'Twas the last blog post before Christmas

when all through the house,

clutter reigned, but luckily no mouse. 

 While at home, to herself, the writer asks,

 (therefore no need to wear any cloth masks)

will there soon be heard massive outrage and clatter?

We've wanted so much change that matters!

Yet four such difficult years are now ending.

Give us fortitude for the future that's pending.

On to equality, fairness, compassion!

On putting democracy back into fashion! 

Stay safe, stay brave and stay healthy, too.

Be grateful I can't sell this to get wealthy! Whew!

 

 post #522

not a Christmas photo, but I'll try for one this year

This was a trial Christmas photo one year, in Denver, but it happens to be a favorite of mine. Can't remember what in the world I was saying to them....

          We have had a single day this year with visible snow on the ground.  So far.

 

 

 This last photo is from a few days later, going for a walk across the road from my place, on the neighbor's hay field. My house is sort of visible through the trees.

All best wishes for the season to everyone, but please stay patient and believe that we will need to wear masks for many more months. More than a few people I know well have had to deal with the virus. I just found out yesterday that, sadly, my niece, in Los Angeles, is one of them.  I'm so sorry for the hardships this pandemic brings to people across the world. America has not done as well as it could have. Different leadership will have a big impact, and thank goodness, as I have said before, for the hard work of so many health provider teams everywhere. I hope they are getting their vaccine pronto.    

I also hope you enjoyed my poetic effort, with more emphasis on the effort part than on the poetic. Once I got started, I couldn't let it go. 

I'm not going to do a post next Sunday -- will take a week off, especially since no one will have time for it. But I'll be back in the new year! Again, all best wishes.

pausing for a poem

post #484
      For making sense of these serious, shifting and unsettled times, it definitely helps to have writing friends who use their words to respond to what goes on around us.  I'm fortunate to share in the poems, essays, songs, novels, memoirs, and fiction manuscripts from the monthly writer's group I've been part of for over 25 years. We stay surprised, grateful for the work that surfaces in this supportive milieu. In addition, we rely on each other's perspectives about anything.
      A recent poem George Ella Lyon shared with all of us gave me the idea to feature it on my blog, with a few photos of mine that could have a connection. I next hoped the other five of us would share some words over the next weeks or months. I'd like to add photos when it works to do so. I look forward to seeing what we come up with! 

      When George Ella recently sent us all this poem, she included a short paragraph with it, which follows:
          Thank you [all] so much for responding to my poem in such a deep & thoughtful way. I wrote it in the early fall of 2008 when I was at the Mary Anderson Center as that financial crisis was unfolding. I was concerned, of course, but I had a meadow, abloom with fall flowers, to walk in. I had the birds, the butterflies & dragonflies, the lake, the woods. I experienced such presence and consolation. Ever since then I've had that meadow in my heart to return to. 
          May we all have such places. May we honor them & each other.

THE MEADOW DOES NOT KNOW
about the stock market.
Today she is worth
exactly what she was worth
yesterday, a year ago, at creation.                            

I don’t mean property value,
taxable assets. I mean
milkweed and copper moths
honeybees, cow vetch,
king snakes. Meadow life
is not money. What rises
and falls here are stems
and flowers, leaves and fruit.
No zigzag line of profit and panic
but the great wheel turning.
Here God gives of her
extravagance and here, like
flicker, viceroy, dragonfly
we come into our inheritance.


  

                     
                George Ella, thank you.

responses to last week's threats about war

post #354

       This week I want to speak up from within poetry and photography. I want to lament some of the current fashion for bully tactics, name calling and contemplation of bombs and annililation. Many of us are not in the least amused by fruitless threats of warfare. There are always other options, some requiring knowledege and thought-through plans, ones that may not show instant results but which have more of a chance for staying power. Other writers can lay out these options with more coherence than I possess, but, at this point in time, as a citizen of this nation, I am feeling compelled to draw on my art, so to speak, to try to make  some sense and to support compassion in the face of greed.
           Last week my monthly writers group met, in Lexington, and I was very moved by this poem that Martha Gehringer had written. So I asked her if I could share it, with a few photos of mine. Thank you, Martha, for your poetry.          Poetry and imaging help me to see things in new ways, to find the hope that is always somewhere there, and to reach across the stuck parts of our lives. Thank you, artists all.

 

Antecedent

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them,

that their talk of appeasement with North Korea

will not work, they only understand one thing.”

 Trump Tweet, 2 hrs ago

The morning before something big—

some big thing like this that looms,

we take in the view from where we sit—

the late summer garden, green still,

though bedraggled.  Our limelight

hydrangeas blooming soft against the sky—

 

against a looming sky.  See how they have

gone from chartreuse to white to pinkish now—

How they hang—heavy—wet mop heads—

mop heads they are called.  And the arc

of them on their weakish stems such a lovely,

lovely, lovely lank.  Beyond them, all still

green, the ivy leaves, the clover leaves,

the broad and promising leaves of violets.

Come Spring, they will (at least for now

we still believe they will) make purple flower.

The tall grasses in the neighbor’s field

are full of what cannot be seen but surely

surely is there.  Yes. 

Nonetheless. 

Yes. 

Photos have the first say on this third of May

post #240
       By first say, I mean, of course, what images most capture my fancy -- before I determine what will be in the week's blog post.  The verdict just now is that it's gonna be PEOPLE.  In my view, the change of seasons wouldn't be as beautiful without them. 
       Recently I showed the trillium on the rock photos. I saw them first with Karen and Doug on 4/18/15 (see post #238).  Today's photos are on 4/28, ten days later.  I am with Debbie and Lucy, all three of us way into photography.  

trillium still blooming, ten days later!

tricky lighting, patient friends

       I do prefer to show anything in context, a witness to where I am at the time and patient with the lighting.  This inclination of mine must have something to do with my over-active curiosity gene!

 These great guys cleared a majorly clogged drainage pipe during those days of heavy rain and saturated ground.  Jason and James, thank you for a job well done!  They are both juniors in high school.  Here is what it looked like before they were called to the scene: 

       My next people are gathered in a dry inner space -- within the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol.  My friend George Ella Lyon is being inducted as the next Poet Laureate of our state, for a two year term!  The Kentucky Arts Council orchestrates the ceremony; the governor speaks and six former P.L.s get to read a poem.  George Ella gave the main address, and soon after we all went outside because of a fire drill!  Congratulations to all, especially when poetry can rule for the day, Kentucky Writers Day, April 24th every year, the anniversary of the birth of Kentuckian Robert Penn Warren in 1905.
      

Frank X. Walker, the "retiring" P.L.

      Now two photos of George Ella -- I am sharing the first one EVEN THOUGH it is not what it could be. I love her expression, but I did not hold my camera still enough to capture it with the clarity I would have preferred.  However, she is acknowledging her family at the beginning of her remarks, and I think she looks loving and happy, so I am not able to dismiss this photo entirely.  The second photo of her could also be sharper, but it is the only one I took at that time.  (Gosh, honesty can be interesting but also difficult to own up to.)

      Last set of photos today: my neighbor Natalie was showing me her baby goats, especially this chocolate one.  She and I have just been to a community theater performance, but she was in her barn outfit in a flash so she could show me the new goat.  I love it.  Thanks for coming with me Sunday, Natalie, and letting me take your photo with the baby goat and the baby rabbits.

CUTE - and quick!

final four, even without any UK basketball!

post #235
        Life has been full court around here - if I can count the only-5-years-old washing machine that died, the tire I slashed by driving over some debris along the ridge, the laptop that continues to be too full, and the bushels of teeny tiny ants that are welcoming spring on my kitchen counter.  So I thought today I would post several final four selections of photos from my recent past, to celebrate the tournament of life, without the stress/adrenalin pump of only one winner....
      The first fun was time with two grandkids and a visit to the Denver zoo. I didn't make many photos during the visit, but here are four images I am happy to share. Already I am a winner for just being there with them!

 
          

eye to eye with a tortoise! 

      Next, I was honored to be part of an arts presentation in Lexington, at the newly renovated Friends Meeting House -- an event that had been the dream of the cellist.  Two poets and this photographer joined her to share music by Bach, with poems and periods of silence interspersed, and with some of my photos on display that connected to the poems.  We were grateful so many people came, even though the event, planned many months ago, took place during one of University of Kentucky's tournament games... 

audience fans and relations -- and a favorite photo of mine and a great t-shirt

The cellist is Roberta, center, with Melva Sue, left, and Judy, right.

 

        Besides basketball in Kentucky, it has been time to check for spring: Four of us went looking for early flowers, especially hepatica, and for remembered early signs of spring.  We even walked as far as the chimney in the woods, looking for daffodils that I'm sure I saw in  other years there.  But there were none!!  I will be checking in 10 days to see if they are irradicated for some reason or just late.  There were still treasures to be found, however, and stay tuned for additional photos in a few weeks, including guest photos of what we found.

look for the photographer in this photo, and in the next one....

         OK, now for the fourth and final round today - four photos from a fine eightieth birthday party for June McDaniel, Saturday afternoon!  I got my flat tire on the way over, but arrived in time for a fine feast and delicious cake.  My thanks, as always, to this family for taking me in and always, always making me feel so welcome.  

    This next photo could be called having your cake and eating it, too:

      I do want to thank the three young men in a white pick-up truck who kindly stopped to change my tire -- the first vehicle to come by.  I love that I live where that happens.  We are all winners when community is strong.

Poets win!

post #233
       Biggest news in Kentucky this week??  Well, just today, maybe, it is that our University of Kentucky basketball team still hasn't lost a game this season.  However, in writing and reading and poetry circles, it is definitely the great news that a name often mentioned on this blog,  GEORGE ELLA LYON,  has been appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky!!  Clicking on her name will bring up a wonderful write-up about her, and the photo they use is very good, even if I didn't take it myself.  Congratulations to George Ella  -- and to the UK basketball team.  Such happy news.
         This week has needed its happy news, since

• I went five days without the internet, until 11 a.m. today,
• which led me to notice a few hours ago that our Sen. McConnell is still dragging his feet on the appointment of Loretta Lynch as the new Attorney General, for no good reason,
• and our state legislature has done very little while in session.
• I am in the middle of a case of laryngitis which makes me sound horrible on the telephone, where I needed to be quite a bit in order to get my internet back on.
• I did have a wonderful visit with my son and his family last weekend, and I did have a dentist appointment and a haircut once I returned, 
• and my writers group met on Friday, in Lexington, where we fetted George Ella with laughter and tears and a cake (thanks, Martha!) and some fabulous fruit (thanks, Leatha!) and our usual sharing of words we have been working on. 

        So I am going to do here today what I had planned to do last week, which is to share an earlier blog of mine, #122, in honor of the one of the beauties of winter, now soon over.  I hope you will have time to revisit my homage -- to our wood cook stove -- which follows.

        Here's to happy news whenever and wherever you find it and can share it.

post #122

     
      In honor of chilly and icy weather, I decided to share photos of a wonderful member of our household staff -- the wood cook stove that was in the house when we bought the place forty years ago.  I have been known to take the stove for granted, but it's usually of great interest when someone visits our home for the first time.  We have it connected via a stove pipe to its chimney in the winter.  In the summer, however, we take out the stove pipe and push the stove up against the wall behind it as a way to provide additional space for summer comings and goings.  We don't rely on it for cooking, but we can boil water on it, cook potatoes or cornbread in the oven, or keep a pot of soup warm all afternoon -- if it is cold enough outside to make it worthwhile to build a fire.
      In the following photos, our kitchen area is close behind me.
      

the stove in use today, water boiling and a pan of water providing steam into the dry heated air

firebox on the left, oven in the middle, and, formerly, a water tank on the right, which, unfortunately, rusted out even before our time and doesn't seem easily replaceable

oven door  --  the gauge isn't actually all that accurate

The wood goes on this side, so my husband cuts it to fit the size of the opening.

To see what is behind the white door on the left, see the next photo.

wood burning in the top, ashes falling to the bottom, drawer comes out for periodic emptying

close-up from the last photo

wood in, lid still open

Here's a fire from last week, wood burning hot.  Often a slower fire can last the night.

yes, indeed

My husband, Frank, took this next photo Saturday morning, at one of the waterfalls.  Thanks!

       

    Photos two years ago of this same waterfall are on my blog here.  John Flavell took them, and today I want to thank him again for sharing the photos and for enjoying using our wood stove so very much.  I can also share that yesterday John won first place at the Kentucky News Photographers Association for the Best News Picture Story/Essay -- on the aftermath and recovery of West Liberty following the March 2nd tornado.  Bravo, John!! Click here to see these winning photos.