Flask, Rag, and Vest Fight COVID-19

Posted on 2020-03-25 by Mellow Curmudgeon

The standard advice to wash hands frequently is worthwhile but leaves many gaps. Goaded by the COVID-19 pandemic, I finally thought of a hack to fill the gaps. Sharing the hack is one of the few ways I can fight back against the pandemic.

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The standard advice to wash hands frequently is worthwhile but leaves many gaps. Suppose the restroom door swings inward, as it does in several markets I visit. However well I wash while in the restroom, I can’t leave it w/o grabbing a handle whose last grabber may not have washed enough (if at all) to get the virus off his hands. And so on.

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When I must go shopping, I now carry a small flask of isopropyl alcohol (the active ingredient in hand sanitizers) and an absorbent rag or washcloth. I can wipe my hands just before and/or after touching anything that might carry the virus. I don’t need to sprint to a wipe dispenser and then toss a used wipe onto the pile that is already overflowing a wastebasket (if there even is a wastebasket there).

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The flask and damp rag fit nicely in a pocket of my photographer-style vest. Don’t have or want such a vest? Appropriate outer pockets are on many gadget bags, gym bags, purses, and so on. Buying one may be easier than buying toilet paper.

haiku, photography, science

Cracks in a Facade

Posted on 2020-02-29 by Mellow Curmudgeon

As happens in many natural places, this stony mass presents a facade of barren sterility. Gripped by Earth’s gravity, the rock seems weighted down by its own mass. Then we look more closely.

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Mass ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #221

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Morose Monolith
|Sullen mass of stone,
|hosting only black lichen?
|Seeds and spores found cracks.

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flowers, haiku, love, photography

Widower’s Song #4

Posted on 2020-02-25 by Mellow Curmudgeon

The first three are haiku in a previous post. This new one is a tanka in response to a CDHK prompt. A vase with this special urn’s shape and colors would have pleased Edith, and that means a lot to me.

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Carpe Diem #1814 lost love

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haiku, history, humor, photography

Vertical Shoreline

Posted on 2020-02-21 by Mellow Curmudgeon

How can a shoreline be vertical? Well, steep cliffs can plunge nearly straight down into the sea. There may be a cave entrance right at the actual shoreline. Do we dare enter the cave? Perhaps (to borrow a few words from Patrick Jennings’ Challenge #220) a beautiful light awaits us there.

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Shoreline ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #220

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Is the sea at Capri’s shoreline still as clear now as it was when I was there in 1977? I hope so.

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While we’re on the subject of clarity, let’s note that it is not clear whether the eponymous goats really did live on ancient Capri. But it is clear that the island sited precursors of Mar-a-Lago for Imperial Rome’s fat tyrants.

From the outside, the Blue Grotto (Tiberius’ private pool) looks much like the (other?) grotto in my photo. The view from inside is entirely different.

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A cave entrance right at the shoreline can sometimes work magic.

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Blue Grotto (Capri) [edited image]

Capri Shoreline, Long Ago
|Goats traverse cliffs while
|pink whale swims in blue grotto.
|Naked emperor.

food, haiku, photography

I Dig This Challenge

Posted on 2020-02-132020-02-14 by Mellow Curmudgeon

Photographer-poet Patrick Jennings posts a weekly challenge to create something inspired by one of his photos and a single word. Challenge #219 is posted with a photo and an appropriate haiku (using the challenge word “dig”). Fortunately for me, it is OK to reuse Patrick’s splendid image in a haiga with my own haiku.

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Low Tide at Seaside Creek Beach
|To dig for clams is why
|we are here, beneath this sky.
|No clams? No problem!

Two Cheers 😀 😀

The first is for anybody who noticed that changing the haiku’s initial line

To dig for clams … ⇒ Clam digging …

would make the haiku comply with the 5-7-5 rule. The second is for anybody who noticed that the version of the initial line with 6 syllables has a better rhythm. The actual editing change was from 5 syllables to 6. Does that seem like an odd direction to move?

The outside story says that a haiku “is” a 3-line poem in blank verse with syllable counts 5, 7, and 5. While this story is oversimplified, it is still a good place to start. (Some haiku poets disagree.) The inside story is more complex. Various poets bend or break various rules at various times for various (and often good) reasons. Tho messier, the inside story is ultimately the better one. Just ask the clam digger who went home with an empty bucket but a full heart.

haiku, music

Love in Norway

Posted on 2020-02-06 by Mellow Curmudgeon

There are several good musical compositions that I hear too often because my radio station loves to air them. For years, Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite was like that. Then I heard one orchestra play it their (unique?) way, with deep love and infectious joy.

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Carpe Diem #1805 Introducing our new Theme … Love month

The lightly edited screenshot ending this post links to a performance by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. They love this music, and it shows. Near the end of the last movement, they even dance. When was the last time U saw classical musicians dance while performing?

fiction, humor

Weird Works Wanted in 2020

Posted on 2020-01-15 by Mellow Curmudgeon

While the image for this post may be funny or offensive (or both), it also hints at possibilities for responding to a call for submissions of weird stories for Volume 3 of an annual anthology. (Previously published work is OK if the author retained the rights.) The deadline is 2020-03-31.

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Volumes 1 and 2 of The Rabbit Hole have many good stories and some gems. Links to those volumes are in the call for submissions for Volume 3, which I will just call “RH-3” below. Here is an excerpt:

This year marks a new departure, in which we explore how ‘weird’ fits into a genre. And we’re kicking off with ‘romance’. Do your aliens fall in love? Is your young hero consumed, swallowed and digested by desire? Does your ageing husband bring his passion back to life only to find it’s not what he thought it would be? The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps you never read romance. Perhaps you’ve never written it. So much the better! Who knows what lies outside the box? • • •

I’ll stop there. You’ve got the idea. In fact I’m sure you’ve got plenty, and you don’t need me to give you more. Simply bear in mind that ‘weird’ doesn’t always mean outlandish – it can be subtle, discreet, even furtive. Witty too, or burlesque – we’re always open to humour. Or even, at a stretch, humor. We look forward to discovering whatever means you choose to warp, subvert, disfigure, disguise or otherwise befuddle the concept of romance.

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Image cropped from meme as posted 2015-10-07 by TheAnswerWasAlwaysMoreLube

I know. A red light district is a weird place to look for romance. Maybe U can make it work for RH-3. Maybe a closer look at the image will suggest something else to try.

The line formed by Alice’s straight spine meets the line formed by her legs somewhere under that flouncy skirt. Nobody on Earth has such long thighs. Hmmm. Maybe Alice is a Martian spy, practicing her skills before trying to seduce Earthian leaders into betraying our planet. (They already do that, but not in ways that would benefit Martian colonists.) Maybe interplanetary espionage will be kerbolixed by interplanetary romance when Alice moves on to the corridors of power.

I can’t think of a good way to use the idea of Alice as a Martian spy with a conflict between love and duty. (It would not suffice to write a hackneyed conflict story and tack on some extraneous weirdness about how an Earthian and a Martian get it on.) It is unlikely that RH-3 will include anything by me. That’s no great loss, but it gets worse. The medium with a laptop turned out to be a fraud, so RH-3 is also unlikely to include Lewis Carroll’s posthumously written Alice in Amsterdam. Unless U can step up.