A Trinet
Shower remodel
Found tiles
Sourced from ancient yard sale treasures
Piecemealed together with love and abandon
Grandpa’s house
Approaching antiquity
Safeguarding today
Slice of Life – Shower Tiling Finished
Poetry Friday – A Love Letter to 2025
Today is Poetry Friday, and Carol Varsalona is hosting today with a lot of love at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link.
A Love Letter to 2025
Dear 2025,
I don’t want to love you.
After one month, I think
you are worse
than the incompetence
inundation of 2017,
the COVID crisis of 2020,
and the war, family deaths,
and disappointments of 2024.
What good would it do
to love you, 2025,
in your sorry state?
For you have already brought us
an abominable and unelected
South African-born president;
a plan for Gaza to become a resort
for the rich, while displacing
the residents (those who haven’t
already been killed or displaced);
tariffs on, tariffs off;
a new concentration camp
at Guantanamo Bay;
poster boy 1/6 insurrectionists;
rich oligarchs taking over,
and Congress
wringing their hands,
no clue what to do
in the flooded zone,
a muzzle velocity of absurdity.
Now, second thoughts
on that title,
I don’t necessarily
love you, 2025,
but I will choose Love.
I will choose Love.
I will choose Love.
I will choose Love.
It’s a long and winding road
to Liberty and Justice for All
Spiritual Journey Thursday – Doors
Today is Spiritual Journey Thursday, and Bob Hamera is hosting. Bob asked some interesting questions about opening and closing doors. They brought to mind a time 12 years ago when God surprisingly opened a new door. We went to Bahrain to live and work. I taught English to Arabic-speaking children, and my husband was a hospital chaplain. Before moving there, we had never ventured out of North America. We got our first passport the same year we moved there, and I quit my teaching job and committed to move there before we had even visited. God opened the door wide open and confirmed with everything that happened in our lives. How did my life change? I learned so much about the world and the variety of people in this big world of ours. I learned how God works through everyone and every situation. I met amazing people of different religions and different kinds of Christians too. It was transformational living, and we got to do it for eight years.
Lately, there are faith doors closing and new ones opening. Christian Nationalism is a big slamming door as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want anything to do with that faithless “faith.”
I just finished reading How to Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby. I realized that I have learned Christianity from pastors and books who overtly or inadvertently practiced “theological racism.” Over my lifetime, I have read and heard more from theologians who believed in slavery, like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, than from theologians who had been enslaved or were descendents of enslaved people. I can’t even name any Black theologians off the top of my head.
I’m closing the door on faith that would judge Jemar Tisby, as reported in this article: How evangelical Christian writer Jemar Tisby became a radioactive symbol of ‘wokeness’. I am attempting to walk through the Courageous Christianity door that Tisby writes about in How to Fight Racism. I have lots more to learn. He speaks of the ARC of Racial Justice–Awareness, Relationships, and Commitment. I highly recommend his book full of things you can do today to begin to bring about racial justice in your community.
Slice of Life – Give Me Liberty
I have been contemplating Liberty for some time now. As I consider the asylum seekers whose appointments have been cancelled and all the good things immigrants bring to our nation, I am painfully concerned. I will keep fighting back with hope and protest and writing emails and making phone calls.
Fear
I ache whenever I see Liberty faltering.
I cringe whenever I hear the fiery blazes.
I grieve whenever I think of tomorrow.
But not today.
Today I will wear my full sunshine
and bask in hope where the yeses are.
Liberty, look at me.
Blazes, hear me.
Tomorrow, think of me.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
January 11, 2025 – Inspired by Fasano, Joseph. The Magic Words: Simple Poetry Prompts That Unlock the Creativity in Everyone (p. 41). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Seven
Liberty sat
on the shelf at Joann’s.
80% off in the after
Christmas and
before tariffs sale.
This resin bauble
has one of her rays
broken off. Of course,
she does. That’s why
I bought her.
In memory.
To remember.
Seven is the perfect
number. And Liberty
isn’t perfect. She’s fragile,
and oligarchs and idiots
can dismantle her in a
quick minute, in an
unchallenged
executive order,
in forced unity
pointing at a contrived enemy.
No longer
seven spikes on
the crown.
Who is going to repair her?
February 1, 2025
Dear Libertas,
You’ve been knocking on our door
since long before your arrival.
We haven’t really
answered your call.
It seems these days, we
want the grass to grow
under your feet. Just look
away, we say, don’t mind her.
We’ll ignore you as you wait
at the door.
Resisters, don’t
ignore. Don’t look away.
Don’t let the grass grow
under our feet.
Get to work.
Now is the time
for liberty and justice
for all.
February 2, 2025
Poetry Friday – A Tan-ku for America
Today is a day for a Tan-ku, a conversation between a tanka and a haiku. Thanks to the #PoetryPals for suggesting it. Tanita explains more about it here.
I’m also taking the Coursera.org class Tabatha told us about a couple of weeks ago. The course is called, “Sharpened Visions.” Our lesson this week was about using metaphor and more. I’m not sure my vision is sharpening, but I’m trying. We also learned about “a conceit,” which is an extended metaphor, like in John Donne’s “The Flea.” I had never heard of a conceit before.
Anyway, I was thinking of metaphors when I wrote my tan-ku. I tried to make the haiku answering back to the tanka, as if in conversation.
A Tank-ku for America
lesion of power
cultural bacteria
pus-filled, blistered ooze
hindering advances made
our sickly democracy
antibiotic
prescription needed A-SAP
Not too late to heal
Professor Kiah Duggins,
Civil rights attorney, brave
and beautiful. Lost too young.
Links
The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize – Opens February 1 – March 15, 2025.
National Federation of State Poetry Societies Annual Poetry Contests
Slice of Life – Sweet Weekend
My 2.5-year-old grandson’s parents had not gotten away since before he was born. My husband and I had the wonderful privilege of flying to Seattle to babysit for the weekend so they could!
But first, the Friday morning loudspeaker at the airport: “Flight 1257 is delayed until 12:00 2:00 p.m. The plane is missing a part, and after it is replaced, we will get you out of here as soon as we can.”
Normally, in our retired lifestyle, we would go get another cup of tea or eat lunch, but this time panic set in. We were sitting across from a frequent flyer who said nonchalantly, “The part is probably being shipped in from Seattle. It may take several hours, even after it arrives.” What? I was in contact with my daughter who had not left for Portland yet, but they were hoping to leave before we arrived. Daycare was finished at 5:00 p.m., so now they had arranged for a friend to pick him up at his childcare provider. If our flight was cancelled, what would happen?
“We have to get to Seattle to pick up our grandbaby at daycare,” I texted the Alaska Air support person. Rose was her name, and she was so helpful. We knew there was another flight leaving from the gate right next to us, twenty minutes earlier than the estimated time of our flight. We were hoping to snag two of the empty seats just in case. She did switch us to that flight, and I was so relieved. At least we’d get there before bedtime. We stayed in line and arranged to have our luggage switched to the new flight. Then I crossed my fingers that nothing would go wrong with flight 582. As we waited for the departure time, still more than an hour away, for some reason, the first flight 1257 started boarding. What?
Oh, well. It is what it is. We waited, boarded, and flew on Flight 582 to Seattle without a hitch. When we got there, we were surprised to see that we had arrived 20 minutes earlier than the first flight was due, which had boarded before us. I wondered if they had boarded and then parked somewhere while they put in the part.
After Flight 582, we waited for longer than Alaska’s “20-minute baggage service guarantee.” Finally when the baggage started on our carousel, it was coming from Flight 1257. What? (again) After checking a few bags and realizing they were all from Flight 1257, all of a sudden ours came out of the shoot, with the 1257 tags still on them. They had not been transferred after all. Oh, well, we decided we had the best of all possible scenarios for this crazy trip, so we took the 30 minutes or so that we had just saved and hightailed it to the train.
We made it by 6:30 p.m., just two hours after we had originally hoped to get there. Fortunately, that was the only snag in our otherwise perfect weekend with the best little kid I’ve ever met!
Poetry Friday – Hopeless
Poetry Friday is hosted by the dear Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference.
I am trying to befriend hope these days, trying to avoid hopelessness.
I am sickened as I think of the lost hope at the end of “Reconstruction” in our country, a decade of living and trying to repair a life without slavery. Then the so-called “Redemption” of the status quo with its white supremacy and suppression of the black vote. I am troubled and pained to think of that era lasting almost a hundred years before the Civil Rights Act.
The belief in and protection of white supremacy is as strong today as ever. I hope I live to see the end of this current era, but I’m sadly aware that I may not.
Imagine how our 92% strong Black sisters must feel as they watch this administration wreck carnage on Civil Rights. Imagine all the generations of Black women who have endured travesties beyond our imagining, and white women were not (and still are not) there to stand up.
Let’s commit to fight injustice and hopelessness and the cancer of white supremacy.
In a poem by Nyah Hardmon, I was reminded again of the strength of Black women. Closing lines from “Cocoon”:
My nana be born hopelessBut she didn’t stay that way.
Read her whole poem here or watch her read it herself at The Poetry Foundation.
Open Write – January 2025
It’s been difficult for me to write lately. So much going on in the world and this crazy country. I’ve been busy this week with retiling a shower in a family home, watching an almost 4-year-old who isn’t potty trained, reading and scoring REALM literary magazines for NCTE, writing a poem a day for the Stafford Challenge. This week the poems are coming from prompts at Ethical ELA. Join in with today’s prompt called “Until I Discovered” with Erica Johnson, and tomorrow there will be a new one by Jessica Shernburn.
1/18/25 Are You Down? with Shaun Ingalls
No Cap
So lore goes,
Always the main character
Jack and his moot Jill,
without cooking,
Finna secure the bag
Of water
Jack’s dogs tripped (bruh)
Bucket yeeted
“I oop”
Jill, not usually an NPC,
This time falls in line,
Gagged, no girl bossing,
Out of pocket
No cap
My translation of “Jack and Jill” into Gen-Z dialect was inspired by Alan J. Wright’s “Jack and Jill” in the style of John Keats here.
1/19/2025 KonMarie with Gayle Sands
I choose to keep
hikes around Abel’s Mountain,
the flickering candle under
this pot of masala chai,
writing one line a day
in my five-year memory book,
crocheting with a backrub
from my husband
and a good movie in front of us,
Spanish with Duolingo and Rocío,
healthy eating to lower my A1C,
my trusty Kindle
and extensive Libby library,
skylight apricity,
the ERA,
Curiosity,
Resilience,
Resistance,
Justice,
and
Mercy.
Time to rid myself of
overflow in the back recesses
of my cupboards,
binge watching poor shows,
throwing my hands up
in surrender to oligarchy.
1/20/2025 How Embarrassing! with Glenda Funk
Mrs. Lifflander was the substitute
everyone hoped we would never get.
She was mean as a snake and unfair.
And if I believe anything then (and now):
Everything has to be fair!
This time we drew the short stick,
and she became our Viola Swamp.
When Mrs. Moscrip came back, she
rebuked us for not respecting the sub.
(I guess Ms. Swamp left notes and names.)
“But she did thus-and-so.” “She was so unfair.”
I raised my hand to tell my side. She stopped me,
“Oh, Denise, I’m sure you had
to add your 2 cents, didn’t you?”
1/21/2025 Until I Discovered with Erica Johnson
It wasn’t until we bounced
back to cling to racism
that I discovered this
low rung of history.
That is not who we are.
Oh, yes, yes, of course, we are.
It’s who we’ve always been,
The arc is slight, if it moves at all.
And now again, complacent,
backward bend of the arc.
Ignominy of this chapter haunts,
and I am future-fearful.
And yet I can choose resistance.
Shine spotlights on racism, sexism,
megalomania and dishonest gain.
Someday we will take another step
toward justice. I may not see it,
but history points to better days
in the future. My grandson will live
anew in a more just world.
1/22/2025 This is the Year with Jessica Sherburn
This is the year that Palestinian
children will play and dance and sing
along the shore of the Mediterranean.
No outsiders will ever consider taking
their coastline for high-rises for themselves.
This is the year when the olive orchards
will return to bloom and produce in abundance
and all the people will be full and healthy
with all their limbs intact and they will
eat Musakhan and celebrate independence.
This is the year when Palestinian borders
will no longer just be a squeezed strip
or a failing bank, but there will be enough
for all. That each nation in this shared space
will not train for war anymore.
This is the year for peace.