Ginger, I love your
Anti-inflammatory
Properties and the
Flavor you add to a peach
Smoothie — Wish I could make one!
Showing up
I see her at the gym every morning.
“Good job,” I said.
“I haven’t lost any weight,” she replied.
“But you’re showing up.”.
Listen
Music is a world within itself
Stevie Wonder, Sir Duke
With a language we all understand
Go ahead. Listen. So much joy.
A Sunflower from Maggie

In 2022, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston decommissioned this piece by Georgia O’Keeffe and sold it at auction to benefit acquisitions for the museum. However, it fell short of the $6-8 million estimate of what it would bring in, selling for a mere $4.8 million.
I heard on the news the other day that Manchester United, the soccer team, was for sale. The price was in the billions. $4.5 billion? $5 billion? $8 billion? I can’t fathom numbers that high.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the price of eggs.
Mimic the master attempt #2 — I tried to make a collage version of “A Sunflower from Maggie.”
This will not win a prize. Every time I try to collage I learn something from my frustrations.
- Glue stick is sticky, messy, and dries too quickly.
- Mod-Podge is sticky, messy, and makes the paper buckle and curl.
- Art requires infinite patience — and I’m sadly lacking.
- Art requires time — and I’m sadly lacking that too. I’m surrounded by far more important things I should be doing, but I’m stuck. So I cut up books. Sheesh.
- Prestigious artists earn their prestige. I doubt anyone just wakes up one morning and starts creating masterful art. It takes practice, time, patience, and maybe some Mod-Podge and glue sticks.
When I look at other collage-art, it’s very different from mine which makes me think I’m not doing it right.
But it’s mine.
And I like it.
Sometimes.
Christina’s World
The challenge: mimic a master
The original by Andrew Wyeth:

The collage version made with pictures from children’s books:
Dismal fail.
Repeat tomorrow.
Journey
Where will life’s journey take you today?
To a farm? Past a castle? I really can’t say.
Embrace it. Enjoy it. Pedal away!
Wings
“Oh, that I had wings..” Psalm 55:8
The first story I submitted for publication 35 years ago was based on that verse.
Rejected.
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw

She cinched it too tight –
I can hardly breathe, and yet
Composed, I pose here,
While imagining little
Ways to punish that servant
I’m going beyond the 23 words of my Ekphrastic Tanka (5-7-5-7-7) — To be honest, I’m not really sure I did the Tanka right because I know good poetry is more that counting syllables.
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (by John Singer Sargent) looks annoyed, doesn’t she? That’s all I see when I look at the painting.
And yet that seems so unfair to Lady Agnew. What if I’m just projecting my own annoyances onto her.
How about this tanka, instead.
I’m going to sneeze
I mean it — I can feel it
Rising, rising up –
So that my eyes smart [breathe in,
Relax, slowly breathe] — ACHOO
Really, it’s a lovely painting. I’m not trying to make fun of Lady Agnew. I want to know what she’s thinking. Is it deeper thoughts than the little annoyances she may be experiencing?
Twilight
Reading through posts and looking for inspiration. Quadrille poem — nope. Spoons — fascinating, but no. Gauge — zero inspiration.
Twilight! I was looking for that word just the other day!
I was trying to tell a friend about the books that I read 15 years ago in order to relate to the teenage girls I was coaching. I said to my friend, “You know, the really stupid vampire series.”
She looked at me and said dryly, “There’s a lot of them.”
“This one was like Harlequin Romance with a vampire twist,” I said.
“That describes most of them,” she said.
“They were pretty terrible,” I said.
She nodded in agreement.
But I couldn’t think of the name.
It didn’t matter. Neither of us were vampire romance fans.
But now I have the name! Twilight!
I’ll tell her tomorrow.
_______________
Wrote my post — checked that box. Way over 23 words — did NOT check that box. Sigh.
What If?
What if, instead of a competition, the tortoise and the hare fable was about cooperation?
What if nobody won?
What if they tied?






