Asparagus Fern Floral Branch
This is the size of the branch of flowers above compared to my little finger. I think I need a manicure. I used this finger because most of the other nails are broken off. Hard work being isolated!
For Cee’s FOTD.
This essay by Paul Duncan is both funny and brilliantly done..don’t miss it.
Global holiday experts, known as “the employed” in most countries, have today agreed that the timing of this year’s Easter weekend “is a direct and pointed insult to anyone who has in the past relied on this holiday to maintain their work-life balance, and are now left with just life, and no work. And no balance.”
“It’s like someone giving you a set of new tires to help you get over crashing your car,” said Chase Lounge, an upper-level sales manager at I’se The B’y Office Supplies, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. “I like a long weekend as much as the next guy sure, but after spending the last few weeks plumbing the disturbing depths of my addiction to human fail videos, I say no thank you sir.”
“It’s an odd surplus to be sure,” agrees Tom O’Furlough, a former bartender in Dublin, Ireland. “It’s like someone throwing you a shot…
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In this time of isolation, these hibiscus blooms decided not to comply and showed up in a group. As usual, you can click on photos to enlarge.
For Cee’s FOTD Challenge
Be sure to come back here again after you click on this link and then the link that pops up below it to see the video that goes with the below photo: https://defectivehumor.net/?p=877
I had to go out the other day to take photos but my iPhone suddenly would not respond to my demands. It took me awhile to realize that it was activated by facial recognition and I had my mask on!! Ha!
I wonder how many others have had this same thing happen and it set me to thinking that I’d like to sponsor a mask competition for decorating an actual mask worn to fend off the coronavirus in two categories.
1. In one, for a mask that is painted to actually look like the parts of your own face covered by the mask so you look as much like yourself as possible in the mask as without. This needs to be done on an actual mask you’ve been using for health reasons. In this category, the winner will be determined according to skill of execution, appeal, likeness to your own face or perhaps humor if you are using a gimmick. A $50 prize will be awarded in this category.
If you do not have a blog or website, please post a photo on my facebook page, not as a personal message . If you do have a blog or website, post in your site with a link to this blog at: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/04/09/who-am-i-under-here-mask-contest-cash-prizes/ If it is linked to another posting on my blog and it isn’t linked to this particular blog, I may not see it. Just put a comment with the URL of your blog where your photo is posted.
Two $50 first prizes will be awarded, with the understanding that you give permission for me to publish a photo of your mask in my blog. ENTRIES MUST BE RECEIVED BY APRIL 24.
Below is a collage of concrete poetry I’ve done over the past six years. Please click on images to increase the size and read the poems.
The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a concrete poem. Here are a few.
Plumbing the Depths
They call him the professor because of his great wit.
Everything he says has perspicacity in it!
The way he wrangles words should be no great surprise,
for he’s a modern Shakespeare in a plumber’s rough disguise.
Once he unplugs your loo, he is not finished, but instead
he shares a legendary quip to clear out his own head.
Word prompts for the day are: perspiscacity, wrangle, surprise, legendary and professor
Please click on photos to enlarge.
Patchwork
I’ve put my life together
like a patchwork quilt,
and almost finished.
It is beautiful—
the lawn freshly groomed,
drawers organized,
all of the pictures straightened on the walls.
Friends, travel, career, family, art, writing–
a happy life that
I have stitched together,
hiding the pain under the seams.
The NaPoWriMo prompt today is to peruse the work of a twitter bot, and use a line or two, or a phrase or even a word that stands out to you, as the seed for your own poem. “Under the seams runs the pain.” is the line from a Mary Ruefle tweet that I selected as my seed. When I Googled it, it said that it was a quote by Autobiography of Red,
For some reason, my Photos system has gone crazy on my computer and I can’t preview or edit them or get them down to size, so I’m publishing this and will try to add photos later. Thanks to Forgottenman, we now have photos. I hope.
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If you missed the previous newsletter, you can read it here.
Al Drago for The New York Times
I didn’t expect Donald Trump to turn eloquent overnight, nor is that necessary. Strong leadership doesn’t require it.
I didn’t expect him to stop complimenting himself. Bragging is as central to his existence as swimming is to a whale’s. It’s what propels him. It’s what sustains him. At this point it’s not merely reflexive. It’s autonomic.
I didn’t expect him to start telling the truth. I’m an optimist, not a fantasist.
But what I did expect, or at least hope for, was that this once-in-a-generation pandemic would tamp down his pettiness and meanness. How could it not? How cold he behold the scale of the suffering and the dimensions of the challenge before him and not realize that he finally had to be bigger and dig deeper?
There is no such bigness in Trump, no such digging. There is just the usual martyr complex, the familiar tirades and the same old passing of the buck. I’m forced to conclude that he’s not just a man ill equipped for this moment. He’s a man whose soul went missing.
I said as much in a column published a few days ago, and I winced when I wrote it and cringed when I sent it to my editor, because I don’t want to feel this cynical about an American president, certainly not now. I want to be pleasantly surprised. I want to be forced to reassess all prior misgivings and to apologize for selling him short, because that would mean that he was ably and nobly guiding us through this nightmare. Get something this important right and you’re forgiven all wrongs.
But as I explained in the column, which assesses Trump’s behavior over the past month, he isn’t finding the grace in crisis that other presidents did. He doesn’t even seem to be trying. I can’t fathom that. And I definitely can’t swallow it.
Laments like mine won’t change him. His rot is too fundamental for that. But they do, I think, serve a purpose: They nudge us past any lingering illusions that the direst of circumstances will transform the false prophet into a benevolent god.
No, this prophet just demands an even greater magnitude of worship. And he grows all the more furious when he doesn’t get it.
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Federal Government knew about the Corona Virus breakout and what effect it would have on the U.S. as early as November. Read about it here. People, we need a head of government who knows what he is doing and who is not just a media star! Open your eyes. Your life and the existence of the world is at stake in this and other matters. Research says that pollution helped to spread the virus. Listen to the scientists, not a reality “star.”
The cache. Think we can make anything out of it?
About the third day of my isolation, when I had to cancel a visit by a friend who has in the past been a fun art playmate, I came up with a plan whereby we could sorta do art together without breathing on each other. The idea was to find a couple of other artist friends and for each of us to contribute a bag of “stuff” to each of the others. No rules except that the same stuff needed to be contributed to each of us. As it turned out, the participants were my friend Brad, my friend Candace, Candace’s friend Jean and yours truly.
After a week or so to collect the stuff, I said I would go collect Brad’s stuff in Ajijic, drive to Chapala to give our stuff to Candace and she could give me the bags from Jean and her, then I could take all of our stuff back to Brad, Now, you might have noticed that we live in three different towns ,and since I haven’t been out of my house for two weeks except once two days ago to drive less than a mile down the mountain to the tiny grocery store at its bottom., this was a big expedition! And I was going to see people! Albeit from at least 6 feet away.
I showered, washed my hair, put on makeup and clothes for the first time in two weeks, and compiled a list of things to do and buy in town: i.e. visit bank, paint store, pharmacy, Walmart and Super Lake–the best miracle all-and-everything-American edibles store in Mexico–and disperse the art supplies. All ready to go, I went out to my car to find the battery dead! Now I have an electric battery charger, but I also have a very small garage, so once the car is parked inside it, the front bumper is just about one inch from the door of the cupboard that the battery charger resides within. And, without juice in the battery, I can’t shift the car into neutral to roll it back to get the cupboard door open or to get the engine in a position so jumper cables can reach from it to another car. Luckily, my gardener Pasiano was there and we finally jerry-rigged three separate sets of battery cables end-to-end and using the car of a friend who just happened to start painting a mural on the outside wall of my house that very day, we tried to charge the battery but alas.it was dead as a, well, dead battery!
Suffice it to say that my big plans were changed and my self-enhancement procedures all in vain. I called my friends, cancelled my plans and st 9 at night, Yolanda’s son, who just happens to both be a mechanic and to work in an automotive supply store, came with a new battery, installed it, and finally today I was off again. (This time I didn’t bother with makeup but I did again don clothing.) The plan was that I would put on my mask and collect Brad’s bags in Ajijic, take our material to Candace’s house in Chapala, and when I arrived, call her on my cell phone. She would open the gate from her upstairs apartment and I’d set our bags inside the gate and collect the bags of Jean and Candace.
When I got there, however, Candace had a more creative exchange in mind. Taking isolation to its furthest extreme, she was on the roof of her house letting down an incredible pulley-fueled bucket within which to put our bags. She then pushed a button and up they went. Her and Jean’s MUCH larger bags were hanging on a hook on the wall. I took them and was off to Brad’s and then homeward. The last time Brad came to my house, he brought me an ECHO, to which I immediately became addicted. “Alexa, play John Prine.” This time when I put on my mask and called to let him know I was waiting in my car outside his house, he arrived with art bags and an ice cream bar! Some men just know what women like! Thanks, Brad.
So. I was off with a car fully-laden not just with art materials but with 5 liters of paint, groceries, appliances and animal food from Walmart, food from Super Lake and business taken care of at the bank, and when I got unpacked and the former”stuff” swept to one side on my dining room table, I opened the four bags to reveal the items that were to become the materials for my next art project. A mighty heap, to say the least. Hmmm. I think I’m going to change the rules to say you don’t have to use all of the material. Perhaps at least one of each category of things? Upcoming, I hope, will be photos of our projects.. perhaps at different stages.
So, if you are an artist, or if you aren’t—why not mount a similar project with your friends and show us your contents of bags and final results? It’s a Challenge! Or, choose your own media. Want to bake a Lonely Artist Covid cake? Great. Write a poem? Paint a painting? Do a mural? Make an intriguing mask? Snap a photo? Do a video? Sing a song? Do a dance? All are welcome. Just link your contribution via a link to this blog.You can go HERE to see my answer to the challenge, HERE to see Candace Spence’s piece and HERE to see Jean Mulleneaux’s contribution. We’d love to see your answer to the challenge.
Click on photos to enlarge.
