Happy Birthday, Brenda Iijima!

Happy Birthday to a poet whose writing I have enjoyed for some time, and whose writing I want to know better!

I am going to ask dead Philip Whalen to write you a birthday poem later if he's around...I wonder if I'll have to start paying soon like those people who put dead John Wayne in car commercials...

But I don't have a hologram. So I think it's free.

I went to a Chinese restaurant with my family and I got the same fortune cookie fortune as Lee's daughter. She said that's like the third time we've done that.

This is probably because we were linked in fate by our evil running commentary on two Lifetime t.v. movies last night...it was apparently "fight fatphobia" night on Lifetime as they ran a movie about a svelte, popular girl who dressed in a fat suit and fat prostheses to learn how the other half lives, and this was followed by a movie about a heavy child who became Homecoming Queen after a cruel joke put her on the ballot. They were both excellently awful.

When I woke today I reached for Matthew Rohrer's poetry book but it was too far.

So I asked Lee to bring it to me and he did.

When people bring you things it's as though you're in a thirties movie. You could be dying or infirm.

And then I asked for iced tea with sweet and low but that was pushing it.

I got it though. If you're the slowpoke in a day's plans you can really extort things like this. It's a beautiful thing.

That's a very, very good book of poetry, the Rohrer. It's called Rise Up.

I think there is another Matthew Rohrer (or maybe just a Rohrer) who is a rather interesting painter who is either very old or dead. I think he had some connection to this area in Pennsylvania or Lancaster or maybe somewhere down near Philly.

I haven't had a chance to Google him, but I keep seeing this one green painting in my head. I think he might be a minimalist painter and there might be some connection with quilts, maybe an Amish or Mennonite background.

I found such great things in the thrift store, most of them toys.

I even found a stuffed version of that red heart-shaped monster who spars with Bugs Bunny in the one spooky cartoon. Remember, Bugs ends up playing cosmetologist and doing his nails only to set him up with the mousetrap in the dipping bowl?

Okay, you don't.

But I do. And he's impossible to find.

Lee said you can't even find his image very easily online because he tried Googling him before. He thinks his name is Harry, but I am skeptical about that. Maybe Harry though is right, because he's all hair...red hair...

Okay, I just Googled it..it's WARREN Rohrer...here....

"Warren Rohrer (1927-1995), who grew up in Lancaster County, ... And in 1972, definable shapes gave way to minimalist grids of delicate lines and overlapping..."