• These are called Lectric Flowers. Not Electric flowers, Lectric. My Dad planted them from seeds sent from Arkansas by my cousin — seeds which belonged to my great grandmother. Not quite grain from the bowels of a pyramid, but nothin’ to sneeze at either.

  Pretty, aren’t they? I’ve never seen them before. And they grow pretty tall; the tallest in this picture is around 5 feet. Here are more photos of them, along with some sweatpeas and stuff.

• We had ourselves a power failure in Carp today. Four hours it was out. I had no particular plans for using my electricity during that time, but still hate it when there’s no juice. And it was worse than usual. Both of the supermarkets were closed, and the big drug store. Starbucks closed and never did reopen, which I thought showed a lack of fortitude. I guess you might say they didn’t have the beans.

  The best thing about a power failure – except that sometimes you get a chance to read a book – is that feeling you get when it comes back on. “Hot damn, my toys are workin’ again! Sweet.”

• Since metaphor hopes to be a clean well-lighted, literary place, these lines of Whitman:

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?