For Cee’s FOTD
Crown of Thorns: FOTD, Oct 24, 2021
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To Be Enlightened
I wanted to share with you this informative and thoughtful article by Fandango published on his Flashback Friday Blog:
To Be Enlightened
“I don’t understand,” Hal said. “It’s just a handgun and I got it to protect our home and family.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll enlighten you,” Rosemary said. “Statistics show that a gun in the home is more likely to be used in a homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used for self-defense.”
“Oh come on,” Hal responded. “That’s fake news.”
“No, it’s not. It’s true,” Rosemary said. “Having a gun in the home is eleven times more likely to be used for attempted or successful suicides than for self-defense. It’s seven times more likely to be used in criminal assaults and homicides, and four times more likely in unintentional shooting deaths or injuries.”
“But we’d use the gun exclusively for self-defense,” Hal objected.
Rosemary sighed. “Did you know that, on average, nearly 5,000 children in the United States receive medical treatment in an emergency room each year for a gun-related injury? And about 21% of those injuries are unintentional. Almost 1,300 children die annually from a gun-related injury in this country.” (more)….
To read the rest of this excellent article go HERE.
Before
Click on photos to enlarge.
My friend Leslie is here visiting from the states for a month. Two years ago, she helped me decorate the graves I have “adopted” in the Ajijic cemetery for Day of the Dead, and she wanted to go see how they were faring this year. As you can see, they have become very overgrown again, so I’ve hired Yolanda’s sons to go cut down the year’s growth. Yolanda and I will go clean off the stones and Leslie and her friends want to come help me decorate them–perhaps on Halloween. I had heard the cemeteries will be closed again on November 1 and 2 because of Covid, as they were last year, but rumor has it that that restriction has been lifted. Both Ajijic and San Juan Cosala are having their plaza celebrations, so I guess things are back to normal. I’ll post more photos after the graves are cleared and decorated. Below are links to two earlier posts about past years:
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/11/02/pantheon-afternoon-dia-de-los-muertos-ajijic-mx-2015/
https://judydykstrabrown.com/2016/10/27/r-i-p-jnws-halloween-challenge-graveyard/
The inhabitants of the graves that I have adopted are:
Frances Cutting Fletcher, born 1901, died 1966.
Katherine Root Fletcher, born 1873, died 1957.
Charles Arnold Fletcher, born July 19, 1893, died October 4, 1970.
I did extensive research and finally figured out the relationships, but can’t find the notes I took two years ago. Trying to research last night, I discovered from census and military records that there are three generations of Charles Arnold Fletcher, so we never could figure out the exact relationships, but I’ll keep searching.
Keeping Up
Keeping Up
Celebrations in one’s seventies require an appointment
with your favorite doctor for a painkiller or ointment
for sprains or aches or bruises from one’s excesses of being
a good sport about camping out or ice skating or skiing.
What once you took for granted may now be an act of will
to engineer that final run or execute that hill.
Trying to be a kid again may put you out of touch.
The x-ray that they’ll take today will indicate how much.!
Word prompts today are celebration, x-ray, appointment.
Gazania: FOTD, Oct 23, 2021
Spooning
Please click on photos to enlarge them.
When Re-Farmer published a blog about making his lovely wooden spoons, I had to make a comment about how much I love all of the handmade wooden soons and other wooden implements that I have purchased over the years and the Turkey with holes all over it that I bought years ago and ended up using to display some of the wooden spoons, knives, forks and spatulas I’ve purchased over the years. I have been using some of them for over 30 years and they are all still serviceable.
I remarked that I’d like to send him photos of them but in the end, the easiest way seemed to be to publish them on my blog. Holding some of the implements with handles too large to fit in the holes of the turkey is a hand-carved buna (coffee) holder that I bought in Ethiopia in 1973. The other wooden implement is my grandmother’s lemon squeezer. See Re-Farmer’s spoons HERE.
A Lonely Widow’s Lament
A Lonely Widow’s Lament
She advertised for company and put it on the web.
Discouraged with the “no response,” she felt her patience ebb.
She pined so much for conference and knew that it was wrong,
and yet she vowed she’d make do with whatever came along.
She promised she’d be tranquil, not expect a fast response.
She relaxed and did some weaving, there beneath the garden sconce.
The comfort of the sunlight helped her not to worry.
She’d give a little leeway, no need for any hurry.
A gentle breeze assisted her in sinking into dreaming.
It didn’t help a widow to spend her day in scheming.
And, soon enough a jerky movement set her heart to beating.
A fly caught in her cobweb meant that she would soon be eating!
Although I have the perfect photo to illustrate this poem, I didn’t want to give away the ending, so I’m leaving it unillustrated. To see the illustration for it, go HERE.
Prompt words today are conference, assist, cobweb, leeway and comfort.
Gazania: FOTD, Oct 22, 2021
Dental Discourse: dVerse Poets Compound Word Verse
Dental Discourse
She could not stand the sad sad sight
of his horrendous overbite.
She arranged to take him to a
dentist, thinking he could do a
makeover.
She asked the doc what he would charge
to make his overhang less large.
The price he set to make each tooth less
was, I fear, greedy and ruthless
overkill.
Thus began their drawn-out dicker
that I think would have gone quicker
if his teeth had been less icky,
and the job a much less tricky
overhaul.
After much talk, they struck a deal,
both thinking that they’d made a steal.
But then with little else to do,
she said if he attempted to
overcharge,
she would have his license lifted
no matter how bloody gifted
he might have been (when this all ends)
at cutting down her toothy friend’s
hangover.
For dVerse Poets prompt: Compound Word Verse Image by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
This form consists of 5 five-line stanzas with aabb rhyme schemes, each containing 8 syllables and each stanza concluding with a three-syllable compound word that had one element the same as all other compound words in the final lines of the stanzas. Phew!
