Dave's Blog

Found Love Poem

It's a short one. But there's a lot there if you really think about it.

Lanyard

Ah, that bastard Billy Collins got me good with this one. Touche, Billy Collins!

Poem

Stumbled on this YouTube poem that scratched an itch with me. It's got NSFW language, but if you'd like you can turn the sound down and just read the streaming text.

On another note, I'm pretty excited about a Magnetic Poetry poem I composed this morning and set to music. I'll try and record it and put it up in the next day or two. It's really fun getting back to the original purpose of this product, which was to be a songwriting tool.

Lincoln Center

One of the coolest things I saw in New York was the new renovations at Lincoln Center, especially the green roof that overlooks this reflecting pond. Such a peaceful spot in the middle of all the chaos. They souped up the fountain too, and now it puts on a classy little show.

 

Birdcalls

There's a music store called Lark In The Morning that sells all kinds of exotic musical instruments from around the world, and of course I've bought way too much stuff from them over the years and get their e-newsletter. The most recent one had all of these amazing  Brazilian bird whistles, and I'm tempted to own and learn all of them. Check out the YouTube recordings; they're just beautiful.

My dad used to be a duck and pheasant hunter and is really good at a number of bird calls. He has a call designed to sound like an injured baby crow, and when we were kids we'd beg him to blow on it until dozens of angry crows were dive bombing us looking for the dastardly animal that was hurting their young one. But from experience I know that it's not enough to just buy a call and start blowing. It takes a lot of practice. I blew and blew and never could get those crows to come.

Warmed By Love

I'm out in New York for the big Gift Show. One thing I love about this city is all of the semi-legal street vendors, many of them selling used books. My friend, Ivy (formerly from Minneapolis'  The Tin Star Sisters) found a real gem (a first edition Nimoy!) and read poems to us from it aloud at a hipster bar in Brooklyn.

Sidewalk Poetry

Over in St. Paul they have a Sidewalk Poetry Program where they stamp poems into fresh concrete sidewalk slabs (you could do the same, incidentally, with one of our Poetry Stones Kits). Here in Minneapolis our sidewalk poetry program is more organic. This one's called "Cracking Up Peacefully."

Seedy Socks

I went for a bike ride and picked up a few hitchhikers. Cool design, eh?

Naughty Chamois

A friend of mine is a sales rep for Specialized Bikes. We had bike club at his house the other night and he was showing off samples of the chamois (underside pads) they're putting in their new line of shorts. Is this really a scientific design, or is their engineering department a bunch of snickering 12-year-old boys? Or... maybe they're designed to make middle-aged men like us snicker like 12-year-old boys...

Chanterelles!

A nice little walk around Wirth Park yielded these golden pretties, about two pounds worth. The woods are still full of these things; we left many pounds of them out there that were past their prime, only taking the nicest ones.