Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada) 2024: Reviews keep happening

Poets, friends, the curious, the adventurous. . . Each reviewer of Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada/2024) offers a fresh perspective on my poems ... which journey from the East Coast to the West Coast (Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, the Crenshaw District, Echo Park, Malibu, up to San Francisco and Seattle). These poems explore that famously tricky topic of family, as well as race, friendship, a sense of place. All are beautiful. Feel free to comment here or on Amazon.

The reviews. . .

Rain Taxi. REVIEW by Jim Feast: The link is to an Instagram post.

The Writing Disorder. REVIEW by Ed Go

MER/Mom Egg Review. REVIEW by Jordan E. Franklin. 

Compulsive Reader. REVIEW by Charles Rammelkamp

Tears in the Fence. REVIEW by John Brantingham

Necromancy Never Pays. REVIEW by Jeanne Griggs & from Michael T. Young: "It is a deft collection that brings us along seamlessly in learning the art of having a self and should find a place on any poetry-lover’s shelf."

Thanks to Roxanne Hoffman and Jack Cooper of

 Poets Wear Prada (Hoboken, New Jersey and Paris, France).

Various incarnations of Sarah Sarai. Stay tuned. We update monthly, or hope to:

Sarah Sarai, 2024:

Sarah Sarai, 2010, or so.  

Sarah Sarai, 2023, with Stacy's Daughter, in L.A.

PurCHasE from the seller of your choice, including: Amazon  Bookshop 

Also by Sarah Sarai:

The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX/2009)

Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books/2016)

That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books/2019)

BRIGHT-EYED: The new poetry collection from Sarah Sarai & Poets Wear Prada

BRIGHT-EYED is now available on Amazon. 

from the back cover: 

Bright-Eyed, Sarah Sarai’s deliciously quirky excursion into her California roots, explores the concept of family and the racial and gender divides that can obscure the basic truths of existence. Danced out into the sun-bleached So Cal heat, these poems dazzle. As the poet says in “Wasted in a Special Way,” It is always good to be young and loaded./Something, somewhere is always good./Something somewhere is always wasted. These poems are terrific. Nothing wasted. Nothing at all. 

 —Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of EROTIC: New & Selected

With Sarah Sarai’s Bright-Eyed, I’m reminded of the Miles Davis idea that music’s not the notes but the attitude of s/he who blows the notes, and Bright Eyes is filled with attitude. It’s a joy-ride through the old neighborhood informed by a vital wit that ranges from Sun Ra to Nietzsche and drops aphorisms the way Hansel and Gretel dropped crumbs – the past doesn’t haunt you/you haunt the past; youth is a superpower; To have a self:/That’s an art; and on and on – reminding us, if we need reminding, that you can’t go home again, but you do anyway.

—Tim Tomlinson, author of This Is Not Happening to You; co-founder, New York Writers’ Workshop

Order here: https://amzn.to/3PM90bH 

BRIGHT-EYED is published by Poets Wear Prada, a press founded in Hoboken and specializing in beautiful paperback books. Roxanne Hoffman is founder and editor-in-chief. Jack Cooper is editor.

About BRIGHT-EYED: These poems reflect this native New Yorker’s family's move to California; growing up on the West Coast—the San Fernando Valley, the Crenshaw District, Echo Park, in the 1960s and 19670s as a preteen, teen, and soon an adult; and her responses to her new surroundings and the times. Several poems explore interracial tension and coexistence from the viewpoint of a young person whose older sister created an interracial family. The poet explores her relationships with her nephew, niece, their children, and her brother-in-law from the perspectives of both family and race. Her insight and wit are reminiscent of the California poet Diane Wakowski and James Broughton.

 

Pine Hills Review LOW-LIFE MALIBU (a #poem)

Adventurous lit journal Pine Hills Review is published at The College of St Rose in Albany, New York. 

Pine Hills Review, "Low Life, Malibu" by Sarah Sarai. 

Dig it. And also, the perfect image.“Lunch Break” by Nicole Monroe. That's what life felt like when I was young and shiftless. 

Check out the PHR submission policies for art and poetry and prose. 

The end. (Sorry to be so brief.)

Their Every Yellow Leaf #poem #NewOhioReview

Aspen leaves still green but ever fluttery.

https://budburst.org/plants/38

Their Every Yellow Leaf

 

Jacinth looks at the pig and 

asks what she did in another lifetime

to be so beautiful. 

Maybe not everyone would see it

but she’s perfect.

I am not everyone. I agree. 

Alice is perfect, 

a hippopotamus made compact. 

I stroke her dark hide and feed her 

fruit cup from breakfast. 

Cauliflower and a toasted bagel. 

Plum jam. 

With the pig, Jacinth 

and I break bread. 

Jacob, who is new to this poem,

buries his cigarette in a late Fall lawn 

to take a call from Quebec. 

In bright sunlight Alice considers

eternally recycling life. Is my guess. 

Jacinth has no interest in me or Jacob 

and praises only the pig, who is complete. 

Is her guess. The heart gets lonely 

some days. Is Jacob’s guess. 

Feeding Alice renders longing and irritation 

irrelevant, without obliterating either. 

Aspens snap their every yellow leaf. 

The trees expected we’d be gone by now. 

Their every yellow leaves don’t guess. 

 

Thank you to the editors of New Ohio Review, 2023 for selecting this poem.

Renegade Sonnets Once Removed

"September" by Gerhard Richter
Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.C.

Renegade Sonnets Rendered via Ekphrasis

A few notes on Rob Stanton’s Once Removed (Nono Press/2022)

 

by Sarah Sarai

 
We look to the past to understand the past. Also repetitive disorders and daily stupidities. We look to the past to understand a shared present, greed and hauteur acted out, to divine a future we pretend we can’t foresee. Or we try to persuade our leaders in a pursuit of common sense, kindness, equality. One much-studied and globally shared event of the past, the attack on the Twin Towers, is interrogated by Rob Stanton in his ekphrastic chapbook Once Removed. 
 
The object of Stanton’s contemplation is, of course, not the attack but the remarkable painting September by Gerhard Richter, whose work often magnetizes viewers. I’ve watched museum patrons squint and study his canvases in a manner that feels unique from interrogations of other artwork. Strictly anecdotal, on my part. 
 
Nudged by an anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers and through a study of Richter’s 2005 painting, Stanton created these stencil sonnets. My term. They are a cry from a heftier sonnet of classical literary history and the many contemporary iterations. They are stripped. As in September. Neither better nor worse than earlier iterations of a loved form of poetry, each wee sonnet is comprised of four stanzas: two brief, each four lines, all short; then two stanzas, three lines each. Each a puff of word or each word is a puff of smoke. Appropriate by design as September depicts the Towers after the second building was hit. Matching what we witnessed on that day, in Richter’s work the structures are discernable only through menace of dust and aggregation. From Rob Stanton’s Sonnet 154:
 
A corona of suddenly
insignificant 
 
                        litter spills
                        Blow back.
                        blow back 
 
On the twentieth anniversary of the attack I broke down and watched the documentaries. That’s what there was, “litter spill.” For the record, Richter was flying to New York in a commercial plane that had to be diverted to Halifax. But that fact makes him no more privy to this wound that will not heal than anyone else. 
 
From “160.” “...already / pockets of flouted sky / cerulean blue / are being tendered.” 
 
Once Removed is a Nono Press venture, as is Sonnets 1-159, in a longer work “dedicated to the work of Luc Tuymans.” 
 
 
 
A native of the UK, Rob Stanton teaches in Austin, Texas. He is the author of The Method (Penned in the Margins, 2011) and Trip- (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2013). Contact him for more information.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Blackbird v Blackbird: Stevens v Sarai: Two Poems

"The End of November: The Birds That Didn't Learn How to Fly" by Thornton Dial, 2007. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.

I am close to embarrassed, but what would be the point. I already know that I am not Wallace Stevens, and he is not Sarah Sarai. That being established may I say I had Stevens’ poem in mind as I wrote “Another Way of Looking.” I was responding to Stevens. Saying, Click a prism and you will see different perspectives with each time. But now that I see my poem adjacent to the great Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Thirteen Ways...” Well. Yikes and all that. Sigh. I plow on. First my poem. Then his. Thanks to the editor of Prelude, Stu Watson.

Another Way of Looking
by Sarah Sarai

The poem on the page
remains on the page

the page with the poem is
the page with the poem it

may lift it self (up)

or snack and nap

but there it is on the page

in all its theory

in all its wisdom which

is not all wisdom

hey, a blackbird knows wisdom

just one blackbird

no need to cast shade over

the whole of them

from Prelude Journal, Stu Watson, ed.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,   
The only moving thing   
Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II
I was of three minds,   
Like a tree   
In which there are three blackbirds.   

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   
It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV
A man and a woman   
Are one.   
A man and a woman and a blackbird   
Are one.   

V
I do not know which to prefer,   
The beauty of inflections   
Or the beauty of innuendoes,   
The blackbird whistling   
Or just after.   

VI
Icicles filled the long window   
With barbaric glass.   
The shadow of the blackbird   
Crossed it, to and fro.   
The mood   
Traced in the shadow   
An indecipherable cause.   

VII
O thin men of Haddam,   
Why do you imagine golden birds?   
Do you not see how the blackbird   
Walks around the feet   
Of the women about you?  

VIII
I know noble accents   
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   
But I know, too,   
That the blackbird is involved   
In what I know.   

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,   
It marked the edge   
Of one of many circles.   

X
At the sight of blackbirds   
Flying in a green light,   
Even the bawds of euphony   
Would cry out sharply.   

XI
He rode over Connecticut   
In a glass coach.   
Once, a fear pierced him,   
In that he mistook   
The shadow of his equipage   
For blackbirds.   

XII
The river is moving.   
The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.   
It was snowing   
And it was going to snow.   
The blackbird sat   
In the cedar-limbs.

from the Poetry Foundation website.

Sarah Sarai's Editorial Services (to be continued)

First draft, 2/11/23. I'm a stone cold, birthright English major who can edit the sense out of the angels and proofread the evil out of Satan's cold soul. 

Hildegard of Bingen

12th-century editor (and writer) 

In Brief

I am an editor of most anything with words. Fiction. Nonfiction. Poetry. Your manuscript. 

My rates are in accord with the Editorial Freelancer Association's rate sheet. I charge by the number of pages plus the challenge your writing may present (i.e., scholarly; medical; fiction or memoir; poetry...). 

 

How It Works

We talk and/or email. I look at your manuscript (or a portion) and make an estimate in accord with the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) rate sheet, so there is no mystery. If you approve, I draw up a contract which includes a projection of due dates for both of us. I've never had any problem getting paid, but the contract lays out what to can expect, including a timeline. I require a downpayment before I begin, and full payment on completion.

My Story 

(Feel Free to Skip This. I'm Interest in Process and How the Backstory of Journeys so 

I Am Revealing a Bit of Mine)

I was about twenty-five years old when I first realized I could edit. I hadn't thought about it, rarely used the word "edit." But my oldest sister mailed me a few of her poems. I read them, and realized they could use a change here or there. And I would never make a suggestion to my sister about anything. I both worshipped her and found her a bit scary. It's a shame I didn't speak up. I buried my editing self to read read read, smoke marijuana, go back to school for a secondary diploma, teach high school English for three years. That was all in Los Angeles. I moved to Seattle, where I was invited to participate in a small workshop for writers. I was writing short fiction. A woman in the workshop very much appreciated my editing finesse and mentioned me to her supervisor who hired me, when the woman (let's say Queen of Queens) left. For four year I was the Writing Lab person at Antioch College in Seattle. That's close to editing. 

Even closer to editing is editing. I became the editor-in-chief of Northwest Ethnic News. I don't know how. I'd taken one class in journalism in college and felt kinda sorta shamed by the grumpy geezer journalists in charge. I fled to English Lit. Thomas Hardy. Like that. But there I was and there I stayed for four years, working on a monthly newspaper. The original job of NWEN editors was to publish articles about the many types of Scandinavians in the Pacific Northwest and their dances, artwork, and such. Its ... (I'm not finished here.)

(I hope this isn't too much. I'm incredibly shy yet incredibly pushy. Go figure.)

Sarah Sarai

Hi, 2023! + "O Faded Elegant World" + MacQueen's Quinterly

These kids predate me, I suspect, but still, happy 

and goofy kids is what kindergarten is about. 

 

I started the year with a long walk, longer than expected, on the sidewalks of musty New York, first to a bar where I discovered an event had been canceled then across town to a building complex that demands I walk an extra ten blocks in the wrong direction before it will allow me into its time-honored walls. Every time. There, people I know, all warm smiles, warm hugs.  And in-between the Lower East Side and the evasive building down some from the Whitney Museum I ran into a friend. And that was unexpected - insofar as, what! you? yay! - and delightful. An unexpected, impromptu, generous meet-up. Somehow helped me clear a bit of the baggage I was hauling from 2022. 

After seeing some warm acquaintances, and friends, on top of two-and-a-half hours of walking on sidewalks, I caught a bus, but only part way. It gets complicated. Once home I popped into bed, fully clothed, fell asleep. Woke. Did some things people do when awake, such as removing a sports bra, reading a poem, watching a t.v. show I knew would lull me back to sleep.

So no booze, no big parties. I like booze and I like big parties. Another time. Soon!

One more event. When I woke for the small portion of time I saw that new work of mine had been published. A Flash autobiographical essay* of mine was online. "O Faded Elegant World" in MacQueen's Quinterly. That surely wins the prize for a journal name. It mixes the hip and the quaint. My mini-essay is personal history as recalled by the personal historian who was seven? six? when the events took place. So. Grain of sand. Definitely with a toss of salt over your left shoulder. And truth.

Here's to 2023! Peace and sanity, please. 

*500 words or less, in this case

If Ezekiel could see it, why not me

(A Chinese dwarf, courtesy of the Met; my alter ego) As a follow-up to my August 4 posting, I’ve done it, revisited my not-yet-published fiction. Deleted: several paragraphs on what a dumb schmuck I am. Yesterday I submitted one of the revived stories to a contest and charged the fee. Thank you, Chase. On the 21st of I sent off another of these revived stories. Not for a contest but there’s money if they take it. Two stories now out there, waiting. Last month I pulled together a novella I’d started again years ago. Found a reader who has a great eye. So now it’s ready to go asking for what it's worth. It's a delight. Two stories and a novella. Then a novel is collecting dust, all the dust there is in my Cloud. The one solid piece of advice I was given in grad school was: Leave New York. I don't belong here. I never have. I wonder if I'd feel better about my work if I'd moved. I'll be back to this blog in September. Ezekiel? Read the skies. Was he in pain?

Words and their heftier cousins...invited to the writing party

 

You tell me.

Reviving drafts of unfinished short stories which is proving to be enormously rewarding. And by rewarding I mean I'm diggin' the words. The current drafts are just that - fiction that's unfinished or finished but not polished. Stores not new to the party, such as the writing party is. Well, obviously the cellar's been dug and the foundation laid so there's that. Yeah. Stop. Okay.

I haven't sent one of the previously unpublished (and now reworked) stories out yet, mainly because there are few and when the few are gone ... girl, they'll be gone. They'll be gone, girl.

We're talking two or three new stories one of which is novella-like. It's like a novella because it is one.

Some days I am up against depression. It throws me to the ground and holds me down with vicious glee. The counteractive to depression is joy.

Repeat: The counteractive is joy. Words and their heftier cousins, sentences, are joy. New and reworked and working on reworking. Joy. Sarah Sarai 8/4/22

a hefty cousin

Ahab's tale never gets old. Changes by way of perspective.

 

Ahab's white whale, courtesy of the NYTimes.

The Avoirdupois Chic

More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. – Melville

My depraved indifference to death
sets Ahab to thumping his peg
against my leg so we’ll perchance into
that which precedes an heir bearing
his bi-syllabic surname on banners bright
through the belly of the whale warm as
mutton and potatoes tea towel-topped.
If you can’t bear a son, at least a splinter
Mr. Ahab says, for use against blubbery
blowhard though how, you might puzzle.
No intimate to his intricacies am I
who harbor soft-spots for heavyweights
fat as concubines, the avoirdupois chic.
Given the length of a life in nautical miles
there’s hardly time for history to congeal
for the slain to raise kin underskin the
abandoned to banshee dreams as locust
swoop hover and hum desert-side
Ahab Uno’s tent on palmy summer eves.
Ecstasy is all it’s cracked up to be,
insufficient, a means to a cul-de-sac.
Are locust merely in love with love?
Starting soon, let’s no longer be afraid.
The locust are at the door, dear. 
Well, set a plate for the happy couples! 
Tomorrow Ahab goes with his gut,
with its celiac flora.  Sing a seafaring
song of fish fingers, ladies, avast! ahoy!
Childhood fosters the eternal orphan.
God wants what God wants.
You, my dear Ahab, merely want,
though That Can Change, a sea battle
dispatch, a motto conceived of
circumstance and truth, life’s sequels,
now ebooks or available for download
at a workstation near me.  Near you.

by Sarah Sarai. first published in Berfrois in 2011.

Berfrois (https://www.berfrois.com) remains a remarkable amalgam of idea, narrative, poetry, perspective, philosophy, natural history, science, art, architecture, you-name-it-ism. 

In the year of covid-fear all the hairs on my head turned shock-white ... #poem

 

https://wallpapercave.com/w/uwp2109286

Is March 1 a special day? Do we prank each other? In Arts class do we begin construction of a 15-day calendar to note the advent of the Ides of March. Any day, every day, anyone can be betrayed, being the theme?

The antidote to betrayal is to keep your expectations low. Don't convince yourself that today is the day your lottery ticket rings a bell. Don't assume that today, today, your luck is amping up and you will meet a gorgeous kind generous fertile not-fertile mate of any persuasion. The earth keeps moving. Most often, when you smile at someone they will not report you to the police. Somewhere, some child is happy. 

I'm ignoring the ruthless man in Russia.

Back to me. I showed up here to wish everyone a day of hope. Yeah, hope can be a killer of tender dreams, but we need it. This weirdo, me, is less tuned into hope, a future fantasy - not to be turned away but the now. The now. Whatever they're doing the clouds are astounding in their visual brilliance. Clear skies. Atmospheric struggles between pollution and clean air aside, there are pigeons. Always there are pigeons, plump and strutting, at least here in N.Y.C. If pigeons have earned an attitude of superiority and desire to parade their chubby selves, so can I. (I don't know why that's true. Let's pretend it is.)

I had a poem published in February, one I shall herein, here and now, share with you. It's about a painful swath of my life. About hope and persistence. Pulling away from pain. Moving on. One friend called it a "hair poem." Okay. Not really. Whatever you want.

"iv.

In the year of covid-fear all the hairs on my head turned shock-white, all white, only white."

Read "Shock-White" on the gorgeous and historical site, Big City Lit. I love the editors - Alyssa Yankwitt, Christopher Cappeluti, Barry Wallenstein, Richard Levine - who took over from Nick (Nicholas Johnson), who I loved also. Everyone loved. 

Everyone loves. Yes, we can all love. Don't have to admit it. Just enjoy. We're all forgiven every day.

For the Children of Poets #poem by G.E. Schwartz

 

John Milton and his two daughters, one of whom,
Deborah, I believe, is not looking thrilled with time spent taking dictation,
even if her learned father is dictating Paradise Lost. Artist: George Romney, 1794.

For the Children of Poets

Children of poets, how do you find Your haven? Maybe you escape to

     A cousin’s or some other place? If There are two homes, off and on,

Separately (the parents’), would you Be directed by where you have little

     But private stress to cope with? (With Her mother away, Deborah Milton

Had to be used, by ear and by pen Especially, at her alternate home.

     Imagine, in the dark deeps of night, The blind poet, her father, haplessly

Rounding with a surge of line upon Line till he could bear no burdening

     Anymore, and at four-thirty a. m., The hired secretary ill, unavailable!)

You heard, and wrote: a process by-Passing mind, or heart, I’d guess. Did

     Sister Mary, too, have to learn Hebrew, Latin, other languages, he wanted

Read aloud? Children of dust, the call Can come at harsh hours, disrupting

     The sleep of nature. The voice must Be heeded, the unfathomable words

Forming at best a promise that, in Some way, someday, everything will

     Come into clarity. Warm-hearted Samuel Johnson must have been so

Exasperated on your behalf, saying That you had ben schooled only in

     Alphabets and sounds of all those Languages, not in the words, their

Meanings that might have made all The long hours a little less wearisome.

     Children, sleep well while all time Runs on. Rise, docile, dim of spirit.

Someday someone sometime will bless you for it.

_ _ _

G.E. Schwartz. "For the Children of Poets" first appeared in Dappled Things, and is included in G.E. Schwartz' collection Murmurations (Foothills Publishing, ISBN: 978-0-951053-32-4; www.foothillspublishing.com).

Climate Change and Your Nerves

 Climate Change and Your Nerves

East River Park where 400 trees were cut down
& mulched to make way for an environmentally dangerous development
of fancy apts. Same old same old. [photo by Sarah Sarai]

Last Tuesday my weekly talk group - all of us senior and queer - hit the subject of feeling anxious about climate change - are we?/aren't we? anxious. And our guilt and fear, right-now fear and right-now guilt related to climate change and its inevitable impact on that thing ahead of us: The Future. Did we stop it? No. Many of us, to some degree or another, tried, ie, recycled and sometimes boycotted. If you have tried to mollify the planet or if you haven't, it's coming. We agreed we had the anxiety and probably each of us thought more about the messed up Earth awaiting us. The messed up Earth here and now. That giant iceberg that's about to break free. Birds. Always birds. Often cats, too. 

So I was relieved to read a very relevant article by reporter Ellen Barry in the New York Times (monthly subscription costs $4!). Here's the first few paras from Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room.

PORTLAND, Ore. — It would hit Alina Black in the snack aisle at Trader Joe’s, a wave of guilt and shame that made her skin crawl.

Something as simple as nuts. They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.

She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.

In the early-morning hours, after nursing the baby, she would slip down a rabbit hole, scrolling through news reports of droughts, fires, mass extinction. Then she would stare into the dark. con't.

Yeah. The thought of mass extinction will do that to you.

I would expect that only the captains of industry who push denial like it's soft serve ice cream consider climate change it's a momentary blip. Or believe their fortresses will protect them. Which they won't. God could but God never seems to step in until ten million or sixty million people have been slaughtered. And even then... Anyone's guess. So I recommend you read the article. Here's a little more to bide you over:

It was for this reason that, around six months ago, she searched “climate anxiety” and pulled up the name of Thomas J. Doherty, a Portland psychologist who specializes in climate.

A decade ago, Dr. Doherty and a colleague, Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, published a paper proposing a new idea. They argued that climate change would have a powerful psychological impact — not just on the people bearing the brunt of it, but on people following it through news and research. At the time, the notion was seen as speculative.

That skepticism is fading. Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational.

Again, from the Times.

East River Park...already in partial ruin

photos by Sarah Sarai
 

The Gilded Age on HBO - scrapes off the gild to reveal plywood

Madison Square Park, photo by Sarah Sarai

I am most unhappy with the first episode of "The Gilded Age," a Julian Fellowes-written jam which is very silly and very white. My HBO subscription ends in a few hours, so this was my farewell and no problem there. 

This first-of-the-series episode is a fitting send off (to the demise of my subscription).  There were many complaints with HBO's The Wire - that it was a white writer's impression of a black city (Baltimore) and a black struggle (Baltimore). That is my perspective of "The Gilded Age" - that it is very very very white and remarkably uninventive in being so. Despite the one young black woman who is a struggling writer. Perhaps her struggle will be representative of the times but why bother representing those times? Why use the history of racism as an excuse to further racism? 

And why such a pallid portrayal of the nouveau riche? Hallelujah and thank you, lord, two great and interesting actresses brightened the screen. Christine Baranski as an old school white lady richie rich. And, briefly so far, Audra McDonald as the mother of Baranski's new secretary. (There is no situation or script on God's earth that could not be bettered by Baranski and/or McDonald.) 

The plot is pallid. Carrie Coon, an actress I dislike (her expressionless face creeps me out - has done so since Fargo [the t.v. show], is the striver in this series. A monied wife who has a house built on Fifth - across from Central Park - as her Cape Canaveral to launch herself into old New York society. Her architect is the great Stanford White but apparently his name means nothing to the first families of New York. New York has always had snobs spinning its social circles with a circus clown's panache. And, yes, snobs are delightful when they are Baranski aided by some of the mustachio twirling men in the series. 

In the final scene of Episode 1, the Carrie Coon character, an arriviste, insists she's going to make the snobs of New York admire her or come to her parties. THAT's the issue? Sounds like a Father Knows Best episode with Kitten scrunching her 10-year-old face to reveal gumption. It would work better if Reese Witherspoon were the pushy broad determined to get through Harvard Law. 

I live in NYC and it is mundo snob-o-licious. It is awful here, in fact, IF you harbor a desire to fit in. Which I stupidly did. Because there are no accommodations for weirdos like me (a simple country lass with no money and a quick tongue). I'll talk about that sometime when my thinking portions are up to par. 

Captain Snowpants: Vermont School Kids Name Their Snowplows

Last November, Vermont school kids got to name their local snowplow. Click below for the news story and below the below, read the names, i.e., William Scrape-speare, The Plowinator, Brr-ito, JFK Snow You Didn't, Darth Blader, Captain Snowpants

Vermont grammar school kids name their snowplow, 2021

Academy School Brattleboro Astro Albany Community School  Albany Wolf Tracks Allen Brook School  Williston Salty Bakersfield Elementary and Middle School  Bakersfield Jennifer Snowpez Barnet Elementary School Barnet Storm Breaker Barre Town Middle/Elementary School Barre Snow Destroyer Barstow Memorial School Chittenden Frostbite Barton Graded School Barton  Eye of the Tiger Bennington Elementary School Bennington Snowy the Plow Berlin Elementary School Berlin Yo Bro, No Snow Bethel Elementary School Bethel Plowtron Bishop John A. Marshall School Morristown Snowbegone Kenobi Blue Mountain Union School  Newbury BMU Monster Buck Bradford Elementary School  Bradford Blizzard Wizard Braintree Elementary School Braintree Captain Snowmerica Brewster Pierce Memorial School Huntington Yogi Bridge School Middlebury Plowy McPlowFace Bridport Central School  Bridport Spooky the Square Pumpkin Bristol Elementary School Bristol Captain Snowpants Brookfield Elementary School  Brookfield Ole Bessy Brookside Primary School  Waterbury Brookside Beast Brownington Central School Brownington The BCS Beast Burke Town School  West Burke Frosty's Demise C.P. Smith Elementary School Burlington Storm Slayer Calais Elementary School Plainfield The Calais Snow Cat Cambridge Elementary School  Jeffersonville Baby Snowda Camels Hump Middle School Richmond Plower Power Castleton Elementary School Bomoseen Stardust Central Elementary School Bellows Falls The Maple Machine  Champlain Elementary School Burlington The Snowlebrator Charleston Elementary School  West Charleston  Dorito Chelsea Public School Chelsea Kirby Christ the King School Burlington Carl Concord School Concord Pumpkin Cornwall School Cornwall The Snow Eagle Currier Memorial School Danby Snow Hunter Danville School Danville Blizzard Davis Community School South Burlington Snowy the Snowlifter Derby Elementary School  Derby Line Tiger Force Doty Memorial School Worcester Snow Pickle Echo Valley Elementary School Washington Snow Wolf Eden Central School  Eden Brr-rito Edmunds Elementary School Burlington Timberwolf Essex Elementary School Essex Scoop Fayston Elementary School  Waitsfield Snow Day Crusher Ferrisburgh Central School  Ferrisburg Midnight Fisher Elementary School  Arlington Snow Day Reaper Flood Brook Elementary  Londonderry  The Mighty Snow Tiger Founders Memorial School  Essex Junction Ice Claw Franklin Elementary School Franklin Plow-A-Tron 6,000 Georgia Elementary School  Georgia Snow Dragon Gertrude Chamberlin School South Burlington Chamberlin Chomper Good Shepherd Catholic School  St. Johnsbury Arctic Angel Grafton Elementary School  Grafton Snow Panther Halifax Elementary School Halifax Midnight Monster Hardwick Elementary school  Hardwick The Snow Bobcat Hartford High School White River Junction Snowicane Harwood Middle School Moretown  Snow Day Dream Crusher Head Start - N. Bennington  North Bennington  Pumpkin the Plow Truck Head Start - Pownal Center Pownal Snowdigger Head Start - Spring Center   Bennington Snowasaurus Hiawatha Elementary School Essex Junction Crystal Royalty Highgate Elementary School Highgate The Ice Crusher Hiland Hill School Bennington Ducky Homeschooling Student Bradford Scrapes the Snowplow Homeschooling Students Ripton William Scrape-speare Hyde Park Elementary School Hyde Park Snow Hawk Irasburg Village School  Irasburg Thunder Jamaica Village School Jamaica Vermont Bob Jericho Elementary School Jericho Snow Day Stopper JFK Elementary School  Winooski JFK Snow You Didn't Killington Elementary School Killington Snowday Buster Lake Champalin Waldorf School Shelburne Ice Will Pay the Price Lakeview Elementary School Greensboro Snow Dog Lowell Graded School Lowell Snow-manator Ludlow Elementary School Ludlow Get Out of My Way! Lunenburg School Lunenburg The Lion's Snow Destroyer Lyndon Town School Lyndonville Snow Buddy Maple Street School Manchester Center Maple Snow Racer Mettawee Community School West Pawlet Mettawee Mountain Mover Mid Vermont Christian School Hartford Darth Blader Middletown Springs Elementary School Middletown Springs Tiny Tim Miller's Run School  Sheffield Snowy Joey Milton Elementary School Milton Milton Mike Molly Stark Elementary School  Bennington  Molly's Snowdragon  Monument Elemetary School Bennington Hot Cocoa Moretown Elementary School Moretown Snowbuster Morristown Elementary School Morrisville Snowy Wolf Pup Mountain River School Morristown Snow Runner Neshobe Elementary School Brandon  Ice Ice Baby Newark Street School Newark Fearless Frosty NewBrook Elementary School  Newfane Mr. Plower Newbury Elementary School  Newbury Snowflake: The Knight Plow Newton School  South Strafford Rumble North Hero School  North Hero Steve  Northeast Primary School  Rutland PAWS Oak Grove School  Brattleboro Mr. Frost Okemo Mountain School Ludlow Snow Big Deal Open Fields School Thetford Plowdypus Orchard School South Burlington Obi-Wan KenSNOWbi Orleans Elementary School  Orleans The Night Owl Pacem School Montpelier Edgar Allen Snow Porters Point School Colchester Arctic Blaze Pownal Elementary School Pownal Mr. Pushy Randolph Elementary School Randolph Bob the Plower Readsboro Central School Readsboro The 'Boro Beast Red Cedar School Bristol Snow Blade Richford Elementary School Richford Flurry Rick Marcotte Central School South Burlington Mighty Moose Robinson Elementary School Starksboro Snowy Chicken  Rumney Memorial School Middlesex Snowfight Rutland Area Christian School Rutland RACS Snow Destroyer Rutland Intermediate School  Rutland Luke Snow Walker Saint Francis Xavier School  Winooski Snowbusters Saxtons River Elementary School  Saxtons River Arctic Fox Shaftsbury Elementary School Shaftsbury Salty Eagle Shelburne Community School Shelburne Shelburne Blizzard Shelburne Nursery School Shelburne  Ice Breaker Shrewsbury Mountain School Shrewsbury Sub Zero South Royalton Elementary School South Royalton Wildcat Winter St. Johnsbury School  St. Johnsbury Snowflake Dently St. Monica-St. Michael School  Barre Frosty the Snowplow St. Paul's Catholic School Barton Flurry the Snow Cow Stowe Elementary School Stowe Polarplow Summit Street School Essex Junction Crystal Sustainability Academy Burlington Snowcrusher Sutton School Sutton Sutton Cats Rule the Road Swanton Elementary School Swanton Maple Creemee Cruiser The Barn School Westford Blizzard Lizzard The Dover School East Dover The Orange Snow Peeler The Elmore School Elmore Snowy Owl  The Mountain School at Winhall  Bondville Snow Place Like Home  The Riverside School Lyndonville Plowser The School of Sacred Heart St. Francis de Sales  Bennington Perry the Plowerpus Thetford Elementary School  Thetford Snowy Thomas Fleming School Essex Junction Mr. Plowington Tinmouth Mountain School Tinmouth Plow-Cow Trinity Baptist School Williston Snow Shadow Troy School North Troy The Plowinator Tunbridge Central School  Tunbridge  Snow on the Go Underhill Central School Underhill Center The White Fox Union Elementary School Montpelier Storm Union Memorial School  Colchester Everest United Christian Academy Newport Snow Plowie Vergennes Union Elementary School Vergennes Glacier Vermont Commons School South Burlington Shellington Vermont Day School  Shelburne Snow Magic Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative Morrisville Vinnie's VTVLC Pack Waits River Valley School East Corinth Snow Chomper Waitsfield Elementary School Waitsfield The Frost Walker Walden School Walden Snow McQueen  Wardsboro Elementary School  Wardsboro Storm Trooper Warren Elementary School  Warren  Sweeping Beauty Waterville Elementary School Waterville Blizzard Bessy Weathersfield Elementary School Ascutney Big Bessie West Rutland School West Rutland Orange Bolt Westford Elementary School Westford McNugget Westminster Center School Westminster  Green Mountain Plower Williston Central School Williston Powder Pusher  Windham Elementary School Windham Slip Sliding Safety Service Wolcott Elementary School Wolcott Super Snow Storm Woodford Hollow Elementary School Woodford Woodford Sands