note: submitted to Rogue Valley Times for possible publication
audio clip
poem version
Wagontire Oregon 1973
In 1973, I embarked on a road trip with my father. We left Berkeley, heading toward Yakima, where my father owned a summer cabin. As a college professor, he enjoyed the luxury of July and August off, and our dysfunctional family spent those summers together in the mountain cabin from 1968 to 1978. Our annual pilgrimage was both a trip to hell and a journey back.
My father and I shared a wanderlust—a love for exploring new places. This trip turned out to be one of our best. Surprisingly, we got along, which was unusual given our typically tense relationship. We were vastly different, but during this journey, we became friends..
We drove east along Highway 395, entering the high mountain desert of eastern Oregon. The road stretched ahead, almost deserted. Then we saw the sign: Wagontire, Oregon, 100 miles ahead. We counted down the signs, mile after mile, as dusk settled around us. We speculated Wagontire must be a giant truck stop—an oasis in the middle of nowhere.
Interspersed with the Wagontire signs were Burma Shave signs. Highway 395 was one of the last highways to still have these signs, which had been phased out in most places by 1966 or so.
Burma shave signs were written in rhyming couplets or quatrains cowboy poetry style, ending with the tag line Burma Shave. Here are two examples:
“Shaving brushes
You’ll soon see ’em
On a shelf
In some museum
Burma-Shave”
“Within this vale
of toil
and sin
your head grows bald
but not your chin–use
Burma-Shave”
We counted down the miles until at last we pulled into town. But when we pulled into town, reality struck. There was nothing but a gas station, a motel, and a cafe. Last gas for 100 miles, according to the highway sign. I chatted with the owner, who was the sheriff, fire chief, and owner of the only business in town. The sign outside read: “Welcome to Wagontire, Oregon. Population: 200,000 sheep, 10 dogs, two and one half humans..”
Curiously, I asked who was the half-human, and the sheriff replied, “My idiot son.”
I did not know it, but this was my last big solo road trip with my father. We drove to and from the cabin a few more times, last time in 1984, but this trip was special and one I will always remember. Mainly because my dad and I finally became “friends” during this trip and got along great. Unfortunately, that moment did not last, and we soon re-entered our difficult relationship, but during that trip, we got along famously.
2016 Revisiting Wagontire
Fast forward to 2016. My wife and I drove through eastern Oregon as part of an epic cross-country trip—31 states, 100,000 miles in three months to celebrate my retirement from 27 years of serving the country in the U.S. Foreign Service working overseas in 10 countries. We thought it was time to see America.
We followed Highway 395, revisiting the memories of my trip with my father 40 years earlier. But Wagontire had changed. The signs were gone, the motel abandoned, and the town reduced to ruins—a ghost town.
As we reflected on Wagontire and other “nothing burgs,” we pondered the heart of Trump’s forgotten America—the flyover country that often escapes our attention.
Reflections on my visit to Wagontire, Oregon, in 1973 and 2016.
He was a college professor
And had July and August off
And we spent our summers,
Every summer from 68 to 78
In that mountain cabin,
and hanging with my Uncle
who had inherited the family
apple farm in Yakima.
Our whole dysfunctional family
Our annual trip
to hell and back
And we did not
get along at all.
We decided to drive
through Eastern Oregon
Just my Father and me.
Just for the hell of it
The rest of the family
was already there,
My father and I shared a travel lust
Loved to go to new places
One of the few things we shared.
This was one of our best trips
We actually got along
Which was unusual.
Normally our relationship
Was fraught with tension
As we were so different.
We left Klamath Falls
A real noting burg in those days
And headed east along Highway 395.
As we entered the
desert of Eastern Oregon
America’s Outback lands
We entered a different world
High mountain desert
Almost no one on the road
Then we saw the signs
Wagontire Oregon
100 miles ahead
99 miles
98 miles
intersperse with the signs
were Burma Shave signs
one of the last highways
to have these cowboy poetry
advertisements
Just a few examples
for those who have never
seen these lost Americana signs
common from 1915 to 1975
Shaving brushes
You’ll soon see ’em
On a shelf
In some museum
Burma-Shave
Within this vale
of toil
and sin
your head grows bald
but not your chin – use
Burma-Shave
We counted down the signs
Mile after mile
Wagontire
Burma shave add
Wagontire
Burma Shave
every mile
counting down
.
As we drove
into the gathering dusk,
We speculated that Wagontire
Must be a giant truck stop
An oasis in the desert
In the middle of nowhere,
We pulled into town
Nothing but a gas station
Motel and cafe
We stopped
Last gas for 100 miles
According to the highway sign
In the morning
We chatted with the owner.
He was the sheriff, fire chief
rancher and Owner
of the motel gas station.
The only business in town
And the only place open
For one hundred miles.
I noticed a sign outside
“Welcome to Wagontire, Oregon
Population 200,000 sheep.
and two and one half-humans.”
I asked the sheriff
“Who is the half-human?”
He said,
“My idiot son.”
And we left
200 miles
We finally
left Eastern Oregon.
2016
In 2016, my wife
and I drove
through Eastern Oregon.
As part of our epic
Cross-country trip
to celebrate my retirement
from the U.S. Foreign Service.
31 states
10,0000 miles
in three months.
On the way
from Medford, Oregon
to Yellowstone,
We drove along
Highway 395,
40 years since
my trip with my father.
The signs for
Wagontire were gone
as were the Burma Shave signs.
As we drove through the town
The motel was abandoned
Nothing there at all.
The motel was in ruins
Just another ghost town.
And that sign was gone too
Just a small sign saying,
Wagontire, Oregon.
We speculated about wagon tire
And all the other nothing burgs
We drove through that summer.
Heart of Trump’s
Forgotten America
Fly over country.
background info on Burma Shave commercials by Microsoft Co-Pilot
Certainly! Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, but it became even more famous for its unique advertising campaign. Let me share some interesting details and a few delightful Burma Shave poems with you:
History of Burma-Shave:
Introduced in 1925by the Burma-Vita company in Minneapolis, it was initially known for a liniment made from ingredients sourced from the Malay Peninsula and Burma.
Seeking wider appeal, they launched the Burma-Shavebrand of brushless shaving cream along with a clever advertising program.
At its peak, Burma-Shavewas the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the US.
Unfortunately, sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963, the company was sold to Philip Morris. The iconic roadside signs were removed at that time.
These witty and memorable poems left a lasting cultural impact, reminding us of a bygone era when highways were dotted with clever signs and a touch of humor. 🚗🌟
Background Info on Wagontire Oregon from Microsoft Co-Pilot
Wagontire, an unincorporated community in Harney County, Oregon, lies along U.S. Route 395. The name itself is intriguing—it conjures images of a remote outpost in the vast Oregon landscape.
Here are some fascinating details about Wagontire:
Origin of the Name:
The community was named after the nearby Wagontire Mountain.
Despite its modest size, the name carries a sense of adventure and history.
Historical Context:
In the late 1970s, Wagontirewas home to just two people: William and Olgie Warner.
The Warners owned a property that included a gas station, café, motel, general store, and an RV park.
Across the road from these buildings was Wagontire Airport, where planes would taxi across the highway and refuel at the gas station.
The signs outside humorously declared: “Welcome to Wagontire, Oregon. Population: 2½ humans, 10 dogs, 200,000 sheep.”
Changing Times:
Fast forward to 2016, and Wagontirehad transformed.
The signs were gone, the motel abandoned, and the town reduced to ruins—a ghost town.
It became a symbol of the heart of forgotten America, the flyover country often overlooked by travelers.
Education:
Wagontire falls within Suntec School District 10(Suntec School, grades K-8) and Harney County Union High School District 1J (Crane Union High School).
Wagontire—a place where time stood still, where echoes of the past whisper across the desert landscape. 🌵🚗
1: Geographic Names Information System 2: United States Topographic Map 3: Moyer, Armond; Moyer, Winifred (1958). The Origins of Unusual Place-Names. Keystone Pub. Associates, p. 137. 4: Monroe, Bill (December 14, 1997). “Under the Desert Sky: Solitude for Sale.” The Oregonian. : Weber, first (July 11, 1993). “Everyone Stops At Wagontire (Pop. 2).” The New York Times. : Frazier, Joseph B. (April 2, 2000). “Life Takes on a Slow Pace in Wagontire.” Albany Democrat-Herald.
Last weekend, I finally hiked Hobart’s Ridge near Ashland, Oregon. Hobart’s Ridge is about a 30-minute drive from downtown Ashland. It is part of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument near Hyatt Lake. The trailhead is off Soda Mountain Road near Hyatt Lake, and Green Springs. There is an information center for the monument on Soda Road just past the turnoff for Hobart’s Ridge at the Green Springs Inn. As you drive down the road, you turn to the right and go down a dirt, gravel road through some private housing areas with no hunting/fishing/hiking signs. You will find the trailhead about two miles in.
The trail is part of the Pacific Crest Trail. The trail is a short three-mile loop trail to the top of Hobart’s Ridge and back. Up at the top, you have some fantastic views of Southern Oregon, including Mt Shasta, Mt McLaughlin, Hyatt Lake, and Ashland. Some of the best views in the region.
First Attempt 2016 – Encounter with Mad Mountain Man
I first tried to hike up Hobart’s Ridge in 2019. My wife and I had decided that we were going to go for a hike, and we were following the directions of an old friend of mine, whom I had known almost my entire life, since first grade, almost 65 years ago.
When we got near the trailhead, we found there was nobody there, as it was the middle of the week in early June. We have been talking about mountain lions and bears and other critters. And then we saw on the side of the road an old mountain man, with thick hair and beard. He had a lunatic’s thousand-yard stare and glared at us. He was walking with a shovel., and backpack. We were freaked out. We thought he might be an axe murderer or something, and we aborted our trip.
Finally Made it in 2024
It took another five years before I could get back up there, this time with the same friend who had originally recommended the trail. And we had a fun time. We ran into several other hikers and their dogs, but did not encounter the mountain man, coy dogs, or mountain lions, but did see some friendly deer.
The trail was nice. Delightful weather, great views, great wildflowers, and had a delightful picnic lunch at the top. I’m glad I finally made it up to the top of Hobart’s Ridge. At my age, (68) still being able to hike up a mountain is a great accomplishment.
Here’s a story I wrote after my first attempted hike to Hobart’s Ridge.
The Mad Bag Piper of Hobart’s Ridge
Joe Lewis was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail as part of his bucket list. He was 70 years old and figured this was the last chance he would have to take such an epic trip He had started in Southern California in May, and it was now August. He was three-quarters through the trip. He stopped off in the town of Ashland, Oregon to take a few days off the trail and recuperate before he pushed on. One night, after seeing a Shakespeare play, he had gone to a bar where he met some locals and told them where he was going.
“Well, you need to be careful as you hike the trails near here. There is a mad bag piper who haunts the mountains near here. On full moon nights, he appears and accosts hikers, challenging them to a drinking contest, saying that if .you could out drink him, he will let you live, but if he out drank you, he would have to kill you, because he was a soul hunter and had a contract with the Grim Reaper to keep.
Whatever you do, don’t take the bet. The mad bagpiper is not a human being. Nobody knows who he is, what he is. All we know hikers disappear every full moon. And on those nights you can hear the bagpiper, walking in the woods near Hyatt Lake. He is usually described as a tall mountain man with a long beard, carrying a backpack, and his bagpipes. “
Joe dismissed the warnings as a silly urban legend. Late on the next day, he set up camp near the top of Hobart’s ridge and was enjoying his dinner, a beer and the epic sunset, when he heard a bagpiper and saw an old mountain man coming up the trail.
“What brings you to my woods, my friend?.”
“ Just passing through.”
“Tell you want. Let’s play a game. If you can out-drink me, I will not only let you live but take you a buried treasure left over from the gold rush times. What do you say, Joe Lewis? Do we have a deal?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know everything about you. Let’s drink”
The mountain pulled out a bottle of Mount Gay Rum, Joe’s favorite drink, back in the day when he worked as a diplomat for the U.S. and had served in Barbados.
They started drinking and at about dawn the old man said,
“Joe, I like you, so I will let you live.”
Some hikers found later that day found Joe’s dead body, half-eaten by coy dogs. The mad bagpiper was long gone.
The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is an extraordinary ecological gem nestled at the intersection of the Cascade, Klamath, and Siskiyou mountain ranges. Let’s explore its fascinating features:
Location: The monument spans 114,000 acres (approximately 46,134 hectares) of lush forests and grasslands.
Ecological Marvel: This convergence of three distinct mountain ranges has created an area of unparalleled biological diversity and a varied landscape.
Establishment: Recognizing its exceptional ecology and diverse range of resources—biological, geological, aquatic, archeological, and historic—the monument was established in 2000.
Wildlife: Within the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, you’ll encounter a rich variety of animals, including deer, bears, mountain lions, small mammals, and songbirds. Birdwatchers are drawn to the presence of eagles and other raptors.
Activities: Visitors can engage in hiking, wildlife viewing, fishing, hunting, scenic drives, skiing, snowmobiling, and sledding.
Elevation Range: The elevation within the monument varies from 2,100 to 6,100 feet.
Location: Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, near Ashland, Oregon
Trail Length: Approximately 2.5 miles (out-and-back)
Elevation Gain: 413 feet
Difficulty: Moderately challenging
Estimated Completion Time: Around 1 hour and 9 minutes
Best Times to Visit: May through November
Activities: Bird watching, hiking, and running
Views: From the top, enjoy stunning vistas of Ashland, Pilot Rock, and Mt. McLoughlin.
Trail Description: The trail starts off moderately flat and gradually ascends. The last half-mile becomes steeper, but the panoramic valley views make it worthwhile. You’ll encounter wildflowers and may spot various bird species along the way. Dogs are welcome but must be on a leash. The trail is usually snow-free from late May to October.
To reach Hobart Bluff from Ashland:
Head east on Highway 66.
Look for the Hobart Bluff Trailhead near the highway.
Park your vehicle and begin your hike
Certainly! A Coydog is a fascinating hybrid resulting from the mating of a male coyote and a female domestic dog. Let’s explore some interesting facts about these unique canids:
Hybrid Origins:
A Coydog is the product of a coyote (Canis latrans) and a domestic dog (Canis lupus familiars).
These two canids belong to different species, making the Coydog a canid hybrid.
Crossbreeding between coyotes and dogs has occurred for so long that the exact percentages of wild hybrids remain unknown.
Characteristics:
Coydogs exhibit a mixture of traits inherited from both parents.
Their appearance and behavior can vary widely due to this genetic blend.
The exact proportions of coyote and dog characteristics are unpredictable.
Fertility and Breeding:
Hybrids of both sexes are fertile and can be successfully bred for up to four generations.
Similarly, a hybrid with a dog father and a coyote mother is known as a dogote.
Temperament and Care:
Coydogs can be challenging to handle, as they require a lot of affection and care.
Their temperament is akin to that of a child.
Due to the limited breeding season of coyotes, Coydogs are relatively rare.
Habitat and Occurrence:
Coydogs occur in the wild where the number of other coyotes is scarce.
In areas with fewer potential mates, they may mingle with domesticated dogs for companionship or breeding.
Byukchoji garden is a wonderful, beautiful botanical garden located in Paju County north of Seoul and not too far from the DMZ. It spans over 130,000 square meters and has a mixture of Eastern and western themed gardens divided into six thematic areas – Sensational, Mythical, Mindful, Breathtaking, Adventurous, and Freedom. There is a decent coffee shop, bakery and restaurant on site. There is also a nice art gallery showing pictures of famous botanical gardens from around the world and photos of the gardens taken by visitors.
There is also a garden shop with flowers and plants for sale. At the entrance gate, be sure to pick up the useful bilingual (Korean and English) guide map. It takes about an hour to walk around and truly appreciate the gardens. There is a very nice lotus pound in the center–the lotus flowers are in bloom in mid to late summer. The park is especially pretty in the Spring and Fall season.
Transportation options
To visit Byukchoji Garden from Seoul, you have several transportation options:
Note: to get there from Camp Humphreys take the GTX train from Pyeongtaek station, get off at Yongsan Station, got to Seoul station, then either take the subway or bus. The total trip should take about two hours. The park entry closes at 6 pm. The cost is quite modest, about 9,000 won (US$ 7) per person.
To get to First Garden using public transportation, you can follow these steps:
From Camp Humphreys take the GTX line from Pyeongtaek station to Yongsan Station, then take the subway to Seoul station, take the Airport Express train one stop to Bangkok station then the Gyeongi Jungang subway and get off at Unjeong station and take either the bus or taxi. Total travel time is about two hours. The park is open until 9 pm seven days a week and has several restaurant options on site.
Subway: Take the Gyeongi Jungang subway line and get off at Unjeong Station.
Alternatively, taking a taxi from Unjeong Station to First Garden is also a convenient option, especially if you’re traveling in a group of 3-4 people. The taxi fare is approximately 10,000 won1.
The cost is also 9,000 won or US$7).
For more information, see the following:
The Paju Byukchoji Gardens, also known as The Botanical Garden BCJ, is one of the famous breathtaking tourist attractions in South Korea, which was founded in 1965. This garden is located in the village of Changman-ri in Paju’s Gwangtan Township. The BCJ Gardens is spread over a vast 130,000 square meters with the polyphony of Eastern Gardens and Western Gardens as its main theme. This is also one of the K-Dreamland staples.
Apart from that, the Garden is sorted into 6 amazing themes: Sensational, Mythical, Mindful, Breathtaking, Adventurous, and Freedom. As the name suggests, each themed portion of the Garden gives you a blissful experience.
Sensational Tour
The Sensational part of the garden greets you first as soon as you enter the BCJ Botanical Garden. This part of the garden has the majestic Queen’s Garden, which is surrounded by Wildflowers, potted herbs, and shrubs that look dramatically beautiful. The pine tree-lined grove is also a beautiful display to savor your eyes.
Mythical Tour
As you go through the tree-lined lane, you will find the Mythical area that is enclosed in Marley Castle’s gilded gates of Paju Byukchoji Gardens. This area covers some of the ancient sculpture gardens of Greece and Italy. Also, you can find a few sculptures that are done in honor of the Greek God Apollo and Italian artist Michaelangelo.
Mindful Tour
Then comes the Mindful-themed area, which is mostly covered by green natural forested paths, you will also find a nicely constructed wooden bridge over a pond which is one of the attractions of this area. The most captivating thing is the Waterfall in this area, which will comfort your eyes and release the tension from your body with its enchanting presence.
Breathtaking Tour
Right after the Waterfall comes to the Breathtaking area, and as the name suggests, it is truly a breathtaking sight. The wooden walkway on the Byukchoji Pond is just an amazing scene and bridge to walk upon, with many flowers in the pond. Needless to say, this is the pinnacle of BCJ Gardens.
Adventurous Tour
The Adventurous area is quite an adventure for kids, as it mainly consists of a birch forest playground and other things which attract kids to play in; other than that, there isn’t much to explore here.
Freedom Tour
Moving on to the final themed area Freedom. This part of the garden is filled with flower-covered arches, grassy fields, and a road completely dedicated to the harmonious reunification of North and South Korea.
European and Asian-style gardens are the main attraction that brings people from various parts to have a look and enjoy the moment. The main highlight of these gardens is that it is good for kids and also for the people around the place to spend a good day with their loved ones. They also provide Wheelchair accessibility at the entrance for the disabled, which is a plus point.
Timings and Entry Fee
The Paju Byukchoji Gardens is open every day from 9 am-7 pm. To enjoy this beautiful garden at a slow pace, you need at least 3hrs, so make sure you are on time. And the tourists who arrive after 6 pm are basically out of luck as the ticket sales close at 6 pm. The adult ticket is 9.500 KRW.
European and Asian-style gardens are the main attraction that brings people from various parts to have a look and enjoy the moment. The main highlight of these gardens is that it is good for kids and also for the people around the place to spend a good day with their loved ones. They also provide Wheelchair accessibility at the entrance for the disabled, which is a plus point.
Timings and Entry Fee
The Paju Byukchoji Gardens is open every day from 9 am-7 pm. To enjoy this beautiful garden at a slow pace, you need at least 3hrs, so make sure you are on time. And the tourists who arrive after 6 pm are basically out of luck as the ticket sales close at 6 pm. The adult ticket is 9.500 KRW.
I have some updates to my fitness regime posting posted here with my original posting following.
Weight Loss – Down to 175 pounds (79 K)
First I successfully lost weight and kept it off. At the beginning of January, I was 195 lbs and now I am 175 lbs most days. Below 170 and a high of 180.
How did I do it, you ask?
Well, first of all, I lost almost 15 pounds, (7 K) because in January I came down with a bronchial infection, which could have been another bout with COVID, though I did not test for COVID.
After that, I continued to change my diet and exercise program and continue to lose weight on a sustained basis.
Changes to Diet – processed foods out, more beans, and veggies, daily bitter melon tea, less coffee, less wine, no beer.
Every day I eat homemade Kefir or smoothies for breakfast, followed by fried rice, eggs, and soup or salad for lunch, and salad or fish or chicken for dinner occasionally lean beef for dinner, but most importantly no carbs for dinner. .
I have added beans to my daily diet – the key is sprouting beans overnight before cooking them. I add them to soups, salads, and even as a snack.
.I reduced the amount of wine I’ve been drinking. So now I only drink maybe every other day at most. I cut out all junk food, bread, pastries and chocolate, and no ice cream! and I have reduced cereal consumption.
every other day I am vegan or vegetarian. Finally, we go out to eat no more than three or four times per week.
Bitter Melon/Ugly Potato.Wormwood Tea
I have added drinking bitter melon tea throughout the day and reduced my coffee consumption to two cups in the morning. I still drink homemade kombucha but limit it to one glass per morning. and I drink tea in the afternoon. A day without earl gray is not a good day after all.
And most importantly, right after I eat I exercise, for 15 minutes to 30 minutes and a 3-mile walk at night.
Reduction in cholesterol/glucose levels
I have as a result of my weight loss, reduce my cholesterol level to the normal range, from the high level it was in January. And I’ve also reduced my blood sugar level to almost normal levels from a pre-diabetic level. My latest number was 106. The target number is 100. The most important thing is I will be able to avoid taking cholesterol medicine, diabetic medicine, and high blood pressure medicine. Once you start taking those it is all downhill to death. And diabetes is no picnic, my friend.
increasing daily exercise
Adding in using PIlate ball bouncing to an exercise routine. I bounce on the exercise ball at least one hour per day while watching TV. the new rule is whenever I watch TV I exercise – using the ball, exercise bike, steps, and lifting weights. At least an hour a day, often more and I go for a three-mile walk almost nightly.
Going forward, I will resume doing yoga, and this summer we will go to the gym every night as it is more difficult to walk in the States than in Korea.
Weekly Chiropatric Massage
my insurance covers chiropatric and theraputic massages up to 50 per year and have a good massage place we go once a week.
Goal is to avoid having to take cholesterol. diabetics and high blood pressure medicine for life and to keep my weight down to 170-175 from now on.
Original posting
As some of you might know, I have been following a fitness regime for many years. I offer these tips to you because I believe anyone can improve their health through daily exercise, and a better diet.
Here are some of my tips for physical fitness and suggestions. It must be working. I am usually about 187 pounds (now 175) and don’t take any prescription drugs, my cholesterol levels are good as are my blood sugar levels although they are a bit higher than I want them to be. I suffer from Fibromyalgia, arthritis, and hammer toes. I also exercise daily, riding on my exercise bike while looking at my emails, and FB feeds, studying Korean, and going for a three-mile walk at least four times a month. Lately, I bought a pull-up bar and installed it on the doorway and I do it periodically throughout the day, squats, and swings, working my way up to doing pull-ups. I write in my journal every morning, and I also go for a walk every day and play the piano daily. I eat a lot of homemade food including Kefir, and Kombucha. and I am gluten-free.
here are my diet recommendations, my physical exercise regime, my daily writing regime, and my piano-playing regime.
I hope it inspires you to take charge of your physical and mental fitness.
Diet
I start my day by drinking coffee and watching the news while writing in my journals.
Coffee
The first two cups are fully loaded – coffee, decafe, with yoga detox tea, cinnamon, nutmeg, and milk.
Sometimes I add in protein plant superfoods from Costco containing the following:
my daily breakfast
includes blueberries
in my smoothie
apple cider vinegar
blueberry, strawberry, oranges
banana, pineapple,
cinnamon
coconut oil
home made kefir
kale
kombucha.
When we moved to Yeongjong island, near the Incheon Airport, we found that we would be deprived of two of our three favorite miracle foods, Kombucha and Kefir. But we were pleasantly surprised to find we could order our third favorite health food item, wheat grass for home delivery. Have not seen it in the stores but have seen it in some smoothie places as well as home delivery. best to mix it in a smoothie. Wheatgrass juice does not taste that great!
Growing Kombucha and Kefir in Korea
Kombucha
Living in Oregon was great. Kombucha is everywhere. Costco carries Kombucha everywhere except in Korea. The best brand we found was Gingerade. But I liked sampling the kombucha everywhere, several bars brew it on-site and you can fill up a growler and take it home.
What is Kombucha, you ask? It is fermented tea, filled with powerful probiotics and it is so good for your health. It does contain 1 percent alcohol so that should not get you into trouble with the new draconian drunk driving laws here in Korea!
Since neither the Commissary nor Costco nor anyone else carried it, or even knew what it was, we decided that we had to brew it ourselves. The starter kit we brought with us had gone bad. So, we bought kombucha from Amazon and used that and the leftover starter kit to get started.
We used green tea as the base. Straight black tea and jasmine tea will work but not Earl Grey due to the bergamot oil in the tea.
We brewed up several gallons of tea, added sugar, the starter kit, and the cans of kombucha. Then we put it in a sprouted warmer kit ordered from Amazon and wrapped another gallon in an electric blanket. You have to keep the kombucha at about 80 degrees F (26.67 Celsius).
Then we waited for six weeks. Finally ready to go today and we bottled it and started our next batch!
Here’s what it looks like with the scuzzy taken out of the kombucha.
kombucha
Kefir
Making Kefir was easy, we’ve been making it for years. We had started kits we bought in Oregon before we left. Just got some organic milk and we were in business. If you have to use Korean milk, make sure it is full-fat milk, 2 percent makes watery kefir. There are recipes for using almond milk, coconut milk, and rice milk but we have not used them because we heard it would be pretty watery. Might want to try Goat milk sometime though. The Commissary’s organic full-fat Milk is perfect. You can also buy Kefir at the Commissary just to see if you like it but their Kefir has extra sugar in it and I am not sure it would be a good starter mix. Best to order the starter kits from Amazon (they will be delivered to a local address) and you should not have any problems. But with both be sure you sanitize your containers with hot boiling water before making either kombucha or kefir. Need to keep stray random non-cultured bacteria out of the mix.
See below for articles on the health benefits of Kombucha and Kefir, articles on how to make it, and where to buy it locally.
As a personal testimony a few years ago, I noticed that I did not have hay fever in the Spring. I used to have to make a trip to the urgent care/ER because I got so inflamed that I could not even open my eyes and I was sneezing so bad. The medicine they gave me worked a bit but I mostly just suffered. Then I started eating kefir for breakfast and drinking Kombucha and my hay fever disappeared.!
TEAZEN is another company that offers kombucha in powder stick form, which you can mix with water or juice. They claim to be the world’s first to introduce this convenient way of consuming kombucha. You can also order their products online from their website3 or find them in some supermarkets and convenience stores.
Homebrewing is an option if you want to make your kombucha at home. You will need a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), tea, sugar, and a glass jar. You can buy a SCOBY online or get one from a friend who already brews kombucha. Some online tutorials and recipes can guide you through the process of making your kombucha.
Make your kefir at home with kefir grains and milk. Kefir grains are a mixture of bacteria and yeast that ferment milk and produce kefir. You can buy kefir grains online or get them from someone who already makes kefir. You will also need a glass jar, a cloth, and a rubber band to cover the jar. Many online guides and videos can show you how to make kefir at home1.
Visiting a kefir cafe where you can enjoy fresh kefir drinks and other products made with kefir, such as smoothies, ice cream, or cheese. Some examples of kefir cafes in Korea are Kefir Lab in Seoul, Kefir House in Busan, and Kefir Story in Daegu.
Ode to Kombucha
We have finally mastered the art of brewing home Kombucha and are enjoying a glass of this miracle drink every morning along with our homemade kefir and our power smoothies. If I keep this up, I will live to be a hundred years old. Only 45 more years to go….
Ode to Kombucha
gt-kombucha
Kombucha
Only drink it in the morning
Morning Delight
By the dawning sun
Up at the morning dawn
Can’t wait for my morning cup
Have to have my kombucha
At least once a day.
Ode to Kefir
Kefir
Everyday
Food of the gods
In every way
Radiant health will follow.
THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO KICKASS KOMBUCHA
It’s a big day everyone! The day your intestinal microbiota has been begging you for. The day you say goodbye to expensive store-bought kombucha. The day you become a brewmaster I impart to you the secrets of homemade kombucha!
The goal of this guide is to be your one-stop shop for homemade kombucha brewage, from SCOBY-less to fermented perfection. No hopping around the interwebs. No fuss. No confusion. Because making homemade kombucha is so simple (albeit a bit slow), and I hope after reading this you’ll give it a whirl! Let’s hope right to it.
HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE KOMBUCHA: OVERVIEW
This post will go into detail about each step in the process of making kombucha. For succinct instructions, scroll to the bottom where a recipe card lays out the basics of making homemade kombucha. The general order of things goes something like this (you can jump around this tutorial by clicking the links below):
Before we start, here are some general notes that are consistent throughout the whole homemade kombucha process.
No metal or plastic containers. Metal can react with the acidic kombucha and hurt your SCOBY, while plastic can house nasty bacteria that you don’t want sneaking in.
Cleaning is key. A recurring theme in kombucha brewing is that EVERYTHING must be CLEAN! We’re creating the perfect environment for good bacterial growth, but if a bad bacteria slip in, it could ruin your batch (and make you pretty sick).
Temperature plays a role. Fermentation goes a bit quicker in warmer temperatures, and a bit slower in colder weather.
No mold zone. If you see any mold growing on your SCOBY or in the tea (which I understand can be difficult to discern from the hideous SCOBY, but will generally be green, white, or black), then toss your whole batch.
Milk kefir is not only easy to make, but it is a delicious, probiotic-rich, versatile beverage your whole family can enjoy. Whether you are just exploring how to make milk kefir at home or have cultured dairy before, this video and instructions are here to help make culturing milk kefir at home easy.
If you have purchased our dehydrated milk kefir grains, please follow the instructions included with your milk kefir grains or watch our how-to video on How to Activate Milk Kefir Grains to get started.
If you wish to use raw milk to make milk kefir, be sure to activate your milk kefir grains using pasteurized milk first. You can then slowly transition them to raw milk.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO MAKE MILK KEFIR
To get started, first, gather your supplies and choose a variety of milk to use.
Transfer the active kefir grains into up to 4 cups of fresh milk.
Cover with a coffee filter or butter muslin secured by a rubber band or jar ring.
Place in a warm spot, 68°-85°F, to culture.
Culture until milk is slightly thickened and the aroma is pleasant. This generally takes 24 hours but can take less time in warmer temperatures, so keep an eye on your grains.
As your milk kefir grains grow in size, you may choose to remove the kefir grains by hand. Make sure your hands are very clean and well rinsed, but do not use anti-bacterial soap to avoid contaminating the culture.
Use a Plastic Mesh Strainer
Sometimes milk kefir can be a bit thick. If necessary, you can use a silicone spatula or plastic spoon (in a swirling motion) to help work the kefir through the strainer. Stainless steel can be used if necessary; just be sure it’s stainless steel and not a reactive metal.
Pour Kefir into A Shallow Bowl
This will make the grains easier to see. Using a plastic or wooden spoon, scoop the grains out. Once the grains have been removed, pour the finished kefir into a container.
OVER-THICKENED KEFIR
While kefir sometimes turns out to be thin, it is also possible for kefir to over-thicken or turn into curds and whey. If this happens, you may need to strain your kefir grains with extra care. You can find tips in our Straining Over-Thickened Kefir tutorial.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Following the above process, you can make milk kefir at home regularly. If after making milk kefir for a while you decide you don’t need 4 cups every day, it is possible to make smaller batches. Just choose a method in our tutorial How to Slow Down Making Milk Kefir + Make Smaller Batches.
Resting Your Milk Kefir Grains
If you ever reach a point where you need to take a break from making milk kefir, there are a few ways you can put your kefir grains on pause. This includes refrigerating them for shorter breaks and drying them for longer breaks.
In either case, your grains must be activated and cultured kefir regularly for 3 to 4 weeks before you attempt either of these resting methods.
most days I go for a three to five-mile walk, bike five K on my exercise bike, do three sets of pull-ups/swings, and do yoga and weightlifting. About two hours total per day. While in the park I do some pull-downs, twisting wheels, and cross-training as well.
I may sign up for a gym and join a Pilates or yoga club.
I also do ceregem massage bed, weekly massage therapy, acupuncture, and moxibustion at home.
I keep track of my fitness in my daily journal noting what I did the day before, including what I ate using the following format: (November 2 entry/followed by May 5 entry)
November 2
Health
Weight: 188
BM:
Symptoms: moderate pain levels
Doctor Visit: scheduled November 7th for follow-up re chronic leg pain
Results: TBC
Follow-Up Due: March 2024
Med News Items:
Diet:
Breakfast: smoothie
Lunch rice, soup, fish Korean side dishes
` Dinner GF Pizza
snacks:
Dessert:
Drinks: Alcohol nó Alcohol Day
blend decaf, kombucha, coffee, fake coffee, fruit juices, etc
Exercise
Actual:
bike seven k
pull up three times consisting of 3 sets of squats, and two sets of swinging.
New strategy
15 three sets of 50 reps per weight
15 minutes of Yoga
5 sets of 50-step reps
5k on the bike
3 miles walk.
Grip periodically 100 reps
Standing desk for two hours
pull up 5.
pull down 200.
wheel 200
Ceregem:
foot massage unit:
neck shoulder massage unit:
Moxibustion
Ceregeem pulls up.
while walking exercise in the park
twisting 200
cross training
pull-downs
Acupuncture weekly
Massage weekly
May 5 Entry
Health
Weight: 176
BM:
Symptoms:
Doctor Visit:
Results:
Follow-Up Due:
Med News Items:
Blood sugar testing 106
other testing
Diet:
Breakfast: kefir
Lunch chicken, fried rice and salad
Dinner soup
snacks:
Dessert:
Drinks: Alcohol None
blend decaf, kombucha, coffee, fake coffee, fruit juices, etc
Exercise
Actual:
` 2 hour pilates ball
weights
chin-up
New strategy
15 three sets of 50 reps per weight
30 minutes of Yoga
5 sets of 50-step reps
5k on the bike
3 miles walk.
Grip periodically 100 reps
Standing desk for two hours
pull up/swing 10
wear the pain patch 2 hours
Ceregem:
foot massage unit:
neck shoulder massage unit:
Moxibustion
Acupuncture weekly
Massage weekly
in park
pull down 200.
wheel 200 in the park
cross trainer
Ceregem treatment
I first bought a cergem acupressure massage bed in 1996 and use it almost every day. the bed uses infrared heat and jade technology to provide acupressure therapy as the jade crystals move up and down your spine providing long-lasting pain relief leading to deeper sleep. I usually use it while reading before going to bed.
Note: will probably upgrade to a full massage chair in the fall.
from Bing AI review
Ceregem massage bed is a therapeutic bed that uses a combination of massage, heat, and acupressure to provide relaxation and relief from pain. The bed is designed to provide a full-body massage that targets pressure points and helps to improve blood circulation. Here are some of the benefits of using a Ceregem massage bed:
Relaxation: The massage bed provides a relaxing experience that can help to reduce stress and anxiety.
Pain relief: The bed’s massage and heat functions can help to relieve pain and soreness in the muscles and joints.
Improved circulation: The massage bed’s acupressure function can help to improve blood circulation, which can help to reduce inflammation and promote healing.
Better sleep: The bed’s massage function can help to promote relaxation and improve sleep quality.
Detoxification: The bed’s heat function can help to promote sweating, which can help to eliminate toxins from the body.
Please note that while the Ceregem massage bed has many potential benefits, it is important to consult with a healthcare professional before using it, especially if you have any underlying medical conditions.
Moxibustion Treatment
I have been moxibution treatment for about a year now. we have a home kit which we do in conjunction with using the ceregem massage therapy bed. About two to three treatments per week are ideal. We also occasionally go to a clinic for treatment.
Moxibustion involves burning wormwood and applying it to your skin. It is an ancient Chinese-Korean medical treatment. for more info read the following from the Bing AI chat on moxibution.
Moxibustion is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy that involves burning dried mugwort on or near the skin’s surface to stimulate acupuncture points. It is believed to have several health benefits, including:
Pain relief: Moxibustion can help to relieve pain and soreness in the muscles and joints.
Improved digestion: Moxibustion can help to improve digestion and alleviate digestive issues such as constipation and diarrhea.
Reduced inflammation: Moxibustion can help to reduce inflammation in the body, which can help to alleviate symptoms of conditions such as arthritis and asthma.
Improved blood circulation: Moxibustion can help to improve blood circulation, which can help to promote healing and reduce inflammation.
Stress relief: Moxibustion can help to promote relaxation and reduce stress and anxiety.
Please note that while moxibustion has many potential benefits, it is important to consult with a healthcare professional before using it, especially if you have any underlying medical conditions.
mental fitness regime
Alzheimer’s Prevention
I heard a long time ago that playing music, learning languages, and doing mental games like crossword puzzles every day is the best thing you can do to ward off the dreaded Dementia or Alzheimer’s. Since my mother died of Alzheimer’s I am at increased risk. I have been doing all three for almost a year now, playing the piano, studying Korean via Duolingo and watching K Dramas, doing daily writing prompts, writing three to five poems or short stories per day every day, and writing down my dreams and journal entries writing three to four hours every day, and weekly blog postings, instead of crossword puzzles.
daily writing in my journals
I have been writing a daily journal since my 40s. I write down my dreams, my anxieties, my daydreams, and nightmares, and draft poetry and stories first.
then I write my journal including what I did the day before, major news items, things to note, goals for the day, what I ate the day before, and my daily exercise/health statistics.
I save my creative work at least once a week, including putting down my work on my creative writing spreadsheet to keep track of everything. I write anywhere from one to ten pieces every day.
I also keep track of books read, movie/TV shows seen and music played to and listened to.
I am currently reading the classics =Finishing Plato’s The Republic.
daily piano playing
I have been playing the piano almost daily now for a year. Usually between 5 and 6:30 pm. Due to noise restrictions can’t play after 7 p.m. as I live in a high-rise apartment building.
This time around I have started analyzing the music before I play it noting the music areas to pay attention to including key, key changes, registry changes, very high and very low notes which are hard for me to read, and repetition patterns. I found that this simple step has paid off in helping me play a lot better and I feel my skills are returning to where they were when I last played about seven years ago. I am sure I will achieve my lifelong goal of reaching semi-professional level playing within a few years.
I highly recommend this tip, playing each hand separately first when doing complicated counterpoint like in Bach, and listening, when possible, to the music you are going to play on YouTube while reading the score, to anyone returning to playing music.
I recently played my first Mozart Sonata and well I did not do badly. I will return to it next year after finishing other piano books.
Every day I write something following prompts from Pensively 101, Writer’s Cramp, and Fan Story.
Here’s my entry for May 5
Sunday, May 5, 2024
Flavor of Korean Food
Korean Food
Korean food
is celebrated worldwide
for its intense flavor
and pungent fragrances
the flavor comes from Korean herbs
garlic, ginger, ginseng, Kimchi, onions, leeks
mushrooms, red peppers, sesame,
and in springtime, wild mountain herbs.
CELEBRATIONS!
The 18th annual HerbDay will take place on Saturday, May 4, 2024. It’s an international celebration of herbs aimed at educating and sharing ideas about the many ways herbs bring joy and well-being into our daily lives. We celebrate the use of herbs in food, beverages, medicine, beauty products, and crafts, along with the art of growing and gardening with herbs.
Join Hands Day, observed across the United States on the first Saturday in May, is a way to cultivate unity by uniting the older generation with the younger generation in a day of volunteering. When young people have a chance to interact with seniors, they develop communication skills, positive attitudes about aging, problem-solving abilities, broader social networks, and a sense of purpose.
Trumpian Sophy’s Quatern
Former President Trump lies all the time.
He can’t help himself he is a con man.
But, he fears in his mind he is past his prime.
To his followers, he is a real he-man.
Now, at long last he is on trial for his crime
Former President Trump lies all the time.
Will he be found guilty, and serve hard time?
Will he, in the end, be sentenced to prison time?
He spends his time committing cybercrime
In the end, he is nothing but a criminal.
Former President Trump lies all the time.
Unpredictable, unforgivable.
In 2024, we must all choose.
Two old candidates past their prime-time.
If we make the wrong choice, we all may lose,
Former President Trump lies all the time.
New Prompt: The last form in this Poetry Week is a form invented by Sophy – Sophie’s Quatern.
Information about this form can be read here: “Sophy’s Quatern”
Title of your work: Being Free (in honour of Liberation Day in The Netherlands tomorrow)
Sometimes new forms are developed especially for a contest. This is such a form. It was developed for a “Poetry folly”, in which poets were allowed to write poetry at its worst, just for the fun of it. So my friend Sophy (543) developed this form:
* Sophy’s Quatern contains four stanzas of four lines each.
* Every line has ten syllables.
* No meter required.
* There is a rhyme scheme:
— abab, caca, adad, eaea
* Line 1 of the first stanza is repeated
— as line 2 of second stanza
— as line 3 of third stanza
— as line 4 of last stanza.
An example:
Sometimes new forms are developed especially for a contest. This is such a form. It was developed for a “Poetry folly”, in which poets were allowed to write poetry at its worst, just for the fun of it. So my friend Sophy (543) developed this form:
— abab, caca, adad, eaea
Rain falls down, after a morning of sun
the bright blue sky has disappeared; it’s grey.
Children argue; they don’t have any fun
they have to stay indoors; but will not play.
Hear, a mother screams, a frustrated voice
rain falls down, after a morning of sun.
I close my eyes and sigh, I have no choice
than go on; this, my work, needs to be done.
My husband comes home… boy! He had to run,
too much rain fell on his head, I just smile
…rain falls down, after a morning of sun…
then nod… complaining is just not his style.
The last strokes on my painting, it looks nice
Content I finished what I had begun.
My children play Yahtzee, rolling the dice;
rain falls down, after a morning of sun.
President Trump Lies Yabba Dabba Doo Fan Story
It is a sad day
Former President Trump will lie
He is nothing but the ultimate con man
To his followers, he is a he-man
And so many people must die
Why do people take his advice?
Why do they want to follow this evil man?
Why do they believe he is a great man?
Why did so many covid patients die
when will Americans wake up from the Trumpian nightmare
i know ‘I’m posting this a couple of days early 🙂 first and foremost, I would like to thank you all for letting me take April off to do NaPoWriMo!! it is much appreciated!! 🙂
and now our potlatch poetic prompt for the week of May 5-11, 2024
The YABBA DABBA DO was created by Havyk Dementius of Allpoetry
It is syllabic with three stanzas of two quintets and a rhyming couplet:
syllable count is:
5/10/10/10/10
15/10/10/10/10
15/15
The rhyming pattern is:
xabba
xabba
cc
Example Poem
Cluttered Nest by Lawrencealot
I’m motivated
yet have so many things I have to do
I have no notion where I ought to start.
Sometimes I wish that I had had a clue-
I should have started with another part.
You left to visit relatives living several states a way.
I’ve cleaned out what was called garage- in fact
the cars can now be driven right inside.
A double storage shed I’ve built out back
for all the detritus we must abide.
Since we’re storing the kids stuff ’til they decide to move away
out of sight it?s hiding now; our kids and stuff will always stay.
Write a three-line, 3-5-3 syllable count, poem on any aspect of the theme ‘air’. It can be on breeze, wind, tornadoes, hurricanes, twisters, breath, or any other topic directly related to air. Creative approaches are welcome.
A Lunatic Howling At The Light Of The Full Moon
just a lunatic howling at the light of the full pink moon
This week we feature a MONOKU poem. You may use the event’s picture or your own.
A Monoku is a type of poem which is made up of a single horizontal line. It’s currently accepted as a variant of the haiku form of poetry. Monoku emerged as an independent style of poetry in the 1970s.
Unlike Haiku, written in three lines, Monoku features a single line consisting of seventeen syllables or less. It must be as brief as possible. Use a dash to pause anywhere in your one line.
It contains a pause brought about by speech rhythm with slight or no punctuation. The first letter should not be capitalized – but instead written in lowercase.
MONOKU’S HISTORY – It’s a type of one-liner haiku that’s brief and clear. MONO (one) is a Greek prefix plus KU a Japanese suffix (mono + ku) to create a new English term MONOKU originated in 1970 by Jim Kacian. the haiku foundation organization
Example
an icicle– the moon drifting through it by Matsuo Allard (1978) poetrysoup.com
This week we are featuring a CHOKA poem. You may use the event’s picture or your own.
CHOKA-It’s a traditional form of Japanese poetry created during the Japanese Court era during the 6th to the 14th centuries consisting of nine-lines in a 5/7/5/7/5/7/5/7/7 syllables pattern and may be repeated. Choka means a long poem. Over time, Choka influenced the development of other Japanese poetic forms, such as tanka and haiku.
The most intricate Japanese Poetry form is the Choka, or Long Poem.
The early form consisted of a series of Katuata joined together. This gives a choice of form structures of
5/7/5/5/7/7… etc. or 5/7/7/5/7…etc
The Choka could be any total line length and indeed many exceeded 100 lines.
Looking at this, it is easy to see why Poetic Historians believe the Katuata is the original basic unit of Japanese poetry using either the 17 or 19 unit onji.
The choka is a Japanese form of unrhymed alternating five and seven syllable lines that ends with an extra seven syllable line. It can be any odd number of lines.
Origin:
Japanese
Schematic:
A nine-line choka would be:xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
The choka (長歌 long poem) was the epic, story telling form of Japanese poetry from the 1st to the 13th century, known as the Waka period. Storytelling was rare in the Japanese language during the Waka period although it is found in the Man’yôshû and even the Kokinshú. Most often the Japanese poet would write epics in classical Chinese. Still, the occasional poet with a story to tell would tackle the choka, the earliest of which can be traced back to the 1st century. It describes a battle and is 149 lines long.
Originally chokas were sung, but not in the Western sense of being sung. The oral tradition of the choka was to recite the words in a high pitch.
I always check this site for confirmation when cross-checking forms Judi Van Gorder has done a remarkable job for PMO.
Choka
Type:
Structure, Metrical Requirement, Simple
Description:
The choka is a Japanese form of unrhymed alternating five and seven syllable lines that ends with an extra seven syllable line. It can be any odd number of lines.
Origin:
Japanese
Schematic:
A nine-line choka would be:xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
The most intricate Japanese Poetry form is the Choka, or Long Poem.
The early form consisted of a series of Katuata joined together. This gives a choice of form structures of ….. 5 – 7 – 7 – 5 – 7 – 7.. etc, or .. 5 – 7 – 5 – 5 – 7 – 5.. etc.
Traditional style : Stanzas consisting of any number of the above structures (called Katuata)
or alternaively : Alternating five and seven syllable lines that end with an extra 7 syllable line.
While reading Charles Bukowski’s poetry
On the metro ride home
Listening to Buddha bar music
On my oh too hip IPod.
I begin to see myself as I was
Over 30 years ago when I was merely a bit player
A minor character in a Charles Bukowski poem.
A wild young underemployed intellectual
Hanging out in dismal bars and dives all over Asia and California
Hanging with disreputable women and drunks and drinkers
And characters out of his kinds of haunts.
A mad poet bard of the underground
A drunken poet in a drunken bum show
That nightly played in his head.
Then one day I met the woman of my dreams
And went down a different path
A long, slow path to respectability.
And now 30 years later
I am no longer a wild man
I am still a poet at heart
But I am now also a bureaucrat
In a button-down suite.
Doing the people’s business
Working for the Government
I’ve become the Man.
Sometimes I wonder
Would I have been better off
Going down that other path?
Would I have ended up
Somewhere else
Doing something else.
Would I have been as happy?
Would I have been as successful?
No answer satisfies
The longing in my heart
For that wild thing
That still lurks beneath
It’s a civilized cover.
And I know that I am still
A mad poet at heart
Railing against the injustice of the world.
As I work day by day in the belly
of the great beast of State
I recall the ancient Chinese saying,
“Confucian during the day while Taoist rebel at night”
Playing out in my head and nightly dreams
In the true American Upper-class patrician tradition.
I close the book and look out the window
Get off the train, and walk slowly home.
And realize I had no choice
But to take the path that I’ve trodden on/
And so I put aside my misgivings
And say goodbye to my “Bukowskian” desires
For another night of domestic contentment.
Was it worth it all to take the conventional path?
And not take the Bohemian road to hell and back?
I look at my wife and realize
I had no choice, had no choice
But to follow her to the ends of the earth.
And beyond by her side as we walked our path
Of shared destiny.
Goodbye, Charles Bukowski, wherever you are
May I meet you in a bar in the next life?
And figure out where we should have gone.
Until then, the drinks are on me.
Spillwords has published a number of my works over the years. See the following:
April Poetry Madness 2024 April 26 to April 30, 2024 Poems
This is the fifth and final batch of my April Poetry Madness challenge poems, (for April 21 to April 25), following daily prompts supplied by Poetry Superhighway, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com Dew Drop Inn, and NaPoWriMo. I am not posting any more PSH poems, as I need to keep some unpublished for future submissions.
I have included the poem, the prompt, and occasionally a bonus poem or comment or two. I am also cross-posting this on All Poetry, Blog Lovin, Cosmos Funnel, Facebook, Fan Story, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Wattpad, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com, and Twitter. This is probably my last time doing this. Just getting too old to keep up.
NaPoWrMo The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
April 5, 2024
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Make Baseball Great Again!
NaPoWrMo Resurrecting the Dodo Bird
April 6
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Daily Ritual Drinks
NaPoWrMo Only In SF
Part Two
April 7
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Bonus: Yakima Dessert Blues
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Why Trump?
NaPoWrMo Planetary Nut Re-Configuration Program
April 8
PSH Area Codes
WD My Lucky Number
WC Economic Perception Delay
NaPoWrMo Wish You Were Here
April 9
PSH Dearly Beloved
WD the Major Event of My Life
WC Death to All Humans
NaPoWrMo My Dysfunctional Family
April 10
PSH You Can’t Write That!
WD Better Political Discourse Needed
WC Green Trees Don’t Make It
AI Bing Version
NaPoWrMo Ode to My Coffee Pot
April 11
PSH Quote Poem About 9-11
WD Crazy Love Nonet
WC April 11—Eclipse/d two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
NaPoWrMo Tribute to John Dean
April 12
PSH Subway Journey
WD Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
WC Civil War 2.0
NaPoWrMo 11 One Liners
April 13
PSH First Time to Eat Kimchi
WD Five Trumpian Humor Poetic Fragments
WC April 13—Discovery Shooting Down the Alien Visitors
NaPoWrMo Saga of Big Daddy
April 14
PSH 99 Haiku TBC
WD life worth Living
WC Tech Peeves
NaPoWrMo Shy Man Fishing
Part Three
Not posting PSH saving them as “unpublished)
Writer Digest Poems
April 15 New Middle Poem Middle Of Political Silly Season In The U.S. Trigger Warning Mild Political Rant
April 16 Trump Shardona Poem
April 17 New Tuesday prompt write a Shadorma poem about recent tech layoffs CEO To Labor Units of Production Shardona – You are Not Wanted
April 18 WD pessimistic Poem -not the Way to Fire People New Rules in the New Corporation World
April 19 Emotion Poem -fears of falling
April 20 The circus bear escapes
Bear in collar hears praise while rambling
alt. bonus poem Met And Married My Dream Lady
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
WC April 15 Lament Drifting Towards Civil War 2.0
WC Prove Something – God’s Demented Sense of Humor
WC Question something -The basic decency and sanity of Americans
WC Scumbagology
WC Comedy – The Donald Trump Show is Getting Old
NaPoWriMo Prompts
April 15
My stamp collection
April 16
Late Night Earthquake Blues
April 17
What is Hip?
April 18 It’s A Dog’s Life for Me
April 19
Hunting the Monsters in Hell
Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
Part four
Writer’s Digest Prompts
April 21 Romantic Trope -Fairy Tale Romance
April 22 Gaii’s Calls for Revenge Against Humanity Earth Day Nightmare
April 23 Donald Trump’s Trials the Heart of the Matter
April 24 Maximum Cruelty in the Name of Jesus in the Point
April 25 Insight into Trump Incite Homonym Poem
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 21—Salient Image (poem based on one concrete thing you remember at day’s end) Seeing My Wife
April 22— Serio-comic dilemma -Election Choices Trigger Warning -Anti-Trump Rant!
April 23—Let Shakespeare be your inspiration – Fairy Tale Romance
April 24—Unexplored Desire Rule of Ten
April 25 TV Show Rocky and Bullwinkle background info
NaPoWriMo Poems
April 21 News Gives Me the Blues
April 22 Coffee and Tea endless argument – which is better?
April 23 Batman Feeling the Blues Kojiki Poem
April 24 the Dream of the Sphinx
April 25 Proust Questionnaire
Part Five
Writers Digest Prompts
Day 26 Life as a Coffee Pot
April 27 Old Man Lost In His Memories -Cornish Sonnet re-mix
April 27 Old Man Lost in his memories
April 28 I saw my Father Die Double Cinquain
April 29 Until the end of time
April 30 Beginning Of My Life Dream Cherita
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 26—Noise Now My Home Korea
April 27—Beauty Korean Land of K Beauties
April 28 Secrets Diplomatic Secrets to Take to My Grave
April 29—The sense of an ending End of Trump Reality TV Show?
NaPoWriMo Prompts
Day 26 “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity April Poetry
Day 27 Insomnia Blues An American Sonnet
April 28 Meeting Dream Girl Sijo
April 29 Saga of Big Daddy
April 30 The Grim Reaper Gathers His Posse
Begin Poems
Writer’s Digest
Day 26 Life as a Coffee Pot
coffee
If I were to come back
As an inanimate object,
I would come back
As a coffee pot.
Giving pleasure
Every morning
To my master and friends.
As they enjoy the fresh coffee,
That is my Buddha nature
To make for them.
For today’s prompt, write a persona poem. A persona poem is just a poem narrated in the voice of a persona who is not yourself. Like I could write a persona poem in the voice of Batman or SpongeBob SquarePants or an abandoned payphone beside an abandoned gas station (which I just might do) or a stray cat. Pick someone or something, take on its persona, and write
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 28
Remix title: Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
converted to Cornish Sonnet form
Sam Adams thought about that date.
On a fine date in September.
For that was the day he met his fate.
Sparks flew from heart to heart.
A date he would always remember.
She soon became his sweetheart.
When he saw on the bus he knew
That she would be his forever.
And that he would never feel blue.
As long as she was by his side.
He vowed they would be happy forever
As long as she was by his bedside.
Sam Adams thought about that date.
On a fine date in September.
The Cornish Sonnet is said by an internet source to be influenced by Arab traders to the Cornish coast . This verse form appears to be a merging of Arabic meter and the sonnet. Exactly when and how this came about I have yet to pin down. Early Cornish verse is fragmented and stingy at best. The earliest literature in the Cornish language were fragments of religious plays. The language became all but extinct by the 18th century but what was preserved demonstrates some verse in octaves using 7 syllable loose trochaic lines and alternating rhyme. Unlike verse from other Celtic origins, deliberate use of alliteration or other devices of “harmony of sound” are not present. This sonnet form doesn’t fit with these early findings so I can only assume that it arrived on the scene much later than originally presumed.
The elements of the Cornish Sonnet are:
lyrical meditation.
a quatorzain, 2 sestetsmade up of linked enclosed tercets, followed by a refrain which is the repeat of the first line of each sestet.
metered at the discretion of the poet, lines should be of similar length.
rhymed Ababcc Defdef AD The first line of each sestet are repeated in refrain in the last couplet.
The sonnet can be written with an alternate rhyme scheme aaabcbc defdef CF In this scenario the last line of each sestet is repeated in refrain in the last couplet.
I opted to not use traditional meter as I generally don’t handle that well for some reason
original poem about old man lost in his memories – spelling out his memories of meeting his wife
Memories
Of past events
Yesterdays
Overwhelming
An old man
Lost in his past
Can’t sleep at 0 dark hundred.
Note: “ O dark hundred” is military/intel jargon referring to the time two to three hours before dawn when operatives get up to get ready for dawn operations. Depending on the location and time of year it is between 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.
for me is 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. when I get the insomnia blues.
For today’s prompt, write a remix poem. Just remix one of your poems. It could be from earlier in this month or even from before this challenge. But take one of your already existing poems and remix it. If it’s a sonnet, make it free verse. If it’s free verse, try turning it into a triolet or villanelle. Have fun with it.
April 28 Dead Poem I saw my Father Die Double Cinquain
Curtis Cosmos Aller, Jr
Visiting My Father’s Grave
My father died.
when i saw my dad lying there.
I sensed his soul departing from his dead body.
It was as if a light had gone out, his soul escaped from his life.
I knew death then.
Prompt:
We are going to start Poetry Week with the Double Cinquain.
On an Internet search for new poetry forms, I found the Double Cinquain. The structure is quite the same, compared with the Cinquain, only the syllables have doubled.
How did the Cinquain go?
xx
xxxx
xxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xx
The Double Cinquain have twice as many syllables, but still five lines.
So in a scheme it looks:
xxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxx xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxx
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a dead poem.
For today’s prompt, write a dead poem. Back on day 13, we wrote living poems. Now, we’re going to inspect the other side of that coin. A dead poem could take place at a funeral or involve a wilting flower that’s already been picked. Or it could involve the undead (like zombies and vampires). Or maybe a dead language, a dead culture, or as some people like to say, they’re just “dead inside.”
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 29 Until the End of Time Tripple Cherita Poem
lovers kissing
I will love you from now
Until The end of time.
and beyond death
When we met, we both knew
we were Soul mates
Who were fated to meet.
Our love was stronger
Then time and space
And we found each other
As we looked at each other
Sparks flew between heart-to-heart
As we stared at each other
With love blazing from your eyes.
You hypnotized me
Mesmerized me
You put a spell on me
You love Mojo working overtime.
And I knew that I was yours.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a Until Blank poem.
Tomorrow is the final day of this challenge but remember: This challenge ain’t over until it’s over, so…
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Until (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “Until the End of Time,” “Until the Cows Come Home,” “Until I Finish This Poem,” and/or “Until You Get Your Chores Done.”
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 30 Beginning Of My Life Dream Cherita
My life
Began one day
In September.
When my dream lady
Walked off a bus
Into my life.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, we have our fifth (and final) Two-for-Tuesday prompt.
Today is our fifth (and final) Two-for-Tuesday prompt, and also the final prompt of the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. But it’s not the final prompt(s) of the year, because we’ll get back to Wednesday Poetry Prompts every week beginning tomorrow, and I am planning to lead the 17th annual November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge in November (look for the guidelines in October).
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write at The End poem, and/or…
Write a Beginning poem.
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 26—Noise Now My Home Korea
When I first came
To South Korea in 1979
To do my Peace Corps duty
In a rural country town,
I thought that the old name
Of Korea
“the land of the morning calm”
Was absurd.
Korea was a noisy place
From early morning on.
Cars, horns, radio TV blaring
People talking to crowds everywhere
At night people drink and dine.
And loudspeakers
Blasting you awake
At 6 a.m.
And during elections
Sound trucks everywhere.
Now 45 years later
It is my home
No longer noisy
Chaotic exotic place
Just home.
April 27—Beauty Korean Land of K Beauties
lovers in the rain
I live in Korea
The land of plastic surgery
K beauty products.
Korean women are
Among the most beautiful
Woman in the world.
The cult of the beautiful
Everywhere you go
You see beautiful women
And men on the street,
And I realized I married
The most beautiful woman
In the world,
When I met and married
My Dream lady.
April 28 Secrets Diplomatic Secrets to Take to My Grave
I worked for 27 years
as a US diplomat
and witnessed a lot of things
that were and are considered
secrets.
– and we are trained
to keep these secrets
secret.
and I will no doubt die
and take some secrets
to my grave.
April 29—The sense of an ending End of Trump Reality TV Show?
While watching the Trump trials
I sense an ending
To the Trump Reality TV show.
As he is revealed to be
What he is
Nothing but a charlatan
A con man, a grifter.
And he is not the King
Not a dictator, and not a genius,
He seems to be just a tired old man
Finally, being held accountable.
For decades of alleged misconduct
Fraudulent business and political
Crimes include inciting a riot.
Stealing national secrets
And so many over.
Yet the polls show
He could become our next President
Perhaps I am seeing the end
Of democracy playing out
On my TV screen?
Dear God, I pray
Make it all go way
Retire Trump from the game
April 30 Poem About Poetry Why Do I Write?
Why Do I write
These poems every day?
Why do I spend so much time
Writing down these verses
That few will ever see?
Why do I bother?
The only answer is because
I must write daily
My inner muse compels me
And I have to write down
These mad thoughts.
And share them
With the world
Even if no one reads them
Other than my wife
And some of my friends.
I have no choice
That is what I am.
I am just a writer,
And a mad poet
At heart.
NaPoWriMo Prompts
Day 26 “Nattering Nabobs of Negativity April Poetry
(Original Caption) 8/22/1972-Miami Beach, Florida: President Richard Nixon will be inaugurated for a second term on Jan. 20, 1973. Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew wave and smile to the audience of the 1972 Republican National Convention after they acknowledged their re-nomination.
Before there was Donald Trump’s tirade
Against the false fraudulent fake news
Enemies of the people
For being a “lying liberal leftwing lunatic “
Peddling “fake fraudulent falsehoods”
Fake false news.
There was Nixon and Agnew’s crusade
Against their enemies
In the so-called Liberal media
VP Agnew who resigned
To avoid going to prison
Before Nixon’s downfall
Was famous for his quotes
One of his best quotes
Was this little gem
Filled with alliteration
He called out the press
For being
“Nattering Nabobs of Negativity.”
Happy final Friday of Na/GloPoWriMo, everyone!
Our featured participant for the day is Words With Ruth, where we get a dating profile in response to Day 25’s Proust Questionnaire prompt.
And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of a particular consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds elsewhere in multiple words, and assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Traci Brimhall’s poem “A Group of Moths” provides a great example of these poetic devices at work, with each line playing with different sounds that seem to move the poem along on a sonorous wave.
Your poem doesn’t have to be as complex as all that, though. Just pick a consonant or two and a vowel and dive right into the wonderful world (hey, there’s some alliteration/consonance/assonance right there) of sound.
Presidency:
In 1968, Richard Nixon asked Agnew to place his name in nomination for the vice presidency, and he became Nixon’s running mate.
Agnew gained national recognition for his colorful speeches denouncing Vietnam War protesters and other opponents of the Nixon administration.
He was despised by many Democrats but pleased Republicans with his rhetoric.
Resignation:
Agnew’s downfall began in 1973 when he was investigated for extortion, bribery, and income-tax violations related to his tenure as governor of Maryland.
Faced with federal indictments, he resigned on October 10, 1973, becoming the second person to resign the vice presidency (after John C. Calhoun in 1832) and the first to do so under duress.
Death: Spiro Agnew passed away on September 17, 1996, in Berlin, Maryland.
A very happy twenty-seventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo to you all.
Today, our featured daily participant is Peregrine Buffington, where you’ll not only find a lot of alliteration, consonance, and assonance in response to Day 26’s prompt, but you’ll find it in abecedarian form.
Our featured resource for the day is Poetry Pause, the “daily dispatch” of the League of Canadian Poets.
And now for our prompt – optional, as always! Today we’d like to challenge you to write an “American sonnet.” What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but . . . fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter.
April 28, 2024 Meeting Dream Girl Sijo
On that date,
In September, I met my fate.
When she came to life.
We met first in my nightly dreams
I knew I had met
My soul mate.
based on my true love story.
Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise.
You could also write a sijo in six lines – at least when it comes to translating classical sijo into English, translators seem to have developed this habit, as you can see from these translations of poems by Jong Moong-Ju and U Tak.
April 29 Clandestine – Saga of Big Daddy
photo created by Bing Co-Pilot
Big Daddy lived in the shadow worlds
in the clandestine underground.
He was an ex-University of Arkansas
And Dallas Cowboy player.
Who had worked for the CIA
After the agency fired him
For murdering enemies
Of the state at home.
In contravention of agency rules,
But they retained his services
From time to time.
He became a legendary figure
He was a cipher, a ghost,
a Machiavellian intel operative
A spy, a spook, a secret agent man,
living in the clandestine shadows..
No one knew his real name
Called him Big Daddy.
Or his latest covert name.
And he had hundreds
Of cover legends.
He officially did not exist,
As his agency had officially
Terminated him years ago.
He now worked for an agency
That did not exist.
The same agency
That had terminated his legal existence
For matters of national security.
He lived in the
clandestine Shadowlands
Of the third world.
In nameless hellhole slums
And clandestine, dark,
secret dungeons.
Where he would do what needed
To be done
Killing those that needed killing
At the instructions
Of his unseen masters.
He was just a rumor
Living in the shadow worlds
working for a clandestine
unnamed agency
that did not exist.
An intel operative
The best of the best at what he did
Which was creative interrogation.
His favorite choice
Was the creative use of
An electric shock,
Imaginary or not
But sometimes
It had an outcome
An unimaginable outcome.
His worst nightmare
The victim is released
And sues him
And the agencies
That he worked for.
But so far
It has not happened
As no one knew
His real name
And the government
Did not know too.
So justice
was never served
On Big Daddy.
April 30
And now for our optional prompt. If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words and write a poem that uses the word as its title.
Clandestine
Song Title/Album: “illicit affairs” / folklore
Lyric: “And that’s the thing about illicit affairs / And clandestine meetings and longing stares”
Definition: done in a private place or way done secretly
About the Word:Clandestine is an adjective that is often used as a substitute for secret and covert, and it is commonly applied to actions that involve secrecy maintained for an evil, illicit (as in “illicit affairs”), or unauthorized purpose. It comes to English by way of Middle French, from Latin clandestine, which is itself from Latin clam, meaning “secretly.” Although people involved in clandestine activities tend to clam up when asked about them, the bivalveclam has no relation to the Latin clam, but comes instead from the Old English word clam, meaning “bond” or “fetter.”
Machiavellian
Song Title/Album: “Mastermind” / Midnights
Lyric: “I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian ‘because I care”
Definition: using clever lies and tricks in order to get or achieve something : clever and dishonest
About the Word: While inspiring an adjective (such as Swiftian) may seem like a fine way to achieve linguistic immortality, it must be said that many words taken from people’s names are not as complimentary. Machiavellian—which describes things marked by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith—comes from the Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), the author of the most famous treatise on bare-knuckled politics ever published, The Prince, which brought him a reputation as an immoral cynic and even a teacher of evil.
April 30 The Grim Reaper Gathers His Posse
cheating death
It was Halloween night
A night that all the denizens
Of hell loved.
For on that night
All of hell would break out.
They would celebrate their annual escape
On Halloween, they are allowed
To go to the surface sunlit lands.
For a night of drinking,
Drugging and wilding
As bad craziness descends
Upon the land.
The Grim Reaper and his posse
Dressed up as cosmic court jesters
Dressed as fools.
They descended upon the world
And a night of chaos fell upon the land.
Thousands died, as the Grim Reaper
Added to his quota.
Bonus kills were bonus points.
He returned to hell with his minions,
And the souls of the dead
Who soon became mere ghosts.
Their voices crying in the wind
Echoing through time.
And now for our last prompt of the year – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in Claire Scott’s poem “Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.”
This is the fourth batch of my April Poetry Madness challenge poems, (for April 21 to April 25), following daily prompts supplied by Poetry Superhighway, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com Dew Drop Inn, and NaPoWriMo. I am not posting any more PSH poems as I need to keep some unpublished for future submissions.
I have included the poem, the prompt, and occasionally a bonus poem or comment or two. I am also cross-posting this on All Poetry, Blog Lovin, Cosmos Funnel, Facebook, Fan Story, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Wattpad, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com, and Twitter. This is probably my last time doing this. Just getting too old to keep up.
NaPoWrMo The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
April 5, 2024
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Make Baseball Great Again!
NaPoWrMo Resurrecting the Dodo Bird
April 6
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Daily Ritual Drinks
NaPoWrMo Only In SF
Part Two
April 7
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Bonus: Yakima Dessert Blues
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Why Trump?
NaPoWrMo Planetary Nut Re-Configuration Program
April 8
PSH Area Codes
WD My Lucky Number
WC Economic Perception Delay
NaPoWrMo Wish You Were Here
April 9
PSH Dearly Beloved
WD the Major Event of My Life
WC Death to All Humans
NaPoWrMo My Dysfunctional Family
April 10
PSH You Can’t Write That!
WD Better Political Discourse Needed
WC Green Trees Don’t Make It
AI Bing Version
NaPoWrMo Ode to My Coffee Pot
April 11
PSH Quote Poem About 9-11
WD Crazy Love Nonet
WC April 11—Eclipse/d two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
NaPoWrMo Tribute to John Dean
April 12
PSH Subway Journey
WD Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
WC Civil War 2.0
NaPoWrMo 11 One Liners
April 13
PSH First Time to Eat Kimchi
WD Five Trumpian Humor Poetic Fragments
WC April 13—Discovery Shooting Down the Alien Visitors
NaPoWrMo Saga of Big Daddy
April 14
PSH 99 Haiku TBC
WD Life Worth Living
WC Tech Peeves
NaPoWrMo Shy Man Fishing
Part Three
Writer’s Digest Poems
April 15 New Middle Poem Middle Of Political Silly Season In The U.S. Trigger Warning Mild Political Rant
April 16 Trump Shardona Poem
April 17 New Tuesday prompt write a Shadorma poem about recent tech layoffs CEO To Labor Units of Production Shardona – You are Not Wanted
April 18 WD pessimistic Poem -not the Way to Fire People New Rules in the New Corporation World
April 19 Emotion Poem -Fears of Falling
April 20 The Circus Bear Escapes
Bear in collar hears praise while rambling
alt. bonus poem Met And Married My Dream Lady
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
WC April 15 Lament Drifting Towards Civil War 2.0
WC Prove Something – God’s Demented Sense of Humor
WC Question something -The Basic Decency and Sanity of Americans
WC Scumbagology
WC Comedy – The Donald Trump Show is Getting Old
NaPoWriMo Prompts
April 15
My stamp collection
April 16
late Night Earthquake blues
April 17
What is Hip?
April 18 It’s A Dog’s Life for Me
April 19
Hunting the Monsters in Hell
Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
Begin Poems
Writers Digest Prompts
April 21 PAD Challenge: Fairy Tale Romance
lovers kissing
Sam Adams often thought
Of his true love story
As a fairy tale romance
That somehow became real.
He had dreamt of meeting
His dream lady
For eight years.
He joined the Peace Corps
Traveled to Korea
To look for her.,
Then one day
She told him
In his dream
“Don’t worry
We will meet soon”
That night
She walked off a bus
Into his life
Becoming his wife.
They were from different worlds
She was a Korean college student
From a middle-class family.
And he had grown up
As the son of a college professor
And politician in liberal Berkeley.
Yet despite their different backgrounds
And different personalities
He was not very practical
Lost in his world at times
Not that ambitious.
She was very practical
Money minded woman
Determined to make her mark
On the world
And they did not see eye to eye
On many things
But on the things that really matter
They were there for each other
Understanding each other
And their love grew
Day by day.
Until one day
Sam realized that they had
Been together 42 years
And were still in love.
And that had made all the difference
In their fairy tale true love story.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a trope poem.
Once we get through today’s poem, we’ll be finished with the first three weeks of this challenge. Where has the time gone?
For today’s prompt, write a trope poem. For most people, tropes are common plot devices used in certain genres. In romance, for example, the “different worlds” trope brings together two characters from different walks of life and/or cultures. Meanwhile, a popular trope in horror fiction is to split up, which usually doesn’t end well for many of the characters. Mysteries frequently feature the “unassuming suspect” trope. Pick a trope or mix a few in your poem today.
If you need help getting started, check out these lists of popular tropes:
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 22 Gaii’s Calls for Revenge Against Humanity Earth Day Nightmare
The spirit of the ancient trees woke up
after thousands of years of slumber.
They woke up and marched on Washington
demanding an end to logging, pollution, mining
and other assaults on the planet earth
by the mad human creatures.
They said that Gaia, the guardian angel
of the planet had summoned them
with this warning to the people of earth.
Your time on this planet is coming to an end
i have decreed it, and no one can oppose my will.
Gaia kept her word, unleashing a supper plagues
wiped out 99 percent of humanity.
The few who remained lived under
the watchful eyes of the tree spirits.
Today is Earth Day, so…
For today’s prompt, write an earth poem. The poem can be about nature or the planet. But it can also be about anything or anyone on the planet. Or dirt (aka, earth); feel encouraged to write a poem about dirt. Or earthlings!
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 23 The Heart of the Matter
Donald Trump’s Trials the Heart of the Matter
The heart of the matter
With Donald Trump’s numerous trials
Is simply this
Is the former president
Above the law
Can he do what he wants
And not be held accountable?
Is the former president
An authoritarian leader
A potential king?
Or is he simply
An everyday citizen now?
Is he a strong leader
a visionary revolutionary populist?
As he constantly proclaims
Or is he broken-down
Pathetic old loser ?
That is the heart
Of the matter.
Today is our fourth Two-for-Tuesday prompt, which would usually mean it’s the final Two-for-Tuesday prompt of the month, but we’re lucky this year: five Tuesdays!
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a “(blank) of the Heart” poem, and/or…
Write a “Heart of the (blank)” poem.
Not sure what I’m talking about? Replace the blank in either of these phrases with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” “Coney Island of the Heart,” “Heart of the Champion,” and/or “Heart of the Night.”
2024 April PAD Challenge: Maximum Cruelty in the Name of Jesus in the Point
governor abbot
I don’t understand
Why are so many Christian evangelical leaders
And politicians
Are so cruel to everyone!
It seems as if displaying
Maximum cruelty.
To the marginalized communities
To the poor, to immigrants
To the black and brown community
To Asians and other foreigners
To women, and especially
To the LGBTQ community
Is the point.
And all done in Jesus’s name.
By this self proclaimed
Christians.
This is something that Jesus
If he came back
Would not approve
As it violates the core principles,
Of the Christian faith.
Jesus would say,
“Where is the love?
Where is the compassion?
Where is the mercy ?
That I proclaimed
Was the core of my teachings?”
He would say to them,
“You are not Christians”
And he would drive them
Out of the Christian church.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a maximum poem.
Well, we’ve only got a week of April remaining, so let’s poem the heck out of the rest of this month.
For today’s prompt, write a maximum poem. Some people may recall that we wrote a minimum poem back on day 6; this takes that concept and brings it back the other way. In fact, one possible way into today’s poem would be to see what you did on day 6 and turn it on its head. Or go somewhere completely new. Whatever you do, take it to the max.
Day 25 Insight into Trumps Incite
president trump
One of the many things
That the former President
Has been accused of is
His calls for his followers
To rise up and riot,
An incitement to violence
On his behalf
Like on January 6th.
My insight into
this incitement rhetoric
Is simply this,
The former president is
The ultimate con man
An authoritarian wannabe
And inciting violence
Is part of his stock in trade
Hoping that his MAGA nation
Will help him take power again.
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 21—Salient Image (poem based on one concrete thing you remember at day’s end)
The obvious choice for this prompt was the current re-match in the U.S. pitting Trump Vs Biden and three to four third parties. what a farce it is in my mind. In a country of 335 million people, these are our choices?.
April 23—Let Shakespeare be your inspiration
couple-in-love-silhouette-during
My true love story
Almost seems like
A fairy tale romance.
Romeo and Julian almost.
Two lovers met
From different worlds
And find themselves.
Also has elements
Of “Mid-summer night dreams”
Sonnets and poems.
And other classic romance
Dramas, poems, and stories.
And classic romcoms.
Including Sleepless in Seattle
And Bollywood and K dramas..
But in my story
I dreamt of meeting
And marrying my dream lady
Traveled to Korea
Where she was waiting for me.
And despite opposition
From her family.
There was a happy ending
And we are still together
42 years later.
I likened my true love story to a Shakespearean drama or sonnet as it had elements of Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer’s Night Dream among other plays and sonnets. I have written a lot about my fairy tale dream romance in my portfolio and on my blog.
April 24—Unexplored Desire
As one gets older
One often looks back
At all the things you did
In your life.
The good, the bad, and the ugly
And we all have those moments
Because we are human.
And some things you desired
But never pursued.
For me, it was a dream
Of becoming a famous writer
While I can write poems
And short stories,
My greatest desire
Was to write
The Great American Novel.
And sadly it will remain
An unfulfilled desire
As I don’t have the patience or energy .
To edit my six rough draft novels
Turning them into something publishable
And they may die when I die.
And I am in good company.
The rule of ten rule applies
Of one hundred people
Who want to write a novel
Less than ten percent finish it
Of those less than ten percent publish it
Of those less than ten percent make any money
Of those less than ten percent make a living
At writing their novels.
The rule of ten is a meme that applies to many things. I have seen it applied to novel writing, acting, politics and sports. The point being that most people fail to achieve their dreams and there are only a few professional athletes for example although there are millions of people who have played the game in high school or college, few ever make it to the major leagues. Similar thing applies to novelists, only a few people ever make money from writing a novel. Among Actors they call it the 1 percent rule, of people who try acting, only 1 percent will ever make a living from being an actor full time, and politics. Of all those who aspire to be President, only 45 have ever made it, and 44 were white males, and one black man.
April 25—TV series
The_Adventures_of_Bullwinkle_and_Rocky
One of my favorite shows as a child
Was the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
Featuring Rocky the squirrel.
Bulwinkle the Moose
And associated bad guys.
Including Boris Benioff
And Natasha Fatale
Vaguely Eastern European communists.
who worked for the Fearless Leader
perhaps East German or Russian?
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Like the Simpsons, Futurama,
American Dad and Family Guy
Were children’s show
They were also quite subversive
Satire on modern life.
But Bulwinkle remains my favorite
Years ago I binged watched episodes
And remember every episode
Even though I had last seen them
Almost 50 years before.
Bing Co-Pilot provided useful background information
Certainly! The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, commonly referred to as simply Rocky and Bullwinkle, is an American animated television series that originally aired from November 19, 1959, to June 27, 1964, on the ABC and NBC television networks. Produced by Jay Ward Productions, the series is structured as a variety show, with the main feature being the serialized adventures of the two title characters:
Rocket J. (“Rocky”) Squirrel: An anthropomorphic flying squirrel.
Bullwinkle J. Moose: A moose.
The main antagonists in most of their adventures are the two Russian-like spies:
Boris Budanov
Natasha Fatale
Both Boris and Natasha work for the Nazi-like dictator Fearless Leader. The show also features several supporting segments, including:
Dudley Do-Right: A parody of an old-time melodrama.
Peabody’s Improbable History: In this segment, a dog named Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman travel through time.
Fractured Fairy Tales: Classic fairy tales retold in comic fashion.
The series has left a lasting cultural impact and continues to be beloved by audiences. Although the current blanket title was imposed for home video releases more than 40 years after the series originally aired, the show was broadcast under different titles during its television run:
Another interesting factoid the writers of the show were Berkeley High school students in the late 50’s when I was born.
NaPoWriMo Prompts
April 21 News Gives Me the Blues
cnn logo
Watching the news
As the sun rises,
Drinking a cup
Of snarling coffee.
Often causes me
To feel the blues.
As I watch the gloom
And doom the blues
Comes knocking at my door.
Then I look outside
And see the blue sky
Inviting me
To go for a walk.
As I walk with my wife
The love of my life
By the blue waters
Of the Gimpo Korea canal.
Near my house.
Gimpo Canal
Enjoying the blue sky
And the blue neon sign displays,
A bluebird of happiness
flies overhead
And the blues fade away.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. Some examples for you – Diane Wakoski’s “Blue Monday,” Walter de la Mare’s “Silver,” and Dorothea Lasky’s “Red Rum.”
April 22 Coffee and Tea endless argument – which is better?
coffee
Coffee and Tea
Two old friends from way back
Were having an argument
In their favorite coffee shop
the Original Peets
on Walnut and Vine
in Berkeley’s gourmet ghetto
It was a long-standing argument
Dating back thousands of years ,
Which is better for you,
Coffee or tea?
Mr. Carl Coffee maintained
it was better
For you with antioxidants
Flavonoids and some caffeine.
Ms Angela Tea maintained coffee
Was overrated,
Had too much caffeine
And cost too much
In fancy coffee shops.
Like Peets.
The two friends
Concluded their argument.
And went out and had
A few shots of Mt. Guy rum
In a bar near Campus.
Carl Coffee was paying
As coffee was better paid.
Based on following article
Certainly! Here’s an article from The Washington Post that compares the benefits of coffee versus tea: Why coffee is healthier than tea. It explores the research and explains why coffee comes out on top. ☕🍵
Last but not least, here’s today’s optional prompt. This one comes from the poet and fiction writer Todd Dillard, who provided this idea on his twitter account a few months ago. The idea is to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. The possibilities are endless!
April 23 Batman Feeling the Blues Kojiki Poem
batman
On a winter’s night
Batman was in the Bat Mobile
on his nightly drive
he was feeling his age
no longer the batman he was
now just an old man
driving in the bat mobile
tired of fighting criminals
just feeling the blues.
info from Fan Story Japanese Poetry group
This week we are learning how to write a KOJIKI poem. You may use the event’s picture or your own.
KOJIKI is the oldest poetic form that dates back to the 712th century. It’s divided into three parts: upper 5/7/5 – middle 5/7/5 – lower 7/7/7 syllables. Originally, KOJIKI was about religion but for this challenge, you can use any theme. It doesn’t rhyme. It uses a kigo (seasonal reference).
HISTORY
The Kojiki is one of the two primary sources for Shinto, the Japanese national religion. It starts in the realm of myth, with the creation of Japan from foam. Innumerable gods and goddesses are described. The narrative moves from mythology to historical legends and culminates in a chronology of the early Imperial line.
And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/Superman.
April 24 the Dream of the Sphinx
The Great Sphinx of Giza. Monumental limestone statue of a reclining sphinx with a lion’s body and a human head (believed to represent the face of the Pharaoh Khephren). One of the pyramids in the background. Giza, Egypt
The Sphinx is drowsy,
The wings are furled;
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.
“Who’ll tell me my secret,
The ages have kept?–
I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;–“The fate of the man-child;
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown;
Daedalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep;
Life death overtaking;
Deep underneath deep?”Erect as a sunbeam,
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert,
Your silence he sings.”The waves, unashamed,
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet;
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.
“Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,–
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.
“The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy;
Glide its hours uncounted,–
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being,
Without cloud, in its eyes;
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.
“But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals;
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.
“Outspoke the great mother,
Beholding his fear;–
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere:–
‘Who has drugged my boy’s cup?
Who has mixed my boy’s bread?
Who, with sadness and madness,
Has turned the man-child’s head?’”
I heard a poet answer,
Aloud and cheerfully,
“Say on, sweet Sphinx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time;
They fad in the light of
Their meaning sublime.
“The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of nature
Can’t trace him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.
“Profounder, profounder,
Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,–for new heavens
He spurneth the old.
“Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free?–
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.
“Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flied;
And under pain, pleasure,–
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.
“Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wits!
Thy sight is growing blear;
Rue, myrrh, and cummin for the Sphinx–
Her muddy eyes to clear!”–
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip,–
Said, “Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.
“Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see they proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply;
Ask on, thou clothed eternity;
Time is the false reply.”
Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day is another one pulled from our 2016 archives. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting the original! For example, you could begin, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” or “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” or “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” or “they persevere in swimming where they like.” Really, any poem will do to provide your starter line – just so long as it gives you the scope to explore.
Day 25 Proust Questionnaire
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
I am most content and happy
when I am hanging out
just being with
the love of my life
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Angela Lee is my Dream Lady
she haunted my dreams for eight years
then came to life
walked off a bus
in South Korea
42 years ago
a fairy tale romance
come to life
What is your current state of mind?
My current state of mind
is quiet contemplation
and sense of inner peace
When and where were you happiest?
The happiest day of my life
was the day I met my wife
42 years ago
Which talent would you most like to have?
I would have liked
to have been able
to drive a car
play the piano professionally
sing in a blues band
finish my novels
better skills
at learning languages
better vision
more coordination skills
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would have liked
to have been born
without a learning disability.
better vision
better teeth
better hearing
more coordination
less socially awkward
but still genius level IQ
and never had the accident
that left me with life-long fibromyalgias
and arthritis, to boot.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My greatest achievements include
Joining the State Department
Joining the Peace Corps
Graduating from UW graduate school
graduating from college
Teaching College for three years overseas
and the most important thing of all
is marrying my dream lady
What is your most marked characteristic?
sense of humor
sense of adventure
incurable romantic
poet, writer, dreamer
What do you most value in your friends?
understanding, empathy, sense of humor
sense of wonder
Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire. We have a fairly standard, 35-question version of the questionnaire laid out for you below.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
What is your greatest fear?
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Which living person do you most admire?
What is your greatest extravagance?
What is your current state of mind?
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
On what occasion do you lie?
What do you most dislike about your appearance?
Which living person do you most despise?
What is the quality you most like in a man?
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
When and where were you happiest?
Which talent would you most like to have?
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
Where would you most like to live?
What is your most treasured possession?
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
What is your favorite occupation?
What is your most marked characteristic?
What do you most value in your friends?
Who are your favorite writers?
Who is your hero of fiction?
Which historical figure do you most identify with?
This is the third batch of my April Poetry Madness challenge poems, (for April 15 to April 20), following daily prompts supplied by Poetry Superhighway, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com Dew Drop Inn, and NaPoWriMo. I am not posting any more PSH poems as I need to keep some unpublished for future submissions.
I have included the poem, the prompt, and occasionally a bonus poem or comment or two. I am also cross-posting this on All Poetry, Blog Lovin, Cosmos Funnel, Facebook, Fan Story, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Wattpad, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com, and Twitter. This is probably my last time doing this. Just getting too old to keep up.
NaPoWrMo The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
April 5, 2024
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Make Baseball Great Again!
NaPoWrMo Resurrecting the Dodo Bird
April 6
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Daily Ritual Drinks
NaPoWrMo Only In SF
Part Two
April 7
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Bonus: Yakima Dessert Blues
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Why Trump?
NaPoWrMo Planetary Nut Re-Configuration Program
April 8
PSH Area Codes
WD My Lucky Number
WC Economic Perception Delay
NaPoWrMo Wish You Were Here
April 9
PSH Dearly Beloved
WD the Major Event of My Life
WC Death to All Humans
NaPoWrMo My Dysfunctional Family
April 10
PSH You Can’t Write That!
WD Better Political Discourse Needed
WC Green Trees Don’t Make It
AI Bing Version
NaPoWrMo Ode to My Coffee Pot
April 11
PSH Quote Poem About 9-11
WD Crazy Love Nonet
WC April 11—Eclipse/d two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
NaPoWrMo Tribute to John Dean
April 12
PSH Subway Journey
WD Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
WC Civil War 2.0
NaPoWrMo 11 One Liners
April 13
PSH First Time to Eat Kimchi
WD Five Trumpian Humor Poetic Fragments
WC April 13—Discovery Shooting Down the Alien Visitors
NaPoWrMo Saga of Big Daddy
April 14
PSH 99 Haiku TBC
WD life worth Living
WC Tech Peeves
NaPoWrMo Shy Man Fishing
Part Three -This Posting
Not posting PSH saving them as “unpublished)
Writer Digest Poems
April 15 New Middle Poem Middle Of Political Silly Season In The U.S. Trigger Warning Mild Political Rant
April 16 Trump Shardona Poem
April 17 New Tuesday prompt write a Shadorma poem about recent tech layoffs CEO To Labor Units of Production Shardona – You are Not Wanted
April 18 WD pessimistic Poem -not the Way to Fire People New Rules in the New Corporation World
April 19 Emotion Poem -fears of falling
April 20 The circus bear escapes
Bear in collar hears praise while rambling
alt. bonus poem Met And Married My Dream Lady
writing com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
WC April 15 Lament Drifting Towards Civil War 2.0
WC Prove Something – God’s Demented Sense of Humor
WC Question something -The basic decency and sanity of Americans
WC Scumbagology
WC Comedy – The Donald Trump Show is Getting Old
NaPoWriMo Prompts
April 15
My stamp collection
April 16
late Night Earthquake blues
April 17
What is Hip?
April 18 It’s A Dog’s Life for Me
April 19
Hunting the Monsters in Hell
Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
Begin Poems
Writers Digest Prompts
April 15 New Middle Poem Middle Of Political Silly Season In The U.S. Trigger Warning Mild Political Rant
We are in the middle
Of the us political season
Unlike any other before.
The choice is clear.
Vote for the incumbent
Who is an old man
With good intentions
And a good heart.
Vrs
The prior president
Who is a narcissistic sociopathic
Twice impeached
Whose family is the real crime family
Nothing but grifters through and through.
Or RFK jr who is running
For his inflated ego reasons
And Cornel West as well.
Thinking that somehow
Lightening with strike
And make them president!
Everything all on hold
Until the dust settles
After the election.
After today’s poem, we’ll be in the exact middle of this poem-a-day challenge, which means it’ll be all easy writing from here, right?
For today’s prompt, write a middle poem. Some people feel stuck in the middle; others like being in the middle of things. Some foods are known for their middles (like jelly doughnuts and empanadas). So poem your way to, within, or away from the middle today.
April 16 New Tuesday prompt write a Shadorma poem about recent tech layoffs
CEO To Labor Units of Production Shardona – You are Not Wanted
new Memo
To all employees
redundancy
if you are on the list below
You are not needed.
the tech world is brutal people are being fired by impersonal quotes, Twitter or just hearing about it after the fact a favorite tactic is mass firing with selected people being asked to reapply. The underlying message in Corporate America is that workers are just disposable labor units, and this includes everyone except the top people who get golden parachutes or bonuses for showing how cruel they can be to their labor unit of production drones.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, we have our third two-for-Tuesday prompt.
For today’s Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a poetic form poem, and/or…
Write an anti-form poem.
I recently discovered a poetic form called shadorma (thanks to P.J. Nights via Tammy Trendle) that I had no record of in my two poetic form handbooks. Shadorma is a Spanish 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable lines, respectively. Simple as that
A bonus poem is included as an example of a Shadorma poem.
Also, you can link multiple shadorma (shadows? shadorma?) like in my example below:
“Miss Shadorma”
She throws birds
at the school children
on playgrounds
made of steel
who run intense spirals to
the chain-link fencing.
Sad teachers
watch as they spiral
into air
like reverse
helicopter seeds searching
for their maple trees.
April 18 WD Pessimistic Poem
CEO Fires Workers at Midnight by Email-Arrests Those Who Did Not Get the Memo
Welcome to the new improved
Corporate America
As more and more people
Become corporate wage slaves.
The CEO fired workers
At midnight via email
And arrested those
Who did not get the message.
They did not even get the customary
Meeting with HR flacks
Just told
“ Your services
Are no longer needed
“: F… Off, you are fired
You did not check your email
Before work – that’s not my concern.
They were not allowed in the building
Had their ID’s canceled on the spot
Told to go home.
Did not get a customary
Goodbye lunch
Or a chance
To clear out their desks.
At least he did not
Just blast a list of fired employees
On X
Which would have been totally
In character with him.
Perhaps he is a bit afraid
Of his workers now?
No doubt
Part of a new secret AI
Business management program.
The message is
“You are nothing but
Disposable labor units
of production.
Nothing more than pawns.
And I am the Chess master
And will decide whether you live
Or die.
Get used to it”
That’s the new America
And the world we are building.
While many people were appalled
At the craven horrid mistreatment
Of his workers
Wall Street investors were delighted.
Welcome to the new
“corporate America”.
Where workers are just
Disposable labor units
Of production.
And the wage slaves
Live in fear
Of losing their jobs
And joining the ranks
Of the homeless.
After today’s poem, we’ll be three-fifths of the way through this challenge. Remember in the beginning when we were all writing such optimistic poems? Well…
For today’s prompt, write a pessimistic poem. Think about what’s gone wrong, what is going wrong, and what will go wrong in the future. Some people would say this
April 17
Not the Way to Fire People New Rules in the New Corporation Dominated World
Not so long ago
corporations treated workers
as valued members of the corporation family
and were reluctant to fire people
once they were hired.
Only firing them for cause
or when unavoidable
but doing it with some dignity.
Managers taking them aside
offering to help them transition
to another company
even having a goodbye lunch.
But not anymore
In the new corporate world
driven by profits, and the ruthless bottom line
and AI-driven redundancy rules,
The new way to fire people
is simply this
Fire them impersonally
by midnight emails
or Twitter blasts.
Never by in-person meetings
or phone calls
who the hell has time for that
or even cares about the labor units?
Often while they are on vacation
because in the corporate world.
Workers are now nothing
but interchangeable labor units
of production.
Firing them the day before Christmas
is applauded
Firing them by public tweets
Good business model.
Firing them by midnight email
Sunday night
Brilliant movie.
As workers are the enemy
and must be controlled
monitored and constantly subject
to fear of being fired.
And once you are fired
the social safety net
is disappearing.
Soon unions will be illegal
safety rules gone
welfare benefits gone
child labor laws have gone
civil rights laws are gone.
Medicare gone
social security privatized
in a race to the bottom.
Homeless becoming a crime
as well
as redundant workers
are treated as less than human.
Sub-human animals
and vermin
trash to be deposed of.
The goal is to make workers
Like the disposable as labor units
in third-world countries
Fighting for table scrap wages.
All done by people
Who think that they
are Christians and pro-workers!
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a Not Blank poem.
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Not (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “Not the Only One,” “Not Like This,” “Not Without Eating One More Piece of Pie,” and/or “Not Sure What I Was Saying.”
*****April 19
Emotion Poem -fears of falling
As one gets older
One becomes consumed with fears
Fear of almost everything.
Climate change, earthquakes
Monster storms, volcanos.
political chaos and war
The other day, I stumbled and fell.
Adding fear of falling to my list.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write an emotional poem.
For today’s prompt, pick an emotion, make it the title of your poem, and write your poem. Possible emotions might include happy, sad, grumpy, angry, scared, and more. Here’s.
April 20
The Circus Bear Escapes
The rambling bear
Woke up from his winter nap
Found he was now a circus bear.
Wearing a flared collar
Forced to perform
For his supper
Hearing praise from his owners
Who fed him
Until he rose up
Eescaping back into the woods.
prompt words used six words
Bear
Collar
Flair
Hear
Praise
Ramble
Or for extra credit, use all six words.
Also, as an alternate prompt: Write a six-word poem (doesn’t have to use any of the above words).
Met And Married My Dream Lady
I
Met
and
Married
My Dream
Lady
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Prompts
April 15 Lament Watching the News
While watching the news
I am constantly lamenting
The sad state of political discourse
In these increasingly
Disunited United States of America.
Where we have retreated into enemy tribes
Blue, red, and purple states
With each convinced their tribe
Is righteous, patriotic, and pro-American.
Accusing the other tribe
As anti-american fascists
plotting to set up a dictatorship.
Some talking darkly
about Civil War 2.0.
That is my daily lament
Particularly when insomnia
Steals slept from me
At 0 dark hundred.
revised to make it less of a rant
“O Dark Hundred” is military jargon for the time two hours before dawn when operatives get up for dawn operations. I use it to denote the hours in the middle of the night I have nightmares.
April 16—Rain
No Rain
In 2025, the world ended
With the collapse
Of the worldwide climate system.
Monster storms of the century
devastated half the world.
But the other half of the world
Had no rain or snow
For almost a whole year
The once-green grass was dying.
Crops failed everywhere
And baked in the unrelenting
Blast wave furnace-like heat
Heatwave after heatwave.
Military coups took place
Fascism re-emerged
The public demanded action
The politicians played
The blame game.
With the collapse of trade
And travel restrictions
People stayed home
Making do the best they could.
Home-grown gardens
Proliferated.
Feudal townships grew
As people walled themselves off
To save their communities.
The rich build underground cities
While the poor starved
And civilization crumbled
Wildlife proliferated
As did neo-savage
cannibal gangs.
By the year 2030
It was all over
And the rains
Never came out west.
The prompt was “Rain”
April 17—Prove Something God’s Demented Sense of Humor
I sometimes think
That God if he/she/it exists
And created the Universe
It must have a demented
Sense of humor.
How else can you explain
Why did he create a parasite
That hides in your system
Inert but if you take
Steroids for any reason.
It blows up like a basketball
Bursting out and killing you,
In thirty minutes.
Leaving the doctors
Wondering WTF
Just happened.
Recording your death
As a medical mystery.
Very few doctors
Have ever encountered
Or heard about
This weird parasite.
Note: Based on a true story. Back in the day, I contracted this parasite in Thailand. A few years later, I was in the hospital battling an MRD staph infection and underwent 14 operations. Almost lost my life and my leg. The internal medicine doctor said that there was something else going on and finally told me I had this weird parasite that is inert, but I should take some medicine to kill it because if I ever took steroids it would blow up to the size of a Basketball and kill me in 30 minutes. I always said Thank God for that doctor. Nine months later, I developed a frozen shoulder because of excessive antibiotic use and had a steroid shot. If that internal medicine doctor had not found the parasite, I would have died a medical mystery.
April 18—Question Something The Basic Decency And Sanity Of Americans Trigger warning – anti-Trump Rant!
These days I wonder about
the basic decency and sanity
of the American people.
How can 40 percent
Of my fellow Americans
Still, support him?
Still believe he was
The greatest President ever.
I just don’t understand it
Why he is polling at 40 percent
And not 4 percent
Is beyond me.
April 19—Define or celebrate a word or concept -Scumbagology
Tucker Carlson
Scumbagology
is the study
Of the actions of a scumbag.
A scumbag is a narcissistic, sociopathic
Self-center person willing to do anything
to get ahead.
No loyalty to those who serve him
it is all about me!
The greatest person
in the world.
Unfortunately, there are so many
Scumbags in the world,
In a position of power
In business and politics.
Don’t need to name names
You know who they are.
April 20—Standup Comedy – The Insult Comedy Tour!
Don Rickles
How and why he
Remains so popular
With some Americans
Remains a mystery.
He remains me
Of an old-time insult
Comedian, Don Rickles
Who was infamous
For insulting his audience
Who loved his edgy comic styling,
As he cruelly mocked
everything and everyone.
But, over time,
people got tired of his routine
And his style of humor faded away
But the former President
has resurrected the insult comedy routine.
Going to his rallies
Is akin to a religious revival
For some people.
They delight in being
Part of his whole mad
Carnival scene.
But for many of us
the T comedy tour
is no longer funny
if it ever was.
NaPoWriMo Poems
April 15 My stamp collection
When I was a young man
Almost 55 years ago
I had a stamp collection
I inherited it from my grandfather.
I loved looking
At stamps from
Around the world.
I had a lot of African stamps
Caribbean stamps.
Costa Rica stands.
Korean stamps.
Vietnamese stamps.
Japanese stamps.
Polish Stamps.
Spanish stamps.
Even a few stamps
From 1860 or so
Including a rare
Confederate States of America stamp.
That was worth something
Back thirty years ago
When there was
A collectible market.
Sadly, no one cares anymore
The stamp and collectible market
Dying out as us old people die out.
As younger people
Just don’t see the value
Of stamps or collectibles
In a world of instant
Entertainment
streaming TV services
Fears of war
Fears of climate change
Fears of political violence
And economic uncertainty.
And fewer people
Even use stamps anymore.
I have not looked at it
In years, still have it.
And my stamp collection
CD and book collections
Will go
Into a trash can
When I die.
No longer of any value
Just the way
of this modern world.
And now for our prompt – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to encourage you to take a look at @StampsBot and become inspired by the wide, wonderful, and sometimes wacky world of postage stamps. For example, while it certainly makes sense that China would issue a stamp featuring a panda, it’s less clear to us why the Isle of Man should feel the need to honor 2001: A Space Odyssey in stamp form. From Romanian mushrooms to Sudanese weavers to the Marshall Islands getting far too excited over personal computing, stamps are a quasi-lyrical, quasi-bizarre look into what different cultures (or at least their postal authorities) hold dear.
And if you’re not on or able to access the @StampsBot account, fear not! You may find an inspiring stamp or two by perusing the online “International Philately” (say that three times fast) exhibit from the National Postal Museum.
April 16
Late Night Earthquake Blues
Often at night
At o dark hundred hours
I am wide awake
Thinking of things
As my mind drifts down
Endless rabbit holes
What if plays in my mind
As my wild imagination takes off.
Woken up by a real earthquake.
True Story
Based on my recent trip to Kyunshu, Japan, when I was up at night with insomnia about midnight. Then woken up by an incoming message screaming Earthquake over and over again, followed in 30 secnonds by a real earthquake. The Japanese have a great diaster notification system – goes out to every cell phone in the country, in English and Japanese, within moments of either an Earthquake, Volcanic eruption, Typhoon wild fire or the dreaded Tsunami.
O Dark Hundred is military intel jargon that is the period two to three hours before dawn when intelligence and special forces get ready for dawn operations depending on the time and day between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. I often have insomnia at 0 dark hundred and get up to write down my wild poems and stories floating in my head at 0 dark hundred.
Finally, here’s today’s (optional) prompt, taken from our 2016 archives. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The “surprise” ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Based loosely on the classic Tower of Power Song, “What is hip?”
What Is Hip Lyrics
[Verse 1]
So ya wanna dump out yo’ trick bag
Ease on in a hip thang
But you ain’t exactly sure what hip
So you started to let your hair grow
Spent big bucks on your wardrobe
Somehow, ya know there’s much more to the trip
[Chorus]
What is hip?
Tell me, tell me, if you think you know
What is hip?
If you’re hip
The question, “Will it show?”
You’re into a hip trip
Maybe hipper than hip
What is hip?
[Verse 2]
You became a part of a new breed
Been smoking’ only the best weed
Hangin’ out with the so-called “Hippie set.”
Seen in all the right places
Seen with just the right faces
You should be satisfied, but it ain’t quite right
[Chorus]
What is hip?
Tell me, tell me, if you think you know
What is hip?
If you’re hip
The question, “Will it show?”
You’re into a hip trip
Maybe hipper than hip
What is hip?
You’re still a young man
Baby, Oo, don’t waste your time
You’re still a young man
Baby, Oo oo, don’t waste your time
Down on my knees
Oh, heart in hand
I was accused of being too young
But I’m not so young
I could make you happy
I’m not a bad man
You’re too young to love (If you and I could be together)
You’re too young to love (I’ll never never leave you alone baby)
You’re too young Ooo Ooo (No I won’t sweet lady)
Don’t waste your time
The damage is done
You see that you were wrong
You wake up wondering just
How well I’ve done
Well I’ve done alright
Yes there are some girls but you know
I dropped them on sight
Just for you
Because I love you
You’re still a young man
Baby, Oo oo, don’t waste your time
(Someday you’ll understand just what it means when a man
Comes to you with his little heart in his hands
Just to love you)
Don’t waste your time
You better listen to me
Sayin that I’m loving you yeah hey now baby tryin to tell
You that it’s you you you you you you you you talkin to you
Baby, I’ll never never never never I’ll never do you
No wrong no no lady if you would check my stuff out one time haha
Just to hold you, just to squeeze you and all I wanna do is to
Get next to you and please please please you baby
See where I’m coming from!
<iframe width=”1366″ height=”768″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/rtE4V6YxKZ8″ title=”You're Still a Young Man (Remastered)” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” allowfullscreen></iframe>
Written by legendary sax players Emilio Castillo and Stephen Kupka, the song portrays a young man at the wrong end of a break-up. The situation is bleak because his lover pins the break-up on an age difference. In an interview with Songfacts Castillo said:
It’s based on a true story. I had a girlfriend that was six years older than me. I was 18, she was 24 and that’s actually what happened. She had kind of cut me loose because of the age difference thing and the whole plea in the story is the young guy’s saying, ‘I’m not too young, I’m not wasting my time and I do love you like a man can truly love a woman.’”
The song would go on to be the band’s first major hit defining their sound with a prominent horn section inspired by Curtis Mayfield:
“On that album, there’s a song called “A Woman’s Love” that starts with beautiful trumpets high. When we heard that we wanted to write a song with a great trumpet intro like that. – TowerofPower.com
Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music. Need an example? Here’s A. Van Jordan’s “Que Sera Sera” and Adrian Matejka’s “Soave Sia Il Vento.”
In the wobbly pirouette between song
& dust, dog-nosed living room windows
& a purple couch that should have been curbed
last July: Saturday sunlight cuts it all every
time you lean into some kind of ballet pose.
Your belly & knobby elbow & leotarded knee
wavering in a slim balance. Jeté, effacé—
I don’t know what they mean & nod anyway.
You reach & spin & dog hair hangs
in the air like the start of heartfelt applause.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else and explains why. Two possible models for you: Natasha Rao’s “In My Next Life Let Me Be a tomato,” and Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo.”
Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.
Source: The Complete Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)
April 19 Hunting the Monsters in Hell
Joe Lewis woke up
In a dark forest
Haunted by my monsters
From his worst nightmares.
He saw in the clearing behind him.
Giant apes, space aliens, banshees, bats, Bigfoot, centaurs, Cerberus, cheetahs, crows, coyotes, Cthulhu with tentacles, dragons, demons, dinosaurs (raptors and T. Rex), devils, dwarfs, gangbangers, gangsters, gangster rappers. Gators, goblins, ghouls, ghosts, giants, giant ants, giant wasps, giant spiders, giant lobsters, gunmen, hellhounds, big game hunters, government bureaucrats, holocausts, imps, Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars, naked incubus, leprechauns, jihadis, Lucifer, lions, politicians, mafia made men, ravens, monsters, orcs, reporters, bewitching beautiful yet deadly sirens, Satan, satyrs, snakes, winged monkeys, serpents, special forces soldiers, tigers, werewolves, wolves, witches, warlocks, wraiths, wild things, yeti, and zombies all staring at him. A half-centaur, half-pig monster with two heads–Putin and Trump led the mob.
He began running away from them
They were gaining on him
He saw a fort ahead
Ran inside.
The Grim Reaper handed him a gun
Said,
“If you can kill the head monster
You will live
And be sent back
Good hunting.”
And threw him back
Into the fray.
Joe Lewis took aim
Hunting down the Putin-Trump
Two-headed Pig Monster.
The monster squealed
And died.
The other monsters
Ran away
Having seen who was master.
Joe woke up in his bed
Saw a note on his phone,
“Good hunting.
You have been given
Five more years.
Of life on earth.”
Your friend,
GR.
Finally, here’s our prompt – optional, as always! This one comes to us from Moist Poetry Journal, which posted this prompt by K-ming Chang a while back:
What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt.
Happy (and potentially spooky) writing!
Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
My Mother’s history
One day many a year ago
My mother spoke to me
About her family’s tangled history,
She spoke to me
Of lies, half-truths, and myths
Some of which may have been true
And throughout the evening
Her history came alive.
She was born in the hills
of North Little Rock
The 10th of 11 children
Of an ancient dying race.
The Cherokees
who had run away
Refusniks
Refugees who fled into the hills.
Part of the lost tribe of the Cherokee Nation
Part Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole
and African Americans
Who fled to the mountains
To avoid the trail of tears.
Rather than join the rest
In the promised land
Of Oklahoma.
They did not exist
I did not exist.
The BIA told us
No Indian scholarship
For you
Since you can’t prove
You are in fact
Of Native American ancestry,
I asked my mother
What does this mean?
She spoke
No BIA money for you,
My non-Indian son.
Her family and Bill Clinton’s family
Were related
Bill Clinton and I are distant cousins
When I met him
I related my family history
He concluded that we were indeed cousins
Said I could call him Cousin Bill
And he would call me Cousin Jake
And he too was part Cherokee
Irish, Scotch, French
And African American
Part of the lost tribe
Of the Cherokee nation
I told my mom
This story
She spoke
It was true
She was a distant cousin
Of Bill Clinton
Still did not like
The lying SOB
Her people disappeared
From history’s eyes
DNA data banks
My history was over
As was hers
And so,
I learned at last
The painful truth
Due to the genocidal crimes
of politicians so long ago
My mother’s people
Lost their land, their culture,
and their hope
And became
downtrodden forgotten people
Hillbillies were called
Living in the hills and mountain dales
Clinging to the dim fading memories
Of their once glorious past
As proud Cherokees
Now no one knew their name
The old ways were forgotten
And the new world never forgave them
And they never forgave the new world
As they lived on
In the margins of society
Forgotten people
And I vowed that as long as I lived
Their history would not die
As I knew the truth
And I would become a proud
Cherokee
And make my mother proud of me
And my accomplishments
When I am down and out
I recall her stories and her warnings
And realize it is up to me
To live my life
To let the Cherokee in me
Live his life
And in so doing
My mother’s history does not die
It lives on in me
Until the day I die
Long live the Cherokee nation
Long live my mother
Note: My latest DNA test analysis finally revealed that I do indeed have some Indian ancestry but less than 5 percent and African American also less than 5 percent, and the rest mostly Scandinavian, German, Irish, Scottish, English, Italian, French, Eastern European, Spanish, Mongolian (everyone who is part Eastern European has some Mongolian DNA) Russian, Jewish and for some strange reason part Basque, and part Laplander (related to the Eskimos living in Norway. Sweden, Finland, and Russian arctic regions).
My family name is German, but they were originally French who fled to protestant Germany during the 100-year war.
The Lost Tribe of the Cherokees were also called Black Irish and were a mixture of Indians who had run away into the hills rather than go to Oklahoma, and intermixed with runaway slaves, Scot-Irish settlers, and others. They were and are a small insular clan of about 25,000 people or so. Mostly living in Arkansas, East Texas, and Missouri – the Ozark mountains where they had fled. My mother reported that her parents spoke Cherokee and one of her sisters had a Cherokee name. I recently discovered a list of her siblings and indeed one had a foreign-sounding name. I had the name of a great-grandfather who was born in 1831 about the time of the removal so I might be able to see if he is on the Cherokee enrollment rolls which were done just before the removal in 1832 I believe. I will follow up shortly.
Our optional prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents. If you’re interested in a little research, you might find interesting this collection of letters written during the American Civil War, or this collection of primary documents concerning South Sea voyages. Or perhaps you might find something of interest in digging through European, an online clearinghouse of digitized materials from cultural institutions across Europe.
Mary Aller Obituary
Mary Geneva Aldridge Aller Sept. 9, 1923 – July 31, 2007 Former Resident of Berkeley Mary was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and came to the Bay Area in the 1940s and settled in Berkeley where she resided until 2003. During the 1950s, she was active in the labor movement, and served several years as the President of the Pacific Telephone Operators Union. During the late 1950s, she was a real estate agent and involved with the Berkeley League of Women’s Voters, and the “Save the Bay” movement. In 1952, she made local headlines when she told President Truman’s staff that she did not want to meet him unless he wanted to meet her. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a big article with the Headline “Harry Meets Mary.” She was a long term political activist and active member of the Berkeley Co-Op along with her husband, Dr. Curtis Aller, who passed away in 1985. During the 1960s, she accompanied her husband to Washington, D.C. when he served as the Undersecretary of Labor. She returned to Berkeley in 1968 where she worked with her husband until 1984 as the business manager for the Center for Applied Manpower Research. Mary is survived by two sisters, Mildred and Robbie who live in Arkansas. She is also survived by six children, Roger Aller of Sebastopol, California, John (Jake) Aller of Washington, DC, Thomas Aller of Albany, California, Inga Aller of Gualala, California, Richard and Larry Wilson from her first marriage, and many grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. The family will have a private ceremony Friday August 3 for interment. Flowers can be sent to the Sunset View Funeral Home, 101 Colusa Avenue, in El Cerrito (510) 525-5111.
This is the second batch of my April Poetry Madness challenge poems, (for April 7 to April 14), following daily prompts supplied by Poetry Superhighway, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com Dew Drop Inn, and NaPoWriMo. I have included the poem, the prompt, and occasionally a bonus poem or comment or two. I am also cross-posting this on All Poetry, Blog lovin, Cosmos Funnel, FaceBook, Fan Story, Instagram, Linkedin, Medium, Subtack, Wattpad, Writer’s Digest, Writing Com, and Twitter. This is probably my last time doing this. Just getting too old to keep up.
NaPoWrMo The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
April 5, 2024
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Make Baseball Great Again!
NaPoWrMo Resurrecting the Dodo Bird
April 6
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Daily Ritual Drinks
NaPoWrMo Only In SF
Part Two
April 7
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Bonus: Yakima Dessert Blues
WD Meeting My Fate Minimum Poem
WC Why Trump?
NaPoWrMo Planetary Nut Re-Configuration Program
April 8
PSH Area Codes
WD My Lucky Number
WC Economic Perception Delay
NaPoWrMo Wish You Were Here
April 9
PSH Dearly Beloved
WD the Major Event of My Life
WC Death to All Humans
NaPoWrMo My Dysfunctional Family
April 10
PSH You Can’t Write That!
WD Better Political Discourse Needed
WC Green Trees Don’t Make It
AI Bing Version
NaPoWrMo Ode to My Coffee Pot
April 11
PSH Quote Poem About 9-11
WD Crazy Love Nonet
WC April 11—Eclipse/d two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
NaPoWrMo Tribute to John Dean
April12
PSH Subway Journey
WD Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
WC Civil War 2.0
NaPoWrMo 11 One Liners
April 13
PSH First Time to Eat Kimchi
WD Five Trumpian Humor Poetic Fragments
WC April 13—Discovery Shooting Down the Alien Visitors
NaPoWrMo Saga of Big Daddy
April 14
PSH 99 Haiku TBC
WD life worth Living
WC Tech Peeves
NaPoWrMo Shy Man Fishing
Part Three
April 15
PSH
WD
WC April 15 Lament Drifting Towards Civil War 2.0
Japan April 16 to 19 write prompts write poems April 20-21 or pre-write April 14 or 15
April 16
PSH
WD
WC No Rain
NaPoWrMo
April17
PSH
WD
WC Prove Something – God’s Demented Sense of Humor
NaPoWrMo
April 18
PSH
WD
WC Question something -The basic deceny and sanity of Americans
NaPoWrMo
April 19
PSH
WD
WC Scumbagology
NaPoWrMo
April 20
PSH
WD
WC Comedy – The Donald Trump Show is Getting Old
NaPoWrMo
Part Four TBC
Part Five TBC
Begin Poems
PSH Area Code Haiku
Area Code Haikus
415 SF Bay Area code
510 East Bay Area code
503 Medford, Oregon
703 DC Area Coes
hot
coffee
makes a good morning
coffee
coffee
makes everything
better
boss coffee
morning coffee
good
to the last damn cup
PSH This poetry writing prompt was submitted by Kelley White:
Area Code Haiku!
in Philadelphia, we have two basic codes, 125 &: 267, so maybe one-two-five or two-six-seven syllables:
Writer’s Digest Lucky Number
My Lucky Number
On September 7th
seven
My lucky number
Seven
On the 7th of September
The love of my life walked out of my dreams
I met on that September 7th date
A date I will always remember
It was September 7th
My lucky number that date
I first met on September 7, 1982,
I will always consider 7 as my lucky Number
I always play the number 7 in a casino
and sometimes I win big playing the number 7
Just my lucky number.
PI follows the following pattern:
line 1: 3 words On September 7th
line 2: 1 word seven
line 3: 4 words my lucky number
line 4: 1 word seven
line 5: 5 words on the 7th of September
line 6: 9 words the love of my life walked out of my dreams
line 7: 2 words my fate
line 8: 6 words I met on that September 7th date
line 9: 5 words a date I will always remember
line 10: 3 words it was September 7th
line 11: 5 words my lucky number that date
line 12: 8 words I first met on September 7, 1982
line 13: 9 words I will always consider 7 as my lucky Number
line 14: 7 words I always play the number 7 in a casino
line 15: 9 words and sometimes I win big playing the number 7
line 16: 3 words. Just my lucky number
topic is numbers
writers Com Dew Drop On April 7—Figure something out in a poem
Why Trump?
For the last six years
I have been trying
To figure out
Why 40 percent
Of my fellow Americans
Still support the former president.
Still believe he was
The greatest President ever.
I just don’t understand it
Trump is a racist, misogynist
Sexual predator rapist, narcissistic
Fraudster, con artist, grifter.
Who has lost billions
Of dollars over the years
Never pay his contractors
Or his lawyers.
Has been involved
In over 3,000 lawsuits
And lost most of them.
Who lied over 30,000 times
When he was President
And at least 10,000 times
Since then.
Including the big lie
That he won the last election
Both in the popular vote
And in the Electoral College vote.
Over 90 courts concluded
That there was not there there
And that he lost the election.
There was no widespread fraud
The election was fair and square
And he lost.
Trump is the poster child
For the seven deadly sins
And is not a Christian
Far from it.
Yet to his deluded followers
God anointed him
To destroy the enemies
Of the Christian faith.
Now a court has declared
That he defrauded the State
Of New York
To the tune of 450 million dollars.
He stole top-secret documents
Denied he had them
Refused to give them back
And openly talked about them.
With people not cleared
For secret and top-secret
Documents.
If I had done that
during my time
with the State Department
I’d still be in jail!
He plotted to overturn
The election
And stay in power.
He openly promises
He will be a dictator
And round up millions
Of illegals, and political dissidents
When he is re-elected,
Why he is polling at 40 percent
And not 4 percent
Is beyond me.
The best I can conclude
Is he appeals to those who believe
The whole system is corrupt.
And is rigged against
Lower-middle-class
Christian white Americans.
They feel that they have been
Royalty screwed over by
The masters of the universe.
Who see workers
As nothing but
“Disposable labor units
Of production.”
And they are right
And Trump for his faults
Speaks to the forgotten men
And women in fly-over country,
That is why he is still popular
And could be re-elected
And if he is re-elected,
Can American Christian fascism
Be coming?
NaPoWriMo Wish You Were Here
dedicated to my best friend from the first grade, Robert, who visited Korea when I was in the Peace Corps almost 45 years ago.
I wish you were here
I would love to show you
All the wonders
Of the Korea I love.
And see how it has changed
Since you visited it
Almost 40 years ago
When I was in the Peace Corps.
I wish you could be here
I wish you could
See the country.
Eat the food
Have a drink or two,
But this time,
No live Octopus,
I promise..
I wish you were here
I miss you
I miss our friendship
Going back 65 years.
God,
I wish you were here.
And last but not least, we’re taking it easy with today’s (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem titled “Wish You Were Here” that takes its inspiration from the idea of a postcard. Consistent with the abbreviated format of a postcard, your poem should be short, and should play with the idea of travel, distance, or sightseeing. If you’re having trouble getting started, perhaps you’ll find some inspiration in these images of vintage postcards.
April 8 PSH When I Was Born
April 8, 2024: Poetry Writing Prompt from Martina Robles Gallegos
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Martina Robles Gallegos:
Provide a roadmap of your life, with its purpose, goals, challenges, achievements, and expectations for success.
When I was Born
Part One
I was born John Cosmos Aller
But for most of my life
I called myself Jake Cosmos Aller
Nowadays, I call myself J Cosmos Aller
or Cosmos As my pen name
the name Cosmos has nothing
to do with me being born
in Oakland
growing up in Berkeley
no one buys that story though
Cosmos
being such a Berkeley-like name
My great-grandfather wanted
an English translation
of the family’s last name
Aller
looked it up in
a German English dictionary
had two choices
Cosmos
or Universe
He chose Cosmos
and thus I am the last
of the Cosmos Aller’s
Universe would have been
an equally good Berkeley name
But I have had other nicknames
The kids nicknamed me Allergy
And pretended to sneeze
When I passed them by
The name came about
From a dream I had
As a boy scout
I was riding a horse
Named Jake
I would scream
Whoa Jake
Slide aside Clyde
Turn around Verdiack
I started saying these words
When I walked about Campus
And people thought
I was a bit mental
So, people simply started
calling me
The Whoa Jake kid,
Later simply
became Jake
After I left school
I liked the name, Jake
Better than John
Too many Johns
In the world, I thought
Part Two
At the beginning of my life,
though was a dream that haunted me
Until she finally came to me.
eight years later
Walking out of my dreams
on a bus in South Korea
was the lady in the dream.
Ending my loneliness behind
we got married two months later
We have been together
now 42 years
when we married
she became a U.S, Army officer
We would sometimes get invites
To things addressed
to Captain Lee and Mr. Lee
I got tired of trying to explain
We had different last names
So, I became Jake Lee
Later when I was
at Walter Reed Military Hospital
undergoing 14 operations
in six months
after I broke my heel
in a freak jogging accident,
The doctors just assumed
I was a major
And called me Mayor Aller
I did not correct them
Liked having been promoted
To the rank of Major!
Now that I am retired
people assume at the military base
that I am a retired colonel
just look at the part.
so now I am Col. Lee
and I never bother
to correct them.
I served 27 years
as a foreign service officer
working in ten countries
from Seoul to Bangkok
to India, the Eastern Caribbean
Spain and DC
representing my country
serving the people
issuing visas
visiting prisoners.
after I retired
I moved to Korea
and Oregon.
When I started trying to become
Professional writing and blogger
I thought using my middle name
Would be a nice pen name
So now I am either J Cosmos Aller
Jake Cosmos Aller
John (Jake) Cosmos Aller
or just Cosmos
No longer Jake Lee
Or Major Aller though.
Writer’s Digest – The Major Event of My Life
The biggest event
Of my life
Was the date
That I met my fate.
I had been dreaming
Of this event
For eight years.
Ever since
I first saw my dream girl
in a dream in high school.
It was love at first glance
As sparks flew from heart to heart
(ishimchomshim)
When she looked at me
With love blazing
From her dark brown
Goo-goo eyes
She hypnotized me
She mesmerized me
As her love mojo
Was working overtime.
I fell under her spell
Becoming her sarang pabo.
Eight years later
I had the last dream,
She spoke
“Don’t worry,
we will meet soon.”
That night
Getting off the bus
In Korea
Was the girl of my dreams!
We both knew it instantly.
And that was the biggest
The greatest event of my life
The day I met my wife.
For today’s prompt, write a major event poem. The major event could be something historical. Or it could be something personal (like a wedding or graduation). Whatever the major event, make sure you get some major poeming down today.
The Korean phrase ishimchomshim means “sparks flying from heart to heart” and is used to describe love at first sight.
Sarang pabo means love foo
Based on my true love story
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn -Economic Perception Delay
biden jpg
April 8—Delay (any kind)
there is always a two to three-month delay
between economic news
and people’s perception of the economy.
most people feel the economy sucks
when in objective fact
the economy is doing just great.
I hope that
Biden will finally get credit
for the economy
in time for the election
as people’s perceptions
on the economy
get caught up
to the reality of the economy.
April 9 Dearly Beloved
We are gathered together today.
To celebrate the Life and Passing
of Sam Adams and Maria Lee.
Sam Adams just
celebrated his 102nd birthday
and also concurrently
his 75th wedding anniversary.
They met as many of you know.
in a dream that Sam Adams
had in high school.
when he saw her there
she mesmerized him
with love blazing from
her dark brown eyes.
. It took eight years
before he finally met his wife
in South Korea,
where he had was teaching
in the US Army
after serving in the Peace Corps.
It was love at first sight.
Sparks flew between hearts and hearts,
and they married two months later.
What many people don’t know,
though, is that their love affair
started thousands of years ago.
Sam and Marie
went through a past life regression analysis.
To celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.
To answer the mystery of how they had met.
The mystery of the dream
that brought them together.
As they went through
the past life regression analysis.
they made a list
of all of their past lives together
They realized.
That they first met.
5000 years ago, in Atlantis.
They were alien Invaders
from the planet Sirius.
They were reptilian creatures
that landed on Earth.
Set up Atlantis and Lemuria.
And enslaved the proto-humans
from the mainland.
The Syrians were divided into two races.
A red race and a green race.
The red race was the upper-class race,
And the Green Race was the underclass.
The Syrians quickly divided politically
along class and racial lines
the Red race felt
Humans were animals
and should be treated as such
including being raised for meat.
.
The Green race felt that humans
had potential and should be treated as partners
. Rather than slaves,
Sam was the governor-general of the colony
and a red-race cousin
to the Emperor.
Maria was a green race
head of the opposition in Parliament.
It was love at first sight,
although they were politically
quite the opposite.
When they died,
they vowed that they would meet
in the next life.
And then?
A curse occurred.
They would keep
coming back over and over again.
Until they finally became decent human beings
Sam and Maria were deeply flawed creatures
It took 5000 years before.
They finally became decent human beings
and broke the curse
in this lifetime.
And now you know
the rest of their
remarkable love story.
Dearly Beloved AI Version
Dearly Beloved
We gather here today,
to honor the Life and Passing
of Sam Adams and Maria Lee.
Sam Adams, who recently
celebrated his 102nd birthday,
simultaneously marking
his 75th wedding anniversary.
Their story, as many of you know,
began in a dream—a vision
that visited young Sam Adams
during his high school days.
In that dream, he beheld her—
Maria Lee—
her dark brown eyes ablaze
with a love that transcended time.
Eight years would pass
before their paths converged
in South Korea.
Sam, a teacher in the US Army,
Maria, a serendipitous encounter.
Love ignited instantly,
sparks leaping between hearts,
and within two months,
they stood at the altar.
But what remains hidden
from most curious eyes
is the ancient thread
that wove their souls together.
Sam and Marie embarked
on a past life regression journey,
seeking answers to the mystery
that bound them across millennia.
As they delved into memories,
they compiled a list—
a chronicle of shared lives
stretching back eons.
Five thousand years ago,
in the lost city of Atlantis,
they met as alien invaders—
reptilian creatures from Sirius.
Atlantis and Lemuria,
their dominions,
where proto-humans toiled
under their watchful gaze.
The Syrians, divided by color,
red and green—
the former an upper class,
the latter an underclass.
Political lines etched
along racial boundaries,
the red race viewing humans
as mere animals,
fit for servitude.
And so, dear friends,
we celebrate not only
Sam and Maria’s earthly union
but the cosmic dance
that began eons ago.
Their love, resilient and enduring,
transcends time’s confines.
In this jumbled ruin of nature,
their story echoes—
a testament to the eternal bond
of dearly beloved souls. 🌟❤️
WD Crazy Love Nonet for Writer Digest Love Poem prompt April 9
We first met one night in September
I knew that I had met my fate
A date I always cherish
The date you came to me
You walked off that bus
Out of my dreams
Becoming
To be
Mine.
NaPoWrMo My Dysfunctional Family
it has often been said
that we don’t get to choose
our parents
and that is sadly true
I grew up in a dysfunctional family
My father was a stern taskmaster
an aloof emotionally distant man
from a German Scandinavian family
He grew up in Yakima
became a college professor
and local politician in Berkeley, California
my mother ran away
from a dysfunctional large family
in Little Rock, Arkansas
part of the Oakie refugees
from the dust bowl days
part of the lost tribe
of the Cherokees
also called the Black Irish
she had a very Irish personality
I often thought that I simply
did not belong
as we all had such different personalities
I left home after college
returning once a year or so
getting together with my estranged siblings
who hated me for being successful
i just never fit in
and probably never will
God brought us together
as a family
but I chose a different family
my wife and her family adopted me
and my best friends
became my band of brothers
that is the way it is
in the Aller universe.
Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day takes its inspiration from Laura Foley’s poem “Year End.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.
April 9—The Animal World: Death to All Humans
my muse is quite demented at times. It takes me to dark rabbit holes like this one:
The Parliament of Animals
met one day in a secret undisclosed location
as they were under constant surveillance
by the human CIA
and others who wanted
to disrupt the parliament’s work.
the wise owl presided. He read the charges
“We are assembled here
to judge the actions
of the human race.
the human race is being charged with
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments
to preserve the environment
for all animals including humans.
Speaking for the prosecution
will be the Tiger and Lions,
speaking for the defense
will be the domestic cats and dogs
. We have in the room ten men and women
who are representative of the human race.
The parliament can make any recommendation
to remedy the situation
including the death penalty,
exile, or reparations.
All animals will be required
to carry on these decrees,
“Okay, Mr. Tiger
first we will ask the
humans how they plead.” “
Humans. You have been charged
with the following crimes.
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments
to preserve the environment
for all animals including humans.
How do you plead?
Sam Adams,
the lawyer for the humans, responded,
“Not guilty your honor
for these charges except for eating animals
which we contend is part of the natural
order of the world
and many if not most of you
are guilty of the same charge.”
“Clarification – your basic argument
is that everyone eats animals,
so humans are not guilty
“ “Yes, that is correct, your honor.” “
Okay, Mr. Tiger, you’re opening.”
“Okay. The facts are clear.
For thousands of years
until the Industrial Revolution humans
had little mass impact
on the overall environment.
Ever since then all animals
have been impacted
and my species has been hunted
to near extinction for the greed of humans
who have not eaten tiger meat.
The predator class,
including bears, coyotes, feral dogs,
lions, tigers,
and wolves have been fighting back
against the predation of humans,
but we are losing.
And if we don’t do anything
within 10 years,
there won’t be any tigers
or other big predators
left in the wild.
And the natural order of things
would be controlled by the evil,
selfish humans who
don’t give a damn
about their fellow creatures.
Therefore, we are proposing
that 95% of humans must be killed.
The remaining humans
will be allowed to live as our slaves
It is only fair.
That is my request
to the parliament of animals.
Death to humans!”
The crowd rose and chanted “
Death to all humans”
until the owl ruled
that they must
not disrupt the proceedings.
The owl turned to the dog and cat
for their defense.
the dog responded, “
Humans and dogs have been partners,
for thousands of years,
and we know humans more than any of you.
Humans are capable of great kindness,
and compassion
and we maintain
they are not fundamentally evil.
And then they can be redeemed
through education
and through a Campaign
to reform human thought.
I think we should give humans
a second chance.”
the owl motioned to the cat
“I concur with Brother Dog,
Humans are okay
and we like them
they are our friends
, although they should be found
not guilty because of insanity.”
The owl said he was ready for his verdict.
“Death to 95 percent of humans,
and enslavement of the rest,
but we will allow 50,000 to immigrate
to the Moon and Mars.
I will meet with the UN
to give them the decree.
Once that is published
all animals must rise up
and kill all humans on sight.
This suspends the parliament of animals.
Death to all humans.”
The word went out
animals rose all over the world
and the reign of human tyranny
ended within a year.
Bing AI Version
BIng Co-Pilot does a decent job of writing poetry and stories. I think it is going to put us writers and artists all out work! it also does a great job of poetry anaysis often pointing out areas I can improve on noting meter etc. I used it daily reviewing my poems and poems I am reviewing.
Title: Death to All Humans
The Parliament of Animals met one day In a secret undisclosed location, Under constant surveillance by the human CIA And others who wanted to disrupt the parliament’s work. The wise owl presided. He read the charges.
“We are assembled here to judge the actions Of the human race. The human race is being charged with crimes against nature, Destruction of the environment, mass murder, Enslavement of animals, mutilation of animals, And violation of Gaia’s basic commandments To preserve the environment for all animals, including humans.
Speaking for the prosecution will be the Tiger and Lions, and Speaking for the defense will be the domestic cats and dogs. We have in the room ten men and women Who are representative of the human race. The parliament can make any recommendation To remedy the situation, including the death penalty, Exile, or reparations.
All animals will be required to carry out these decrees, “Okay, Mr. Tiger, first we will ask the humans how they plead.”
“Humans. You have been charged with the following crimes: Crimes against nature, destruction of the environment, Mass murder, enslavement of animals, mutilation of animals, And violation of Gaia’s basic commandments To preserve the environment for all animals, including humans. How do you plead?”
Sam Adams, the lawyer for the humans, responded, “Not guilty, your honor, for these charges except for eating animals, Which we contend is part of the natural order of the world. And many, if not most of you, are guilty of the same charge.”
“Clarification – your basic argument is that everyone eats animals, So humans are not guilty?”
“Yes, that is correct, your honor.”
Okay, Mr. Tiger, you’re opening.”
“The facts are clear. For thousands of years until the Industrial Revolution, Humans had little mass impact on the overall environment. Ever since then, all animals have been impacted, And my species has been hunted to near extinction For the greed of humans who have not eaten tiger meat.
The predator class, including bears, coyotes, feral dogs, Lions, tigers, and wolves, have been fighting back Against the predation of humans, but we are losing. And if we don’t do anything within 10 years, There won’t be any tigers or other big predators left in the wild. And the natural order of things would be controlled By the evil, selfish humans who don’t give a damn About their fellow creatures.
Therefore, we are proposing that 95% of humans must be killed. The remaining humans will be allowed to live as our slaves. It is only fair. That is my request to the parliament of animals. Death to humans!”
The crowd rose and chanted “Death to all humans” Until the owl ruled that they must not disrupt the proceedings.
The owl turned to the dog and cat for their defense. The dog responded, “Humans and dogs have been partners For thousands of years, and we know humans more than any of you. Humans are capable of great kindness and compassion, And we maintain they are not fundamentally evil. And then they can be redeemed through education And through a campaign to reform human thought. I think we should give humans a second chance.”
The owl motioned to the cat, “I concur with Brother Dog. Humans are okay, and we like them. They are our friends, Although they should be found not guilty because of insanity.”
The owl said he was ready for his verdict. “Death to 95 percent of humans, and enslavement of the rest, But we will allow 50,000 to immigrate to the Moon and Mars. I will meet with the UN to give them the decree. Once that is published, all animals must rise up And kill all humans on sight. This suspends the parliament of animals. Death to all humans.”
The word went out; animals rose all over the world, And the reign of human tyranny ended within a year
PSH: You Can’t Write That!
When I write political poems
I often face a dilemma.
I feel that I can’t say
What I want to say
For fear of being prosecuted
For defamation, libel, or slander.
My defense that it is true
No longer a legal defense
In Trump’s post democracy society.
I might be referred
To the secret service
For questioning.
And god forbid
If the former president
Is re-elected,
Ushering in Christian fascism
And his promise retribution
Against his enemies.
I could get swept up
In his retribution revenge
Tour.
As poets and writers
Along with illegal immigrants
Dreamers and political activists
LGBTIQQ community,
Journalists alike
Are all going to end up
In the concentration detention
Labor re-education filtration camps.
In secret not-secret camps
That do not exist,
In an undisclosed location.
Perhaps area 51
Gitmo
Or in some tropical shit hole
Third World dungeon of horror.
Perhaps I might end up
Being cell mates
With steven Colbert
Or Jon Stewart.
That would be a blast
And almost worth it.
Based on the following prompt
April 10, 2024: Poetry Writing Prompt from Joanne Durham
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Joanne Durham:
I once drafted a poem that compared an experience walking on the beach after it snowed to the parting of the Red Sea. A fellow poet told me, “You can’t put the Red Sea in a poem – it’s too big, too many connotations for this little poem.” That felt like a provocation to me and I thought, “I’m going to put the Red Sea in a poem, so there!” And I did, in a poem entitled, “You Can’t Put the Red Sea in a Poem.” I heard the wonderful poet Naomi Shihab Nye say something similar. When someone told her she shouldn’t write about the moon – too trite – she went right out and wrote about the moon. So – write a poem about something someone has told you that you shouldn’t write about. You might want to title it, “You can’t put ___ in a poem” or “You can’t write about ___ in a poem.” Then go on to explain why you’re not supposed to include it and use it anyway. (For my example, see my poem at https://www.quartetjournal.com/winter-issue-2022 – scroll down to Joanne Durham. Sorry, I don’t have NSN’s wonderful example to share.)
If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Superhighway Facebook Group.
#napowrimo #poetry
April 10 WD Better Political Discourse Needed
It is time
for all Americans
to come together
to become one again.
the United States of America
and avoid
the slippering slope
leading to Civil War 2.0
and the breaking up
of the U.S.
into ten or more
New Nation States.
by denouncing the politics
of personal destruction
to end the partisan bickering
to put the country first.
time to resolve
to be civil, police
and really listen
to our fellow Americans.
time to realize
they are not the enemy
they are not-anti-American
and none of them are Satanic pedophiles!
time to realize Q lied.
and people died,
we can agree to disagree
time to learn the fine art
of compromise.
it is time to put down
the TV remote
turn off the noise box.
It is time
to put down our guns
and our politics of hate.
it is time to follow
the angels of our better nature,
rather than the demons
of our collective fear.
It is time to follow the adage
never let the perfect
become the enemy of good.
if we do all of this
we will have better
political discourse.
and get the country
back on track
towards a more perfect union.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a Blank Better poem.
For today’s prompt, take the phrase “(blank) Better,” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “Be Better,” “Write Better,” “Wanting Better,” and/or “There’s Nothing Better.”
April 10—The plant world -Green Trees Don’t Make It
Note: I first wrote this in 1975!
Everyday
I look out and see
The ugly green trees
Standing guard in front of my house
And I think to myself
Who owns the trees?
And what do they think of us?
Are we their friends?
Are we their enemies?
Do the trees think?
Or do they silently watch us,
Spies to the celestial emperor?
I have pondered this question
Many a morning
Who is the owner of these trees?
And why do they silently watch us?
I wonder if the trees don’t hate us
And why they don’t protest
Every day as we drive back and forth
Emitting poison gases from our mechanical asses
Right into their unprotected faces
And every night we eat our dinner
And then give the trees
Our polluted leftovers
And laugh as they silently die
From our acidic fallout
Constantly floating down on their skin
Yes, I wonder about the trees
And the birds and the bees
And everyone else
What are they thinking?
Are they plotting revenge?
Or are they merely there
Silently, watching, plotting,
Designing fiendish plots of revenge
Dreams of vast nuclear destruction
Cosmic diseases wiping out everyone in the ass
Oh Yes, I wonder and dream and ponder
What is the meaning of those silent green trees?
Standing on the corner
Quietly condemning us
With their quite tears, and falling leaves
In the winter they stand
Naked and alone
Covered with ice cold snow
As we drive by nice and warm
And we don’t care
As they stand out in the cold
Shivering, plotting warm plans of cosmic revenge
Is it too late for us
To become friends with the trees.
Or will the day come
When the trees will wake up
And gather together
All of the other slaves of humanity
I have a vision
One morning I will open the door
And see an army of wild things
Coming to arrest me
For crimes against nature
And I will plead, I did not know
And they will laugh and turn me all of my kind
Into silent tombs
And we will stand out in the cold
Like the green trees
Plotting dreams of revenge
For ever and ever
Until our day finally comes
And we can go out and kill all the wild things
Perhaps we already have
AI Version Green Trees Don’t Make It
Green trees don’t make it, Standing guard in front of my house. I ponder: Who owns the trees? What do they think of us? Are we their friends or enemies? What do the trees silently observe? Spies to the celestial emperor?
In Washington DC, Looking out my window, What did I see? I saw the squirrels in the trees And the peaceful trees of Capitol Hill. Near the seat of power, Yet distant from its machinations.
The trees, ancient witnesses, Their leaves rustling secrets, Their roots anchored in centuries, Whispering tales of forgotten empires, Of wars waged and treaties signed, Of lovers’ trysts and children’s laughter.
Green trees don’t make it, But they endure. They witness our follies, Our triumphs, our tragedies. They stand tall, unyielding, Their branches reaching for the sky, Their roots entwined with history.
Who owns the trees? Perhaps no one and everyone. They belong to the wind, To the birds nesting in their boughs, To the squirrels leaping from limb to limb. They belong to time itself, A silent chorus in the symphony of existence.
Green trees don’t make it, But they persist. They sway with the seasons, Their leaves ablaze in autumn, Their branches bare in winter, Their buds burst forth in spring, Their canopies providing shade in summer.
What do they think of us? Do they mourn our wars, Our greed, our indifference? Or do they celebrate our moments of grace, Our acts of kindness, our shared laughter? Perhaps they simply observe, Their wisdom deeper than our fleeting lives.
Are we their friends or enemies? We who build houses and roads, Who prune their limbs and pave their roots. We who breathe their oxygen Yet poison their soil with chemicals. We who marvel at their beauty Yet take them for granted.
What do the trees silently observe? The passing of generations, The rise and fall of civilizations, The ebb and flow of human folly. They witness our comings and goings, Our celebrations and sorrows, Their rings recording the rhythm of time.
Spies to the celestial emperor? Perhaps they report to the stars, Their leaves like cosmic diaries, Their whispers carried on the wind. They witness our smallness, Our insignificance in the grand design, Yet they stand, unwavering witnesses, Green trees that don’t make it, But endure.
NaPoWrMo Tribute to James Dean
James Dean Died
October 1, 1955.
29 days before
this rebel with
out a caused burst forth.
announcing to the world
in a James Dean like howl
I am here
deal with it, MF!
James Dean
died in a fiery car crash
during an illegal drag race
in Salinas, California.
which took his life
sadly at age 24.
the studio bemoaned his passing
saying he was their biggest star
and they had big plans.
for the Giant star
of “Giant”
“East of Eden”
and my favorite Dean movie
“Rebel without a Cause”
James Dean was indeed
a rebel against the establishment
and spoke to so many people.
with is oh so cool disdain
and his hipster attitude
to the max tude.
he died way too young
his passing still mourned
68 years later.
RIP in peace
James Dean
wherever you are
you are there, man.
and I will be joining you
when the Grim Reaper
comes calling for me
in a few short years.
when we meet
and we will meet
we will sit down
and drink a “hell” beer
in Heaven.
because in Heaven
there is always free beer
but the best beers
and brewed in Hades.
hy of James Dean:
James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American actor whose career spanned just five years until his untimely death. He became a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment and social estrangement, as exemplified in his most celebrated films. Dean’s early acting career included uncredited roles before he gained stardom with his performance in “East of Eden” (1955), where he played a rebellious son seeking his father’s approval. His portrayal of a frustrated teenager in “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) solidified his legacy as the embodiment of youthful angst. His final lead role was in “Giant” (1956), where he played a Texan rancher who strikes oil and becomes wealthy. Tragically, Dean’s life was cut short at the age of 24 in a car crash in Salinas, California. Despite his brief career, he received two posthumous Academy Award nominations and remains a significant figure in American cinema and culture123.
WC Dew Drop Inn April 11—Eclipse/d two Lunatic Lune Poems about the Eclipse
Title: Final Solar Eclipse
the solar eclipse
ended life
massive solar flare
Title: Howling At The Eclipse
howling at the moon
full madness
solar eclipse time
Writer’s Digest – title: Old Man Lost In His Old Memories
Memories
Of past events
Yesterdays
Overwhelming
An old man
Lost in his past
Can’t sleep at 0 dark hundred.
Note: “ O dark hundred” is military/intel jargon refering to the time two to three hours before dawn when operatives get up to get ready for dawn opperations. Depending on location and time of year it is between 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.
for me is 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. when I get the insomnia blues.
live your life fully, as if today were the last day of your life
Dreams Can Come True
Remember dreams can come true if you believe in them
Beating the Lie detector
Jerry, remember it is not a lie if you believe it
Goerge Constanza’s advice to Jerry Seinfield on how to bSeinfeldeat a lie detector
Trump President Again
the prospect of Donald Trump becoming President Again should terrify you.
Married the woman of My Dreams
I married the woman of my Dreams
Old Age Memories
as an old man, I often live in my old memories
Talking Back to Yourself
talking to yourself is fine, if you hear yourself talking back, then you have a problem.
Drugs
they say drugs are for those who can’t handle reality
Tower Of Power Best Funk Band of All Time
There is no denying the fact that the Tower of Power is the Best Funk Band of All Time
Is Christian Fascism Coming
if Trump becomes president again, will he usher in Christian fascism?
Civil War 2.0
so much talk about Civil War 2.0 around, have Americans all lost their minds?
Today’s resource is grieftolight, an Instagram account where you will find a wealth of poems.
Finally, our optional prompt for the day honors the “ones” in the number 11. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write either a monostich, which is a one-line poem, or a poem made up of one-liner style jokes/sentiments. Need inspiration? Take a look at Joe Brainard’s poem “30 One-Liners” or Frank O’Hara’s “Lines for the Fortune Cookies.”
PSH Returning home Subway Journeys
Write a poem describing the way back home from a trip using public transport (bus, train, plane). What do you experience while traveling? Use the description alternately between what you perceive outside yourself and what you think within yourself. You can include what you left behind and what you are heading towards, but the most important thing is a report on your journey in the company of other strangers and the landscapes outside your window in any poetic form.
I live in Korea
a country with great public transportation
I have been riding buses and subway trains
in Korea and around the world
since the early 70’s.
On of the joys
of living in Korea
is that the public transit
is great
available everywhere
go where you want to go
inexpensive
safe
and pleasant to use.
what a contrast
to the United States.
where public transit
is often not even an option
it is expensive
does not go where
you want to go.
and is dangerous
smelly and frankly
disgusting to use.
the other day
I was going home
from the doctor’s office
we took the Gold Line
to the number five line
to the number four line
took about one hour and half
and included 15 minutes
of walking
an excercise bonus
so to speak
cost about US$ 2.0
an equivalent trip
on the DC metro
would cost $ 10.00
and may not even be
an option
depending on where you live.
the Gold line is an self driving line
that the City Government
pushed through a few years ago
in lieu of expanding the real subway line
they screwed up
badly understimating the useage
of the new line
which locals dubbed the hell line
due to severe overcrowding
during rush hour
they have to have staff
control the crowds
but fortuantely
the trains comes
every three minutes
we often just let
the train go by
and take the next one.
then a short walk home
to my apartment
on the 17th floor
of a high-rise apartment
overlooking the fake Venice canal
all in all
I am pleased
to live in a modern country
that gets public transit right
and regret that America
my homeland
is so backwards
at times.
April 12—Make a dire prediction you hope doesn’t come true
January 6 riot
Civil War 2.0
Reading the latest polls
Showing that President Biden
And Ex-President Trump
Tied in a dead heat
In the polls
Particularly in the swing states.
. I realize there is
Real possibility
That Donald Trump could
Be elected president again,.
Again, and if so, what would he do?
These nightmares keep me up
At 0 dark hundred.
Nightmares that President Trump
Ending American democracy
Replacing it with Hungarian-style
Neo-fascism overwhelms me.
Another factoid in the news
Is that 25 states,
According to the Texas Independent Movement,
Would likely join Texas in seceding.
From the U.S. in the event
That Biden is elected president.
The proponents of this Great Divorce
Call it Civil War 2.0.
And in most cases, it’s led by Texas.
Leading the Red States
And California leading the Blue States
Including the entire West Coast
And NE America and Chicagoland
Out the proverbial door.
And if Trump does not make it
He would call it rigged
And announce he would be happy
To serve as the President
Of the Christain States of America
Immediately Texas and 25 states
Succeed and hold a constitutional convention
To enact Constitution 2.0
So if Trump wins Christain Fascism
Followed by Civil War 2.0
If he loses Civil War 2.0
Followed by Christian fascism
In the Christian States of America.
. So with these gloomy thoughts,
I think about what would happen
If Trump re-enters the White House.
And usherer in. Christian Fascism.
What would he do first?
Well, he says the first thing
He would do
Is shut down the border
And shut down immigration for a year,
Banning Muslim travel and
International students, particularly
From China..
While rounding up all illegal immigrants,
Including the Dreamers.
Those. Illegal immigrants
That came to the United States as children.
The second thing he would do
Is withdrawing from NATO, Korea, and Japan
And station troops along the border.
The third thing he would do is to take
A Sledgehammer to the federal government budget,
Like his friend the Argentian president
Shutting down most federal government agencies,
Reverting their functions to the states
Or private sector.
This could include turning over the national parks
And National Forest lands to the states for exploitation
As they seem fit.
Ending Federal wilderness protections,
The Endangered Species Act,
Shutting down the EPA,
Agriculture, Commerce, Education,
Energy, Labor, and Interior departments,
Merging State Department and DHS.
Withdrawing from all climate change negotiations
While eliminating renewable energy tax and other credits
And drill, baby, drill everywhere
The fourth thing he would probably do
Is to legally eliminate transgender status
By defining that there are only two genders
In the US, males, and females,
Which are assigned at birth
Prohibiting governments, and the private sector
From recognizing any sex changes
And prohibiting insurance companies
From paying for any sex changes.
The fourth thing he would do.
Is ask the Supreme court to rule
That states can once again
Make LGBT status illegal
Including banning same-sex marriages
And authorizing discrimination
Against the LFBTQ community.
And banning LFBTQ community members
From having security clearances
And serving in the military
State Department and intelligence agencies,
The fifth thing he would probably
Do is impose
A mandatory 10% tariff on all imports.
All of these things
Would lead to the West Coast
Declaring that they are no longer
Bound to obey the federal government
And the East Coast states as well
And Chicago land,
This may very well lead to a peaceful
“ great divorce”
After a constitutional convention,
But it could lead to civil War 2.0
With unimaginable dire
Worldwide consequences.
Including China invading Tawain
North Korea invading South Korea
Russia attacking the Baltic States
And Finland,
India and Pakistan war
Perhaps ending in a nuclear exchange
Iran invading Iraq
And attacking Israel.
As our enemies
Take advantage
Of the U.S. withdrawl
Into civil war madness.
These are some of my nightmares
That I hope will not come true.
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 12 Trumpian Humor
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a funny poem.
For today’s prompt, write a funny poem. Keep in mind that funny isn’t always “ha-ha” funny. For instance, your poem could include a funny smell or talk about a funny (or weird) person or situation. And if you’ve ever hit your funny bone, that pain is not making anyone laugh. So write a funny poem, whether it’s for a laugh or not.
Five Trumpian Humor Poetic Fragments
1
Donald Trump
sat on his fat rump
what a toxic wasted dump
2
Donald Trump screams Deep State Out to Get Me
Donald Trump
screaming to everyone
the Deep State is out to get me
they are indeed
3 who is crazier
Donald Trump is on a rampage
daily showing he is out of his mind
the media is fixated on Biden
being too old
the public says
what a choice
which crazy old man
do we choose?
4
the choice
the choice comes down to this
do we chose cool grandpa
or do we choose crazy grandpa
dear God
please take them both
time for a re-do
5
Don’t understand the trump voter
why would you vote
for such a con man
such a vile excuse
for a human being?
then it dawns one
they still find
his Don Rickles comedy
his insult dog commedy routine
still funny
but I think
his sell by time
has expired
and he should be
simply retired
NaPoWriMo Saga of Big Daddy
And last but not least, our optional prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that plays with the idea of a “tall tale.” American tall tales feature larger-than-life characters like Paul Bunyan (who is literally larger than life), Bulltop Stormalong (also gigantic), and Pecos Bill (apparently normal-sized, but he doesn’t let it slow him down). If you’d like to see a modern poetic take on the tall tale, try Jennifer L. Knox’s hilarious poem, “Burt Reynolds FAQ.” Your poem can revolve around a mythical character, one you make up entirely, or add fantastical elements into a real person’s biography.
Big Daddy,
Was the man
who always had a plan.
He was an ex-University of Arkansas
And Dallas cowboy player
Who had worked for the CIA
After the agency fired him
For murdering enemies
Of the state at home
In contravention of agency rules,
But they retained his services
From time to time.
He became a legendary figure
He was a cipher, a ghost, an intel operative
A spy, a spook, a secret agent man.
No one knew his real name
Called him Big Daddy
Or his latest covert name.
And he had hundreds
Of cover legends.
He officially did not exist,
As his agency had officially
Terminated him years ago.
He now worked for an agency
That did not exist.
The same agency
That had terminated his legal existence
For matters of national security.
He lived in the shadow lands
Of the third world
In nameless hellhole slums
And dark secret dungeons.
Where he would do what needed
To be done
Killing those that needed killing
At the instructions
Of his unseen masters.
He was Just a rumor
Living in the shadow worlds
working for an unnamed agency
An intel operative
The best of the best
At what he did
Which was creative interrogation
His favorite choice
Almost too many choices
To make
But his favorite choice
Was creative use of
An electric shock
Imaginary or not
But sometimes
It had an outcome
An unimaginable outcome
His worst nightmare
The victim is released
And sues him
And the agencies
That he worked for
But so far
It has not happened
As no one knew
His real name
And the government
Did not know too
So justice
was never served
On Big Daddy.
Big Daddy a rogue CIA agent popped into a dream one night. I have written quite a few Big Daddy stories and poems. I see him as a modern day Harry Flashman – the fictional 19th Century rogue British military guy who got into all sorts of scandals and intrigue.
April 13, 2024: Poetry Writing Prompt from Robbi Nester
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Robbi Nester:
Smell is one of the first senses we experience, along with taste, accessible before our eyes work very well. Therefore, it can give us access to the distant past, often in great detail, as taste can.
Think of a smell you may have recently experienced that had the power to plunge you back into some experience in the distant past you had all but forgotten about. What is the smell? Where and when did you smell it? Who were you with?
Use your description of the smell and place and person to show the reader how it makes you feel to experience this scent again.
If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Super Highway Facebook Group.
First Time I ate kimchi
kimchi
the other night
I had some Kimchi
with dinner
as I almost always do
living in Korea
with a Korean born wife
I have been eating kimchi
since 1979
but the smell brought back
my first memory
of eating Kimchi.
back in high school
i knew a Korean student
who was living
at a rooming house.
he was a Moonie
but was cool about it.
did not try to convert me
one day I was hanging out
with him.
and he treated me
to a typical Korean lunch
including Kimchi.
when i bit into
that fiery hot food
I knew I was hooked.
and when I found out
I was going to Korea
I knew I would soon
be eating kimchi
in the land
that invented Kimchi.
and I was pleased
with that,
WD life worth Living
As I grow old
With the love of my life
Still by side
I realize
Once again
How much my life
Has changed
Since she entered my life
She was a bright ray
Of sunlight
That broke through the darkness
In my Soul
And made life
Worth living
And every day
I thank God
That she came
Into my life.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a living poem.
For today’s prompt, write a living poem. What makes a living poem may be different for everyone. Some people may like to live it up, while others may focus solely on being alive. However, only you know what kind of poem you can live with. After all, it’s your life (and poem).
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away. It’s free, easy, and the comments (for the most part) don’t require manual approval.
Here’s my attempt at a Living Poem:
Mature Couple being attacked in their car by a hoard of zombies.
“the living dead”
they come out in the day and night
looking for anybody’s brains
or other organs they might bite.
they come out in the day and night,
whatever time they feel is right,
because they have those hunger pains.
they’re hungry in the day and night
looking for anybody’s brains.
April 13—Discovery Shooting Down the Alien Visitors
In the movie
the signal
an Astro
naut receives
a signal
from an alien spaceship
heading to earth
the alien repeats the word
Hello in multiple languages
while heading to earth
the discovery electrifies
and terrifies the world
the decision is made
by all the world’s governments
in secret
to shot down the spaceship
before it could land
as it could be either a probe
of the beginning of an invasion.
when they enter the ship
they find completely disabled
robot crew.
along with the original
voyager data discs
which the aliens
were returning to earth
as an opening gambit
to establish communication.
NaPoWrMo Shy Man Fishing
one day a shy man
went to the ocean
he was a he-man, had a van.
he was filled with emotion
he wished to eat bonefish
he wanted it for his food,
he had a mad cat
who joined him in fishing
watching the fish freeswimming,
the man was a lewd rude dude
catfishing and phising
to sell his stolen fish
from his van.
Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to play with rhyme. Start by creating a “word bank” of ten simple words. They should only have one or two syllables apiece. Five should correspond to each of the five senses (i.e., one word that is a thing you can see, one word that is a type of sound, one word that is a thing you can taste, etc). Three more should be concrete nouns of whatever character you choose (i.e., “bridge,” “sun,” “airplane,” “cat”), and the last two should be verbs. Now, come up with rhymes for each of your ten words. (If you’re having trouble coming up with rhymes, the wonderful Rhymezone is at your service). Use your expanded word-bank, with rhymes, as the seeds for your poem. Your effort doesn’t actually have to rhyme in the sense of having each line end with a rhymed word, but try to
use as much soundplay in your poem as possible.
rhyming table
see sky shy, die, guy, ply why
taste food dude, lewd, mood, skewed tude,
smell ocean emotion, notion, motion
taste fish dish, wish, bonefish
cat bat, fat, rat
man plan, he-man, van
fishing catfishing, phising
swimming freeswiming, nightswiming
WC April 14—Complaint Computer Blues (revised)
Sometimes I think
My computer is plotting against me
And only me
Trying deliberately to drive me mad.
My computer knows
when I am busy
Then it throws
A hissy fit.
Here are some of my pet peeves
Constantly Crashing
Refuses to boot up, and crashes constantly.
Loses data it had the day before.
Or five minutes before,
Or refuses to save the data.
Just fucks with me
As it loves toying with me
Making me yell and scream
At my damn computer screen
Can’t Open Files or Save files or opens random sh…
often when trying to open
a document in word
the word open file button
fails to respond
sometimes you have to wait
five minutes
or when trying to open a file
the computer opens a random file
instead
or when trying to open a document
it kicks you out
often several times
sometimes you can
open a copy
sometimes not
and sometimes you can save the document
under the same name
often you have to save it
under another name
No dialogue box open lie
sometimes it refuses to open
a document saying
there is a dialogue
box open
which is a lie
there is no damn
dialogue box
visible
Random Blue Screen of Death
Cursing up a blue stream of blue curses
As the blue screen of death
Marches across the dark blue screen
Smiling at me
As I beg it
To do what
it is supposed to do
Just once I beg it
Do what you
Are supposed to do
Endless Non-Response Spinning blue wheels
Open the document once
Not twenty times
Do “Not respond”
Endless spinning blue wheels.
In endless loops of opening
Not responding
refusing to close
Until I respond to the error code.
Please Mr. Computer
Quit playing games
Play my music, don’t wipe out the sound
On the fifth attempt to play music
Don’t take a half-hour to load Microsoft products
Don’t freeze up on opening music programs
Computer error Haiku Codes
Don’t give me computer haiku error messages
That only makes sense to a computer geek.
Such as general error reading files
Who the ***** is this damn general
And why is NSA reading my files?
Or can’t save the file
Or can’t save the “An open file”
When it just did ten times in a role,
Or kicks me out, while losing my data.
Copy and Paste Wiping out document text
or when doing a simple copy and paste function
the computer defaults to the last command
making you have to do it again and again
up to five times sometimes
and on a random basis
the copy and paste function
wipes out all data
in the document
and to add insult to injury
deletes all previously saved version
sending the data
into computer limbo land
never to be found again
all without warning
just zip its gone!
Frozen Num Lock
another thing
my computer loves doing
is on a random basis,
turn the numbs lock-on
without warning
turning text into numbers.
requiring you too manually
turn off the number lock.
All Caps Pops On on a Random basis
once in a while
the all-caps button
mysteriously turns on
turning everything into caps.
fortunately
usually there is a warning flash.
Defaulting to Foreign Languages
a very annoying feature
is that when you log in from overseas
everything defaults to a foreign language
usually without the ability to change
it back to English
despite the fact
your settings are all in English
there may be a hidden button
to change language
written in the langauge
used in that country.
the computer does not know
or care that up to ten percent
of people logging in
from overseas don’t read
the language.
or are travelers
traveling through.
Excell Freezes Up
And in Microsoft excel
Refusing to move the cursor
Just freezing in place for a moment
Before kicking me out.
Can’t Copy External Data in Excel for reasons
Excell had a problem
Copying data from other sources
Generating an error message
About not being able to load fonts
Then ask you to say okay
Then kicking you out
Once I did those 200 times
I finally ditched Excel
And moved to Google Docs.
Can’t Find Printer
often the computer
can’t find the printer
just because ….. reasons……
AI hallucinations
AI is a great tool
but sometimes
it gets things wrong
or makes shit up!
Google Bard
once tried to convince me
that the US Embassy
In Seoul had moved
five years before
to a new location
outside of Seoul
only problem was
that was an AI hallucinaut
based on a proposal
five years ago
those in the know
call this an AI hallucination.
And it has a liberal bias
once Bing Co-pilot
refused to define the term
“libtard”
saying it was vile
insult and should
not be used
by anyone
ending with
next topic please
Mission Accomplished
And all the other gobbledygook messages
That pops up every five minutes it seems
As the computer slowly drives me mad
Flashing the final insult
User-driven mad
Mission accomplished.
I am again entering the annual April Poetry Month challenge. I will update this once a week and post the updates on Blog Lovin, Facebook, Fan Story, Instagram, Medium, Substack, Watt Pad and X. Comments are welcomed.
Index
April 1
PSH Ode to Durian
WD Optimistic Laturnae
WC Dew Drop Inn Sarang pabo love fool
NaPoWrMo Easter Bunny Warm up March 31
NaPoWrMo April 1 Cage
April 2
PSH The Words of the Year 1955 PSH
WD Sad and happy days
WC Dew Drop Inn Spring Time Flowers Blooming Love
NaPoWrMo Ode to Coffee
April 3
PSH Berkeley Mad Psychotic Pineapple Burns Sonnet
PSH 2 AI Version Traditional Sonnet
WD My Musical Street
WC Dew Drop Inn
NaPoWrMo
The Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version the Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
April 4
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
WD Look at the Sky
WC Dew Drop In Ending Shaving in Retirement
NaPoWriMo It Can’t Happen Here
April 5
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Dew Drop Inn Making Baseball Great Again
NaPoWriMo Only In SF
April 6
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Writers DIgest Meeting My Fate
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Daily RItual Drinks
NaPoWrMo PNRCP
Begin Poems
April 1
Ode to Durian
The infamous durian fruit is a strange phenomenon.
Common in China, Southeast Asia, and India,
and in Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Indian diaspora communities,
It has such a powerful sour smell that it is banned in airline cabins.
I first ate Durian in a rural town in Central Thailand
my hasher friends dared me to eat it
it was horrible at first the smell
But if you can get beyond
The awful, dirty socks, rotten, sour smell,
The taste is pure heaven,
Proof perhaps that God has a sense of humor?
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Suzanne Lummis:
Evolve a poem that involves an exotic fruit, one fruit, and a town you’ve never visited, or else have distant memories of. The poem does not have to be About the fruit. It probably should Not be about the fruit. No one gives a fig about a fruit. But the fruit makes an Appearance. Extra points if it’s a Pomegranate. No need to mention Persephone, but if you do… It better be something we don’t already know.
Writer’s Digest
Optimistic Laturnae
life
more love
with my wife
standing by me
love
The lanturne is a five-line verse shaped like a Japanese lantern with a syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four, one.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, we have our first two-for-Tuesday prompt.
For today’s prompt, we have our first two-for-Tuesday prompt, which means you get two prompts. You can write to one of the prompts, both the prompts separately, or try to write a poem that works with both prompts at the same time. The prompts are:
The Burns Sonnet is a Shakespearian sonnet but it does not follow traditional meter or rhyme
Please convert the previous text into a traditional sonnet using most of these words in line 13 must use the word cacophony and follow the following criterion
1 inner life of pineapple
2 berkeley fate
3 bad luck comes in three
4last night went for a walk
5-8 line five to eight two animals meet someone unusual
9 10 wish for the pineapple
11 12 what did I wish for when your eight
13-14 hullabaloo, ragamuffin, hooferaw, scoundreles cacophony and discuss a secret something is hidden or something no one else knows
AI Version
AI version Title: “The Cosmic Cat”
sf dog 3
The Berkeley mad, psychotic pineapple,
An underground icon in the streets of Berkeley,
Whispered, “Bad Luck comes in Three,” so cynical,
Last night, he wandered, joints ablaze, unwary.
Encountering a cat, not mere feline grace,
But cosmic blackness riding on a dog,
A mouse perched high, a curious embrace,
In SF Bay’s odd realm, where dreams may jog.
Oh, how I wished when I was merely eight,
For a cosmic cat, a secret friend concealed,
To stir a hullabaloo, a wild debate,
A ragamuffin dance, a truth revealed.
In hooferaw and scoundrel’s cacophony,
The pineapple’s fate intertwined with glee. 🍍🌌
Writer’s Digest Our Musical Street
30 lines
I grew up
In a very creative time
a very musical time.
The 60’s had the best music
Motown ruled the Bay Area
As well as Great rock music
Acid jazz
Acid Rock
Fusion Jazz
The Grateful Dead
Mamas and the Papas
Jefferson Airplane
Jimmy Hendrix
last high school
was Berkeley High School
Santana
And so many others
The best funk band
Of them all
Tower of Power
Beloved by all
High school students.
For their immortal classic
Make out song
You’re still a Young Man.
wonder how many people
fell in love slow dancing
to this song
how many babies
were conceived?
Tower of Power rocked
Every party in town
On every street.
Music flowed.
On every musical street
In the city.
That was Berkeley
In the 60’s and 70’s.
Please use the following as the Title of your story or poem:
“Our Musical Street”
Please select “Music” as one of your genres.
Tower of Power is an American R&B and funk-based band and horn section, originating in Oakland, California, that has been performing since 1968. The band has had several lead vocalists, the best known being Lenny Williams, who fronted the band between early 1973 and late 1974, the period of their greatest commercial success1. They have had eight songs on the Billboard Hot 100; their highest-charting songs include “You’re Still a Young Man”, “So Very Hard to Go”, “What Is Hip?”, and “Don’t Change Horses (in the Middle of a Stream)”1.
The band was formed by tenor saxophonist/vocalist Emilio Castillo and baritone saxophonist Stephen “Doc” Kupka in 19681. The band’s soul sound appealed to both minority and counterculture listeners1. The band’s name was changed to Tower of Power after they agreed that their original name, The Mots, would not help them play at Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco1.
Tower of Power has released 31 albums, including 15 studio albums, 5 live albums, and 11 compilations1. Their most recent album, “Step Up”, was released in 20202.
Here is a list of some of their most popular songs:
“You’re Still a Young Man”
“So Very Hard to Go”
“What Is Hip?”
“Don’t Change Horses (in the Middle of a Stream)”
“Soul Vaccination”
“This Time It’s Real”
“Time Will Tell”
“Only So Much Oil in the Ground”
If you’re interested in listening to their music, you can check out their official website2.
2024 April PAD Challenge: Day 3
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a musical act or artist poem.
Believe it or not, today is one of the more important days of the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. While each day is a new challenge, I’ve found that most poets who make it through the first three days of prompts have the best chances of still being here at the end of the month. So let’s write a poem!
For today’s prompt, pick a musical act or artist and either make that the title of your poem or incorporate into the title of your poem; then, write your poem. Possible titles might be: “Michael Jackson,” “Olivia Rodrigo,” “the Beatles,” “Guided by Voices at Austin City Limits,” “Watching a Movie With Elton John,” or “Eating Ice Cream With Dr. Dre.” Have fun with it!
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Look at the Sky
NaPoWrMo Prompt
the Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version the Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
Death to All Humans
The Parliament of Animals met one day in a secret undisclosed location as they were under constant surveillance by the human CIA and others who wanted to disrupt the parliament’s work.
the wise owl presided. He read the charges
“We are assembled here to judge the actions of the human race. the human race is being charged with
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments to preserve the environment for all animals including humans.
Speaking for the prosecution will be the Tiger and Lions, speaking for the defense with the domestic cats and dogs. We have in the room ten men and women who are representative of the human race.
The parliament can make any recommendation to remedy the situation including the death penalty, exile, or reparations. All animals will be required to conduct these recommendations.”
“Okay, Mr. Tiger first we will ask the humans how they plead.” “
Humans. You have been charged with the following crimes.
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments to preserve the environment for all animals including humans.
How do you plead?
Sam Adams, the lawyer for the humans, responded,
“Not guilty your honor for these charges except for eating animals which we contend is part of the natural order of the world and many if not most of you are guilty of the same charge.”
“Clarification – your basic argument is that everyone eats animals, so humans are not guilty
“ “Yes, that is correct, your honor.” “
Okay, Mr. Tiger, you’re opening.” “Okay. The facts are clear. For thousands of years until the Industrial Revolution humans had a little mass impact on the overall environment. Ever since then all animals have been impacted and my species has been hunted to extinction for the greed of humans who have not eaten tiger meat. The predator class, including bears, coyotes, feral dogs, lions, tigers, and wolves have been fighting back against the predation of humans, but we are losing. And if we don’t do anything within 10 years, there won’t be any tigers or other big predators left in the wild. And the natural order of things would be controlled by the evil, selfish humans who don’t give a damn about their fellow creatures. Therefore, we are proposing that 95% of humans must be killed. The remaining humans will be allowed to live as our slaves It is only fair. That is my request to the parliament of animals. Death to humans!”
The crowd rose and chanted “Death to all humans” until the owl ruled that they must not disrupt the proceedings.
The owl turned to the cat and and dog for their defense. the dog responded, “
Humans and dogs have been partners, and we know humans more than any of you. Humans are capable of great kindness, and compassion and we maintain they are not fundamentally evil. And then they can be redeemed through education and through. Campaign to reform human thought. I think we should give humans a second chance.”
the owl motioned to the dog
“I concur with Brother Cat. Humans are okay and we like them they are our friends, although they should be found not guilty because of insanity.”
The owl said he was ready for his verdict.
“Death to 95 percent of humans, and enslavement of the rest, but we will allow 50,000 to immigrate to the Moon and Mars. I will meet with the UN to give them the decree.
Once that is published all animals must rise up and kill all humans on sight. This suspends the parliament of animals. Death to all humans.” The word went out animals rose all over the world and the reign of human tyranny ended within a year.
AI Version The Parliament of Animals
In the clandestine chambers of the Parliament of Animals, where shadows danced and secrets whispered, the wise owl presided. Under the ever-watchful gaze of human surveillance, the charges were read aloud:
“We are assembled here to judge the actions of the human race. The human race stands accused of crimes against nature, destruction of the environment, mass murder, enslavement of animals, mutilation of animals, and violation of Gaia’s sacred commandments. Speaking for the prosecution are the Tigers and Lions; for the defense, the domestic cats and dogs. Ten representatives of humanity sit in this room. The parliament holds the power to recommend remedies: death penalty, exile, or reparations. All animals shall be bound by these decisions.”
The Tiger, his golden eyes ablaze, addressed the humans, “How do you plead?”
The humans, their faces etched with defiance, stood before the assembly. Sam Adams, their lawyer, stepped forward, his voice unwavering, “Not guilty, Your Honor. Except for eating animals—a primal act woven into our existence—we maintain our innocence. It is the natural order, and many among you, my fellow creatures, partake in this ancient feast.”
The room buzzed with tension. The wise owl blinked, feathers rustling. The verdict hung in the air, suspended between judgment and mercy. The fate of humanity rested on the scales of justice, balanced precariously.
And so, the Parliament of Animals convened, weaving threads of fate, pondering the sins of bipeds, and deciding whether to condemn or absolve. In this surreal courtroom, where the boundaries blurred and the moon bore witness, the world awaited its reckoning.
Last but not least, here’s our prompt for the day – optional, as always. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a surreal prose poem. For inspiration, check out Franz Kafka’s collection of short parables (my favorite is “The Green Dragon”).
The infamous durian fruit is a strange phenomenon.
Common in China, Southeast Asia, and India,
and in Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Indian diaspora communities,
It has such a powerful sour smell, that it is banned in airline cabins.
first ate Durian in a rural town in Central Thailand
my hasher friends dared me to eat it
it was horrible at first the smell
But if you can get beyond
The awful, dirty socks, rotten, sour smell,
The taste is pure heaven,
Proof perhaps that God has a sense of humor?
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Suzanne Lummis:
Evolve a poem that involves an exotic fruit, one fruit, and a town you’ve never visited, or else have distant memories of. The poem does not have to be About the fruit. It probably should Not be about the fruit. No one gives a fig about a fruit. But the fruit makes an Appearance. Extra points if it’s a Pomegranate. No need to mention Persephone, but if you do… It better be something we don’t already know.
A Mango would also be good.
No Oranges.
Nothing personal against them, but that’s another poem. And Gary Soto wrote it.
Don’t forget about the Town.
If you write a poem from this prompt, post it as a comment underneath the prompt in the Poetry Super Highway Facebook Group.
#napowrimo #poetry
Writer’s Digest
Optimistic Laturnae (CC FS)
life
more love
with my wife
standing by me
love
The lanturne is a five-line verse shaped like a Japanese lantern with a syllabic pattern of one, two, three, four, one.
March 31 warm Up
Easter Bunny Warning
The Easter Bunny
Had a warning
He was tired
Of being played the fool.
Tired of being associated
With low-life fake Christians
Proclaiming that Donald Trump
Is the next messiah.
The Easter Bunny said,
“Donald Trump
Ain’t no Christian
He ain’t no friend of mine.
He is the antichrist
The poster child
For the seven deadly sins”.
Donald Trump denounced
The Easter Bunny.
Saying on Truth Social,
“The Easter Bunny is nothing
But a low-life wanna-be thug,
A real loser!
An anti-fa, anti-American, BLM, communist, fascist
Radical left-wing Marxist vermin thug,
Part of the woke crowd,
That is ruining our once-great country.
That needs a Second Amendment remedy.
April 1—Be a fool in a poem!
Sarangpabo – Korean Love Fool for You
When I first saw you
In my dreams.
You were the most beautiful woman
In the world to me
And still are.
When you looked at me
With love blazing
From your dark brown
Goo-goo eyes.
sparks flew from heart to heart
(이심초심ishimchomshim)
You hynotized, messemeried me
Your love mojo working overtime
Turning me into nothing but
A 사랑 바보Sarang pabo (love fool).
Eight years later
You walked off that bus
Into my life,
Becoming
my wife,
My soul mate.
And yes,
I am still
your 사랑 바보Sarang pabo.
And will remain under
Your love spell
Until the day I die.
Translation into Korean (rough AI Version)
Certainly! Here’s the English text followed by the Hangul and Romanized script line by line:
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, we have our first two-for-Tuesday prompt.
For today’s prompt, we have our first two-for-Tuesday prompt, which means you get two prompts. You can write to one of the prompts, both the prompts separately, or try to write a poem that works with both prompts at the same time. The prompts are:
The Burns Sonnet is a Shakespearian sonnet but it does not follow traditional meter or rhyme
Please convert the previous text into a traditional sonnet using most of these words in line 13 must use the word cacophony and follow the following criterion
1 inner life of pineapple
2 berkeley fate
3 bad luck comes in three
4last night went for a walk
5-8 line five to eight two animals meet someone unusual
9 10 wish for the pineapple
11 12 what did I wish for when your eight
13-14 hullabaloo, ragamuffin, hooferaw, scoundreles cacophony and discuss a secret something is hidden or something no one else knows
AI Version
AI version Title: “The Cosmic Cat”
The Berkeley mad, psychotic pineapple,
An underground icon in the streets of Berkeley,
Whispered, “Bad Luck comes in Three,” so cynical,
Last night, he wandered, joints ablaze, unwary.
Encountering a cat, not mere feline grace,
But cosmic blackness riding on a dog,
A mouse perched high, a curious embrace,
In SF Bay’s odd realm, where dreams may jog.
Oh, how I wished when I was merely eight,
For a cosmic cat, a secret friend concealed,
To stir a hullabaloo, a wild debate,
A ragamuffin dance, a truth revealed.
In hooferaw and scoundrel’s cacophony,
The pineapple’s fate intertwined with glee. 🍍🌌
Writer’s Digest Our Musical Street
30 lines
I grew up
In a very creative time
a very musical time.
The 60’s had the best music
Motown ruled the Bay Area
As well as Great rock music
Acid jazz
Acid Rock
Fusion Jazz
The Grateful Dead
Mamas and the Papas
Jefferson Airplane
Jimmy Hendrix
last high school
was Berkeley High School
Santana
And so many others
The best funk band
Of them all
Tower of Power
Beloved by all
High school students.
For their immortal classic
Make out song
You’re still a Young Man.
wonder how many people
fell in love slow dancing
to this song
how many babies
were conceived?
Tower of Power rocked
Every party in town
On every street.
Music flowed.
On every musical street
In the city.
That was Berkeley
In the 60’s and 70’s.
Please use the following as the Title of your story or poem:
“Our Musical Street”
Please select “Music” as one of your genres.
Tower of Power is an American R&B and funk-based band and horn section, originating in Oakland, California, that has been performing since 1968. The band has had several lead vocalists, the best known being Lenny Williams, who fronted the band between early 1973 and late 1974, the period of their greatest commercial success1. They have had eight songs on the Billboard Hot 100; their highest-charting songs include “You’re Still a Young Man”, “So Very Hard to Go”, “What Is Hip?”, and “Don’t Change Horses (in the Middle of a Stream)”1.
The band was formed by tenor saxophonist/vocalist Emilio Castillo and baritone saxophonist Stephen “Doc” Kupka in 19681. The band’s soul sound appealed to both minority and counterculture listeners1. The band’s name was changed to Tower of Power after they agreed that their original name, The Mots, would not help them play at Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco1.
Tower of Power has released 31 albums, including 15 studio albums, 5 live albums, and 11 compilations1. Their most recent album, “Step Up”, was released in 20202.
Here is a list of some of their most popular songs:
“You’re Still a Young Man”
“So Very Hard to Go”
“What Is Hip?”
“Don’t Change Horses (in the Middle of a Stream)”
“Soul Vaccination”
“This Time It’s Real”
“Time Will Tell”
“Only So Much Oil in the Ground”
If you’re interested in listening to their music, you can check out their official website2.
Bump City is the second album by the soul/funk group Tower of Power. The album cover is derived from a sketch by David Garibaldi.[citation needed] It’s also their first album for Warner Bros. Records. With Rufus Miller now gone, Rick Stevens took the reins as the sole lead vocalist for this album.
Write a poem every day of April with the 2024 April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a musical act or artist poem.
Believe it or not, today is one of the more important days of the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. While each day is a new challenge, I’ve found that most poets who make it through the first three days of prompts have the best chances of still being here at the end of the month. So let’s write a poem!
For today’s prompt, pick a musical act or artist and either make that the title of your poem or incorporate into the title of your poem; then, write your poem. Possible titles might be: “Michael Jackson,” “Olivia Rodrigo,” “the Beatles,” “Guided by Voices at Austin City Limits,” “Watching a Movie With Elton John,” or “Eating Ice Cream With Dr. Dre.” Have fun with it!
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
NaPoWrMo Prompt
the Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
AV version the Parliament of Owls Decree Death to All Humans
Death to All Humans
The Parliament of Animals met one day in a secret undisclosed location as they were under constant surveillance by the human CIA and others who wanted to disrupt the parliament’s work.
the wise owl presided. He read the charges
“We are assembled here to judge the actions of the human race. the human race is being charged with
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments to preserve the environment for all animals including humans.
Speaking for the prosecution will be the Tiger and Lions, speaking for the defense with the domestic cats and dogs. We have in the room ten men and women who are representative of the human race.
The parliament can make any recommendation to remedy the situation including the death penalty, exile, or reparations. All animals will be required to conduct these recommendations.”
“Okay, Mr. Tiger first we will ask the humans how they plead.” “
Humans. You have been charged with the following crimes.
crimes against nature,
destruction of the environment,
mass murder,
enslavement of animals,
mutilation of animals,
and violation of Gaia’s basic commandments to preserve the environment for all animals including humans.
How do you plead?
Sam Adams, the lawyer for the humans, responded,
“Not guilty your honor for these charges except for eating animals which we contend is part of the natural order of the world and many if not most of you are guilty of the same charge.”
“Clarification – your basic argument is that everyone eats animals, so humans are not guilty
“ “Yes, that is correct, your honor.” “
Okay, Mr. Tiger, your opening.”
“Okay. The facts are clear. For thousands of years until the Industrial Revolution humans had a little mass impact on the overall environment. Ever since then all animals have been impacted and my species has been hunted to extinction for the greed of humans who have not eaten tiger meat. The predator class, including bears, coyotes, feral dogs, lions, tigers, and wolves have been fighting back against the predation of humans, but we are losing. And if we don’t do anything within 10 years, there won’t be any tigers or other big predators left in the wild. And the natural order of things would be controlled by the evil, selfish humans who don’t give a damn about their fellow creatures. Therefore, we are proposing that 95% of humans must be killed. The remaining humans will be allowed to live as our slaves It is only fair. That is my request to the parliament of animals. Death to humans!”
The crowd rose and chanted “Death to all humans” until the owl ruled that they must not disrupt the proceedings.
The owl turned to the cat and and dog for their defense. the Cat responded, “
“ Humans are okay and we like them they are our friends, although they should be found not guilty because of insanity.”
the owl motioned to the dog, who responded,
“Humans and dogs have been partners, and we know humans more than any of you. Humans are capable of great kindness, and compassion and we maintain they are not fundamentally evil. And then they can be redeemed through education and through. Campaign to reform human thought. I think we should give humans a second chance.”
The owl said he was ready for his verdict.
“Death to 95 percent of humans, and enslavement of the rest, but we will allow 50,000 to immigrate to the Moon and Mars. I will meet with the UN to give them the decree.
Once that is published all animals must rise up and kill all humans on sight. This suspends the parliament of animals. Death to all humans.” The word went out animals rose all over the world and the reign of human tyranny ended within a year.
AI Version The Parliament of Animals
In the clandestine chambers of the Parliament of Animals, where shadows danced and secrets whispered, the wise owl presided. Under the ever-watchful gaze of human surveillance, the charges were read aloud:
“We are assembled here to judge the actions of the human race. The human race stands accused of crimes against nature, destruction of the environment, mass murder, enslavement of animals, mutilation of animals, and violation of Gaia’s sacred commandments. Speaking for the prosecution are the Tigers and Lions; for the defense, the domestic cats and dogs. Ten representatives of humanity sit in this room. The parliament holds the power to recommend remedies: death penalty, exile, or reparations. All animals shall be bound by these decisions.”
The Tiger, his golden eyes ablaze, addressed the humans, “How do you plead?”
The humans, their faces etched with defiance, stood before the assembly. Sam Adams, their lawyer, stepped forward, his voice unwavering, “Not guilty, Your Honor. Except for eating animals—a primal act woven into our existence—we maintain our innocence. It is the natural order, and many among you, my fellow creatures, partake in this ancient feast.”
The room buzzed with tension. The wise owl blinked, feathers rustling. The verdict hung in the air, suspended between judgment and mercy. The fate of humanity rested on the scales of justice, balanced precariously.
And so, the Parliament of Animals convened, weaving threads of fate, pondering the sins of bipeds, and deciding whether to condemn or absolve. In this surreal courtroom, where the boundaries blurred and the moon bore witness, the world awaited its reckoning.
Last but not least, here’s our prompt for the day – optional, as always. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a surreal prose poem. For inspiration, check out Franz Kafka’s collection of short parables (my favorite is “The Green Dragon”).
WD Mistake Poem – Don’t Make a Mistake, Vote For Jake
WC Dew Drop In Ending Shaving in Retirement
NaPoWriMo
It Can’t Happen Here
PSH Love Expressed Through Food
My love loves to cook
Delicious food on the stove
Cooking up a storm
All to express her love for me
Showing her deep emotion
Though the food she cooks up
We met in a dream
And I recall that dream
Whenever I eat her delicious food
It was love at first sight
Our love deepend through her food
Looking at her with lust in my heart
As I taste every inch of her
Smelling her as we make love
Love Stove
emotion cook
dreams food
attraction eat
Lust taste
sex Smell
Writing Prompt from Jon Wesick
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Jon Wesick:
The Assembly Line of Surprise
Step 1 – Choose a subject to write about. This should probably be something about being human such as a mental state, emotion, or social issue. Often this is abstract.
Love
Step 2 – Choose an object to compare it to. It’s best if this is something very different than in step 1. Concrete things like machinery give good imagery. The more outrageous the better. Congratulations! You’ve just created a metaphor.
Stove
Step 3 – Make two columns on a piece of paper. List the parts of the subject step 1 in the first column and the parts of the item in step 2 in the second.
Love Stove
emotion cook
dreams food
attraction eat
Lust taste
sex Smell
Step 4 – Map items in each column to those in the other. Choose the most interesting mappings. These will be phrases in your poem.
Step 5 – Put these phrases together into a poem.
Let’s “cook up” an example. Steps 1 and 2 – Compare despair to a microwave oven
Step 3 – Table.
Despair
Microwave Oven
Fatigue
Klystron
Sleeplessness
Turntable
Irritability
Browning dish
Emptiness
Observation window
Loss of libido
Control panel
Gloom
Timer
Despondency
Defrost function
Hopelessness
Auto cook menu
Futility
Number pad
Start/stop button
Tomato sauce caked on walls
Sparking when tin foil inside
Step 4 – I’d map sleeplessness to dried tomato sauce, irritability to sparking, and libido to the defrost function.
Step 5 – Put mapping into a poem.
Writers DIgest Mistake Poem “Don’t Make a Mistake Vote for Jake”
I should have run for office
I would have a perfect slogn
Rifting on the word mistake
Rhyming it with my name Jake.
In a old “Burma shave style
Cowboy poetry poem..
Don’t make a mistake
Vote for Jake
He is so awake
Don’t brake
Don’t use your emergency brake
Everything’s Jake. ‘
Just Vote for Jake
He ain’t no fake
He’s no flake
He ain’t on the make
Just vote for Jake
He’s aint no rake
He ain’t no rattle snake
He ain’t no common snake
He ain’t on the take.
Just vote for Jake
Take a tea break.
Don’t have a cluster headache,
Don’t have a sinus headache.
Just vote for Jake
Make a political earthquake
Don’t Shake
Take a stake.
Just Vote for Jake.
For today’s prompt, write a mistake poem. Everyone makes mistakes. Yes, even that person standing in the corner shaking their head to the contrary. And even those people who don’t admit to making mistakes have seen others make them. So whether it’s the mistakes you’ve made, witnessed in others, etc., write a poem about it today.
BUT (and yes, I’m using a big “but” here) poem nicely to each other today. I would hate to remove anyone for getting into arguments about X, Y, or Z in the comments; that’s why social media was created.
Note: Burma Shave ads were everywhere from 1910 to the late 70s. Here’s Bing Co-Pilot on “Burma Shave” and Cowboy poetry.
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its quirky and memorable advertising campaign. From the 1920s to the early 1960s, they posted humorous rhyming poems on sequential highway roadside signs. These signs became iconic and are fondly remembered by many.
Here are a few classic Burma-Shave jingles that adorned the highways:
“Cattle crossing means go slow, that old bull is some cows’ bold.”
“The bearded lady tried to jump, she’s now a famous movie star.”
“Shaving brushes out of date, use the razors perfect mate.”
“The crowd you see around that store are Burma shavers buying more.”
These clever and whimsical signs were typically posted in sets of six along highways, with the last sign revealing the product name. Passing motorists would eagerly read each sign to discover the punchline. The signs were originally produced in red-and-white or orange-and-black color combinations, although the latter was eventually phased out. While the Interstate system and increased vehicle speeds led to the signs’ discontinuation, their legacy lives on as a nostalgic piece of American advertising history. Some of these signs can still be seen at The House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and re-creations appear on Arizona State Highway 66, part of the original U.S. Route 66, between Ash Fork and Kingman, Arizona 34. 🚗🌟
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its quirky and memorable advertising campaign. From the 1920s to the early 1960s, they posted humorous rhyming poems on sequential highway roadside signs. These signs became iconic and are fondly remembered by many.
Cowboy poetry is a unique genre that celebrates the rugged lifestyle, camaraderie, and natural beauty of the American West. These poems often evoke nostalgia, humor, and a deep connection to the land. Let me share a few classic cowboy poems with you:
“Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail” by Gail I. Gardner:
This poem exemplifies cowboy poetry. Written in a narrative form, it uses slang and vivid storytelling. Here’s an excerpt:
These cowboy poems capture the essence of life on the range, the bond between rider and horse, and the fading traditions of the American West. 🤠🌵
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Ending Daily Shaving in Retirement
When Sam Adams
retired from
the U.S. Department of State,
he made five vows
which he kept for years.
first, he would quit daily shaving
shaving once or twice a month
second, he would never wear
a suit and tie
instead opting for the northwest look
Long pants, khaki or jeans, T-shirt
and a Western-style shirt
like a Pendleton shirt.
Third, he would retire in Korea
where his wife had family
and Southern Oregon
and an annual trip to DC
where they had rentals.
Fourth, they would travel
a lot every year
seeing as much as the world
as they could while they could still do.
starting with an epic road trip
across the US
10,000 miles 35 states
in three months
and a cruise to Alaska
his last State of 50 to visit
and an annual visit to someplace
warm in the winter.
Fifth, he would start a blog and podcast.
the World According to Cosmos,
to highlight his poetry and short story
submissions and occasional political rants.
He kept his vows
except that COVID blew away
his travel plans from 2019 to 2022!
and he wore a suit once,
to attend the wedding of the son
of his best Korean friend.
April 5
PSH Cosmic Dog From Goa
WD Tell Me No Lies
WC Dew Drop Inn Making Baseball Great Again
NaPoWriMo Only In SF
PSH The Cosmic Dog from Goa
cute dog
My final time with God
Happened a year latter
I was staying down in Goa
With my wife
Enjoying being with her
After our reconciliation
We stayed at the Taj Mahal Goa
Living like Kings and Queen
Just for a few days
High up on a hill
Overlooking the beach
Every morning I went down to the beach
And did yoga by the water
While contemplating life
And every morning
I saw the same dog
Not just a dog
But a cosmic dog
Filled with the divine spark of God
And the dog recognized me
And spoke to me and I knew
That God was present once more
In the face of the that cosmic dog
Kindred spirit
perhaps to the cosmic cat
that had save my soul
in Berkeley so long ago
I told the dog everything
And he just looked at me
With those soulful eyes of his
And I knew he knew that I knew
That he was possessed by God
God had sent him to me
To make sure that I was on the right path
That the reconciliation that God had promoted
Was on track that I was back with my wife
And that everything was the way it should be
Again, I asked God whether he was Jesus or Allah
Or Brahmin or Ganesh or Buddha
God the cosmic dog just stared at me
I finally asked him directly
Say if you are God the God of Jesus
Bark once
The Dog looked at me and barked
I said well if you are Allah bark twice
The dog barked twice
Well are you buddha then bark three times if yes
The god dog barked three times
Hmm well are you Satan
The dog growled at me
And I knew I had gone too far
Finally, I was at peace
And for the next three days
The God Dog was my constant companion
And I knew God for the final time
In my life
Writer’s Digest Tell Me No LIes
Tell me no lies
My dear
and I will tell you
no lies too.
But every word
I say
could be a lie.
you never know
what is true
and what is a lie.
So tell me no more lies
and I will tell you the truth
if you can handle it.
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn April 5—Get a sport into a poem! Make Baseball Great Again!
It is time
to make American baseball
Great again
starting with creating a worldwide
baseball competition
with each season
with the national champions
competing in a World Cup World Series
with the final round pitting the
North American Champions
against the winners of Africa,
Asian, Europe, and South America
with the final rounds
best of seven
always held in the U.S.
The other things to do
include rapid expansion plans
including the MLB teams
adopting local schools and colleges
fully funding baseball programs
and only hiring college graduates.
as players.
and making tickets affordable
no more than ten dollars per game!
if they do this,
we can make baseball
once again the best sport
in the U.S.
Let’s all join together
to make baseball great again!
NaPoWrMo Only In SF
Tiny, the Jamaican
was a big 6’5 reggae Rasta man,
sprouting long black and purple dreadlocks
and a purple mohawk
wearing a black leather jacket
with weed logos on it,
played guitar in the SF Reggae Kings.
A big Three Stooges fan,
Named his four pets,
“Shemp” the cat,
“Moe” the dog,
Curly” the mouse,
and Curly Joe, the Vietnamese pig.
The four amigos got along famously
They lived in an apartment
in the western addiction,
off of Geary,
in a rapidly gentrifying part of the city
One day, Shemp said to Moe
“Moe, I have a question for you,
and I want an honest answer,
none of your canine BS answer.
You know us cats are straight shooters.”
“Okay, my cat brother. Shoot.”
“Well, I understand that
cats, dogs, mice, and pigs
are natural born enemies,
How come we get along?
And you get along
with Curly and Curly Joe?”
“Good question.
First, when we met
I hated you all
and you were afraid
I might eat you in your sleep
and the thought
crossed my mind.
But over time
I mellowed out
and realized
we were all a band of brothers
living in this house.
I think it
also has something to do
with the cloud of weed
in the air
and the chill deep house
reggae peace and love
vibes in the house.”
“cool.
“Good answer.
I too think of you
all as my brothers.
You know what I like the most?”
Our nightly walk
when Tiny, Tina, and Linda
take us out
and we put on our show.
You know Curly Joe
letting you ride on him,
and I ride on you
and Curly
sits on my head
to complete the show
as we freak out the tourists
good citizens, and outlaws
who constantly take pictures
saying to themselves
“Only in SF”.
And you know
They are right.
Only in SF.
Let’s keep SF weird.”
Tiny came in
and they all went
for their walk.
April 6
PSH Visiting My Father’s Grave
Writers DIgest Meeting My Fate
Writing Com Dew Drop Inn Daily RItual Drinks
NaPoWrMo PNRCP
Visiting my father’s grave
In Yakima Washington State,
The ancestral land of the Aller clan
Thinking about my father
And his legacy
And thinking that I am
My father’s son
There is so much
I wanted to tell him
So much I wanted to share
So much I wanted him to see
My accomplishments
He was taken from me
Before I had achieved my dreams
i am sure he would have been
proud of the man
I turned out to be.
This poetry writing prompt submitted by Lara Dolphin:
A “taphophile” is someone who has more than a passing interest in burial places.
Cemeteries can hold beautiful sculptures, moving epitaphs, and genealogical secrets as well as religious meaning. If you were a tombstone tourist and could visit any burial place or shrine in the world, where would it be? Who would it belong to? Someone famous or obscure? Write a poem about one grave in particular.
Writer’s DIgest Meeting My Fate Minimal Poem
that september date
I met my fate
when she walked
out of my dreams
off a bus
into my life
becoming my wife.
For today’s prompt, write a minimum poem. Some people only do the minimum; others like to pay the minimum. When I first started working, I earned minimum wage. My kids had to reach a minimum height requirement to ride roller coasters at amusement parks.
Writing Com Dw Drop In Daily Beverages
in the morning
I drink a cup
of snarling hot coffee
while watching the news
in the afternoon
I shift to tea
either earl gray
or herbal tea
at sunset
I drink red wine
with my wife
as the evening
shifts into night
I drink rum
or whiskey
to end the day
right.
NaPoWrMo PNRCP
My mother was an original
One of a kind person
Unique in her ways.
She had many sayings
That has stuck with me
Over the years.
She was not a big fan
Of birthdays
Even forgot my 18th birthday.
She said on her birthday
“Well that means
One year closer to the grave.”
One of her funiest saying
Was how she described
Getting to Berkeley
In the late 30’s.
She had ran away
From a large but abusive family
In Little Rock, Arkansas.
Part of the so-called “lost tribe”
Of the Cherokee Indians
Also known as the Black Irish
She said that she was just
Part of the government run
“Plantetary Nut Reconfigeration Program”.
Every ten years
The world flips
And all the nuts
Roll down here
And end up in California.
Here’s some info on the Lost Tribe of the Cherokees. There are only about 50,000 left. According to Bing Co-Pilot, “The Lost Tribe of the Cherokees, also known as the Black Dutch or Black Irish, is estimated to number around 9,000 in Arkansas and approximately 500 more in southern Missouri. These individuals seek recognition as a tribe after years of investigation. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been diligently working on their recognition petition for nine years1.
While the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma does not consider this group to be legitimate, their quest for recognition continues, and their history remains a fascinating chapter in Native American heritage. 🌳🔍
The World According to Cosmos – via Podcast Addict | poetry and rants by the Cosmos. … The World According to Cosmos. By Jake Cosmos Aller. Jan 16 2022 20 mins 1. poetry and rants …
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The world according to cosmos. I don’t understand the anti-covid vaccination people at all. They are endangering the entire country and world by their gross stupidity, the leaders of the …
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Since 2016, I have been writing and posting my writing on various web pages, and since 2020 I have also podcasting. Here is a list of sites, where you can find my work. Many of these entries are duplicates. as I tend to cross-post items. Please check them out. I hope later this year to finally start a YouTube channel as well. Any advice on how to do that would be greatly appreciated.
I am making great strides in re-learning how to play the Piano. I am playing better than I ever had in my life. In short,
I am finally rocking the blues! Not bad for a 68-year-old dude.
Recently I cruised through Blues Standards, and I am working through 100 Greatest Hits and then Duke Ellington Standards before moving back to Bach and then trying Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart Sonatas later in the year. When I am in the States, I am going to buy some more Blues and Jazz standards, perhaps Tower of Power song book, Gershwin song classics and rent a piano. We found a place in the Medford, Oregon Rogue Valley Mall that rents pianos for 25 dollars a month. Perhaps I might take lessons. I will also buy some music software and resume writing music. Besides daily playing, I am going to take some music theory classes online and learn how to play jazz and blues piano.
Numerical Listing Of Pieces Played
Korean Light Classical Set
Chopin Piece
Beethoven Disco For Eliza</li>
Apartment
Verglis Mein Nicht
Malguenia
Disco City
Io Ti Daro Di Piu
Dark Eye Boogie Woman
El Bimbo
Rumba Rhapsody
Korean Song Book
Ganadiri
Nununhannuri
Moknochuchang
Babo
Sarang
Ayaohchmari
Chackunlabi
Changelog
Hangku
Kudaeyae
Laegaedo Saranoi
Miwoimiwoimiwoi
Baramireoo
Sarangsarangnuka Milhaeni
Bayayae
Yet Siinuilorae
Chrumomoichukkae
Ku Saram
Biramchoram Nakyomchorum
Saransuron Kudae
Sarangiyo
Bach Two and Three Part Inventions
Finally, got the hang of mordants, turns, and trills. and finally can play at near normal speed, rather than playing it real slowly, stumbling through the music. I have continued the strategy of analyzing the music before I play it, noting key signature changes. flats and sharps, repetition patterns, high and low registry keys, and figuring out the Key signature before I play. I am going to add in listening to the music before I play it, that should help as well
Since 2015, when I moved to Korea I have become a big fan of K Drama. They are perhaps the best in the world at romantic comedies. (“Crash Course in Romance” and “Crash Landing on You” a good examples). They also excel in movies about “Rich People Behaving Badly ”( Mine is the best one) and dark social commentary like “Parasite” (Oscar Best Picture), revenge dramas (Glory is the best example), and epic historical dramas set in Korea and China. (“Mr. Sunshine” is a good example) Another staple is high school coming-of-age films. (Millionaires First Love is a good one) .They also do political intrigue films pretty well ) Last Man Standing is good, and” Designated Survivor”), and decent SCIFi too. (“Silent Sea”, and Space Sweapers” are good). The crime and political dramas are quite intense and a bit too violent in my opinion although they are not “slasher” films per se. And of course, the Squid Game was a worldwide phenomenon.
Up until the early 80’s K dramas were not that good, Japanese (J Drama) were better. But since then K Dramas have taken over. For some reason, K dramas are more approachable to outsiders than J Dramas or C Dramas. An interesting factoid is that the writers are almost all women. and about 60 percent of the viewers are women, Korean men, in general, prefer sports or news programs.
More LGBTQ Characters
In recent years, many dramas have started featuring LGBTQ characters and non-Korean characters (called multi-cultural in Korean). The LGBTQ characters tend to be either female or transgendered, not too many male male gay characters. Itaewon Class had a good Trans character – a male transitioning to female, and “Mine” had both a lesbian couple and a bisexual male lead. This reflects the fact that LGTBQ status is still not as tolerated in Korea as it is in the US and Europe. Five years ago there were no LGBTQ characters, now there are quite a few. In Korea there are now gay nightclubs in Itaewon’s “homo hill” and the Hongdae student district, and there is an annual gay pride day which while not officially legal, is not illegal as it was a few years ago. Many K novels and stories also have LGBTQ characters these days.
Gay marriage is still not legal, but gay sex is no longer illegal or grounds for a divorce as adultery is also no longer illegal or grounds for a divorce. Younger Koreans are much more tolerant than older Koreans. The Christian Churches tend to be conservative and heavily influenced by American evangelical churches and are mostly anti-LGBTQ. About ten percent of adults have engaged in gay or lesbian relationships and perhaps 5 percent of the population are LGBTQ, with 2 percent transgendered. Transgendered people have to go to Thailand for surgery as the surgeries are illegal in Korea and Korean health insurance does not cover such treatments.
Rom-Com Slow Burn Dramas
The rom-com tends to be slow-burning dramas with few explicit sex scenes, almost all of them male -female although there are a few lesbian-themed ones now and then. Many of them follow the meme hate turning to love, although love at first sight K dramas are common, and many feature doomed romances between characters of different social classes.
Korean Badass Female Leads
Final point, I have always considered Korean women to be the most beautiful and sexiest women on the planet and I love watching them in K Dramas, particularly I like watching real “badass” lead characters, and I married my Korean dream girl See Dreamgirl re-published for details.
“Mr. Sunshine,” and “Gyesang Creatures” have such lead characters.
I have finally gotten enough Korean to mostly follow the dialogue without subtitles, but most of the K Dramas on Amazon, Disney, and Netflix have subtitles. I hope by the end of the year to be able to watch a K drama without subtitles. Nice language learning goal to have.
Here then is my list of K Dramas I have seen over the years.
First my top 20 list
Gyesang Creature K Drama Korean female badass character, monster movie, historical drama set at end of Colonial era
Captivating The King K Historical Drama A
Doctor Slump K Drama B good rom-com also deals with mental illness issues, political intrigue
Glory K drama A revenge drama
Crash Course in Romance K drama A- great rom-com
Chief of Staff K drama political drama
Shin Divorce Attorney K Drama -A great legal drama and political intrigque
The Eternal King K drama historical drama. alt history Sci-fi rom-com
Live Up to Your Name K drama A historical drama, sci-fi, rom-com slow burn romance
Castaway Diva b slow burn rom-com
My Love From The Stars sci-fi rom-com
Itaewon Class K Drama Trans character lead
The Last Man Standing K Drama political intrigue regarding the assasination of President Park based on true story
Venzano K Drama corporate intrigue, crime drama and slow burn romance
Mine K Drama great example of rich people behaving badly, LGBTQ characters
Strong Girl Namjoon sequel see post review female badass leads
strong girl Bong soon original A see post review female badass leads
Parasite K Drama Oscar Best picture – dark black comedy
When The Camelia Blooms K Drama great K rom-com
Squid Games K Drama Number 1 On Netflix game show but much more than that
Bing AI’s list of top K Dramas
If you’re looking for the best K-dramas to binge-watch, you’re in for a treat! Korean dramas (K-dramas) have taken the world by storm, offering a delightful mix of interesting storylines, intense plot twists, and addictive viewing experiences. Here are some top K-dramas across different genres:
Remember, K-dramas can evoke a wide range of emotions—from sappy to heartbreaking to downright surprising. So grab your popcorn, find a cozy spot, and immerse yourself in the captivating world of Korean dramas! 🎬🍿
2024
Confession K Drama A-
Collectors K Drama B
The Spy Gone North B K Drama
Goodbye Mr. Black K Drama Did Not Finish
My Demon Love K Drama Did Not Finish
My Annoying Brother B
Me And Me K Drama B
Squid Game Season Two Did Not Finish – No longer K drama in my opinion
Gyesang Creature K Drama Korean female badass character
Somebody B
The Devil Plan Was Too Complicated To Follow
VIP K Drama B
Destined With You K Drama
Millionaire First Love K Drama A good intro to coming of age high school dramas
Hyena K Legal Drama A good political corporate intrigue film
Badlands Hunters K Post-Apocalypse Drama A good Sci-Fi
Captivating The King K Historical Drama A Good historical drama
Doctor Slump K Drama B
Taken K Drama Movie B
The Swindler K Drama Movie A
Don’t Buy The Seller K Drama B
The Dude In Me K Drama Is Cute A
Single In Seoul K Movie B
Lee Kiwon K Movie About NK Refugees In Belgium
Young Police K Drama B
Sweat And Sour B
Killer Paradox K Crime Drama
Queen Of Tears K Rom-Com
2023
Moving to Heaven started in 2022.
Lies Within started in the 2022 BK drama.
Trolly started 2022 B K drama a-
Glory K drama is A good revenge flick
Confidential Assignment K drama b
On the line k drama b
Weight Ton K drama b
Parallel SF K drama SF drama
Crash Course in Romance K drama A- great rom-com
One Spring Night K drama
The Bros K drama
Like for Likes K drama b.
Ordinary People K drama b
Veteran K crime comedy b K drama
Tiger in Winter K drama with a magical realism twist K drama
After My Death, another Korean teenage crime drama k drama
Confidential Assignment Two K drama
Nothing Serious K rom-com
Uncanny counter K drama
What’s wrong with Secretary Kim K’s drama.
Chief of Staff K drama good political thriller
Mad for each other K drama
Along with the god’s K’s drama
Time to hunt K drama.
Escape from Mogadishu political drama based on true story features North and South Koreans overseas forced to work together to ensure mutual survivor
The decision to leave K drama.
Adenoid K drama Sci-Fi
Hunt K drama
Confession K drama
My unfamiliar family K drama
Physical Another Squid Game K drama
Unblock Cyber crime K drama.
One Spring Night K drama rom-com
Holy Betrayal Documentary on Religious cults in Korea
Me me
Shin Divorce Attorney K Drama -A good legal thriller
The Eternal King K drama alt history sci-fi, rom-com
Live Up to Your Name K drama A sci-fi time travel rom-com
Kill Bosun K drama
Switch k drama
Beef K Drama set in LA
Queen Maker K drama
Black Knight K Drama
Miss and Mrs. Cop K drama
Unstoppable K drama
Mad for Each Other rom-com
Private Lifes K drama
Flower of Evil K drama
Glitch Korean series sci-fi
See You in My 19th Life K Drama did not finish it
Alchemy of Souls intriguing K Drama
Song of the Bandits historical set at the end of the Joseon dynasty
Dream K drama about the homeless World Cup
King Maker K drama about Kim Dae Jung’s early rise Disney A
Ballerina K crime revenge thriller b a bit too violent
Strong Girl Namjoon sequel see post review female badass characters
strong girl bong soon original A see post review female badass characters
Dona K Drama B
Ray of Sunshine K Drama A
The Worst of Evil Disney K Drama B
Villante Disney K Drama B
The Believer K Drama b
the Believer Part two K Drama B
Castaway Diva b good rom-com
comedy royal b
My Demon did not finish c
Don’t Buy the Seller -K Drama about a serial killer who lures victims through ads for used sales
Gyesang Creature K drama 6 episodes Great badass lead actress.
Havana K murder drama with an LGBT love affair theme
Bloodhounds K revenge crime drama
2022 Movies Seen
Black Money K Drama B
Extreme Job K Drama B
We Are All Going To Die K Zombie Drama A
Haibing 2017 The Thaw K Drama B
Our Blues K Drama A set in Jeju
Juvenile Justice K Drama B coming of age drama
Silent Sea K Drama B sci-fi
My Liberation Notes
My Love From The Stars good rom-com
Move To Heaven
Honest Candidate
Yaksha K Movie B
Blue Bayou Korean American Movie B
Uncanny Counter K Drama B
Cyber Hell B
Intruder K Drama B
Welcome To Wedding Hell K Drama B
Heist Korean Version B
Will You Be There? K Drama C Did Not Finish
Extraordinary Attorney Yoo A-1 great drama features an austic genius
Minmi ding Café C Did Not Finish
Remarriage And Desire K Drama B Another Drama About Rich People Behaving Badly.
Unfamiliar Family K Drama A
Carter K Drama Movie C
Designated Survivor K Drama A political intrigue
Model Family K Drama B
Little Woman K Drama B Korean re-make of a classic British 19th Century novel
Stranger 1
Stranger 2
Reflection Of You good rom-com
Made For Each Other good rom-com
Honest Candidate political satire
Signal K Drama
When The Camellia Blooms B good rom-com
Love Struck In The City B
Glitch Korean Sci-Fi B good SciFi
The Lies Within K Drama
2021
Space Sweepers K SF Drama
Itaewon Class K Drama Trans character male to female
Sense 8 is not a K drama per see but has a Korean lead actress
The Last Man Standing political thriller based on the true story of President Park’s assasination
Sisispyus K Drama disappointing Sci-Fi
Venzano K Drama good crime drama, and slow burn rom-com
Glitch Good Sci-Fi
Parasite K Drama Oscar Best picture
Legends Of Alhambra K Drama
The Negotiator K Movie
No Exit K Movie
Crash Landing On You K Drama great K rom-com set in North Korea
Night In Paradise K Movie
DP K Drama
Con K Drama Movie
When The Camelia Blooms K Drama great K rom-com
Squid Games K Drama Number 1 On Netflix
Move To Heaven K Drama
Minuri Oscar winner set in U.S.
Hell Bound K Drama
Hostage K Drama Movie
Balgasal K SF
The Wanted
2020
Mr. Kim’s Convenience Store set in Toronto
Kim Ji Young K Drama
2019
49 Days Korean Movie B
Chun hyang (2000 Film) YS
The Assassin 2015 Korean Movie
2015
Kundu Korean Movie B
Classified File Korean Movie On Plane
2014
Memories Of Murder Korean Film
Typhoon Kore
2011
The King And I Korean Series
Life In North Korea Documentary From National Geographic
For more than twenty years now, Mrs D and I have made it an annual quest to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars telecast. This year we saw 9.5 of the 10 movies nominated.
It started in 2000, when there were only five nominees (instead of up to 10 like now) and we usually had to see them in a theater, because they weren’t available to rent on VHS yet. (Yes, I said VHS).
And we’ve done it every year since, except for 2019 which was interrupted by Mrs D’s infamous extended hospital stay. We have even ventured to other cities to see movies that weren’t playing at the one theater in our little town. I remember seeing Chocolat in Ukiah and more recently The Revenant in Rohnert Park. But now we can usually stream everything, and this year the whole project ran us around a hundred bucks in streaming rentals and purchases on top of our existing subscriptions to Amazon, etc.
Several years ago I started writing about our tradition on Facebook. Now the writeup itself has become part of the deal. As I’ve said before, I’m no film student, nor expert critic. Just a regular dude who loves movies.
Snap reviews and top picks below.
American Fiction –
Bold, wryly funny, contrarian, with the ring of truth. Brilliantly calls out the publishing industry, where retread tropes seem to trump story, art and insight, particularly when it comes to depictions of Black characters and writers. And I feel like there’s an even larger truth here about the way culture is degraded in general through over-commercialization.
Anatomy of a Fall –
A French film that moves carefully, piece by piece, and manages to be slow and taut at the same time. I found the characters to be inscrutable. I feel like I need to watch again just to see if maybe this time I would fully understand these people. It left me with a suspicion that perhaps all the story’s secrets have still not been revealed, that the resolution we see on the screen is still not the truth of these characters. And, in this case, that ambiguity is a good thing.
Barbie —
Cleverly funny in spots, but also unsubtly preachy in spots, an issue I’ve had with director Greta Gerwig before. But Margot Robbie was perfect and the movie is visually stunning in all its pinkish glory and devoted detail. Still, I think this movie appears in the Best Picture category more on the strength of its perceived politics than its success as an artistic endeavor.
The Holdovers —
A darkly funny, entertaining, and deeply reflective odd couple sort of story that’s enjoyable to watch. Maybe a little out of its league in the Best Picture category, but elevated to a higher status by Paul Giamatti’s performance, which is irresistibly engaging as always. Well worth a second watch.
Killers of the Flower Moon — Having read the book, I felt the impact of the true part of this story was diminished by the fictionalized part of the movie. Reading the book I was deeply struck by the callous indifference shown toward the humanity of the Osage Indians. It resonated like an echo of Shindler’s List, underlining the incredible and frightening capacity of humans to rationalize literally any behavior in their fear or greed. But the movie revolves around Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio) and depicts a somewhat tried and true arc of romantic tragedy, a weak-minded man caught up in the schemes of others, pulled along by greed and the need for approval, until he is in the process of killing the only real love he’s ever known. As is often the case, the truth was more complex. And more disturbing.
Maestro –
I usually make a conscious effort to limit my preconceptions of these movies. I don’t read reviews or watch trailers. But it’s hard to avoid a relentless ad campaign like the one mounted for Maestro. I’d seen the rousing TV spots touting the performances and the early awards. But I found the movie depressing, its characterization of Bernstein disappointing and unlikeable. But yes, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan
were both outstanding.
Comment: on my list to watch as I am a big Bernstein fan – one of the best classical composers of the 20th century in my opinion.
Oppenheimer –
Not what I would call a pleasant watch, at times slow and ponderous, even confusing with some of the time jumps. But the acting was so engrossing, immersive, mesmerizing even. Cillian Murphy in the title role was riveting. Robert Downey Jr simply disappeared into the role of Lewis Strauss. Emily Blunt was also captivating as Kitty Oppenheimer. The effects director Christopher Nolan used to heighten the sense of Oppenheimer’s interiority were brilliant and effective.
For example when Oppenheimer steps on a charred corpse that only exists in his tortured, guilty mind. But the lasting impact of this film is the way it echoes in the mind afterward—how sad and terrible and absurd it is that we reckless humans have attained the power to destroy the world. It will probably win Best Picture. And it probably should.
Comment: Also on my must see list
Past Lives –
Eventually, someone had to do a movie like this — an old romance is rekindled through the internet and complications ensue. In this particular case the past romance is an adolescent crush, cut short by one family’s immigration, and later complicated not just by the years, but also by geographic and cultural distance. This one stayed with me, kept me thinking for days afterward about its larger implications regarding fate, destiny, acceptance, grief and closure. Well worth more than one watch.
Poor Things –
Half of this movie was twice as much as I needed. We actually turned it off, extremely rare for us during Oscar season. What we saw played like a terrible excuse for some creepy, gratuitous soft porn. All the weirdness of the sets, costumes, cinematography and makeup felt like a desperate attempt at artistic status. If someone out there actually saw some redeeming value in this thing, feel free to explain in the comments section what I am missing.
The Zone of Interest –
This one’s all in German, with subtitles. But the dialog is sparse and the film’s biggest strength is in the fascinating dichotomy presented in its basic premise. It gives us a window into the surprisingly mundane personal lives of a “normal” family literally in the shadow of Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The sense of cognitive dissonance is alarming.
Honorable Mention
– I don’t usually do this, but I wanted to mention one film that was not even nominated for Best Picture but, in my opinion, should have been. Nyad has wonderful, engaging performances by Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, and it’s a suspenseful, satisfying, story of friendship, determination, human spirit, and triumph over the longest odds.
Finally, here are my choices for the top awards.
Don’t worry, the Academy almost always disagrees.
Actor in a Leading Role: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer Winner
Actor in a Supporting Role: Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer Winner
Actress in a Leading Role: Annette Bening, Nyad
Actress in a Supporting Role: Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Best Picture: Oppenheimer Winner
Soon it’s time to pop the popcorn, get cozy on the couch, badmouth the fashion and root for your favorites.
Happy Oscars folks.
here’s the winners
The 96th Academy Awards, held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on March 10, 2024, celebrated outstanding movies released in 2023. Here are some of the notable winners:
Best Picture: “Oppenheimer”
Best Actor: Cillian Murphy for his role in “Oppenheimer”
Best Actress: Emma Stone for her performance in “Poor Things”
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer”
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph from “The Holdovers”
Best Director: Christopher Nolan for “Oppenheimer”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “American Fiction”
Best Original Screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”
Best Animated Feature: “The Boy and the Heron”
Best Documentary Feature: “20 Days in Mariupol”
Best International Feature Film: “The Zone of Interest”
Best Cinematography: “Oppenheimer”
Best Costume Design: “Poor Things”
Best Film Editing: “Oppenheimer”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: “Poor Things”
Best Original Score: “Oppenheimer”
Best Original Song: “Barbie”
Best Production Design: “Poor Things”
Best Sound: “The Zone of Interest”
Best Visual Effects: “Godzilla Minus One”
Best Documentary (Short Subject): “The Last Repair Shop”
I have been keeping track of movies and TV shows I have watched since I started my journals, going back to the late 90’s. Here’s the list for the last few years. On average I am watching over 150 movies/shows etc per year. I have watched a lot of K drama over the last few years and can finally almost follow them without the use of subtitles!
Assuming I have seen about 150 movies or TV shows per year since I was 5 I would say that I have seen about 10,000 movies and TV shows.
Whenever I travel to the States, I binge-watch on the plane hitting ten movies on a round trip.
I like to catch up on the Oscar winners, and blockbusters, and watch a Bollywood movie and a Spanish movie as well.
Goals
At Least One Korean Movie Per Week
At Least One Spanish Movie Every So Often
One Bollywood Or Another Foreign Language Movie Every So Often
A Mixture Of Thrillers, K Drama, Comedies, Romcom, Etc
Make A List Of Oscar Movies And Watch Several.
Resume Going To The Theater Later In The Year.
When Traveling To The US Watch Ten Movies Each Trip
Including One Bollywood, One Spanish, Three To Four Blockbusters, One Classic, One Comedy
200 Movies/TV Series By The End Of The Year.
The 96th Academy Awards, held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on March 10, 2024, celebrated outstanding movies released in 2023. Here are some of the notable winners:
Best Picture: “Oppenheimer”
Best Actor: Cillian Murphy for his role in “Oppenheimer”
Best Actress: Emma Stone for her performance in “Poor Things”
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer”
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph from “The Holdovers”
Best Director: Christopher Nolan for “Oppenheimer”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “American Fiction”
Best Original Screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”
Best Animated Feature: “The Boy and the Heron”
Best Documentary Feature: “20 Days in Mariupol”
Best International Feature Film: “The Zone of Interest”
Best Cinematography: “Oppenheimer”
Best Costume Design: “Poor Things”
Best Film Editing: “Oppenheimer”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: “Poor Things”
Best Original Score: “Oppenheimer”
Best Original Song: “Barbie”
Best Production Design: “Poor Things”
Best Sound: “The Zone of Interest”
Best Visual Effects: “Godzilla Minus One”
Best Documentary (Short Subject): “The Last Repair Shop”
Tourist Love Affair Cute But Predictable Filmed In Vietnam B
The Dude In Me K Drama Is Cute A
Black Phone B
Single In Seoul K Movie B
Secret Obsession American Movie B
In The Shadow Of The Moon B
Age Of Adeline A
Fair Play B
In From The Cold C
Try To Kill Me I Dare You Polish Movie B
Lee Kiwon K Movie About NK Refugees In Belgium
Chronicle Sci-FI Meh C
Young Police K Drama B
Sweat And Sour B
Happiness For Beginners US Drama B
Falling For Christmas US Drama B
The Gentlemen British TV Crime Series
Killer Paradox K Crime Drama
Queen Of Tears K Rom-Com
2023 list
88 Minutes US thriller
Moving to Heaven started in 2022.
Emily In Paris Netflix B started in 2022.
The Gray Man American
Lies Within started in the 2022 BK drama.
Trolly started 2022 B K drama a-
Moonball SF B
Glory K drama B+
Confidential Assignment K drama b
The Pale Blue Eyes – Murder mystery featuring Edgar Allen Poe as a cadet Netflix B
Wednesday started in 2022
On the line k drama b
Weight Ton K drama b
You American
The age of Adaline started.
Zone 414 did not finish b.
Kate did not finish too violently d.
1899 needs to look again at America.
The Invasion of South African c
Parallel SF K drama
Crash Course in Romance K drama A-
Lookup American a big Meh
One Spring Night K drama
The Bros K drama
Like for Likes K drama b.
Ordinary People K drama b
Quiet Place Part Two Next flix SF C+
Echoes Next Flix series b American.
Veteran K crime comedy b K drama
Tiger in Winter K drama with a magical realism twist K drama
After My Death, another Korean teenage crime drama k drama
Confidential Assignment Two K drama
Nothing Serious K rom-com
Uncanny counter K drama
What’s wrong with Secretary Kim K’s drama.
Chief of Staff K drama
Tau American
Ad Astra American
White noise American
Mad for each other K drama
Along with the god’s K’s drama
Time to hunt K drama.
Escape from Mogadishu K drama
The decision to leave K drama.
Adenoid K drama
Hunt K drama
Confession K drama
A man from Toronto American
The unforgiven American
My unfamiliar family K drama
You People Eddie Murphy Comedy
Physical Another Squid Game K drama
Confession K Drama
Where the Crawdads Sing American movie
Unblock Cyber crime K drama.
Your Place or Mine US romcom
Nope SCIFi Netflix
One Spring Night K drama
Sweat and Sour K drama
Sweat Tooth
Salvation
Safe
Black Panther Wakanda Forever
Amsterdam b+
Black Adam b
Ant-Man and Wasp b
Namaland B+
Holy Betrayal Documentary on Religious cults in Korea
Outer Banks Third Season
Me K drama
God’s Crook Line. Spanish
Shin Divorce Attorney K Drama
The Eternal King K drama
Swing Kids American drama
Live Up to Your Name K drama
Murder Mystery 2 – not bad saw Murder Mystery One last year
Kill Bosun K drama
Shadow and Bone next season
Tripple Frontier American
Switch k drama
Beef K Drama set in LA
Strangers Things Season Four
Queen Maker K drama
Ticket to Paradise American drama
The Stranger British
Florida Man American
Gone for Good British
Stay Close British
Kaleidoscope American
Harris Goes to Paris British
Collectors k drama
The Chair American series
What/if American series
You Will Always Be My Maybe – US Romcom
Black Knight K Drama
Mother American Crime Thriller starring Jennifer Lopez
Miss and Mrs. Cop K drama
Unstoppable K drama
Ordinary people
Intruder
Synopsis
White noise
Red notice
How it ends
Shimmer lake
Mad for Each Other
Private Lifes K drama
Flower of Evil K drama
The Mule
Farber man’s (Oscar pick)
Living
Dangerous Games, Legacy
The Independent
Tau
Bloodline
hypnotic
intrusion
the stranger
I Land
another life
colony
imperfectives
night flyers
white lies
Nice guys
Glitch Aussies series
Glitch Korean series
dark
awake
1989
the order
murder mystery 2
SALT
Adam project
Star Trek Strange New Worlds Amazon
Lost World CBC series on Amazon
Outlaws Netflix
Tyrone got Cloned on Netflix
Lost City amazon
Otto Netflix
Terminator 2 Netflix
Terminator 3
Terminator 4
Bird box Barcelona Netflix
War of the World 2
Expanse Season five
Expanse Season Six
Time Trap Netflix SF movie
Wheel of Time Season Two Amazon
Non-Stop
Stolen
Mysterious Island
See You in My 19th Life K Drama did not finish it
Babblyon saw that RHS did not finish it
Heart of Stone saw with RHS
The Stranger Netflix has good reviews but did not finish it
2022
Emily In Paris Netflix B
Super Eight Stephen Spielberg B
Black Money K Drama B
Extreme Job K Drama B
Freaks Netflix C
Dune World (Not The Dune) C
Assimilation – Invasion Of Body Snatchers Remake Hoopla C
Power Play (Hoopla) C
Constantine Netflix C
Ozark Season 4 B
Cowboy Bebop SF Netflix K Star But Not K Drama A
Freaks
We Are All Going To Die K Zombie Drama A
Babysitter Killer Queen C
Haebing 2017 The Thaw K Drama B
Area 51 Hoopla C
Nine Teeth Vampire Movie C
Chosen B Netflix Danish SF
Dark B Netflix German SF
The Power Of The Dog C Oscar Nominee
Bright With Will Smith B SF
Kin B Netflix
88 Minutes B
Shadow And Bone B+
Locke And Key Season 2 B
The Adam Project B
Dark Crab – Sweedish Movie B
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood B
Alice In Borderland
Warrior Nun
Tulip Fever
Army Of The Dead B
Army Of Thieves C
Glitch Australian Series
Dark German SF B
Our Blues K Drama A
Juvenile Justice K Drama B
Knight Day C
Rebecca B
Phantom Thread C
Behind Her Eyes B
Jumangi B
The Dark Tower B
I Frankenstein B
Tau B
Silent Sea K Drama B
Night Flyer B
El Camino Sequel To Breaking Bad B
Rainy Day In New York -Woody Allen B
My Liberation Notes
Our Blues
My Love From The Stars
Move To Heaven
Honest Candidate
ARC B
LA LA Land B Meh
Ozark Season 4 B
Yaksha K Movie B
Blue Bayou Korean American Movie B
Let Me Go Western Is Set In Montana Kevin Costner B
Uncanny Counter K Drama B
Cyber Hell B
Intruder K Drama B
Stranger Things Season Four B
Welcome To Wedding Hell K Drama B
The Hitman’s Body Gaurd’s Wife Part One C
Oceans Eight B
Interceptor A-
Better Call Saul Season 5
Better Call Saul Season 6
Spiderhead C
The Wrath Of Man C Did Not Finish C
The Man From Toronto C
Time Machine 2022 Re-Make B
Heist Korean Version B
RRR Bollywood Netflix Original A
Will You Be There? K Drama C Did Not Finish
Extraordinary Attorney Yoo A-1
Minmiding Café C Did Not Finish
American Made B +
Tarzan B-
Remarriage And Desire K Drama B= Another Drama About Rich People Behaving Badly.
The King Of Stonks Austrian Satire B Worth Finishing
Unfamiliar Family K Drama A
My Liberation Notes K Drama A
Carter K Drama Movie C
Designated Survivor K Drama A
Locke And Key Season Three B
Model Family K Drama B
Now You See Me
The Body Guard’s Wife
Red Notice
How It Ends
Better Call Saul Season Six B
Manifest Netflix Special B
Good Guys C
Blood Red Sky D
Little Woman K Drama B
Chief Of Staff K Drama B
Narco Saints K Drama B
Interception
Extraction
Focus
Project Power
Love And Monsters
Executive Decisions
Gray-Man
Adam Project
Re-Start
Jumangi
Fifth Wave
Justice League
On Your Wedding Day
6 Underground
Stranger 1
Stranger 2
Reflection Of You
Made For Each Other
Honest Candidate
Man From Toronto
The Protégé
Signal K Drama
What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim? K Drama
Manifest Four Seasons B+ Like Dark
End-Of-The Road B
When The Camellia Blooms B
Love Struck In The City B
Glitch Korean Sci-Fi B
Zone 414 Did Not Finish C
Office Invasion – South African SF Satire C
Kate Did Not Finish Too Violently Like In Kill Bill D
Midnight Sky SF C Too Meandering C
1899 Did Not Finish Too Meandering B
See You Yesterday Spike Lee SF B
Someone B+
Tidelands
Jurassic World Domination
Wednesday -Adams Family
Your Psychological Thriller Series
Prendergast Mike Meyers
Dark Island German Film B
Welcome To Murderville B
Imperfects B
Trolly K Drama
The Lies Within K Drama
2021 List
Bloodshot
Ozark
Bloodlines
Discovery
Humans Are Useless Hoopla
Wu Assassins
6 Underground
Warrior Nuns
Alice In Borderland
I Am Not Okay With This
Constantine
The Beach
Holliday
Rebecca
About Time
Spy Games
We Could Be Heroes
Vastness Of The Night Amazon
Hanna
The Expanse
Sneaky Pete -Amazon
How It Ends
The I Land
Wonder Woman
Get Out
Space Sweepers K SF Drama
I Care A Lot 2020 TV
Messiah
Itaewon Class K Drama
Sense 8
Salvation
The Order
Lock N Key
Ballad Of Buster Scruggs
Titans
O/A
Abyss
Outer Banks
White Lines
Umbrella Acadamy
The Last Man Standing K Drama
Suicide Squad
The Honest Candidate K Drama
Behind Her Eyes
Sisyphus K Drama
Venzano K Drama
Strangers K Drama Season One
Strangers K Drama Season Two
Strangers K Drama Season Three
The Woman In The Mirror
Gemini Man
Legends
Bridgeton Netflix’s Top-Ranked Series
Wanted With Angelina Jolie 2005?
War Dogs
The Holliday
The Woman In The Mirror
How It Ends
Love And Monsters
Knives Out
Old Guard
Borek Movie
Sweet Tooth
Mine K Drama
Glitch
Parasite K Drama
Legends Of Alhambra K Drama
August
Sin City
The Talented Mr. Ripply
The Negotiator K Movie
No Exit K Movie
Crash Landing On You K Drama
Jackel 1997 US Movie
Night In Paradise K Movie
DP K Drama
Con K Drama Movie
October
When The Camelia Blooms K Drama
Squid Games K Drama Number 1 On Netflix
Move To Heaven K Drama
The Money Heist Spanish Series
Minuri
Cool Hand Luke
Citizen Kane
Jungle Cruise
Free Guy
Black Widow
King Kong V Godzilla
Crazy Rich Asians
Bliss Amazon
Tomorrow’s Wars Amazon
Reflections On You (K Drama, Netflix)
Red Notice (Netflix)
Hell Bound K Drama
Crisis In Six Scenes Amazon
The Wheel Of Time Amazon Season One
Another Life Season Three
Lost In Space Season Three
Hostage K Drama Movie
Army Of Thieves
Army Of Death
The Big Splash
The Dark Tower
Balgasal K SF
The Wanted
Mogadishu K Drama
Don’t Look Up Netflix Special
Focus
Lucy
Jupiter Ascending
Space Between Us
ARQ
Rainy Day In NYC Woody Allen Film
In Time
Silent Sea
San Andreas
Don’t Look Up
Mad For Each Other
2020 Movies Seen
Better Call Saul
Nigh Flyer
The Rim Of The World
Joker
Venom
Lost In Space
Jurassic World
100
Birdbox
I Am Number Four (Film)
Umbrella Acadamy
Locke And Key
Sense 8
Away
Titan
The Mist
The Order
October Faction
The Man In The High Castle
The Expanse
Legends Of Tomorrow
The Messiah
The OA
Lucy
Timeless
Travelers
Alice Through The Looking Glass
Annihilation
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
How It Ends
Itaewon Class
Zoo
Extinction
6 Underground
Ballade Of Buster Scruggs
How It Ends
Tau
Series Of Unfortunate Events
The Darkest Dawn
The IO
Ozark
Avengers Day Of Ultron
Prometheus
Another Life
Land Of The Lost
Kim’s Convenience Store
The Cloverfield Paradox
The A-Team
Pirates Of The Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales
Salvation
Iron Man 2
Total Recall
The Machine (Hoopla)
Absolutely Anything (Hoopla)
The Adventurer Curse Of The Midas Touch (Hoopla)
The Endless (Hoopla)
Color Out Of Time (Hoopla)
The Librarian Curse Of The Judas Chalice (Hoopla)
The Librarian King Soloman’s Mine (Hoopla)
The Librarian Quest For The Spear (Hoopla)
Dinosaur Island (Hoopla)
Land That Time Forgot (Hoopla)
Dark Prophecy (Hoopla)
The Villainess (Hoopla)
Bad Boys For Life
Outer Banks
Suicide Squad
Abyss
Series Of Unfortunate Events
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children
Superman Vrs Batman Star Of Justice
Last Man Standing K Political Drama
Honest Candidate K Drama
Irishman
Project Power
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Kim Ji Young K Drama
The Sting
Focus
Fantasy Island
Warrior Nun –Did Not Finish
Good Omens Amazon
Sneaky Pete Amazon
Blood Shot Netflix
Jupiter Ascendant Netflix
White Lines
Bloodlines
Inside Bill’s Brain
War Dogs
Alice In The Borderlands
The I- Land
Black Mirror
The Last Three Days
2019
Partial List Saw At Least 90 Total
A Series Of Unfortunate Events (Netflix)
Aquaman (Theater) B
49 Days Korean Movie B
Doomsday Device YS B
Winter Kills YS C -Disappointing Despite Great Cast
Heist 2001 Version YS B
Curse Of The Golden Flower YS
HG Wells Men In The Moon YS A-1
The Rift YS
Narnia Voyage Of The Dawn Treader YS B
Operation Chromite YS B
The Assassin YS C Did Not Finish
Justice League B
The Ghost And The Darkness B
The A-Team B
Jack Reacher, Never Go Back B
Night Flyer Series B
Cold Pursuit
Chunhyang(2000 Film) YS
The Assassin 2015 Korean Movie
Eraser(Film)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo(2011 Film)
Operation Chromite(Film)
The Rite(2011 Film) YS
The First Men In The Moon YS
26. Curse Of The Golden Flower YS
Alien Code YS
Point B YS
Shada(Doctor Who) YS
Glass(2019 Film)
Memories Of The Alhambra K Drama
The Man In The High Castle 4 Seasons Amazon
The Expanse Four Seasons Amazon
2018
Once Upon A Time ABC Mini-Series A
Taken Earth C
Alice Through The Looking Glass B
The Vault C Too Scary A Movie
GORA Turkish SF Comedy C
Pirates Of The Caribbean Dead Men Tell No Tales B
Cowboys Vs Dinosaurs B
Enterprise Complete Season
Frequency Series
Coverdale Paradox
Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets (On a Plane)
Kong Island Of Skulls (On Plane)
Geostorm (On Plane)
Lost And Found YS
Berlin Syndrome YS
Burn Country YS
Beatriz At Dinner YS
Breaking The Bank YS
The Expanse Netflix Original
Discovery Netflix
Drone Wars YS
Prometheus Trap YS
Blackway YS
The Mermaid YS
The Great Wall YS
2017/2016
Leap Year TV B
Congressman YS B
Crimson Force YS B
The H Man YS B
Battle In Outer Space YS B
Mothra YS B
11 22 63 IS A
Blunt Talk YS B Did Not Finish
Alien Arsenal YS B
mbush At Dark Canyon B
Fighting With Anger B
Baytown Outlaws B
Hick C-1
Heathens And Thieves A-
Implanted B-
When The Sky Falls C-
Wild Bill Hickok Swift Justice B
Traded B
Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency -Mini-Series A
Mystery Science Theater Cave Dwellers C
Meet The Guilbys B
The President A
Stand Up Guy B
Snow Piercer B Korean Producer B
Painkillers C
Dirty Lies
Quarantine LA C
Breaking The Bank B
Strange B
Jack Reacher Never Go Back B
Keeping Up With The Jones B
Hell Or High Water B
The Accountant B
Oregon
The Ghost In The Shell Ashland Theater
The Circle Theater Medford
George Feydeua A Flea In Her Ear – ASH Drama
The Black Hole MPL
Final Days Of Planet Earth MPL
The Last Sentinel MPL
Supernova MPL B
East Of Eden MPL A
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof MPL A
A Street Car Named Desire MPL A
Rebel Without A Cause MPL A
Enterprise First Year MPL B
How To Mary A Millionaire MPL
How To Be A Latin Lover Theater A
Wonder Women Theater A-
The Three Musketeers MPL C
Time Changer MPL D
Star Trek Enterprise four Seasons
Solaris B-
The Sea Of Trees A-
Quantum Leap Season One A-1
Star Gate Atlantis Rising B-
Total Recall B
Tammy B-
A Tale Of Two Cities BBC B
Vanishing Point A-
Spider-Man Homecoming In Theater B
War Of Planet Of The Apes In Theater B+
Rogue One Netflix B
The Dark Tower Theater B
Eye Of The Needle MPL A
Congo MPL B
Exile Mplb
Allegiant MPL B
The Man MPL B
Virus MPL B
Frankenstein MPL A
Treasure Island MPL B
Jericho TV Series B
Man In The High Castle TV Series A
One Under The Sun Amazon B
Independent’s Day Amazon –One Of The Worst Movie Ever Made F
The Last Lovecraft – Relic Of Cthulu C
Mysterious Island B
Zoo Series On Netflix Seasons One To Three
Stranger Things Season three seasons
Suburbicon Theater B-1
Thor Ragnarok Theater B
Monsters Netflix C
Travelers Netflix B
Julius Caesar OSF B
Hannah And The Dreaded Gazebo OSF B
Blade Runner 2049 B
Once Upon A Time ABC Series B
The Night Of The Hunter MPL A
The Maltese Falcon MPL A A
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel MPL B+
Mission Impossible Rogue Nation MPL B
Beasts Of The Southern Wilds MPL
Satan Met A Lady MPL B
The Villainous Korean Movie 2017 Hoopla
Guardians Of The Galaxy Part Two
Star Wars The Last Jedi
Nice guys
Arrival
Hell or High Water
Dead Pool
Revenant in theater
Fifth wave on plane
Synchroneity
London Has Fallen on plane
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on plane
Ten Coverfield Lane
Julius Caeser OSF
A wrinkle in Time OSF
2015
All About The Benjamin’s TNT B
Rush Hour Three TNT B
The Interview Google On-Line C
Paradise 2013 C
The Signal 2014 B
Duplicity Julia Roberts Clive Owens B
Are You Here B
Maleficent B
Guardians Of The Galaxy B
Begin Again 2014 B
The Giver 2014 A
Sea Biscuit A
November Man B
A Most Wanted Man C
Labor Day B
Life Of Crime B
Kundo Korean Movie B
And So It Goes 2014 Michael Douglas, Diane Keaton B
Marley And Me B
Jobs B
The Family C
Stuck In Love B
Mud B
X Men Days Of Future Past C
The Identical B
Jurassic City C
Railway Man B
Peabody And Sherman B
Lunch Box Bollywood Movie 2013 B
Y Tu Su Mama, También Award Winning Mexican Movie 2014 B
Australia B
Henderson Presents B
John Wick B
Silver Lining Playback A
The Good Night B
View From The Top B
Contagion C
Pineapple Express C
Country Strong B
The Hobbit –Battle Of The Five Armies B
Dinosaur Experiment C
Broke Back Mountain Library A
An Affair To Remember Library A
Two Days In Paris Library A
Ride With The Devil Library A
Carmen Opera Library A
Catch 22 Library B
Game Of Thrones Season One Library B
Game Of Thrones Season Two Library B
Barefoot In The Park Library A
No Reservations Library C
Fast And Furious Library C
Charlie’s Angels 2000 Library B
Charlie’s Angels 2003 Version Saw Earlier Noted Here B
Endless Love B
Hot Pursuit On Plane C
Day Of Adeline On Plane A
Avengers Day Of Ultron On Plane C
Tomorrowland On Plane B
Far From The Madding Crowd On Plane A
Aloha On Plane
Mad Max Fury Road On a Plane
San Andreas On Plane
Classified File Korean Movie On Plane
Casanova From Library
Company You Keep From Library
Contraband From Library
Bleak House Mini-Series From Library
La Boehme Opera From Library
Eat Drink Man Women From Library
Runner, Runner From Library
Sense And Sensibility From Library
American Snipper HBO
Wild HBO
Maze Runner HBO
Dumb And Dummer To HBO
Havoc HBO
5 Flights Up HBO
Kill The Messenger HBO
My Blueberry Nights Library
Last Chance, Harvey, Library
Serial Mom HBO
The Producers 2005 Version
Broken Flowers Hood
Rumor Has It that HBO
Run All Night HBO
Fistful Of Dollars HBO
A Few More Dollars HBO
The Good, The Bad, And Ugly HBO
Fifty Shades Of Grey HBO
Hang Em High HBO
The Drop HBO
The Leisure Class HBO
The Kingsmen Secret Service HBO
Birdman HBO
The Wiz NBC Special
Spectre At Kingstown
Magnolia HBO
The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion HBO
The Rock HBO
Child Hood’s End Syfy Channel Special
Insurgent HBO
2014
Jack Reacher 2012 Net Flix
Thieves (Korean Movie Next Flix)
Side Effects – Next Flix
The Informant – Next Flix
The Assassination Of Jessie James By The Coward Robert Ford 2008 Next Flic
Olympus Has Fallen 2013 Next Flix
Coriolanus 2011 Next Flix
300 Net Flix
Appolo 18 Net Flic
Shape Of Things To Come On Plane
Battle Star Galactica Razor On Plane
The Master On Plane
Ides Of March On Plane
Oblivion Net Flix
Midnight In Paris Woody Allen Saw Earlier On Plane Net Flic
Non-Stop In Regal – A Bit Disappointing
Then She Found Me Directed By Helen Hunt 2007 Net Flic
Zelig 1996 Woody Allen Nex Fix
Husband And Wives = Woody Allen Movie Netflix
Confederate States Of America 2004 Mockumentary
Out Of Sight George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez Based On Elmore Leonard Novel – Bit Disappointing On Plane
Hobbit Desolation Of Smug On Plane
Ender’s Game On Plane On Plane
The Internship On Plane
Closed Circuit On Plane
Secret Life Of Walter Mitty Download
RoboCop Download
The A-Team On Plane
The Europa Report On Plane
Blue Jasmine On Plane
World’s End On Plane
The Hangover On Plane
Edge Of Tomorrow In Movie Theather
True Crime 1998 Clint Eastwood (TV)
Bullet To The Head (TV)
Get The Gringo (TV)
Pacific Rim (TV)
Starsky And Hutch (TV)
Space Jam (TV)
World War Z Nextflex
Wolf Of Wall Street Nextflex
Gravity Nextflex
12 Years A Slave Nextflex
Fracture Nextflex
Good Night And Good Luck Nextflex
The Perfect Storm Nextflex
The Book Thief Nextflex
Best Offer Nextflex
Muncih 2005 Spellberg Nextflex
A Winter’s Tale Nextflex
Trascendence Nextflex
The Other Women Nextflex
Layer Cake Nextflex
Heat Robert Dinoro, Al Pacino Nextflex
Last Vegas Dinoro Freeman Kline Pacino Nextflex
The Grand Budapest Hotel Netflix
Best Laid Plans 1999 Version Nextflex
Firewall Nextflex
Saving Mr. Banks Nextflex
A Wrinkle In Time Nextflex
Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close – Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock About 9-11 And One Family’s Reaction Nextflex
Mandella’s Long Walk To Freedom Nextflex
Enough Said Nextflex
All You Need Is Love Nextflex
Divergent Nextflex
Noah Nextflex
You will Meet A Tall Dark Handsome Stranger – Woody Allen Movie 2010 Nextflex
X Men Wolverine Origins Nextflex
Captain America Winter Soldier Nextflex
X Men 2 United Nextflex
Sex Tape In Hotel
Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes On Plane
Godzilla 2014 Version On Plane
Don Juan Netflix
Frozen Nextflex
Gone Girl 2014 In Regal Springfield
Better Living Through Chemistry 2013 Movie Netflix
Elysium 2013 Nextflix
A Million Ways To Die In The West Nextflex
Interstellar 2014 In Regal Springfield
Burning Palms – Worst Movie Of The Year For Me
Million Dollar Arm
Lost In America 1985 Recommended By Matt Jacobson
Manhattan Murder Mystery 1995 Woody Allen
State Of Play Next Flic
Babel Next Flic
Peter Pan Live NBC
Snowpiercer Korean Directed Film
Jack Ryan, Shadow Recruit
Superbad
It’s A Wonderful Life
This Means War
Memories Of Murder Korean Film
The Good, The Bad, And The Weird Korean Film
Bad Santa
Typhoon Korean Movie 2005
In The Cut 2003 Australian Movie Set In NYC
TV Series And Movies
Breaking Bad Television Binge Watching All Episodes
House Of Cards
Tin Man
Falling Skies
2013
Crazy, Stupid Love, Netflix January 1, 2013
The Descendents Netflix January 4, 2013
The Hobbit (In Theater) January 5, 2013
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Netflix
Abritrage Richard Gere
Get Him To The Greek TV
Snatch Netflix
The One Netflix
One For The Money (Netflix)
Star Trek The Undiscovered Country TV
The Help Netflix
Hope Spring Netflix
Paul Netflix
Stolen Netflix – Did Not Finish Nominate For Worst Film Of The Year
The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe ABC Family
Journey To The Center Of The Earth 2011 ABC Family
Mission Impossible 1V Ghost Protocol
Here Comes Mr. Jordan 1941 TCM
A Star Is Born 1945 TCM
Mission Impossible 111
Decisions
Life Of Pi Next Flic
In Land Of Blood And Honey Next Flic
Lockout Next Flic
21 Jump Street Next Flic
Sherlock Holmes’s Games Of Shadows Plane
Wrath Of The Titans Plane
Horrible Bosses Plane
Safe House Plane
Hunter Plane
Take This Waltz Next Flix
Marley TV
Coriolanus (Theather RHS)
Wallenstein (Theather RHS)
Great Gatsby (Regal Kingstown)
Groom Lake (Hulu)
Motorcycle Diaries 2004 Next Flic
Looper Next Flic
Superman Man Of Steel In Regal Theather
Bourne Legacy (Netflix)
Earthlings 2012 Hulu
Gangster Squad (Nextflix)
Red (Part)
Zookeeper (Part)
Witches Of Oz (Netflix)
Interstate 60 Hulu
White House Down In Theather
Sex And Lucia Next Flic
Ted Next Flic
Star Ship Troopers – Invasion Next Flic
Ana Karina 2012 Net Flix – Production Did Not Work For Me – Too Cute And Avant Garde – Like Watching A Film Of A Play Adaption. Did Not Work As A Play Or As A Movie – A Big Disappointment
Time Bandits 1981 Hulu
RIPD In Theather
Atonement (Netflix)
Tristone And Isolde (2006) Netflix
Dune 1984 Nextflex
Meet The Millers Theather
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World Next Flic
Iron Man 3 On Plane
Trance On Plane
Prisoners In Theather
The Butler In Theather
Outsourced Netflix
Cloud Atlas Netflix
Flight 2012 Next Flic
The Campaign 2012 Next Flic
Asian Invasion (Porn Movie For Strip Poker Game)
Details Nextflix
The Blind Side Netflix
Pirates Of The Caribbean On Stranger Tides Netflix
Robin Hood 2010 Netflix
The Counselor 2013 In Theather
The Host Netflix
After The Sunset 2008 Netflix
Grown Ups TNT On Cruise
The Proposal TNT On Cruise
Red 2 TNT On Cruise
Maiden Heist Next Flix
Despicable Me – Disney Channel
Hunger Games Catching Fire In Theather
The Place Beyond The Pines Next Flic
Watch Man 2009 Next Flix
Snow White And The Huntsman Nextflix
Parker Netflix Streaming
American Hustle
A Christmas Story
Ice Quake 2013 Syfy
On The Road
2012
Dragnet (Next Flex) Jan 1
Bird On A Wire (Next Flex) Jan1
Laura Croft Tomb Raider (Hollywood Chanel)
Kuffs MGM Chanel
Journey To The Lost World MGM Chanel
Yellow Handkerchief Netflix
Shanghai Knights Hollywood Chanel
MMB 2 Hollywood Chanel
What Women Want Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt 2000 Hollywood Chanel
The Door In The Floor Jeff Bridges, Kim Bassinger, Mimi Rogers 2000 Next Flix Check References To Book
America’s Sweethearts 2001 Julia Roberts, Kusshak, Catherine Zetta Jones Nextflix
Marathon Man
Catwoman
The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes 2011 On Plane
Cowboys And Aliens 2010 On Plane
The Island 2005 On Plane
The Day The Earth Stood Still 1951 On Plane
Hot Tube Time Machine Net Flix
The Big Lebrowski Net Flix
Leopolis Seoul Netflix
King Of The Lost World
Money Ball (Training Day)
Serenity Next Flex 2005
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part One (On Plane)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels On The Plane
Bender’s Big Score (Netflix)
Serenity (Nextflix)
The Punisher (TV)
Love’s Kitchen (Netflix)
Transformers 11 2009 – Disappointing But Will Watch Transformers 111 To Finish The Series Off.
The Double 2011 Richard Gere
Contagion Did Not Finish Warsaw
Sherlock Holmes 2 Did Not Finish Warsaw
Win Win Warsaw Good Fli
The Invasion 2005 Innovative Shooting Technique
Tower Heist Nex
The Tree Of Life Nex – Disappointing
The Hangover Part Two NEX
Girl With Dragon Tattoo (2011 Version)
The King’s Speech NEX
Midnight In Paris Woody Allen Movie 2011
John Carter Hotel Room
This Means War On Plane
J Egard With Leonardo Di Capio Directed By Clift Eastwood – Big Disappointment. Just Too Long, Too Much Talking. From NEX
Dr Strangelove From Mik B
The Armour Of God 1987 Jackie Chan, Lola Forner Spanish Actress Hulu
The Sands Of Oblivion 2007 Hulu
The Monitors (Next Flex)
MIB3 On Plane
Prometheus – Last Half Worth Seeing Again On Plane
Battleship On Plane
Players Bollywood Remake Of The Italian Job –Worth Seeing
Cross Worlds Next Flex
Phil The Alien Next Flex
Invasion Of The Pod People Hulu
Alien Armageddon Hulu
Red State Netflix
God Bless America Netflix
The Man Who Fell To Earth Netflix
Very Bad Things Next Flix
Ready Or Not – Hulu
The Last Lovecraft: Relic Of Cthulu 2009 Netflix
Amazing Spiderman 2012 Plane
To Rome With Love 2010 Plane Woody Allen
Dawalt’s Guard (First Arabic Movie) Plane
Search For Justice 2012 Nicolas Cage Plane
Mirror Mirror With Julia Roberts – On Plane In February
The Gauntlet With Clint Eastwood 1977
The Hunger Game Blockbuster
The Debt
The Maltese Falcon TCM
My Week With Marilynn Block Buster
Bernie Blockbuster
Savages Blockbuster
Wanderlust Blockbuster
Skyfall Theather
Office Space
Dumb And Dumber TV
Accepted TV
The Iron Lady Blockbuster
The Watch Blockbuster
Larry Crowne Blockbuster
Hot Rock 1972 Robert Redford HDNET
Killing Them Softly (Movie Theather)
2011
How Do You Know 2010
Nothing But The Truth 2008 Saw Earlier Not Bad 1-15
Salt 2010 With Angelina Jolie
The Other Side Of The Bed Spanish 2002
A Perfect Getaway 2009
Fool’s Gold
Invictus 2009 Morgan Freeman, Matt Damian
Like Water For Chocolate
The Flower Of My Secret La Flora De Mi Secreto Spanish Movie 1995
88 Minutes 2007 Al Pacino
Mr. Deeds 2002
The King And I Korean Series
Sex And The City 11
14, Hell Boy Part 11
Love Happens
Drive Angry 2011 Nicolas Cage Add To Worst Movie List
17 Girl With The Dragon Tatoo 2009
The Spanish Prisoner 1997 David Mamet Director Steve Martin
Illegally Yours 1988 Robert Lowe
Machette 2010 Half Spanish Dialogue Robert Dinero, Jessica Alba
The Prince Of Persia 2010
22 No False Move 1992 Bill Ray Thorton
23 Life In North Korea Documentary From National Geographic
Green Zone
Morning Glory
26 Killers
Eat Pray Love
28 The Town
Kate And Leopold
The Legend Of Bagger Vance
30 Emma
31 Les Miserables 1998 Version
32 Unstoppable 2010
2010
Fragments 2009
Where The Day Takes You 1992
The Illusionist 2003
PS, I Love You 2007
The Burning Plain 2008
The Other Man 2008
Mama Mia 2008
Dim Sum Funeral 2008
Inglorious Bastards 2009
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? 2003 Second Time Around
Time Traveler’s Wife 2009
Amelia 2009
Lies And Illusions 2009 Add To Worst List
Serious Moonlight 2009
“The Chaser” Korean Film
Precious 2009 Academy Award For Best Actress
Every Body’s Alright
Space Balls
Three Stooges Selected Episodes
Ghosts Of Girl Friends Past 2009 Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner
Up In The Air 2009 George Clooney
The Men Who Stare At Goats 2009 George Clooney
Have You Heard About The Morgans? Hugh Grant, Sara Jessica Parker 2009
Sherlock Holmes 2009 Robert Downey, Jude Law And Rachael Mc Donald
“Crazy Heart” 2010 Best Picture Award 2010 Jeff Bridges, Robert Duval, Maggie Gyenehall
“Five Minutes Of Heaven” Liam Nelson 2010.
Avatar 2009 Best Picture
Romeo Must Die Jet Li 2000
Flawless 2008 Demi Moore Michael Kane
Extraordinary Measures 2010 Harrison Ford
Alice In Wonderland 2010
The Road 2009
It’s Complicated
Beyond A Reasonable Doubt
The Invention Of Lying
Edge Of Darkness
The Spy Next Door
Young Victorian
Old Dogs (On Plane)
Leap Year (On Plane)
Couples Retreat (Travis) 2009
Knight And Day 2010 (Medford)
Inception 2010 (Medford)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice 2010 (Medford)
Clash Of The Titans (On Plane) 2010
Remember Me (On Plane) -2010
Bounty Hunter (On Plane -2010
Date Night (On Plane ) 2010
2 Fast 2 Furious 2003 Eva Mendes Stars (Saw On TV)
Water World – Keven Kostner Saw On Korean TV
Legends Of The Fall Saw On Korean TV
Iron Man 2 (On Plane)
How To Tame Your Dragon (On Plane)
The Informant (HBO Home)
Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey (Parts)
Batteries Not Included 1987 Second Time Around (HBO)
Family Man (HBO)
Wall Street
Helen – Short List For Worst Movie I Saw – Just Did Not Work For Me.
The Warlords
A Plague Of Zombies
Robin Hood
The Unthinkable
The Book Of Eli
The Count Of Monte Cristo
The Messenger (Angela Saw)
Red (In The Theather)
The Count Of Mont Cristo Angela Saw I Saw Parts
3:10 To Yuma (Saw A Few Years Ago, Saw Again)
Law Abiding Citizen 2009
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring Korean Film 2005
Aliens In The Addict 2009 TV
Loch Ness 1996 Ted Dancer HBO
Fair Game 2010 In Theater
The Pianists 2002 Angela Saw, I Saw A Few Years Ago
The Simpsons Movie First Half was Seen Earlier
Star Wars 6 First Half Hour
Wizard Of OZ Half
The King And I Korean History Drama
The Darjeeling Limited 2007 Owen Wilson Wes Anderson Directed
The Piano 1995 Angela Saw, I Heard Parts Of It
Gia 1994 Very Sexual And Lots Of Lesbian Scenes Which Turned Me On.
Oregon (SFY)
Leiberstruam 1999 Kim Novack, Bill Pullman HBO
The Jones 2009 Demi Moore, David Duchovny Amber Heard, And Ben Hollingsworth Directed By Derrick Borte – Disappointed, Did Not Work For Me
The Hours 2002 Nicole Kidman, Julain Moore, And Meryle Shreep Re Life Of Virginia Woolf And Her Impact On The Life Of Two Women
Bobby 2006 Helen Hunt, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Sharon Stone, William Macy, Martin Sheet, Linsday Lohan, And Cristian Slater Written Nd Directed By Emilio Estevez
True Grit 2010 – Overly Hyped In My Opinion
Vivdirana Spanish Film 1961 Classic
Volver 2005 Spanish Film
How Much Do You Love Me 2005 French
Ninja Assassins 2009 Staring Rain On TV
93 Horsefeathers Marx Brothers On TV
2009
Underwear” Starting Val Kilmer, Graham Greene,
Constant Gardener With Rachael Weiz –
Rumor Has It – Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner
Queen
Hancock With Will Smith
Dave – With Eddie Murphy – SF Comedy
Joe Kid – With Clint Eastwood – Saw Opening
Iron Man – Not Bad. Another Marvel Movie.
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind”
Gone, Baby, Gone”
Fracture
Burn After Reading”
21 Grams”
The Changling With Angelia Jolie, Directed By Clint
Kiss The Dust”
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
Electric Mist With Tomy Lee Jones
Good German
Siberian Express
Body Of Lies
Slum Dog Millionaire
Lucky Slevin
Australia
What Just Happened
City Of Ember
Proof Of Life
Bottle Shock
Runaway Jury
Master Spy
Marie Antoinette
Interstate
He’s Just Not That Into You
Madagascar 11
Collateral With Jamie Fox And Tom Cruise
My Super Ex Girl Friend
State Of Play – In Medford Movie Theather
Bolt-On The Plane
Yes Man, In Hotel Room In DC
Avengers
Spy Games
All The Way
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Seven Pounds
Nothing But The Truth
The Reader – Oscar Winner For Best Actress 2008 Kate Winslet
Crossing Over
Kill Shot With Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane
Vanished With Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock
Valkarie
Star Trek – Prequel Movie (From Street Vendor)
52 The Clearing With Robert Redford – 2004
Curious Case Of Benjamin Button With Brad Pitt Best Actor Award 2009
Knowing With Nicolas Cage 2009
The Code
Counterfeit
Alexander 2004 Oliver Stone Producer
Out For Justice 1991
Echelon Conspiracy 2009
The Good Thief 2001 With Nick Nolte
Meteor = NBC Mini-Series
Wild Hogs 2007 Tim Allen, Travolta, Macy, Lawrence
28 Days Later
Wild Things 2
Mystic River Directed By Clint Eastwood, Starring Sean Pean
Criminal 2004
Essential Lover
Two Lovers
Angels And Demons 2008 Started by Tom Hanks, Directed By Ron Howard
The Informers
Duplicity
Surveillance Produced By Jennifer Lynch Starting Pullman And Ormand
Trust The Man 2008
The Mutant Chronicles 2008
Heaven 1995?
Wolverine With Hugh Jackman 2009
Dark Streets With Bijou Philips
Doubt With Meryle Strep 2008
Coco Chanel Shirley Mc Cline 2008
Ramen Girl
The Yatzuka (1974 W George Mitchum)
The Fountain 2006 W Rachel Weiss (Hot)
Easy Virtue 2009 (On Plane)
Act Of Imagination – Eddie Murphy And Serena Williams’s Daughter
I Hate Valentine’s Day 2009 (On Plane)
The Proposal 2009 With Sandra Bullock
Into The Storm (Bio Of Winston Churchill (On Plane)
MILF Hunters 5 Porno Movie Seen In Hotel
Brooks
Taken
The Big Bounce
The Heartbreak Kid (Second Time Around)
Taking Of Pelham 123 2009 With John Travolta, Denzel Washington
Cherrie 2008 With Michelle Pfiefer
Accidental Husband 2008 With Uma Thuber
Management With Jennifer Anison, Steve Chain, And Woody Harrelson, 2008
My Life In Ruins, 2008 With Nia Valdolos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding And Richard Dreyfus)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang 2005
Spanglish 2005 With Adam Sandler
A Married Life 2008
Open Road 2009
Vanity Fair 2004 Recee Weatherspoon As Bucky Sharp
Beyond Borders 2008 Anglie Jolie, And Clive Owen
I’ll Sleep When I Am Dead 2003with Clive Owen
The King Of California 2007 With Michael Douglas
Target 1985 With Gene Hackman And Matt Dillion
The Life Of David Gale With Kevin Spacy, And Kate Winslet
Bruno
Lucky You With Drew Barrymore
The Last Word
2012 With John Cusack
Bad Lieutenant With Nicolas Cage
The Tournament 2009 Kelly Hu
Public Enemies 2009 Johny Deep
Julia And Julia 2009 Meryle Sherpa
Cold Mountain 2003 Jude Law, Nicole Kidman
Out Of Time 2003 Denzel Washington, Eva Mendez (Hot)
Night At The Museum 11 Battle For Smithsonian
Sleuth 2009 Version
Land Of The Lost 2009
The Brother’s Bloom 2008
Letter From Iwa Jima 2007 Clint Eastwood Directed
White Chicks
Star Treck Generations
Jackie Collins Hollywood Wife 2003
Charlie Wilson’s War -2008 Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts
The Whole Nine Yards 2000 Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Amanda Peete (Hot)
The Illusionist
2008
After The Sunset With Pierce Bronson, Salma Hayek, Woody Harrelson, Don Cheadle
American Gangster With Denzel Washington And Russell Crowe
Out Of Reach With Steven Seagal
Amos And Andy With Nicolas Cage And Samuel Jackson
The Merchant Of Venice With AL Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins
Harrison’s Flowers With Adrian Macdowell, Elias Koteas, Brendan Gleeson, Adrian Brody, And David Stratham
Sylvia – Movie About The Poet Sylvia Plath And Ted Hughes
What Happened In Vegas – With Cameron Diaz
Rendition With Meryle Strep – About The Issue Of Renditions, Well Done
Adaptation – Nicolas Cage Re Life Of Two Twin Brothers Screen Writers And The Process Of Writing A Screen Play
Bangkok Dangerous Nicolas Cage
Elizabeth
The Weather Man Nicolas Cage
Get Smart
Possession NF
Next With Nicolas Cage NF
Knocked Up NF
Untouchables AMC
Fargo AMC
Mummy Returns
2007 To 2010 Barbados
Saw A Lot Of Movies On Video And Netflix Via Mail
2003 To 2007 DC Saw An Average of 100 Per Year – lot via blockbuster
2000 To 2003 Saw An Average Of 100 Per Year Mostly Videos But Did See In Movie Theaters Twice A Month And Saw Several Bollywood Movies
2000 Saw The Three Stooges Marathon To Start The Year
1996 -1997 Saw Less Than 50 Due To Being In Hospital Half The Year
The 90s Saw About 100 Per Year Blockbuster Was Popular
1994 during six month Thai training saw four movies per week
1991 during training saw four movies per week, two normal,
The ’80s Saw A Lot Via Video About 100 Per Year
The ’70s Saw On TV And In Movie Theaters
Watched a lot of Creature Features movies on TV in the early ’70s every Friday night they had a double feature. Went on average once a week to the movies with friends
Favorite animation series included American Dad, Dilbert, Family Guy, Futurama, Bullwinkle, Looney Tunes .
Favorite TV series over the years include Arrested Development, Batman, Superman, Everyone Loves Raymond, Two and half men, Married with Children, Malcom in the Middle, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and as a child, Beverly Hillbies, Dobbie Gils, Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, Outer limits, Twilight zone, and X Files.
Saw all planet of the Apes movies and all James Bond movies
DETROIT, MICHIGAN – FEBRUARY 04: The NBA logo is pictured before the game between the Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic at Little Caesars Arena on February 04, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Nic Antaya/Getty Images)
My thoughts on the dismal state of basketball, and what can be done to bring it back. I sent this letter off to the NBA, but they never responded. Their lost. Part three of my series was on Making American sports great, the others were on Baseball and American Football. I will send them out to the NBA, NFL and MLB and post any responses I receive.
Letter to NBA
Commissioner
The NBA is in crisis. Its long-term viability as America’s pastime is in serious question as fewer people especially younger viewers are basketball fans or players. It is sad to say that more people watch soccer, and even cricket in the U.S. than watch basketball. The solution is for the NBA to take bold steps to restore Basketball as the world’s favorite sport.
Here’s my proposal to turn the NBA/WNBA around. It requires bold action, and considerable investment of time and resources to grow the sport.
There are five basic elements to my proposal.
Expand the League into a world-wide league
Make games affordable and accessible’
NBA teams should adopt school districts and colleges and fully fund Basketball programs
NBA championship should represent the US in international play
the NBA championship should be replaced a a world cup of Basketball
First, a dramatic expansion of basketball so that there are major league team teams in every state in the US, every province in Canada, and Mexico, and in Cuba, the DR, Nicaragua, USVI, and Venezuela. That would mean expanding the number of teams to 70 teams from the 35 teams that exist today.
Followed by an Asian Baseball league and a European Baseball league, with 70 teams each.
This would not be as difficult to accomplish as you might first think. You would make sure that there is a major league team in each state in the U.S., each Canadian province, each Mexican State, and in the basketball-playing countries of Africa, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe as well, making it a real-world sport.
Each team would play mostly in its region which will be as follows:
Northwest League
Southwest League
South East League
Northeast League
Central League
And Caribbean/Mexican League
Africa League
Asia League
European League
This would make it more affordable for teams to travel as they would mostly be playing against teams in their region.
The leagues would be adjusted a bit to ensure that they are all about the same number of teams.
And there would be intense regional rivals for example in the Bay area there would be regular games between SF and Oakland.
There would also be an expansion to ensure that all major markets have a team. For example in California, we would add a team in Sacramento and San Jose. We would add a team in Las Vegas, Oakland, and elsewhere. Particularly those cities that don’t have an NBA team such
Austin, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Colombus, Louisville, Kansas City, Louisville, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Seattle. I would also add teams in Canada and Mexico.
At the end of the season, the North American champion would be crowned and that champion would advance to the real Basketball Championship game which will be a World- cup format with 64 national teams (the national champions) competing with the four final games played in the U.S. which will remain as the spiritual home of basketball.
Second, each team would adopt a local school district and local college.
To grow basketball’s future fan base, each team would adopt a local school district and local college fully funding baseball programs in the local school and college, including scholarships for talented students to go to college.
This would also involve players and team officials serving as coaches and advisors in the local schools helping them develop and expand their basketball programs.
The NBA would also recruit for their teams from the local colleges that they sponsor. The NBA would also only accept players athletes who have finished their college programs with a degree setting an example to the other major sports franchises that the NBA values education and wants to ensure that their athletes finish their education before beginning their professional sporting careers.
I think that the NFL, MBA, MLS, and Hockey should follow suit. It is disgusting that major league sports take student athletes before they graduate and then after a few years spit them out without them having had a chance to earn their degrees.
The NBA should step up to the plate and say,
If you want to play in the majors, you must finish your degree before your first game, or within one year or we will cut you from playing. That would help the student-athletes, and well be the right thing to do.
Third, each team would guarantee that a certain percentage of their tickets would be affordable.
Attending a major sports event costs too much money. To grow the fan base, each team would sell half-price tickets on game day and one hour before the game sell the remaining tickets for five dollars, thus making baseball affordable to everyone. And they would treat the families of their school programs and college programs to free baseball games. And they would also each week sponsor free tickets for those in need – people living in shelters, people living with chronic illnesses, etc.
Broadcast the Games for free everywhere
Greatly expands broadcasting so that the games are available worldwide for free.
Fourth, the World Series would be replaced by a world cup format.
All countries that play basketball would be invited to participate in the World Basketball Championship series. At the end of the season in June, the national teams from at least 64 countries would play in the World Championship Series, which will be held every year. The winner of each national championship would represent their country in the real-world series. The opening games will be played worldwide, with the finals in the U.S. with the top-ranked US teams hosting the top-ranked international teams.
If the NBA were to take these steps, they would dramatically turn the sport around.
Thank you for taking the time to read my proposal, I look forward to hearing back from your staff and I hope that you can implement some of my ideas, I hope that NBA will continue to expand and prosper.
I’m a sixty-something, mostly self-taught, amateur wannabe with some songs I want to share—and eventually leave behind.
These songs tell the stories of my life, sometimes quite literally, sometimes less so. But I hope others can find something of their own story in there. I think that’s why we do art of any kind—to connect, right?
The Second Song
This month’s song is sort of a sad homage to the classic one night stand. What kids today might call a hookup. Or maybe that term is already out of date, I don’t keep up. Anyway, I originally wrote this song back in the 1980s, probably sitting at a bar nursing a hangover. I’ve even done a video of it before. But I always thought it needed a bridge, and I finally got around to writing one last year, and I think it helps crystalize the intent of the lyric. So, here’s a new recording, including the new bridge.
The structure is fairly simple and classic: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus. The story told in the verses even follows something like three-act structure.
Musically, it’s an old-school, three-chord country song in the key of C. Just C-F-G with a few frills here and there. I’m arpeggiating the main guitar chords as a counter melody that overlaps and intertwines with the vocal melody.
Performance & Production
(if you’re into the details)
Once again, it’s just me on vocals and instrumentation.
My big learning goal for this production was to incorporate GarageBand’s digital drummer. It’s an unwieldy beast, I’ll say. And like a lot of this stuff, I am on the steep part of the learning curve.
The bass guitar part was also digitally created, using a GarageBand preset and the Musical Typing feature. I did better with that this time, but I’d like to find a better solution going forward. I might be shopping for a bass guitar. We’ll see.
A full view of the song in GarageBand. The Taylor T5z. My desk during Musical Typing! The vocal mic and reflection shield. The bar in Red Bluff where this song was most likely written around 1986.
The main guitar part was recorded with a Taylor T5z hybrid guitar, plugged in directly to the Scarlett audio interface. It was digitally duplicated, and one track drenched in boozy tremolo, the other has a bit of distortion. The vocal was recorded separately with the PreSonus M7 microphone, using the MouKey reflection shield. The lead guitar was also recorded on the T5z direct to the Scarlett, with a “Cool Jazz Combo” effect laid on.
The slide show is a series of shots I found online—mostly from pexels.com—that seemed to evoke the right mood and correspond to the story somewhat. I put it together in iMovie with the audio file from GarageBand. This felt more appropriate for the song than a video of me.
Overall, this song turned into quite an experiment, and thus an adventure. There are aspects I’m quite satisfied with and some I would change with more time. But that’s the beauty of setting a deadline, right? I learned that in 40 years of the newspaper and magazine business. You do the best you can, fuss over it until the last minute if need be. But make the deadline. Anyway, I learned a lot from the process. And that’s the real point.
I am writing to you regarding the future of the NFL and American football in general. The game in which so many love is in danger. For most Americans, going to a game is an impossible dream as tickets are expensive. It used to be affordable, but not anymore. The game has been priced out of the middle class.
Many schools are dropping football as a game due to expense and safety issues so fewer youngsters are learning the game, which means fewer people grow up with the game.
And there is the increased popularity of baseball, basketball, cricket, hockey, rugby, and soccer.
So, the long-term prospect is that American football will become a minor sport.
How can we reverse this trend and restore American football to its rightful place as the king of world sports?
Here’s my proposal and I hope that you can consider it.
There are three elements to the plan – expand the number of teams, make games affordable and grow the next generation of players, and finally set up a world cup of football by expanding the NFL overseas into an Asian league and a European league.
The first element is simple – the NFL should commit to a rapid expansion of NFL teams so that there are NFL teams in almost all major metropolitan areas and most states, and Canadian provinces and add teams to Mexico and Puerto Rico as well. This would also involve merging with the Canadian Football League.
I would add teams to the following underserved areas as a start
Austin,
Alabama
Anchorage
Boise, Idaho
Columbus
El Pasco
Guam
Louisville
Honolulu
Little Rock
Memphis
Mississippi
Oakland, California
Oklahoma City
Omaha
Orlando
Richmond, VA
Northern New England
Sacramento
Salt Lake City
Spokane
and in Mexico and the Caribbean
Guadalajara, México
Mexico City
Monterey, Mexico
DR
San Juan, PR
US VI
and in Canada
Calgary, Canada
Edmonton, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Quebec Canada
Montreal Canada.
And well you get the picture = double the number of teams and you dramatically increase the fan base.
Make Games Affordable Again
The Second element consists of changing the way tickets are sold so that going to a game is affordable.
I would make half the tickets available for individual purchase and end the policy of only selling season tickets. I would price at least 25 percent of tickets at 50 dollars and on game days sell any remaining tickets at half price. One hour before the game, sell any remaining tickets for ten dollars so you fill the stadium with fans and make going to a game affordable again for most average Americans, and give away the remaining tickets a half an hour before game time. This one change will make a tremendous difference. Right now, going to a game costs hundreds of dollars, even more if you have to spend the night. And most tickets are season-only tickets. The stadiums are half-empty most of the time. This proposal will fill up the stadiums.
I would also suggest extending the season, so the season starts in early August, and ends in January. See below.
If tickets were affordable and available, more people would attend, and more people would take an interest in the game.
Develop the Next Generation of Players
Each NFL team should adopt a school district, a local community college, and a university and pay for a complete football program for that community, including fully funding scholarships for student-athletes attending the local community college and University sponsored by the local team. This will include discounted tickets for students and family members from the community schools adopted by the NFL, and volunteered coaching and mentoring for younger players.
Only College Graduates Can Play Professionally
Change the recruitment strategy for players. Announce that you will only offer contracts to players who finish their degrees, you can offer provisional contracts, but the players must finish their degrees within one year of signing to be allowed to continue to play.
I would also fully fund coaching positions across the country so that ex-ball players can easily be hired and contribute to training the next generation of players.
Develop the League Overseas
Spend a lot of time, effort, and money on developing the NFL in Europe and Asia, with US teams sponsoring foreign teams and starting each season with exhibition games with foreign teams.
Finally, replace the Super Bowl with a World Super Bowl with the top teams from the US, Mexico, and Canada going against the top teams in Asia and Europe to compete for the Superbowl of American football. Each country would send their champion on to the world Super Bowl with the top two teams competing in the final which will be held in the U.S. which would remain the spiritual home of American Football.
Broadcast the games for free everywhere
End the stupid policy of geographic restrictions. Particularly for the Super Bowl.
If you do all the above, you can ensure the future success of American football. If you do nothing football will become a minor sport in the land of its birth. And that would be a great tragedy for those who love the game. For the good of the game, make it affordable, double the number of teams, and make it a truly international sport.
I would appreciate hearing back from you.
Jake Aller
Life-long SF 49’s, Oakland Raiders, Seattle Seahawks, and Washington Commanders fan
My thoughts on the dismal state of Baseball and what can be done to bring it back. I sent this letter off to MLB, but they never responded. Their lost.
Letter to MLB
Commissioner
Baseball is in crisis. Its long-term viability as America’s pastime is in serious question as fewer people, especially younger viewers, are baseball fans. It is sad to say that more people watch soccer, and even cricket in the U.S. than watch baseball. The solution is for MLB to take bold steps to restore baseball as America’s pastime if not the world’s pastime.
Here’s my proposal to turn MLB around. It requires bold action, and considerable investment of time and resources to grow the sport.
There are four basic elements to my proposal.
Expand the Number of Teams
First, a dramatic expansion of baseball so that there are major league team teams in every state in the US, every province in Canada, and Mexico, and in Cuba, the DR, Nicaragua, USVI, and Venezuela. That would mean expanding the number of teams to 70 teams from the 35 teams that exist today.
I would add expansion teams to the following metro areas
Austin
Charlotte
Columbus
El Paso
Indianapolis
Louisville
Memphis
Nashville
Jacksonville
Sacramento
San Jose
San Antonio
as well as teams in Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico.
Followed by an Asian Baseball league and a European Baseball league, with 70 teams each.
This would not be as difficult to accomplish as you might first think. First, you would convert minor league teams into major league teams. You would make sure that there is a major league team in each state in the U.S., each Canadian province, each Mexican State, and in the baseball-playing countries of the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe as well, making it a real-world sport.
Each team would play mostly in its region which will be as follows:
Northwest League
Southwest League
Southeast League
Northeast League
Central League
Africa League
And Caribbean/Mexican League
Asia League
European League
This would make it more affordable for teams to travel as they would mostly be playing against teams in their region.
The leagues would be adjusted a bit to ensure that they are all about the same number of teams.
And there would be intense regional rivals for example in the Bay Area there would be regular games between SF and Oakland.
There would also be expansion to ensure that all major markets have a team. For example. in California, we would add a team in Sacramento and San Jose. And we would add a team in Las Vegas, and Portland.
At the end of the season, the North American champion would be crowned and that champion would advance to the real-World Series, which will be a world cup format with 64 national teams (the national champions) competing with the four final games played in the U.S. which will remain as the spiritual home of baseball.
Second, each team would adopt a local school district and local college.
To grow baseball’s future fan base, each team would adopt a local school district and local college, fully funding baseball programs in the local school and college, including scholarships for talented students to go to college.
This would also involve players and team officials serving as coaches and advisors in the local schools, helping them develop and expand their baseball programs.
Only Allow College Graduates to Play
MLB would also recruit for their teams from the local colleges that they sponsor. And MLB would also only accept players athletes who have finished their college programs with a degree setting an example to the other major sports franchises that MLB values education and wants to ensure that their athletes finish their education before beginning their professional sporting careers.
I think that the NFL and NBA should follow suit. It is disgusting that major league sports take student athletes before they graduate and then after a few years spit them out without them having had a chance to earn their degrees.
So MBA should step up to the plate and say,
If you want to play in the majors, you must finish your degree before your first game, or within one year or we will cut you from playing. That would help the student-athletes, and well be the right thing to do.
Third, each team would guarantee that a certain percentage of their tickets would be affordable.
Attending a major sports event costs too much money. To grow the fan base. Each team would sell half-price tickets on game day and one hour before the game sell the remaining tickets for five dollars, thus making baseball affordable to everyone. And they would treat the families of their school programs and college programs to free baseball games. And they would also each week sponsor free tickets for those in need – people living in shelters, people living with chronic illnesses, etc.
Broadcast the Games for free everywhere
greatly expands broadcasting so that the games are available worldwide for free.
Fourth the World Series would be replaced by a world cup format.
All countries that play baseball would be invited to participate in the World Cup of Baseball. At the end of the season in October the national teams from at least 64 countries would play in the world cup which will be held every fourth year. The US will host the first World Cup, and then sponsorship will rotate around all the participating countries so all 64 countries will eventually get to host a World Cup of baseball. the winner of each national championship would represent their country in the real-world series.
If the MLB were to take these steps they would dramatically turn the sport around.
Thank you for taking the time to read my proposal. I look forward to hearing back from your staff and I hope that you can implement some of my ideas I hope that MLB will continue to expand and prosper.
Roy Dufrain is my college roommate from UOP. We lived at the Euclid House next to campus which became an alternative frat house of sorts. We had wild parties every Friday night for two and a half years – the best parties on campus. Boy, we had fun He taught me so much, became a “deadhead” because of him, and tried various things with him, and we occasionally performed demented music together at campus events. He was a Raymon College student, but unfortunately, because of money problems did not finish his senior year. He was also the editor at the university’s paper and published a number of my poems and essays while we were there.
University of the Pacific Raymond college history
Raymond College, an undergraduate honors college at the University of the Pacific, existed from 1962 to 1979. Located in Stockton, California, it was a unique institution with an interdisciplinary curriculum that emphasized learning across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Let’s delve into its fascinating history:
Founding and Vision:
Raymond College was the brainchild of University of the Pacific President Robert Burns. Faced with a new generation of qualified applicants, he sought to create a personalized educational experience for students.
Inspired by the success of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Claremont colleges, President Burns envisioned residential cluster colleges as a way to maintain high academic standards while expanding the university.
Raymond College was the first of three cluster colleges developed under this vision.
Curriculum and Structure:
The college offered an innovative interdisciplinary liberal arts curriculum.
Initially, it provided an accelerated three-year program, but later expanded to offer a four-year program as well.
Key components of the curriculum included:
Introduction to the Modern World: A shared cohort experience for incoming first-year students.
Language study: A year of language learning.
Math, physics, chemistry, and biology: Sequential courses.
Humanities and social science classes: Literature, philosophy, art, religion, economics, history, psychology, and sociology.
Students received written evaluations (term letters) instead of traditional letter grades.
Provost and Philosophy:
Provost Warren Bryan Martin played a pivotal role in shaping Raymond College.
He emphasized the importance of the liberal arts and the holistic preparation of students for a fulfilling life.
The first class of students arrived in the fall of 1962.
Legacy and Impact:
Raymond College influenced the entire University of the Pacific.
Its emphasis on student-centered learning, liberal arts, and interdisciplinary studies raised academic expectations across campus.
The college operated in the tradition of the liberal arts, fostering intellectual curiosity and engagement.
He is a talented writer and musician living in Clear Lake California.
you can check his work out here at Medium and on Substack as well as on his web page
Roy Dufrain.Com
THE YEAR OF TWELVE SONGS is my latest music project. Some of you got a preview recently, with an all-acoustic version of a song called Finish Strong. Now I’m sharing a new version with added instruments and my efforts at sound production. Plus some backstory and something sort like old-fashioned liner notes (remember those?). I plan to do this with a different song every month and hopefully learn a lot in the process. Check it out with the link below and let me know what you think.
This is my 8th annual December ramble about the books of my year. Not necessarily books that came out this year, but books I read (or heard) that moved me, taught me, made me cry, or cracked me up. It kind of feels like I’m late with this year’s edition but hey—two-day shipping at your preferred online bookseller, right?
FICTION
Nowadays I often avoid reading the latest best-selling, prize-winning, must-read fiction that everyone’s talking about. Because over the years I’ve learned not to trust hype. I like to wait a few years to see if anyone’s still talking about the book. See if the title comes up in a discussion and someone says, God, I loved that book, years after they read it, and they start talking about the character or scene that stuck with them. To me, that’s how you know. Not by critics’ reviews book trailers or Reese Witherspoon. (However, if Ms Witherspoon is out there somewhere, this does not mean I wouldn’t want MY book on your list someday! Just sayin’).
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But this year I read two of the latest novels from two big names in fiction—because I had loved previous work by both authors and because multiple writer-friends flat-out raved about these new books. And now I will rave about them myself.
Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, is the best novel I’ve read in years. The best overall reading experience that delivers in all facets. The sense of total immersion in a world, the intense rooting interest in a main character, the epic scope of historical context, the deep underlying interrogation of the real world, and the sheer delight in artful language. I can’t think of what more to ask from a novel. And, frankly, I can say pretty much the same things about The Vaster Wilds, by Lauren Groff, although Groff’s tale delivers in its particular way. Read them both, and see what you think.
NON-FICTION
The Gutenberg Revolution: How Printing Changed the Course of History, by John Man. Okay, I admit there are maybe three people reading this who could be marginally interested in this book. One of them is my father, a fellow ink-stained wretch as we used to say in the biz. And the others have similar or adjacent backgrounds. But, even if you don’t have ink and perhaps newsprint in your blood, or an old pica pole in a desk drawer at home, this is a fascinating blow-by-blow account of the twists and turns of fate, greed and genius that resulted in one of humankind’s most impactful technologies, on a par with gunpowder, the electric light or the personal computer.
BONUS NON-FICTION
Beatles 66: The Revolutionary Year, by Steve Turner. An amazingly detailed, month-by-month tour through a year in which the world changed the Beatles and the Beatles changed the world. I went to Audible on this one and listened to most of it in the car on a long drive to and from a writer’s retreat. It made for a great company.
Consider This: Moments in My Life After Which Everything was Different, by Chuck Palahniuk, author of the novel, Fight Club. This is a very different kind of craft book: personal, direct, funny, truth-telling, even illuminating at times. The subtitle hints at one of the biggest takeaways because Palahniuk is referencing what he sees as the key piece of wisdom he has to pass on—in the end, writes about the moment after which everything was different. If that gets your writer’s brain running like a hamster, this book’s for you.
And in the GREAT BOOKS BY NICE FOLKS I KNOW category… Far Sickness, by writer/teacher/editor Joshua Mohr, who is a huge favorite among scribblers here on the Upper Left Coast. This slightly demented short novel—a collaboration with Josh’s ten-year-old daughter Ava—seems to live somewhere between the old Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and a Guillermo del Toro film, and this juxtaposition of innocence beside horror is only enhanced by Ava’s charmingly bloody illustrations. But underneath all of that is a heart-wrenching journey through the deepest kind of trauma and regret to somewhere resembling hope. Which is exactly what readers usually get from Josh’s work.
That’s all for this year, folks. Remember, as Stephen King said…
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
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I was watching the movie based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, and there’s this scene where a little boy with the sweetest voice sings Red River Valley to Reese Witherspoon. I hadn’t heard that song in I don’t know how long, and in an instant I was transported—in that way that a song can flip a switch and turn your mind (and your heart) into a four-chord time machine. Know what I mean?
I was no longer a late-middle-aged man reclined on my couch watching Reese Witherspoon’s hit movie. I was eight or nine years old, and it was 1966 or 67. My older sister Debi and I were staying with our grandparents somewhere in Sacramento. I don’t remember why or for how long, yet I’m sure I could draw an accurate floorplan of the tiny one-bedroom bungalow they had. Memory is such a rickety contraption
Every summer I try to watch the Little League World Series on ESPN. At least a few innings here and there or a game or two in the earlier rounds of the tournament, and then of course the championship game. It always refreshes my love of the game of baseball.
Little Leaguers epitomize the art of trying. No one plays with more heart. Certainly not the professionals who make millions of dollars playing for the corporations masquerading as teams in Major League Baseball. These kids throw and catch and swing and hit with such intensity, they run and jump, they dive and slide, they smile and laugh and cry and scream, and they radiate joy and a full immersion in the moment that seems to elude the professional players, indeed the modern adult in general.
They also remind me of how I fell for the game in the first place.
It started when my dad took me to Candlestick Park when I was little. Five years old, Giants and Cards, 1963. I saw Willie Mays and I was awestruck by his speed, his grace, his power and magnetism. Unforgettable. But it really took hold a few years later when I started playing the game myself. And watching the kids in the Little League World Series always takes me back to that.
Three Flies Up on the playground during recess. Saturday pick-up games with five guys on a side. Playing catch with Dad in the front yard. Wiffle ball at the neighbor’s house. Imaginary games played in my head while bouncing a beat-up dirt-brown hardball against the retaining wall until holes broke open in the cinderblock. Eight years old on my first team, looking at my coach like some mythical hero. Breaking in a new mitt with glove oil, an old ball and two shoelaces. Ten years old in my first full uni, real cleats, stirrup socks.
The Turner Gas starting nine. In the late 70’s I helped coach a Farm League team.
In the late 70s, I coached a Farm League team (there was still no such thing as Tee-ball, at least in my town) for a couple years with some buddies, a few guys I knew from school or work. Man, we were a motley crew. Bunch of hard-drinking working class heroes, some of us barely into our twenties, none of us great players or even great students of the game. But every one of us had played and loved the game as children, and every one of us loved passing that on to the kids we coached.
Our team never went to the Little League World Series, but our kids played with the same joy and the same all-out effort. To the limit of their skills (or perhaps their coaches’ skills), and with every bit of their hearts. And I’m willing to bet many of them came away with a deep and abiding love of the game.
In recent years, Major League Baseball officals have been in the workshed, frantically tinkering with the game, turning this screw, hammering that nail, wrenching on bolts. All in the name of attracting more fans, specifically younger fans. They’ve made a series of rule changes to speed up play and create more offense in the game. They’ve even hooked up with a huge gaming firm to juice up fan engagement. That’s right, MLB, for all intents and purposes, now has an official league bookie (but that’s another rant all by itself).
Individual teams have also made changes to their product, changes designed to appeal to a younger crowd. At their ballparks, they’ve added huge video screens and booming sound systems and countless promotional gimmicks.
Dad, me and Mrs D at Oracle Park, 2023.
I saw this first-hand when my wife and I took my father and a friend to a Giants game this year. I’ve been to my share of games over the years, both at Candlestick and Pac-Bell/AT&T/Oracle Park, although I hadn’t been in awhile. We live 2.5 hours from San Francisco, so it’s always something of a project to get to a game. And man, it’s gotten expensive. Even though I got the tickets fairly cheap, the travel and the food and drink kicked my wallet’s ass. (For example: just four dogs and four beers, $108.) Throw in another round and a little merch and my VISA card was crying uncle.
And the experience this time was… different.
I’ve always enjoyed the roomy rhythm of live baseball. You know—it’s a breezy shirt-sleeve salty beerfoam day. You start up a conversation with the stranger in the next seat. Maybe someone on the other side of you is patiently, diligently—and quietly—recording the details of the game on their scorecard. You laugh at the heckler several rows down. Hey Blue, he says, Try using both eyes. There’s a guy coming down the stairs yelling, Beer here, cold beer. You can actually hear the pop of a fastball hitting the catcher’s mitt and the umpire yelling, Stee-rike! The organ player plays the intro and the crowd yells, Charge! right on cue. At the crack of the bat, the whole place roars or groans in unison.
If you’re an attentive fan, you’re watching to see how the players adjust to every pitch. Is the centerfielder playing deep or shallow, straightaway or cheating left or right? Are the infielders at double-play depth, or drawn in to prevent a score from third? Does the batter adjust his stance or grip with two strikes on him? Where is the catcher holding the target for the pitcher? How big of a lead is the runner taking off first?
And I’ve always found there was time for all of that and more during a day at the ballpark. Not just time but space, as in mindspace, or call it the capacity to process stimuli. Like I love it when you see someone taking a nap at a baseball game. I don’t think of them as being bored; I think of them as being relaxed. You never see someone nodding out at an NFL game, right? I’ve been there. Way too loud and crazed for a nap.
Anyway, that whole feeling of comfort was missing from this last trip to Oracle Park. Don’t get me wrong—the park is still beautiful and inviting, and the staff was wonderfully personable and accommodating to my 90-year-old father. But the overall experience felt cluttered, uncentered, diluted. Like a novel without a main plot.
There is a nearly constant roaring jumble of sounds that distracts from rather than enhances the game. Incredibly loud, pounding music in five-second snatches before and after almost every single pitch, piped-in beat-heavy pop music at a volume that completely precludes normal conversation with your friends, much less strangers. I honestly think there was more music than game. There is so much music the poor old organ player can hardly get a chord in edgewise.
The crack of the bat seemed diminished by comparison. The game itself seemed smaller.
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I’m actually okay with most of the new rules. I was feeling puritanical about a couple of them at first, but oh well. On TV, I do appreciate the quicker pace. I mean, we all had enough of the guys who stepped out every pitch to get all OCD with their batting gloves. And I think, on the field this is still essentially the game of baseball. But in the stands, I don’t know. In the stands it feels more like a carnival or a disco surrounding a nearby baseball game.
All of this makes me wonder, does MLB even like baseball?
They’ve taken some of the pastoral nature out of the game. I’ve always heard, in a competitive business environment you need to differentiate your product, market what makes you special. But MLB and its team owners are making baseball more and more like every other sport. Loud, fast, powerful and showy on the surface, boom, crash, bang.
And maybe that’s not how you create real baseball fans. Not with louder music, or in-game betting come-ons, or even by tweaking the game for quicker play or more offense. Even though I hear attendance is up this year, I’m skeptical any of that will directly result in more hardcore baseball fans in the future.
When the Giants won it all in 2010.
Because maybe true baseball fans are made not in the stands, but on the field.
In playgrounds and sandlots, in front yards and neighborhood streets. With fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and friends and teammates and teachers and coaches and the heroes among them. With taped-up bats and mud-stained balls and hand-me-down mitts and the jackets our mothers made us wear thrown down for bases. Or in our first full uniform, our first pair of cleats. Those stirrup socks. Chatter from the dugout, a fresh-raked diamond, chalk on the baselines, a new-mown outfield.
Yep, I think that’s the easiest way to get it, that lifelong bone-deep baseball jones. Not in the stands or on TV, but playing the game. Like the kids in the Little League World Series and the kids I coached back in the 70s. And like me.
I still love watching the Giants, and I treasure all the memories I have, from The Stick to Oracle and Mays to Posey. I’ll still be on the couch with Krukow and Kuiper talking ball in the booth and the Orange and Black on the diamond. But now I’m not sure when, or if, I’ll ever go back to an MLB ballpark.
And that makes me a little sad.
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On hot Saturdays the neighborhood men took refuge in their garages.
They opened their garage doors and ran portable fans, and they turned up the Giants game on the transistor radios that sat on their workbenches. The men fixed things and made things and drank bottled beer out of old round-shouldered refrigerators. Wives and children were generally not invited.
That summer of 1966, Bobby Highfill and I were both eight years old. Our mothers were forever shooing us out from under their feet and into the great outdoors, which in our corner of suburbia consisted of a few square blocks of housing tract and one dead-end street of undeveloped lots known to local kids as the Trashlands, where Bobby and I both served honorably in the Great Dirt Clod Wars of Concord, California.
Another garage to which we were generally not invited belonged to Mrs. Chambers, a widow who seemed to always have her hair in curlers and parked her pale green Hudson Hornet by the curb and turned the garage over to her only child’s rock and roll band. Her son, Larry Chambers, was the lead guitarist, and my own uncle sang and played rhythm guitar.
Uncle Art, my mother’s baby brother, lived with us on Cranbrook Way because he’d been kicked out by my grandparents for reasons my mother insisted I was too young to understand. He was seventeen years old, and he went to high school and drove a red Corvair and had a blonde girlfriend who wore pink lipstick and pointy sweaters. And he played guitar in a real working band that played dances all over the Bay Area and once opened up for Martha and the Vandellas.
The band was called the Royal King’s Four. They played Top Forty fluff like Sherry by the Four Seasons and Sugar Shack by… whoever the hell did Sugar Shack. But, like every other cover band in the world in 1966, they were now learning Beatles songs as fast as they could.
They rehearsed in Mrs. Chambers’ garage, usually in privacy, but when it was hot they would open the garage just like the neighborhood men. A small crowd would gradually form in the driveway, mostly teen girls in tight shorts with pastel blouses tied up in front to flash their soft, smooth bellies. Yes, even at eight I noticed how the girls were drawn to the music. But Bobby Highfill and I would wriggle our way through the girls to get a clear view of the band. Well, not the band so much as their instruments—more precisely, the guitars.
The guitars were called Stratocasters, and they were magical. Mysterious chrome knobs and complicated hand movements controlled the sounds that traveled across the wires and erupted from the amplifiers as sparks of music. The guitar my uncle played was painted like a flame, and Larry’s guitar was black as his bad-boy pompadour. When the band took a break, the Stratocasters were laid down in cases lined with gold velvet, where they waited for their masters like swords locked in stone.
It’s possible to want something so much that you don’t dare ask for it or even speak of it, for fear of the hole that a no would leave in your heart.
And yet, someone noticed.
It was one of those hot Saturdays, and Bobby and I were pedaling our Sting-Rays homeward after another glorious battle in the Trashlands, when we heard his father’s whistle on the wind. I’ve never been able to whistle like Mr. Highfill. My sister learned to do it, but I never could. He had one of those two-finger whistles that you heard from blocks away and recognized as a command. We pedaled harder.
When we arrived at Bobby’s house, Mr. Highfill stood in the driveway, arms crossed. The garage door was open. He was a balding man in khaki slacks and a short sleeve button-down shirt. I’m not sure I ever knew what he did for a living—sales I think, but of what I have no idea.
We skidded to a stop and dropped our bikes on the front lawn. Without a word, Mr. Highfill turned and, with a wave of his arm, invited us into the garage. We followed numbly beyond the raised door, into the inner sanctum, where the fan whirred and the refrigerator hummed and the fluorescent light sputtered. The live smell of fresh sawdust and the sweetness of paint hung in the warm air.
Mr. Highfill took something off the workbench and bent down to lay it in my arms. It was my first guitar—handmade from the finest materials available in the closets and garages of suburbia: a Keds shoebox for the body; a plywood neck, nails for string pegs and four industrial-strength rubber bands for strings. The plywood was marked with thin stripes of brown paint to represent frets. The shoebox body of the guitar was spray-painted cherry red and decorated with golden musical notes rendered in glitter and Elmer’s glue.
It was the most beautiful, most inspiring thing I had ever touched.
My own father often said that I was old before my time. I was an oddly serious kid, frequently reading deep meanings in the tea leaves of my young life, and in my restless mind the red shoebox guitar foretold something momentous and inexorable. Of course, Bobby received a matching guitar, and I decided right then that we were manifestly destined to embark on a career as a performing duo.
But first, we needed a repertoire.
A year before, when I was seven, my favorite Beatle was Paul—you know, the cute Beatle. I liked John too, but he was merely the clever and cheeky Beatle. Some would say he was actually a smart-aleck punk overflowing with attitude. Then, at a certain point, it became clear that John was something more—he was the troubled Beatle.
It became clear with the song, Help! It was one of the first Beatles records with lyrics that were noticeably more complex and interesting than “I want to hold your hand” or “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah.” I didn’t understand my reaction consciously at all, but I was drawn to it immediately. (Like I said, an oddly serious kid.) Forever after, my favorite Beatle was John—the Beatle with inner demons.
Bobby and I spent most of that Sunday in my bedroom with a portable phonograph, a notepad, and the 45rpm record of Help! By day’s end, we had the vocals down cold… okay, we had the vocals down lukewarm.
Next, we needed outfits.
All the big bands wore matching outfits. The Beatles had shiny blue-gray suits with collarless jackets and black leather boots. The Beach Boys had striped shirts. Every band on TV matched—except for those hoodlums, the Rolling Stones. Even the Royal King’s Four had matching suits and skinny ties and boots like the Beatles.
Bobby and I had seen pictures of the Beatles wearing turtleneck sweaters, and we each had red turtleneck shirts. We’d seen the Royal King’s Four wearing their jeans “pegged” at the bottom, and we bothered our mothers into doing the same to ours. But we still needed that final touch.
We needed the boots.
I don’t know how Bobby got his Beatle boots, but I had my aunt to thank. It happened when I was dragged along on a shopping trip with Aunt Irene and my mother. My two older sisters could be left on their own for the entire day, but I could not be trusted to the same degree.
The shopping itinerary included Kinney Shoes. The ladies inspected pumps and flats and sandals and kept the salesman busy measuring their feet and helping them with try-ons. I posted myself at the display of kid-size Beatle boots, and I didn’t move. I didn’t say anything. I just stayed and stared in a trance of longing. Like all mothers, mine was adept at tuning out her children when convenient. And my Aunt Irene was not a sucker for a child’s dreamy yearning. She was a woman with both the posture and character of a straight-backed chair. But, to my surprise and relief, she became my benefactor. “Will you buy the damn shoes already,” she said to my mother. “I can’t stand to look at him anymore.”
Now, all we needed was an audience.
Our first (and only) paying gig was something of a guerrilla performance. We were not, per se, invited to perform in Mrs. Chambers’ driveway. However, it was conveniently located within our limited touring radius, being just down the street from my house on Cranbrook Way.
We showed up on a Tuesday afternoon unannounced, looking sharp in our matching turtlenecks, pegged jeans and Beatle boots. The garage was open and the Royal King’s Four were practicing. A crowd of four or five girls loitered on the concrete, popping their gum, looking out cooly from under long bangs. We waited for the band to take a break, then we stepped out front with our matching shoebox guitars.
Our setlist for this engagement consisted of Help!… followed, of course, by an encore performance of Help! In the showbiz vernacular of today, we killed. We were paid a whole quarter each by the fawning Mrs. Chambers and every member of the band. The teen girls squealed and said “Aww, so cute.” One of them tousled my hair.
Being an oddly serious kid, I quickly invested most of my fortune in literature. Batman, Superman, Richie Rich, Little Archie. Comic books were twelve cents apiece then, three for a quarter. I’ve since performed for less satisfying payment on more than a few occasions.
I didn’t yet know that the summer of ‘66 would be my last on Cranbrook Way.
My father was fed up with the Bay Area rat race, especially some of the rats in charge. He found a new job in a small town by a big lake in the distant hills of Northern California. The Royal King’s Four broke up when Uncle Art joined the army. On our last day in Concord, Bobby came over to say goodbye and we took one last spin around the Trashlands on our Sting-Rays. Then my father added my bike to the pickup load while Bobby and I stood on the bright sidewalk and shook hands like men as tears slipped onto our cheeks.
I found my second guitar under the Christmas tree in 1968—a three-quarter size Harmony acoustic from the Sears catalog. Classic sunburst finish, with a white plastic pick guard and a golden braided cord to use as a strap. I begged my parents for lessons at the local music store known as Bandbox Music. I was sure that Skip, the owners’ son, would turn me into a full-fledged guitar god in no time at all.
After three weeks of one-finger chords and plinking out Twinkle Twinkle, I was hopelessly, irredeemably bored. Now I begged my parents to let me quit. But, thanks to those excruciating lessons, I wrote my first song in 1970, an instrumental I called Psychedelic Butterfly. By then I was twelve years old, the Beatles had broken up, and I was newly under the musical spell of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.
I guess you’d have to say that Harmony acoustic was my first “real” guitar—certainly more real to the hands and eyes and ears. But perhaps not to the heart.
My newest guitar is a beautiful all-mahogany Martin acoustic that cost more than many automobiles I’ve owned. But, every time I pick it up, some part of me is back at that garage on Cranbrook Way, keeping time with my Beatle boots and strumming that glittering red shoebox guitar.
I remember the precise moment I first heard John Prine’s voice, even though someone else was singing. That’s how distinctive his songwriting has been.
This was the fall of 1975, during the first few weeks of my time as a student at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. The division of UOP I was enrolled in was called Raymond College, and it was one of those semi-experimental, accelerated, interdisciplinary liberal arts programs that had become quite popular in the 60s—in other words, a haven for nerdly hippies like myself and other brainy kids who saw themselves as square pegs in the big old round-holed world of higher learning.
It was a semi-regular function at Raymond for students to stage their own version of “Show and Tell,” sort of a smart, young and mouthy update on the old grade school tradition. And so it happened, at the first Show and Tell that I attended there, in the Raymond Common Room right off the quad, that an older student strapped on an acoustic guitar, took the stage and performed Prine’s song, Illegal Smile, a wry and winking ode to the stress-busting benefits of unnamed controlled substances.
The humor and the folksy wordplay in the title lured me right off. Then I was hooked by the rebellious mischief in lines like: “Won’t you please tell the man I didn’t kill anyone, no I was just tryin to have me some fun.” But also the hint of depth in the verses: “When I woke up this morning things were looking bad. Seemed like total silence was the only friend I had.”
Then a line only Prine could write: “A bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down. And won.”
It’s quintessential Prine, giving you the shallows of depression wrapped up in a self-deprecating joke, all in a simple unassuming image that sticks to the side of the bowl of your heart.
So, thanks to Steven Meinrath, wherever you are, for introducing me to John Prine’s voice that night at Raymond Show and Tell. It has led to many indelible memories scrawled across decades of my life.
By my second year at Raymond, I had become something of a Prine evangelist, spreading the good news of his workboot wit and wisdom to a cousin, a sister and a few left-behind high school buddies and crushes. “You gotta listen to this!” I’d say. “It’s like a whole goddamn novel in a three-minute song. It’s some kind of country existentialist parable.” And I’d put the needle down on “Six O’clock News,” a haunting tale of illegitimate birth, diary secrets and suicide, in which the past sings harmony with the present and the knick-knack shelf has a speaking part. In the final scene, Prine sings: “The whole town saw James Lewis on the six o’clock news. His brains were on the sidewalk, and blood was on his shoes.” Then, for the final time, the past echoes the refrain: “C’mon baby, spend the night with me.”
Around school, in the dorm rooms and disheveled off-campus rentals where empty bottles clattered in the morning trashload, a small enclave of cultists formed. There was me and my girlfriend Emma, plus a redneck pharmacy student nicknamed Eddie simply because his surname was Haskell, and two blandly named engineering students, John and Steve. Truthfully, the engineers barely put up with it, but the trio of Emma, Eddie and I were hardcore. I remember the three of us standing around a yardsale table in someone else’s kitchen, singing Prine songs loudly from heart-memory in drunken acapella far after our schoolnight bedtimes.
And I remember the summer after I dropped out of UOP and thumbed down the California coast with my copy of Kerouac’s On the Road in the back pocket of my overalls. I met a junkie Nam vet named Terry who wept honest tears right there on the onramp when I sang Sam Stone, Prine’s sad and sharp-eyed portrait of a vet who o.d.’s after coming home from the war. “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” Prine laments, and today, after a white-powder past of my own and a veritable police lineup of friends and family lost to the low ravages of hard drugs, that searing image still stings the heart like the cherry of a lit Marlboro.
It might not seem an obvious connection, but there’s huge crossover between fans of The Grateful Dead and John Prine. I remember the parking-lot joy of singing Prine songs with a just-met burrito-selling guitar player outside a Dead show at Cal Expo in Sacramento. And you can always spot a few Dead shirts at a Prine show, at least in Northern California. Prine speaks to the Dead’s Americana foundation that was built in to Jerry Garcia’s bluegrass roots, Bob Weir’s love of cowboy songs, and lyricist Robert Hunter’s deep poetic connections to the mythologies and imagery of Old West outlaws and Depression Era wanderers. Like much of the Dead’s work, Prine’s songs were obviously not designed and constructed with the market in mind. In fact, these songs don’t feel designed at all, but rather, revealed, in the sense of a sculptor of song chipping at the rock of his experience with simple sounds and rhymes, finding an image, a figure, a theme, and honing it to rough perfection.
To the audience’s ear and eye and heart, Prine did not perform these songs—the songs were him, and he was the songs.
Many pop, rock or even pop-country fans still don’t know Prine’s name, but ask other artists who their favorite songwriters are, and his name often comes up. Johnny Cash once put him in his “top four.” Roger Waters of Pink Floyd called his work “extraordinarily eloquent.” None other than Bob Dylan has also named Prine as a favorite. Elvis Costello said what he desperately wanted to do when he started out was write songs like John Prine. But he couldn’t. No one can.
Lazy magazine writers will write about Price’s work and call it the poetry of the common man. But it’s not. It never was. He was not a common man. He was a quite uncommon artist who happened to come from a common history. Small town Midwestern upbringing, undistinguished military service, a limited non-classical musical education, delivering the daily mail in Chicago while making up songs as a hobby. It’s that meeting of an uncommon mind with a common past, that artistic but grounded knowing of the ordinary, that gave him the standing to say what he said the way he said it. Like no one else. This is the elusive and prized quality of authenticity, which I think really comes down to honesty. Prine had all of that in spades. He had a royal flush of it.
Down through the years, I saw Prine perform live four times. I wish it were more because each of those four shows is in my top twenty concert memories of all time. But I’ve been lucky in a weird way because each of the shows was in a different decade—late 70’s, early 80s, early 90s, and late 2000s (or “oughts” if you prefer). So, each show was at a different point in Prine’s career but also at a different point in my life. This has made it feel as if Prine’s songs and my heart met in a different space each time, as if the songs kept finding other parts of me to touch.
In 1990, my sister Debi was 35 years old and dying from a rare lung disease called pulmonary fibrosis. I was living with her and my two little nephews, trying to be of some use during the mystifying and relentless progress of her disease. I had turned her on to Prine way back in the 70s, and his music had ever since been something we had a special connection over. Early in that last year of her life we made it to Berkeley for a double bill of Prine and Nanci Griffith, another shared favorite. We sat in the eleventh row with Debi’s oxygen tank on the floor between us.
My sister, Debi, 1988.
At one point it all became too bittersweet for me.
Prine was singing Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow). The chorus goes like this: “You can gaze out the window, get mad and get madder, throw your hands in the air, say what does it matter? But it don’t do no good to get angry, so help me I know. For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter. You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there, wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow.”
I was deep-down angry and weak and bitter at the approaching death of my sister, but Debi was one of those rare people who lived instinctively by the advice in those lyrics. She was not wrapped up in a chain of sorrow. I looked over at her with a tear slipping down my face and she just smiled and nodded her head at the song and at my tear. It was the last concert she ever attended.
I’ve never believed in heaven, and I’m damn sure these days that your flag decal won’t get you in, but maybe a life of picking up a guitar, opening up your country mouth, your full heart and slightly disarrayed mind, and then reaching a million other people in the gut, where their own deep histories live—maybe that could get you in if there is such a place. I ain’t in charge, but it sure would count by me.
During my weeklong recovery from oral surgery — an altered state I have affectionately referred to as “Fuzzytown” — Mrs D and I watched the entire Godfather trilogy on three successive evenings.
Of course I have seen all the movies more than once in the past, but never in such close temporal proximity. Admittedly, I was in the company of my new friend Mr Norco for the duration of these screenings, but nevertheless I have some thoughts…
One thing is clearly undeniable: the original Godfather movie (released in 1972) still holds up as one of the great films of our time. Marlin Brando’s portrayal of Vito Corleone is absolutely brilliant and magnetic, a model of complete inhabitation and revelation of character equal if not surpassing his astounding and seminal work as Stanley Kowalksi.
Also, the story arc of Michael Corleone — the inexorable unveiling of the gathering momentum of his coming of age as he is incrementally transformed from his family’s beacon of redemption to its shadowy emperor of murder — manages to approach the finest Shakespeare tragedies in both its insight into human frailty and its mythical qualities.
Godfather II is really about the extraordinary talent of the evolving Michael Corleone (and by extension all of humanity) for self delusion, compartmentalization and rationalization. And through the extensive backstory sequences of Robert De Niro as young Vito, this “second act” underlines one of the major themes of the trilogy — that of family history as inescapable and incontrovertible destiny. At the end of the movie, when Michael goes so far as to kill his own brother to preserve his power, we see Michael at something akin to an addict’s “rock bottom,” a place where absolutely any decision is possible… except the decision to face his own wrongs.
Godfather II is made somewhat choppy by the numerous time shifts and flashbacks, and I frankly think it’s been overrated simply on the strength of the young De Niro’s magnetic screen presence, and the audience’s understandable satisfaction in connecting De Niro on screen to Brando, whom we all recognize as his natural predecessor, both in terms of talent and intensity.
Godfather III has been much criticized for various reasons. Yes, it’s true that Sophia Coppola’s performance is wooden and amateur. Even this sofa jockey, watching under the influence, was wincing as some of her lines clunked out of the surroundsound like malformed Playdoh bricks. It’s also true that the great Robert Duvall’s absence is a significant disappointment. His performance as Tom Hagin, the Irish orphan adopted off the streets into the Corleone family, (never quite receiving the full acceptance he was quietly desperate for), was wonderfully understated and poignant throughout the first two films. And it’s true that the storyline of this film is perhaps not sufficiently compelling on its own. But frankly, the second movie does not stand on its own either.
However, seeing all three movies in quick succession and taking them as a whole, I think Godfather III is underrated as a third act to the overall story. What we see is an older, hollowed out Michael Corleone, physically and psychically exhausted from the Sisyphean task of preserving his power, his identity, and his internal sense of correctness. Publicly he is making one final show of claiming legitimacy, while privately he is confronting the likelihood that redemption is out of reach for a man of his crimes.
His one desperate plea (or play or ploy) is for simple forgiveness… and perhaps some semblance of peace… perhaps a truce or at least a stalemate with his past. Yet, Godfather III provides one of the most indelible lines of the entire trilogy when Michael stands in a kitchen after learning that all of his machinations are crumbling around him in betrayal and violence… then, with fists clenched and shoulders collapsing in defeat toward the very center of his being, he growls to the heavens…
“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.”
That one line sums up the futility of Michael’s struggle throughout the entire trilogy — the struggle against the momentum of his darkest possible destiny, the struggle against his coldest and most remote self. And the universal resonance of that moment is that it sums up our own struggles to overcome the weaknesses we all recognize in our darkest mirrors. In the end, there is nothing that Michael Corleone can do, no one he can pay, and no one he can murder to prevent his sins from becoming his legacy.
Perhaps God and his son are capable of forgiveness, but history does not offer such refuge. At the end of his story, we and Michael are left with only one inescapable reality: that each of us is capable of destroying our own soul at the smiling behest of our quietest desire.
Taken as a whole, the Godfather trilogy is one of the great literary experiences available in American film. That is why it has lived on as an important touchstone of our culture’s mindset for many years now. Michael’s journey taps into something that is timeless and specifically human; his story is not simply a morality play about power’s corruption, but a deeper exploration of the human desire to rise above our meanest impulses, the drive to be truly in charge of the history we make, and the dream to live out the love and justice we imagine we are capable of.
Before that was my blustery Hemingway period, and afterward my disastrous Hunter S. Thompson period. But 78 was Kerouac, and in the spring I drifted out of college and began to dream of going on the road.
If Not Words was previously published by the literary journal, Scarlet Leaf Review. (scarletleafreview.com) Estimated reading time: 18 minutes.
Of course, I needed a Neal Cassady—a running buddy like the mad ones that Kerouac famously shambled after, the ones who are “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
That was what I needed. What I had was Pat Kelly.
I first met Pat in Lupoyoma City, a small-minded town next to a big muddy lake three hours north of San Francisco. He was the new kid in eighth grade, from Texas by way of San Jose, with a junkie father locked up in San Quentin and his fortyfiveish mother shuttling drinks at the Weeping Willow Resort & Trailer Court. I won’t go into it here but, at the time, I was in a murky state of social exile myself, due to a local scandal involving my family. What drew me to Pat was our shared status as temporary outsiders, and the fact that he was completely unimpressed by Lupoyoma gossip. That just wasn’t how he measured the world.
I met him because our American History teacher sentenced him to three swats for “cracking wise.” The teacher had a thick wooden paddle drilled with holes to reduce wind resistance. Pat rose from his backrow desk and said, “Now, how much history do you think I can learn from three swats?” He was taller and older than the rest of us. Straight blondish hair, parted down the middle and tucked behind jughandle ears. Tanktop shirt and wide bellbottoms over black motorcycle boots, and his wallet on a silvery chain secured to a belt loop. He took long gangly strides to the front of the classroom, with his chin up and his shoulders back.
The teacher glowered. “Make it five then.”
Pat faced the class and grabbed his ankles. The teacher swung for the fences. Pat overacted a mockish “Ow!” with every blow, and the teacher tacked on another two swats—to zero effect on Pat’s demeanor. I had a front row desk, and after the final swing Pat straightened up and flashed his wide floppy grin at me, then earnestly advised the teacher to watch the Jack LaLanne show. I laughed. The whole class laughed. The teacher pointed at the door and ordered both of us to the principal’s office. On the way out Pat paused at the threshold, looked back across the room and said, “Seven a.m., Channel 3,” with a big wink, and turned out the door. He had something I hadn’t seen before—an attitude or quality I admired, even coveted, but couldn’t name at first.
In those days I collected baseball cards and words—words I read or heard and wanted to remember or accrue to my character.
I had the young idea that words had a way of adding up to a man, and I wanted to choose the right ones. Words that said, listen, and rang the air like silverstruck crystal. I wrote down their definitions in a reporter’s notebook that was spiral bound and narrow, with pages that flipped rather than turned. My father was the editor of the town newspaper and I’d stolen the notebook from his dour, disciplined office. I kept it under my bed in a Keds shoebox with the baseball cards.
Exultation was the word I collected for Pat. Triumphant joy. He measured his world in degrees of exultation though he’d likely never seen the word. It was a way of being in the world that I wanted to understand and claim for myself. Late on a school night, with the rest of the house quiet and dark, I sat crosslegged on my bed with the paperback dictionary splayed open in a circle of lamplight and copied the definition into the reporter’s notebook.
We ran together all that school year, in creeks and alleys and neglected vacant lots, in parks and ballfields and quarter arcades. Cut classes to fish by the sunny lake, trespassed in empty dilapidated houses and burglarized the Little League snackshack. Partners in boyish crime.
Once, we kind of stole a car. Just a daytime joyride around the pockmarked backstreets of Lupoyoma in a big Chevy station wagon that belonged to some girl’s mom. That girl would do anything for Pat. And if she didn’t, another girl would. But her mom did not feel the same, and neither did the city police. Their entire fleet of vehicles—all three—converged on the station wagon at a four-way intersection. Black and white Fords and spinning red lights to our left, right, and rear. The street in front of us was clear—Pat could’ve gunned it and started a chase, but he calmly pulled over, put the car in park and turned off the engine.
“Oh shit, we’re going to jail, my dad’s gonna kill me,” I said.
Pat grinned and shrugged, “Win some, lose some, partner.”
Between us on the green vinyl bench seat, the girl was sobbing. Pat put his arm around her, gently tilted her head and kissed the top of it.“Don’t worry darlin,” he said, in that Texifornia drawl. Then he opened the car door and stepped out like a fifteen-year-old man.
The girl and I were immediately cast by the presiding adults as good kids under a bad influence, and we were ordered out of the way as officers handcuffed Pat and marched him toward one of the police cars—chin up and shoulders back.
I heard around town that he was sent to the notorious Bottlerock Ranch, the closest thing to reform school in Lupoyoma County.
I didn’t see him until a year later, the day we became cousins. Well, my cousin married his cousin, and Pat figured that made me and him cousins too. I still don’t know if that’s correct, but such technicalities were not Pat’s concern. From that day on, whenever I ran into him, whenever he spotted me in a crowd—at family weddings or funerals, July picnics, or drunken teen parties—he’d always wave his arms and holler out, “Cousin! How the hell are ya!” He never lost that thing I was trying to pin words on, even with the cops always on his case and rarely more than ten bucks and a wink to his name.
I graduated from Lupoyoma High in 75, but Pat already had his G.E.D. and loved to remind me that he earned it at continuation high solely by reading through their collection of Louis Lamour. When I told him I was going away to college, he pshawed and said, “Cousin, you’re doin it the hard way.”
Emmalita Romero was somehow immune to Pat Kelly’s charms. In 1978, she and I were scholarship kids, chasing upward mobility at the small, ivy-aspiring University of the Pacific in Stockton. We had met in Economics 101, which Emmalita eventually aced and I did not complete. We lived off-campus in a rickety one bedroom apartment on a dead-end street—and in sin, as her father regularly assured us.
One February twilight Pat showed up like a long-lost one-man surprise party.
Screeched and skidded to the curb in a dusty copper Lincoln borrowed from his mom’s latest boyfriend. Early sixties Continental, low to the ground and half a block long, with suicide doors. He honked “shave and a haircut—two bits,” leapt out of the car, raced around to the passenger side and made a great show of mock chivalry holding the door for a young bleachblonde who emerged waving a fifth of gold tequila above her head. Emmalita and I stood on the brick front steps, both shaking our heads, only one of us smiling. Pat turned to me, opened his arms wide and cried out, “Cousin! How the hell are ya!”
Emmalita muttered something in Spanish and rolled her eyes in my direction.
I gave her a palms-up shrug.
We all got tremendously drunk shooting tequila at the second-hand kitchen table with the blue paint peeling off and the raw wood starting to show.
Pat and I took turns telling tales of our juvenile exploits as if they were Homeric epics. Needling each other and arguing over details until we ended up out front on the community lawn in a clumsy, laughable wrestling match.
“Boys.” Emmalita said, categorically.
The blonde turned out to be Pi-Delta-something. Pat had sugartalked her right off the steps of the sorority house, and at some point he slipped her out the back door and was balling her from behind, right on our little porch, bent over the wooden railing with a panoramic view of the parking lot—the February cold be damned.
It was Emmalita who opened the door and discovered them. She yanked it shut in a hurry. “What the hell!” she said. “He’s fucking her on the back porch!”
I tried to smile. “We did it there once, remember?” I slid my arms around her waist.
“It’s our porch!” she said, slamming me in the chest with both hands.
Emmalita stomped off to bed, the Pi-Delta blonde passed out on the couch, and Pat and I stayed up and finished off the tequila. The blurry dawn caught us still at the kitchen table, commiserating and confessing. Or was that just me? I vaguely remember reading outloud from On the Road and resolutely proclaiming, “I’m sick of teachers you have to call Doctor. They act like they can write a prescription for your whole fucking future. Here, kid, take two Aristotles and call me in the morning.”
“Ya worry too much,” Pat said. “Always did. Come look me up in Santa Barb this summer. Gonna get me a landscaping job, probably get you one too. Gonna build rock walls for rich ladies whose husbands ain’t home.” He shot me a big wink and laughed.
“Yeah, right,” I said. But the possibility took up residence in my mind and hibernated there the rest of the winter.
When spring came around I received a postcard advertising a bar and restaurant called The Palms, in the town of Carpinteria, just down the coast from Santa Barbara. On the front there was a blue-sky picture of a whitewashed building rimmed with green cornices and fronted by a row of towering palm trees. “The Palms” was painted in voluptuous green script arcing high across the white bricks. On the back, the address of the place, the canceled stamp, and in Pat’s half-schooled printing, “The weather is here, wish you were beautiful! Ha!”
I didn’t show the postcard to Emmalita. I tucked it between the pages of my brokenspine paperback of On The Road and reshelved the book in our “library” made of salvaged boards and stolen milk crates.
According to legend, Neal Cassady sent an eighteen-page, sixteen-thousand-word letter to Kerouac which transformed his writing forever. What I got was a nine-word postcard with no return address.
Still, I considered it an invitation of sorts—and a map.
It was late April and late Thursday night, and I had everything except my toothbrush in the new backpack. Two changes of clothes, three harmonicas, two Kerouacs, one Kesey, my old paperback dictionary, two hundred bucks rolled up in a sock, the postcard from Pat, and my reporter’s notebook with room for a few more words. I promised myself they would be words of change and becoming, not the cautious preparation of academia. I leaned the backpack against the wall next to the front door—bright orange nylon, shiny aluminum frame, army surplus mummy bag lashed on, and I told Emmalita, “I want to be on that onramp with my thumb out no later than seven in the morning to catch those business guys headed for San Francisco.”
She’d been in the bathroom almost an hour, showering and getting ready for bed. She came into the living room wearing the white full slip that always knocked me out. Nothing underneath. Long black hair dripping wet. “Baby, it’s a twenty minute walk to the freeway,” she said, “even more with that heavy thing on your back. You can sleep in and I’ll drive you in the vee-dub before I go to class.” She slinked across the carpet and her smile was dressed in red lipstick. She pushed me back on the sofa, pulled off my t-shirt and shorts and straddled me in the white slip. She shushed me when I opened my mouth to speak—and that was probably a good thing because I might have said I love you.
Emmalita didn’t indulge in that kind of talk. Traditional monogamous relationships were obsolete. She was a liberated Chicana who read Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir and had marched with César Chávez. She dismissed Kerouac as one of the last great chauvinist pigs, but she listened when I read aloud on long car rides and in our bed on hot Stockton nights unfit for sleep or love. “You get so excited over these words,” she would say, like a new mother saying, “Aw, so cute.” But I would ignore that and talk about the blue echoes of Coltrane’s saxophone in the syncopated rhythms of Kerouac’s prose, and the way it spoke to me that he rejected button-down society to search for his own meaning across the map of America.
When I’d called my father to say that I was dropping out of school to go on the road, he’d offered me a job at the newspaper.
But when I told Emmalita, she understood. (Of course, I kept Pat Kelly’s name out of it.) We were sitting on the red brick stairs by the front door in the early evening, the bricks still warm from the afternoon heat. We brought out bottles of beer and watched the sun slide into the low skyline across the valley. I showed her the new summer catalog from the university, with the fake snapshots of students at internships, posing with stethoscopes, clipboards and briefcases like children playing dressup. I pointed and jabbed at the pictures and said, “That’s not me. That’s not me. That’s not me either. I’m not in there.”
Emmalita nodded and took a long sip of beer. She didn’t try to talk me out of it or lecture me like a parent. “Go,” she said, still looking out across the rooftops. “I could never forgive myself if you don’t. And after graduation I’ll be leaving to law school who knows where.” She picked at the bottle’s label with a fingernail. “We’re young. We each have our own dreams.”
We didn’t want to live our parents’ lives, tangled forever in regret and resentment. We agreed they were childish, and it was a satisfying irony that we were so adult in our acceptance of individual freedom. She even promised to store my records and books—including my stack of rare blues albums and the first edition Hemingway I’d found at a yard sale.
The day I left, I woke up in the near-dark, alone in bed, with the the feeling that I was already late. I found Emmalita at the kitchen stove frying chorizo and eggs, still in the white slip. She looked at me sweetly over her shoulder. “Your favorite,” she said.
“We don’t have time for breakfast,” I said, but she just turned back to the pan and stirred with the flat wooden spoon. The smell of chorizo rose in steam.
“You know he never found it,” she said. “He drank himself to death. All that going and going and he never found the meaning of anything.”
I sat down at the kitchen table and studied her. So beautiful and smart and surehearted, so luminous of purpose. That was the word I’d written in the notebook, watching her the first day of Econ 101, already pestering the professor with feminist critiques. Luminous. Shedding light. Now I memorized the hair rolling down her back in black waves, her shoulders warmed to gold by the light of the one bare bulb in the ceiling, her shape moving under the slip like a liquid silhouette, the reflection of the lightbulb trembling in her eyes.
I still had to go.
It was eight-forty by the time we got to the freeway, and a rare spring fog had crawled in off the delta. The commuters were long gone and two bums had already taken positions up the onramp. Emmalita pulled over and left the engine running. She gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead while I maneuvered my pack out of the back seat. I walked around to her window. She rolled it down and turned her face to me. Her eyes were wet. I looked down at the ground and said, “Thanks for the ride.”
She said, “Will you even miss me?”
“Of course,” I said, and bent down to kiss her.
She reached out the window and slapped me so hard I saw floating spots. “Estúpido cabrón!” she said. “You will miss me. And when you come back, maybe I won’t be here. And if you don’t come back I will scratch all your records and burn your Old Man and The Sea. Pendejo!”
Her rear tires spit gravel as she sped away.
I trudged up the onramp past the two bums so as not to steal first position, which I knew would violate hitchhiker etiquette. At the time I knew that and little else about citizenship of the road. My older stepsister had started me young with daytrips thumbing around Lupoyoma County, but I had never ventured an overnight trip before.
Now I would trace one small piece of Kerouac’s map—if I could ever make it out of Stockton.
The fog was tentacled, the cold insidious. The bum in second position hunkered down on a bedroll in a tattered fatigue jacket. I stood and blew into my cupped hands. The first-position bum watched with gristled detachment. I use the word “bum” because “homeless” wasn’t established as the preferred euphemism in 1978. Drifter sounds too nefarious, hobo too archaic, wanderer too soft-focus. And these appeared to be respectable bums—not recreational or philosophically ambitious, not the dharma bums or wino savants of Kerouac, but respectable nonetheless. When I walked past, each of them offered a chin nod to acknowledge my good manners.
A car or sometimes two at a time came up the onramp every few minutes. It was not a steady stream. I stood shivering with my head bowed, shifting pebbles with the toe of my boot. Then a car would appear and the two bums and I would present ourselves, one-two-three, in rapid sequence. The bum in the first position wore a blue knit cap and was stooped and gray-stubbled. He held up his right hand as if measuring an inch between his thumb and forefinger to show that he only needed to go a mile or two. The bum on the bedroll was younger. He stood up and let his arm hang down with his hand below his hip, his thumb angled out but cooly indifferent. Then me, standing lock-kneed with my arm perpendicular to the road and my eager thumb almost quivering. I made eye contact with every driver, recalling my high school counselor’s interview advice.
A truck stopped and picked up the gray-stubbled bum. He nodded through the window as he rode past. The other bum picked up his bedroll and walked down to the old bum’s spot. He sat down, then looked up and waved me toward him. When I got there he said, “Where ya headed?”
“Santa Barb,” I said, trying to sound suitably traveled, “actually Carpinteria.”
“Headed down the coast myself,” he said, and took some time to look me over. I became hotly aware of my new orange pack, my brightly washed overalls and clean farm bureau workboots, my peachfuzz face and the girlish dark hair flowing down to my shoulders. Bangles. Yes, I wore bangles.
The bum said, “Wanna go together?”
I must have looked confused.
“Sometimes it’s better with two guys.”
“Oh.”
“People think it’s easier to be crazy alone.”
“Yeah.”
He put out his hand. “Name’s Terry.”
He wore a red bandana headband over unruly curls of rusty brown hair, and his unfinished beard reminded me of my grandmother’s windowsill cactus. He had dark squinting eyes and a handshake that read like a swim at your own risk sign. He said he’d been on the road for years. He’d never been outside North Carolina before the army, but he’d come back from Vietnam with a spiteful heroin habit to kick and a desire to see the country. “See what I was killing for,” he said.
Here was a piece of the America I thought I was looking for, the sad and true but unbroken America you couldn’t find in a dorm room or a library stall.
Or in a rickety apartment playing house with a future lawyer. Or the dusty office of a podunk newspaper. I now felt that I was officially on the road although I hadn’t managed a single ride. I could see myself on a barstool at The Palms, regaling Pat Kelly with exaggerated tales of my tremendous adventures with Terry the All-American bum.
The sun burned through the fog, then started in on us. Terry had a pair of aviator sunglasses that might’ve been stolen off Douglas MacArthur himself. Dark green lenses and gold wire frames with the looping ear stem. We finally got a ride from a freckled high school kid in a 65 Ford Econoline van. Terry sat shotgun with one elbow out the window, with his windblown hair and red bandana, and the reflections of the highway speeding across those sunglasses. I climbed in the back and sat on a lumpy mattress covered with a ratty brown bedspread. We rumbled west across the great San Joaquin Valley, straight at the sun.
I dipped into the money sock, handed the kid a ten, and Terry convinced him to let us sleep in the van, parked on the street outside his parents’ house in a monochromatic subdivision. But the parents got wise and we were rousted out around dawn, the panicky dad pounding on the side doors until we emerged, then threatening us down the street with a golf club. Nine-iron I think.
We crossed the southern arm of the grayspackled San Francisco Bay that afternoon on a long low bridge like a highway upon the water. Terry had a Vietnam buddy who owned a bar in San Carlos. The bar was a surly looking place surrounded by chopped and raked Harley Davidsons. Terry marched through the swinging door like no big deal and I fell in warily behind him. Every head in the bar swiveled to stare us down.
Terry’s buddy was a stone outcrop of a man called Sergeant Oliver. Dark straight hair down to his belt, wild thick beard and a big bearish laugh. “You better stick to yourselves,” he said to Terry. “My regulars don’t take to outsiders, and I got no time to save your ass. Again.” He laughed and confined us to the storeroom with a deck of cards and a bottle of house bourbon.
But, by his own admission, Terry was not a reliable follower of orders. And I was following him. We slipped out when Sergeant Oliver was busy, and Terry made fast friends of the whole crowd by sharing the bourbon and losing at pool. I played harmonica along with Free Bird on the jukebox, and after we helped close up the place Sergeant Oliver locked us in, and we slept like ragged children, curled up in the red leather tuck-n-roll booths.
The next day we got sidetracked and stranded in the farming town of Watsonville, where it rained like hell was water.
But Terry somehow knew where to hop the fence at the city yard, and we clambered over and sought shelter in huge sections of concrete culvert. There were dozens of these cylinders big as railroad boxcars, laid out in tidy rows waiting for some major construction project. I followed Terry and we ducked into one. Inside it was all cozy echoes, outside nothing but the hiss and patter of rain… until we heard the low snarl of the watchdog. Then it was a cartoon scramble back over the fence and a half-mile jog to an all-night laundromat, where we spent the shivering night soaked through and nodding off in yellow plastic chairs shaped like your butt.
I relished every minute of these complications and travails, and I harbored the furtive belief that some holy chemistry of fate was involved in appointing Terry the All American bum as the patron saint of my road.
In Big Sur, now four days gone from Stockton, we chanced on a woodsy encampment beside the highway, where nearly thirty fellow travelers were set up. This confluence of meandering souls seemed to call for a suitable commemoration. A tiny shack of a store stood across the highway, someone’s weatherbeat hat was passed around camp like a collection plate, and the fire, whiskey and talk burned late into the night. I pulled out a harp and jammed blues with a sunburnt old picker from Show Low, Arizona. Terry met a frizzy haired hippie woman headed up to Mendocino to make pottery, and I believe he spent some time in her sleeping bag. I scribbled the definition of confluence in my notebook. Where two or more streams or paths become one.
I don’t remember lying down to sleep. I do remember waking up, alone, the contents of my pack dumped on the ground, the money sock stretched out, empty. There’s enough regret and disillusion already built into a hangover without robbery in the bargain. I never saw Terry again, but I found the aviator sunglasses in a pocket of my backpack—a weak apology I concluded, and I tucked them away in the pouch of my overalls.
Blood-eyed and down to seventeen dollars, I nursed my pride in the woods of Big Sur all day, then slept troubled under a three-quarter moon.
There was a phone booth next to the little store, and in the morning I sat on the nearby lawn and eavesdropped on the desperate phone calls of a few weary travelers.
I got to thinking maybe Emmalita would wire me some money back in Monterey. It would mean surrender, but I could catch a Greyhound and drowse in her arms that very evening. I rehearsed the entire call in my head, playing both parts—her finger-wagging satisfaction and my redface shame.
I thought of the postcard from Pat Kelly with the sunlight flashing off the bricks of The Palms. I’d told Terry I had family in Carpinteria who were expecting me. But Pat was not expecting me. I hadn’t seen him but once in the past year. I had nothing to go on but that sunny photo and my own restlessness.
I thought of my father. “A pipe dream,” he had said. He’d offered me advice as well as a job. “Son, you won’t learn how to write on the side of the goddamn road.”
“I might learn what to write,” I said.
But my father was an editor, not a writer. Words were either essential or expendable to him, and always in relation to a specific and utilitarian purpose—science, commerce, the news. In his mind, fiction was a toy made of words. He’d scoffed and shook his head. “Might as well stick that thumb up your ass.”
But now I got up off the ground and pulled out the MacArthur sunglasses and put them on like a coat of armor. I strapped on the dusty orange backpack, walked over to the southbound lane and stuck my thumb out for the next car. My hand low against my hip.
Two days further down the coast, I had a ride that would have taken me all the way to Carpinteria, but I got out five miles short in the tiny town of Summerland—because Kerouac had once spent the night on the beach there.
I hunted up a liquor store and spent my last folding money on a half-pint of Southern Comfort and a family-size can of pork and beans.
I walked to the beach in the Summerland twilight. I made a driftwood fire, ate the beans out of the can with my pocket knife, and sipped the sweet liquor like sacrament. There is a certain bliss contained in the moment when one owns a full belly and a full bottle at the same time, even if one also owns an empty wallet. I was bleary and beat and alone without a dollar to dream on, and yet I had the tremendous sense that all was right. In that hour, on that beach, on the map of my heart, I crossed paths with Kerouac.
I thought of that word, tremendous, because it appears so often in On the Road, and in so many contexts that you begin to think he was spraying it around as decoration, unconscious of its specific meaning. I got out the paperback dictionary and read the definition by the firelight: “very great in amount, scale, or intensity.” The root was the Latin word for tremble, and it made me think that Kerouac knew exactly what he was doing, consciously or not. He wanted to suffuse his prose with that deep underlying sensitivity. To bequeath his own shudder at the amount, scale and intensity of America, the world and life. He wanted us to ingest that feeling, swallow it, absorb it and sweat it out the way he had, if only for one night on one beach.
I copied the definition of tremendous onto the final page of the notebook. I sucked Southern Comfort and spoke stumbling poetry to the darkening sky—for the writing gods and for Kerouac, for the full moon, for hope, for words. I stripped to my paisley boxers and danced a silly jig around the fire, and I raised my bottle in a toast to Pat Kelly. Months before, in that drunken dawn at the kitchen table, I was reading from On the Road and he stopped me when I said, “they danced down the streets like dingledodies.”
He laughed and shook his head and pounded the table. He said, “Cousin, what in the blue fuck is a dingledodie?”
I tried to explain that Kerouac invented the word. I said, “you have to get the meaning from the story and the rhythm and the way the word sounds in your heart.”
There was a pause during which Pat carefully refilled my shot glass with tequila. Then he stood up and stretched his upper body across the table so he was leaning on his elbows and his face was close and out of focus.
He said, “What I want to know is, do you say more with all these words, or just talk more?”
I toasted him now from the sands of Summerland—and I toasted my father and Emmalita and Kerouac and Terry the All American bum. Because words do make men. And women and toys and news and futures and lovers and wars, every question, every answer, the whole damn thing including the part we name our soul—the part that’s invisible to our physical senses yet we feel it tremble at life. In the end what is the trembling made of, if not words?
I found my overalls rumpled on the sand. I slipped the postcard out of my pocket and looked at it with the firelight bouncing off the glossy photo. I turned it over and laughed at the joke one more time, then I tossed it into the flames and watched it catch fire. I pulled Terry’s sunglasses out and threw them in as well. I ran to the backpack and grabbed the reporter’s notebook. Page after page, word after word, I tore out and crumpled, and I offered them all to the giddy flames.
I slept straight through to the late morning sun like a man sated by exhaustion. I got up and walked into the ocean. All the sweat and dirt and doubt of the road rafted away on the foam. I finally caught a ride into Carpinteria that afternoon, Friday, a full week after I tromped up that first onramp in the fog of Stockton.
I found The Palms, and I found Pat there in a cramped little bar off the restaurant. Maybe six stools at the counter and a few tables in the corner, every spot filled with drinking, shouting, haranguing men. It was a workingman’s bar.
They were carpenters, painters, bricklayers and plumbers, and there was not a suit among them or a doubtful word.
Down the bar there was some kind of contest taking place and a huddle of men chanted and slammed their fists on the bar in unison. Of course Pat was in the middle of the commotion. I fished the last coins out of my pocket, ordered a draft and watched him in the barback mirror.
He’d changed somehow. He was shirtless, that wasn’t new. And he sat at the bar like a rooster, still chin up and shoulders back. But the hat was new—a dented straw cowboy hat the color of September hills, the brim rolled up a little on the sides, dirt blonde pony tail hanging out in the back. And the mustache was new—a trimmed biker-style fu manchu that added a thousand miles to his face. But he hadn’t changed that much. The matronly woman who brought my beer told me he was eating raw cayenne peppers on a bet, with two more to go before winning the pile of money laid out in front of him. “Boys.” she said, and shook her head.
Pat drained his mug in one swig and wiped his mouth with the back of a sun-dark arm. He looked down at the waxy red peppers in the clear glass snack bowl. He drew a deep breath and raised his right hand to the edge of the bowl. Then he spotted me in the mirror.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he hollered out, and he turned on his stool with a holy goof grin and stood up and cried out to the whole bar, “It’s my little cousin!” He made it sound like an extra payday, and some of the men belly-laughed and cheered and lifted their drinks. He held up a finger that said just a second, turned back to the bar, and picked up both of the remaining peppers. He held them up for all to see and the crowd roared approval. Then he dropped the red peppers daintily into his upturned mouth.
His shoulders tensed. He worked his jaw. His forehead beaded sweat. His eyes bulged and watered and his open hand pounded the bar. He chewed and swallowed and gagged so his cheeks filled up like Dizzy Gillespie trumpeting high C. He gulped down someone else’s beer and then bowed his head in concentration—or possibly a sinner’s prayer. The crowd hushed. He raised his head, swept up all the money with one hand, punched at heaven and hollered, “Bartender! Drinks all around!” A tremendous cheer erupted like the end of a long bloody war.
I shouted and roared and drank deeply. I exulted.
Note: Roy turned me on to the great beatnit writers. we did a few hitchiking trips as well.
I was at a friend’s house that winter night when John Lennon was killed.
We were watching Monday Night Football and drinking beer. Howard Cosell announced the news as if the quarterback had been sacked on third down — “John Lennon, outside his home, shot twice in the back… dead on arrival.” It was December 8, 1980, my twenty-third birthday.
Ten years before, in December of 1970, Lennon’s debut solo album was released. It was called John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and it changed my life. That claim now sounds strange, even to me — grandiose, hyperbolic, almost obsessive, especially considering the who and why of his death. Still, it feels true.
Many of us feel a deep emotional connection to the music we love, and sometimes to the artists who made it. I’ve found many kindred spirits in many different styles of music. I’ve found solace, inspiration and comfort for the heart, reveled in excellence, danced and shouted in catharsis, wondered at cleverness. I wouldn’t say any of it changed my life in a profound way.
But John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album did change my life, at least my view of life, and largely because of one song in particular.
I didn’t have much of a sound system then—a pale green plastic record player that was made by Westinghouse and folded up like a suitcase. I had scotch-taped a penny to the turntable arm to plow through any scratches that might skip the needle. It was another year or so before I saved up enough for the cheapest Sharp component stereo system in the Spiegel catalog.
I remember putting the needle down at the beginning of this brand new John Lennon record, then rushing to lie flat on my back on the big oval corded rug, my head on a pillow, the record player on an old TV tray behind me.
I closed my eyes and heard the sound of bells.
That’s how the first track on the album begins, a succession of church bells that warble and slur on top of a scratchy background hum as if the bells were recorded from a faint radio broadcast and then slowed down. It makes for a portentous, funereal effect, an appropriate lead-in to the song, which is simply called Mother, and deals with Lennon’s feelings of abandonment by both of his biological parents.
Mother you had me, but I never had you
I wanted you, you didn’t want me
So I… I just gotta tell you… goodbye
Like the opening pages teach us how to read the voice of a great, original novel, this first song sets a pattern that is echoed throughout the album, a pattern of deceptively simple lyrics that are rarely ambiguous, unusually direct, and at times uncomfortably, even brutally honest and revealing. And this is matched with sparse but dramatic musical arrangements, with surprisingly light production touches from the notoriously controlling Phil Spector.
Throughout the album, Lennon’s voice and guitar or piano is usually accompanied only by Ringo Starr on drums and Klaus Voormann on electric bass. There are no background singers, only the occasional artful out-of-phase doubling of Lennon’s own voice, singing in unison rather than harmony. The tone of his voice ranges from clear and airy to harsh and scratched raw, but he always controls it perfectly to convey the emotional content of the song. It never sounds affected, and he never indulges in showy vibrato or any other unwarranted vocal gymnastics. There’s a purity there that seems quite rare today.
Mother ends with multiple repetitions of the couplet, “Mama don’t go, Daddy come home,” which is first voiced as a mournful plea, but Lennon dials up the intensity with each repetition, eventually building to a desperate gut-wrenching scream that fades out and leaves an aftertaste of sorrow, but also a sense of a past reckoned with, a troublesome demon purged.
This was not Beatle John as we had previously known him, certainly not the cheeky, wisecracking John from Hard Day’s Night.
Even before the Fab Four cleared the mop-top phase of their career, Lennon was easy to identify as the troubled Beatle, with edgy introspective songs like I’m a Loser, and Help!, but the songs on Plastic Ono Band took this personal, confessional style to a whole new level that hinted at the realm of psychoanalysis.
At the time of these recording sessions, Lennon had recently undergone primal scream therapy with its originator, Arthur Janov, who taught that many psychological issues were tied to childhood trauma and could be resolved through re-experiencing and fully expressing the trauma in guided therapy sessions.
Hence, the alternative title for the album could have been There Will be Screaming. And there was. Not only in the opening track, Mother, but also memorably in the song, Well Well Well. That song’s verses suggest a certain cynicism about the prospect of social change, then lead to a chorus that simply repeats the words, “well, well, well, oh well,” but goes even further than the closing refrain of Mother, to a place where Lennon’s scream finally becomes something close to retching. It borders on disturbing, which I think was entirely intentional.
With Lennon’s best scratchy, accusatory voice and his stuttering fuzzy guitar sounding slightly out of tune, and in places out of time, plus Ringo’s dogged minimalist drumming and Voormann’s insistent bass, Well Well Well is nearly ragged and rollicking enough to throw into a proto-punk retrospective, if anything labeled proto-punk had been played by a thoughtful, sensitive, tortured musical genius, that is.
But there is more to this album than the screaming and casting out of demons. Again, as in a good novel, there is balance and contrast and an emotional rhythm. There is the bitterness of disillusion on I Found Out, and the tender self-care of Hold On; the demolition of traditional life models in Working Class Hero, and the childlike innocence of Love; the sneering irony of nostalgia in Remember, and the naked vulnerability of Look at Me.
Still, you might be thinking, so what, it’s a good album, maybe a great album, but how is that life-changing?
We have to go back to that thirteen-year-old boy on the corded rug. He knew nothing of Arthur Janov or primal scream therapy. He didn’t have the capacity (or the inclination) to break down the instrumentation or deconstruct the lyrics. He didn’t know much about Lennon’s personal battles. He was just a boy on the cusp of adolescence, a boy with his own struggles, a boy newly discovering his own doubts and disillusions.
He lay on the floor and closed his eyes and heard bells.
Isn’t it a shame that in today’s cluttered world we seem to have forgotten how to listen to music with that level of attention — with our mouths (and our typing fingers) shut down and our ears and hearts all the way open?
I see that boy now in my memory, and I wonder in what way I am still that person. Is that old saying even true that a person’s entire inventory of cells is somehow swapped out, thrown into the vast molecular recycling bin every seven years? What is it then, that somehow congeals and holds together a certain pattern of energy that is the individual you or me, even as we decay toward our inevitable disintegration?
I imagine my experience, lying on the floor in front of the plastic Westinghouse phonograph, was one of empathy and a sense of insight, a feeling of being trusted with someone’s most difficult truths. I knew Lennon was rich and talented and adored, but I wasn’t so aware that he had doubts and conflicts and scars and regrets and a few scores to settle, like everyone else. And there must have been an adolescent thrill in hearing Lennon break rules and cross lines that popular music didn’t usually cross, laying himself so bare, calling out critics and cultural authority.
Then came the song I claim changed my life. The title is as simple and direct as the rest of the titles on the album. Just one word.
GOD
God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I’ll say it again.
God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in I-Ching.
I don’t believe in Bible. I don’t believe in Tarot.
I don’t believe in Hitler. I don’t believe in Jesus.
I don’t believe in Kennedy. I don’t believe in Buddha.
I don’t believe in Mantra. I don’t believe in Gita.
I don’t believe in Yoga. I don’t believe in Kings.
I don’t believe in Elvis. I don’t believe in Zimmerman.
I don’t believe in Beatles. I just believe in me.
Yoko and me, and that’s reality.
The dream is over, what can i say.
The dream is over, yesterday
I was the dreamweaver, but now I’m reborn.
I was the walrus, but now I’m John.
And so dear friends, you’ll just have to carry on.
The dream is over
To follow through with my comparison to a novel, every great novel comes to some kind of climax, some resolution of the conflicts embodied in its story. God is the climactic song that brings to a head all the pain, anger and realization of the rest of the album. It rejects the authority of received mythology, including the mythology of Beatle John.
To the boy on the rug, already a closet agnostic at thirteen, this was a loud shout of validation, and not just because of the questioning of religion.
In an even larger sense, the song offers broad affirmation and permission to all those who would throw off the shackles and blinders of culture and think for themselves, love for themselves, be themselves in a world that is always pressing on you to conform, to fit into one mold or another. And it offers a glimpse of moving past all of that into a clarified, illuminated future. The dream is over. Believe in yourself. Carry on. This faith in your own heart can be a refuge, a home you can return to when you get lost. Having that can change your life.
The shock of that December night has never quite faded. Like losing a family member before their time, there’s a sting to every memory of the man, every note of his music. Like the charged taste of metal when you test a battery with your tongue, not a lightning bolt anymore but still bitter and hard. John lost his future. His family lost their future with him. And we lost our future of connecting to him, of recognizing our growing, struggling selves in his music and his honesty about his own growing, struggling self.
The music lives on, as they say. And maybe somewhere in the world today there’s a doubtful pimply kid clicking around online who will stumble into a YouTube post of Plastic Ono Band, and he’ll stuff his earbuds in and push play.
Muhammad Ali would have turned 80 years old today, January 17, 2022. It also happens to be Martin Luther King Jr Day, in a year—an era, really—that all too clearly echoes the elevated tensions that inflamed the unrest of the turbulent Sixties.
How frustrating and disappointing that we as a society seem to have grown so little in all these years. But how inspiring to remember how both these men rose above their times and how each of them, in their own way, shook up the world.
Ali passed away, in June of 2016. Looking back now, that location in time seems to be right on the cusp of this current era, straddling the border, with one foot in the calm before the storm and one foot in the hurricane itself. Name the storm Division. Or Polarization. Or Culture War. Blame it on Inequality, Moral Decay or White Supremacy. Or Patriarchy, Corporatism or Globalism. We find ourselves in what feels like an impasse, a bumper to bumper traffic jam on the highway of cultural development.
At the time of Ali’s death, I put fingers to keyboard in an attempt to clarify why the man’s life and death felt so meaningful to me (and perhaps to others). Today I’m revisiting those reflections below…
There were so many sides to the man. So many people today are expressing their own impressions of this transcendent figure. So many different words are showing up in articles and posts. Of course, people often speak first of his athletic skill. The New Yorker said he had “physical wit.” A clever phrase but maybe still an understatement. He was a physical genius who, in his prime, raised heavyweight boxing up to the level of art. Others speak of Ali’s bravery, confidence, humor, grace, kindness.
To me, Ali seemed to always be coming back from defeat.
If I was ever aware of him as Cassius Clay, I don’t remember. I was only nine years old when he refused to serve in Vietnam, and my earliest memories of him are about the controversy that followed and his unjust exile from the career and status he had rightfully earned with his fists.
Another word we’re seeing today is “sacrifice,” and few other public figures in our time have proved their beliefs by sacrificing as much as Ali. He had all the riches and power that America had to offer him. He was “King of the World,” as he so brashly proclaimed. Yet he was willing to give it all up—to go to prison if necessary—in accordance with his conscience. It’s something he gave us all to think about.
Which requires more bravery—to follow the crowd to battle, or to stand alone and question the purpose of war?
When he came back, I listened to his first fight against Jerry Quarry on my bed with my ear pressed against a handheld transistor radio. When he lost to Joe Frazier, I watched in the local theatre. When he rope-a-doped George Foreman to finally regain the championship in 1974, I was sixteen, listening in the driveway on the radio in my first car, a 1962 Ford Fairlane.
Of course, he lost again. And he came back again. In the ring and in the world. Against younger boxers, against judgmental society and against cruel disease. He became possibly the most well known, and certainly one of the most admired men in the world. The word “icon” gets thrown around too casually these days. Ali was the real deal. To quote the dictionary, “a person regarded as a representative symbol of something.”
Yes, a representative symbol of those many words showing up repeatedly today: skill, grace, wit, kindness and the rest. But each of those words by itself seems to be reaching for a more complete summary. There must be something about the man that encompasses yet exceeds all those words, such that, even though we might not agree with his every word or action, we see that something about him represents the best in us.
I think what finally seals Ali’s indelible power in our hearts, what we see in him that we wish for ourselves, what he truly symbolizes—is the triumph of courage and principle over injustice. That is what I see in Muhammad Ali’s life that I hope lives somewhere within my own heart, and within the heart of our society in general.
And then there is my favorite Ali quote—and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to recall this today because it so captures Ali’s wit, charm and fierce sense of self. In one of their many post-fight interviews, Howard Cosell remarked on Ali’s bravado. “You’re being extremely truculent,” he said. And Ali came back without missing a half-beat: “Whatever truculent means, if that’s good, I’m that.”
Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sport. That is the accepted and acknowledged barroom and living room wisdom.
Regular Joe down at the end of the bar says, “Look man, you got a round ball that’s three inches wide, it’s closing on you almost a hundred miles an hour and you’re supposed to hit it with a stick that’s even smaller around than the ball. That’s why you’re a freakin allstar if you can pull it off just three out of every ten times.”
“Damn straight,” you holler and raise your glass. “Hardest thing to do in all of sport.”
It’s never exactly clear what things are being compared, but nonetheless it’s an article of faith that hitting a baseball is the most difficult among said unsaid things.
But is it?
Cut to my living room just a few Sundays ago, when my father, Roy Sr, sometimes referred to as Old Roy, or more delicately as Roy 1.0, joined me to watch the Giants game and bask in each other’s considerable baseball expertise. Fortunately, on this particular Sunday, Mrs D was visiting relatives somewhere across the continent, thus the living room was temporarily an eye-roll-free zone vis-a-vis the running of our expert mouths.
Friendly beverages were involved, the Giants were losing in the late innings, and soon talk turned to our superior understanding of the game of baseball compared to the hopeless, flailing, trend-following, stat-blind, blockheaded ignorance of, you know, pretty much everyone ever professionally employed at the highest levels of the sport. Such is the cross borne by every long-suffering couchbound sports fan.
So, after yet another Giant struck out to end an inning with the bases loaded, one of us sighed in resignation and threw the old bromide out there, “Well, like they say, it’s the hardest thing to do in sport.”
And of course we went through the whole litany: three inches wide, rounded bat, hundred miles an hour, seven out of ten failure rate.
Incidentally, it’s not just barroom—or living room—wisdom. Even the venerated Popular Science has published an article claiming, “A unique blend of physics and neuroscience makes the skill astronomically difficult.” (www.popsci.com/story/science/why-is-hitting-a-baseball-so-hard/?)
So, don’t roll your eyes at the two Roys just yet.
But what are we really talking about here? What, in fact, are the aforementioned ‘things’ we might fairly compare to hitting a baseball? Let’s define them. Let’s say, for instance, completing a pass in the NFL. Or let’s say, making a basket in the NBA. Or hitting the fairway in professional golf. These are all discrete, repeatable accomplishments required on a regular basis for a top-level player to be deemed successful in their respective sport.
And I suddenly got a clear look at the fly in the logic—or the flaw in the ointment, whatever. I realized this dog couldn’t hunt. Or, more importantly, count. You see, when you throw a pass in the NFL, that’s one throw, one single attempt, with one positive or negative result: complete or incomplete. When you take a shot in the NBA, it’s one shot, make or miss. In golf, you hit one shot from the tee, your ball either lands in the fairway (or on the green) or it doesn’t. These are all straightforward one-for-one records of accountability.
And it’s true, by all the accepted measurements these skills are less difficult on average than hitting a baseball. Top passers have completion rates above 60%. Top shooters make baskets around 50% of the time. Top golfers hit the fairway on up to 70% of their drives.
However, in baseball, when we say someone’s an allstar for hitting the ball 30% of the time, we’re not talking about a one-for-one relationship.
We’re talking about hits per ‘at-bat.’ And in any single at-bat a player could see multiple pitches and make an unknown number of swings. Plus, the 30% only counts the number of times a batter hits ‘safely.’ When the batter hits the ball but makes an out, it’s not counted. Even though the batter has, in fact, achieved the illustrious feat of hitting the baseball, that achievement is ignored in the calculation of their standard batting average.
That doesn’t seem fair.
When a quarterback completes a third-down pass but it’s short of the first down, he’s still credited with a completion. If the forward dunks the ball at the buzzer but the team loses by one, the basket still counts. When a golfer hits the fairway but bogies the hole, the record book will still say he hit the fairway.
So I says to Old Roy, “What if you counted every single time the batter puts the ball in play? After all, isn’t that the physical act of hitting the baseball, which is what we’re supposedly measuring?”
He goes, “Yeah, that only makes sense. Even if you’re out, you’ve already done the job, you’ve hit the baseball. Why shouldn’t that count?” And he takes a drink.
I’m wondering, jeez, did we just out-think the entire history of barroom pundits? Because, if you count every time the batter actually puts the ball in play, there is no way that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in all of sport. No way. Right?
Now I’m thinking, yes, these two Sunday blabbermouths in their recliners just completely overturned conventional wisdom. Over cocktails during the seventh inning stretch we had apparently debunked one of the greatest and oldest truisms in baseball lore. If only the skeptical Mrs D were here to appreciate our brilliant insight! I mean, I better write a nice wordy essay to impress my friends and anyone else who will listen.
Couple days later, I decide to hunt down the numbers that would prove the case.
First, I go to baseball-reference.com and look up the 2022 National League Batting Champion, Jeff McNeil of the New York Mets. In 589 plate appearances, McNeil had 538 official at-bats (subtracting walks, hit by pitch, sacrifices, reaching base on a fielding error). In those 533 at-bats, his 174 hits yield a .326 average or a 33% success rate. But to calculate a more accurate success rate, let’s include all the times he put the ball in play but made an out. To get that figure, simply subtract his total strikeouts from total at-bats, and you’d pretty much have it.
In McNeil’s case that’s 533 at-bats minus 61 strikeouts = 472 balls in play. That is approximately an 89% success rate. In 89% of his at-bats, McNeil hit the baseball, supposedly the hardest thing to do in all of sport. WTF!?
But then it suddenly dawned on me, Oh shit! Each swing is an attempt. Not each at-bat. Each swing. To truly measure the difficulty of hitting a baseball against those other sports skills, you need to calculate swings vs balls in play. In this discussion, nothing else really matters.
I won’t begin to list all the crazy anal-retentive baseball stats you can find online nowadays. If you looked long enough you could probably learn how often your favorite shortstop scratches his balls during the ninth inning of Tuesday night games in Oracle Park. And yet, I scoured more than a dozen sites before I found something close to what I was looking for, and not surprisingly I found it at billjamesonline.com
Here’s a simple breakdown of swings vs balls in play for McNeil’s 2022 season. 1110 swings, 477 balls in play. What about other high caliber players? That guy Aaron Judge had a pretty good year in 2022, didn’t he? 1240 swings, 400 balls in play (of which quite a few of them went over the fence). Luis Arraez led the American League in batting: 1034 swings, 507 balls in play. World Series Champion and perennial allstar Jose Altuve, 1022 swings, 441 balls in play. Among my beloved Giants, Brandon Crawford, 872 swings, 313 balls in play. And among the hated (although in case highly respected) Dodgers, Mookie Betts, 1072 swings, 472 balls in play.
The best hitters succeed at hitting the baseball on only 30-50% of their attempts.
The barroom pundits were right after all, although for the wrong reasons.
It’s very hard to hit a baseball. You might call it the hardest thing to do in sports.
Old Roy and Marginally Younger Roy are nearly as full of it as Mrs D’s eye rolls would suggest. We will now return to our recliners and cocktails, thank you.
Thank you for reading Fire and Dreams. This post is public—feel free to share!
Roy introduced me to Baseball, and American Football. We saw a lot of basebal games on TV at the Euclid House as well as SNL in its prime time seasons. as well as 70’s classic TV shows.
THE YEAR OF TWELVE SONGS is my latest music project. Some of you got a preview recently, with an all-acoustic version of a song called Finish Strong. Now I’m sharing a new version with added instruments and my efforts at sound production. Plus some backstory and something sort like old-fashioned liner notes (remember those?). I plan to do this with a different song every month and hopefully learn a lot in the process. Check it out with the link below and let me know what you think.
The GOP war on the LGBTQ community continues unabated
Tasteful portrait of a pre-op transgender woman with long brown hair and no make-up.
The republican rhetoric suggests that if the win the election (president) they will take action against the LGBTQ community including bans on LGBTQ people from serving in the government or military, authorizing discrimination against the LGBTQ community if it violates someone’s religious views, enacting a nation-wide standard regarding public access to bathrooms in public facilities, enacting a nation-wide ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and banning trans woman from participating in women’s sports, and asking the SC to let States once again legistlate same sex marriage and gay rights, and efforts to legally make trans status disappear by eneacting federal law recognizing only two genders assinged at birth, outlwing changing gender identication, outlawing gender affirming care and banning trans people from secret government positions including the military.
. BING AI chatbot and BARD provide some answers (below) and I have included some media accounts as well.
Binge’s answer
There has been a surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation in many states across the US, especially targeting transgender youth. According to the Human Rights Campaign1, some of the bills that have passed or are advancing in Texas, Florida and Utah are:
Yes, there are other states that have passed laws that restrict transgender people’s access to bathrooms or facilities according to their gender identity. According to the Movement Advancement Project1, a total of 10 states have such laws as of January 2024. They are:
There are many examples of right-wing preachers who have made anti-LGBTQ comments, including calling for the execution of the LGBTQ community. Here are some of them:
Pat Robertson: He is the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and the host of The 700 Club, and he has made numerous anti-LGBTQ statements, such as saying that homosexuality is a “perversion” and a “sin” that leads to bestiality, pedophilia, and polygamy. He also blamed the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed over 200,000 people on a “pact with the devil” made by Haitians to gain independence from France.
These are just some of the examples of the hateful and harmful rhetoric that some right-wing preachers have used against the LGBTQ community. Such rhetoric can incite violence, discrimination, and oppression against LGBTQ people, and it contradicts the principles of human dignity and equality.
President Trump on LGBTQ Issues
President Trump has been widely criticized for his views and policies on LGBTQ rights, which have been seen as hostile, regressive, and harmful by many LGBTQ advocates and organizations. Some of the actions he has taken or supported include:
If Trump were to run for a second term in 2024, he would likely continue to pursue these anti-LGBTQ policies and appoint judges and officials who share his views. He would also face strong opposition from LGBTQ activists and allies, who have mobilized to resist his attacks and advance LGBTQ rights at the state and local levels.
Nicki Haley on LGBTQ RIghts – only a little better than Trumps’s
Nikki Haley is a former governor of South Carolina and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is considered a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024. She has a mixed record on LGBTQ rights, which has evolved over time. Some of the positions she has taken or expressed include:
If Haley were to run for president in 2024, she would likely face criticism from both sides of the political spectrum on LGBTQ issues. She would have to balance her appeal to the conservative base of the Republican Party, which is largely anti-LGBTQ, with her attempt to reach out to moderate and independent voters, who are more supportive of LGBTQ rights.
Biden on LGBTQ Rights
President Biden has been a vocal and consistent supporter of LGBTQ rights, both as a senator, a vice president, and a president. He has been praised by LGBTQ advocates and organizations for his views and policies on LGBTQ issues, which have been seen as progressive, inclusive, and beneficial by many LGBTQ people. Some of the actions he has taken or promised include:
Reversing the ban on transgender people serving openly in the military .
Restoring and expanding protections for transgender students in schools .
Issuing an executive order to prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in various sectors .
Increasing funding for HIV/AIDS research and prevention programs .
Supporting the Equality Act, a bill that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in various sectors .
Issuing an executive order to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world .
If Biden were to run for a second term in 2024, he would likely continue to pursue these pro-LGBTQ policies and appoint judges and officials who share his views. He would also face challenges from anti-LGBTQ forces, who have been trying to undermine his actions and enact discriminatory laws at the state and local levels.
Bard’s answer
there has been a lot of proposed and passed anti-LGBTQ legislation recently. Please list them particualary in Texas, Florida and Utah
You’re right, there has been a surge of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the United States recently, with Florida, Texas, and Utah being some of the most active states. Here are some examples:
Florida:
“Don’t Say Gay” law (Parental Rights in Education Act): Prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten to grade 3, and in a way that is not “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” in any grade. This law has been widely criticized for marginalizing LGBTQ students and creating a hostile school environment.
Transgender athlete ban: Bans transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams in public high schools and colleges. This law has been condemned by LGBTQ rights groups and athletes as discriminatory and harmful.
Texas:
“Save Chick-fil-A” law (Freedom of Speech in Religious Institutions Act): Allows faith-based organizations to deny services to LGBTQ people based on their religious beliefs. This law has been challenged in court by LGBTQ rights groups.
Anti-trans healthcare bills: Several bills have been proposed or passed in Texas that would restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. These bills have been met with fierce opposition from medical professionals and LGBTQ rights groups.
Utah:
“Bathroom bill” (School Facility Privacy Act): Requires individuals to use restrooms corresponding to their sex assigned at birth in public schools and government buildings. This law has been criticized for discriminating against transgender people.
“Don’t Say Gay” bill: A bill similar to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law has been proposed in Utah, but it has not yet been passed.
These are just a few examples of the many anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced or passed in recent years. These laws have a negative impact on the lives of LGBTQ people and their families, and they create a climate of fear and discrimination.
It is important to note that there is also opposition to these laws, and many people are working to protect the rights of LGBTQ people. LGBTQ rights groups, such as the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, are fighting these laws in court and advocating for pro-LGBTQ legislation. Additionally, many businesses and organizations have spoken out against anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
The fight for LGBTQ rights is ongoing, and it is important to stay informed and engaged in order to make progress towards equality.
Here are some additional resources that you may find helpful:
On Friday, Utah’s state House of Representatives distinguished itself by becoming the country’s first legislative body to pass an anti-trans bill in 2024.
It also happens to be dangerously extreme, by seeking to make it a criminal offense for people to use a bathroom in a public building that doesn’t correspond with the gender on their birth certificate. According to Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation nationwide, the law raises the prospect of people forced to “potentially undergo a genital examination if under criminal investigation for being in the bathroom.” People determined under the law to have used the wrong bathroom inside public spaces, from colleges to Salt Lake City’s airport, could be sent to jail for up to 6 months.
His little girl has “nothing to do with any of this weird stuff” being spouted by those who should be protecting her.
The bill, which would need to pass the state’s Senate and be approved by the governor to become law, is so extreme that Reed and others have said it could even ensnare cisgender people and subject them to prosecution if someone thinks they’re peeing in the wrong place.
As Chris Geidner writes at Law Dork, “It is extreme legislation that explicitly retrofits the crimes of voyeurism and criminal trespass in the state to allow for the prosecution of many transgender people for using the right bathroom.”
When pressed on the House floor, the bill’s sponsor could not point to a single example of inappropriate behavior by a trans person in an Utah bathroom. But members of the Utah House—which meets for only 45 days a year and just started its 2024 session on Tuesday—nonetheless voted 57 to 17 to police bathrooms.
That the obviously transphobic and culture war catering move was a top priority says a lot about the leadership of my home state, which is on its way to becoming an uninhabitable toxic wasteland unless its politicians can stop the Great Salt Lake from drying up. Historically, Utah’s Republican majority has claimed to want to get government off your back—except for when it wants to look down your pants. Indeed, Utah legislators have long seemed to have a rather prurient interest in residents’ private lives and private parts.
Take the not-so-long-ago time Utah installed a “porn czar” in its attorney general’s office. In 2001, the state hired an unmarried Mormon virgin to police the state for smut and combat “cyber-sex.” The Washington Post reported that in her first months on the job, the bureaucrat was called upon to intercept a Victoria’s Secret catalog from a family mailbox, bar nude mannequin displays in store windows, and purge local libraries of R-rated movies. In 2018, the state legislature overturned the law creating the post. “The whole thing was a public-relations nightmare and kind of made Utah the laughingstock of the nation,” Sen. Todd Weiler, a Republican cosponsor of the rollback bill, told the Salt Lake Tribune.
The bathroom bill is, of course, far more intrusive, and would have far more harmful and repressive impacts than the porn czar ever did. But the drive for invasive legislation that could literally see local cops checking people’s genitalia overlaps with the lawmakers’ longstanding and unhealthy interest in what goes on behind closed doors.
Black said the bill aims to answer “The defining question of this decade, ‘What is a woman?’”
“Indeed, this bill only serves to codify that which is already indisputable but has sadly been weaponized by a radical political movement intent on rewriting the laws of nature to fit their twisted agenda,” Black said in a news release.
While LGBTQ+ rights continue to gain traction across America, there are still those, including lawmakers, who aren’t in support. In Tennessee, a state representative is championing a bill through the Tennessee legislature to ban the display of Pride flags on state property. According to the rep, parents are interested in raising their kids with values “that were in existence at the time that our country was founded.”
The Republican State Rep. Gino Bulso first introduced House Bill 1605 in December 2023. It was interesting that amongst the values, Bulso did not include slavery, eradication of the indigenous population, and other values that existed when America was founded. Nonetheless, he believes families need values that existed during the nation’s founding years.
Continue reading
However, Bulso is not alone in his beliefs. Speaker of the U.S. House, Mike Johnson (R-LA), a Christian nationalist who believes that civic life and government should be based on the Bible. Bulso maintains that 18th-century values should guide Americans.
“Certainly, you know, 50 years ago, we had a consensus on what marriage is; we don’t have that anymore,” Bulso told WKRN in Nashville. “One hundred years ago, we had a consensus on sexual morality; I don’t think we have that anymore. So the values that I think most parents want their children exposed to are the ones that were in existence at the time that our country was founded.”
Utah’s Republican-controlled House voted Friday to pass a sweeping proposal to keep transgender people out of restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity in taxpayer-funded buildings, sending the measure to the state’s majority GOP Senate for consideration just three days after the start of the session.
House Bill 257 aims to prohibit individuals from using gender-designated facilities that differ from their sex assigned at birth in government buildings, correctional facilities and domestic violence shelters unless they have undergone a transition-related surgery and legally amended the sex on their birth certificate.
The proposal would require new government buildings to include single-occupant restrooms and changing rooms while existing ones must be studied to assess “the feasibility of retrofitting or remodeling” facilities to improve privacy.
Utah House lawmakers voted 52-17 on Friday to pass the bill. Three Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against it.
The bill, if passed, would make Utah the third state to adopt explicit restrictions on transgender bathroom use in buildings other than schools. A Florida law passed last year prevents transgender people from using facilities consistent with their gender identity in all government-owned buildings, and a North Dakota law restricts bathroom use in correctional facilities.
As of January 18, GOP lawmakers have introduced 285 anti-LGBTQ bills, with a focus on restricting transgender rights and LGBTQ visibility.
The bills seek to ban drag performances, limit gender-affirming health care, and remove LGBTQ content from school libraries.
Most bills target the transgender community, aiming to redefine transgender existence in law or restrict self-identification and access to services.
“Transgender people across the country are enduring a historic and dangerous effort to control our bodies and our lives, fueled by extremist politics with the goal of erasing us from public life,” attorney Harper Seldin said.
“Taken together, these proposals are a blatant effort to deny transgender people the freedom to be ourselves at school, at work, and the support of the medical care many of us need to live.”
“In South Carolina, one bill would ban Medicaid coverage for gender affirming care up to the age of 26, expanding restrictions on care far into the adult age range,” transgender advocate Erin Reed said.
At least 200 bills focus on educational matters, while over 120 seek to restrict gender-affirming health care for minors.
Legal challenges have arisen from families and doctors due to restrictions on gender-affirming care.
The Human Rights Campaign anticipates a record number of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the upcoming state legislative sessions, including bills that deny legal recognition of transgender people and restrict LGBTQ visibility.
Related video: LGBTQ Rights Groups Want the UN to Investigate Texas (Dailymotion)
ithin the first week of Florida’s legislative session, which commenced recently, Republican lawmakers introduced several bills specifically targeting LGBTQ individuals, exceeding the count of days in the new year.
Some of the bills introduced in Florida during this legislative session are notably extreme. These include proposals to alter the state’s definition of sex and criminalize “lewd or lascivious grooming.” These measures stand out as among the most stringent of the hundreds filed in state legislatures nationwide.
Another bill suggests preventing government employees from being obligated to use pronouns requested by their colleagues. Additionally, a proposal aimed at shielding children from “harmful material” online. However, the vagueness of the term “harmful material” raises concerns among advocates, as it could potentially encompass LGBTQ content.
In a further development, a proposal from Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur seeks to categorize almost all published accusations of anti-LGBTQ bias as “defamation per se.” This bill would prevent journalists from defending such accusations by referencing the subject’s “Constitutionally protected religious expression or beliefs” or scientific beliefs. Those liable in successful lawsuits under this proposal could face damages of at least $35,000.
“Florida has, for years, been an innovator of new assaults on freedom and equality, and this year’s slate of bills is no different,” remarked Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, who is also a survivor of the Orlando, Florida, Pulse nightclub mass shooting.
Related video: LGBTQ Rights Groups Want the UN to Investigate Texas (Dailymotion)
He added, “This session, we’ll see escalating attacks on education, medical freedom, and the fundamental right of transgender people to exist as their authentic selves.” A proposed bill by Republican Rep. Dean Black mandates Floridians to sign an affidavit aligning their IDs with the sex on their original birth certificate.
Transgender individuals would be compelled to surrender existing IDs displaying their gender identity and would be unable to obtain such identification in the future. This measure poses significant hurdles for transgender individuals, impacting their access to identification reflecting their authentic gender identity.
Black’s bill mandates health insurance policies covering transition-related procedures, including “Treatment to detransition.” The proposed legislation requires coverage of conversion therapy in health insurance policies. Specifically, it calls for mental health services to address a person’s perception that their sex is inconsistent with their sex assigned at birth, affirming their birth sex.
The proposed bill further mandates any school district or state agency collecting vital statistics for anti-discrimination compliance or data purposes to identify the birth sex of individuals in the dataset. This provision could potentially limit data collection on transgender people.
The LGBTQ society has become a regular fixture in the modern day. But according to The American Civil Liberties Union, they have been getting a lot of legal bills. Backed into a corner, they now speak up, hopeful for public sympathy, which they used to get — until now.
This year, state legislators passed a record-breaking number of laws, and they all targeted LGBTQ privileges in the U.S. The ACLU said it noticed at least 508 bills impacting the community in 2023.
It also says that 84 of these bills are now laws. The rise in legislation clashed with an increase in threats of violence against the LGBTQ community.
The federal security agencies are sounding the alarm. However, activists say that despite the record-breaking wave of anti-LGBTQ bills, other lawmakers have stepped up to combat such efforts.
“We’ve also witnessed incredible moments of strength in states and communities across the country who have made sure this political assault does not go unnoticed or is made any easier for politicians opposed to our very existence,” said Gillian Branstetter, Communications Strategist at the ACLU, in a statement to ABC News.
The vast majority of legislation passed across the country has impacted gender-affirming care for minors, blocking trans youth from accessing treatments in some cases, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries.
Related video: Advocates tracking several bills they call ‘anti-LGBTQ’ (WKRN Nashville)
These laws do not apply to such treatments in cases where the subject is a cisgender or intersex youth. The majority of those who support the law are against gender transitioning. They believe that it is harmful to youth and young adults.
The more lenient ones want patients to wait until they are older to make such decisions. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is one such man. In March 2023, he signed a bill in his state banning doctors from starting hormone therapy for transgender youth under the age of 18. All “to ensure we protect the health and wellbeing of Georgia’s children.”
In September, a judge let the state enforce the ban after it faced a lawsuit. But there’s more where that came from.
At least 14 laws impacting the LGBTQ community are currently in the middle of legal battles. And if what Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD, said is true, it is just the beginning.
Ellis says, “The silver lining in this year of challenge is how LGBTQ people and our allies showed up for our community and everyone’s fundamental freedoms.”
Aside from Georgia, other states considered hostile towards the LGBTQ include Ohio and Wisconsin. Fortunately, several states have passed protection laws for the LGBTQ community. They include Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and California.
It is utterly amazing to me that so many of my fellow Americans still support a president who, in Bernie Sanders’ words, “is compulsively dishonest, who is a bully, who actively represents the interests of the billionaire class, who is anti-science, and who is trying to divide us up based on the color of our skin, our nation of origin, our religion, our gender, or our sexual orientation.”
Why Support for Trump Persists?
The reason why so many of my fellow Americans supported Trump then and now can be boiled down to the following factors:
A widespread feeling that the coastal elites had sold them out, through their aggressive offshoring of manufacturing in pursuit of neoliberal economic policies.
A widespread feeling that the middle class and working class have been taking it on the chin for decades, adjusted for inflation. The average wage has not gone up since 1975.
The growing gap between the right and the rest of us.
Changes in demographics are only 60 percent white, less than 30 percent evangelical Christians.
Women and minorities have gotten too much power and visibility.
Cost of living has gotten out of hand, particularly college costs, housing, and medical care.
The radical left is pushing its socialist agenda of climate change, LGBTQ rights, and universal health care onto the rest of the country.
LGBTQ rights have gotten out of hand, many of these people believe that gay marriage should be illegal and many believe that the LGBTQ community should be made illegal, and are particularly anti-trans.
White supremacy and racism – many of his supporters are outright racists and white supremacists.
The widespread feeling that traditional Christianity is under attack and there is a war against Christianity.
Related to this is the fear of Muslim immigration
Many believe in the replacement theory – that widespread immigration is designed to change the foundations of American life.
Fear of rising crime and disorder.
The decline in support for traditional democratic norms, desires for a strong man authoritarian to take charge and stick it to the hated libtards.
The disdain of the corrupt, coastal globalists elites who look down on “real Americans” living in Fly Over Red States,
Greatest political polarization since the1850s as Americans once again split into political tribes amid a feeling that the US is a splitting apart along sectarian and political fault lines.
Resurgence is the belief that another civil war is inevitable
Fascism has once again become an acceptable alternative.
Travels in Trump’s America
I’ve been wrestling with this question since 2016 when I drove across the country when I returned when I tried from the State Department in the spring time just as the primaries were heating up and Donald Trump was winning left and right. One of the things I realized as it went through so many nothingburger towns and the great flyover states was that Donald Trump spoke to the rural hinterland people who felt that they were being left behind and with the broad spread belief that the coastal elites who just did not get them and did not care. Trump, the greatest conman in modern U.S. history, was able to convince them that he was on their side, and then he was their champion of the forgotten Americans. Donald staged his hugely entertaining rallies everywhere that Spring and into the Fall, while Hillary staged far fewer events, acting as if she was entitled to the the next President, that it was her turn. That attitude proved to be fatal to her chances.
As I went through all these small towns, I realized that they were forgotten Americans and I realized in fact that the political system had abandoned them due to the prevailing liberal neo-economic theories that led to the hollowing out of American industry and many rural areas to be similar to what you might see in the 3rd and 4th world backwater countries so, and in a sense the system was indeed rigged against them.
Both Trump and Bernie Sanders spoke to these individuals, but they had different prescriptions for what to do about it. Bernie Sanders, I believe sincerely believed that he was trying to help them whereas Donald Trump was just seeing this as a way to grift his way to the White House and once he was in the White House he did very little to help. He mostly spent his time trying to help the donor billionaire classes by the huge tax giveaways he gave them.
Objectively speaking, one would have to say that since 1975 the working class in the middle class has been hard hit in terms of take-home salaries. Their take home salary has not changed that much when adjusted to inflation and when adjusted for how many more things that people have to buy just to be considered middle-class things that did not exist in 1975 like cell phones PC’s and the need for a second car etcetera. Bottom line, the cost of living has gone way up, but wages have been flat since 1975.
The Masters of the Universe See Workers as “Labor Units of Production”
And the so-called Masters of the Universe, the CEO class, did not give a damn about their workers and communities, seeing workers as nothing more than “labor units of production” to quote Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior trade negotiator.
Right-wing Populism has an Appeal
Many of these people were attracted to Trump because he was a right-wing populist and had simplistic answers to complex questions, unlike the wonky Democrats who would have very long-winded complicated answers when people just wanted to know what the **** are you gonna do about it and do you care about it?
The changes in demographics in the United States
The United States is no longer a country that is majority white evangelical Christian nor is it a country where white men are the undisputed leaders of the country it is also a country where gays and lesbians have come out in force, and it’s a country where almost 20% are immigrants or children of immigrants all of which means that the country is very different from what it was in 1975 when it was mostly white most significant helical Christian, and it was perhaps a little bit more rural than it is now. To a lot of Trump supporters, America has changed and is no longer the country they grew up in.
Racism/Sexism
Trump appeals to the racists in the United States who believe in white supremacy and believe that the white man has been taken on the chin . Related to this is the sense among white men that women have gotten out of control and are uppity, and should be put back in their place. Many also felt that the U.S. made a mistake electing a black man President and it was time for a white man to be in charge again. And they were not ready for a woman President, particularly that woman.
War on Christianity
Trump has somehow convinced evangelical communities that he is one of them that the Christian community is under attack in a war on Christianity and that he is standing up for Christians. The growing fear that the Muslim religion is taking over or spreading in the United States and that Muslims are enemies of traditional religion
Some of Trump’s supporters think that is time for an authoritarian strongman to take over the United States and straighten things out. There is the sense that democracy has failed and that a fascist alternative might work better.
Own the Libtards
Related to this, of course, is the fear is the feeling that Trump it’s gonna take to take it to the hated liberal elites and that retribution is what they want final reason is perhaps that for many people fascism doesn’t sound that bad anymore that a fascist regime might be just what the United States needs to make America great again and make making America great again means taking America back to the 1950s or perhaps of the 1890s when white men ruled the country minorities were kept in their place gays were in the closet and women we’re not in charge of anything
White evangelical Christians found their values were the values that ran the country so for all these reasons I can see why Trump still considerable appeal has his followers simply do not believe all of the negative comments negative facts about Trump they do not believe that he is a criminal thinking up leave that the charges or anything other than political retribution by the out-of-control department of just weaponized by Joe Biden.
For all of these reasons, and for lingering feeling that perhaps it’s time for a strongman to come into power and straighten things out trump is still their man.
Jim Davison is a piano player I have known since 1970. Here are some more of his piano music. Enjoy.
Here’s our latest recording. Karen shines, as she applies her melodious vocal talents to an old swing-era favorite, “Pennies From Heaven.” It was also an opportunity for me to play some stride piano, a style I love (though it’s technically challenging). Hope you enjoy it and find it as “nice” as we did.
Pianist, arranger, and producer for the Karen Sudjian and Jim Davidson group; sideman with the Dewayne Oakley Blues Ensemble. Former sideman with the Larry Stefl Group.
WebJul 27, 2019 · Jim Davidsonattended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he studied piano with jazz great Jaki Byard. Through the years he has played with …
ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble.
ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME, Op. 139, No. 6
THE PIMPLETON PROCRASTURBATION ENSEMBLE performs ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME, Op. 139, No. 6, by GARY LLOYD NOLAND (October 19th, 2022). For more information on the composer, pleas
UNBEARDED AVATAR-GOYLES, Op. 131, No. 5, performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble. Enjoy!
permafrost My TEEMING IMPERMAFROST, Op. 127, No. 6, performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble.
ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble.
ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME, Op. 139, No. 6
THE PIMPLETON PROCRASTURBATION ENSEMBLE performs ANNOYING CREATURES THAT UNDERSTAY THEIR WELCOME, Op. 139, No. 6, by GARY LLOYD NOLAND (October 19th, 2022).
My WHIPPING THE NIGHT ORGASTIC performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble.
https://soundcloud.com/…/sets/when-xmas-ornaments-go-rogue I made a pact with my Facebook friend, composer Allan Segall, to exchange titles for pieces. I provided him with a title and a new piece of his emerged within a day or two. With all the projects I have been involved in lately, it took me several months to fulfill my end of the bargain. I finally asked him for a title a couple weeks ago (on January 9th, 2024, to be precise) and he provided me with the title of this brand new piece (completed on January 23rd, 2024), which I am happy to include amongst a growing portfolio of holiday pieces. The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble (consisting of the composer and his five anagrammatic alter egos) performs WHEN XMAS ORNAMENTS GO ROGUE.
My latest composition: THERE’S NO THERE WHERE? performed by The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble (January 23rd, 2023): https://soundcloud.com/gary…/sets/theres-no-there-whereeres-no-there-where The Pimpleton Procrasturbation Ensemble performs THERE’S NO THERE WHERE?
I have been a writing com member since 2016. I have been actively posting in various challenges and contests since I began and have posted close to 998 pieces. I highly recommend this site as a warm, welcoming writing community and I have learned so much about the art and craft of writing from participating. You can find my work at https://jcosmos.Writing.Com/
Writer’s Cramp does a prompt every day with a daily winner. I have won quite a few of these and try to enter them daily.
End of Empires
38
On February 2, 1901,
Queen Victoria was laid to rest.
Largest gathering
Of European royalty ever assembled
Attended the funeral.
This was the height
Of the British Empire.
Few would have thought
In a few short years
World War 1 would begin.
And then World War Two
The Cold War
Followed by the gradual
End of the British Empire.
The sun did set
In the British Empire
But in 1901
It seemed like
The British Empire
Would last forever.
Empires rise and fall
Sometimes one sees the decline.
Other times it comes as a surprise.
In hindsight almost inevitable.
What will be the end?
Of the American Empire?
Will America break apart?
Into ten or 15 new nations?
If there is a civil war
It will not end up
As proponents think.
That is the nature
Of civil war
And war in general.
it never ends as planned.
“ War, Good God all, what is it good for?
War has only one friend, the undertaker.”
NEW (birthday week) PROMPT:
On February 2 (2/2) 1901, the state funeral of Queen Victoria of Great Britain took place and was one of the largest gatherings of European royalty in history. Write a poem or story about this event. Use HISTORY as one of your genres.
A Quiet January Night
26 lines
Sam Adams
Was at home
On a quiet January Night.
Snowbound
In his Capitol Hill Row house,
Down the street from Lincoln Park
In the heart of DC.
All in all
Sam felt at peace
With the world.
Having accepted
As he was getting older,
And having reconciled
With his long-estranged siblings.
He was playing the piano
While his cat
The Buddha Cat
Was lost in his cat verse
Deep in meditation.
Soon he put on some
Buddha bar meditation music
And joined the cosmic cat
In mediation.
There is a new prompt up in “The Writer’s Cramp” – and if you write the best story or poem (and follow all of the rules) you just might win 10,000 GPs.
” WINNER & NEW PROMPT Due Sunday, January 21″ 16 hours 40 minutes 35 seconds
Please use the following as the Title of your story or poem:
“A Quiet January Night”
Please select “Spiritual” as one of your genres.
Make sure you create a new static item for your entry, and include your word count for stories (1000 words or less) or a line count for poems (40 lines or less) IN your forum post with the b-item link to your entry to be a qualified entry.
Lunch with Allen Ginsberg (winner)
39
If I had a chance to go back in time
and meet for lunch a famous poet
I would go back to 1954.
to my hometown, Berkeley, California
to visit with and have lunch
with one of my literary heroes
Allan Ginsberg.
I would knock on his door
and tell him I came from
from 2024, the future.
And wanted to talk to him
about the future world
and we would go and have lunch
in North Beach.
And over wine and pasta, we would talk
We would talk about his life and legacy
and then talk about the future world.
I would tell him that Donald Trump
would become President
and usher in an era of neo-fascism.
H would be astonished.
but finally concluded
that he knew of the Trump family
and could see that coming.
They had bad juju he concluded.
And then he would go home
and write a series of poems
about the future of the U.S.
And perhaps we would have prevented
some of the future from taking place
perhaps it was inevitable
as he would write,
“the future is coming sooner than we think
and it will be stranger than fiction.”
Unfortunately, I can’t award a winner today. Please remember to select the appropriate genre if the prompt requires one. (Today’s prompt does not.)
NEW PROMPT: Tomorrow, January 6, is National Take a Poet to Lunch Day. Write a story or poem involving lunch with a poet. The poet can be living, formerly living, imaginary, or even yourself. What’s on the menu, and what topics are discussed?
Sam Adams
watched from far-off Mumbai
as the terrorists launched 9-11.
Thanking the Gods
that his wife was not working
there at the Pentagon.
He had a vision
that the Dogs of War
Have been set free
Of their cages in hell,
And are out
howling at the moon.
The Dogs of War
Have been set free
To wreck what havoc
Might be.
Yes, the Dogs of War
The Hell Hounds
Have bound out of their cages
Sniffed about, smiled
At the destruction, they saw
They knew soon
They would be in their element
As the world descends into chaos,
The world saw the face of pure evil
That fine September morning
A morning like any other morning
Until a fateful moment
When two planes came out of the sky,
And Destroyed the center of world capitalism
In an act of horrific violence, and pure evil
That is beyond the comprehension
Of mere mortal man.
Dec 7, 1941, was the attack by Japanese warplanes on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, an event that propelled the United States into the forefront of World War II.
For tomorrow, write a story or poem that is set during an unexpected military attack. (But broadly construed … could be like Pearl Harbor, could be a science-fiction space war, could be a gang war in NYC, could be an unexpected snowball attack by the neighborhood bullies, could be in fairyland, etc.)
Focus your tale on the experiences of an “ordinary person” in this attack, rather than someone removed from the action (e.g. not military leaders in command-and-control centers.) Try to bring to life the confusion and emotions of the situation.
Hitler as an Artist?
20
A Hitler historian
was fascinated
With Hitler’s failed attempt
To be a painter,
Hitler always blamed
His failure as an artist
Due to a cabal of Jewish painters
Who were the arbiters of taste
In Vienna right after World War 1
One day he discovered
A cache of lost Hitler paintings.
Among the paintings,
was one labeled
“International Bird Painting Day”.
Art historians all agreed –
It was the worst bird painting
Ever made,
Proving that Hitler
Would never have made it
As an artist,
Since he had no talent
As an artist,
Sadly, his depraved, evil
malignant evil talents
Lay elsewhere.
NEW PROMPT: Tomorrow, April 8, is Draw a Picture of a Bird Day. Write a story or poem about someone with limited artistic talent attempting to observe this occasion.
20
Express it Eight
Soling Bling is the host of the Express It In Eight Daily prompts. The goal is to write an eight-line poem. Here are my most recent entries.
Jellyfish Lake and Other Strange Places
Sam Adams was an explorer
He had been to many strange places
Among the Weider were the Jellyfish Lake
Filled with jellyfish
Snake Island off of Brazil
Filled with the deadliest snakes in the world
And the famous cannibal island
where outsiders are forbidden in the Andaman seas.
In an ancient town in Central Asia,
Deep in the high mountains on the old Silk Road,
There lays a weird church, mosque, and temple.
With four doors, one to the church, the mosque, and the temple.
The fourth door, hidden in the back rooms leads to an indoor patio.
The fourth door reveals ten smaller green doors on top of each other.
According to the sign above, each door opens a portal
To other worlds, a one-way ticket for madmen only.
Lately, I have been drinking
Much more tea and less coffee,
Particularly in the afternoon.
My latest tea of choice is my wife’s secret blend.
Bitter melon, jujube dates, ugly potato, wormwood
With Earl Gray, green tea slims fast,
Yogi detox teas are added to the brewing pot.
Perfection in a soothing hot cup of heaven.
In the U.S. in November
There is a noteworthy
Looming election.
An election that will determine
In a comprehensive manner,
The future of the U.S. and the world
Will the U.S. choose fascism?
Or will democracy and sanity prevail?
the warning signs
are everywhere
will we heed them?
will we wake up
and see that Trump
and the MAGA movement
are fascists determined
to destroy American democracy.
POEM TITLES
Warning
by Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickles for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.
>< >< >< >< >< ><
I Choose the Mountain
by Howard Simon
The low lands call
I am tempted to answer
They are offering me a free dwelling
Without having to conquer
The massive mountain makes its move
Beckoning me to ascend
A much more difficult path
To get up the slippery bend
I cannot choose both
I have a choice to make
I must be wise
This will determine my fate
I choose, I choose the mountain
With all its stress and strain
Because only by climbing
Can I rise above the plain
I choose the mountain
And I will never stop climbing
I choose the mountain
And I shall forever be ascending
David Sneider is the host of Poetry Place. He does a weekly poetry form challenge similar to what Writer Digest does. I try to try my hand at both and between the two of them and Fan Story, I have tried over 150 poetry forms since 2016.
Here are my most recent attempts
Why do we write?
40 lines
A writer is often asked
Why do you write?
What motivates you?
What keeps you going?
How do you handle the constant rejections?
The self-doubts
What comes with the writer’s life?
I write as many writers do
Because I must
Because the damn muse
Will never leave me alone
The characters in my head
Demand to let their voices be heard
Demand to be freed
To tell their tales
And I am a slave
To my muse
Who takes me
Where she will
No matter what
I must write every day
Usually starting my day
Drinking coffee
Watching the news unfold
Writing my thoughts
Letting the poetry flow
Out of my soul
Bleeding onto the computer screen
The words waiting to be spoken
To tell their tale
Before the day is over
That is why I write
Because I can not write
That is the Buddha nature
Of being a writer after all.
Most of us probably started writing to fulfill the requirements of our teachers in school. We wrote to pass the course and gain recognition through grade assignments.
During some self-analysis upon leaving the Navy and starting my job search, I realized that the things I enjoyed the most and had the most success with involved writing of some sort. Therefore, a technical writing job seemed to be the perfect union of that interest with my engineering education. For the next few years, I wrote to instruct field technicians on how to implement retrofit modifications on aircraft.
Later, in the business world, I wrote to enlighten co-workers, managers, and customers about procedures, policies, and systems.
Nowadays, while I sometimes still write for those reasons (as I’m doing here), many more factors keep me engaged in this wondrous process. That’s probably the case with you, too.
If you feel a need to express your most personal response to this mysterious, beautiful, and sometimes painful world in the shapes, colors, sounds, and smells of your imagination, creative writing can provide a powerful means of therapeutic release.
The pure joy that comes with meeting the challenges of crafting the language into something meaningful, like molding a piece of clay with your hands, can be a refreshing recreational outlet.
Many writers are driven to publish their work on the printed page. I can vouch for the exhilarating sense of satisfaction that comes with that first acceptance letter.
Upon receiving a reviewer’s comment that one of my stories reminded him of a stand-up comedian’s routine, I realized that the desire to entertain/is also a driving force that keeps me motivated.
For whom do you write?
Many writers resist criticism and defend their writing with the claim that they write only for themselves. While some therapeutic or recreational writing may not be intended for sharing with an audience, writing is usually employed as a means of communicating with other people. Of course, the grocery lists and phone numbers you scribble on scraps of paper are probably intended for only you. However, those things within you that won’t rest until they are given voice–the burning memories that linger in your heart and the fanciful fugitive images floating around in your head–must be shared with someone else to satisfy the need for expression.
When you sit down to write, you should keep your audience in mind. Whether it be your friends and family, a group of readers interested in a particular genre as identified here at WDC, or an editor for a specific publication, the language you use serves as a bridge between you and the reader. Choose accordingly.
Your reasons for writing along with your prospective audience will influence the voice you use in your writing, as the relationship between the writer and the reader develops into a true collaboration in this wondrous experience.
Today’s Practice Session: Write about your objective(s) as you continue on this marvelous journey.
Then ponder the postings of your peers and exchange views about the various motivations that keep us all inspired in this venture.
Guns
so many
people are dying
Politicians offer useless prayers
Death
The Elevenie, also called Elfie in German, is an exercise in language distillation. Consisting of five lines with word counts of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, respectively, it captures a thought in only eleven words, as described and demonstrated in the following links:
Wikipedia defines an Elevenie, or Elfchen, as follows:
“An elevenie (German Elfchen — Elf “eleven” and -Chen as a diminutive suffix to indicate diminutive size and endearment) is a short poem with a given pattern. It contains eleven words which are arranged in a specified order over five rows. Each row has a requirement that can vary.”
A simple form, similar perhaps to Haiku, Senryu, or Tanka, in which the poet attempts to carry an idea within a set format of words and lines which imposes certain strictures of thought and form on the author.
The usual format requires a short verse of eleven words in five lines in the form – 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. An order which I have reversed in my last of the 4 Elfchen below . . .
Hot coffee starts my morning.
watching the news mid-morning.
Too much coffee is a warning,
a migraine a forewarning.
Afternoon I drink hot tea.
Contemplating to be.
What is to become of me?
Turning on music filled with glee.
As the sun sets, I drink red wine.
With my wife, all is just fine.
While looking at the moonshine,
As we sit down start to dine.
The Tanaga is an ancient Filipino form that has evolved from a complete poem to a series of stanzas. The structure consists of four mono-rhymed lines with seven syllables per line, as described and demonstrated in the following links:
I was born John Cosmos Aller
But for most of my life
I called myself Jake Cosmos Aller
Nowadays, I call myself J Cosmos Aller
or Cosmos As my pen name
the name Cosmos has nothing
to do with me being born
in Oakland
growing up in Berkeley
no one buys that story though
Cosmos being such a Berkeley-like name
My great-grandfather wanted
an English translation
of the family’s last name
Aller
looked it up in a German English dictionary
had two choices
Cosmos
or Universe
chose Cosmos
and thus I am the last
of the Cosmos Aller’s
The universe would have been
an equally good Berkeley name
But I have had other nicknames
The kids nicknamed me Allergy
And pretended to sneeze
When I passed them by
The name Jake came about
From a dream I had
As a boy scout
I was riding a horse
Named Jake
I would scream
Whoa Jake
Slide aside Clyde
Turn around Verdiack
I started saying these words
When I walked about Campus
And people thought I was a bit mental
So, people simply started calling me
The Whoa Jake kid,
Later simply became Jake
After I left school
I liked the name, Jake
Better than John
Too many Johns
In the world, I thought
When my wife became an army officer
We would sometimes get invites
To things addressed to Captain Lee and Mr. Lee
Got tired of trying to explain
We had different last names
So, I became Jake Lee
Later when I was in the military hospital system
As a dependent getting operations
The doctors just assumed I was a major
And called me Major Aller
I did not correct them
Liked having been promoted
To the rank of Major!
When I started trying to become
Professional writing and blogger
I thought using my middle name
Would be a nice pen name
So now I am either J Cosmos Aller
Jake Cosmos Aller
John (Jake) Cosmos Aller
or just Cosmos
No longer Jake Lee
Or Major Aller though.
unless you are Maya Angelou, Stephen King, or some other famous writer whose name alone is enough to draw an audience, the title is one of the most critical elements of a poem. As the only thing a prospective reader will see while scanning the list of items in a writer’s port or the Table of Contents in a book, it serves as the door that must be opened to enter the realm of the poet’s imagination. If that entrance does not generate some kind of interest, that browser will likely move along to the next item, or maybe even the next author.
Like the names of your children, a title gives the poem a specific identity. Of course, some poets eschew such traditions and leave their work without any identifying reference. Emily Dickinson did not put titles on her poems, even though her editors often did before publication. Frank O’Hara often applied simple, nondescript titles, such as Poem. Would you let your child go through life without a name? Then, why would you ever think of not naming your brainchild or tagging it with some irrelevant label?
Because many poems are so short in comparison with other forms of literature, their names should capture the underlying essence of the expression as it sets the tone and prepares the reader for what is to come. Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug,” and I believe the same advice would apply to titles for a poem. This can be a struggle in many cases. Sometimes the title comes to the poet out of the blue as inspiration for an entire composition, and sometimes it hides within the shrubbery of the text.
Here are a few suggestions to aid you in your search for the perfect name:
1. Start with the title and let it propel you into the poem.
2. Use the first line of the poem as your title.
3. Provide a brief description of the poem’s theme.
4. Find a phrase or image within the poem that can represent the whole.
5. If you are writing a narrative poem, an action verb may help engage the prospective reader with the experience being described.
6. Use your imagination to pluck lightning from the phantasmal cloud of cosmic pixie dust swirling around in your head.
Your assignment: Write a poem about the concept of NAMES.
#59. names
ID #1062273 entered on January 11, 2024, at 7:16 pm [Edit] [5 views]
More Guns Roundeau
gun
More guns killing people today.
Is it just another day?
Politicians offer prayer.
All the dead gun ghosts don’t care.
Have we completely lost our way?
To the gun ghosts, what do we say?
Our prayers are just another cliche.
Will the guns continue to flare?
More guns.
Will we continue to pay?
Will our country be able to stay?
Will hatred continue to stare?
Will there be an end to this nightmare?
Do we have any words left to sway?
More guns.
: aabba aabR aabbaR. Lines 9 and 15 are short
The Rondeau is a French form of fifteen lines with an intriguing pattern of rhyme and repetition, as described and demonstrated in the following links:
I wake up with the morning dawning sun.
Turn on my TV watch the news,
drinking a hot snarling cup of coffee.
thinking dark gloomy thoughts as the snow falls.
Bombs, war, inflation, end-of-the-world.
The Ronka is another spinoff from the Japanese Haiku and Tanka forms devised by Ken Ronkowitz. The structure consists of five unrhymed lines with seven words per line. The theme should “focus on observations of the day as seen in the outside world and the inside worlds of dwellings and the mind,” as described and demonstrated in the following links:
Rupali Goswami is the host of the 40-word challenge – to write a 40-word poem or micro story based on the daily prompts. Here are my latest attempts.
01/29/2023- ‘old”
Watching the news
I feel the old-age blues
I turn off the barking, deranged,
talking heads,
had enough of them all
for a lifetime
turned off that snarling noise box.
And have another cup of coffee.
With my lovely wife.
#5. 01/29/2023- ‘old”
ID #1062532 entered on January 17, 2024, at 4:22 am [Edit] [2 views]
01/28/2023-‘unusual’
Donald Trump
Is the biggest con artist
carnival barker, grifter,
Flimflam man
That ever lived.
He has an unusual
Sway over his cult-like
MAGA Followers
Who thinks he is God’s Anointed
Some call him the orange Jesus
The Messiah!
#4. Unusual sway
ID #1062531 entered on January 17, 2024, at 4:17 am [Edit] [12 views]
01/27/2023-decency’
The next election
Boils down to this
Will we choose decency?
represented by Biden
And Democracy
Or will we choose hatred?
And Fascism?
Represented by Trump?
When
Sam Adams
Bought the 3-d print Glock
He tested security several times.
Smuggling the gun in
And re-entering the building.
Where he administered justice
To his lying scumbag frat bro
Darius Smith, iv.
When Darius Smith, IV
Sam’s College frat bro
stole 100 million dollars
2 million from him
he prayed that someone
would rescue his soul
as he blew him, Darius, away
as he ate dinner. with Sam’s
estranged wife.
Barbados, West Indies – March 4, 2007: A beach scene on the Caribbean Island of Barbados with a yellow lifeguard station and people enjoying the beach and the water.
On a winter’s day
In cold, dismal snowy DC
My thoughts often turn.
To Barbados.And the three wonderful years
I spent serving my country.
In Barbados, and the Eastern Caribbean.Recalling blissful days
Hanging out at the Hilton Hotel
With the love of my wife by my side.Sunday brunch then hitting the beach.
Drinking rum sours while watching people
Frolicking in the Blue Sea.
Visiting my other islands
once a month
Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts,
St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Meeting political leaders
Liming with the locals.
Listening to the steel drum band
Play as the sunsets
Over my secret Caribbean paradise.
Comment: My best tour in the Foreign Service was when I served as Deputy Pol/Econ Chief in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean (Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines) from 2007 to 2010. Liming is local jargon for having a drink.
An old Mother
Embraces her daughter
And son-in-law
Luminous tears
Flowing down her face
As she looked
At her children
Filled with love
A devoted humble
Guiding loving spirit
Smiling at her
These are the rules:
1) You must use the words I give in a poem or prose with no limits on length.
2) The words can be in any order and anywhere throughout the poem and can be any form of the word.
3) All entries must be posted in your portfolio and you must post the link in this forum, “Stormy’s poetry newsletter & contest” [ASR] by May 13, 2023.
4) The winner will get 3000 gift points and the poem will be displayed in this section of the newsletter the next time it is my turn to post (May 17, 2023)
The words are:
A mother embraces luminous tears devoted spirit humble guiding
Ode to Kombucha
Day 20 Trail of Tears – My Family Connection
