January 12: "Last to Leave the Party," Blizzard Warning, Christmas Tree

Billy Collins is the . . . 

Last to Leave the Party

by:  Billy Collins

In your white dress

you revolved around me

like the moon

and like the earth

I was spinning,

titled back on my own axis.

I always find myself in a weird state around this time in January.  While other people have taken down their Christmas lights, stowed away their trees, and stopped watching Jimmy Stewart running down the streets in Bedford Falls in a snow storm, I stubbornly refuse to leave the party.

Yes, my Christmas tree is still the main source of illumination in my living room, and my front porch is the only one in the neighborhood still festooned with decorations and colored lights.  Perhaps people walk by my house at night and shake their heads, thinking me lazy.  Christmas is still revolving around me in its moon-white dress, and I'm still spinning on my yuletide axis, unwilling to change orbit.

Tonight, there is a blizzard warning from the National Weather Service in effect for my neck of the Upper Peninsula.  As with most warnings like this, the predictions are not incredibly specific.  Fourteen to 30 inches of snow.  Wind gusts of 35 to 50 miles per hour.  It could last until 7 p.m. tomorrow night, but there could be an additional six to 12 inches of lake effect snow into Sunday.

Having grown up and lived almost my whole life in the U. P. of Michigan, I'm used to these blizzard fetes that never seem to end.  Sort of like Christmas in my house, winter hangs around in its white dress, spinning and dazzling the trees and houses and streets, until well past the time the party is supposed to end.

Tonight, after having dinner with my kids, I headed out into the start of the blizzard to practice music for some church services I have to play this weekend.  The winds were just kicking into high gear, but the snow had already been coming down for a couple hours.  The streets were a little drifted.

First, I practiced at a Catholic church.  When I stepped inside, the thing I noticed immediately was the absence of Christmas decorations.  The manger and trees and wreaths had all been raptured into storage, and the flames of candles cast long, flickering shadows on the walls of the bare sanctuary.  The party was over.  I played through the music, and then I hopped in my car and drove to a Lutheran church.  The first thing I noticed when I stepped into the building?  All of the Christmas decorations had disappeared.  It looked . . . empty.  Sad.  The party was definitely over.  I practiced music and then drove home.

Now, I'm sitting on my couch, typing this post, listening to the blizzard rattle my windows.  My Christmas tree is the only light in the living room, and everyone else in the house has gone to bed.  It almost feels like December 24th instead of January 12th.  

Everyone else has strapped on their 2024 armor.  The upcoming presidential election year is going to be long and ugly, and I'm not looking forward to it at all.  I prefer silent nights to blizzards.

That's why, for a little while longer anyway, Saint Marty's going to hold onto the holidays and the hope that always accompanies them.

February 3: Ice Storm Warning, "Pange Lingua Gloriosi," Vote

My daughter is out with her boyfriend right now, driving around, shopping.  Just saw that an Ice Storm Warning has been issued by the National Weather Service.  It goes into effect at 10 p.m. tonight.  Whenever I see things like this, my first instinct it to tell my daughter to come home immediately, that it's not safe to be out.  It's a holdover from when she was a baby,  I think.  I wanted to protect her from everything.

I know I can't do that anymore.  She's going to make mistakes, suffer heartbreaks and setbacks.  She's 18 years old, and the world is waiting for her.  She's smart.  I like to think we've raised her to be independent and practical.  She certainly doesn't take a whole lot of crap from anybody. 

Yet, Saint Marty still wants to tuck her in at night, sing her a lullaby, say a prayer over her after she falls asleep.  Old habits.

Pange Lingua Gloriosi

("Sing My Tongue the Savior's Glory")

by:  Martin Achatz

On Holy Saturday, I put my daughter
To sleep and think of death.
Tonight, milk is her enemy.
She stands in her crib, dark eyes watering,
Her chin slick with fear.  I lift her,
Strip off her wet pajamas, wash her fevered body
With a cold cloth.  She shivers, yet lies still,
Accepting the bath in silence.  I dress her,
Fresh and lotioned, place her back inside the crib
My wife has just cleaned, cover her with a quilt,
And watch her settle into the pillows
Like a sleeping fish.

Before Easter, these quiet moments
In the dark, there is this:
I listen to my daughter's breaths,
As Mary might have listened to her son's,
Counting them
Like stars in the night.

Vote for Saint Marty (Marty Achatz) for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the U. P. at the link below:

Vote for 2019/2020 Poet Laureate of the U. P.

December 30: Yon Yonson, Second-to-Last Day, Taking Out the Trash

A couple of weeks after I telephoned my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, I really did go to see him.  That must have been in 1964 or so--whatever the last year was for the New York World's Fair.  Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni.  My name is Yon Yonson.  There was a young man from Stamboul.

I took two little girls with me, my daughter, Nanny, and her best friend, Allison Mitchell.  They had never been off Cape Cod before.  When we saw a river, we had to stop so they could stand by it and think about it for a while.  They had never seen water in that long and narrow, unsalted form before.  The river was the Hudson.  There were carp in there and we saw them.  They were as big as atomic submarines.

We saw waterfalls, too, streams jumping off cliffs into the valley of the Delaware.  There were lots of things to stop and see--and then it was time to go, always time to go.  The little girls were wearing white party dresses and black party shoes, so strangers would know at once how nice they were.  "Time to go, girls," I'd say.  And we would go.

And the sun went down, and we had supper in an Italian place, and then I knocked on the front door of the beautiful stone house of Bernard V. O'Hare.  I was carrying a bottle of Irish whiskey like a dinner bell.

It is the second-to-last day of Slaughterhouse Five and Kurt Vonnegut.  He's on a journey in this little passage, going to visit his old war friend.  It's the start of the book that will take him to Dresden and Tralfamadore and back, over and over and over.  Billy Pilgrim hasn't made an appearance yet, and time is still pretty stable.

Journeys always seem to begin and end in the same place.  You leave home, fly or drive hundreds or thousands of miles, and then return home again.  That's what this year has been like for me.  I started off, walking hand-in-hand with Vonnegut, into January, 2017.  And now, the day before New Year's Eve, I'm still walking hand-in-hand with him toward January again.

A snow storm is on the way today.  According to the National Weather Service, we could receive up to ten or twelve inches of fresh white stuff.  It's like God is getting ready to erase 2017 off the face of the planet.  He's taking out the trash.  Out with the old, in with the new. 

Of course, I must say that, while 2017 was the year of Donald Trump and his Nazi cohorts, I have had a pretty good twelve months.  I was named Poet Laureate.  I've traveled from one end of the Upper Peninsula to the other, giving readings, raising money for causes that are important to me.  This month, I was given a teaching award from the university.

So, I will remember 2017 as a good year for me, personally, but a pretty shitty year for my country and the world, in general.  I have great optimism for the future.  I think that Donald Trump will not be President of the United States next December.  I think that all of the Republicans who've screwed over the middle-income and lower-income citizens of this country will be voted out of office next November.  There will be a quiet, peaceful political revolution.

And Saint Marty will continue to write poems and teach and do Poet Laureate stuff, trying to make the world a little better.

January 3: Snow, Daughter's Friend Who's a Boy, Classic Saint Marty

Woke this morning to a fresh coating of fluffy white precipitation.  About an inch or so.  It wasn't bad.  Easy to shovel and quite beautiful sitting in the trees, dusting the cars parked along the street, drifting in the wind like dandelion fluff.  Of course, I'm not too happy about the lake effect snow warning issued by the National Weather Service for tonight.  There's an additional three to nine inches of beauty headed my way, with blowing and drifting.

I had my daughter's friend who's a boy help my shovel this afternoon.  He took the snow scoop and went to work.  As I said, the snow was really light, so the work was easy.  It took us about a half hour to finish the job.  He's a small kid, but, when given a task, he throws himself into it.  My daughter just sat in the house, happy there was somebody else to do her share of the shoveling.  I have a feeling, when his parents pick him up this evening, my daughter is going to be a little sad.  Moodier than normal, if that's possible.

Of course, an extra day off school would improve her mood for sure.  I'm not sure that's going to happen with the current weather forecast, but there's always a possibility.  It depends on the amount of snow we receive and the strength of the winds.

According to today's episode of Classic Saint Marty, four years ago we were dealing with extreme cold.  As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, Christmas vacation was extended about three days because of a polar vortex spinning over the Great Lakes.  Every night, my kids were glued to the TV, waiting for school to be canceled again.

They may not be quite so lucky this year...

January 3, 2012:  At McDonald's Again, Cold is Cheap, Scrooge

I'm currently at McDonald's, racing my laptop's battery to get this posted.  I have 37 minutes.  I've had a really productive hour or so here.  I just uploaded my post from this morning.  I submitted some poems for an anthology of U.P. poets that's coming out this year.  (I'm pretty much assured of getting published.  I know the guy who's putting it together, and he likes my stuff.)  And now, I'm trying to get my second post done.

Thirty-four minutes.  The view outside the window here at McDonald's highlights all the new snow we received yesterday.  The whole hill on the opposite side of the highway is pure white, covered with black pine trees.  The temperature this morning was about -6 degrees Fahrenheit.  It's warmed up to around 3 degrees now.

Sometimes, Scrooge got it right

Speaking of warmth, I'm sort of a Scrooge when it comes to heat in my house.  It's not because I don't like being warm.  It's because my heating bills are so astronomically high January through March/April.  I'm reminded of what Dickens says about darkness and Scrooge:  "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it."  When my wife or daughter complain about the coldness of our abode, my response is always the same:  "Coldness is cheap, and Martin likes it."  When I'm feeling particularly generous, I will allow my daughter to turn the thermostat up a few degrees.  It's like Christmas morning all over again for her.  Just another way to keep Christmas alive.

Eleven minutes.  Saint Marty is done.

November 9: Winter Storm Warning, Classic Saint Marty, New Cartoon

Yes, the National Weather Service has issued a winter storm warning for my piece of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan starting Monday night through Wednesday morning.  Depending on the source, we are going to be getting anywhere from six inches to two feet of snow.

This news depresses me more than a little bit.  I'm not ready for winter yet.  My mind has not made the adjustment from rain mode to snow mode.  Of course, I live in the U.P., so a snow storm at the beginning of November should not surprise me.  Actually, a snow storm at the beginning of September shouldn't surprise me.  I just am not looking forward to moving that much white rain.  Too much work.

Today's Classic Saint Marty first aired three years ago.  In 2011, I was yet again bitching about a winter storm warning.  Some things just don't change.

November 9, 2011:  Got to Be Kidding, Best Drink, Snowstorm

I just looked at the latest Blog of Note (BON).  It's another artist blog.  Looks like the artist/blogger just finished illustrating some kind of book.  My reaction when I looked at his blog:  you have got to be kidding.  Really, it seems like strong written content doesn't mean a hill of beans to the people of Blogger.  It's about art and food and fashion and baby pictures.  Don't worry about being a good writer.  The thing that bothered me the most about the latest BON was that there was no gushy post from the said blogger about how excited and surprised he was.  No welcome to all his new followers.  No thanks to the people of Blogger for giving him the honor.  Nothing.  Now, I know that being named a BON isn't exactly like winning an Oscar or a Pulitzer Prize, but I want to see some kind of reaction.  Anyway, I was just a little torqued this morning.

My wife and I went out on a date last night.  We traveled to a local micro-brewery, even though we're not beer drinkers.  I ordered a peppermint patty, which is a hot chocolate spiked with a healthy dose of peppermint schnapps.  Quite good.  We also ordered a heaping plate of every deep-fried appetizer on the menu:  waffle fries, mozzarella cheese sticks, mushrooms, and chicken fingers.  It was delicious, but I was paying for it for the rest of the evening and into the night, gastro-intestinally speaking.

There is a winter storm warning in effect for my little area of the world today.  Depending upon which weather report you believe, we could be in for anywhere from three to eleven inches of thick, white, heavy rain.  I was really hoping this little winter event was going to blow past us, either to the west or east.  No such luck.  I guess I better drag out the old snow boots.

Saint Marty is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weather day.

Not quite ready for this shit!

Confessions of Saint Marty