Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thursday Doors, May 11, 2017

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My friends came to visit me a year or two ago and ended up buying a house and moving here!  They are having my artist friend Jesus Lopez Vega paint murals of the sun and moon on the front of their house as well as various precolumbian images on the beam across the entire front of the carport (not yet completed) so I thought I’d show you their beautiful front door plus the first two improvements.  Jesus is the one who did all the murals at my house as well as many of the paintings. He and his family are coming tomorrow for pizza and swimming at my house.  They are a fun and unruly bunch.  I’ll take photos and share them with you.

Becky and Lach’s Front Door

(Click on any photo to enlarge all)

 

It is clear that Becky is happy with the sun and moon.  She’s now waiting for Jesus to adorn that beam above her head on the front gate. 

 

For Hugh’s Thursday Doors.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Isolated Subjects

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This single post sticking up far from the shore of Lake Chapala is the epitomy of isolation, but as I zoomed in on it, I learned more of its story.

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It is in fact a handy perch for this solitary night heron.

Cee’s prompt was “Isolated Subjects.”

Sad News for the Bearded Lady

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Sad News for the Bearded Lady

That your girlish form is rather cute
is not a fact we would dispute;
and though you’re held in good repute,
yet every male’s lack of  pursuit
from callow youth to crusty coot
is a subject that is moot.
The men would be more resolute—
more determined to press their suit—
if only you were less hirsute!

The prompt today was “pursue.”

Ben Dykstra’s Bottom

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Every region has its own vernacular and sometimes we are not aware of how familiar terms of our childhood might be to others.  My dad was a farmer/rancher in South Dakota  where a low-lying field or land near a river was called a “bottom.”  My dad loved a good joke, but not so much when it was on him; thus, while we laughed until we were ill, he never cracked a smile as he read the following news in The Murdo Coyote, our local small-town newspaper: “The men are busy this week moving dirt on Ben Dykstra’s bottom.”  

One local wit was heard to observe that his bottom must be a sizeable one to afford that amount of activity for that length of time.

 

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Another small town diversion, other than the local newspaper, was the church bulletin. Typed and mimeographed by a volunteer before the age of the computer, one of the diversions of church could be to search for snafus such as those given below.  Thanks to sister Patti for sending these.  I’d read them long ago, but I couldn’t have laughed as long and hard at them as I did today.  My stomach literally hurts, but I really needed the laugh so wanted to share them: 

Church Ladies With Typewriters

They’re Back! Those wonderful Church Bulletins! Thank God for the church ladies with typewriters. These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced at church services:   
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The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals.
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Scouts are saving aluminium cans, bottles and other items to be recycled Proceeds will be used to cripple children. 
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The sermon this morning: ‘Jesus Walks on the Water.’The sermon tonight:‘Searching for Jesus.’
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Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Bring your husbands.
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Don’t let worry kill you off – let the Church help. 
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Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
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For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
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Next Thursday there will be try-outs for the choir. They need all the help they can get.
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Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days. 
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A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
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At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be ‘What Is Hell?’ Come early and listen to our choir practice.
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Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
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Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
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The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility. 
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Pot-luck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – prayer and medication to follow.
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The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon. 
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This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin. 
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The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the Congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
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Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM . Please use the back door. 
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The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
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Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance. 
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And this one just about sums them all up

The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new campaign slogan last Sunday:
‘I Upped My Pledge – Up Yours.’

Sweet Bloomings

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For Cee’s Flower of the Day Prompt.

Sentinels: Cee’s B&W Challenge, “S”

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On this day, wherever we went, there seemed to be animals on guard, seemingly as sentinels. In all probabiity they all just needed a comfortable place to perch. The first photo is of the entrance to a bank in Chapala.
Click on first photo to enlarge all, please.

Cee’s B&W Challenge: The letter “S.”

“Unexposed”

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It is the difference between that present handed to you by a person who says, “It’s only a tie,” and a package under the tree squeezed and prodded at—perhaps a corner loosened or a hole poked in through supposed accidental handling, pondered like a good detective show. Who wants these mysteries revealed before their time? What value in the present whose contents you already know for sure?

The magic of Christmas for some is that faith that the girl, untouched by human lover, gave birth—and it is that sort of faith that “saved” the world. If we knew the whole truth of that story would all it prompted fall into the hole covered all these years by mystery? The whole world seems to be standing more on what we don’t know than on what we absolutely know empirically—what we can prove.

Unexposed

And so I look at the picture of my young mother
in her cotton housedress and saddle shoes
holding her baby in front of her in her stroller,
whole contraption, child and carrier,
a foot or two above the ground,
and there is mystery in the reveal.

I do not hear what transpired to cause this pose––
whether my father caught her carrying me
from the porch to sidewalk and said,
“Here, Tootie, turn around,” and snapped the picture,
or whether my older sister planned the pose.
Perhaps some movie star was snapped in a similar scene
and my mother and sister, like two conspiring fans,
planned the shot to steal the glamor formerly reserved
for “Photoplay” or “Look” or “Life.”

There would be no reel-to-reel
in any normal person’s life for years.
No movie camera to tell me exactly what my mother and I were like
 before my memory took hold and even then,
what I remember of childhood is
more like reflections in a lake that color and change
depending on the clouds or rain,
distorting the light like moods.

My Aunt Peggy’s house,
always remembered as feeling like
the color chartreuse,
and I will never know why––
that smell of a friend’s house that became associated
with her memory more than any concrete proof of
the spinning film of a movie projector.

I do not know my mother’s voice at thirty.
I did not witness myself since birth
by either sound or sight.
There is a different mystery
to a past caught
in boxes of Kodacolor prints
curling and yellowing in a closet
than one documented like a science experiment
with every event taped and filmed.

Where does the mystery of you reside when you see yourself
so clearly, as others have seen you all along?
What does it leave for you to try to discover?
No tapes.
No film.
No Internet.
No Skype.
No YouTube.
No home movies.
All of our pasts were once wrapped up forever
with only our fingers poking in the edges.
Only our voices asking,
“What was it like the day when I was born?”
What do you remember about the day when. . . .?

(This is a rewrite of a poem I wrote three years ago.)

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/exposed/

Luddite

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Luddite (Within Reason)

Resurrect the Luddite gene!
Raise the axe! Kill the machine!
Its use is seldom credible
in products that are edible.

A bread machine for making bread?
Ban that idea from your head.
Bread manufactured should be banned.
The nobler loaf is shaped by hand.

Lasagna, too, it is a fact,
is better manually stacked.
Those frozen ones from Costco? Toss ‘em!
For no machine knows how to sauce ‘em!

Torillas handmade pat by pat?
You simply can’t improve on that.
But I admit I’m not that keen
on ones that come from a machine.

South of the border, arts abound
on almost every wall they’re found.
All over town, the artists stand
creating murals there by hand.

Art that’s produced digitally?
It will simply never be
as satisfactory to me
as this handmade artistry.

The stately dome, even and round,
in Mexico is often found.
With bricks, cement and lime and sand—
it’s true that they are made by hand!

I admit that a brick wall
is hardly any view at all.
The only worse thing in a town
is when you find one tumbled down!

But Mexico excels at walls.
Hand-stacked, a stone wall rarely falls.
And they are things of beauty, too,
and add, not detract, from the view.

I find that I can best assuage
my aches with a hands-on massage.
Our massage chair bought for beaucoup bucks?
Truthfully? It really sucks.

And yet, I know that many lean
in preference to the machine.
I must admit, though I am wary,
that certain ones are necessary.

Elevators beat the stairs.
Electric shavers best cut hairs.
(Those signs extolling Burma Shave
belong outside a caveman’s cave.)

And I admit the movie sector
clearly needs its film projector.
Doctors? X-rays. Dentists? Drills.
Pharmacists? Machine-made pills.

And I am sure I’d really balk
If I were forced to always walk,
so cars and trucks would make my list
of machines that should exist.

I could live if forced to brave
this world without my microwave,
but take my Wifi? Don’t you dare!!!
Some things are better sent by air!


I must admit, I had totally forgotten writing this poem, which is about 3 years old.  If you’ve been writing blogs for awhile, I heartily recommend that you go back and read some  from three years ago or older.  You will probably be surprised––like reading something someone else has written.  Or perhaps your memory is better than mine.  At any rate, hope you enjoyed this again if you’ve been following for that long and for the first time if you haven’t.

Art We Walk On: One Word Photo Challenge, Floor

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I love the found art in my world here in Mexico.  This lovely triptych was found on a vegetable vendor’s concrete floor next to the framers where I went to pick up some framed art work.  How many generations of feet were complicit in creating this lovely collage of colors?


https://jennifernicholewells.com/2017/05/02/this-weeks-challenges-april-30-may-6-owpc/

Letter “T” in B and W

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The prompt asks that we post black and white photos of subjects beginning with “s” or “t.”

“T” Is for Tillandsia.

Click any photo to enlarge them all:

Tilandsian loves to grow on electrical wires.  I was told its seed is carried in on the feet of birds that roost there. The first shot was taken through my car windshield to show scale.  I like the distortion.

 

https://ceenphotography.com/2017/05/04/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-letters-s-or-t/