Category Archives: Uncategorized

Marilyn Armstrong Doll Collection

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Be Sure to double click on photos to enlarge!

As longtime friends in blogging, Marilyn Armstrong and I often found ourselves discussing dolls that we owned in common. Little did I know how many dolls she owned, but eventually, when she decided that she’d like to find a permanent home for her dolls where they could all be exhibited together, I told her of a doll museum in the works that I had visited during my last 5 year school reunion in the town where I grew up. .  This eventually led to a discussion between its founder, Andrea Miller Sheehan, and Marilyn, and the result was that Marilyn shipped her entire collection off to her.  This year, when I returned  for the reunion, I was able to see Marilyn’s complete display. Her writeup of her collection can be read if you click on it and then  enlarge it a bit more, as is true of all of the photos.  I’m sure Marilyn’s family and friends who have continued her blog would love to hear your comments.

As I understand it, the museum is still under development as its owner has had family health issues over the past five years that have kept her from completing the installations. Fortunately, Marilyn’s displays are completed and  hopefully, the museum will soon be finished and open. It is located in Murdo, South Dakota, just off Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Mitchell, just 50 miles east of Wall Drug.  I’ll keep you informed about developments and give better instructions about how to find it when it has opened permanently.
–Judy Dykstra-Brown, July 21, 2026

 

“Killing Time” for FOWC

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Meeting an Old Friend

Sixty years since you lived one block away.
In one hour we meet for brunch and memories.
Really my sister’s friend,
but in small towns, so devoid of much else to do,
people still living and moved away
become legends.
Your mother the nightclub singer
with the distinctive whistle that called you home
from behind trees and low in ditches at night,
the rest of us still caught in the thrlll of “ditch ‘em”–
our version of hide-and-seek.
I was the tag-a-long, the watcher
to your cowboy games
and the neighborhood plays
raising nickel-after-nickel for a memorial plaque
for the small boy killed from a fall from the tallest slippery slide.
That slide gone soon after, the plaque never installed,
as you were gone to a larger town
and voice lessons translating your pure high voice
to the more studied operatic perfection
of a sweet bottom in a tight girdle.
Still a small town girl at heart
now, all these years later,
you pull our somewhat
off-tune unschooled
voices to you
over years
and miles
to sing
the
old
school
song.

For FOWC the prompt is “Killed.”
The prompt word is just a tiny tragic detail in this nostalgic poem of a past
and a present that has now become the past as well.

Pick a Pickled Pepper, for Blast from the Past (From July 20, 2017)

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Pick a Pickled Pepper

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Pick a Pickled Pepper

Some girls lick on lollipops, but I never will.
I prefer the piquant taste of vinegar and dill.
Pickle up some peppers  and shove them in a jar.
Put a label on it to show them who you are.
If a cute boy eats one, he will pucker up,
and perhaps you’ll plant a kiss where he deigned to sup.

Pick a cherry pepper, press it to your lips,
and that special spicy boy might want to steal some sips.
Do not tell your mother. Do not tell your dad,
or that might be the only pepper that you ever had.
Lollipops are sweet, but just a little coy.
Pickles work much better for picking out your boy.

 Strangely enough, the song “Lollipop, Lollipop” has been going through my mind for the past few days.  I even made up different lyrics to the tune of it to sing to Annie, my 15-year-old ill cat,  as I drove her (meowing all the way) home from the vet the other day. The men who stand in the road to wave people into the fish restaurants near San Juan Cosala must have wondered at me as I hollered out the strange song at the top of my lungs, just like my dad used to do to startle a howling baby into silence.  Ah well.  We get odder as we get older but have more of an excuse for it!

Zoe Meets Ollie. 2022

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Just found this darling video of Ollie mothering Zoe when I first brought her home. four years ago

“Quartet”, for Today’s “Throwback Edition”

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Quartet

They flicker like tiny sparks,
these rapid kittens
intense in attention,
movements reflecting
every neighboring small movement.
Suspicious of brief distractions.
Violent, then soft like the feather
they’ve destroyed,
drifting to the window frame above,
forgotten by its intense stalkers
of a second before.

This is a post from July 19, 2017

More Fibs for Fibbing Friday

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For Fibbing Friday, the task at hand is:

1. What is a pinkie? A very small brooch.

2. What is a fortress? What is for tress is barrette or bobby pin.

3. What is a snapdragon? A large, irritated, flying lizard.

4. What is a pantry? An unsuccessful attempt at flipping a pancake which ends up the flapjack on the ceiling.

5. What is a windchime? A clock won in a raffle.

6. How would you describe a banana? With pen and paper or vocally.

7. What is a moustache? A rodent’s dental pain.

8. What is a nub? A freshly hatched flying, stinging insect that produces honey.

9. What is a metaphor? It is for referring to yourself.

10. What is a lunatic? A burrowing insect on a moonlit night.

Walking to Town for Blast from the Past

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I am in Sheridan, Wyoming, spending the night at the home of my best friend since college days, having flown from Guadalajara to Billings Montana yesterday. I was picked up by my sister Patti, and after spending the night in a motel near the airport, we drove to Sheridan. Here I have  seen a number of old friends and tomorrow Patti and I drive to Murdo, South Dakota, to our high school reunion, which meets every 5 years. If it had been held last year, it would have been my 60th year reunion and Patti’s 64th, but our school in our town of 700 was so small that it is necessary to just combine all of the class reunions from every year into one big reunion held every 5 years. Murdo, South Dakota, here we come!!!

It is appropriate, then, that my “Blast from the Past” prompt to reblog a blog posted on this date in an earlier year describes a day at my reunion ten years ago. Here it is:

Walking to Town

lifelessons

Lifelessons,

I was trying to post my blog when my sister and brother-in-law asked if I wanted to accompany them to town to meet friends at the Star Cafe.  Since I’d been trying in vain to post since I woke up this morning, I decided to stay in the motel until I’d posted, so she told me to call when I was ready to come into town and she’d come get me.

A few hours later when I was still unable to post, I tried to call, but alas––no cell phone coverage and no wifi!  When I went to the office, I was greeted by a sign that the office would be closed until 3:30 and with not a car in the parking lot, I knew I was the solitary person in residence at the moment.

The only solution I could think of was to walk to town–more than a mile away down a gravel road like this one:

 

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and then along the shoulder of the highway that leads to town.

 

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En route I would need to cross an overpass over Interstate 90 as well as an exit and an entrance.

 

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It was a hot day and the way would be treelesss. Still, I set out on my adventure.

First, past the lonely horse in the pasture.

 

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Giving him a few pats on the nose, I was on my way again. We were both looking pretty hot!

 

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As I approached the local cemetery, a police car pulled up to see if I needed help, but didn’t offer me a ride.

After a half hour walk or so, I encountered another solitary inhabitant of the road:

 

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And,as you can see from this view, I was drawing nearer to my destination. Just another 600 feet or so to go.

 

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I arrived at the Pioneer Auto Museum a bit wind-tossed and sweaty, and luckily the two very nice ladies in the gift shop loaned me a cell phone to call my sister. Ten minutes later, she picked me up and we did a short swing through town to see former residences and other haunts before returning to the motel.  It was, in fact, a bit of a futile exercise just to return to where I’d departed from an hour and a half before.  The rest of the day, however, turned out to be wonderful––old friends as well as some new ones, some surprises, a few tears, lots of laughs and a few messages from dear departed ones via stories I’d never heard before.  But it is 3:20 in the morning and I need to be up by 8 so I will desist and say as a famous man did many times in the past, that that is the rest of the story!

Blast from the Past: Nine Years Ago Today “Sleight of Knees”

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Sleight of Knees

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IMG_7755doll by Louie Gann, jdbphoto

Sleight of Knees

When the circus clown was lauded,
marveled at, praised and applauded
for hanging from the high trapeze
for 24 hours by his knees,
though he was admired for his moxie,
it turns out it was just epoxy!

For Blast from the Past, here is a silly poem from july 15, 2017. I shared a house with Louie for two weeks at Cannon Beach, Oregon. in 2001 and still have her wonderful doll. It made the culling before my move to Mexico. Louis, if you see this, drop me a line…

“Eavesdropping”

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I woke up this morning to this email from my neighbor David Bershad, whose second-story terrace gives a good view of my roofline. Seems Yolanda kept the gate open enabling the doggies to enjoy the sunset  from the roof!  The terrace of the upstairs casita furnishes easy access to the rest of the roof. The song lyrics and first three photos are his. Below them are my photos of the explanation of the sculpture on the dome that Coco, Zoe and Morrie love to visit. Only Morrie knew the “real” Frida.

Below are my photos of Frida and her sidekick Diego, now both sadly departed, along with the story of how Frida came to be memorialized on the dome of my house.

If you can’t see the commentary of what is going on in these photos, you need to click on the photos to see it.

(Frida as a puppy.)
For the fifteen or more years Frida lived with me, this is where she was most of the time, checking out the neighborhood and occasionally barking at someone who didn’t belong there.
When Frida died, I had a sculpture of her installed on the roof dome.
And Frida’s ashes went into this effigy which we concreted in place on her favorite place on the dome, to watch for as long as I have any say in the matter.
Neighbors snapped this photo, then called to advise me that Frida had visitors.

And, if you want to read a poem I wrote about the lovely Frida, Here it is:

Look Up! (Eulogy for a Good, Good Girl)

“Translation Difficulties” for Word of the Day

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Sign Language

I know our birth tongues aren’t the same,
but still I think words aren’t to blame.
It is your means of understanding
that convinces me you’re underhanding.
For every time I give you kisses,
it seems you go to other misses
in search of the translation tips
they give by laying on of lips.
My dear, if we were dumb and blind
then translation service of this kind
might make some sense, but I must say
your excuses will not work  today.
Please have your translator of prose
stick this finger message up your nose!!!

The Word of the Day is “Translate..”