haiga, haiku, tanka

When He Pulls Strings

Dancer’s wooden mask: leather hinges swing open. Drum throbs; shaman chants. ~ ~ ~ ~ Hinges swing shut as dance ends: hidden face; revealed spirit. Photo © Trustees of the British Museum ~ ~ ~ ~ Khan Academy | Transformation Masks – Gray button (upper left corner) reveals widgets, – – above post (on phone) […]

humor, language, photography

Ornithocardiac Irony

I want an illustration for a short story that features a heart attack.  The image should be like an abstract expressionist painting of the idea of a heart attack, not a stock image.  While I don’t paint, I do take (and often edit) photos.  Can I edit one of my photos for my story?  Yes.  It’s a birdbath photo, of course.

growing old, health, How To, humor

To Age Gracefully … or Not

While Freud’s quarrelsome trio was speculative and oversimplified, he was onto something: “the” mind may be a loose association of multiple partial minds (I’ll call them “miniminds”) that jostle for conscious attention and sometimes squabble.  Here is a comic misadventure due to one of my own miniminds that segues to another minimind’s way to treat toenail fungus.  BTW, it’s all true.

history, politics

The REAL Thin Blue Line

While defending the US Capitol on 2021-01-06, police officer Mike Fanone was dragged down its steps, beaten, zapped with a taser, and nearly killed.  Apologists for mob rule (provided the mob is white) were soon rebranding the rioters as tourists who were merely rowdy.  Now Fanone is defending the truth at great personal cost.

flowers, humor, love, music, photography

Daylily & Chicory & Nat King Cole

Photographing wildflowers in my yard inspired new lyrics for a song about a couple “too young” to be in love.  While the original sweet lyrics came true for some couples, I did not marry young.  I still like that song’s lovely music and calm questioning of what “they” say, so I am glad to have lyrics that fit my situation.  Wish I could sing.

haiga, haiku, photography

Optimists, Some w/o Neurons

Being rooted makes plants easier to photograph than animals, but plants do twitch with the breeze and ruin careful compositions.  Cautiously optimistic, I shoot repeatedly and hope a few images catch the air’s calm moments.  Sometimes optimists win, with a haiku as well as images.

How To, humor

Trust, But Verify

Ronald Reagan’s remark about arms control is not an oxymoron, as I learned while coping with the discovery that my phone-friendly blog was not so friendly after all.  Able to handle mobile calls with a simple flip phone (and unable to type with my thumbs), I had seen no reason to have a smartphone and had trusted the WordPress previewer to warn me if a blog post would look bad there.  But then I bought a smartphone.