About

“Drachenfutter”. The peace-offering/gift German husbands bring home to their wives after screwing-up something (or someone?). 

As this blog is not publicized, you have arrived by direct invitation, through someone who knows it (or me), because you searched for one of the indexed words, or stumbled on it.

The entries here are offerings, but to whom and for what purpose is unanswerable.   Loosely, they fall into two categories: the influences that made me “me” and what “me” is curious about.  I subscribe to a line from a favorite Theodore Roethke poem: “I am naked to the bone, with nakedness my shield”, as I believe that we learn most about ourselves (and others) when we are willing to expose and reveal our true selves.  However, while a reader can get a “feel” for who I am by through the postings, nothing replaces actual contact.  To think you “know” me solely by reading my writing is short-changing me and, dare I say, you.

In that vein, below are links that reveal more, if interested.

– A profile in the The Penn Gazette, the alumni magazine of the University of Pennsylvania, because of spoken word project related to the Holocaust

–What women friends say about me – how my “sisters/daughters” filled in my version of a Mad Libs when I was on dating sites.

– A blog of love poetry – A one-a-day for a year (March 2010 – 2011) project,  the selections coming from my 30+ linear feet poetry library, decades in the collecting.  Both it and the blog were/are truly a “love’s labor lost” (sorry, love word play…) truncated by the fire that destroyed my Philadelphia apartment a few days before Christmas 2010.  (I promise no “roses are red..” variety or treacly poetry in it.)  If you do (or don’t) like something, leave a comment: I’m interested in knowing what resonates with others’.  With over 62,000 page views from viewers from 164  countries (since March 2010), the total number of comments is UNDER  100 (.02%!)

– The solo road-trip to the West Coast (and back) in my beloved (and aging) 1999 Porsche Boxster  – Five weeks and almost 9,000 miles: to speak at the wedding of a young friend, to clear my head, to research the largest massacre of Chinese in this country, which took place on a remote part of the Snake River in Idaho.

Harrison

The photo in the header is of the Isle of Skye, off the northwest coast of Scotland, viewed while hiking in Knoydart Peninsula, the remotest part of “mainland” Scotland,  on a fine Summer’s day in 2005 when all of life was good and right and, therefore, fleeting.