What is the one subject that should be taught in school that isn’t? Empathy!!!
For Fandango’s Provocative Question # 13.
Fandango’s Provocative Question # 13
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Inner Parts: FOTD, Nov 29, 2022
Childhood Games
Childhood Games
Hide-and-seeker, breathing hard, pressed up against the ledge,
her tracker stealing closer around the garden hedge.
“Allie-allie-oxen-all-in-all-in-free”
releases other hiders from behind rock and tree.
Boys and girls together, playing a childhood game.
He tosses up a basketball, showing off his aim.
She braids a dainty daisy chain and lays it on his head.
He shakes it off and tosses it to ring her locks instead.
Each meadow is a jungle, each brook a raging sea
within these childhood cravings, these yearnings to run free.
That house they think is haunted and face with certain dread—
will entry show an empty room or the walking dead?
Some pleading not to open it, others saying, “pull!”
with excitement and with terror, their hearts equally full,
thrilled with excitations or with terrors fraught,
opposite emotions crowd their every thought.
Do you not remember when you felt the same?
How many other childhood games are you able to name?
Red Rover and Parcheesi, Jacks and Kick-the-can—
memories like this reveal the boy within the man.
Prompt words for the Sunday Whirl Wordle # 580 are: ledge dead chain boys doors will crave sea free games steal
New Secrets Revealed!!!
Have you ever slept on / in a hammock?
Yes, frequently for short naps in my own gazebo.
Do you find it easy to maintain friendship with other people?
Yes, although the older I get, the less time we seem to spend together. It has to do with the amount of things there are to do and the longer time it seems to take to do them. Plus, friends are moving and, sadly, passing away. I maintain them in my heart and thoughts.
Are you a person of ethics?
I hope so.
If so, how does that impact your daily life?
I think I’m more aware that when things are wrong, I can do something to change them–by volunteering or at the very least by donating.
Are you decisive or indecisive as a person?
Decisive
Why do people hold double standards?
Because it is easier to think something and/or to believe in it than to do it.
Inspired by Kristian and That Really Burns my Biscuits #10
What is your most unhealthiest but guiltiest pleasure and why?
Cheetos Torciditos, because they are practically the only thing that tastes good to me anymore.
What is your process of writing a new post for your blog?
It is the first thing that I do when I wake up, after feeding the dogs and cats. I get back into bed and don’t leave it until I’ve written at least one poem to the prompts and posted a new photo of a flower for Cee’s prompt. I’ve done this every day for nine years now. I usually come back and read and do more blogs as well.
If you were asked to create a Top Fifteen Book List holding books that you felt everyone should read at least once in their life and would never regret reading what titles would you include?
Becoming (Michelle Obama) nonfiction
No One Can Pronounce My Name by Rakesh Satyal
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (Trevor Noah)
The Delight of Being Ordinary: A Road Trip with the Pope and Dalai Lama (Roland Merullo)
The Brain that Changes Itself. (Norman Doidge M.D.). nonfiction
Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries (Kory Stamper) nonfiction
The Midnight Library (Matt Haig)
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely fine: A Novel. (Gail Honeyman)
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (Helen Simonson)
The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Club (Sophie Green)
The Grand Sophy (Georgette Heyer)
Secrets of a Charmed Life (Susan Meissner)
Crazy Salad and Scribble, Scribble (Nora Ephron essays)
The All-Girl Filling Station’s Last Reunion (Fannie Flagg)
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane (Lisa See)
Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing and Survival (Leslie Johansen Nack)
Anything by Anne Tyler or Barbara Kingsolver
The Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley
Anything by Jane Austen or the Brontes
Logical Family: A Memoir (Armistead Maupin)
Simon the Fiddler (Grover Gardner)
How important is it for you to know a person’s real name? [Be this online, off line, social media or blogging]
I like knowing their real name. I always have this feeling that if I did, I would find some connection between us that otherwise we would never discover.
When at school what were your top five subjects that you were passionate about?
Literature, Composition, Botany, Chorus, Math
Why was this – what did you love about them?
I loved reading literature and creative writing and also studying grammar. I liked Botany because it was a science where we didn’t have to dissect animals and because I love plants. I enjoyed singing in the chorus. I loved the puzzle aspect of math but never really discovered what it was for, short of multiplication, division and addition. I could do the geometry and trig and I actually won the math award in high school without ever actually learning any practical applications!!!
Are those five subjects still present in your life today in any form?
I still write for hours every day and always have a book going, although I now listen to them on Audible as my eyes give out by the end of the day. Luckily Alexa and my phone now help me with math as I’ve lost my facility for doing math in my head. I am still crazy about plants without having to dissect them and have lots of plants and flowers and trees in my garden and I do daily photos of flowers for Cee’s blog. I no longer sing much as I’ve lost my voice but all through school and college I sang in church choirs, duets, girls chorus, mixed choirs and in the chorale in college.
Are you a photogenic person?
No. At least I certainly hope I don’t look like any of the recent photos that have been taken of me.
Are you eager to appear in family of friend snaps?
No. I am always the one taking the photos so I rarely appear in them.
Are there many photos taken of you in the various stages of your life?
Yes. tons of them thanks to my older sister when I was younger and because of friends and family taking them later.
With regard to the paranormal do you choose to not believe because there is nothing to believe or because you feel it is safer to not believe?
I do believe in the paranormal to some extent.
Are you a non-believer or a believer?
Non-believer in organized religion. I do, however, believe in some spiritual element in the world.
How are you with meeting strangers/new people who might or could become new friends?
I have traveled so much that I feel I’m good at meeting and befriending people.
Is there a process you adopt to identify if they are the right fit for you?
If it feels right and easy and fun and natural, we are the right fit.
Grandpa’s Stories
Grandpa’s Stories
She smelled of gin and jasmine and was a lovely sight,
with her intricate maneuvers as she engineered her flight
out the back door of the restaurant and then over the hill
to escape the sure appearance of her dinner bill.
The leadership of angels led me on my quest
to pursue over hill and dale with muffler and with vest,
for it was a winter evening, swathed in ice and frost,
and I feared that she would freeze or at the very least, get lost.
When I found her in the forest, I offered her the garment,
told her that I’d paid her bill and kicked the snarling varmint
that dashed at her from bushes, and therefore saved her life
and that is how I came to meet up with my wife!
I’ve guarded her from varmints and paid her bills since then,
kept her warm and safe and supplied her with her gin.
You know her now as Grannie, old and soft and pale,
but you should know your grandma was not always so frail.
When you go out partying, feeling wild and free,
those are traits you got from her, and certainly not me!!!
Prompt words today are frost, offer, leadership, intricate, bill and jasmine. I never knew either of my grandpas, but if I had, I hope they would have told silly stories like this one!!
For CBWC, Nov 24, 2022: Long Items
My nephew Ryan is certainly a long item ! He can remedy that a bit with a sideways curve, but not much! Click on photos to make him even taller!!!
For CBWC, Long Items
Wallflowers and Friends: FOTD, Nov 24, 2022
Repurposed: FOTD, Nov 22, 2022
Here are better shots of my new plantings in the flowerpots I made out of the two large statues the kitties pushed off their pedestals on either side of my front gate.
Here are the original sculptures we purchased the day we bought the house. R.I.P.
For Cee’s FOTD
The Proposal
The Proposal
He’s economically trustworthy, but has a humdrum mind.
He’ll never write a sonnet, for he’s more the right-brain kind.
He’ll never sculpt a fountain or create a work of art,
but he’s brilliant at accounting, numerically smart.
So he won’t paint your masterpiece, but if you ever spy it,
if he’s the one you married, you can bet that he can buy it!!
Prompt words are sonnet, fountain, humdrum, economic, trustworthy. Image by Andra Jackson on Unsplash.
Coco’s Tale
Coco’s Tale
This frisky little mongrel, rescued off the street,
jumped up at once to greet me and wove around my feet.
We were meant to be together, I thought. What better proof
than her goofy antics—her lick and growl and woof?
I didn’t need another dog. My friends would all concur.
In my home there was no lack of yowl and bark and purr.
Would a new arrival agree with dog and cat?
Would my spectacular surprise fizzle and fall flat?
Would Morrie accept her? Would Zoe object?
Would the cats say “That’s enough!” and finally defect?
I had no proof that she’d fit in, and yet part of the weaving
together of a family is in the believing.
That potent pull of heartstrings exchanged at the first glance
somehow won over reason, so I thought I’d take the chance.
When we got into the car, she jumped up on my lap,
curled herself into a ball and took a little nap.
Cats hissed at her arrival and approached her fully armed,
so her feline siblings clearly were not charmed!
But to Zoe and to Morrie, she is a long-lost friend,
and though our story is not over, for now this is “The End!”
I’ve had a terrible bronchial infection for the past two weeks and indications are that I’m allergic to Coco. I tried making Zoe and Coco sleep out in the doggie domain with Morrie, but they cried for two hours, so they are back inside but somehow, Coco seems to realize my problem and she has shifted from sleeping right beside my neck to getting as far away from my face as possible while still touching me, so she sleeps pressed up against my leg, knee to ankle, or with her chin over my foot. Zoe has switched down to sleep in her own little bed right next to the bed. Fingers crossed that this will work. They are so dear. Zoe and Coco are constant companions and Morrie sometimes joins in the chase. I feel bad, knowing he is missing Diego, so I’ve been putting the girls out all day to keep him company and sometimes he sleeps on a comfy lawn chair right outside my bedroom door that I leave cracked a bit so the dogs can get out if they need to. Peaceable kingdom. The cats still don’t like the new intruder, but they have their own safe area out in front that is not accessible to the dogs.
Prompt words today are spectacular, concur, believing, potent, proof and exchange.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 