{"id":326193,"date":"2020-07-10T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T20:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=326193"},"modified":"2020-07-10T06:00:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T20:00:05","slug":"t-o-a-s-t-telling-old-age-sonnet-tales-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/t-o-a-s-t-telling-old-age-sonnet-tales-4\/","title":{"rendered":"T.O.A.S.T.: Telling Old Age Sonnet Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This poem is dedicated to my younger sister Ellie, who had a palomino horse in her early teens that she\u00a0called El Dorado. She took the horse\u2019s name from\u00a0the Edgar Allan Poe poem, El Dorado. Poe\u2019s poem and Ellen\u2019s careers as a home economics teacher and blueberry, strawberry, rhubarb, and cherry farmer were my inspiration.<\/em><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>My Sister Ellie\u2019s Potato<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nIt was Irish all right though at times a French Canadian\u00a0<br \/>\nfried delight covered with a thick sauce of tomato<br \/>\nsometimes it was gold, blue, russet brown or red<br \/>\nthey always kept us five Connolly children well fed<br \/>\nwe sure looked forward toward eating Ellie\u2019s potato<br \/>\nsometimes they would get soft or grow green and black<br \/>\nand stinky rotten from sitting for too long in a sack<br \/>\nusually they were edible ready to cook and found<br \/>\nsome oblong with eyes, good and hard all around<br \/>\nwe found every one of them that had the knack<br \/>\nand took a dozen that looked good and were hard<br \/>\nwrapped in aluminum foil to roast in the back yard<br \/>\nor over to our friends or a nearby neighbor\u2019s patio<br \/>\n\u2018baked potato\u2019 said we \u2018hot fire roasting makes thee\u2019<br \/>\na model to be named for our sister Ellie\u2019s potato<br \/>\noh for mountains of mashed with salt and pepper<br \/>\nand butter stashed inside our mouths it would go<br \/>\nwhether it was baked, roasted, boiled or fried<br \/>\nmy sister Ellie\u2019s delicious and nutritious potato.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>Mr. Glenn, A Maven Forevermore<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\n<em>Another Edgar Allan Poe poem, The Raven, was my inspiration for this sonnet dedicated to my old friend, Glenn O\u2019Leary, on his 70th\u00a0birthday last April 2020. A maven is a Yiddish word for someone who understands how to do something or take care of things very well.<\/em><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAh distinctly I remember though a cold dreary<br \/>\nApril come to the high desert as she often will\u00a0<br \/>\nmy old Louisiana friend Mr. Glenn O\u2019Leary\u2019s<br \/>\nforthcoming birthday was on top of the bill<br \/>\nat the good ole boys Southern crawfish boil<br \/>\nwith Leroy, carpenter friends, and Jules Hebert<br \/>\nover an open fire he grilled chicken with toil\u00a0<br \/>\ncorn on the cob Cajun spices they did prepare<br \/>\nI thought of him and remembered oh so well<br \/>\nColorado, Louisiana, Philadelphia\u2019s Freedom Bell<br \/>\nhow his love and friendship and sense of humor<br \/>\nbrought calm peace from Viet Nam to Hammond<br \/>\nand like the good \u201cDoc\u201d Mr. Glenn always says<br \/>\naided now by his better half Ms. Carol Fernandez.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Joey &#8216;Pepe Batbon&#8217; Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Joey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This poem is dedicated to my younger sister Ellie, who had a palomino horse in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":322001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23672,23673,13843],"class_list":["post-326193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-lvnv","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}