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Shell Fossil
For Debbie’s Ond Word Sunday’s Lines Prompt
Between the Lines for One Word Sunday
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Last Straw for SOCS, May 17, 2025
Last Straw
I’d make conversation but my upper plate
seems to be grinding my lower of late.
I fear there’s a fissure that’s preventing their matching
and somehow my back teeth just seem to be catching
and locking which creates a problem in chewing,
so eating’s another thing I won’t be doing.
I’m bungling everything done by my jaws.
At talking and eating I’m taking a pause.
For now I’ll just listen and watch you eat pie.
If you give me a straw, I’ll simply get by
by sipping my tea and nodding my head
in avid agreement with everything said.
I could have stayed home and stared at the wall,
but I couldn’t face not seeing y’all,
so I will just sit here and soak in the news,
forsaking my own chance to thrill and amuse.
Until I’ve seen my dentist, you’ll just have to wait
for the juicy story I was going to relate!
The SOCS prompt this week is “straw.”
Does the U.S. Need to Establish a Magna Carta????
From Heather Cox Richardson via Letters from an American
Today the story broke that a long-neglected document held by Harvard University Law School, believed to be a cheap copy of the Magna Carta, is in fact the real document. More than 700 years ago, the Magna Carta, or Great Charter, established the concept that kings must answer to the law. (If you wonder what relevance this has to the America of today, please be sure to read the last two paragraphs, printed in bold at the end of this post)
King John of England and a group of rebel barons agreed to the terms of the document on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede, a meadow a little less than an hour from London near the River Thames. After the king had raised taxes, barons rebelled, insisting that he was violating established custom. There were rumors of a plot to murder the king, and the barons armed themselves.
Those two armed camps met at Runnymede, where negotiators for the king and the barons hammered out a document with 63 clauses, mostly relating to feudal customs and the way the justice system would operate. But the document also began to articulate the principles central to modern democracies. The Magna Carta established the writ of habeas corpus—a prohibition on unlawful imprisonment—and the concept of the right to trial by jury.
Famously, it put into writing that: “No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.” It also provided that “To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”
The Magna Carta placed limits on the king’s ability to tax his subjects and established the law as an authority apart from the king. Anticipating the idea of checks and balances, it set up a council of barons to make sure the king obeyed the charter. If he did not, they could seize his lands and castles until he made amends.
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The original charter did not last. King John convinced the pope to declare the document illegal because it circumscribed the power of the monarch, and in reaction, barons fought for the rights outlined in the Magna Carta. After the death of King John in 1216, the Magna Carta was confirmed and reissued, becoming an accepted part of the understanding of British rights. In 1297, and then again in 1300, King Edward I reissued the Magna Carta and confirmed that it was part of England’s law. The copy in Harvard’s possession is from 1300. Harvard bought the document after World War II for $27.50, about $500 today. It is one of seven original copies of the 1300 Magna Carta, and in the United States of America in 2025, it is priceless. In the early 1600s, King James I and King Charles I both reasserted the power of the king. Jurist Sir Edward Coke used the Magna Carta to insist that longstanding English customs guaranteed liberties to British subjects and required the king to comply with the law. There were limits to a king’s power to tax his subjects and his power to punish them. This legal struggle was unfolding just as British subjects were colonizing the North American continent, and the charters of the new colonies echoed Coke’s arguments. The 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, for example, established that colonists and, crucially, the children they might have in the colony, “shall have and enjoy all liberties and Immunities of free and naturall Subiects.” As constitutional scholar Mary S. Bilder notes, lawyers and political figures put into the documents of the early British settlement of North America the belief that liberties were the birthright of English subjects. That belief informed colonists’ opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act, which imposed a new tax to which they had not given their consent and called for those who violated the law to be tried not by a jury of their peers but rather in admiralty courts. The Massachusetts Assembly declared the Stamp Act to be “against the Magna Carta and the natural rights of Englishmen, and therefore, according to Lord Coke, null and void.” British politician William Pitt told Parliament: “The Americans are the sons not the bastards of England.” In September 1774, as tensions between the king and the colonists intensified, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and wrote a declaration of rights and grievances, claiming the liberties guaranteed by “the principles of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts.” Showing the unity of the colonies, the Congress published an image of 12 arms holding a column crowned by a liberty cap and resting on the words “Magna Carta.” In 1776 the colonists threw off the monarchy to establish a government based on the idea that all people must answer to the law. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.” In 1776 the new states were writing their own constitutions that defended their liberties, including their protection from loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law. That concept went directly into the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The Fifth Amendment provided that no “person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and in 1868 the Fourteenth Amendment applied that principle to the states as well as the federal government, saying: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Harvard document is not the only Magna Carta in the U.S. In 2007, philanthropist David Rubenstein bought a 1297 copy of the Magna Carta from former presidential candidate Ross Perot. It was the only copy in the U.S., and Perot had permitted the National Archives to display it. Rubenstein bought the document for $21.3 million, hoping to keep it in the U.S. “to ensure that Americans could continue to see it, and to thereby be continuously reminded of its importance to our country.” He promptly lent it to the National Archives for public display, “as modest repayment of my debt to this country for my good fortune in being an American.” And yet the fundamental principles on which the government of the United States is based are under attack. In an interview that aired on Sunday, May 4, President Donald J. Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he “didn’t know” if persons in the United States had a right to due process. When Welker reminded him that the right to due process is written into the Fifth Amendment, he said: “I don’t know. It seems—it might say that, but if you’re talking about that, then we’d have to have a million or two million or three million trials.” Musician Bruce Springsteen has no doubts about those rights, embedded as they are in the country’s DNA. At a concert in Manchester, England, yesterday, he warned: “In America, the richest men… [are]… abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.” He criticized lawmakers who have “no…idea of what it means to be deeply American.” And yet, Springsteen told the crowd: “The America that I’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people, so we will survive this moment.” — Notes: https://apnews.com/article/harvard-magna-carta-rare-copy-97754aee08aaab65a36e49bedebd5992 https://www.parliament.uk/magnacarta/ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-32828251 https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/winter/magna-carta.html https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass03.asp Mary Sarah Bilder, Charter Constitutionalism: The Myth of Edward Coke and the Virginia Charter,” North Carolina Law Review 94 (June 2016): 1545–1592, at https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/magna-carta/legacy.html https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/magna_carta https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/us/politics/trump-meet-the-press-interview-due-process.html https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/magna-carta-muse-and-mentor/magna-carta-and-the-us-constitution.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/world/europe/harvard-magna-carta-original.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/03/31/the-man-who-owns-a-magna-carta/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/15/entertainment/bruce-springsteen-trump-criticism-scli-intl
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For Fibbing Friday, May 16, 2025
For Fibbing Friday, the task at hand is:
1. What is pilau rice? One grain of your rice
2. What are eggs benedict? Why ask him? I can tell you that they are items laid by chickens to produce more chickens or omelettes.
3. What is a souffle? A slight altercation
4. What is baked Alaska? Summer in Juneau
5. What is crème brulee? Coffee served with dairy and a flower necklace.
6. What is a victoria sponge? An English birth control device
7. What is a raspberry roulade? Something that helps one set up regulations for Driscoll’s.
8. What is cannoli ? A small canister
9. What is kamaboko? A security/surveillance system in a library
10. What are sweetbreads? Humans genetically engineered to have kind dispositions.
“Tell Me A Story” (New Prompt. Please Participate!!)
I drove up the hill to my house following this pickup. I was so tempted to follow it to its destination to ask what its story was. Now I’m sorry I didn’t. Can you furnish a story for me? HERE is the pingback to include with your post to make sure we all see it..
Every Wednesday, I will publish a photo. Please publish a poem or short story inspired by the photo and link to this blog in the comments.
I loved this song that came out the year I turned 6 years old. Seems to still be having an effect.
Matin
Matin
What kind of a world
does a bird feel itself a part of
that prods it to such a joyous song
in celebration of her beauties?
Sun barely risen,
air crisp and cool,
not a breath of air stirs the
vibrant golden hibiscus
to cause the fall
of one palm-sized petal
onto the dew-damp grass below.
No clouds obscure
one puff of steam
rising from the distant volcano
that peeks over the
hills above the lake––
not one ripple on its calm surface.
I lie on my bed,
apart from this still morning,
making lists––
only a glimpse
of that bird’s world
on view through my window’s parted curtain,
as I listen to this constant oration
of its joy over being born
into this world.
I somehow in the editing erased the prompt for this poem and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. If it strikes a chord with you and you think you know of a prompt it might have been written for, please put a link in comments. I am definitely losing it, folks!!!
Divine Providence, for dVerse Poets
Image by Alireza Dolati
Divine Providence
The wings of destiny are stilled, waiting for our play.
Astonished at our slowness, confused at the delay.
Disappointment in mankind by now’s a usual thing.
What new human horror will the future bring?
We’ve poisoned oceans, sullied air and burdened earth with junk.
Enough to put Ma Nature in a perpetual funk.
She balks and sends out warriors to try to curb our lusts,
but still mankind continues to turn shouldn’ts into musts.
She now sees she was misguided in creating human fools,
with all of their excesses flaunting all her rules.
Soon she’ll find another way to try to clear her slate of them
as destiny stands waiting to see what is the fate of them.
For dVerse Poets, we were to choose a Spanish term to use for the subject of a poem. In Spanish, Divina Providencia means destiny with choices and spiritual interventions. My poem is about how mankind has unfortunately chosen to respond to that divine providence.
“The Passenger,” for Word of the Day, May 13, 2025
The Passenger
I see her back her car outside.
She never offers me a ride.
I go the same way she is going,
but she passes, still unknowing.
After ten long years, I stand
making no sign with head or hand.
My legs are tired. My back is bent.
My footsteps follow where she went.
It takes two minutes to go by car.
I take an hour to go that far.
If she knew, perhaps she’d say,
“Would you like a ride today?”
She would have rolled her window down
to offer me a ride to town.
I’d dust my clothes and step inside,
grateful, at long last, for the ride.
And at the bottom of the hill,
as though, perhaps, she’d had her fill,
She’d say, “I’m turning left from here.”
And I’d assemble all my gear,
and give my thank-you, even though
I need to go where she will go.
Charity goes just so far,
I think, as I exit the car.
I live about two-thirds of the way up a very tall mountain in Mexico, and often as I drive down to the main road, I give a ride to whomever I encounter walking down the cobblestones—especially the women, most of whom work as housekeepers in the houses in my fraccionamiento. But now and then when I am in a hurry or when I see a man suspicious-looking or dusted by his labors, I drive on by. Then I wonder what he is thinking as I guiltily observe him in the rear vision mirror.
The Word of The Day Challenge today is passenger. Forgottenman found this poem I published long ago and suggested I used it for this prompt. He knows I am exhausted. Sweet, sweet man. Here it is.
Davy Jones Locker, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle #706
Davy Jones Locker: Davy Jones’ Locker is a metaphor for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors and shipwrecks. It is used as a euphemism for drowning. Silver coins spilling from a pirate chest seem to be doing these victims of shipwreck at sea no good at all. I collected all of the shells and sand used in this piece from various beaches in Mexico. Even the plastic cup, once claimed by the sea, washed ashore covered in coral.
(Although I created the piece above for an exhibition 5 years ago,
the poem below is new, created for this prompt:)
Davy Jones Locker
Storytellers tell the tales of underwater realms
where sunken ships lie buried with sand up to their helms.
They lie countless fathoms beneath the emerald foam
of oceans only beasts and serpents of the sea call home.
There saints of the underworld have made more novel choices
other than announcing their presence through their voices.
Silver coins rolled to the beach, bones smoothed by ocean tides,
give hints of those deep regions where Davy Jones resides.
His ship now razed by currents that drew it to its death,
the ocean mist still carries vestiges of his breath.
He has become that element that once he sought to best––
a part of that great ocean that was his lifelong quest.
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle # 706 the prompt words are: underworld realm beasts raze maps storytellers saints emeralds hood voices serpent mist
Immigration, Misspelled Inspiration and Soap Dispensers for SOCS, May 10, 2025
Immigration, Misspelled Inspiration and Soap Dispensers
“Southern Icons of the 20th Century” by Joni Mabe
“Travelers” By Larry Walker
When I saw that the SOCS prompt for today was “Soap,” I typed “Soap” into the search bar of my blog and found this post from 11 years ago. I couldn’t resist reblogging it:
Yesterday, I arose at 3 a.m. (after just 3 hours of sleep) to be driven by taxi to the Guadalajara airport to catch a plane to Dallas/Ft. Worth where I would catch a connecting flight on to St. Louis, MO. After visiting Mexican immigration at one end of the airport and pulling two heavy bags the length of the airport to wait in the American Airlines line for an hour, I discovered that bad weather in Dallas had caused them to cancel all flights, and would it be convenient for me to come back tomorrow? No, coming back tomorrow was not convenient! Not only was a friend waiting for me in St. Louis, but the additional two taxi fares would amount to my taxis costing more than my airline flight. American was able to schedule me onto a later Delta flight and so it is that at the hour when I should have arrived in St. Louis, I am instead in the Atlanta airport with three hours left before my flight leaves, sitting next to a man who snuffles like a pig every 30 seconds, held prisoner by the electric power strip providing juice to the loyal MacBook Air that is making it possible for me to tell you today’s story.
If you’ve ever gone through your customs and immigration check in Atlanta, you probably already know what I have discovered: that the Atlanta airport has the longest walk and most circuitous queue lines of any airport so far experienced, after which you arrive at an automatic passport check where you scan your own passport, pose for the most unflattering picture possible, then go through yet another maze that is nothing short of an endurance check/ordeal after which you wait in line forever along with 500 other travelers to again be sorted into lines by an immigration employee on the job for the first day (she told me so) who for some reason has a grudge against your line to the point that the other two lines are empty before she sees fit to select people from the pariah line to again get in line to see one of the 4 humans assigned to double check our worthiness to enter the U.S., walk for another 15 minutes to retrieve our luggage and then wait in yet another line for customs.
By the time I actually made it through customs and began my loooooooong trek to where I could catch a train to another concourse, I was as perspiration-soaked as if I had been through an hour-long workout at the gym. You will have guessed right if you are thinking that once I arrived on “B” concourse, I discovered that my gate was the last one on the concourse. Of course it was! There is, however, a fact that mitigates all of the frustration previously endured, for the corridors of the Atlanta airport leading from the plane to Immigration are lined with some of the best and most varied art I’ve ever seen in any airport exhibition and most art museums. Collage, wall sculpture and paintings made me wish the automatic walkways would stall to give me time enough to actually look at the art—with the result that I got off the moving walkway to walk back to do just that. With no hands free to record any of the names of artists, I’ll just have to leave it to Google or airport authorities to give you more specific information, but the art was whimsical, colorful, original, thought-provoking and sometimes naïf. (For certain of those outsider art pieces giving exhaustive social commentary, do not judge the artistic merit by the spelling.)
A $13 pulled-pork plate assuaged my appetite as at that time it had been 13 hours since I arose to drive to the airport and begin my long day’s journey. But it was a trip to the ladies room that assured me that I was in fact back in the good old U.S.A. Spotless cleanliness, two full toilet paper rolls, paper seat covers, a hook to hang my purse, enough room to store my carry-on rolling bag without having to squeeze myself into a corner to do so, a self-flushing toilet that actually flushed and the piéce de résistance—A SHELF TO PUT MY DRINK ON!!!! Upon my easy exit from the roomy stall, I enjoyed an automatic foam soap dispenser installed in the sink next to the warm water faucet, then found paper towels and trash can within easy reach. This of course made me remember (with no nostalgia) the new movie theater in Ajijic, Mexico—my home town for the past 13 years—where only one sink of the eight present actually works and is, of course, the one furthest away from the only towel dispenser. Ah, Atlanta airport. I forgive thee for all other sins.
The RDP prompt is “Soap.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 