Peeking out through the stage curtains, the comic realized he would be pirouetting on eggshells as he wrestled with syllables sure to displease this audience of militant women. He wished he’d checked out who his audience would be before choosing his topic. “Barefoot and Pregnant” was not going to win applause tonight!
need 6 words
For “Can You Tell A Story In…” the task set is:
Can you tell a story in 52 words using the following words in it somewhere:
(Image by AI)
Everything is in the Shape of a Bird, a Fish or a Woman
Look how they frown in the old photograph:
my grandmother, her sister,
her two daughters and her granddaughter.
All of the women are very stern.
Grandma looks out of her element,
her eyes shielded against the sun.
In the yellowing photo,
“Taken at homestead” written on the back,
They stand, stark house behind them.
From the porch overhang, a sparse vine hangs,
but on the hidden tendril of the vine,
in the dead tan prairie that surrounds the scene,
in the summer grass bent low, I imagine birds.
It is a drying photo—brittle, cracked,
of three generations of prairie women.
Although none there knew it,
a waterhole is in their near future,
and in this stock pond that my dad would someday dig,
would swim perch and crappies,
sunfish, northern pike.
And although none there will ever see it,
in my house, everything is in the shape of a bird, a fish or a woman.
On the wall hangs an earthy goddess–
stolid and substantial.
Birds perch on her shoulder, arm and knee.
On the hearth, a crow formed out of chicken wire.
A soapstone fish swims the window ledge
beside that aging photograph
and on another window ledge
are two ancient terra cotta figurines.
The small one kneels in her kimono, playing pipes.
The large one stands wide-hipped
with arms narrowing to points
above the elbow.
In my studio,
a still-damp terra cotta figure
holds a fat plum.
On drying canvasses,
Women recline in their vulnerable states–
layers of wet flesh tones, yellows, purplish reds.
The house in the photograph
has been long-felled by rot and fire and rust.
All of the people shown here are now dead.
Yet still in the grass, the meadowlark.
and in the muddy pond the minnow.
In the glass of the photo frame, I see my own reflection–
thinning lips pulled into one straight line.
around me is their house, their sky, their prairie grass.
In the glass, my face
turns into the face of my grandmother.
I flinch but do not falter.
I look deeper.
Reflected in one eye, a perched bird.
in the other eye, a swimming fish.
Esther’s Writing Prompt this week is :Shapes.
From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, Jan. 20, 2026
World leaders are gathered at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which is taking place from January 19 to January 23. Trump is scheduled to go to the meeting in person for the first time since 2020, although now, with him still in the U.S., his social media account has been posting wildly.
Just after midnight, the account posted that Trump had “a very good telephone call with Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, concerning Greenland. I agreed to a meeting of the various parties in Davos, Switzerland. As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back—On that, everyone agrees!” Shortly after, the account posted an AI image of world leaders sitting in front of Trump’s desk in the Oval Office with a large picture of North America entirely covered with stars and stripes to indicate American ownership—including Canada, as well as Greenland. The flag also covers Venezuela.
Then the account posted an image of Trump with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio next to him as he stands on what looks to be an arctic landscape, holding a U.S. flag waving above a sign that reads: “GREENLAND—US TERRITORY EST. 2026.”
Later on, it would post private text messages to Trump from Rutte and French president Emmanuel Macron, mocking their attempts at diplomacy, and repost a message reading: “at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within [angry emoji]. China and Russia are the bogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO, and [Islam].”
And then the account posted: “No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!! President DJT”
But seizing Greenland was not the only thing on the mind of administration officials. The account’s posts suggest they are worried about Trump’s declining popularity. It launched an attack on Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, whom the administration is targeting for alleged mortgage fraud, just before it claimed that Trump was lowering mortgage rates. Later, the account would post a short video of Trump under which the chyron read: “I AM STANDING UP FOR AMERICAN AUTOWORKERS,” although the video was of him promising to stop all federal payments to “sanctuary cities” on February 1.
Then it bopped over to claiming that the people resisting ICE violence in Minnesota are “agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act. They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.” The first to go, he said, should be Democratic governor Tim Walz and Democratic representative Ilhan Omar, both of whom he called corrupt. Later, the account insisted that Democratic governor of California Gavin Newsom is also corrupt.
Later, the account posted that “[t]he Department of Homeland Security and ICE must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system. They are saving many innocent lives! There are thousands of vicious animals in Minnesota alone, which is why the crime stats are, Nationwide, the BEST EVER RECORDED! Show the Numbers, Names, and Faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW. The people will start supporting the Patriots of ICE, instead of the highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”
Then the account turned to reposting long-debunked lies about the 2020 presidential election. It reposted claims that there was voter fraud in Nevada (there wasn’t), that Dominion Voting Machines flipped 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden (they didn’t), that China had rigged the voting for Biden (it didn’t). It appears someone is thinking about the fact that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will be testifying in public on Thursday, January 22.
In Washington today, in a long, rambling speech before reporters, Trump appeared to try to bring his social media post directly to the media. The speech was supposedly to outline the accomplishments of his administration, and he brandished a large sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip, labeled “ACCOMPLISHMENTS,” both of which he later threw on the floor.
But Trump turned from it almost immediately to insist that agents from Immigration and Customs enforcement are not arresting and detaining American citizens, although they very publicly did so on Sunday, breaking into the home of U.S. citizen ChongLy “Scott” Thao without a warrant, holding him at gunpoint, marching him outside in subfreezing weather in just sandals and underwear, driving him around for an hour or two before dropping him back at his home, and then lying that members of his family are on the registered sex offender list.
Trump denied such abuses, claiming that in Minnesota, ICE is apprehending “bad people.” To illustrate his claims, he held up one photo after another of individuals above the label “WORST OF WORST” as he mumbled about how bad they were: “many murderers, many many murderers, people that murdered.” Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who has watched and clipped Trump’s speeches for years, commented: “folks, this is some really weird sh*t. the president is not well.”
From there, Trump was off with the usual litany of complaints about former president Joe Biden, and familiar stories like this one:
“I should’ve gotten the Nobel Prize for each war, but I don’t say that. I saved millions and millions of people. And don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots, ok? It’s in Norway. Norway controls the shots. They’ll say, ‘We have nothing to do with it.’ It’s a joke. They’ve lost such prestige. Got all—that’s why I have such respect for Maria doing what she did. She said, ‘I don’t deserve the Nobel Prize, he does.’ When she got it, they named—they said, ‘Wow that’s amazing, I thought President Trump would get it.’”
Trump also had words about Jack Smith: “Deranged Jack sick Smith. He’s a sick son of a b*tch. They gave me the worst of the worst.”
Trump’s threats against Greenland and his promise to hit Europe with high tariffs if governments there don’t support his seizure of Greenland drove the U.S. stock market sharply downward today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 870.74 points (1.76%), the S&P 500 was down 2.06%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.39%, the worst day for all three of these major indexes since October.
Yesterday Tom Fairless of the Wall Street Journal reported that, contrary to Trump’s repeated assertions, U.S. consumers and importers—not foreign countries—are the ones who have paid for Trump’s tariff war. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, echoed the findings of Yale and Harvard Business School economists, confirming that American consumers and importers have absorbed 96% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump’s threats against Europe are an entirely different kettle of fish, for as Konrad Putzier, Chao Deng, and Sam Goldfarb of the Wall Street Journal explain, the European Union is the biggest trading partner of the U.S., its largest investor, and its closest financial ally. European leaders are discussing whether to retaliate against the U.S. using the EU’S Anti-Coercion Instrument, nicknamed “the Bazooka,” which can restrict imports and exports to any country trying to coerce an EU member and can limit U.S. investment there.
In The Atlantic on January 18, Robert Kagan wrote that “Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II” and warned they “are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future. For eight decades, they have inhabited a liberal international order shaped by America’s predominant strength” and “have grown accustomed to the world operating in a certain way.”
European and Asian allies have cooperated with the U.S. on both defense and trade, while the power of those alliances has prevented serious challenges to that order. Global trade has generally been free, and oceans have been safe for travel both by humans and container ships. Nuclear weapons have been limited by international agreement. “Americans are so accustomed to this basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world that they tend to think it is the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely,” Kagan wrote. “They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.”
In Davos today, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, told the world, “We are in the midst of a rupture.” The rules-based international order is no longer an automatic route to prosperity and security, he said, as the world’s most powerful nations now use that system’s economic integration to coerce other countries.
In its place, Carney offered a different vision than the “world of fortresses” made up of major powers with spheres of influence that Trump and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin are trying to build.
If “middle powers” pursue a system he called “variable geometry,” he said, they can rebalance the world and help solve global problems while still building strength at home. His vision is a version of the “diplomatic variable geometry” of former U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, but Carney’s vision decenters the U.S., noting that middle powers must work together to be at the table to avoid being on the menu. Under a system of variable geometry, countries can develop infrastructure and trade at home, strengthening their own nations, while negotiating new international agreements, as Canada has done recently with China, Qatar, India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur, a South American trade bloc made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
But for international affairs, variable geometry means creating international “coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests,” “coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.”
“We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney said. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.”
—
Notes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/19/trump-world-economic-forum-davos-who-isnt-going.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/19/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/americans-are-the-ones-paying-for-tariffs-study-finds-e254ed2e
https://globalnews.ca/news/11620877/carney-davos-wef-speech-transcript/
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/what-a-break-with-europe-means-for-the-american-economy-8b5d746e
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-triggers-25th-amendment-calls-after-29-posts-in-20-minutes/
YouTube:
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Snow’s Epilogue
We can’t codify the snowflakes nor put them into order.
They fall to make a blanket or a pile or a border.
They come in a blizzard and leave us in a trickle.
There’s something about former snow that is so very fickle.
It drips in drops from icicles and surges down the gutters.
Our attempts to modify it end in futile mutters.
I need not be prophetic to state the truth of snow.
It starts out in a flurry and ends up in a flow.
This poem does not match the beautiful imagery of the poem that inspired the prompt or of those poets who answered it. You can see a link to their poems below. All I can say for it is that it does record snow’s ending .
The challenge for dVerse Poets is to write about snow.
Her body fills to perfection the fabric that exposes a form that is in harmony with the robes it dwells within. They neither bind nor expose too fully the chaos of her aging body. Her upper arms are enigmas that dwell always in the caves of the sleeves of one garment or another. A rope of beads swings from her neck like a pendulum, swaying between pert breasts that do not behave according to their age.
For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 740, the pormpt words are: robes exposed bind beads fabric form harmony chaos cave enigma dwells well
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #108”. Today’s number is 230.To play along, go to your photos file folder and type the number 230 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.
Here are my contributions to the album. Click on photos to enlarge and view as gallery:
The Sunday Stills prompt is “10.”
I love this photo of my friend Phyllis displaying her delicious meal that was a work of art as well.
It was a stuffed avocado and she declared it a hit in both respects.
For Cellpic Sunday.
Canine Church
Two dogs to my right and one dog o’er my head
As I lie on the edge of my doggie-filled bed.
Now one moves to my legs to anchor me down,
fearing my desertion for kitchen or town,
banishing canines to cushions or yard––
beds they find chilly and lonely and hard.
Better this bed warmed by blanket and sheet
and a mattress pad heater to thaw out their feet.
A mom they can cuddle or lie on, or heck––
tunnel into her armpit or under her neck.
These Sunday mornings, they insist that Judy’s
meditations with dogs are her spiritual duties.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 