Category Archives: Uncategorized

What are the Rest of the Rules?

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What are the Rest of the Rules?

I just made a comment to Bag Lady that I’ve decided I want to ask a wider audience. If you have the answers, please let me know. This is an expanded version of my comment to her. If you want to see her post, click on the link above. Here is my comment:

Aside from the dangers that at any given moment, someone may shoot you because you do or don’t have a mask on, because you’ve asked how tall they are, or spray acid in your face while parked at a stoplight just because you are black, another reason I have less incentive to leave my house is because of how uncomfortable the masks are.  My glasses fog up and by the time I’m out for a half hour or so I feel wringing wet all over, with droplets hanging off the tips of my hair, as though I’m holding in all the heat usually released in my breath. I’m not using this as an excuse not to wear one. I always do, even though the tops of my ears aren’t high enough to keep the ones held in place with ear bands in place. The mask is constantly ejecting itself, and the ones that go all the way over your hair make me look even worse that I do with hair I’ve cut for myself for 4 months, no makeup and no earrings because the mask keeps catching on them. 

In spite of this, I would never go out without a mask or even have contact with someone in my house without wearing one, but I do have my questions regarding mask protocol. In a restaurant, six feet away from your companion, waiters all masked, the next table twelve feet away, what are the rules for eating and drinking. Do you replace your mask after every sip? Fanangle a straw between you and the mask? Do you lift the mask for each forkful? No one tells us these things.

And the hand washing. Does that twenty seconds include rinsing or is that just the soaping part? What are the precise rules?

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An Empirical Truth

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A Empirical Truth

I’m writing to our leadership–selfish, short-sighted fools
who are selling off our national parks and making other rules
about protected species, pollution and our health.
Saying it’s for our good while the rich expand their wealth.

If Nero fiddled as Rome burned, it’s also true today
that our most notable leader also likes to play.
As he’s shooting birdies on wild habitats turned tame,
his kids take off for Africa to shoot some wild game.

What we do to others turns back on us in time,
and Mother Nature will  find a way of dealing with your crime.
I suggest that you use caution when visiting a zoo
lest the animals you threaten end up hunting you.

 

Prompt words for today are explain, empirical, zoo, caution and leadership.

Leaves for Petals: FOTD June 30, 2020

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Who needs flowers when there are succulents whose leaves rival petals?

For Cee’s FOTD

It’s Not Just About You!!!!

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(Copied from a friend and shared. Please do the same. Sorry, I don’t know the original source.)

Let’s say you woke up with a terrible cough, a fever, and severe body aches. Immediately, you rush to the doctor and unfortunately, you’re diagnosed with COVID-19. For the last two weeks, you’ve been unaware that you were infected and you’ve ignored “the rules.” You’ve gotten together with some close friends for pizza, had a few people over, even visited a park and a beach. You figured, “I don’t feel sick. I have the right to keep living my normal life. No one can tell me what to do.”

With your diagnosis, you spend the next few days at home on the couch, feeling pretty crappy; but then you’re well again because you’re young, healthy and strong. Lucky you. But your best friend caught it from you during a visit to your house, and because she didn’t know she was contagious, she visited her 82-year-old grandfather, who uses oxygen tanks daily to help him breathe because he has COPD and heart failure. Now, he’s dead.

Your co-worker, who has asthma, caught it too, during your little pizza get-together. Now, he’s in the ICU, and he’s spread it to a few others in his family, too–but they won’t know that for another couple of weeks yet.

The cashier at the restaurant where you picked up the pizza carried the infection home to his wife, who has MS, which makes her immunosuppressed. She’s not as lucky as you, so she’s admitted to the hospital because she’s having trouble breathing. She may need to be placed in a medically-induced coma and intubated; she may not get to say goodbye to her loved ones. She may die surrounded by machines, with no family at her bedside.

All because you couldn’t stand the inconvenience of a mask; of staying home; of changing your familiar routines for just a little while. Because you have the right, above all others rights, to continue living your normal life and no one, I mean no one, has the right to tell you what to do.

#SocialDistancing = It’s not about YOU!
#WearAMask = It’s not about YOU!
#StayHome = It’s not about YOU!
#GetTested = It’s not about YOU!
#MaskItOrCasket = It’s not about YOU!

 

Image may contain: text that says 'A mask is not a political statement. It's an IQ test. @johnlundin'

Home for the Duration?

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Home for the Duration?

I simply must go shopping. I’ve a plethora of needs.
My soup has gone unsalted and my garden’s full of weeds.
I need whips for my whacker and I need a box of salt.
So if my meals aren’t tasty, you can see it’s not my fault.

The bane of my existence is the branches that have grown
to obscure my lake view and upset my garden’s tone.
When I’m in the hammock, I’m thereby deprived my vista
because I loaned my hedge clippers to my older sista.

It’s easier to buy new ones if I could just go shopping,
but nobody knows when our immurement will be stopping.
Lately what might happen in the future’s arcane knowledge.
I hope that school resumes before my 3-year-old needs college!

Prompt words for today are salty, arcane, vista, plethora and shop.

Held Captive

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I took this photo of a hibiscus held captive outside a local paint store. I let my hibiscus go free!!!

For Cee’s FOTD

A-roving

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Image by Fusion Medical on Unsplash, used with permission.

A-roving

Just because we can doesn’t always mean we should.
Nature says to stay in place. It wants us to be good.
In searching for experience, we’ve spread ourselves too thin
and left a little bit of us in everyplace we’ve been.

As good as some parts might have been, others cut a path
that proves to be a cruel one, tragic in its wrath.
Smallpox infected blankets, Ebola, Plague and SARS
are gifts we brought along with us in ships and planes and cars.

So now we hunker down alone to choose “I” over “we.”
It’s hard to fight an enemy that we cannot see.
As it reaches out to hold us in each tiny arm,
this minuscule lovely one has such potential harm.

We’ve seen its regal portrait, heard its misleading name,
but the victory crown it offers proves to be a lethal game.
So if you yearn to go roving to relieve the daily grind,
Please, friend, for the present, just go traveling in your mind.

Five Little Words

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Today’s post is dedicated to all of you who labor every day to post your prompts and to read our responses. You and your predecessors have been my motivation for seven years now, every day, and I have probably rarely thanked you, so for Ragtag Daily Prompt, Fandango, Your Daily Word, Word of the day and The Daily Spur, this one is for you. And Ragtag, your prompt today wasn’t meant to be taken personally, right?

Prompt words today are windbag, (Hope this one isn’t personal,) begrudge, futile, inspire and ease.

Five Little Words

Lest you think I’m a windbag and lest you begrudge
my words meant for chuckles, to inspire or nudge
for social reform and for giving the boot
to public servants who pillage and loot
our public coffers and fill up their pockets
with money or spend it on guns, walls and rockets.

Better the money be spent on our own
in stead of a POTUS who sits on his throne
dreaming of golf games and bragging of pussies,
berating mask-wearers as alarmists and wussies.
OK see how I’m off on a whim or a breeze,
raving again with remarkable ease?

I can’t seem to stop, even though I’m retired.
I simply can’t shut off the words when inspired.
So long as the world is so stupid and brutal,
efforts to stifle my words would be futile.
Just five daily words will inspire the rest.
I write all the others at their behest.

On My Way Home

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It isn’t very far from my studio in the garden to my bedroom door—just about 6 feet of sidewalk, then a twelve foot steep ramp that used to be just the wall beside the stairs down to the basement kiosk that I had added a hand railing to and maybe 8 feet across the patio, but laden with a lamp I’d just repaired, my computer, phone, two tubes of glue, an empty cup and my hank of keys, it was a bit of a balancing act. It was nearly 1 a.m. and pitch black outside and I had the studio to lock up and then the house to unlock. But when I saw the loaded  hibiscus bush in full bloom at night, probably due to the motion-detector light that the dogs had been setting off all night-, I knew I had to take a photo. So, everything in my arms went down on the sidewalk while I searched for my phone, with no success! So, about face, open the door and the search for the phone began. I finally had a flash of memory of putting the phone on the grinder when I had used the bathroom earlier. On my way out of the studio for the second time, however, I noticed Diego tracking something along the ground and noticed a beautiful small beetle. Then, two more on the screen. So, if I hadn’t decided to photograph the hibiscus and if I hadn’t left my phone in the studio, I never would have noticed these two varieties of beetle that I’ve never seen before. Finding the treasures in adversity. One of the great learnings of life. Here is what I saw on my short way home from the studio tonight:

(Click on photos to enlarge.

Pool Surprise!!! As Told by Morrie

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When Jesus and Eduardo brought Berta and Rosario (Jesus’s wife and daughter, Eduardo’s mother and sister) over for a pool party on their day off from making Judy’s house beautiful, although they are some of Judy’s favorite people, she kept her distance and kept her mask on, but I (Morrie) surprised them by joining right in the fun. Click on the photos in order to enlarge them and read the story of our mutual surprises, as told by me, Morrie!!

Be sure to click on the photos to enlarge them and see the full captions.

 

It was quite a surprise when you all showed up in my pool today!
All work and no play made Eduardo and Jesus dull boys,
but you two seemed to be having a lot of fun.
I added a new dimension to the game
and you were good playmates to the end.

 

For theLens Artist Challenge: Surprise