2005-10-21 - 1:23 a.m.
For a while I couldn�t tell if it was a pulled muscle or a bruised rib. As it turns out it was both, though the revelation and present discomfort stem from the muscle healing much faster.
Now that the muscle has healed I can move my arm with little pain, but breathing, especially breathing deeply, is very uncomfortable.
The strange part is how it comes and goes, though I think fighter practice may play a role there.
No desire to do any more work today, but will go ahead and finish clearing out the rooms and preparing for tomorrow.
A Kaiser Roll with whipped cream cheese and black cherry preserves is a very tasty breakfast by the way.
The cherry preserves and cream cheese are strictly medicinal of course. I�ve been eating all my meals out of soup cans, and I thought I would probably develop scurvy and rickets if I didn�t vary my diet a bit.
If our government hasn�t done anything else right lately, at least they have picked two great Poet Laureates in a row. Billy Collins and Ted Kooser respectively (Mr Kooser is on his second term now) I�ll include a poem from Ted Kooser at the bottom of this post.
Since Jill and I come from the Midwest, and the Kansas-Nebraska area specifically, this poem might be more vivid to us than someone who has never driven down a gravel road bordered by limestone fence posts and rusty old trucks.
There were very few trees on the plains before settlers brought them along in the 1800�s Now there are trees along every stream and river, and several large areas completely forested, but before that there was almost nothing.
So if you don�t have trees, what do you make fence posts out of?
Limestone, that�s what.
Limestone is one thing the plain states have in abundance, and being a rather soft stone, it is pretty easy to work with. It�s also very heavy of course, and a 6� limestone fence post weighs about 450 lbs. They are a pleasant golden brown color, and many feature fossils of sea shells and fish from an ancient underwater past.
They say that there are 40,000 miles of limestone fences in Kansas, I wouldn�t know for certain, but it would not surprise me. Limestone fence posts also last just short of forever, so in a couple thousand years Kansas will still be studded with thousands of thinner, but still standing, lime stone posts.
So This Is Nebraska
The gravel road rides with a slow gallop
over the fields, the telephone lines
streaming behind, its billow of dust
full of the sparks of redwing blackbirds.
On either side, those dear old ladies,
the loosening barns, their little windows
dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs
hide broken tractors under their skirts.
So this is Nebraska. A Sunday
afternoon; July. Driving along
with your hand out squeezing the air,
a meadowlark waiting on every post.
Behind a shelterbelt of cedars,
top-deep in hollyhocks, pollen and bees,
a pickup kicks its fenders off
and settles back to read the clouds.
You feel like that; you feel like letting
your tires go flat, like letting the mice
build a nest in your muffler, like being
no more than a truck in the weeds,
clucking with chickens or sticky with honey
or holding a skinny old man in your lap
while he watches the road, waiting
for someone to wave to. You feel like
waving. You feel like stopping the car
and dancing around on the road. You wave
instead and leave your hand out gliding
larklike over the wheat, over the houses.
-Ted Kooser
