Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
By James Wright
In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.
All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.
Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.
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I'm sure I've posted that poem before but it goes with The Blind Side, which I watched with
gblvr, with whom I had a wonderful day. We met at California Tortilla and got food, then came back to my house and watched movies and made jewelry...that is, for the most part, she made jewelry and I watched and sorted beads, since I have not yet mastered the ability to twist a loop into a pin for an earring. I knew she loved Sandra Bullock so I figured she wouldn't mind watching The Blind Side, which I thought was a much better movie than I was expecting. I mean, it's very predictable, but that's really my only major criticism -- I did not think it was "white lady saves the day," as Mad Magazine joked in its summary of Oscar nominees, I thought it was a story about one woman who made a rather spontaneous decision because she saw a freezing cold, miserable kid, and that Michael's race was, if not irrelevant to him, not a significant factor in her choices (the most racist character in the entire film isn't even Leigh Anne's bigoted friend, but the NCAA representative who's certain the Tuohys would never have taken Michael in if they hadn't intended to groom him as a player for Mississippi). I also didn't know that the film started with the most traumatic football play of my youth, though I didn't actually see the play when it happened: I was working in my college library, upset that my rabid Giants fan roommate was getting to watch them play the Redskins while I was not, and she called me there to say that Lawrence Taylor had just ended Joe Theismann's career.Anyway, I enjoyed seeing all the coaches playing themselves and I enjoyed Bullock's performance, which was nicely understated for her and particularly for the sort of role that usually wins an Oscar -- the Academy has generally seemed to prefer histrionics. (Speaking of motion picture organizations, I need someone to point me to a really good explanation of the Hobbit and the actor's strike and why the fact that New Zealand Equity works with an Australian guild has somehow made actors wanting fair compensation the villain in the fact that Warner Bros now has an excuse to film in the UK, which it sounds like they'd prefer for reasons having nothing to do with the actors.) After The Blind Side, since we were still making jewelry, we put on When in Rome, which we both saw recently but we both really liked, since it's hard for me to count beads and concentrate on a new movie anyway! When eventually
gblvr had to go home, my family half-watched the MLB playoffs around dinner (with a break for Undercovers) -- I really wanted this to be the last day I'd have to see the Yankees, but alas, it was not to be. If I have to watch a Yankees-Giants series, I will NOT be happy. Here is some of the jewelry that gblvr made for me -- her Etsy store, Vážka Sny, will be open later in the week!
gblvr's. She made a pair of the earrings for herself too.
I owned the blue glass beads for years and have three as focal beads on a necklace but I could never get the ear wires right!
I bought a package of these wolves with
gblvr made the earrings.
All the beads on these earrings were mine -- I got the cats from Cindy's Charms on Etsy -- but I needed someone more competent than me to put them together!
These beads were
gblvr's and I apologize for the lousy photo of the earrings -- I took these in a rush.
Both the tiny dragonfly wires and the beads on these earrings were
gblvr's and all I did was slide the beads on so she could make loops. She made a pair for each of us.
And
gblvr brought me the large beaded pink beads as a present. I am showing them off here on my Brighton breast cancer awareness bracelet.