Not only do the poinsettias insist on continuing to flourish, but we forgot to put the Tarahumara creche figures away as well. We are still enjoying their company on Valentine’s Day.
For Cee’s FOTD
The Year They Outlawed Chocolate
The Year they outlawed chocolate in our village was calamity.
It might have trimmed our waistlines, but it did not promote amity.
Former cheery citizens, lacking its sweet delight,
commenced to back-biting when they had nothing sweet to bite.
The town jail quickly filled right up with chocolate-smugglers and
little grannies in aprons who forgot chocolate was banned.
Young kids wound up in juvie just for shooting M&Ms.
Chocolate-loving parsons sat in jail cells humming hymns.
Cocoa went undercover and fudge went on the skids.
Moms had to resort to feeding apples to their kids!
We were all in mourning, yet the mayor was resolute.
With the whole town in withdrawal, he didn’t give a hoot!
In the end, townspeople voted to freeze the salaries
of councilmen and mayor who had voted to freeze calories.
So politicians changed their minds, reversing chocolate bans
by commissioning the blacksmith to forge three giant pans
and then they used his ovens to create colossal brownies—
enough to furnish chocolate for all the pissed-off townies.
“No Chocolate Allowed” signs were defaced and taken down,
making the perfect kindling for bonfires all over town.
The very air was sweet the night that chocolate was unbanished!
Hostess Cupcakes had to do when brownies quickly vanished.
Strings of lights and fireworks lit the evening air
as townfolk used hot cocoa to wash down their last eclair.
When they ran out of Hershey bars, at first they were aghast,
until Snickers bars ran rampant and Kit Kat bars were passed.
It was a bonbon orgy, a candy jubilee
The day the politicians set chocoholics free!
Prompt words today are chocolate, village, cheery and amity.
Sunday Haven
On Sunday mornings in her pew her countenance was numinous,
her eyes benign, her serene smile was nothing short of luminous,
but by that evening, she had shifted to a mood bituminous.
Dark skies, in short. Her mood and look becoming less than cheery
as she descended into attitudes more dark and dreary—
cantankerous and woebegone, martyred, doleful, weary.
As luck would have it, those of us that she deigned to call friend
suffered through each dark spot, just praying for its end,
waiting for the skies to clear and for her mood to mend.
And sure enough, after a week of musings mired in dolor,
clouds parted and her mental weather slowly crept toward solar,
her mood-swings forming textbook illustrations of bipolar!
If only we could find a way to keep her on her perch
balanced there with hymnal on her pew of gleaming birch,
for the only time we’ve respite is the time she is in Church!
I’ve decided that my nieces and nephews need to hear some of the old family stories of relatives in their far distant past or ones they never met. This photo sent to me by my cousin Sara today gave rise to a story when Forgottenman asked me some question about it.
The members of the group are my mother, her two sisters and the husbands of two of them. Left to right, my Aunt Peggy, Uncle Rob, my mom Pat, My father Ben and my Aunt Betty. Uncle Ed, Aunt Betty’s husband, must have taken the photo, or perhaps he stayed home and a stranger took it. At any rate, I believe it is taken on the Capitol steps in D.C. where my glamorous Aunt Betty (of Filipino Lantern May Basket fame) lived. The three women are sisters–at that time the only remaining members of a family of six sisters and two brothers. Rob and Peggy had driven from Wyoming, picked up my parents in South Dakota and driven to D.C. and points south, going through the states of Kansas and Missouri, where the ladies were born and raised.
One of the most memorable stories of that trip was told to us by my Uncle Rob, a sparkly-eyed gentleman who happened to be the State Superintendent of Schools for the state of Wyoming but who also had a rollicking sense of humor. I adored him.
The story as he told it was that he, Rob, was driving on the Interstate or whatever the equivalent of an Interstate was in the 60’s. As I recall, they were now in Pennsylvania and for the past fifteen minutes or so, they had passed mile after mile of big fields of grapes. Dad, a rancher and farmer, was always interested in whatever was growing and so Rob was not too surprised when they came to a turn-off, that dad asked him to pull over and stop the car.
He was surprised, however, when dad opened the car door and bounded down the ditch up to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the field, reached over the fence and grabbed a vine, tugged at it and came streaking back to the car streaming a long vine of grapes behind him, jumped into the back seat and started handing the grapes around. My dad consistently astonished and delighted my uncle who had pulled a few hijinks himself in his past, some of which I’ve related in this blog.
I think this photo is an incredible contrast to recent events on those same steps.
For Cee’s FOTD, Feb 12, 2021
Click on link below to see how countries rate in their response to Covid:
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/
Thanks to my friend Candace for introducing me to this incredible site:
http://radio.garden/visit/tizi-ouzou/lU2hvtmh
Go here and scroll around the world. Each tiny prick of light is a different radio station. Click on it and you can listen to that station. Amazing. I have it set for Tizi Ouzou. Ever heard of it? Me, either. Soar on sound around the world. What station do you like?
Here’s Radio Tunisia: http://radio.garden/visit/tunis/vG0FE8pT
And here is Paris: http://radio.garden/listen/nostalgie-legendes/QFL4YZzu
You can also search for any location or station in the world. I’m trying for Rapid City, South Dakota: http://radio.garden/visit/rapid-city-sd/tl5dxd4X
Hint: to search for a certain station, its locale needs to be showing on the map, so scroll to its position on the globe. Have fun!!!
Photograph by Kelley Farrell
In the Garden of the Ice Goddess
It’s been a chilly fantasy living in your world.
In every tiny rosebud, an icycle is curled.
Though all of us are vying to try to win your favor,
every single day you require a new flavor.
When you ask us over to have a friendly dip,
we swim in your excesses and it’s an uphill trip.
With one toe in the water, you declare it to be frigid
and state the obvious now that the water has gone rigid.
You bend to lift your skirts up, revealing silver blades,
then glide most gracefully away in one of your charades.
Who can guess your motives or your next vain act?
What new futile effort do you wish us to enact?
Logic is not your forte and kindness not your thing.
You always cast asunder everything we bring.
One by one, we falter and we fall away,
knowing we too will turn to ice if we choose to stay.
Photo by Kelley Farrell. See her blog HERE. Prompt words today are chilly, swim, fantasy and vie.
I can’t remember what I was doing when I glimpsed this potential shot. I remember I was in a car and I was the driver. Also that I was waiting for something or someone when I decided I had to get out of the car and take a photo. Within minutes, I was on my way again.
