http://dystmesis.net the insertion of a word into the middle of another word in an unlikely or unexpected place Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:03:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en There's a graph from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi making the rounds. It compares job losses from the current recession to the two previous ones, and it looks pretty alarming. However, I find the chart a little misleading for a couple of reasons. (I'm not saying we're not having ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/02/10/visualizing-data/ She began to wish she’d never lost that shoe. Oh sure, it was a fairy tale at first, but after the first few months of endless dancing, mindless nattering with the ladies of the court, and fingers sore from embroidery, Cinderella was thinking scrubbing floors for the cruel stepmother wasn’t so ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/02/02/cinderella-six-months-later/ The Crow who sits on the back fence is very old, and possibly very wise. In the morning when I smoke my cigarette I see him sunning himself and preening his feathers. Once, the Crow told me a story, and this is what he said. I knew a Chickadee, who hatched ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/01/26/the-story-the-crow-told-me/ Penelope Trunk writes a blog that is nominally about careers and career advice, but I really love her writing for how honest and personal it is about making choices in life. In a recent post about finding your place in life, she writes: So the final step of finding ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/01/17/being-happy-with-the-things-that-are-good-in-life/ In the modern world, the phone favorites list tells all about the people we love. Aside from my parents, there are four people in my list. These are the four people in the world who could call me at 3 a.m. and ask for help moving a body, and I would ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/01/10/the-phone-favorites-list/ Originally written September 14, 2003 @ 11:18 p.m. I was thinking about writing today, and for the first time in my life, I longed for winter -- the long, dark quiet of the night. All sounds are muffled, there is no smell but cold, and you can be utterly alone in ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/01/05/the-quiet-season/ I read quite a few books in 2008. Not as many as some years (way back when in junior high when I read so voraciously) and not as few as others (when I was in grad school -- only counting books for pleasure, here, not for classes). Far and away, the ... http://dystmesis.net/2009/01/03/best-book-i-read-last-year/ Originally written in 2003 A traffic light late at night, red, seems so pale and dim; it fades into the darkness. What might seem an angry admonition, “STOP!” loses its exclamation, an empty sputtering. Stop or ignore, it doesn’t matter; there’s no traffic anyway. Its power is subsumed, swallowed in the night. Green, though--- green is red’s converse in every way. “Go, go,” ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/12/29/signals/ Originally written in 2003 I stand in the snow in my slippers breathing in the darkness smoking half a cigarette. I am not a smoker but sometimes I like to smoke. Half a cigarette is enough. I watch animals creep in the darkness among the stark tree trunks, Nature’s bones laid bare for the winter. Orion hangs high in the ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/12/28/nicotinic-wisdom/ My grandmother turned 90 this year. Last Christmas, I took some of her old pictures and some stories she had written in a notebook between 2003 and 2006 and made a hardbound book for her using Blurb.com. Here's the text from the stories. My Life, and Some of the Things Dad ... http://dystmesis.net/2008/12/26/a-life/