The Monzante Memorial Fundraising Challenge: a number of teams (headed by various handicappers and other racing fans) are raising $$ in memory of Monzante, a horse who died at a Louisiana track last week. Some teams are offering rewards such as free picks or cookies.

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Thanks to the current clutch of work, I've been paying scant attention to the ponies, but I've had this passage from Niki de St Phalle's Harry and Me on my "to share" stack for some time. This takes place around 1950:

When I rejoined Harry at Harvard, he and my brother John (who was also studying there) would go out very early in the morning to the racetrack where they were working as hot walkers. That is to say, they would walk the horses through a routine to cool them down after their morning runs. Harry enjoyed this very much. he was earning a bit of extra money while learning all about the racetrack from my brother, which fascinated him. John had quickly become quite an expert on the topic. His enthusiasm for horse racing was so great that it was difficult to walk into his room, which was brimming over with countless stacks of the Morning Telegraph, John's favorite paper for tracking the odds on the horses.

At some point John felt it necessary to take on yet another job ... with an airline, which I believe was to earn the extra money he needed to finance his obsession with the track. Despite the excessive amount of time John spent on "the horses," John did manage to do very well on his studies. Nonetheless, Harvard's administrators eventually cottoned on to the fact that he was only showing up for his classes to take the exams. They chose to suspend John from Harvard for a year -- in spite of his outstanding academic performance.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/57776.html.

Bikram update: to my surprise, I felt like attempting a toe stand today. To my even greater surprise, I managed the first handful of steps without feeling I'd gone too far, at least on my left side. (My attempt on the right side veered out of form before I raised my heel. This practice, it will keep a gal humble...)

I'm still sorting out where my head should be (so to speak) in Rabbit and Triangle. I suspect part of the problem is that I'm long-waisted, but without much in the way of core strength, so right now my arms feel both too short (in Rabbit) and too long (in Triangle) as they try to compensate for my middle not quite managing what I'm asking of it. Yet. By my count, today was class #23, so by any measure, I'm still just getting started (and I'm certain I'll still feel that way when I get to class #230. My pastimes have a way of doing that -- she says, glaring at today's efforts at writing.)

Duck: Buttercup! (aka 3-D printing in the news for something other than guns)

Lonely Eagles: Jennifer Michael Hecht featured Marilyn Nelson's poem about the 332d Fighter Group. Some poems, when I read them, I wind up bolt upright by the end and exclaiming, "Holy shit." This is one of those poems.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/55303.html.

The subject line is from my poem "Leftovers," which is (at the moment) in second place in the current contest hosted by the Goodreads ¡POETRY! group. (Voting is open to members of the group until March 31.)



Also newly afloat on the net: "A Multitude of Sorrows" and "Good Morning," over on Houseboat.



I recently came across two oosts on e-readers and privacy within a day of each other. Nashville's Shopping Diva lamented that she could no longer "casually glance" at the books her fellow travelers were reading, whereas Sam observes that e-editions are a godsend "to people who like to read romance novels but are ashamed of the stigma attached."

As I promote my own book, it's been fascinating to learn about the current reading preferences of my friends and acquaintances. I don't myself own a dedicated e-reading device (although I have the apps on my laptop), and it's been gratifying to hear that Measured Extravagance is the first poetry e-book (and in at least one case, the first e-book of any kind) some people have been willing to take a chance on.

The downside, of course, is not having a physical book right at hand for people who prefer that format. That said, I'm willing to send signed postcards of the cover (isn't it pretty?) to anyone who'd like one -- please just send me a request (and your address) via PM or e-mail.

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Unrelated to the rest of this entry, except that they live in Nashville: baby clouded leopards.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/10476.html.