A World of News and a video

Where I read the rhymes on the Hula Hoops calendar, after a little plug for subscribing to the blog. Which many of you already do and for that, I thank you! This should be the last of the calendar posts. You can find it below....

On to new and other thoughts. The Sunday papers got me scribbling a lot of notions. Perhaps the world was always this busy, scrambled, upside-down, quite lovely, full of interest, scary, creative, stuck....and small; we just didn't know before those triple w's came into our lives.

So the book I am reading is in some way about the news and big changes. It's a wonderful read; I recommend it strongly. The author is actually a poet by trade and  you can tell in her writing. It revolves around a man who, after the Civil War,  travels the state of Texas with the news of the world. He performs in live readings from newspapers to paying audiences eager to hear the news and the changes to their lives as a result of the war. 

...He unfolded the London Daily  News. He would give them a few paragraphs of hard news and then read of dreamlike places far removed. This was the arrangement of all his readings. It worked. The lantern beam shone sideways onto his face, casting brilliant lunar cells of light on his cheekbones through the lenses of his reading glasses. He read an article concerning the Franco-Prussian War. It involved delicate Frenchmen, scented with toilet water, being whipped soundly at Wissenbourg by huge blond Germans who were fat and strong on sausages. The outcome was easily predicted. The audience stage rapt, listening. News all the way from France! 

On to the poetry reading. I don't have a bad cold, although it certainly sounds like it. Guess it's time to invest in a better microphone, huh?