Blue Penumbra

It's a Blue Monday in the blog, though actually gray, without the promised and needed rain. I've got a poem called "Blue Penumbra" in the new issue of Blue Fifth Review, which has a fantastic cover photo of a highway yearning toward a glorious blue sky. It's a great issue, and the prose poem "And," by Carol Reid, really got to me as I'd just heard an interview on NPR about the status of AIDS treatment and because medical marijuana (hey, hey, like the MONKEES) might be coming to our town...

I've just finished reading The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green (fellow Kenyon College alum!), for book group. It's my daughter's book, a Christmas present from Grandma, and she read it right before me, wanting to read the book before seeing the movie. We both like the humor in it, and my daughter is annoyed that the movie apparently leaves out some of the tough and annoying reality about cancer treatment that the book leaves in. (But I do see the oxygen tank cannula in the movie poster, so that's a good sign.) I also, of course, heard a good interview with John Green on NPR! And I sort of want these shoes.

Since every day is a Random Coinciday, I must note the reference to language difference and, specifically, the Dutch, in this book, on p. 209, where the narrator tells us the Dutch call lattes "wrong coffee" because they have "more milk than coffee." In The Language Archive, the play I'm directing, the Dutch are pertinent, as are different ways of saying things. But now I can't help but hear Michael Caine, as Nigel Powers in Goldmember (an Austin Powers film), saying, "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures...and the Dutch."