in brown-blue shadows
spring-yellow buds are glowing
brighter than eveningLate April sunset
all impossible yellows
and bright magentain the yard’s gloaming
daffodils, white and yellow,
radiating still
I’m still stuck on the news and the Gettysburg Address and all the video of people cleaning up in Baltimore just as other people in other cities have had to clean up after looting and anger took over their city streets. I can’t help but think what could be done if all that energy were directed to putting new people into office and reclaiming our country.
The Great Task
It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us
— Abraham LincolnMaybe it’s not yours to fight a war
or to save someone from a burning bus
maybe you will never go viral
or have a road named for you
but you can do your bit:
vote every single time,
go to town meetings,
go to your kids’ school,
clean up and plant things,
decide what needs to be fixed,
and be determined in how to get it done.
Maybe anger is called for
but action by many is what it takes
Slow steady pressure toward change.
Know your neighbors,
watch out for each other,
try new things, meet new people,
be intolerant only of evil and greed
encourage tolerance and acceptance
let people know where you stand and why
think about: what’s the right thing to do?
talk about: how’s the best way to do it?
know that: we are the vehicles of change
and our lives, every day, fuel it.
Many xanthophylls
yellows not of carotene
like squash and peaches.Xanthophyll – look for
a deep golden color or
etiolation.papaya, peaches
and, for unknown reasons, prunes
are xanthophyllic
I knew “X” would be hard.
I had some free quiet brain time this morning and was thinking about Baltimore and the rest of the United States and the really big questions: what to do? how to make this any better?
All I could come up with the Gettysburg Address, folks. Seems trite but if you want to get back to some basic principles, it’s probably the shortest and sweetest way to get there. Learn it. Apply equality to everyone. Fight for the right cause. Fight in a way that counts. Don’t do it so people will remember your words or your fame but so they’ll remember what it was all about. Remember with gratitude.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
i’m waiting for the wash.
pairs of socks
a skirt
a couple of towels
i’m waiting for the wash.just waiting for the wash
some undies
a bra
a tshirt or two
i’m waiting for the wash.won’t you just spin?
don’t be throwing me off balance
i’m trying to wait for you
just waiting for you to finishi’m waiting for the wash
the towels and sheets
to be
fluffy and clean
waiting for the washwon’t you just spin?
please don’t twist up my tights
there’s a sock that escaped
it’ll have to wait for the next loadbut I’m waiting, waiting for the wash
hearing it go round
just my things
coming clean
waiting for the wash
i’m waiting for the wash.
The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way in which we use them.
