The Numbers Game #118. Come Play Along!!

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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #118. Today’s number is 240. To play along, go to your  photos file folder and type the number 240 into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title. This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. 

Click on photos to enlarge.

Mexico,
In your suitcase, ready to go along
And Auntie Sherri
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Behind the Camera
Peek Into her drink glass

 

Ajijic Pier

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For Cellpic Sunday

“Hopelessly Devoted” for Word of the Day

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Hopelessly Devoted

Time to take a small vacation
from my daily blog oration?
I once had the silly notion
I could end avid devotion
quickly, with a stroke of key
that said that this was going to be.
But it is not tossable.
I found the act impossible.
So here I am right on the dot.
It seems a quitter I am not!

The Word of the Day is “Devoted.”

“The Full Story” for The Sunday Whirl

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The Full Story

Thinking creatures don’t mind visiting those rumbles in their heads
that contain their darkest thoughts––both phobias and dreads––
that exist alongside their wishes, hopes and dreams.
For writers, criminals and gods seem to exist in teams,
walking through their consciousness, sometimes in equal measure,
as though they know that gold and dirt are equally a treasure
when it comes to spinning tales that reflect all the world they see.
So, at story time, we flock like children to their knee
to hear the truth of all the world––its laughter and its wails––
for life consists of tragedies as well as  pretty tales,

Prompts for The Sunday Whirl are: mind visit thinking creature exists criminal know dirt walk head writer rumbles (Image created with the aid of AI)

Ghost? for The Weekend Writing Prompt

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Ghost?

That sudden soft midnight footfall outside my room? I’m hoping it was you.

The Weekend Writing Prompt is to write a poem in 13 words.

Self-Portrait for SOCS

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Looking Glass Menagerie

I am trying to escape the menagerie—
all those selves I hold in front of me
as well as the ones I have let escape.
Those that run ahead—
the ones that are my future selves—
are here, hidden in the portrait that you see.
Domineering, perhaps. But seasoned with
an awareness of what might have created
all of the parts of myself I try to reign in.
This has produced a certain slowness to connect.
The natural is seasoned with a desire to honor dreams
of what I hope to be. When I look in the mirror,
I see them all: my mother and my grandmother
and my sisters. We demand, are stubborn.
Sometime we are martyrs, stifling tears.
Then suddenly, I pass them by like memories
of nightmares: all the anxiety attacks,
illnesses and heartbreak.
We are all wonderful performers,
using bad luck to fuel good.
The belles of our own ball,
we push back the grim news
of what we fear we really are.
Headstrong, we reach for what we can be.
Utterly addicted to change,
Tony or no Tony,
we are the stars of our own lives.

The SOCS prompt is Portrait

Silly Answers for Fibbing Friday

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For Fibbing Friday, the assignment is: What do you make of these?

1. What is a skiff? A very poor ranking for a ski jump.
2. What is a liner? Art Linkletter’s half brother.
3. What is a ferry? The means by which a tiny mythical winged. creature is conveyed from shore to an island.
4. What is a destroyer? A puppy, up to the age of 1.
5. What is a cruiser? A party given for the employees of a cruise ship line.
6. What is a galleon? 4 quartes.
7. What is a pedlow? A trike for a very tiny child.
8. What is a kayak? A negative response to my middle name.
9. What is a schooner? A botched sneeze.
10. What is a coracle? The center part of a carbuncle.

A Culinary Confession for the Three Things Challenge.

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A Culinary Confession

My kitchen is my “killer kit,” or so my husband thinks,
as warily he eyes his meal––main course, dessert and drinks.
He says he doesn’t blame me for my culinary lack,
because he didn’t marry me because I have the knack
to fry and broil and grill and roast
or even fail to burn the toast.
Yet I see him eye the knishes,
turkeys, pies and other dishes
served up by the other wives
who, wielding pans and spoons and knives
create dishes edible
as well as being bedable.
While I, though skillful in the sack,
their kitchen talents sadly lack.
So for years, we’ve had to make out
mainly on phone-in or take out!

Prompt words for the Three Things Challenge 375 are: killer, kit, kitchen. (Image created with help from AI)

Backyard Scenes for Wordless Wednesday

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For Mama Cormier’s Wordless Wednesday.

The China Bulldog Review by Derrick J. Knight

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Although I published a link of this review  to Derrick’s blog two days ago, My Facebook won’t link to his blog, so I’m duplicating his entire post here on my blog. If you want to see it on his blog, please go to Monday’s post for a link. Again, I want to thank Derrick for the lovely review of both The China Bulldog and Prairies Moths.  I posted that review earlier.

The China Bulldog

Judy Dykstra-Brown dedicates ‘The China Bulldog And Other Tales of a small-Town Girl’ to her parents and sisters with special thanks to Patti Jo, who took most of the photos in the book, some of which I have scanned and included in this review. This is in fact a heart warming tribute, especially to her parents, from each of whom she has claimed emotional and creative elements of herself.

This is a story of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and family life in an age when hard work, people’s own imaginations and creativity provided their entertainment, and relationships were all important. Growing up in vast open spaces, gave the author a desire to escape to a wider world, which she did, and in the process valued her origins once more. “Ours was little ecological system all it own. Mice feasted on grain spilled from burst seams in the garage. The cat feasted on the mice and we feasted on the steaks of Black Angus cattle who had eaten the ensilage from wheat stripped of its grains.”

‘Sweet Clover’ speaks of the land thus: “On these dry lands, what flowers there were/ tended to be cash crops or cattle feed./ Sweet clover or alfalfa.”

Our author chooses the tense of her sections with care, in particular when using the vivid or literary present to enhance immediacy.

Those of us who, like me, have followed Judy’s blog for more than a decade have marvelled of the fluidity of her poetry, sometimes of free verse as in ‘Blank Page’ in which she uses words as a powerful metaphor, sometimes including well-wrought, smoothly natural, rhyme.

We all know the challenge of ‘Blank Page’. Judy sees it as an opportunity.

“It stretches forever in front of me,/ There, no future happens until I create it./ And that is the power of words/ that rub like pieces of gravel between my toes./ I become less of a child in bearing them, grow to adolescence as I empty them from my shoe./ In storing them on the page, I become my own creator – / writing a new world with each decision of word./ On the page, I can, if I so choose,/ grow up again and again./ Each page filled, or every edit of the pages that came before it/ becomes another part of me that tells the same story:/ that growing enough to fill the space inside of me/ never happened.”

‘Church Purse’ is an example of Judy’s narrative rhyming poetry which continues in a similar vein for two more pages, relating a three year old’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Here, in ‘The Upstairs Room’ we have “The windows in the upstairs hall streamed down shafts of light/ sliced open by the balusters that overlooked the flight.”

She engages all the senses: “I am from sounds in the prairie night. That sudden popping noise and choruses of mice families in the walls, my oldest sister in late from the dance, trying to sneak quietly up the wooden stairs to our all-girls loft where my middle sister lay sleeping and I lay listening for the opening of the door that led to her room whose windows opened up to a front porch roof where we sunbathed far above pesky neighbourhood boys with water pistols and inquisitive eyes.” The prose is as equally poetic as the verses. “…. the scramble of dog toenails on the wooden aisle….” brought laughter to the congregation. “My father’s forehead was ringed like an old tree” is actually a line from the poem ‘Shelter’; “Thus were the flickers of my disdain for boys fanned to a higher flame!” from the prose piece ‘Crushed’.

‘Temporary Rivers’ speaks of children’s response to rain coming in hot summer. “… in hot July, we streamed unfettered out into the rain. Bare-footed, bare-legged, we raised naked arms up to greet rivers pouring down like a waterfall from the sky. Rain soaked into the gravel of the small prairie town streets, down to the rich black gumbo soil that fostered out to be washed down the gutters and through the culverts under roads by rainwater rushing with such force that it rose back into the air in a liquid rainbow with pressure enough to wash the black from beneath our toes.” ‘Summer Evenings Turn to Fall’ opens with “Back when we drank summer through paper soda straws,”

‘Zippy’ was a treasured family pet. “All animal stories end more quickly than we would wish them to. With their shorter life span, it is inevitable. Some stories end with a shoebox lined with dandelion chains, some with a dead goldfish flushed down a toilet, others by watching a grown cottontail disappear into an alfalfa field, but Zippy’s story just faded away without an ending. Like the stories of people we lose touch with. Like the stories of people who move on in life. Like the stories of people who pass from being friends into being just another story in our lives.” This is one example of Judy’s philosophical insights.

 

‘She’ is a piece in tribute to Judy’s mother, as is this poem in Scrabble tiles.

It was her mother in particular whose writing contributed to her style of poetry. Judy earned her Masters degree in creative writing from the University of Wyoming, but before that came her mother, “like a beautiful uncut gem.”

Dykstra-Brown acknowledges that she carries both parents inside her, and ‘Near’ pays the same tribute to her father.

(Please note that the pages shown in this review are just excerpts and not the entire poems.) This book is available HERE on Amazon

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Published 9 March 2026By derrickjknight

Categorised as BooksTagged Judy Dykstra-Brown

60 comments

  1. Rosaliene Bacchus

9 March 2026 at 6:17 pm

Thanks for the review, Derrick.

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  1. derrickjknight

9 March 2026 at 6:38 pm

Much appreciated, Rosaliene

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  1. SueW

9 March 2026 at 6:27 pm

Judy is a talented poet and storyteller. I can relate to her statement, “I wished I’d asked more questions.”
I lived with both my parents, yet I know so very little about my father’s family and his life before us.

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  1. derrickjknight

9 March 2026 at 6:38 pm

Thank you so much, Sue

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  1. luisa zambrotta

9 March 2026 at 6:36 pm

It looks like a beautiful book, Derrick!
Thanks for this great review

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  1. derrickjknight

9 March 2026 at 6:37 pm

Much appreciated, Luisa

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  1. luisa zambrotta

10 March 2026 at 6:09 pm

You are truly welcome
It was a pleasure

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  1. merrildsmith

9 March 2026 at 7:08 pm

A lovely and well-written review, Derrick. Judy should be very pleased.

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 4:34 am

Thank you very much, Merril

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:10 pm

I am, Merril. Just read his review and I am actually in tears. Must be my age, huh? ;o)

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  1. merrildsmith

23 March 2026 at 5:25 pm

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  1. derrickjknight

24 March 2026 at 11:46 am

Thank you both very much

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  1. equipsblog

9 March 2026 at 7:57 pm

She uses word very lovingly, Nice.

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 4:33 am

Thank you very much, Pat

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:11 pm

Thanks from me, too, Pat. Derrick’s review reads like poetry as well.

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  1. ivor20

9 March 2026 at 11:53 pm

Great to see a ‘poet’ receiving such a wonderful review. A very enjoyable read, derrick

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 4:32 am

Thank you very much, Ivor

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  1. JoAnna

10 March 2026 at 12:37 am

I love the old photos. We need this kind of heartwarming, down to earth simplicity in our lives… like your blog.

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 4:23 am

Thank you so much, JoAnna

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:12 pm

If you want to read more, the book is available on Amazon in print and ebook, Joanna. Thanks for your comment.

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  1. JoAnna

25 March 2026 at 1:44 am

Thanks. I’ll check it out.

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  1. Sylvie Ge

10 March 2026 at 2:28 am

Very inspiring in all sorts of shapes and forms

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 4:22 am

Thank you very much, Sylvie

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  1. Anne

10 March 2026 at 5:55 am

A book after my own heart. It sounds like a delightful read

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 7:11 am

Yes. Thanks very much, Anne

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:13 pm

It is available on Amazon, Anne.

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  1. doesitevenmatter3

10 March 2026 at 8:31 am

A heartwarming review, Derrick, of a heart-touching book…reading what you shared here engaged all of my senses and ignited my emotions. I love when a writer/author has a gift in doing all of that.  This brought back memories from my own childhood.
Thank you and (((HUGS)))) to you and Jackie!!
Thank you and (((HUGS))) to Judy!

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 9:18 am

Thank you very much from each of us, Carolyn XX

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:14 pm

Hugs to you, Carolyn. As I’ve mentioned above, the book is available on Amazon. If you read it, I’d love to hear your comments as well.

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  1. Annika Perry

10 March 2026 at 9:24 am

Derrick, thank you for this beautiful and thoughtful introduction to Judy’s unique and inspiring book. The writing is wonderful, I love the inclusion of the photos and what a special tribute to her parents and life!

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 9:31 am

Thank you so much, Annika

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:21 pm

Thanks, Annika. https://judydykstrabrown.com

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  1. arlene

10 March 2026 at 10:16 am

Nice review Derrick.

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  1. Laurie Graves

10 March 2026 at 3:07 pm

Oh, lovely! And how different was the landscape of her childhood compared with the landscape of my childhood was. Same country. Very different environments.

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 11:51 pm

Thank you very much, Laurie

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:17 pm

Thanks for your response. Where did you grow up, Laurie? You can answer at https://judydykstrabrown.com

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  1. Eugi

10 March 2026 at 9:46 pm

Judy should be pleased with your review, Derrick. Well done.

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  1. derrickjknight

10 March 2026 at 11:42 pm

Thank you very much, Eugi

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  1. Eugi

12 March 2026 at 12:54 am

You’re welcome, Derrick.

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  1. Crystal M. Trulove

11 March 2026 at 4:33 pm

The poem tiles are nicely played.

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  1. derrickjknight

12 March 2026 at 8:04 am

Thanks very much, Crystal

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  1. umashankar

12 March 2026 at 6:33 am

The gentle, conversational tone of your overview mirrors the intimacy of the memoir it discusses. One cannot help but feel the emotional weight of the poetic stories, which linger like shared memories. The vivid reflections of a three-year-old in The Church Purse could easily have been my own while visiting a temple in the early years of my childhood.

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  1. derrickjknight

12 March 2026 at 7:41 am

Thank you so much, Uma

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:28 pm

So happy that you identified with the poem, Uma. Read your comment on Derrick’s blog. Here, if you are interested, is a link to my daily blog: https://judydykstrabrown.com

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  1. umashankar

24 March 2026 at 1:22 am

I look forward to visiting your blog and following your posts.

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  1. lifelessons

24 March 2026 at 3:19 am

Pleased to have you aboard. You can also read about all my books on Amazon if you are interested..And I’m just revamping my pages on the blog to give links to all that info, interviews and reviews. A big job and not my favorite writing activity. A friend is helping.

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  1. popsiclesociety

12 March 2026 at 8:38 am

A wonderful review for an interesting book!

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  1. derrickjknight

12 March 2026 at 9:20 am

Thank you very much, Riba

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  1. Lavinia Ross

12 March 2026 at 3:53 pm

An excellent review, Derrick, and thank you for the introduction to Judy Dykstra-Brown.

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  1. derrickjknight

13 March 2026 at 8:47 am

Thank you very much, Lavinia. Judy is an excellent blogger

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:25 pm

Hi Lavinia. Read your comment on Derrick’s blog. Here, if you are interested, is a link to my daily blog: https://judydykstrabrown.com

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  1. Lavinia Ross

24 March 2026 at 5:23 pm

Thank you, Judy!

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  1. robbiesinspiration

13 March 2026 at 5:59 am

A wonderful and comprehensive review of a delightful sounding book. Derrick

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  1. derrickjknight

13 March 2026 at 8:29 am

Thank you very much, Robbie

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  1. Sheree

13 March 2026 at 11:32 am

How lovely!

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  1. derrickjknight

13 March 2026 at 11:55 am

Thank you very much, Sheree

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  1. bereavedandbeingasingleparent

14 March 2026 at 1:59 am

Unbelievably my parents had a similar dog like that on the mantelpiece.

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  1. derrickjknight

14 March 2026 at 7:35 am

Amazing. Thank you very much, Gary

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:23 pm

Really? And did the head come off and the tongue was a handle of the spoon? Do you know where they got it? I’ve never seen another one but I still have this one…It is one of the few things I brought with me to Mexico. https://judydykstrabrown.com

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  1. lifelessons

23 March 2026 at 5:15 pm

I’m very grateful to Derrick for taking the time to read my memoirs. Thanks to you for reading his comments.