A bit of late-night reading in the hammock. Luckily, there is an overhead light.
For Bushboy’s Last on the Card, Aug, 2025
Last on the Card, Aug, 2025
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“Toast” for SOCS (Here’s to the Bride) Aug 29, 2025
Here’s To The Bride
The groom’s family was titled and a bit anachronistic.
So when they saw the bride, I fear they went a bit ballistic.
Instead of white she wore a dress of scarlet oddly draped.
The mother of the groom grew faint. Her husband merely gaped.
She wore something archaic instead of merely old—
her grandma’s feather boa—a bridal statement bold.
Around her neck, a python, and her arms were densely bangled.
Her veil pinned to a tractor hat of satin, oddly-angled.
The brim turned back as though she were an umpire at a game.
In short, the bride’s ensemble was anything but lame.
As she hip-hopped down the aisle to a tune by Kanye West,
the groom stood fondly watching her in morning coat and vest.
Her lipstick blue, her bustier was borrowed and conditional
on return to its owner in a manner most traditional.
To complete her fashion statement, her combat boots were blue,
and if you’ve paid attention, you could guess that they were new!
Her bouquet was fresh dandelions bound up with some chives.
She held it in one hand and with the other, gave high fives
to friends all up the aisle as she jerked her way on by.
The groom’s mom gave a shudder and his father gave a sigh.
So did this modern wedding forsake the antiquated
with customs much less stuffy, less predictable and dated.
The wedding fare was tacos, Cuban sandwiches and chips,
jelly beans and donuts, crudités and dips.
No caviar or salmon. Just ribs and Tater Tots.
The toasts to bride and groom were made with Jello shots.
The wedding cake was chocolate with custard between layers.
Good wishes voiced by ministers, gurus and namaste’ers.
In place of rice the bride and groom were showered with quinoa.
In short, it was a wedding to rival mardi gras!
The SOCS prompt is “toast.”
Word Choice for The Three Things Challenge
Word Choice
Poetry’s got metaphors, similes and rhyme,
and a bit of meter to make it sound sublime.
But prose has plot and conflict, and compared to verse
is of course much longer whereas poetry’s more terse.
But either genre that you choose, for sure you can’t go wrong.
A book of prose or poems is really good to have along
in waiting rooms or buses, on airplanes or on trains.
They fill in time for shut-ins in times of snow or rains.
In fact, to entertain you or to cancel out your woes
there is nothing better than poetry or prose!
For the Three Things Challenge, the prompt words are: Poetry, Prose and Verse
Absolutely Terrifying
Heather Cox Richardson, Aug 27, 2025 Letters from an American
Today, for the second time in as many days, President Donald J. Trump suggested that Americans want a dictator. In a meeting in the Cabinet Room that lasted more than three hours, during which he listened to the fulsome praise of his cabinet officers and kept his hands below the table, seemingly to hide the bad bruising on his right hand, Trump said: “The line is that I’m a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, ‘You know, if that’s the case, I’d rather have a dictator.’”
With Trump underwater on all his key issues and his job approval rating dismal, the administration appears to be trying to create support for Trump by insisting that the U.S. is mired in crime and he alone can solve the problem. The administration’s solution is not to fund violence prevention programs and local law enforcement—two methods proven to work—but instead to use the power of the government to terrorize communities.
There is a frantic feel to that effort, as if they feel they must convince Americans to fear crime more than they fear rising grocery prices or having to take their children past police checkpoints on their way to school… . .
To see the resst of this article, go HERE
Our Emperor’s New Clothes, for the Weekly Challenge, Aug 23, 2025
Our Emperor’s New Clothes
How do we mentor our burgeoning youth
in these times of unequalled stretchings of truth?
Teach them to sort out these rash acts of treason,
to approach them with heart and strain them through reason.
Teach them hating is wrong and exclusion is selfish—
that plastic’s destroying our coral and shellfish.
That medical care should be something for all
and that hoarding of wealth brings a country’s last fall.
Teach them the future is theirs to decide.
Teach them the truth of whom to deride.
Teach them that facts being taught by their teachers
may rival what they’re being taught by some preachers
and those who would rule to win their own gain,
lining their pockets again and again
with tax cuts that only extend to the rich
while the trickle-down theory develops a hitch.
Teach them to sort out rhetoric from fact.
Teach them to care and to vote and to act
to stretch out the privilege to blanket us all.
We are not alone on this spinning great ball.
Our former meddling and incredible gall
is why we’re considering building a wall
to keep out the hungry and frightened downtrodden
who come to us weary, exhausted and sodden.
They ask for asylum and our protection
from dictators who have prompted defection
much as many Americans are fleeing south
to avoid the stupidity and the vile mouth
of the dictator who is now ruining our land
with illogical thinking and truth that is canned.
Who will mentor whom in this crazy new world
once the last hateful invectives are hurled?
Our world has been sold out for profit and gain—
overseen by leaders opportunistic and vain.
Perhaps it’s our youth who will now mentor us
to sort out the truth from this internet fuss.
As in the old legend, They’ll teach the uncouth
to forsake propaganda for naked truth.
It’s hoped that our youth wake us up from our doze
to point out the truth of our Emperor’s new clothes!!
The Weekly Challenge Weekend prompt is “burgeoning.”
“Doors” for Lens Artists Challenge #361, Aug 21, 2025
“Pendulum” for Word of the Day, Aug 21, 2025
Pendulum
Would passion carry the same voltage
or heartbreak the sting
if from the beginning we knew
that every extreme
brings us a step closer to its opposite?
It is that great pendulum of the I Ching—
that flowing from the yin to yang—
that foretells the fall of great regimes
glorious in their altruism
who, reaching their summit,
must head back again
towards cruel tyranny.
If we’d known this from the start,
each height would become
a day of mourning,
knowing that having reached one apex,
there is no further height to climb to.
and tomorrow, the start of our slow descent
will bring us closer to that other place
where dark will reign.
Part of the power of youth’s sweet ecstasy
as well as bitter heartbreak is that it seems as though
they’ll last forever.
This is the spice of life.
Its tough gristle comes later,
as we recognize that
everything,
everything everything
changes into its
opposite.
The Word of the Day prompt is “Summit.”
The Numbers Game #86, Please Play Along! Aug 18, 2025
Welcome to “The Numbers Game #86”. Today’s number is 208. To play along, go to your photos file folder and type that number 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.
Please Click on Photos to enlarge and view as gallery.
After quake
and sunny side up!
This is Rich!! Please read.
Please click on arrow to hear/see this short video.
Thanks to Forgottenman for acquainting me with this commentator. FM has published more links to Rich’s pieces on his blog.
Monarch Butterfly Macros.. Aug 18, 2025
Cocoon attached to pot.
Cocoon opening
Released butterly
Click on photos to enlarge.
When my friend Aurora Michel invited me over to her garden to possibly see monarch butterflies emerging from their cocoons, I hoped to see the entire process. Alas, no butterflies did emerge, but I did get some good macros of the cocoons and butterflies, as seen above!
Below are photos earlier taken by Aurora and sent to me to entice me over to see the real event: (Again, click on photos to enlarge.)
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 