Antique Brass
Color Your World: Antique Brass
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Apricot: Color Your World
Apricot
The above image is a cropped photo of a photo by Jim Arnieri 
To see other photos submitted for this challenge, look here: http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/03/color-your-world-apricot/
Wound Around
(That’s a tiny banana he is holding up, by the way. Really. You can see the banana skin.)
Wound Around
Howe’er you wrap it––short or long,
it’s hard to beat a good sarong.
Easy to pack, easy to wear,
It hardly takes a bit of care.
If it;s been wound up in a wad,
just throw it o’er the curtain rod
and all the wrinkles will hang out.
Then when you wish to gad about,
just wind it tight around your frame.
Front and back are just the same;
so do not look to find a label,
just wind as well as you are able.
Women? Tuck your boobies in.
Going braless is no sin.
Slim or chunky, all will fit.
Just wind yourself inside of it.
Whether it’s two times around,
or only one, you’re tightly bound.
Then if as garment you abhor it,
there are other uses for it.
If decorating is your passion,
a sarong is much in fashion.
Just press it smooth as you are able
to cover up a chair or table.
At other times, it comes in handy
for it works just fine and dandy
as picnic cloth or bath towel or
mosquito shield over your door.
Use it to cover up your bed
or wind a turban ’round your head.
And when your head gear you unravel,
it serves as nightgown when you travel.
Swimsuit cover up or blanket,
however you may wind or yank it,
you simply cannot e’re go wrong
when you invest in a sarong!
The Prompt: New Sensation––Ah, sweet youth. No matter whether you grew up sporting a fedora, penny loafers, poodle skirts, bell-bottoms, leg-warmers, skinny jeans, Madonna-inspired net shirts and rosaries, goth garb, a spikey mohawk, or even a wave that would put the Bieber to shame, you made a fashion statement, unique to you. Describe your favorite fashions from days of yore or current trends you think are stylin’.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/new-sensation/
Round Up (WordPress Challenge: Circles)
Pointed Giants–For Olga
Pointed Giants–For Olga
This is the art studio behind my house. As you can see, it is rather overgrown with vines and other plants, despite the huge palm tree I just had cut down because they said it would interfere with the solar water heater coils soon to be installed. So, that little scoop out of the roof overhang can be explained by the fact that I actually built my studio around the palm tree just to gain an extra foot of space without having to cut down a tree. The trunk once occupied that scooped-out place. If you look up by the electrical wires, though, you might notice a flash of red. What is it?
Here’s a closer view. Almost smothered out by the thunbergia and other vines is this stubborn giant. It was a small poinsettia houseplant given to me by a friend as a housewarming gift when I first moved to Mexico 14 years ago. After Christmas that year, I planted it in the ground near my wall. A few years later, I built the studio in front of it. By then it was obscured by a large banana tree than afterwards died. Hidden between my studio and the wall, it was long forgotten until this year, when I suddenly noticed a flash of red peeking over the roof of my studio.
It was my little poinsettia of 14 years ago, now grown into a very tall tree and surviving even though it has been practically choked out by thunbergia and the other hearty vine that grows over my wall.
See that wire running behind it? that is a wire that either carries telephone messages or electricity to my house and beyond. This pointed giant is in high company.
So that, Olga, is the story of how poinsettias are more that the symbol of Christmas that they are in El Norte. Here in Mexico, they are just another subtropical plant that in this climate often grows into a tree–in spite of our best efforts to overlook them!
A New Year Poem Attributed to Khushwant Singh but Really Written by Charles Gavan Duffy
Khushwant Singh died at the young age of 95 years. He was a prolific Indian writer, famed journalist, well known author and acknowledged tippler!! A man who lived his life to the fullest.
Update: When I discovered this poem, it said it had been written by him at the age of 92, but I received the below message regarding it from Patrick Schiermeyer:
This site claims Khushwant Singh wrote poem: “The horse and mule….” at age 92. He died in 2014 so the poem was supposedly written in 2010-2011 timeframe. This cannot be true. I have a copy of this poem I received in 1978 while working in Saudi Arabia. He may have written it earlier or it may be incorrectly attributed to him.
I did some further research, and this is the comment I sent back to Patrick:
Patrick, I spent about a half hour trying to run this poem down after reading your comment. I can’t find it associated with anyone else’s name but his so I’m wondering if he sent it as a New Year’s greeting and people took it that he had written it. I saw one other person post it without attribution and the most posts saying he had written it. I agree now that you have pointed it out that he could not have written it at least at the time he is said to have written it. If you know when he did write it, or who else did, I’d appreciate the correction. Thanks.
So, if anyone has further information about the author of the below piece and when it was written, I would appreciate knowing the full story of its origin.
On July 17, 2021, I received this message from Shristi: “It was written by Charles Gavan Duffy, an Irish poet. Mr Khushwant Singh Sir had just quoted it.”
I checked this out and he is right. Thanks, Shristi, for finally solving this mystery!!!! This poem has been quoted so often and attributed to Khushwant Singh. Thanks for setting the record right. Below is the poem:
The horse and the mule live for 30 years,
And know nothing of wines and beers;
The goat and sheep at 20 die,
And never get a taste of Scotch and rye.
The cow drinks water by the tonne
And at 18 is mostly done
Without the aid of gin and rum.
The cat in milk and water soaks,
And then in 12 short years it croaks.
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for others, then dies at 10.
All animals are strictly dry,
They sinless live and swiftly die.
But sinful, ginful, rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten,
And some of them, though very few,
Stay pickled till they’re 92!
My Life As A Dog
My Life As A Dog
The time in the upper right corner of my computer screen blinks over to 8:30 a.m. and the dogs are still quiet. But for some reason, whenever I think or type that thought first thing in the morning, Frida immediately whines at my door and then the other two stir in their cages. It happens as soon as I finish typing the sentence, reaffirming my belief that we are tied psychically. She has moved to just outside my door now, her heart broken by the fact that I have not immediately answered her demand to be let into my presence.
I roll out of bed, bemoaning the crick in my back that reminds me I have recently traveled–lugging the heavy cases down from the stoop outside my compound gate myself, knowing that if I let the taxi driver in that he will be rushed by the dogs who are half anxious to see me but even more anxious to escape the confines of their comfortable home to roam the wild mountain above in search of the scent messages left by generations of other dogs.
Now I open the door that leads from the hallway to my room and Frida rushes in to be let out to the lower garden from the sliding glass door in my bedroom. I try to return to my bed, but Morrie moans his distinctive complaint that zooms from high register to low in a message that conveys impatience, heartbreak and demand all in his own particular language.
Diego simply claws at the latch to his cage. I go out to the doggie domain––recently completed after two months of cement dust, sledgehammers, and concrete sponges chewed and distributed in tiny pieces over the entire yard and terrace by the dogs. Peace once again reigns except for the demands of the pups, spread evenly over the day from mealtime to mealtime.
“Let me out to pee,” they say. Then “Feed me.” Later it will be, “Throw my toy one hundred times in a row for me to fetch,” or “Might you forget and give us another dog biscuit even though you gave us one two minutes ago?” or, more loudly–in fact as loudly as three dog voices could possibly declare themselves––”Get those wayfarers out of our street!!! Wayfarers–be off. Get away now. Take your dogs with you!!!”
I carry on, knowing I can get away with a few more moments of blogging before it will be necessary to give them their morning kibble. Diego and Morrie tussle outside my open (but screened) sliding glass doors. Growling, leaping, rolling over in doggie sideways double somersaults, they could go on like this for hours. It irritates Frida, old girl like me, who, although she wants to be no part of it, still resents the extra attention given to the new dog, Morrie, by her former partner Diego.
For years Frida has been bothered by the attentions of the younger and more playful and active Diego, but now that he has a companion with equal if not more energy, she resents it and is permanently crabby towards the newest addition to our family. After seven months, this has not changed. When I arrive home and the garage door opens, There is the loud cacophony of Morrie barking to be noticed, Frida barking to tell him to get away from “her” mistress, Diego’s barking at Frida to tell her to let the smaller dog alone. It is deafening, and I add my louder shouts for them all to be quiet.
Once, when a friend follows me home in his car, he announces that my cries are more disturbing to him and probably the entire neighborhood than the barks and growls of the dogs could ever be, and I realize that in this house of canines, I have probably reverted to my animal nature. I growl. I bark. Do I tear at my food and secretly lust for bones to gnaw upon? Probably not. My behavior as influenced by my housemates is probably more metaphoric than actual.
I pull myself away from my compulsion. As necessary as sealing Morrie’s throw toy away in the metal chest where I also lock away their extra dog food is my closing of the lid of my laptop. It is time to be away to other things. Feeding the dogs. Running errands in town. I could throw sentence after sentence off into cyber space for as many hours as Morrie could fetch his toy, but there is more to life––a life that needs to be lived both for itself and the dogs’ hunger as for the necessity of having something to write about tomorrow, or this afternoon or evening–whenever I can find the time to throw my mind out to see what I will retrieve from my life to bring to you eagerly, seeing what you will throw back to me.
(My apologies to the excellent movie by the same name as this post. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is in my list of ten favorite movies of all time.)
The Prompt:Write Here, Write Now–Write a post entirely in the present tense. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/write-here-write-now/
Zooming in: White Poinsettia–Flower of the Day, Jan 2, 2016
Zooming in: White Poinsettia
http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/01/flower-of-the-day-january-2-2016-amaryllis-bud-flower-day-7/
A New Monthly Challenge: Times Past
I love this prompt question asked by Irene Waters and want to encourage friends and other bloggers to participate.
© irene waters 2015
Happy New Year to everyone on the first day of the month. I’d like to invite you to join with me in a prompt challenge that will give us social insights into the way the world has changed between not only generations but also between geographical location. The prompt can be responded to in any form you enjoy – prose, poetry, flash, photographs, sketches or any other form you choose. You may like to use a combination of the two. I will also add a series of questions for those that would like to join in but don’t know where to start.
Heading your response please put what generation you belong to.
The Generations that I think may possibly be blogging:
Greatest Generation
G I Generation: 1901 – 1924 Experienced WWII in adulthood.
Silent Generation 1925 – 1945 Experience WWII in childhood
Baby Boomers
Boom Generation/Hippie…
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Dining Out
Perhaps considering my next order?
Dining Out
I do not remember the first time I ate out at a restaurant, but I have heard a story over and over about the first time I ordered for myself. I couldn’t have been over two years old when my folks took me out to a movie and then to Mac’s cafe for a drink and a visit with town folks afterwards. We lived in a town of seven hundred people in the middle of the South Dakota prairie. Our sole entertainment, other than church and school ballgames, was the Saturday or Sunday night picture show in the small theater on Main Street. It was the social event of the week, and visiting with friends afterwards at Mac’s Cafe across the street from the theater was as much a part of the evening as the movie.
Later, in college, one of my best friends was the granddaughter of the man who owned the theater and she revealed to me that it never had made a profit. He just kept it running to give the folks in the town where his wife had taught school as a young woman something to do.
Probably 200 of the 700 citizens of our town were members of a pentecostal church who didn’t believe in dancing, movies, or even TV, so at twenty-five cents per ticket, I’m sure if everyone in town had gone to a show one time a week, it still would not have paid the overhead, so we should have figured that out long ago, but we hadn’t thought of it––at least no one in my family ever did.
I had two older sisters, so if I was two when this story happened, one must have been about six and the other would have been thirteen. They ordered Cokes. My folks ordered coffee, and when it came to me, I responded in the only way I knew to respond in a restaurant. “Amgooboo an tabey dabey!” I ordered.
The waitress looked puzzled. “She said hamburger and potatoes and gravy,” said my father, deadpan. The waitress looked at my mother. If that was what I wanted at ten o’clock at night, my mother was all for it. The waitress left and my family struggled to keep straight faces but it just didn’t work. They all exploded in laughter, which was fine with me. I’d been entertaining them for as long as I could remember–and I think perhaps I still am to this day!
The Prompt: Tell about the first time you ever ate out in a restaurant.
