Kristi Wachter.com

My random poem for today was "The Australian Dream" by David Campbell - I don't think I'd read any of his work before. I found him in The 20th Century in Poetry. I liked "The Australian Dream" (it reminded me of Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader, which I read recently and thoroughly enjoyed), and I went looking for more of Campbell's work. I found it at The Australian Poetry Library - where a bit of poking around turned up "To the Art of Edgar Degas," which I liked even better.

... because the last time my mom visited, she was wondering about the city's wild parrots.

(Photographed this morning at Fort Mason.)

I was checking Joshua Kosman's blog to see if he'd posted anything lately (alas, he has not), and I was stumped by the phrase "the tentative Alphonse-and-Gaston footwork between Nelsons and the string players " in his entry about hearing the BSO perform Mahler's Ninth.

I've been trying to reinvigorate my language skills, so I've started reviewing some of the languages I've studied, switching to a different one (Spanish, French, German, Italian) each week.

I thought music might help reinforce the vocabulary I was picking up, so I trawled the library for pop CDs in other languages. I had no idea what any of these bands would sound like; I figured I'd just check them out and give a few repeat listens to anything I enjoyed.

Thanks to Google for informing me that today is Alexander Calder's birthday, via a beautiful Google doodle on their home page. I love the shadows.

I was lucky enough to grow up near Chicago, where I got to see the Calder Flamingo every time I went downtown. I've always especially loved his mobiles.

The American Masters episode on Calder was marvellous.

Yesterday a Wonderboy song came up on random play, and I got a great big grin.

For about a decade, I ran a little independent record label, Racer Records. I got to work with artists I really loved, putting out their records and trying to build a bigger audience for them.

Wonderboy was the first band I signed, and I love them as much today as I did back in 1993.

Hearing a Wonderboy tune just makes me indescribably happy.

Background: "Nature Publishing Group told the University of California that next year subscription prices would increase 400 percent, with the average annual cost of a journal increasing to $17,479. UC Libraries fought back with a combative letter to UC faculty suggesting that faculty should consider boycotting the journals, and cease submitting or reviewing articles for these journals." via Metafilter