Bedroom glass doors reflected in hot tub
“Doors” for Lens Artists Challenge #361, Aug 21, 2025
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“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.)
“Life” for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 719, Aug 17, 2025
Prompt words for The Sunday Whirl are: spiral craft signal draft shallow rule dense send shell sham slapping laugh
Nate White on Donald Trump
Someone asked “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”
Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response: Taken from his X post at https://x.com/Ipitythepoorfo1/status/1317856496647049217
“A few things spring to mind.Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.
For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.
Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.
And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.
Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.
He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.
He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.
That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.
God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.
He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.
And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:
‘My God… what… have… I… created?
If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”
With thanks to Rhonda Schrader, Ray DiFazio and Michael Lussier, who all republished this piece before it finally made its way to me.
Can’t believe it, but…
TMy dogs actually love used coffee grounds! How do I know this? Because I just had Pasiano replant a large anthurium plant in a new flower pot and later, when I was cleaning up the kitchen, I noticed the coffee grounds in the basket of the coffee maker. Remembering that they were good for plants, I went out and scattered them over the dirt of the newly planted anthuriums and Coco immediately ran over and started LICKING THE DIRT! He was frenzied in his antics, so I scattered the rest of the grounds in his dish and not only Coco but also Zoe competed in licking them up. Already hyper, I wonder what this will do to them? Who would have guessed. Now need to go Google it. Do all dogs love coffee grounds?
Months ago, Chris and Barb brought me this gorgeous anthurium in a Talavera vase. Now twice as big, It is the plant I transferred to the bigger pot on the terrace. Hope anthuriums like coffee as much as my dogs do.
Oh No! I should have Googled this earlier. This is what I just read!!!
While some dogs might show interest in coffee grounds due to their smell or curiosity, coffee grounds can be harmful and even toxic to dogs. Dogs are more sensitive to caffeine than humans, and ingestion can lead to caffeine poisoning, causing symptoms like hyperactivity, vomiting, and in severe cases, seizures. It’s best to keep coffee grounds out of reach of dogs and to discourage them from consuming them.
For Fibbing Friday, Aug 15, 2025
For Fibbing Friday, the task at hand this week is to anser these questions:
1. What is an ingot? A hole-in-one in golf.
2. What is a pekinese? What one gains with a new pair of eyeglasses.
3. What is gumbo? Those (formerly penny) balls of gum kids used to buy from a gumbo machine. (See illustration)
4. What is crème fraiche? Che Guevara’s order at the dairy.
5. What is a patisserie? A school in how to comfort your puppy for first-time dog owners
6. What is cock-a-leekie? An incontinent male chicken
7. What is a scotch egg? Breakfast for Richard Burton
8. What is a tuning fork? A singing lesson for the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
9. What is a leprechaun? An Arab ruler with leprosy
10. What is a running flush? A broken toilet
Short Adventure for dVerse Poets, Aug 14, 2025
Short Adventure
dog
woman
all
alone
computer
window
rubber
bone
eye-lock
pleading
invitation
one
thrown
bone
brings
jubilation
further
begging
is
for
naught
a
second
later
fun
forgot
For dVerse Poets Open Link Night
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 