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I was first in line at our local precinct for early voting. In this climate of hateful repressions, it is best to get your vote in as soon as possible.

To escape the mess our country is making of the world, I escape into drawing and writing. The Dancing Rat page is finished along with the poem to go with it.

The Dancing Rat

The Dancing Rat has come to town

  amid the leaves, all falling down.

Kicking up heels as he slides along,

  he waves his arms while singing a song.

Children come running soon as they hear

  to toss him some coins and loudly cheer.

The Dancing Rat collects what he can

  with his trusted tool shaped like a hand.

When all the money is safe in his sack                             

  he gives a low bow, then turns his back.

And travels on further down the road

  toward the Old Pub to lighten his load.

Probably will work on the poem some more to smooth it out, but you get the idea….

Earlier this week when Trump firmly turned his back on Ukraine, I went online to check out a charity called, White Stork. It furnishes first aid packages to soldiers on the front lines. I donated several hoping to save some of the bloodshed inflicted by Russia via the United States and Elon Musk. Our promises mean very little to the world now. Trust will come back slowly, if at all.

When I wake in the morning, I see this first thing on the night stand.

Then glancing up, this, questioning when I will move over to make room and say, “Good Morning.”

There is not much else new this week. Pretty much staying by myself. I need to get back to writing more pieces for the book about Letters. And in between some additional 100 word fiction pieces. The following one is the first in a series that will all be 100 words and have stairs be a main part of the story. I think dollhouse stairs will be next. Did I tell you that 100 word fiction pieces are called, “drabbles”? Isn’t that dumb! Why not simply “100 Word Story”? Anyway, I only brought this one dreamed up over Bloody Marys to life because I loved the three main characters almost as much as the dusty shelf of canned peaches. My lunch companion took all my words and extra characters to write her own version of what happens next. But this was enough of a story for me.

Stair Stories No. 1        S. Webster

The best hatreds take time and nurturing, then only seconds to let go.

A minute passed since George pulled his eyes away from the computer to watch his mother fall. With her arms flailing past the dust-covered shelves of canned peaches, she gasped her last breath. It was followed by the thud of her soft excessive weight landing not five feet from his chair.

Looking up from the twisted body, he saw Aunt Agnes at the top of the stairs.

Peering into the darkness she was saying, “Well now, that was a nasty fall.”

“Shouldn’t we call someone?”

“I already have.”

                                                                                                     the end

 

Well, that’s all I have for this week…and I can hear a sigh of relief coming through the internet. Next week will be better. At least let’s hope so.

Right now I am fighting a sudden urge to cut my hair with manicure scissors, pour a stiff drink before checking in the mirror, and drawing on eyebrows that have disappeared somewhere in the last ten years. Then I remember seeing someone recently who did that and is looking like a character out of a Stephen King story. I am talking about the eyebrows here. Not the odd haircut. And it is hard in an elderly neighborhood to tell who has had a stiff drink.

Obviously time to sign off.

Til later….

 

 

 

 

 

I finally had all the dead ferns and weeds removed from the pots and brought the birch sticks back out. I probably should just keep them there year round. Potted plants have expectations of receiving water at a quicker rate than I seem capable of thinking about it. I thought of buying more of these “birch twigs” from Amazon, but it seems even dead sticks have gone up in price.

No point in looking for dead branches in this neighborhood. Seems that any unsightly-ness is camouflaged, or attempted to be disguised at any rate. Note the latest attempt to cover a port-a-john on my morning walks around the block. I suppose covering the outhouse with plastic flowers is a distraction from all the other construction necessities surrounding it.

It has a bizarre resemblance to a woodsy wedding chapel…or confessional. Anyway, it makes me smile in it’s attempt to hide its function.

Needing some calm in what appears more and more like the fall of the “United” States, I have returned to my sketchbooks. First up is the Concertina Poetry Book. remember, I left off with the frog and his camel. Well now I having a dancing rat come to town. Writing the rhyming verse will be fun to do.

Since this last image I have added the town and the road going in. The pocket hand wrench clutching the rats money bag is interesting to me. Where did that idea come from? The toe sticking out of his shoe indicates that there is not much reward for dancing your way into town. I do get caught up in these drawings that beg for rhyming words and will blame the last audio book of the Harry Potter series. That voice of Jim Dale’s bringing the story by Rowling to life is fun to listen to. I love a story read to me. My mother would read all the classics that were illustrated by N C Wyeth to us…only so many chapters per night as I recall. She would be amused that nowadays I am listening to books on my telephone while getting 8,000 steps in per day.

Now it is way past lunchtime and I need to heat up the latest attempt at soup…a tasty concoction of onion, celery, carrots, black beans, chicken broth. and one bag of Mexican street corn flavored rice. Of course there are spices and herbs tossed in to give it that restaurant flavor that someone may have picked it up as a take out. I have to say that while at the store the other day, I bought a can of Campbells Tomato Soup. I wanted to add milk instead of water and then heat it up to go with a grilled cheese sandwich. I tossed the soup out! There was no tomato taste…but something more like the inside of a can was all I could distinguish. Whatever the flavor was, it was not bad enough to make you think you’d been poisoned, but only could be if you continued.

Better go. Lunch to eat and a poem to write.

Til Later…

The fog seems to want to cling more to the lowlands. Mornings are clearer or maybe crisper is a better word. Hay bales pop up wherever the machine drops them. I can appreciate the randomness of that.

Morning walks are lovely. So quiet…me, birds, and the occasional deer. Then there is that ever-changing morning sky!

I went to the library writing time of pure silence. No one was there but me. I worked on getting a new short story into one of the forms of short fiction. Later in the week, I made it exactly 100 words. The title and author do not count as words. I like how it came out. My very first murder. I titled it Stairs No. 1. Now I can do an entire series of short stories centered around stairs. Have you ever read Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space The classic look at how we experience intimate places.? My copy from graduate school was dropped into a bathtub by a friend I loaned it to. And since then has become more impressive with all the discoloration and ripply pages. It is wonderful to hold.

I asked one of the men I have coffee with (a trained architect, now my age) if he had read the book. It seemed it should have been required reading for students of architecture. No, he had not. So I bought him a copy from Amazon. The cover is not near so romanticized as my copy that is all grey shadows of angles, but the text is the same.

From the back cover:

Thirty years since its first publication in English, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.

My copy is from 1994.

How he describes the feeling of going upstairs contrasted with those when we descend downward is so spot on. The downward travel of basement stairs is there in Stairs No. 1.

Anyway, my joining poetry groups and a recent foray into time with those writing prose has made it quite clear that my tribe is more likely my own company. Did you know that poets want to talk about the importance of getting published? Which actually means someone a fraction of the poets age decides if there is enough space in their next publication for the words that may have meant every emotion one could possibly expend through their pen.

And the prose people were similarly focused on what sounded like following a prescribed formula for getting an agent to notice their next best selling novel.

So here I am. Still planning on going to the poetry reading this week…just expecting less in meaningful dialogue. Did you just see that word “dialogue”? One of the poets last month took the ue off the end! I wanted to ask if that was correct. But looked it up instead. You can lop off the ue if you want. But it still looks like a misspelling.

Okay, so I retreat into drawing and stitching to get more comfortable. Nearing the very last page in the Basket Gathering Book, I added the image of the use of Jed’s last bit of willow before he passed away last month. The basket makers put it to good use with talk of Jed and how much his kindness and knowledge affected us all over many, many years. I will turn the page and fill in the last of this book before making another one to continue on with my escapes into memory.

Til later….

 

Sad news from Australia this week that Inga Hunter has passed away. Thirteen years ago I got to spend time with her in her studio. What an artist! Never a moment without passions flowing through her work. She was a wonderful inspiring student in my workshops…always pushing boundaries. She will be missed!

Inga gave me the chicken who drives the children in my Cow Story Book about the perils of collecting.

And a small robe I bought from her hangs in the entry with many other pieces from Australia.

I listened to the world leaders speaking at the United Nations this week and was appalled by the presidents contribution. I so hate what the ignorance and bigotry of our country has wrought upon the entire world. So back to the installations…My opening reception for one was quite successful.

Title: The World Has Had Enough!

I made pumpkin muffins and squash soup yesterday. The butternut squash cost $2.48 a pound! Insane prices for something we used to try to give away. I added a whole apple to the soup because it was beginning to wish it did not come home with me. Plus a yellow onion, some herbs, spices, etc. I made the mistake of assuming the cayenne pepper had a fitted sprinkler top and ended up dumping too much in the soup. Had to add more half and half to help make it edible. If it still makes me gasp, I might just add pasta. It could be time I simply give up cooking. I am beginning to remind myself of the hostess in my short story titled, Loose Threads….

……One time Dora tried a quiche. She liked the word. It sounded sophisticated. So she looked up a recipe and included some of her own ingredients to the frozen pie crust. It wasn’t as good as she thought it would be. Maybe the half can each of cream corn and green beans were too much to add to the cheese, egg, spinach and ham that the recipe called for. Later in the kitchen scraping the plates, Dora assumed it must have been the green beans clinging to a wet pie crust that was the reason no one asked for her recipe. Maybe today her scones with just a small amount of crushed corn flakes worked in and served with a rosemary flavored honey butter would be a better offering…..

I saw a Canadian commentator talk about this game and the teenagers who designed it. He thought they should be up for the Nobel Peace Prize. Needless to say I ordered the deluxe model because it is completely made in Canada and part of their profits go to charity. I am contrasting these boys to our American counterpart…seven Cornell University rapists who only have to write an essay about their experience. This was the best those men in charge could come up with as suitable punishment. My country makes me sick right now and I am quite convinced that I won’t be around to see corrective measures being made.

But as Annie says, The sun will come out tomorrow…

Til later…I am going to tidy up and mix a Negroni later.