I had nothing new to say for this Memorial Day. Disappointed when people trivialize the holiday with recycled platitudes or co-opt it for their own agendas, I had expected to observe this day only with my flag in 2023. Then I saw a post by Robert Reich and remembered a quote from Voltaire.
Author: Mellow Curmudgeon
My blog touches on many things, often with humor and/or haiku. I have been a scientist; an engineer; an Alzheimer’s caregiver.
Rhododendron Rescue in 2023
Where I live, it’s normal to get a big snowstorm around the middle of March. It’s not normal to have so much heavy wet snow on a lopsided rhododendron rooted in such soft thawed soil that the whole bush topples over. Could it saved?
Riff on a Quote from a Song
From a cloudless far horizon …
to a gap in dense fall foliage …
to an old window covering …
« There is a crack in everything. »
« That’s how the light gets in. »
~ Anthem by Leonard Cohen ~
I quoted from the song the way I and some others remember it. The phrase “a crack” is repeated in some transcriptions of the first quoted line, but the line scans better w/o the repetition.
Cracks ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #341
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Deciduous Trees
Lifeless? No, leafless.
They hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
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Be(e) in the Moment ~ 😉
Learn from the past and
be ready for the future.
Live in the present.
Choosing images to go with the lines of my aphoristic haiku was easy (for the past), serendipitous (for the present), and beset with false starts (for the future).
I remembered one of the photos I took among the ruins of ancient Greek temples at Paestum in the 1970-s. So stark, so sad, so in the past. Dwelling on the past would rot the mind. Learn from it and move on.
The future is fluid, unpredictable, possibly dystopian. Plan and prepare, but be ready to change plans if an unlikely future unfolds. (It will.) I wanted an image that was noncommital but not just blurry. After several false starts, I took a tight closeup of swirling brushwork in a small painting by an unknown artist, bought decades ago at a charity sale.
Wanting something joyful and ephemeral for the present, I culled some photos of flowering trees taken in 2020. One jumped out. The camera catches a bee hovering for a moment where it enhances a larger overall composition. The admonition to “be in the moment” is like the haiku’s final line and could be tweaked to give this post a title that winks at the final image.
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Mystic’s Math
Simple shapes
sing silent songs
for those who listen.
Best known today for his theorem about right triangles, the ancient mystic Pythagoras was also big on numbers. How do they relate to each other in pure math? How might they help explain the natural world? How does changing the length of a lyre string affect its pitch? Pythagoras and friends took the first tentative steps toward understanding the physics of music.
While many haiku poets don’t count syllables, those that do often abide by rules that Pythagoras would have liked. In the traditional 5-7-5 form, the total number of syllables is prime (as are 5 and 7). Likewise in the shorter 3-5-3 form. Prime numbers were a big deal to ancient mathematicians. They are still a big deal for encrypting credit card numbers in e-commerce.
Pythagoras would have liked the syllable counts 3-4-5 in this post’s haiku for a different reason. They form the smallest Pythagorean triple. (A right triangle could have sides that are 3, 4, and 5 units long.) While most triples like this are too big or lopsided for 3-line poems, somebody might use 6-8-10.
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Persistent Purple
No longer pretty,
potted tulips catch my eye
until petals fall.
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Wanderlust
Planted crocus long ago,
only in their beds, U know.
Staying there was such a yawn,
some went forth to grace the lawn.
Call this doggerel if U must,
but I hold a sacred trust.
I will seize each fleeting chance
to be as cheeky as my plants.
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Shockwaves?
Water in glassware
plays prism with morning light.
Serendipity.
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Internal Reflections
Sunlight on the pine
caroms off lens surfaces
and shines from within.
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The Tortoise and the Light
February. The old tortoise grumbles about being so late with urgent or seasonal chores, then sees how light falls in yet another way on the Xmas garland that is still up. Hmmm. Is the old tortoise still up for photography in dim light?
Waldo Lemonsucker & Rule of Thirds — Part 2 of 2
Where there are rules, there are people like Waldo, more intent on abiding by the rules than accomplishing the mission, even when the rules are oversimplified guidelines w/o the force of law. It’s hard to formulate a rule of thumb in a way that is simple to learn and remember but adequate for the real world. One example is the Rule of Thirds in photography. Let’s try for a less exception-riddled formulation.
Waldo Lemonsucker & Rule of Thirds — Part 1 of 2
Where there are rules, there are people like Waldo, more intent on abiding by the rules than accomplishing the mission, even when the rules are oversimplified guidelines w/o the force of law. It’s hard to formulate a rule of thumb in a way that is simple to learn and remember but adequate for the real world. One example is the Rule of Thirds in photography. Let’s try for a less exception-riddled formulation.
Vocal Visitor
Caw from unseen bird.
Crows are louder and shriller.
Could be a raven.
Overlay © John Cobb | Unsplash
While my own sightings are few and long ago, I believe ravens still inhabit the region where I live and am confident that I can distinguish the croaking caw of a raven from the canonical caw of a crow. (Don’t hike much any more; still big on alliteration.) I also have some of indigenous folklore’s admiration of ravens, so I celebrated hearing one with a haiku. That posed a problem.
An ordinary image of a raven would not work for my haiku about an unseen bird thought to be a raven. I considered posting the haiku by itself, but I like images. Hmmm. I can photograph the nondescript view toward where the call seemed to originate. Can I then find and tweak an image of a raven to make a ghostly overlay that fits the mood of the haiku? Yes!
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Dusted for Fingerprints
Snow on lawn.
Tracks from last mowing,
seen again.
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Shadow Song
Gourds bask in sunlight;
shadows sing a silent song.
They both contribute.
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Mellow Curmudgeon 