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With stays under $250 a night, VRBO makes it easy to celebrate sweater weather. You could book a cabin stay with leaf views for days, or a brownstone in a city where festivals are just a walk away, or a lakeside home with a fire pit for cozy nights with friends. Or if you're not a sweater person, we can call it corduroy weather. More flexible, and with stays under $250 a night, you can book a home that suits your exact needs. Book now@vrbo.com.
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If your small business is booming. You might say Cha Ching, but you should say Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there and we'll help your growing business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the Slowdown. I have sort of an odd confession. I have a funeral playlist, a list of songs I want played at whatever my memorial service turns out to be. Occasionally I add to it, and now and then I remove songs once they've lost their shine. My kids have laughed about this. Mom, you're so dark. But I don't find it morbid at all. Really. I think of my funeral as the last party I'll ever throw, and I'll be there in spirit at least. How's that for a mom joke? I spent a lot of time choosing the music for my wedding years ago. Songs to play as guests arrived, songs for the cocktail hour, songs for the reception. Why wouldn't I put as much thought into my funeral? Music is incredibly important to me, and all of my most important memories come with a soundtrack. The Cure tapes I obsessively listened to in middle school, the Pixies and Liz Phair I played on repeat in high school, the Nico Case records I discovered in college and graduate school, and all of the music that's become part of my personal archive. Since Music is like a time capsule, isn't it? Listening to a song transports you right back to a time and place, and sometimes to a person. I hope everyone at my funeral agrees that the playlist is excellent and very me. I hope people tell stories anchored by those songs and that there is as much laughter as tears. I hope people drink and eat and sing along with Can't Hardly Wait by the Replacements and this Must Be the Place by the Talking Heads and Blonde on Blonde by Not a Surface. Most of all, I hope everyone there knows how much I loved being here on earth with them, how I would have loved to have stayed. How I hope, though I can't say I believe it, that we'll be together again. The speaker of today's poem imagines loved ones coming to their funeral, and they have some directives and some requests. This is a poem I love to share, and one I return to again and again. Gloria Mundi by Michael Kleber Diggs Come to my funeral dressed as you would for an autumn walk in the woods. Arrive on your schedule. I give you permission to be late, even without good cause. If my day arrives when you had other plans, please proceed with them instead. Celebrate me there, keep dancing, tend your gardens, live well, don't stop think of me forever assigned to a period, a place, a people remember me in stories, not the first time we met, not the last, a time in between. Our moment here is small. I am too, a worldly thing among worldly things, 1 part per 7 billion. Make me smaller still, repurpose my body, mix me with soil and seed, compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful, wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow and decay. Let me be lovely yet temporal, like memories, like mahogany. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter. And find us on Instagram at Slowdown show and blueskylowdownshow.org. Hi, it's Maggie. The Slowdown helps you discover new poems and revisit old favorites. You can help us continue showcasing poetry from a diverse swath of authors by making a tax deductible gift. Head to slowdownshow.org donate today.