World Championships in Kansas City next week

Beginning this weekend, disc-golfers and disc-golf enthusiasts will be taking over Kansas City's parks and wide-open spaces. Kansas City is the host of the 2009 Disc Golf World Championships, which will be played out on 11 different area disc golf courses. Quite a few folks have been working hard to make improvements to each course, including new tee pads, new signs (the one above is not new, btw) and landscaping. Naturally, each course is set up at the most challenging pin placements possible. Expectations and excitement for the event are pretty high, and PDGA sponsors believe there is a good chance this will be the disc golf tournament with 1000 players.

For more information, click here. For more photos of Waterworks, one of the Championship courses, click the photo of the dude sleeping on the upper-deck bench...

While we're on the subject of pics, check out this excellent panoramic shot Giessel took near his parents' farm near Larned, Kansas. Though I haven't seen him yet on this trip in from Cambridge, his enthusiasm for returning to native soil is rubbing off on me in a good way.

In the words of V. Lindsay, "Ho for Kansas, land that restores us When houses choke us When big books bore us!"

photo courtesy of Andrew

Blue, this is that WTC firework fountain I was telling you about. Taken back in the day with my HP PhotoSmart 320 from Wal-Mart. As the label on the firework says: "In lighting this firework, you are not reliving the memory of the tragedy, but honoring the many lives that were lost..."

Moritz Piehler's Peruvian Patio Photos

My dear friend, photographer and Viva con Aguanaut Moritz responded to my request for patio/poetry-inspired photos with two lovely shots from Lima and Cusca, Peru. As promised, here is the Borges poem in the original. Gracias, Moritz!

UN PATIO

Con la tarde
se cansaron los dos o tres colores del patio.
Esta noche, la luna, el claro círculo,
no domina su espacio.
Patio, cielo encauzado.
El patio es el declive
por el cual se derrama el cielo en la casa.
Serena,
la eternidad espera en la encrucijada de estrellas.
Grato es vivir en la amistad oscura
de un zaguán, de una parra y de un aljibe.

Unseasonably cool

Yes, I know the last post about the Ink hotness contest pushed the limits of snarkiness, but now I see it was inevitable. As my friend at the Compendium Tremendium Institute asked me earlier, "How much time passes between the publication of an alternative weekly's ridiculous pander and emergence of a disproportionate backlash in the blogosphere?" Apparently anywhere from 2 to 36 hours, judging by my stopwatch.

Teresa said to me tonight that I must be busy because I hadn't been blogging. That is a post all unto itself. Tonight I'd rather share an early poem from an Argentian whose prose I find difficult but nonetheless greatly enjoy. I usually provide my own photos, but if anyone wants to send me one that this piece reminds them of, I'd be happy to post it along with the Spanish version. I'm going to Mexico soon, though, so it might be a while.

Patio

With evening
the two or three colors of the patio grew weary.
The huge candor of the full moon
no longer enchants its usual firmament.
Patio: heaven's watercourse.
The patio is the slope
down which the sky flows into the house.
Serenely
eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.
It is lovely to live in the dark friendliness
of covered entrance way, arbor, and wellhead

by Jorge Luis Borges
trans. Robert Fitzgerald

Ride your hobbyhorse/Get on your hobbyhorse and ride

The other day while reading Balzac, Jenny stopped to ask me what a hobby-horse is. "Is it actually a toy horse that you ride on?" she asked. I said I was pretty sure it was, but I did an image search just to make sure. Boy am I glad I did. It sure brought back memories.

For starters, there was this lovely portrait the court painter did of my cousin and I back in my pre-tweens.


For those of you who haven't enjoyed such a fortunate childhood as mine, I purloined the following paragraph from a helpful website dedicated entirely to hobby-horse history.

Rocking horses first appeared in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. In the United States, most horse toys were simple wood, painted or unpainted. This rocker seems to be a particularly elaborate model and was, perhaps, imported. In addition to having a showy horsehair mane and tail, it is covered with animal hide, sports a decorated bridle, and its base is elaborately stenciled and painted to imitate the grain of expensive hardwood. Although at this time some goods were mass produced, this toy was handmade. Hobbyhorses were popular because children could imitate the equestrian skills they were expected to have as adults.


Unfortunately members of my family did not always go on to develop the equestrian skills we were expected to have as adults. My uncle Toby, for example.


In all honesty, I think there was something like this on my Grandpa's farm growing up, probably something he built himself.


I found one of these in our carriage house the other day, but unfortunately there is no trace of the magic ring. If anyone can tell me what all eleven of Blaze's famous sayings are, I'd be much obliged.