A new smaller skeleton joined the pack at Houndstooth Hall: young Ambrose’s twin sister Amarise (whatever century some variety of plague occurred was hard on this family). Here’s a photo from her first appearance on Instagram, wearing a “Who The Hell Is Ben Cote?” button that I let her claim because, as Lord Cuttlebone explains, “Never come between a girl and her devotion to a guitarist, songwriter, performer, and possessor of great hair.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. For more of my Instagram skeleton Halloween homages to music artists, check behind the cut.
Tag: buttons
Sunday Sundries
If I read anything over the next week, I plan for it to be a reread of Mary O’Hara’s wonderful series. I first read a condensed version of My Friend Flicka as a kid, and my mother owned a copy of the third in the series, Green Grass of Wyoming. I think I was able to check out and read Thunderhead from the University of Alabama library when I was a student. I treasure this collection of library bound hard copies. If my memory is right, I had help getting them from my friend Steve V, who worked at a Houston independent bookstore (Detering Book Gallery) that helped customers find and acquire rare or long out-of-print books.
I’m putting the most recent musical homage photos from my Instagram feed behind the cut. There are some fun recollections, or if nothing else, the photos offer an interesting look at some of the T-shirts at Houndstooth Hall belonging to Tom, Timothy, and me. =)
Sunday Sundries
January 26, 1955 — October 6, 2020
As long as I have breath and memory, I will remember him, listen to him, think of him, and miss him. I borrowed some of him–his smile and the way it made him squint–for a character, so in that world of mine, Eddie is eternal.
Sunday Sundries
The Democratic National Convention this week is contributing to my website posts each day in some way or another. I’m posting this late, but for this date, I decided to show political buttons from my own collection. Buttons do not indicate how I voted in any of these elections–they indicate that I was given buttons by people I knew or at events I went to. Some of them pre-date when I reached voting age. I don’t hesitate for a moment to identify as a Democrat, never have, but though it’s been a long–very long–time (more often in local or state races), I’ve been known to vote across party lines.
Button Sunday
Today is National Donald Duck Day. Though I’m a Daffy Duck fan myself, I’ll give Donald his due. He’s been around since 1934, has been in even more movies than Mickey Mouse, and gets away with wearing no pants. How many of the rest of us can put those bullet points on our résumés?
Button Sunday
Found this button online, a steampunk theme with cursive writing. I do so little writing by hand these days that my penmanship is atrocious. But I do know how to write that way, and I well remember all the handwritten letters I received in my younger years (truth be told, I still have most of them, though I hope all the males to whom I ever sent letters have thrown all of mine away–or could send them to me, so I can roll my eyes at my younger self).
I already had journals and journaling on my mind when I was looking at buttons today. Yesterday, as I searched for my original essential oils inventory list, which I never found (finally just started a new one and input it to a computer doc, so I’ll know where to find it when I need it again), I opened a file folder that contained a tangle of embroidery thread and a ticket stub. I suspect the embroidery thread went with a cross-stitch piece I started back in the 1990s of a white cat sitting in a window (you can read about that in an old post here).
When the stitching remained unfinished, I finally wrote a poem about it and put the partially finished piece in a frame with the poem. It hung on my wall at The Compound for years, and now I have no clue where it is. I added it to my list of inexplicably missing items.
In the same folder, I found a ticket to a matinee showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi from February 2018. That faded ticket, at least, I could put inside my current Moleskine.
As you can see, I’ve rarely used my Moleskines for capturing my sloppy cursive writing.
Like the one above, the Moleskines (and some are Moleskine knockoffs) are filled with mementoes of all kinds, and they get very fat; too fat for shelving. So they have a bin they go into when they’re full. I do still journal from time to time, but I mostly scribble a day’s events or thoughts in whatever kind of day planner or daily appointment book I keep.
Do you still handwrite your letters? Do you journal or keep a datebook or diary?
P.S. I have now reread all five of the TJB novels. I was amazed at how many things I’ve forgotten and how moved I could still be by those characters and their stories. This book, in particular, required a box of tissues right next to me. I kept having to close the book and cry.
Now I need to get back to The Musician in the Neverending Saga before he writes mean songs about my neglect.
Button Sunday
Speaking of unicorns, it’s Timothy J. Lambert’s birthday today! Wishing him a happy one and looking forward to celebrating it when we can all convene. Thought I’d share photos from most of the birthdays we’ve celebrated with him since he moved here in late 2001. Missing years are likely photos inaccessible on a maimed computer; if he was in town, we celebrated on or around his birthday.
2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2012 cake, 2013 (Saints & Sinners), 2014 (Saints & Sinners), 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 cake, 2023
Button Sunday
Whatever role you took as a nurturer, or whoever nurtured you…
Whatever path got you to the ones who needed you, or who were there when you needed them…
I celebrate you and your shared bond.
Last Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law sent us all a coloring page she created and titled “Fruit Salad.” She knows I enjoy coloring the drawings she shares, so I colored this one to celebrate her on Mother’s Day.
Button Sunday
Who knows the source of this quote?
People still argue about the source (and even this quote) more than thirty years later.
Button Sunday
Heed the crow, friends.
Today is Great Poetry Reading Day, and you can learn more about it at that link. As for me, as soon as I realized this, I went right to the Houndstooth library and took out this book. I don’t know why I thought to check, because I rarely do this anymore, but I looked inside the front page and I had, indeed, written my name and the date I got the book, which in this case was 1997. I wonder what prompted me to purchase it that year, whether I had a hunger to read more poetry or I was in a bookstore, saw it, and decided, I need that!
I paged through the book randomly, reading poems, and came to a section with work by the American poet Robinson Jeffers, who I’ve always read with pleasure. Full disclosure: In 1995, I bought the book Safe As Houses by Alex Jeffers and wondered if he was related to Robinson Jeffers, but these were the days before I had the entire world of information at my fingertips. I reminded myself that just because two people share a last name… Lucky for me, one of my literary icons, Edmund White, had blurbed the novel on the back cover, and he shared that Alex is Robinson Jeffers’s grandson. Curiosity satisfied. Since I’m off-track already, I want to reiterate that it’s among the highlights of my writing and editing career that I queried Alex about submitting a story to Timothy and me for Best Gay Romance 2014, and I was delighted with his submission, “Shep: A Dog,” and really excited to include it in the anthology. If you have interest in reading an excerpt, I provided one at this old post.
Today, I relished Robinson Jeffers’s poem “Love the Wild Swan,” because I really hungered for more of the validation I got last week that yes, I am a writer, and no, I’m not on the wrong path, I’m on my own path, a path where I can and do love the wild swan.
I even crafted a bit today to showcase Jeffers’s poem in between periods of writing, all while listening to music. If you can’t read the words on the photo below, I’ll add the poem at the end of this post. The swan outline came from ColoringAll.com, and I bought that floral paper (to the right) the swan is on at the bookstore where I was an assistant manager in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I met so many good people there, one of whom, of course, was another of our assistant managers, Steve R.
I didn’t forget for a minute that today is Steve’s birthday, and as I do every year, I whipped up something chocolate in his honor (we’ll be adding a dollop of ice cream to those brownies). We love you always, Steve. 
Love the Wild Swan
“I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade’s curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,
The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings.”
–This wild swan of a world is no hunter’s game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast,
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your. . . self? At least
Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
Thank you, Taylor, for today’s creativity soundtrack. Your lyrics mean a lot to me and to some of my characters.
Fun fact: In An Aries Knows history, I launched Button Sundays on September 17, 2006.