kaffy_r | Entries tagged with love like burning

Happy Birthday, Mum

This is Mary Glen Keirstead Routliffe Stirling. She was born on May 30, 1927, in Greenwich, Nova Scotia, Canada. For most of her life, she lived within 10.5 miles of the house where a midwife delivered her.* Nova Scotia was where she died, on Oct. 27, 2013. Nova Scotia was her home.

In the 13 years since she died, I've generally remembered her on the anniversary of her death, and I'll undoubtedly do that again. But today, when she would have turned 98 if she hadn't moved on, I wanted to turn my face to the sky and sing Happy Birthday to her. I hope she and my stepdad, Rob Stirling, young and beautiful again as they were when they fell in love, are together.

And I like to think that after a modest dinner at a modest heavenly restaurant, with a birthday cake that has all the taste and none of the calories, that they will leave the restaurant, and dance together, twirling and laughing, in the stars.

I love you, Mum.

*She spent a short time in Montreal as a newly minted nurse, and later, in the years she was married to my father, she lived in or around Mont Joli, Quebec. Together, those probably consisted of no more than five years.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Ateez, "Say My Name"

Because of Course I Am. Obsessed. WHAT??!?

I've been listening to the four latest music videos from Stray Kids. The eight of them paired up (just like in school! When you had to pick someone to do the project with!) and gifted us Stays with four amazing pieces of music and video.

While I'm not going to go on at embarrassing length about all four, I do have to say that the fourth one, "Cinema," performed by two of the sweetest-voiced members, Seungmin and Lee Know, caught me completely by surprise at how deep it burrowed into my ears and my heart.

Just as its title suggests, the video is very cinematic. It tells a story, one that science fiction lover me immediately grabbed, stuffed into my brain and started writing back story for. As a one-time chick singer in a monumentally unsuccessful band, and as someone who's not averse to post-apocalyptic monographs and/or navel gazing, this story - open to interpretation, of course, as all good visual art is - this hit me where I live. The end hasn't failed to raise the hair on the back of my neck. Nor has it failed to thicken my throat with tears.

I promise I'll go back to less ridiculously niche maunderings. But I hope you enjoy the music, and the potentially intended story.

(They were actually extremely cold when they filmed this. It's not makeup.)

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: "Cinema" Seungmin and Lee Know/SKZ

Mr. Booker Goes to Washington

There are a bunch of small irritations in my life currently - still no laptop, for instance. There are things so bad in this country - people, companies, law firms, newspapers, FFS, obeying in advance - that we're working on getting the hell out of Dodge.. Things are so bad around the world that ... I'm not even going to complete that sentence.

But sometimes ... sometimes ... something good happens. Right now, Democratic Senator Cory Booker is holding out on the Senate floor. He is doing a filibuster the old-fashioned way. He hopes to go through the night and into tomorrow. He's doing it, he says, to disrupt business as usual, because "our country is in crisis." I can't do a proper link, but it's on C-Span.

Go watch it. Here's a really long link to C-Span's website. https://www.c-span.org/clip/us-senate/sen-cory-booker-d-nj-starts-speaking-in-senate-for-as-long-as-i-am-physically-able/5158775. I don't know if you'll be able to watch it, but go hunt it down on news sites.

In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart's Smith filibustered for the purposes of good. It was just a movie. Cory Booker isn't in a movie.

God bless him.

Current Mood: impressed

Happy Birthday Chicago!

I don't know why I'm unable to post things in the beginning of the day, and why my posts always end up at the end of the day. That's not good when you want to celebrate something on a particular day. And this one is even more delayed; Tuesday, March 4, 2025, was Chicago's 188th birthday.

( Read more... )

And here's a good epilogue to my maunderings: Chicago, by Carl Sandburg

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: Stray Kids "Voices"

... Plus Non-Canadian Positivity

First - Happy Flag Day, Canada! I'm old enough to remember the arguments and debates about which potential Canadian flag should win. I was about 10, but for some reason I recall hearing older kids (sixth graders? Junior high kids? Possibly; the memory is kind of fuzzy) talking about it. I remember liking one that had three maple leaves and blue side columns; I think I thought having just two colors was boring. These days, however, I'm glad we went with the flag we now have.

Mind you, Canadians never seemed to have the flag worship that Americans have. At least not until now. (Fifty-first state? Not bloody likely. Suck it, Donny.) That may have something to do with the Canadian psyche. But it's a good flag.

And today, I'm particularly proud of it.

As for other things I've felt positive about today, I put another chapter of "Gleaning Musutachi" up over at

originalkaffy_r , after a long period of inactivity. I've got a second chapter ready to go tomorrow.

I listened to some non-Stray Kids/general Kpop music today. (I know ... alert the press!) Some Keola Beamer, because I'm a sucker for his beautiful Hawaiian slack key guitar. Here, have some!

Watch on YouTube

And ending the day on a completely different - and exhilarating - Patti Smith in 1979. Damn. What a beautiful woman. What a beautifully brutal performer

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: Keola Beamer

Never Forget

This was our past, and it is still with us.

In Flanders Fields

John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

And

kerravonsen was right; this announces our present and future all too well.

The Second Coming

William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: CBC Remembrance Day ceremony

I Still Dream About The Future

I've been running silent over the past week or so, as I struggled through completing my latest for-money story, and saw BB through that awful rite of passage we seniors have to go through - colonoscopies suck, y'all, but we both got through it. Today I completed the story, or the first draft of it, and with any luck it'll pass muster with my editor.

Up next? Vacuuming. Damp mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors. Completing a LoC for my friend's last two 'zine editions. Thinking about another potential story plot. Thinking about trying to resume my long-ignored poetry efforts. Finishing off the kimchi and rice chicken dish I put together yesterday, and edited a bit today to calm the kimchi down a tad.

Oh, and hoping. And dreaming about the future. Hoping and dreaming about a future in these United States where we have a chance to pick up the pieces of our messy and incomplete democracy, and somehow glue them at least partly back together.

( More scattered political thoughts below )

Go vote tomorrow, if you're American and haven't already done so. Help maintain our unsteady and incomplete democracy.

See you on the other side.

* It should go without saying that there are religious believers with good hearts. Y'all know who I'm talking about here.
** I still can't vote in the U.S. so I suppose I shouldn't consider this my country. But it is.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Stray Kids "DLC"

A Few Things Make a Post. More or Less.

( Work stuff )

( Original stuff, and it's fall! )

( Lolla, redux, and Korean weirdness )

( Family stuff )
Now, I've got to get to bed. I'm volunteering at a fundraising golf tournament tomorrow. I hate golf. But I like the news outlet that's raising money this way, and I really like my editor, who needs all the volunteers he can get. Golf. Which, I am sure I don't need to remind you, is flog, spelled backward.

Ta, folks.

Current Mood: moody
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Stray Kids, "Mixtape #2"

So. Lolla.

Yes, I finally got around to posting about it. Bob’s brief hospital stay* and fun with switching mobile phone carriers, complete with SIM card madness**, disrupted my original intent.

Short version:

Attending Lollapalooza to see Stray Kids perform for the first time was an amazing experience — positive and joyful. None of the things my fearful son had worried about came to pass. The heat was reasonable, Lolla provided free water, the food offered for sale wasn’t overpriced. The sun shone, despite weather forecasts that predicted rain and thunderstorms. The crowds were a delight to watch, not a claustrophobic nightmare to survive.

I met other Stray Kids fans, Stays, who were happy to adopt me, a baby Stay. One came from Boston, another from LA, a couple from Evanston, just a few minutes from my place. I know that others came up from North Carolina, a couple reportedly from Paraguay. They loved the band enough to make the journey.

When the time came for the Kids to storm the stage, we were there for it. We couldn’t see the stage ourselves, but we didn’t expect to, given the crowd. Just seeing them on the huge screens behind them, and knowing that they were there below the screens, was enough. We sang along to the songs, we spent 1.5 hours grinning like fools and taking part in a community that included eight young men who loved performing for us.

Long Version:

( Read more... )So here it is, my Lolla report. Too long delayed, and just too damned long.

*He's fine. Medical weirdness, yay.
**Not fun, but taken care of; only us, Maynard ....
***skzoo, not surprisingly stands for Stray Kids Zoo. Each member has an animal totem. As one does. Skzoo merch alone could keep JYP financially afloat.

Current Mood: sore
Current Location: heading to bed
Current Music: Stray Kids "Youtiful"

Happy Birthday, Mum

She would be 97 today, at least in this world. I think she's young, and beautiful, and with all her friends and loved ones, in some other world.

Thanks for everything, Mum. I love you. I'll see you later on.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: MSNBC

Mary Glen Keirstead Routliffe Stirling
May 30, 1927-October 27, 2013

It has been ten years. A decade.

It seems like a much shorter time.

I still miss her. I still hope, with a strong, irrational hope, to see her again.

I love you, Mum.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Whatever is inside my head at the moment

Chicago

It's been more than a month since I put my brain in gear and posted here. It's been a month of little ambition and fewer spoons, I guess. But I'm going to get back to posting, I swear to god.

Doing this - getting back up on the blogging bicycle - is more difficult than it once was. I try to find something interesting to say, and when I can't find something that meets that description (at least in my own eyes), I write nothing at all. Worse than that are the times when I do have an idea I think is worth writing about - and I still can't put pen to paper. But there comes a time one must attempt it, she said portentously.

So here I am, on a fairly sunny Sunday, with nearly all our windows open and the tiniest breeze making it truly enjoyable, ready to write about Chicago.

( It's ALL under here. )

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: birds chirping outside my window

Mary Glen Keirstead Routliffe Stirling

I know you don't need birthday wishes on this May 30th; you are traveling in the stars. But I miss being able to wish you happy birthday. It's been 10 years since I was able to do that. I don't think you'll mind. I love you - now go back to traveling in the stars. You deserve all of their light.

Current Mood: lonely
Current Location: the home office

Harlan and Company

Because I'm bad at updating, and at taking pictures, it's been a bit since

ljgeoff asked for shots of Harlan and his family during their recent visit. It hasn't helped that I'm neck deep in NaNoWriMo, with most of the time in front of my keyboard split between that and tuning in to MSNBC pre- and post-midterms.

I do, however, get around to things. So here are some pictures. Only a few; I know that, while I consider Harlan one of nature's more photogenic toddlers, and indeed one of its most delightful ones, those who aren't his Nana, Grampa Bob or his parents can be forgiven for not so adjudging him.( Under here )

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Max Richter - On the Nature of Daylight

Glorious Visit

I'm sitting in Toronto, waiting for my flight back to Chicago. I'm tired, a little wired, and really, really happy I went to my 50-year high school reunion.

I hope to share stories, and pictures, and thoughts, but I think it's going to have to wait until I'm back in the land of pizza and politics.

What I'll say for now is this: don't take it as gospel that school reunions are to be avoided like the plague. That's probably true in many cases - but you know? Sometimes, and maybe a lot of times, it isn't. Sometimes reunions are just brilliant.

More to come ....

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Billy Bishop Airport, Toronto, Canada
Current Music: Airport ambience. I love it.

Happy Birthday, Mum

My mother would have been 95 years old today. Although I miss her, I'm glad that, given the cognitive state she was in at the last, she didn't make it to this year. It would have been her body's birthday, but she would long since have left. Today, I choose to believe she's enjoying a bit of birthday cake with two of her best friends, Clara and Marion. Clara Jefferson's birthday was May 31, so these school chums will have at least a couple of birthdays to celebrate.

Happy Birthday, Mum. I was blessed to have you; so were many others. As much as I miss you, I'll say what I did at your funeral, back in 2013; you're out of pain, back in charge, and I'll see you when I get there.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: the home office

Treble and Bass Roads to Happiness

One thing I need to remember when I have those directionless days, the ones that threaten to send me off in panic, is that listening to music that transports me, music that makes me close my eyes, move my feet, bang my head, listen, nod, sing because it's impossible not to - that's a way to find direction.

And sometimes, even if the music doesn't help me find a direction, it reminds me that I don't always need to find a direction in which to go.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: International Jazz Day

International Jazz Day

I'm not sure this concert will continue to stay on YouTube, so if you want to enjoy - be transported by - sublime jazz from across the world by musicians from Indonesia, north and south African countries, Japan, the Americas, go, now, and enjoy a little over two hours of ... like I said; sublime.

Yesterday was the birthday of both Duke Ellington and Toots Thielemans, so here are a couple of the pieces of theirs that I love.

Bluesette (Thielemans)

Watch on YouTube

Toots' jazz harmonica (and his guitar playing, which I forget) always always makes me smile, and helps me relax. It's no surprise that the music he wrote for Sesame Street was a part of that children's show for so long.

And then there's the Duke: Edward Kennedy Ellington was responsible for more iconic and quintessentially American jazz than anyone I can think of. Yes, much of his most famous work was written with Billy Strayhorn, but Strayhorn wouldn't have found his own voice had he not Ellington's Amanuensis

I love this one: Caravan

Watch on YouTube

I wish it was easier to choose another Ellington piece. I'll go with Black and Tan Fantasy, because it shows how much his music comes out of his observations of the world.

Watch on YouTube

God, I love jazz.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Ellington "Black and Tan Fantasy"

Watch on YouTube

Caravan (Ellington)

Watch on YouTube

Black and Tan Fantasy (Ellington)

Watch on YouTube

God, I love jazz.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Ellington "Black and Tan Fantasy"

Once More, With Familial Feeling

Thought I'd post these pics of the kidlet and his proud parents, as well as one with three generations all together.

I promise I'll post about other things tomorrow.

( Hey, look! )

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: ambient piano music
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/607264.html

Here He Is

As promised, the first of what I promise won't be a monotonous procession of Harlan pictures. A few, yes, but not all that many.

Not all that many.

Please note the Thirteenth Doctor color stripe on his outfit. It was not planned. (Yes, I know the colors are upside down. Hush.)

( Saving bandwidth )

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: The furnace. MMMmmm warmth....
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/607218.html

Eight Years

Not today; two days ago. Eight years ago on the 27th, Mum died. The fact that I forgot it until late yesterday threw me for a bit of a loop, with a tiny part of me suggesting that this somehow made me a bad daughter. I'm not, and that tiny part of me got swatted pretty hard in my head, retreating to some corner of my consciousness that houses the rest of my ancient and moth-eaten Baptist instincts.

Still I wondered at my forgetting. Forgetting is not a thing I do, or at least not something I do easily. I hoard my memories, even the ones I've remembered so much, so hard, so repeatedly, that they're worn smooth as glass, and possibly no longer memories. Perhaps they're just stories now.

Do I remember Mum, or do I remember a memory of her? It's not the same thing. But could it be as worthy a way of honoring her? If she's become smooth as glass, perhaps a little translucent, like small and rounded Fundy-washed quartz pebbles, is that perhaps not so bad?

Yeah, it's at least a little bad.

She was my mother. She is my Mum. She will always be my mother. And she was more than my mother. She was Mary Glen, and she had thoughts and loves and a life apart from me, and apart from what I thought she was or wanted her to be. That's as it should be.

So, try to remember the real woman, Kathy. She deserves it.

I'll see her again someday, and I want to be able to tell her I did the right thing by her.

Current Mood: melancholy
Current Location: the home office
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/602659.html

I Did Not Drop Him On His Head

And I got to hold him, make odd noises at him, tell him he was a very good kitty (for completely logical reasons), watch him while he slept in my arms, and tell his father completely inappropriate jokes, as is the Way Of Our People..

It was terrific.

There were pictures taken, at least one or two of which get shared with you folks tomorrow, no matter how hard you try to avoid them.

(Also, probably a few less than generous thoughts about Seattle.)

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: A Seattle Travelodge
Current Music: jazz versions of Jerry Garcia pieces.
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/593863.html

Here We Are, In Seattle

It's 6:35 p.m. Seattle time. We've been up since 2 a.m., Seattle time. But things have turned out rather well (well, except for the "I left Bob's Galaxy Tab at the TSA checkpoint because I couldn't find it in my backpack, panicked, found it, had to send the backpack back for another run through the x-ray machine without the tablet in it, then grabbed the backpack and got the hell out of the way of irritated folks, without actually, you know, picking up the tablet" debacle.

(It's possible that it's been put into the TSA lost and found; I've put in an official inquiry. We shall see. This is, however, what happens when you get up waaaaay too early (4 a.m. Chicago time) and lose valuable brain cells to sleep dep.)

But I don't truly care, possibly because I got the chance to hold my very heavy, very large, very cute, 20-day-old grand-creature. And I've hugged the exhausted parents.

Being a grandmother is weird, y'all. But it's also awesome.

And now, I'm going to take a much needed shower, and fall into bed, even though it's only 6:42 p.m., Seattle time.

Tomorrow, more holding of grand-infink.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: A Seattle Travelodge
Current Music: "The Beat with Ari Melber"
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/593596.html

Frankenstein Meme, Day 11

Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

( A whole lot under here. )

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: the home office
Crossposts: https://kaffy-r.livejournal.com/587380.html

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Grasping at Grace (and Growth)

Transformation is Inescapable

Entries tagged with love like burning

Dept. of Remembrance

Dept. of Obsession

Dept. of briefly surfacing

Dept. of Hog Butcher to the World

Dept. of Canadian Positivity ...

Dept, of Remembrance

Dept. of Democracy

Dept. of This and That

Dept. of Bucket List

Dept. of I Remember

Department of Remembrance

Dept, of Lo, She Rises

Dept. of Love and Memory

Dept. of Family

Dept. of Wonderful

Dept. of Family

Dept. of Music Saves the Day

Dept. of If It Sounds Good, It Is Good!

Dept. of If It Sounds Good, It Is Good!

Dept. of Beloved Kidlet, Part Deux

Dept. of Beloved Kidlet

Dept. of Memory

Dept. of Beloved People

Dept. of West Coasting

Dept. of Memes

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