Tag Archives: Reblog

“Share Your World” Challenge

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This is a hilarious parody of the ‘Share Your World” prompts that I’m sure we all love. They are great ways to get to know each other and to reflect on happenings in our own lives. Things get sinister, however–a great reminder to us all that we need to be circumspect regarding what we share online. It starts out great and I’d love to hear people actually answer #s 1,2,3,5,6 and 8 and then to heed the warning the rest of the questions project.

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I’ve seen many “Share Your World” challenges over the last couple years, so I figured maybe I could do one, in my own unique style of course. So, here goes.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? (Yeah, I’m easing into it.)

What is your most wonderful memory as a child before age 7?

If you could relive any moment of your life, what would it be?

What are the last 4 digits of your SSN?

We all remember our first kiss. Without describing the kiss, what led up to it?

What is your earliest memory?

What is your mother’s maiden name?

If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money you don’t keep for yourself?

What are the first 5 digits of your SSN?

What was the name of your first pet?

What was the name of the first street you lived on?

What was…

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Plummeting

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Three years ago, I wrote a blog entitled “Plummeting.” Although it describes an event that occurred almost seventeen years ago, the subject is still a timely one, so I’m going to reblog it. It is linked to a blog entitled “Soaring” that completes the message.
Please join the Daily Addiction prompt site. It is easy and they post consistently. Today’s  prompt word, as you might have guessed, is plummet.

lifelessons's avatarlifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Plummeting

The weekend before, we had had our last moving sale and had nearly cleared out our very overladen house in California.  We’d sold as much of our accumulated lives as possible–a 125 years (sum of our two ages) combined total of collecting art as well as material and tools for making art.  We were shedding the detritus of our old lives to begin a new life in the house we had just purchased in Mexico.  Our van was fully packed with not one inch of spare space other than a place for our cat and two more suitcases we would add when we finally took off for our retirement in Mexico.  We had only one more appointment–to talk to our doctor about the results of Bob’s last physical examination, which had included an ultrasound.

We’d been on a high for months as we prepared to head out for our…

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“My Humorous Anecdote” by Sarah Southwest (Reblog)

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I love this poem that Sarah wrote for dVerse Poets this week.  I’ll prime the pump, then you need to go to her blog to read the rest:

My Humorous Anecdote 

                                 –by Sarah Southwest

We have a funny story
that we often try to tell,
so funny, when we start it,
we giggle for a spell

We can’t remember how it starts
or recall how it ends,
so perhaps we shouldn’t share it
with our dinner party friends

but it’s really so amusing,
it always makes us smile,
so we keep on trying to tell it,
and we struggle for a while –

we argue on location,
can’t recall the time of day,
but it was so hilarious,
we must tell you, we say, . . . .

(To read the rest of this poem, go to:  Sarahsouthwest’s Blog.

Moonlight

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I have recently found a blog I am constantly enchanted by. Its author is a bit of a recluse whose world has become his garden. I especially love two posts in which he talks about his tender care of struggling plants, goldfish found nearly dead under encasements of ice, and his favorite koi, Getsumei (which means Moonlight) newcomer to his pond, who had to be taught how to eat fish food.

Mr. Livingstone, the author of this blog, doesn’t have a reblog button, but he’s given assent to my posting links to a few of his blogs.

In this first link are photos of his garden, along with his story of the struggling little hosta, buried upside down:

https://philiplivingstone.org/2018/05/02/the-1st-of-may-in-the-garden/

And my favorites,  the photos and stories about the gorgeous ghost koi Moonlight, are here:

https://philiplivingstone.org/2018/05/07/%E3%81%92%E3%81%A4%E3%82%81%E3%81%84-getsumei/

https://philiplivingstone.org/2018/05/03/%E3%81%92%E3%81%A4%E3%82%81%E3%81%84-moonlight/

Toronto’s in Mourning by Linda Crosfield

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This poem by Linda Crosfield captures so beautifully the horror of the Toronto massacre.  I wanted to share it with you.  I’m printing the first two stanzas below.  Please use the link to her blog to see the remainder of the poem. As usual, her unique view gives a wonderfully personal view of events:

Toronto’s in Mourning


She’s mourning the scatter of crushed bags of groceries,
for crackers and cheeses and chocolate and lettuce,
the citrus-fuelled scent of oranges bought
to be peeled into segments of sweetness for lunch.

She’s mourning the bitter salt tears in the mouths
of those left to pick up the sunglasses, take-outs,
the backpacks, the paperbacks, iPhones and headscarves,
the briefcases, strollers, the coffees, the bikes.

. . . .to read the rest of Linda’s poem on her blogsite, please go HERE.

Mystery Solved

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My friend Larry Kolczak has allowed me to copy this hilarious email sent to me.  I’ve been trying to convince him he should have a blog himself. Do you agree?

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Six months ago, we hung these beaded curtains on our second-floor patio fence to obscure the view into the neighboring lot.  Recently, …

 

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… we started finding broken strands.  We figured it was because the curtains weren’t made for outdoor use, and that sun and wind had deteriorated the nylon strings.  But, that wasn’t the problem…

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It turns out that many of the eco-friendly beads are acorns.

 

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Guess who noticed?

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He nips the string to get the uppermost acorn…

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… which he either eats on the spot, or buries in our potted plants, and leaves us with the…

 

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…collateral damage.

 

Uriah Heep Meets Rocky Balboa on Rodeo Drive

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Uriah Heep–an unctuous, cringing, overly-humble character from Charles Dickens was chosen by the British Telegraph as one of their favorite Dickens characters. I chose him as well for a meeting with another rather hard-to-take notable fictional figure way back at the beginning of my blog. Few people read that silly poem that chronicled the meeting between Heep and Rocky Balboa. HERE is a link if you’d like to take a peek back at it.

A portrait of Uriah Heep by Frederick Barnard (1846-1896), which was used to illustrate David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

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A portrait of Uriah Heep by Frederick Barnard (1846-1896), which was used to illustrate David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Photo: Alamy

The WordPress prompt today is bestow.

Haibun Reblog: Dianne Hicks Morrow

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Love the haibun by my friend Dianne. She doesn’t have a blog so wanted to insure this poem got the attention it deserves:

At 2 a.m. this morning son Jacob delivered us from the airport to our dark yard. Grateful to see no snow gleaming in the gloom, we staggered inside, even more grateful for the heat of the kitchen wood stove. Our three day return trip from the sunny hot Pacific coast of Mexico, our 2nd home for seven years, featured a snowstorm hello as our plane broke through the cloud to land in Calgary. While we’re mostly glad to be home on PEI, the sounds of silence are deafening. No morning wake-up calls from chachalachas, lorikeets, and doves. But this afternoon a sound surprised our ears—the wind howling.

Bathing suits blow on
Bare forsythia branches
We await their bloom

A Letter from My Future Self of 2038: NaPoWriMo, 2018, Day 11

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 A Letter from My Future Self of 2038

Dear Remi,

Remember eight years ago, when you took this new name for yourself?  I notice you’ve slipped back into the “old” name (Judy) and the “old” you that you professed just five years before to no longer identify with.  What happened?  Was it merely the resistance of old friends to call you by this new name? Or was it that you slowly slipped back into being that person–more laconic, giving in to the heaviness and inactivity of age?  Did you also give up on romance and change and the excitement of the possibility of forward progress?  Did you decide to stay where it is easier with an established routine, people to clean your house and wash your clothes and mow your grass and clean your pool?

I’m wondering if you are thinking about how that is working out for you. I see you even more tied down than before–five cats instead of one, making plans to start more programs for the young people of your community, but will this be enough?  That sense of urgency and of time passing that has kept you vaulting from your bed and running outside to try to breathe at night—is it caused by any physical condition or is it me, prodding you to be young for as long as you can and to experience more before you sink into that routine that is the reward for doing all that you meant to do in this lifetime? Is it time to retire and to smooth your own pathway, or is it still time to leap over barriers such as this barrier of yourself and go boldly out into the world to see what else is there?

I’m not trying to prod or push you or suggest the way.  I am, after all, a figment of your imagination as surely as your present view of yourself is.  I understand that two foot surgeries in two years slowed you down and changed your exercise patterns as well as the patterns of your day.  I also realize that friends moved away or moved into new lives and that this also made you turn inwards.  There are reasons of one sort or another for everything we do.  We all have excuses.  At 90 years old, I have excuses, too.  I know where you ended up but I also know that there are a limitless number of me’s.

There is the me that succumbed to Alzheimer’s, as your sister did.  There is the me who moved to Italy and moved off into a new life that I only hint at here.  There is the me who has devoted herself for the past 20 years to making her small town a better place to grow up in.  There is the me who finally took off in that boat and went all the remaining places there were to go.  There is the me who grew grumpy and reclusive and eventually became dumber than her Smart TV.

There is even the implausible me who did all the “shoulds” and got her other books published—who maybe even got back on the agent/publisher treadmill and did it the “right” way. There is the me who found more romance, the one who converted her entire house into a dog kennel or cat sanctuary, the one who built the house on the adjoining piece of land and hired a nurse/housekeeper and invited her friends to come grow old with her.  There are so many potential me’s that I hope it is making your head swim and that I hope will make you think about what you want to do with the remaining 30 or so years of your life.

Things are not over.  In the first thirty years of your life, you grew up, went to summer camp, counseled at summer camp, went to University, sailed around the world on a boat and saw all else that life could be, got your masters degree, emigrated to Australia, taught for two years, traveled for four months through southeast Asia and Africa, moved to Africa and had various adventures, good and bad.  Fell in love, taught school in Addis Ababa, moved back to the U.S., taught for 7 more years, fell in love, built a house, edited a creative writing journal for teens, traveled to China and Great Britain and Hawaii.

Then you had a dream that knocked you into a recognition of your subconscious.  You quit your job, moved to Orange County, CA, wrote on the beach, moved to L.A., fell in love, studied film production and screenwriting at UCLA, worked in a Hollywood agency, joined a writer’s workshop, joined an actor’s studio, worked for Bob Hope, gave poetry readings, was co-editor of a poetry journal, fell in love again, married, moved to the Santa Cruz mountains, became an artist, traveled and did art and craft shows for 14 years, became the curator of an art center, lost your husband, moved to Mexico, self-published four books, traveled, taught English and art, fell in love a few more times, started a poetry series.

This is what can be done in thirty years.  So, what are you going to do with the next thirty?

Love, Remi–twenty years older.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is: a poem that addresses the future, answering the questions “What does y(our) future provide? What is your future state of mind? If you are a citizen of the “union” that is your body, what is your future “state of the union” address?”  This rewrite of a piece written three years ago seems to fill the bill, except it was pointed out to me afterwards that it isn’t a poem!  Can I get by saying it is a prose poem?  If not, this former piece which is a poem also answers the same prompt:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2018/03/15/provoke/

 

Foreign Tongues

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Portugese Timor, 1973, Setting off on a WWII Troop barge into the Timor Sea

Ciao, Adios, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu

When I was young, I traveled far
from Germany to Zanzibar.
Australia, Bali, France and Spain,
to Africa and back again.

And though I mostly loved them all,
from Venice to the Taj Mahal,
as my departure time grew nigh
I had to voice a sad goodbye.

To Ethiopia I strayed.
For eighteen months I stayed and stayed;
and when I had to leave too soon,
I had to say “dehena hun.”

In college days, when I was young,
German was my foreign tongue;
but when to Frankfurt wir mussten gehen
I just remembered, “Auf Wiedersehen.”

The French were rude and cold and snotty.
They mocked my accent and were haughty,
so while I had to bid “adieu,”
I’d have preferred to say, “pee-ew.”

Florence thrilled me from the start.
Their lasagna is a work of art.
When I left, they all said, “Ciao.”
Their kitties, though, all said, “Miao.”

I never went to Israel
but nonetheless, I’m proud to tell,
the rabbi books? Read every tome.
So I know how to say “Shalom.”

Though “Arigato” is bound to do
when you want to say thank you,
“Sayonara” is the way to go
to bid farewell in Tokyo.

Bali’s full of dance and art
that treat your eyes and fill your heart.
I must admit, I had a ball
before I said “Selamat tinggal.”

Mexico was saved for last
And now I fear my lot is cast
Since “Adios” I cannot say,
I’ve decided I will stay!

The prompt today is foreign.