With more shades of green
than I can easily count,
trees hail Labor Day.
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Late Summer
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.
July 4, Then and Now
Started in 1776!
|Flag waved in fresh breeze.
|Holding truths self-evident,
|a nation broke free.
|~ ~ ~ ~
|Our dream fought to be real, with
|liberty and justice for all.
 |
 |
Ended soon after 2025?
|Limp flag. Stifling heat.
|None but straight white wealthy males
|created equal.
|~ ~ ~ ~
|Fascist crook will make it so,
|if we all submit to him.
With some revisions, the pair of tanka that I posted for Independence Day in 2024 is still all-too appropriate now, half a year into Trump 2.0.
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Flag Day in 2025
On 2025-02-14, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY-24) introduced a bill to make Flag Day a federal holiday while renaming it “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day” to recognize DJT as “the founder of America’s Golden Age.” So says the press release.
In most years, Flag Day is little more than 06-14. This year is different, not only because of Tenney’s epic butt licking. The 250-th anniversary of the founding of the US Army is on 2025-06-14, so it would be appropriate to commemorate that milestone. The same leather-lunged patriots who recite from the Declaration of Independence on 07-04 could recite from Tom Paine’s Common Sense, which boosted recruitment and retention when the new army was near disintegration soon after its founding. Commemoration could include modest parades like those typical of Independence Day.
The immodest parade planned by DJT for Washington DC has $45 million as the lowest cost estimate I have seen. (Does that include a realistic estimate of the cost of repairing streets damaged by tank treads?) My own Flag Day celebration is unlike the extravagant displays typical of dictatorships. My flag is up, and a flag-themed wreath adorns my front door. There’s also a new yard sign.
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Memorial Quandary
Ordinarily, I would display my flag over the Memorial Day weekend and try to think of expressions of pride and gratitude not already ruined by repetition. This year is different.
Height of Spring
Reach up to the sun?
Not that far, just far enough.
Photosynthesis
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April Gemstones
Red maples flower
and greet returning warmth with
rubies in the sky.
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Requiem for Diversity
Big and little stones
could lean on each other for
mutual support.
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Patience
Unseen for millennia,
a mass of rose quartz waited,
deep in the Earth.
a mass of rose quartz waited,
deep in the Earth.
Tectonic plates collided, raising mountains.
Erosion shattered masses of rock and scattered the shards.
Unseen for centuries,
a shard of the rose quartz waited
in a jumble of rocks, roots, and soil.
Unseen for years,
the shard of the rose quartz waited
while runoff undercut sides of a drainage ditch.
After removing debris from the ditch,
I cleaned and kept the shard.
Seen at last!
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Another Dawn
Soon after solstice,
angry year nears end with hope:
“Peace on Earth, Good Will …”
Early morning sunlight can make a frosted window (or clean snow) sparkle like myriad tiny diamonds. I have tried and failed to photograph that look. Editing one recent try produced an image that struck me as interesting and subtly hopeful, appropriate for a Xmas greeting after a grueling year.
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Breeze Over Sunlit Pavement
Wounded bird in flight
casts shadow of fear and hope?
No, autumn leaf falls.
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Not in Nature
Cattle breed with swine,
just in someone’s playful mind.
Belted Galloway pigs!
Nature~ Pic and a Word Challenge #390
The farm near my house does raise Belted Galloway cattle; it does not raise any pigs. My guess is that someone wanted to decorate the farm’s entrance with an outdoor sculpture of a Belted Galloway cow, then found one of a Hampshire pig at a flea market or garage sale. Close enough: black-white-black (but with white forelegs). BTW, I found an image of a pig with black-white-black arranged just as on the cattle. Nature can sometimes be playful, too.
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Two Workarounds
§1: Tree to Stone to Tree to Stone
“I must grow.”
“I can’t move. Sorry.”
“No problem.”
§2: Me to Knee and Up Again
Kneeling on one knee to capture the image for §1 was no problem for me, but my old legs stiffened in the time it took to get a few photos of the tree’s workaround for the stone. To get up again, I depended on my own workaround.
After a few scares with stiffness from kneeling and balance on slopes earlier this year, I had bought a monopod and then replaced the monopod’s wrist lanyard with a clip that was intended for attaching a key ring to a belt loop.
Having taken the monopod on the walk leading to §1, I extended two of its four sections and used it to get up w/o drama. When collapsed and clipped to a belt loop, the monopod leaves my hands free for wiping sweat or taking photos. Like a good assistant, it’s there when I need it and unobtrusive when I don’t. Remembering to take it when I go for a walk is the hard part.
Stone ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #387
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Repurposed Home
With mollusc long gone,
this abandoned shell becomes
beachcomber’s treasure.
Abandoned ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #384
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Independence Day – 2 Tanka
Started in 1776!
|Flag waves in fresh breeze.
|Holding truths self-evident,
|our nation slogs on.
|~ ~ ~ ~
|The dream fights to be real, with
|liberty and justice for all.
|
|
Ended in 2024?
|Limp flag. Stifling heat.
|None but straight white wealthy males
|created equal.
|~ ~ ~ ~
|Fascist crook will make it so,
|if the voters let him win.
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Petrified
Nesting kestrel turns
to see whose approach it hears.
Medusa quits birding.
Long after making a small cairn from these three stones, I noticed a slight resemblance to a nesting kestrel. Long after that, I recalled the old myth about what happened to people who looked at Medusa’s face. Kudos to Medusa for seeing the effect of her hobby and changing course. She switched to making stoneware pottery.
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Impatient Red Maple
Two leaves did not wait
for cool nights after short days.
Turned on Father’s Day.
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Mellow Curmudgeon 