Category Archives: Uncategorized

Celestial Harvest

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Celestial Harvest

Whenever I see stars, I get these rambling sort of feelings.
My soul soars out to meet them, abandoning its peelings—
my body left behind as though left back in a cave
with stars studding the ceiling—the rest of me not brave
enough to chance the journey away from what I know,
but I release my spirit, hoping it will sow
flowers of remembrance whenever it deems
the time right to come back to plant them in my dreams.

 

HERE is another piece I wrote about star-gazing four years ago. I found it while looking back through past blogs to try to find a photo to illustrate this poem.

Prompt words today are stars, ramble, feeling, antre (cave) and sport. Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash. Used with permission.

Gerber Daisy: FOTD Aug 8, 2020

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The center of this flower looks like an intricately beaded brooch. Stunning.

For Cee’s FOTD

Chapala Diary, Page 1 (My Contribution to The Lonely Artist Covid Art Challenge.)

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Friday, Aug. 7, 2020

At the beginning of the Coronavirus Sequestering period, I issued a challenge for people to create an art piece that chronicled their experiences during this time. Go HERE to see that challenge.The idea was that we all started out with the same materials, then added what we wished to to come up with an art piece that chronicled these first stages of our isolation. Four friends accepted the challenge, but I’ve only received photos of their work from two. I’m going to be blogging their photos over the next two days, and if anyone else has photos to submit, please do so now.  Below are the photos of my completed project. See if you can find the pieces in it that are some of the materials given to each artist.

(Please click on the first photo to enlarge it and read the story of my Covid Vacation. Clicking on the next arrow enlarges the next photo and gives more of the story.)

Today is the first day of big bright yellow butterfly season. I sat in my studio and tried to get shots of them darting around the tabachine bush, but they were too fast for my camera lens. Here’s one that didn’t get away, but a distant shot.
Morrie and Diego pulled their usual plaintive sit-in at the door of the studio. This time, I gave them each a dog biscuit, but didn’t let them in.
Another dog biscuit? No. Sorry, fellas.
I mended my Covid-19 art piece for the third time.
This is a depiction of Diego stealing one of the three and a half dozen freshly-baked cookies he managed to steal off the kitchen counter when I was distracted by the plumber. Over his head buzzes a bee–one of the colony of thousands that it took us weeks to remove and relocate from the lot next door so we could clear it. More to be heard about these bees and Diego a bit later.
The whole Covid scare and the resultant social isolation that lead to my creation of this memorial box just happened to coincide with rainbird season–that month-long infestation of cicacas that announces the coming of the rainy season. During this time, the air is filled with their loud choruses of clackings and whirrings.
The rest of the box is a collage of alone-time activities–music,
the constant news reports of possible cures, both real and bogus. As usual, Kukla jumping up on the newest addition to the box.
Time passing slowly for some, more quickly for me when I kept busy. The pages weighted down by the pastry are some miniature mock-ups of my next children’s book, finished during this period except for the final adjustments to the illustraions.
A bit of imbibing,
The good, the bad and the ugly. All part of life’s crazy quilt.

My photography session over,  we’ve all moved from the studio to the gazebo. I’m in the hammock and Diego is rolling around and growling on the grass. I’ve never been able to figure out what prompts this. Is it pure kidlike glee or a bee sting? If it is bee stings, he’s a slow learner because he’s been rolling in the grass and growling for years and yet he still tries to catch bees in his mouth every time they venture near, which is the second reason for the bees depicted in the Covid-19 memorial Retablo. Now it just needs a wooden frame and it is complete.

Tomorrow, a depiction of another piece from my Covid Challenge–that of my friend Candace’s piece. If anyone else accepted the challenge and has photos to send me, hurry hurry.  Go HERE to see Candace’s answer to the challenge and HERE to see Jean Mulleneaux’s contribution.

The Lowest of the Highest by Default

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The Lowest of the Highest by Default

He was a homeless jester, a contentious feisty gent.
He shed a sense of triumph everywhere he went.
No amount of scorn and no superior air
ever contradicted his shabby debonair.
In a stovepipe hat, overalls and a tux jacket,
he played his mobile xylophone, making such a racket
that folks rushed out to pay him just so he would quit.
He felt no sense of shame in this, for he took pride in it.

He had the perfect racket. He felt he counted coup—
raking in the dough for what he didn’t do.
He had a fridge crate penthouse on a tower labeled Trump.
(Also a little pied á terre across town at the dump.)
Highest of the highest and lowest of the low—
his main address  the finest though he had so little dough.
The key up to the rooftop he had scored out of a pocket
right after the janitor had gone up there to lock it.

He snitched a maintenance uniform and in the helter-skelter
of a tenant’s moving day, filched his plywood shelter.
It made a perfect domicile obscured in a back corner.
As a joke, on its front cornice, he wrote, “Residence of Horner.”*
But he dragged it to the rooftop’s front when the day was done
and had a view of city lights that was second to none.
You may think that he’s a shyster and the building’s lowest resident,
but only since the former lowest tenant became president!

 

*Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Xmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, “What a good boy am I!”

Words for the day are homeless, contentious, jester, amount and triumph. Image by Donald Teel on Unsplash, used with permission.

A Little Bird Told Me: Thursday 13

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A Little Bird Told Me

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For the Thursday Challenge we are asked to make a list of thirteen things, our choice. I am listing thirteen questions I would like readers of my blog to answer. You can either do it on your own blog with a link to my blog or in comments on my blog. Since turn about is fair play, I’ve answered them myself.

1 What could you do with an artichoke rather than eating it?  I would dry it and put it in a flower arrangement.

2 What is the strangest name you have ever heard and what is your association with it? Illgemara Lillcox. It was the name on a fake i.d. I borrowed in college. 

3 What is the most embarrassing thing your parents ever did? We took a two week car trip when I was 12. Actually, about everything they did at that age embarrassed me, but what bothered me the most was that they sat in the front seat and held hands for most of the trip. Also, my dad knew he embarrassed me so he made it worse by making funny faces and walking oddly when we would walk down the street in towns or cities. I would walk as far ahead of them as I could.

4 What was your most unusual pet? A raccoon. And a mole.

5 What is your most favorite holiday and why? I like Christmas because I love having the Christmas tree up for three weeks to a month. I like the lights and when I have the energy, the nacimiento displays that I put up.

6 What is your favorite footwear and why? My Croc sandals because they are so comfortable and so easy to get in and out of.

7 What is your most irritating habit? It really irritates people that I have no irritating habits.

8 If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? Where I live, in San Juan Cosala on Lake Chapala in Mexico. If that is cheating, I’d like to live in Florence, Italy for one month. Dolly can come visit!

9 What is the most unusual place you have ever visited? Lalibela, Ethiopia. It was so remote and beautiful and I was the only American living there. It was home to 13 underground churches carved out of the solid stone of the mountain. An amazing place.

10 How did you meet your spouse or significant other? At a poetry reading. I heard him read and knew he was the man I was supposed to marry but I didn’t meet him at that reading. A few months later I was giving a reading where he was in the audience and he came right up to me afterwards. We were married a year later.

11 Who do you most admire? Michele Obama.

12 If your pet could name you, what name would they give you and why?  Patsy. For obvious reasons.

13 What is the most romantic thing that ever happened to you? I was in a very third world country and was going to meet my lover but there was no way to communicate with him to tell him when I was coming, yet when I got off the plane, he was waiting for me with an armload of flowers. I asked him how he knew I was coming and he just smiled and said he just had a hunch. Later his best friend told me that they had met the plane with flowers every day for a week. That night we went to dinner at a little hotel that had a small garden but there were no flowers in it. The hotel had given him permission to pick flowers for me and over that week, they had picked every one!

 

In a world that had gotten so grim, this made me laugh. I’ve seen it before, and it made me laugh before, so maybe it’ll make you laugh now.

This is hilarious, so I had to reblog it…

 

 

via CAPITALISM AROUND THE WORLD — Serendipity Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Heron: A Photo a Day Challenge, Aug 2

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For A Photo a Day Challenge: Birds

Still Life with Fruit and Flowers: FOTD Aug 5, 2020

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For One Word Sunday Challenge: Fruit and for Cee’s FOTD

Peristeronic Poesy

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Peristeronic Poesy

Forgive if I go histrionic
over things peristeronic.
I can’t control the things I do
when I hear them bill and coo.
Every day, my morning tonic
is when pigeons do their sonic
gurglings like water running.
while they do their daily sunning.
How I love these sunrise smidgens
of the morning sounds of  pigeons!!

For the Weekend Writing Prompt: Peristeronic.

Trump Wishes Ghislaine Maxwell Well. Again???

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In an interview with Axios political reporter Jonathan Swan that aired on HBO Monday night, President Donald Trump once again spoke about Ghislaine Maxwell, who was recently arrested for alleged child sex trafficking in connection with deceased financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Two weeks ago, Trump, who knew Epstein and Maxwell socially, caused an uproar when he wished Maxwell well. On Monday, he doubled down on the well-wishes for Maxwell, but first, Trump appeared to question the charges against her.

“Mr. President, Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested on allegations of child sex trafficking. Why would you wish such a person well…” Swan began before being cut off by Trump. “Well, first of all,” Trump said, “I don’t know that.”  “She has. She’s been arrested for that,” Swan responded. “You know that.”

Epstein was found dead in his cell last August in an apparent suicide amid suspicious circumstances that have caused many to question if he’d actually killed himself, or if he was murdered. Trump seemed to imply that his well-wishes for Maxwell are due to the suspicion surrounding Epstein’s death, and the fact that she now finds herself in a similar situation.

“Her friend, or boyfriend, was either killed or committed suicide in jail. She’s now in jail,” Trump said. “Yeah, I wish her well. I’d wish you well. I’d wish a lot of people well. Good luck. Let them prove somebody was guilty.” “Oh, so you’re saying you hope she doesn’t die in jail?” Swan asked. “Is that what you mean by ‘wish her well?’” “Her boyfriend died in jail, and people are still trying to figure out, how did it happen? Was it suicide? Was he killed? And I do wish her well. I’m not looking for anything bad for her. I’m not looking bad for anybody. And they took that and they made it such…” “I mean, she’s a child sex—alleged child sex trafficker,” Swan interjected. “…such a big deal,” Trump continued. “But all it is, is her boyfriend died. He died in jail. Was he killed? Was it suicide? I do. I wish her well.”

Check out Axios on HBO at hbo.com/axios.

Look HERE for every photograph of Trump and Maxwell together.