Category Archives: Uncategorized

Favorite Places for SOCS. May 10, 2025

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Some Sacred Spaces

I asked women about their favorite places.  These Story Boxes are a reflection of what they told me.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my favorite before I sold it.  It was The Artist’s Studio.  These Boxes are all 11.5″ X 8″.

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The Beauty Shop

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The Souvenir Shop

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The Kitchen

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Center Stage

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The Parlor: A chest of memories substitutes for life: a wedding veil, old love letters, pictures and a solitary bottle of champagne furnish her Saturday night company.

For SOCS the prompt is, “My Favorite Place.”

“School Reunion” for Writers Workshop, May 9, 2025

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Class of 1965, Murdo, S.D. class reunion.

School Reunion

He’s an aging “Murdo Coyote” in his ancient football shirt––
remembering past  touchdowns while we’re dishing out the dirt.

Non-Trumper against Trumper, human rightist against bigot,
all the ways we’ve grown apart, gushing from the spigot.

When the debate gets heated, he brings about a shift,
repeating old glories until we get his drift

and switch our conversation way back to the past
to all those high school memories that thankfully still last

and that turn the party back to what it should have been:
turning old friends back to what they all were way back when.

For Writers Workshop, May 9, 2025

 

Name-Dropping Confession # 8

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From Bruce Bishop

I was trying to think of a famous person(s) who I’ve met to add to your blog post, but only three came to mind from when I was in my 20s. I was a waiter in Toronto and served the singer k.d. lang; author Margaret Atwood; and British actor Michael York.
When I was in my last year of university in Halifax, I was the Arts Faculty representative. I booked ‘Mandrake the Magician’ to give the students and faculty a show…The poor man was so elderly and frail at the time, his performance was less than magical, and quite underwhelming, to say the least. That was in 1975!
Judy’s Note:  Leon Mandrake, a real-life magician, had been performing for well over ten years before Lee Falk introduced the comic strip character. Thus, he is sometimes thought to have been the source for the origin of the strip. Leon Mandrake, like the fictional Mandrake, was also known for his top hat, pencil-line mustache, and scarlet-lined cape. Ironically, Leon Mandrake had changed his stage name to Mandrake to match the popular strip and then legally changed his surname from Giglio to Mandrake later. The resemblance between the comic-strip hero and the real-life magician was close enough to allow Leon to at least passively allow the illusion that the strip was based on his stage persona.[7] Leon Mandrake was accompanied by Narda, his first wife and stage assistant, named after a similar character, who appears in the strip. Velvet, his replacement assistant and eventual lifetime partner, would also later make appearances in the strip along with his real-life side-kick, Lothar

In and Out, May 5, 2025

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In and Out

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The Lapdog

Dogs that stand outside and seek admittance to within
overlook the worth of what they’ve seen and where they’ve been.
Those of us sealed fast inside yearn to see the world
that we have been deprived of as we lie securely curled
in the safety of our houses, away from chasing cars
and other fun activities kept from us by bars.
We would feel such ecstasy racing after squirrels,
other dogs and cats and lizards, skunks and boys and girls.
We seek to flee the rules that those street dogs seem to flout.
We would have such wild adventures if we only could get out!!

 

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The Street Dog

Lucky little dogs with collars sit there looking out
as though they do not know what life for street curs is about.
We’d love to have their pampering and their daily feeding.
What they seek escape from is exactly what we’re needing!

 

Seeing Santiago’s new pup longing to get outside and my dogs yearning to get in put me in mind of these poems I wrote years ago so I had to add this last photo on to the poem and repost it.

Name-Dropping Confessions #4

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Here are the stories people told me about their unusual meetings with famous people:

Ana Daksina

18m ago The Poet’s Public Record

I pissed off Miss People’s Republic of China once, by out-modeling her at her own fashion show. The designer invited me to China for the new spring line. I knew better! 🤣

Marilyn Armstrong

27m ago SERENDIPITY – SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH – teepee12.com

When I was 14 I was in the hospital (Columbia Presbyterian) in Manhattan. Eleanor Roosevelt was in there too — for the last time because she died a few weeks later. I met her in the elevator, each in our wheelchairs. I was too shy to have a conversation except to tell her that I enormously admired her. I was just 14 and she was so important.

Second? Getting to actually know Alfred Eisenstadt and actually spending time with him. He greatly changed and hugely improve my concept of photography.

bushboy
Tiny Tim – He had a show in a large club in Sydney where my brother-in-law was on the committee.After the show I went backstage to meet him. I have his autograph on a beer coaster somewhere in my boxes of treasures. Shaking his hand was like a wet fish.

He put on a good show

Cloudburst, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 705

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Cloudburst

Distant sirens justify our sloshing through the mud
to put the chains on tires that are filthy from the crud
of water mixed with father’s choice of topsoil for the garden
that crows have picked and worked at, so it couldn’t harden.
So when the rain comes, clattering the eaves troughs and the shutters,
sending muddy water swirling down the gutters,
there’s a short answer to the puzzle: that necessary bite
of the metal on the tires that will bring us through the night.
Raw courage and pure valor will guide us through the storm
back to our place of solace––safe and dry and warm.

For The Sunday Whirl 705 Wordle, the prompt words are: chain justify sloshing works clatters choice sirens distant crows puzzle short

More Name-Dropping Confessions #3

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The challenge was to tell us about an unusual meeting with a famous person—giving as many details as possible!
35m ago My Blog

Ooh — I didn’t think of Sir Edmund Hillary. My dad took our family to LA when I was about high school age to hear him talk about his ascent of Mt. Everest. After the talk, my dad took us on stage to meet Hillary. My dad, a pediatrician, asked him if they needed a pediatrician on their next ascent!

Several years later I was on a tour of the island of Hawaii. Our tour stopped at a the Rockefeller hotel for a buffet lunch. We arrived at the buffet line just as Happy Rockefeller was taking her plate to her table. She was very gracious and greeted everybody who was oohing and ahhing at her!

  1. VJ
    Well, I once encountered Will Smith in an airport – much shorter than I had thought. But the most exciting encounter happened a year or more ago. It was a Saturday, and hubby and I were relaxing when the phone rang. “I’m in the neighbourhood, can I drop by?” the caller asked. I yelled at my husband to quick get dressed. Loreena McKennet was dropping by. A huge fan, I almost fainted. She’d heard about our work with Ukrainians fleeing war and wondered how she could help. Our relationship continues.

    1. ghostmmnc
      Natalie Maines, singer with the Dixie Chicks (now just Chicks).Her extended family, grandparents, father, uncles, etc. are old family friends of ours. My husband’s dad worked with her grandfather in his mechanic’s business. His mom was good friends with the grandmother. Their children and my husband and his siblings all knew each other. Natalie’s father and his brothers and father were/are in a band, the Maines Brothers Band locally. Natalie was just a little kid when my girls were little kids, so they played together. We’d visit and even spent the night at their house once. Later the grandmother moved closer to where we live now, instead of just out of the city limits, and she’d come over to visit here at our house, too. Sadly she’s passed a couple of years ago. Anyway, I’m sure Natalie doesn’t remember us, as she was just little when we knew her. But still, it was very good to know this wonderful extended family all these years.

Name-Dropping Confessions #2–By Ann O’Neal Garcia

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My challenge was to tell us about an unusual meeting with a famous person. This is my friend Ann O’neal Garcia’s description of her meeting with Ursula K. Le Guin:

I met Ursula leGuinn at a garden party maybe 7 yrs ago hosted by a mutual friend who was in Ursula’s book club. So we were introduced and my mutual friend said, “Ursula, Ann is a fantastic writer. Perhaps you could read something she’s written ” Ursula’s little tiny old face hardened. Her lips became a skinny red dash, her eyes shut tightly for a moment. She didn’t answer. She walked away and talked with a mutual acquaintance. I was hurt and embarrassed but I knew it was my friend who sounded the death knell. You don’t ask a famous writer who’s living out her last years on earth if she’d like to read another damned hopeful writer’s efforts! I felt how this must have felt. I probably would do the same thing if I were old and famous. I’m old now but not the other. But still .. I forgive her with all my heart.

And, more from Ann: I saw Roy Rogers and Dale Evans perform at Cheyenne frontier days in the 80’s? Not sure of date. It was just embarrassing. They sang a bit and mostly talked about Christianity. The sparse crowd slipped out, little by little.

Now…tell us yours!!! Once I’ve heard enough of yours to be satisfied, I’ll tell you mine.

Name-Dropping Confessions #1, May 4, 2025

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:The challenge was to tell us about an unusual meeting with a famous person—giving as many details as possible!  Here are a few answers given in the comments section of the blog I published the prompt in. If you have a longer story to tell, please put it in a blog and send me a link in comments. Once my appetite for stories has been partially sated, I’ll tell you mine. It just awaits telling.  Here are a few early answers to the prompt;

3h ago I Walk with My Dogs

I consider my entire life to be a bizarre circumstance. I met Sir Edmund Hillary at Arapaho Basin. We were in line for hamburgers being grilled over a woodfire halfway down the mountain.

……………….

3h ago serial monography: forgottenman’s ruminations

I’ve only met one – Duncan Renaldo! Who, you ask? Better known to my generation as The Cisco Kid. I even did a lil blog about my encounter. (Read about Forgottenman’s interesting encounter, with a picture, by clicking on the link below:

https://okcforgottenman.wordpress.com/2019/04/23/the-day-the-cisco-kid-rode-into-town/

………………

Tiffany Arp-Daleo has a very interesting twist at the end of her story:

I’ve met a few, but maybe the most bizarre is Greg Douglas, the guitarist for the Steve Miller Band. My ex was the sound guy for USO shows, he befriended Greg so we all hung out a bit, he was all set to play guitar at our wedding, but I called off the wedding the day before, never saw  Greg again!
Now, tell us yours!!!!

“Sing” for SOCS If Only I Could Play Guitar, May 3, 2025

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The bromeliads looked perfect in the Oriental lacquer cup in front of the guitar,

If Only I Could Play Guitar

At times when now I only hum,
I’d pull out my guitar and strum;
and by the time that I’d be done,
completing my last pluck and run,
perhaps whoever sees and hears
would be reduced to sobs and tears
by every perfect tone and note,
the sentiments that I emote,
and tender lyrics that they knew
because of course I wrote them, too.

But I would be so humble still,
(my hubris would be less than nil)
that when they laud me at the Grammys,
I’ll be home curled up in my jammies—
still unaffected by my fame,
astonished at my new acclaim!

And when Bob Dylan asks me if
I’d like to come and share a riff,
of course I will not turn him down.
In spite of all my new renown,
I’ll take the time to show him some
new ways I’ve found to pick and strum.

Mick Jagger would hang out with me
(and Leo Kottke, probably.)
We’d get together to sing and jam.
The whole world would know who I am!
My fame would spread to presidents
and queens and Knob Hill residents.
I’d be so busy that I fear
my writing would fall in arrears.
I might forget to feed my dog,
forsake my friends, neglect my blog.

So all things taken to account,
as negatives begin to mount,
and though I know that I’d go far
should I decide to play guitar,
I’ve penned a note unto myself,
“Put that guitar back on the shelf!!!”

For SOCS the prompt is “sing.”