James LaRue - myliblog

The King of Chicago Today I walked past a store that sparked a memory. Almost a year ago, I had to buy a mop. I was trekking my way back from a Target, and stopped inside a storefront restaurant for some really wonderful and inexpensive middle eastern food.  "What's with the stick?" asked the man serving me. "You mean my scepter?" I asked. "For I am the King of Chicago." He smiled, handing me my order. "Your majesty." I realize now that I should have knighted him.  Blog After the midwinter conference in Atlanta, I wrote a blog about the Trump administration's attempt to halt all "public facing communications" by federal agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency. I posted it yesterday. To my surprise, the post has gone almost viral - some 20,000 reposts on Facebook and Twitter. My takeaway: librarians are feisty, and not to be trifled with. This administration may find that its arrogance breeds res...

Today I talked with the staff of the Kenosha (WI) Public Library about intellectual freedom issues. (Thank you, director Barb Brattin, for the opportunity!) There is a sense - not just in Kenosha - that things (our society, our norms of political contest) are changing. There are some things we thought we knew that are suddenly not so certain. So, the role of the library is .... ? I said that we should do what we have always done, what is still most urgently required: gather, organize, and present to the public the intellectual content of our culture. That content comes from several sources. Mainstream publishing has been the key pipeline for at least a generation of library users. But I also pointed out that there are now far more numerous and potentially more powerful wellsprings of content production. Small, independent, and self-publishing now completely overwhelms the 350,000 annual titles of our Big Five publishers and three or four distributors. Today, there are over 1 mi...

I read a book a few years ago about something called Open Focus (" The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body ," by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins). The idea is this: some people who meditated achieved an "alpha" state: measurable brain activity indicated deep, centered contemplation. Others struggled. But something surprising happened when those laggard meditators were asked to do what would seem to be simple: imagine space. That is, while meditating consider the distances around and between things. Think about the area enveloping your tongue, the distance between left shoulder blade and right collar bone. All of these suggestions were about visualizing dimensions within the body. Let me add the notion of pondering the rippling horizon over waves (Chicago), the sheer volume of distance from foot to mountain top (Denver). Feel free to add in your own moment of connection with the larger, natural world. This captures, I feel, the Tao...

I'm facilitating today on the Western Slope of Colorado. This is from my lovely drive yesterday from Castle Rock through Colorado Springs, Canyon City, Salida, Gunnison, to Montrose. Colorado hills triplets and arpeggios melody of rock rising to the pass rising to the lightning and rising to the rain suddenly between avocado pinon and black cloud - gleaming snow radio sputters into static and river road turns to whitecaps on mountain's north side white carpet glimpsed through the green snow under the pines white-green valley wet beneath gray-blue horizon: late afternoon pearls black cattle lying in the short blonde grasses and just looking around a core of red rock is covered over with creased mounds of earth and grass  skinny little bird struts across the highway just above Beaver Creek skeletons of trees rise white from the blue waters of Black Canyon lake

I've been writing haiku since my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Smith, introduced them to me. I generally follow conventions: three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and a final 5 syllables. Usually there's a seasonal reference, and often I try to make connections between up to three distinct images. But sometimes I break with convention. Last week, I drove from Castle Rock to Saint Paul and back for a memorial service of one of my best friends, Bill Johnston, who died of cancer at 64. The memorial, the loving labor of his wife, Claudia, and 150 of Bill's many friends (he not only never lost a friend, he never even fell out of touch) happened a few days after what would have been his 65th birthday.  These poems don't really talk about that. Instead, they were about just being open to the rolling vignettes along national highways. But Bill was also a poet, and a fine one. So this is my ...

snow faintly purple on pine covered ridge this grey morning two big boulders slathered with moss frogs mating on telephone wire and almost too small to see the grass-blonde bird sings ant crawling up hill or man driving up mountain the immensity!

prickly pear cactus is sporting a new bonnet: bright yellow blossom

I'm on vacation in Taos. On the beautiful drive down, I had a series of haiku moments. Writing haiku makes life worthwhile. lone dark pinon new mexico mesa and sky Which goes from focus to field. And here's one that goes the opposite direction: mountain snow dust stirs golden valley into herd of pronghorns And here's one that's just about how nature reclaims what man makes: white mountain road snow snaking parallel to river below And just before I stopped for lunch, I saw: two crows feast on bloody ball of meat: table mesa And on the long road south of Fort Garland: beetle in the sand long straight line between peaks me on two lane road And finally, flapping up from a field into the sun, against a backdrop of blinding snow-capped peaks: until just now I did not know that ravens are made of light