Tag Archives: reblog of my earlier post

Big, Big World: WP Daily Prompt, Nov 5, 2016

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Big, Big World: for “Let’s Hit Rewind” Nov 5, 2016-2126

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Big, Big World

Remember when your world was new
how in the world surrounding you
everything seemed bigger then?
It often seems that way again
when we see things nostalgically,
for memory boosts them mightily.
Our mother’s lap or father’s knee
becomes a world–a rolling sea
as we remember rocking there—
a child traveling in their care.

The rooms of childhood were immense,
and all the traumas more intense.
Curtailed play and spilled ice creams
were tragedies expressed by screams.
Time stretched out like a highway then,
however short time might have been
for parents, who saw us grow up quickly.
Time surrounded us more thickly.

The days of summer passed so slow
from sunrise up to candle glow.
Voices echoed in failing light
as we took that last long flight
down the road from England’s hill.
It seemed to last for hours until
we reached the bottom and pedaled home
under that vast dimming dome
that soon the starlight would fill in
until the slow sun rose again.

The night was darker and longer then,
as we contemplated sin
that our prayers brought to mind,
and that inevitably would wind
into our dreams to swell and swell
until they became a hell—
our terrors spreading in the night
until our moms turned on the light,
still maintaining they weren’t there at all
as they followed her back down the hall.

All things were large when we were small–
those tiny cuts, that minor fall.
A childish spat heartbreaking when
you could have been where they were then
but couldn’t because you’d had a fight.
and they were wrong and you were right!

And though  rage hadn’t lasted long,
they had to say that they were wrong!
And so you sobbed and fussed and pouted,
while outside, the others shouted
gleefully from swings and slide.
The pain more than you could abide.

When we were eight or six or three,
the whole world was hyperbole.
And now that we are fully grown,
living free and on our own,
hopefully we’ve learned to season
ire with pardon, dreams with reason.
And before it all blows up,
let us hope the world grows up!

“My First Love Letter” for Cracking Open The Content Time Capsule!

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Here is a post from my blog of 9 years ago on this date, Oct.24 for Cracking Open The Content Time Capsule!

Oops.. More Share Your World of Hospitals!!!

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I almost forgot the most important photo in my hospital theme for today’s “Share Your World.”  When we were going through some papers, my sister Patti shared with me this copy of a letter she dictated to my sister Betty and sent to the hospital with my dad after  I was born.  Since I was born on July 3 and she was born on July 9, we must have still been in the hospital a week later! Did they keep new mothers in the hospital for that long back then? Evidently! She was 4. My other sister who wrote the letter for her was 11. Patti insisted that I was a boy.  (My dad had teasingly said they were going to name me Hazel.) Thanks, Dad, for not following through.  Here is the letter as dictated by Patti and written down by Betty Jo:

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And, if you want to see a continuation of this story, look HERE!!!

https://ceenphotography.com/2017/10/23/share-your-world-october-23-2017/

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15 thoughts on “Oops.. More Share Your World of Hospitals!!!”

  9. Pingback: My Greeting in St. Louis | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown (Edit)

Oops.. More Share Your World of Hospitals!!!

15 Replies

I almost forgot the most important photo in my hospital theme for today’s “Share Your World.”  When we were going through some papers, my sister Patti shared with me this copy of a letter she dictated to my sister Betty and sent to the hospital with my dad the day I was born.  She was 4. My other sister who wrote the letter for her was 11. Patti insisted that I was a boy.  (My dad had teasingly said they were going to name me Hazel.) Thanks, Dad, for not following through.  Here is the letter as dictated by Patti and written down by Betty Jo:

IMG_2955

And, if you want to see a continuation of this story, look HERE!!!

https://ceenphotography.com/2017/10/23/share-your-world-october-23-2017/

Post navigation

15 thoughts on “Oops.. More Share Your World of Hospitals!!!”

  9. Pingback: My Greeting in St. Louis | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown (Edit)

“Gradual Justice” For Blast from the Past, Sept 28

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Gradual Justice

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Gradual Justice

Life metes out a gradual justice that we may not  see.
Not choreographed for one lifetime, not designed for you or me,
but rather, for the planet or the universe.
There’s no way to avoid it, circumvent it or rehearse.
We’re a part of something larger even as we make mistakes
as nature compensates for all  the snafus mankind makes.
Great men may be jaunty––swelled up with their great plan,
but nature has more problems than looking after man.
She has the heart of all within, seeing a scope broader
than the needs of man or any other great marauder.
There is just so much for any of us. When we grab for more,
we can be pretty sure we may be headed out the door.
What species will replace us, or how will we evolve
if we don’t act quickly our problems to resolve?
Even all technology is part of nature’s plan.
Perhaps it’s written that robots will take the place of man.
Micro chips for healing and mechanical hearts
are only the beginning. They are only the starts.
Species that overgraze domains bring about their endings.
So it may be with us with all our diggings and our vendings.
Machines spewing toxins in our air and putting poisons on our shelves
may only be the means of making more room for themselves!

“Blast from the Past” prompt asks that we post a prompt made on this date in an earlier year. This was my post on Sept 28, 2018.

The prompts today are justice, heart, jaunty and gradual. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/friday-rdp-justice/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/28/fowc-with-fandango-heart/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/28/jaunty/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/daily-addictions-2018-week-38/gradual

Should I or Shouldn’t I? for Lets Hit Rewind, Sept 26

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Should I or Shouldn’t I ?!

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The word prompts today are inspire, surmount, enthralling, mistrust and today I’m adding Matt’s new prompt site to my inspiration list.  His command is that we invent a new punctuation mark and write a post inspired by it. What would you do if you were given four words and a situation and told to use them in a poem or story? You’d probably wind up with a poem as ridiculous as this one is!!

Should I or Shouldn’t I?!

I am plagued by indecision.
Should I choose that vain incision
leading to the skin division
that might lead to the derision
of those who might choose nature’s pace
written on their neck and face?

I must admit I do mistrust
those who deal with jowls and bust
by removing parts of them,
and so I hem and haw and hem.
As enthralling as it would be
to be confronted with less of me,

I can’t surmount the fear that I
would be the first face lift to die!
Or,  lovely as other ladies look,
I fear I’d end up in a book
of great disasters and that mine
would be a face most leonine!

Or if I had a chest reduction,
all the cutting and the suction
would lead to results most distressing.
What would happen, I am guessing,
is that the surgeon would have the gall
to leave me with no breasts at all!

If I had need to punctuate
a sentence that concerns my fate,
I think that it would culminate
with a mark that had a mate.
Although I am inspired to do it,
another part seems to eschew it,

?! would be the punctuation
designating consternation.
It’s what  I’d have to use until
I decide if I won’t or will.
Half of it anticipation,
the other half, my hesitation!

Cracking Open the Time Capsule: Sept. 14, 2016

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This was my blog ten years ago on this date:

Absentee Ballot

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For the past fifteen years, I’ve voted by absentee ballot in Mexico. This year I had particular problems with getting registered and thought I’d failed when suddenly, as if by magic, I received my absentee ballot via e-mail.  My good fortune, as I’m presently visiting in the states and I can just mail it in this year and it will get there in time!  So, I connected my laptop to my friend’s printer and pressed the “print” button.  This, truthfully, was the result.

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Absentee Ballot

When I  went to print the ballot out,
minutes later I had to shout
“Stop!!!!” when minute after minute
the printer always had more in it!
It printed out ream after ream
no end in sight—so it would seem.

To vote for president was simple,
but that just seemed to be a pimple
on the ass of all the choices
for which they sought to hear our voices.
Senators for state and nation,
congressmen, then more frustration:

water boards and State Assembly,
then measures ’til my hands grew trembly.
Statements by  candidates to rate,
endorsements, ballot measure debate,
instructions, warnings, declarations
occasioning more perturbations.

School bonds, statutes, legislation,
reeled out with no hesitation.
Tax extensions,cigarette tax,
laws that we were asked to axe.
School laws that were multilingual,
laws prophylactic, cunnilingual.

Initiatives on marijuana,
and fire protection made me wanna
rip my hair and cuss and scream.
Still out they rolled, ream after ream.
When I got to number sixty-seven,
it made me want to pray to heaven,

“Please, dear God, not one measure more
or I’ll soon be at heaven’s door!”
I gave the ballot one more poke
as with one sure determined stroke,
I banned the plastic bag, then broke
my pen over my knee–a joke,

for then another page popped out
as victory smirk turned into pout.
District initiatives, then county
made me rue this voting bounty.
For when I thought that I was done,
I discovered I had just begun.

Pages? Thirty-seven in all
are printed out, before they  fall
fluttering, onto my floor.
The printer burps, pops out one more.
“Oath of Voter” said this one.
And so I cussed.  And I was done!!!

 

 

Classic Material from Aug 11, 2018 Breaking Her Diet

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Breaking Her Diet

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Breaking Her Diet

I measure her cat food with care from the vat,
but she has such an aptitude, my little cat
for flushing out lizards and others like that.
With delicate paw thrusts, she gives them a bat
’til they barely know where it is that they’re at,
then unleashes her claws for a more severe pat.

Be it lizard or bird or scorpion or rat,
she defeats it as though it were merely a gnat
and lays it out nicely on my front door mat:
one scorpion sting less or a feather for my hat,
then returns to the stool where she formerly sat,
licking her chops, and that’s why she’s so fat!!!

Paint Theory

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Paint Theory

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…

For “Blast from the Blog” Some Little Bug Inside Me–a Reblog of a post from June 30 in 2018

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Some Little Bug Inside Me

Summer Evenings Turn to Fall for Blast from the Past!

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WP has started sending out notices every day of all the blogs we have done on the same date (In this case, June 20) for the entire time we’ve been blogging.  In my case, I had posted 36 blogs on that date during the past 10 years. I’m sharing the oldest one, published in 2016.

Summer Evenings Turn to Fall

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Summer Evenings Turn to Fall

Back when we drank summer through paper soda straws,
we played at being cowboys, hiding out in draws
that we imagined wilder. Our hearts beat with fear
of fictional opponents who might be drawing near.

We had no euphemisms for our enemies.
We only knew our fear of them, silent, on our knees.
Little did we know then, during childhood games,
imaginary enemies would assume other names.

No ditch big enough to hide, and no night dark enough.
No more cops and robbers. No more blind man’s bluff.
Strange that in those peaceful times the games we chose to play
were a mere foreshadowing of what is real today.

Back when summer filled our cheeks with melons and with berries,
why didn’t we fill balmy nights with princesses and fairies?
Back when life was summer smooth, we lusted after roughness,
as though we’d gain maturity through violence and toughness.

Feigning valor not yet gained, we knew not that tomorrow
we’d have the fears we’d feigned for real––the terror and the sorrow.
Childhood evenings filled with shouts and laughter interspersed
were in reflection adult games that we just rehearsed.

 

The picture is my sister Patti and her best friend Karen.  Note the real saddle placed on the makeshift “horse.”  

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