Aujourd'hui au grand marché

Tell Me Where It Hurts

Junk Thief Sez....

...our country will not find peace until our children stop thinking of peas, ham and milk. Imagine whirled soy. Or at least less pork.

What We're Listening to This Morning

The Children's Prison

Some days make it more real than others.

It's always there, the children's prison, evident in the hardest lines in your face.

Brittle as those stubborn grey hairs you so diligently pluck until you give up and let them spew like the weeds and cobwebs that consume the yard where you continue to threaten to host another barbecue.

They've rated Portland a stressful city because it is so "starved" for sun. Yet roses thrive there, and your heart longs for its subdued, nurturing light.

Even as a child you hated sun and heat. It only made the nastier children smell worse. Now they are in skin cancer wards or terrace bars in Tempe, sitting under the misters and comparing ill-begotten tattoos and piercings.

There will always be a children's prison, until the day you fall in the desert. It is always there, like some memory you should have let go but have pickled in an airless steamy jar and put on the shelf to swelter as it is teased by beams of mocking sunlight.

I Still Have...

...my very first hankie, given as a second birthday present by my Great Aunt Cody. Aren't you jealous? Don't you wish you had a Great Aunt Cody?

Here you can sing along with the theme song in the meantime:

Eccentric?

Besides the use of the color red and cherry stained oak in home decor, Junk Thief shares with Diana Vreeland a penchant for freshly ironed paper money. Spray starch can be used, but this must be done in moderation to avoid stains. It goes without saying that these are then placed in the billfold, all face up with smaller denominations of bills in the front, larger in the back. Stacking of cans or other repetitive behavior is often an early sign of autism. In Junk Thief's family, there is a consistent pattern of children from ages nine months to 32 months of naming the cans and preferring to play with them instead of dolls or other toys. Spice cans were a favorite. No stacking was involved because each can was an individual and needed its personal space.

Do you have similar eccentricities to share?

More Melies Than N.A.S.A.

Just curious, do any of my Philly-based or -rooted blogrollers have any of Sally's discs? I grew up watching Miss Fran in Storyland who had doctorate and was a tad too ivory tower. Sally looks like a cousin of the Del Rubios.

UPDATE: As Sally would say: "Good luck and lollipops!"

This Cat Will Shall Not Be Moved

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is the annual display of cats up for adoption in the windows of the Union Square Macy's. I'm reminded of why I love cats as this one refuses to pay any attention to the attention hungry brat pounding the window. I actually can like kids too, but not this one.