Tag Archives: Steve Shoemaker

Oatmeal Cookies

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Sometimes when you’ve been cooped up too long because of winter storms, your memory drifts beyond the snow drifts. You remember your mother and the aroma of fresh baked cookies. It happened this week to little Stevie Shoemaker out on the Illinois prairie.

My mother’s oatmeal lacy cookies

Mash flat with back of small teaspoon
each dab of dough. Cook for eight or
ten minutes at 350. Then
remove from oven, wait for four
long minutes till you slide a wide
steel spatula under each thin
(one rolled oat thick) cookie. Held
together by white/brown sugar,
one egg, one tablespoon of flour,
two sticks (one cup) of real butter,
when cooled are crisp but chewy, brown
around the edges: will not last an hour.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL

Mother's oatmeal lacy cookies

Mother’s oatmeal lacy cookies

Verse – Night Blooming Cereus

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My grandmother would phone the night
it finally bloomed.  An ungainly
plant, sparse, with long tendrils, all light
green. Four brothers climb happily
into the car all wearing their
pajamas, excited to see
even an ugly plant.  We stare
at the white and gold bloom, and she
smiles, having hope even for me.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 16, 2014

Click HERE for more information and photos of the Night Blooming Cereus. The bloom only lasts one night.

Verse – First World Problems

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My basement desk is extra large
because my grandfather who gave
it to me was a builder who
rolled out blueprints for many huge
commercial projects on it. Save
for one lamp, it is now piled high.

My double garage had a space
for the riding mower, but it
is now in the new backyard shed.
The room around the hybrid cars
now holds all of the tools that fit
on walls and shelves and floor instead.

Our Storage Unit’s deep and wide.
We can’t remember what’s inside.
– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 14, 2014

Watch out for the Flake

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southern drivers in snow

we moved from chicago
in september
…………………the first
snow flake fell in the month
of january
………………we
saw a driver swerve to
miss it and go straight in
the ditch

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 12, 2014

Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Nestlé wants to sell more chips,
so the Tollhouse recipe
calls for two times more chocolate
than tastes best–just try and see!

From the yellow packages,
I eat handfuls semi-sweet,
but in cookie dough, like life,
moderation makes the treat.

I love butter on fresh bread,
pancakes, toast and potatoes,
but in cookies, half will do:
half Crisco with sugar goes.

Half brown sugar and half white,
integration tastes just right!
Use real vanilla, not the fake–
you’ll be proud of what you bake!

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL.

Let’s have an other child!

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OWEN
an acrostic for a former gymnast

Lindsay Shoemaker with Owen

Lindsay Shoemaker with Owen

Only Lindsay, brand new Mom,
While still in the Labor room,
Exclaimed “That was not so wild,
Now let’s have another child!”

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 27, 2014

NOTE: Four month old Owen, with mom, Lindsay Ramsey Shoemaker, spouse of Christopher Shoemaker, Steve’s nephew.

Twilight on the Plains

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Three things up above tonight,
No, four: last, a star, (the kite
First reached altitude), a hot
Air balloon was second, third,
Bright against the dark-turned
Sky–precisely half a moon.

Matches lit the hurricane
Lantern and a pipe beside
Rocking chair, plants, on side
Porch. Horizon towns show light
After light: gold, yellow, white.
Flashing red antennas point…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 20, 2014

“70+”

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I’ve always loved her touches when in bed –
But now she touches to see if I’m dead.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 13, 2014

NOTE: “70+” just arrived. Must mean Nadja and “nature-boy” have another day to love and be loved in return.

 

Verse on Snow

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I only know three
(Expurgated Version)

I only know three of the Inuit words
for snow, and they are, in translation, “the-snow-
that-falls-light-and-fluffy-and-can-be-ignored;”
“the-snow-wet-enough-to-make-two-obscene-snow-
folks-frolicking-out-in-the-yard;” and then last,
“the-white-stuff-that-falls-so-darn-wet-thick-and-fast-
that-shoveling-is-required-just-to-go-out-
for-beer.” (And that last word is said as a SHOUT!)

–

Isocrates, Greek teacher and rhetorician

Isocrates, Greek teacher and rhetorician

Steve (Isocrates) Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 9, 2014.

Oceans of Acid

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The acid smog in the air
rains into rivers
and joins factory sludge
and field chemicals
on their way to the sea.

The obscene slime
spreads from ocean
to ocean and from coast
to oily coast.

The air cannot wash its
hair because trees and shrubs
have not been replanted
most places by most people.

Wood and coal and oil burn on,
rivers are damned, mostly
unfresh water remains
turning a blue planet brown.

We humans might see
our world changing,
but we see screens
and windshields more
than we see our skies.

[Thanks to Elizabeth Kolbert for her
two recent New Yorker articles
reporting on the research for this.]

Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 4, 2014