Monthly Archives: July 2026

“Label” for Esther’s Word of the Week

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Label Machine

Pure rayon or crepe de chine?
Trust the labelling machine.
It for sure will have it right
and easily can solve your plight
when you have that puzzling quandary
over what to call your laundry.
It’s easy.  You are simply able
to look inside and read the label.

With people, it is not the same.
Labelling may unfairly blame
someone of a certain hue
for something they would never do.
You may as well class cleft of chin
as a mark of sloth or sin
as to choose one’s place of birth
as a determiner of their worth.

It’s clear we’ve failed our populace
when we see how many of us
trust bigotry and generalization
to determine policies of  nation.
“Give us your tired and your poor”
has been swept right out the door.
The symbol of what’s free and fair
now stands forlorn with empty stare.

Behold: the Statue of Liberty—
a symbol of hypocrisy.

Esther’s Word of the Week is “Label.”

Marilyn Armstrong Doll Collection

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Be Sure to double click on photos to enlarge!

As longtime friends in blogging, Marilyn Armstrong and I often found ourselves discussing dolls that we owned in common. Little did I know how many dolls she owned, but eventually, when she decided that she’d like to find a permanent home for her dolls where they could all be exhibited together, I told her of a doll museum in the works that I had visited during my last 5 year school reunion in the town where I grew up. .  This eventually led to a discussion between its founder, Andrea Miller Sheehan, and Marilyn, and the result was that Marilyn shipped her entire collection off to her.  This year, when I returned  for the reunion, I was able to see Marilyn’s complete display. Her writeup of her collection can be read if you click on it and then  enlarge it a bit more, as is true of all of the photos.  I’m sure Marilyn’s family and friends who have continued her blog would love to hear your comments.

As I understand it, the museum is still under development as its owner has had family health issues over the past five years that have kept her from completing the installations. Fortunately, Marilyn’s displays are completed and  hopefully, the museum will soon be finished and open. It is located in Murdo, South Dakota, just off Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Mitchell, just 50 miles east of Wall Drug.  I’ll keep you informed about developments and give better instructions about how to find it when it has opened permanently.
–Judy Dykstra-Brown, July 21, 2026

 

“Killing Time” for FOWC

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Meeting an Old Friend

Sixty years since you lived one block away.
In one hour we meet for brunch and memories.
Really my sister’s friend,
but in small towns, so devoid of much else to do,
people still living and moved away
become legends.
Your mother the nightclub singer
with the distinctive whistle that called you home
from behind trees and low in ditches at night,
the rest of us still caught in the thrlll of “ditch ‘em”–
our version of hide-and-seek.
I was the tag-a-long, the watcher
to your cowboy games
and the neighborhood plays
raising nickel-after-nickel for a memorial plaque
for the small boy killed from a fall from the tallest slippery slide.
That slide gone soon after, the plaque never installed,
as you were gone to a larger town
and voice lessons translating your pure high voice
to the more studied operatic perfection
of a sweet bottom in a tight girdle.
Still a small town girl at heart
now, all these years later,
you pull our somewhat
off-tune unschooled
voices to you
over years
and miles
to sing
the
old
school
song.

For FOWC the prompt is “Killed.”
The prompt word is just a tiny tragic detail in this nostalgic poem of a past
and a present that has now become the past as well.

Pick a Pickled Pepper, for Blast from the Past (From July 20, 2017)

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Pick a Pickled Pepper

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Pick a Pickled Pepper

Some girls lick on lollipops, but I never will.
I prefer the piquant taste of vinegar and dill.
Pickle up some peppers  and shove them in a jar.
Put a label on it to show them who you are.
If a cute boy eats one, he will pucker up,
and perhaps you’ll plant a kiss where he deigned to sup.

Pick a cherry pepper, press it to your lips,
and that special spicy boy might want to steal some sips.
Do not tell your mother. Do not tell your dad,
or that might be the only pepper that you ever had.
Lollipops are sweet, but just a little coy.
Pickles work much better for picking out your boy.

 Strangely enough, the song “Lollipop, Lollipop” has been going through my mind for the past few days.  I even made up different lyrics to the tune of it to sing to Annie, my 15-year-old ill cat,  as I drove her (meowing all the way) home from the vet the other day. The men who stand in the road to wave people into the fish restaurants near San Juan Cosala must have wondered at me as I hollered out the strange song at the top of my lungs, just like my dad used to do to startle a howling baby into silence.  Ah well.  We get odder as we get older but have more of an excuse for it!

Zoe Meets Ollie. 2022

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Just found this darling video of Ollie mothering Zoe when I first brought her home. four years ago

Welcome to “The Numbers Game #133.” Come play along. Today’s number is 750.

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To play along, go to your  photos file folder and type the number 750 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 myNumbers 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 photos. Click on photos to enlarge and move on to next photo. Anxious to see yours!

Strums

 

 

School Reunion for The Sunday Whirl

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Back row: Patti Dykstra Arnieri, Val Lecke Halla, Ed Jackson
Front row: Mick Penticoff, Judy Dykstra-Brown and Mick’s granddaughter Melissa

School Reunion

Wind strums the grass
around the Dakota town
where we gather under a prairie sky.

Back home again after sixty years
all the world  constricted to this gymnasium––
forgotten friends are again remembered,
denied loves again brought to mind.

Folklore of the past is stirred up to reveal new truths
as facts and rumors buzz around our heads
like bees that store old stories like honey,
then lie fallow to be stirred up again in 5 years.

We leave each other again, then,
for one more time,
wondering with departing sighs
whether pleas to keep in touch
will be remembered.

For The Sunday Whirl, the prompt words are: home world denied bees pleas forgotten folklore wonder fallow sigh sky strum

I am riding home from my 2-day school reunion in South Dakota as I write this poem wherein I’ve added the restriction of making use of the twelve prompt words above. It was the best reunion ever–the 61st year after my high school graduation, but since the all-school reunions (meaning they are for every class who ever graduated from the school)  for the tiny high school I attended are staged only every 5 years, it was only my 12th reunion, not all of which I’ve been able to attend. It was, however, the best one to date.  (But then my sister says I say that every time.) This time there were lots of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of schoolmates who attended and it was wonderful to see these additions to their lives and continuations of their stories.

More Photos: Reunion Parade combined with 250 year celebration..Horsemen with flags of all 50 states. Photo by Patti Arnieri.

“Quartet”, for Today’s “Throwback Edition”

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Quartet

They flicker like tiny sparks,
these rapid kittens
intense in attention,
movements reflecting
every neighboring small movement.
Suspicious of brief distractions.
Violent, then soft like the feather
they’ve destroyed,
drifting to the window frame above,
forgotten by its intense stalkers
of a second before.

This is a post from July 19, 2017

More Fibs for Fibbing Friday

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For Fibbing Friday, the task at hand is:

1. What is a pinkie? A very small brooch.

2. What is a fortress? What is for tress is barrette or bobby pin.

3. What is a snapdragon? A large, irritated, flying lizard.

4. What is a pantry? An unsuccessful attempt at flipping a pancake which ends up the flapjack on the ceiling.

5. What is a windchime? A clock won in a raffle.

6. How would you describe a banana? With pen and paper or vocally.

7. What is a moustache? A rodent’s dental pain.

8. What is a nub? A freshly hatched flying, stinging insect that produces honey.

9. What is a metaphor? It is for referring to yourself.

10. What is a lunatic? A burrowing insect on a moonlit night.

Walking to Town for Blast from the Past

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I am in Sheridan, Wyoming, spending the night at the home of my best friend since college days, having flown from Guadalajara to Billings Montana yesterday. I was picked up by my sister Patti, and after spending the night in a motel near the airport, we drove to Sheridan. Here I have  seen a number of old friends and tomorrow Patti and I drive to Murdo, South Dakota, to our high school reunion, which meets every 5 years. If it had been held last year, it would have been my 60th year reunion and Patti’s 64th, but our school in our town of 700 was so small that it is necessary to just combine all of the class reunions from every year into one big reunion held every 5 years. Murdo, South Dakota, here we come!!!

It is appropriate, then, that my “Blast from the Past” prompt to reblog a blog posted on this date in an earlier year describes a day at my reunion ten years ago. Here it is:

Walking to Town

lifelessons

Lifelessons,

I was trying to post my blog when my sister and brother-in-law asked if I wanted to accompany them to town to meet friends at the Star Cafe.  Since I’d been trying in vain to post since I woke up this morning, I decided to stay in the motel until I’d posted, so she told me to call when I was ready to come into town and she’d come get me.

A few hours later when I was still unable to post, I tried to call, but alas––no cell phone coverage and no wifi!  When I went to the office, I was greeted by a sign that the office would be closed until 3:30 and with not a car in the parking lot, I knew I was the solitary person in residence at the moment.

The only solution I could think of was to walk to town–more than a mile away down a gravel road like this one:

 

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and then along the shoulder of the highway that leads to town.

 

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En route I would need to cross an overpass over Interstate 90 as well as an exit and an entrance.

 

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It was a hot day and the way would be treelesss. Still, I set out on my adventure.

First, past the lonely horse in the pasture.

 

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Giving him a few pats on the nose, I was on my way again. We were both looking pretty hot!

 

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As I approached the local cemetery, a police car pulled up to see if I needed help, but didn’t offer me a ride.

After a half hour walk or so, I encountered another solitary inhabitant of the road:

 

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And,as you can see from this view, I was drawing nearer to my destination. Just another 600 feet or so to go.

 

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I arrived at the Pioneer Auto Museum a bit wind-tossed and sweaty, and luckily the two very nice ladies in the gift shop loaned me a cell phone to call my sister. Ten minutes later, she picked me up and we did a short swing through town to see former residences and other haunts before returning to the motel.  It was, in fact, a bit of a futile exercise just to return to where I’d departed from an hour and a half before.  The rest of the day, however, turned out to be wonderful––old friends as well as some new ones, some surprises, a few tears, lots of laughs and a few messages from dear departed ones via stories I’d never heard before.  But it is 3:20 in the morning and I need to be up by 8 so I will desist and say as a famous man did many times in the past, that that is the rest of the story!