Old Snack

I Love Old Things
by Wilson MacDonald

I love old things:
Streets of old cities
Crowded with ghosts
And banked with oranges,
Gay scarfs and shawls
That flow like red water.

I love old abbeys
With high, carved portals
And dim, cool corners
Where tired hearts pray:
I join them in the silence
And repair my soul.

I love old inns
Where floors creak eerily
And doors blow open
On windless nights,
Where heavy curtains
Dance a slow waltz.

I love old trees
That lift up their voices
High above the grasses.
They do not sing
At the light wind's bidding:
They chant alone to storms.

I love old china,
Knowing well the flavour
Of great, strong men
And fair, sweet women
Lurks at the rim
Of each deep brown bowl.

I love old books
Frayed from the searching
Of truth-hungry fingers:
Their warm, soft vellum
Leads me up through sorrow
Like a dear friend's hand.

I love old men
And old, dear women
Who keep red cheeks
As the snows of winder
Keep the round red berry
Of the winter-green.

I love old things:
Weather-beaten, worn things,
Cracked, broken, torn things,
The old sun, the old moon,
The old earth's face,
Old wine in dim flagons,
Old ships and old wagons--

Old ships and old wagons
Old coin and old lace,
Rare old lace.

Found in Achievement: A Literature Text for High Schools, 1930.

Post-It Snack

Found on Big A Sullivan

Piano Snack

I just finished reading a play called The Harwich Piano. It is a play partially based on real events written by my friend Alex Johnson. I have a lot of questions that I want to ask him. It is a lovely and strange sort of play, with a lot of truth in its bones.

Once, I was toying with a title of a play I wrote. My choices were The Forgetting of Things and The Way It Always Will Be. I asked Alex which of the two he liked better, and he said, "Definitely the first one. The second sounds like the title of a Neil LaBute play."

Your challenge for the day: Overhear a phrase that sounds like a Neil LaBute play. Remember it. Tell it to me sometime. I've started collecting them, although I have no formal catalogue system yet; they are all over the place in this journal and that.

Button Snack

So Scoville wanted me to find out more about that Button Factory song because he was too lazy to do it himself. You know that song? It's like "Hello, my name is Joe and I work at a Button Factory." You probably learned it in like second grade during that weird art/music/p.e. period that may or may not have occurred before morning recess (Shout out to you, Booker T. Washington Elementary!! What up, Principal Hamilton?!?!). Or at Girl Scout camp, around a giant bonfire or in the mess hall right before each Troop showed their weird skits and probably after we all made those American Flags out of red, clear, and blue beads.

I guess some people named Peter and Ellen Allard wrote it. It's available on a website, to download! People, Teachers, and Summer Camps use it for teaching. I know this because it is listed on such dynamite databases as "ultimatecampresource.com" and "songsforteaching.com."

These Are The Lyrics

As you can see, the song conducts one singular revolution of the appendages. Its syncopated rhythm implies blah blah blah analysis blah.

Here is a link to listen to the song

I am a big fan of buttons. I used to collect them when I found them in the street, on the playground, on the floor at Fiesta Mall. I would buy weird ones at the craft store shaped like ducks or trains. Then I strung a bunch of them up on a string and hung it over the window in my room.

This was the beginning of my penchant for collecting odd knickknacks.

Some of the things I have found and kept recently
-A hologrammed Happy Feet bookmark (on the stairs of the subway)
-A weird old round-dial pay phone (cleaning out the Robert Moss nee Linhart Theater)
-An old watch I used to play with as a kid (a pouch under my bed during the neverending organization of the random shit in my room)

I think I would like to work in a Button Factory.