Monthly Archives: October 2021

Lake Sunset, Oct 24, 2021

Weekend Warriors: Wordle 524

Weekend Warriors

As they mark off  the no man’s land with flags and chalk,
they warn their young brother he’d better not balk.
Then, battle lines drawn, my young monsters are off.

They huzzah and bellow and threaten and scoff.

As side one counts the time off,  twos drop to their knees
behind bushes and tables and boulders and trees.
Then, a hundred count reached, the enemy searches
the ditches and culverts and elm tees and birches.

Crows rise from the trees to caw and to hover,
betraying  those hidden and blowing their cover.
They rise then from where they’ve been crouching or sitting,
to begin their maneuvers of feinting and flitting.

Hiders still in hiding feel a hand on the nape
of their necks, that touch foiling their hope of escape.
Prisoners are taken and armies change places.
Hunted become hunters, continuing chases.

Over and over, this course is repeated.
Loser becomes winner but then is defeated.
Until one-by-one, they all are called home,
and the battleground’s empty below the night dome.

Star after star replaces the ranks
of small weekend soldiers and make-believe tanks.
They fall under covers, their moms tuck them in,
the dreams of their conquests now set to begin.

Prompt words today are battle, drop, sit, young, cover, monster, chase, table, count, times, zone and flags.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 524.
Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In a Spuddle

Click on photos to enlarge.

Forgottenman is the first to add his photo as one. Then Dolly at Koolkosherkitchen contributetd her feline spuddler. Who spuddles! Next?

In a Spuddle

You may think that “spuddle” isn’t a word,
and I agree that it sounds most absurd.
When unsubstantiated, I agreed
that it was unlikely that I’d ever need
a word whose best rhyme turned out to be puddle
or cuddle or muddle or fuddle or huddle,
but when I embarked on an examination,
I found that it wasn’t a mere fabrication,
and though I admit that it seems an anomaly,
as out-of-date as a needlepoint homily,
if you need a word for when you’re forgetful,
fresh from your dreams and still rather fretful,
when you’re befuddled and  in a slight muddle,
the word you might need to describe you is “spuddle.”

Prompt words today are spuddle, unsubstantiated, forgetful, anomaly and examination.

Spuddle: a useful verb from the 17th century that means to work feebly and ineffectively, because your mind is elsewhere or you haven’t quite woken up yet.

 

So, when trying to illustrate this, I had a bit of a problem finding an adequate photo so I had to stage this one. Can you help me out by contributing one of yourself, fresh from sleep or feeling especially feeble or ineffective? Be warned that I’ll add it to make a gallery above, but could be fun.

Additions: a spuddled cat by Dolly at Koolkosherkitchen. Thanks, Dolly!

Crown of Thorns: FOTD, Oct 24, 2021

 

 

 

For Cee’s FOTD

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

Image result for kid with a gun

“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.

 

For Tourmaline’s Halloween Challenge: Grave

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

 

For Cee’s FOTD

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 spoons 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.