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He said: Hands are for doing.
Double pods
Empty!!! (One Word Sunday Prompt)
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Monthly Archives: February 2021
The Letter S: Lens-Artist Challenge # 136
Shades
Sparkles
Sparrow
Spines
Star
Spiral
Sacks
Spout
Seat
Sip
Spider
Secret
Sanctuary
The Letter “S.”
Click on photos to enlarge.
The Return
The Return
Girded by a pressure suit, guided by skill and science,
an astronaut must learn the lessons of complete compliance.
It requires trust and backbone to travel through the dark,
trusting hands thousands of miles away to guide that ark
that speeds him through the solar system, up to regions where
his surroundings are devoid of gravity and air.
Accepting the unknown and resisting terror’s bark,
he hurtles into outer space, accepting danger’s lark.
What prompts him to accept the threat of loneliness and death—
to face an end from fire or from lack of breath?
It is exceptional valor, proving bravery and worth
to face his end so far from the comforts of this earth.
Does he face a different heaven in another clime,
his molecules merged after death to a different time?
Is he bound to spend infinity apart from worlds he’s known,
blown into the universe, forever, now, alone?
No earth he knows to go to to blend back in the world.
From his own nature’s cycle, now forever hurled.
Does he merge into a wider world, another evolution,
absorbed within the rules of a new orb’s revolution?
Will he travel back again in centuries far distant,
in an alien craft, his molecules so insistent
to return to their origins that they are drawn back home
to the soil of this Earth or to the ocean’s foam?
Or can he find his way back home again solely on his own,
intent on his not spending eternity alone?
How wide is one’s soul’s orbit? How vast its gravity?
Can it bring a shipless astronaut back from infinity?
Winning Over White Supremacists–One Hater at a Time
This blog by Annie makes such a valid (and conciliatory) point–and offers hope for a solution to divisiveness in the U.S.
I am writing this piece with images of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol still very fresh in my mind. It is a huge stretch to think of those brutal, sadistic, remorseless thugs and imagine summoning an iota of compassion for them. But others of their ilk–and many psychologists and researchers–say that’s precisely what’s needed.
They call themselves the “formers”: former Klansman, neo-Nazis, or generic white supremacists or other racial extremists who are now devoted to guiding those who’d followed similar paths to come to a better life.
Christian Picciolini is one of them. As a 14-year-old, he’d joined a violent group of white power adherents who became the “Hammerskin Nation.” As he described his feelings to Dave Davies in an NPR interview, the group threw him a “lifeline of acceptance…I felt a sort of energy flow through me that I had never felt before—as…
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Poinciana Memories
For Cee’s FOTD
I found this poinciana flower from the tree in my front yard pressed between the pages of a notebook given to me by Judy Reeves. Thanks Judy. (I put the flower and scribbles there.)
Brain vs Brawn
Brain vs Brawn
Performing ablutions and feeding the dogs,
writing to prompts and checking out blogs.
My movement these mornings is slightly curtailed
now that my circadian rhythms have failed.
With two hours’ sleep, it’s dubious that
my exercise will exceed petting the cat.
You may claim that you still can do a mean pushup,
but lately some of us just can’t get our tushup.
Good for all of you folks with perpetual youth,
although bragging of it I find slightly uncouth.
Do I blather on about crosswords I’ve done
or winning at Scrabble? It just isn’t done.
I don’t swagger around with my I.Q. in view.
Clearly, I have something better to do.
So cover that body. Put your pecs in a shroud.
That muscle shirt clearly should not be allowed.
Put clothes on those biceps, obscure that tight tush.
We know that you pump and you pull and you push,
but must you show us? We find it importunate
that you should flaunt them to all the unfortunate.
We don’t display that we’re learned and clever.
We don’t quote Chaucer. Well, not hardly ever.
We won’t humiliate your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Those of us flabby and rotund and loose
hereby are suggesting that we call a truce.
We will not correct your split infinitive
if you won’t show off your muscles definitive.
Prompt words today are movement, dubious, claim and ablution.
A Fulmination on Fizgigs
A Fulmination on Fizgigs
What I go through to write blogs is absurd.
I’m desperate for topics. I search for each word.
Superior writing often evades me,
but still I am happy when someone upbraids me
to get off the bench and engage in the play
of Ragtag, Fandango or Word of the day.
Each day I search out a possible angle.
I plot and I worry, I scheme and I wangle
to make use of each prompt word, however absurd.
I will not be bettered by any strange word!
So, bring on your fizgigs and your mollynogging,
I won’t be intimidated in my own blogging!
And although some readers might be irritated
by having to look up words obscure and dated,
and though I must struggle, often in vain,
to make use of prompt words that I find inane,
still I’ll plod on, stubborn to the ending,
regardless of what crazy prompt word is pending!!!
Word prompts for today are bench, superior, happiest, fizgig and wangle.
The King of Beasts Fetes the Animal Kingdom
The King of Beasts Fetes the Animal Kingdom
When he threw a sumptuous banquet to honor all his minions,
they showed up by the thousands via hoof and fin and pinions.
He planned a sumptuous feast , hoping that it would invigorate,
but instead the meal he’d served only served to agitate.
The pelicans were shocked by the roast turkey and fried chicken,
for they found such a diet to be less than finger-licken’.
The shrimp cocktail gagged the flounder and made the tuna ill.
Before they even had a bite, they found they’d had their fill.
The black Angus were all traumatized when they were served the veal.
Sheep couldn’t eat the mutton and Baaah-humbugged the whole meal.
Thus, one-by-one they found the king of beasts to be barbarian.
How short-sighted he’d been not to just go with vegetarian!
Prompt words are sumptuous, invigorate, minion . Photo by Jeena Jeong on Unsplash. Used with permission.
Wise Men and Fools
Wise Men and Fools
Pompous men and religious zealots rush into the fray
professing as the solid truth speculations they
determine to be necessary for things to be righted
and other fools support them because they are short-sighted.
But wisdom is as wisdom does and not as wisdom thinks.
It floats up to the surface when foolishness just sinks.
It tends toward calm and practical when flightier heads turn manic
and is irreconcilable with discord and with panic.
Fools may build vain edifices reaching to the skies
that are palatial prisons—follies in disguise.
In time of war, a bunker furnishes more protection,
offering a wiser choice to screen us from detection.
Fools raise their hands and wave at us, inviting their own end,
standing straight and rigid when a wiser man might bend.
Fools rush in where sages might not speculate,
instead letting the evidence sit and percolate.
Sages, fools and charlatans mixed up in the fray.
For those who cannot tell the difference, now we’ll all have to pay.
Prompt words for today are wisdom, irreconcilable, practical and palatial.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 