cold and soft the night

shadows form in mist

light sighs away into blue

cold and soft the night

Ledes & Limericks. Tuesday February 20 2018

Police spokesman Emilian Kayima told journalists that Kamagu
was arrested for what he termed as "using his mouth
recklessly and defaming everyone".  From New Vision.

When using the mouth, have a care

It’s not for some fool reckless dare,

Like making a breach

With too much free speech --

Which makes people think and then share.

It is hardly premature to ask, in this light, how the Trump
administration might manage the fallout from the economic
downturn that everybody knows will happen. Unfortunately,
the United States could hardly be less prepared.  From the NYTimes.

When hard times return with a bang

And hoboes can prowl like a gang,

It’s thankful I’ll be

For austerity

To stop the unceasing harangue.

Japanese millionaire dubbed the

‘baby factory’ dad just won custody

of 13 surrogate children  from the Washington Post

A baby or two is okay,

But too many get in the way.

This millionaire chap

Who’s taking the rap

For dozens is strictly horseplay

une note de ma fille missionnaire

Bonjour à tous! Je n'ai plus le temps d'écrire cette semaine, mais je veux juste que tu saches que je t'aime et que des miracles se produisent tous les jours. J'ai appris cette semaine qu'attendre les bénédictions à venir est vraiment difficile, mais cela en vaut la peine. J'ai lu un discours de Henry B. Eyring qui était tellement génial, il s'appelle La loi des retours croissants et c'est une question d'attente et de temps. Il dit de chercher l'humour chaque jour, de chercher les bénédictions qui viennent maintenant, de garder un œil sur le but lointain et d'attendre la bénédiction tardive. Je pense que nous abandonnons beaucoup trop tôt beaucoup de fois, et nous devons juste nous rappeler d'être patients et d'attendre le Seigneur. Il nous laisse attendre pour construire notre foi, et alors Il peut nous donner la chose que nous attendions. Je sais que c'est vrai. Je vous aime tous, bonne semaine! Amour, Soeur Torkildson

spread like sweet butter

spread like sweet butter

the winter dawn rolls beyond

the dim white wrinkles

sécurité scolaire

Décrochez les panneaux indiquant la zone libre d'armes à feu et affichez «Protégé par RP P M, Police à la retraite et Militaire» (ou trouvez un autre nom). Il pourrait s'agir d'un organisme bénévole de la communauté formé et approuvé. Ils travailleraient avec les écoles pour assurer la sécurité quand et où nécessaire. Les conseils scolaires pourraient parrainer des classes de portage dissimulées pour former les enseignants qui veulent porter et ceux qui sont formés et qualifiés demeureraient confidentiels. Le tournage de nos écoles deviendrait rapidement une mauvaise idée. La Constitution des États-Unis, dans le deuxième amendement, stipule que «le droit du peuple de garder et de porter des armes ne doit pas être violé». Nous avons le droit de porter les armes et la responsabilité de protéger nos écoles et nos familles. Le 10 novembre 2017, un homme armé a tué 26 personnes dans une église baptiste à Sutherland Springs, au Texas. Stephen Willeford, un voisin vivant près de l'église, a tiré deux fois sur le tireur avec un AR-15. Puis, il a raccroché avec un passant et a poursuivi le coupable jusqu'à ce qu'il saccage son SUV et se suicidait. Voir mySanAntonio.com.

The Windsor Hum

They say that up in Canada a subtle humming noise

Is causing mass hysteria and loss of equipoise.

Governments and colleges have looked about in vain

To find the cause of this selective auditory bane.

For some can hear it constantly, while others are untouched --

Those who fall beneath its spell have heads quite tightly clutched.

Victims of this baffling sound cannot sleep through the night;

Their heads do pound like pistons and their nerves are dynamite.

The eggheads say that infrasound may be the culprit here.

But what the hell that word might mean they cannot make quite clear.

Blast furnaces on Isle de Zug are blamed for all the din;

But operators there refuse their thick lips to unpin.

The ghostly racket also runs in towns like Kokomo,

Where people have been known to flee to far off Borneo.

Me, I think the spectral hum comes from the faint kazoo

Of Mother Nature, who in Trump has met her Waterloo.

alone in the white

alone in the white

stiff brown cylinder waiting

on a passing wind

My Grandmother's Boarding House

(The following narrative is based solely on my own faulty memory and with conversations with my older brother Bill. Any kinsmen who remember things differently are welcome to contact yours truly with alternative versions of the Torkildson universe.)

My dad was uncomfortable with the bourgeoisie standards of 1950’s Minneapolis. He liked to pretend, I think, that he was a tough guy with no tender feelings for anyone. He drank too much, he smoked too much, he gambled obsessively, and he didn’t think much of monogamy or of family values. Yet he stayed married to my mother for forty years, usually worked two jobs to provide for us kids, and dutifully visited his own mother every Sunday -- although he professed to find the chore onerous in the extreme.

Before Bierman Field Athletic Building and other University of Minnesota structures were raised on the west side of 15th Avenue Southeast in Minneapolis, the neighborhood consisted of old gabled houses with large screened in front porches and capacious backyards. One of these belonged to my dad’s mother, Olena Christina Torkildson (nee Gullikson, of Lake Mills, Iowa.) I remember her from our Sunday visits as a large and fretful woman, who rented out rooms to U of M students, and who was death on tobacco. Her son, my dad, never dared to light up in front of her.

“Dey are smoking upstairs again! Yoost dey vait till I catches dem!” she often said to me, her Norwegian brogue thickening with rage. She was a large, homely, woman, with thick eyeglasses that gave her a female Peter Lorre look, and her nose was enormous; shaped like a new spring potato, I’m certain that I inherited my schnozzola from her.

I remember the screens on her front porch being rusted so brown I could barely see through them. I was fascinated with her pyramid bread toaster -- bread slices were laid vertically on it to be electrocuted by exposed glowing coils, carbonizing the toast before it could be turned. And in the backyard she kept chickens. She used a lot of eggs. She was a dab hand at making angel food cake, although the rest of her cooking apparently gave her boarders nightmares and indigestion in equal amounts.

She fried everything with lard, from chicken to pancakes. When I think of Grandma Torkildson I don’t remember the scent of lavender or vanilla -- just simmering leaf lard.  

She made huge casseroles of macaroni and cheese, which she stretched with several cans of Veg-All. It did nothing for the overall visual appeal of the dish, which she served to her boarders at least three times a week. She baked her own bread, which I recall as having the mouthfeel of leather gloves and the taste of library paste. She created a sinister hotdish that she deceitfully called “Potato Delight.” As far as I can tell it consisted of crushed Old Dutch potato chips mixed with Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup and Green Giant canned peas, flung together and baked into a gluey block. Many of her boarders elected to get their meals down the street at Bridgeman’s in Dinkytown. This didn’t offend Grandma Torkildson -- she still charged them the full rate whether they ate at her table d’hote or not.

In the early 1960’s the U of M Alumni Association demanded that the Gophers be given better and larger training facilities commensurate with their increasing status on the national college sports scene. Dozens of well heeled alumni poured their mazuma into the Association’s coffers, with the understanding that their donations would mainly be used for athletic boosterism. And so it came to pass that the great University of Minnesota, aided and abetted by the state of Minnesota, exercised the right of eminent domain  -- buying up dozens of houses on 15th Avenue Southeast, including Grandma Torkildson’s. She didn’t want to sell; she didn’t want to move. She was old and arthritic and even after she was paid well for her property she felt isolated and threatened; asking my dad if she couldn’t move into our detached garage in the backyard.

My last memory of her, before she passed away in 1970, is of her complaining to my dad, her son, about the pipe smokers in the lobby of her nursing home one summer Sunday.

“Dey stink up da place someting turrible -- ish dah fey dah!” she sighed bitterly. Dad nodded wearily and gave her a Whitman’s Sampler box. Then we left to drive over to Lake Johanna for the rest of the day, where my sisters and I built soggy castles on the gumbo beach and caught shiners in our cupped hands. I decided that day to never grow old and homely, but to stay young and laughing forever . . .

the white of pardon

embrace the whiteness

the stainless whiteness in all

the white of pardon

il n'y a qu'un seul moyen de préserver notre sécurité sociale

La seule chose qui sauvera la sécurité sociale aux États-Unis est l'entrée sans restriction des immigrants dans notre pays; ils travaillent plus dur et plus longtemps - et ont souvent deux emplois à la fois - que le reste d'entre nous, et ils paient toujours leurs impôts. Ils ont beaucoup d'enfants qui, à leur tour, vont travailler et payer des impôts. Et, s'ils ne se comportent pas comme de bons citoyens américains, nous pouvons les expulser avant qu'ils puissent collecter eux-mêmes un centime de sécurité sociale. Sans cet énorme réservoir d'immigrants actifs et payants, si prêts à faire le travail le plus humble, notre sécurité sociale deviendra un mendiant édenté - un sifflement et un synonyme pour les nations.