers to identify that you’ve got some kind of crap on your face. Random, icky stuff that ends up on you or something else. “Dirt” in German.

Tuesday, 1:05 PM.

An attractive 30 something brunette in one of those fits perfectly business suits only high priced women attorneys wear, makes her way through the noisy lunch hour crowd of professionals at this particular downtown grill to where the other half of her meeting is waiting for her in one of the booths.

“Hey,” the attorney, still standing, says to the women she has come there to meet who is busy reading something on her phone, her crab cake and fries platter half eaten. “I got held up on a conference call.”

“No problem. Have a seat. You want something to eat?”

“No,” the suit responded, reaching over, without asking permission, to take one of her fries. “I won’t be here that long. Are you sure it’s okay to talk here?”
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Posted in Life, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Writing

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