Best AI Quote EVER

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Happy Today!
Have a fantastically wunnerful up-coming week.
I love you. I appreciate you. You are wonderful!

Due to technical defrugalties, Coffee Break Escapes is late. My web mistress is working the situation and within minutes of its being cleared, you will find CBE in your inbox. The most honorable web mistress apologizes, as do I. But, she is marvelous, and you are now reading.

Trader Joe coming????

Since I’ve moved into the Tries, rumors float to the surface every so often that Trader Joe’s is coming! And maybe they are. Or not. The Trader looks at population and parking availability, according to an article in our newspaper, and they see the Tries not as one area of 300,000 population, but as 3 separate cities of (what, 100K each?) which isn’t enough. The article contained a link to put in our browser if we want a TJs—type in “Request a Trader Joe’s” or click here: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/contact-us/request-a-store. I’ve mailed them, periodically, letters requesting same, and never received a reply. But, what the heck, I filled out their form, and maybe, just maybe, enough other Tri-Citians will also fill it out, explain that it’s primarily the pols who see 3 separate cities, but us locals just see three neighborhoods separated by 3 rivers with more than 3 bridges connecting us. That we cross into each other’s neighborhood to shop all the time. Also to visit friends and we’d love to visit Trader Joe. So, if you have a TJs in your neighborhood, congratulations, maybe we’ll get one, too. eventually. maybe sooner! Hope springs eternal…

Travel

I’m going to be travelling for the next three weeks or so, not far, but staying with friends I haven’t seen in a long time, so there is a very good probability (high) I will be busy with friends and not writing the blog. But I shall return. Honest. Trust me.

Best AI Quote EVER!!!:

“I got in my car to drive the 200 miles between San Francisco and New York City. I should make it in about two hours.”

Book Reviews

Turn Up the Ocean: Poems by Tony Hoagland

This is Hoagland’s last book of poetry, put together by his widow a couple years after his death. He knew his was dying when he wrote several of the poems. I hope, if I have that foreknowledge and time, my poems will be written with the humor and pathos with which Hoagland wrote.

Hoagland is a writer I truly wish I could have met and shared a cuppa with. His very first poem in the book is “Bible All Out of Order” and I laughed from the first stanza, “One thing’s for sure; in the future, the morgues are going to be full of tattoos. / It’s going to be more colorful and easier to manage: / ‘Hey Jeff, move Dolphin-Shoulder-Girl to tray seven.” / “And get Mr. Flames-on-My-Neck out for the doc.” to the line, “It’s possible I have this all out of order.” to the last two lines, “while being tossed this way and that, askew and asunder, / in this blithering whirlwind of wonder.”

Just reading the Contents, is in itself a poem, and trust me, the actual poems are far more than the sum of the title’s worth! Gorgon, Immersion, Why I like the Hospital, The Reason He Brought His Gun to School: A Blues, Illness and Literature, On Why I Must Decline to Receive the Prayers You Say You Are Constantly Sending, Dante’s Bar and Gril, The Decline of the Roman Empire, Reading While Sick in the Middle of the Night, Peaceful Transition, with a whole bunch more.

The book ends with “Peaceful Transition.” It begins with, “The wind comes down from the northwest, cold in September,” and flows to “I see the wren has found a way to make its little nest / inside the cactus thorns.”

Rest in Power, Tony Hoagland. Thank you for being, thank you for writing, thank you publishers for publishing your works, thank you for this last book of poetry. You are, truly, missed.

The book is available from your favorite bookstore or the two linked below. And probably your library (but they’ll want it back).

Turn Up the Ocean: Poems by Tony Hoagland
Published by Graywolf Press, 2022
ISBN:  978-1-64445-092-5 (paperback)
ISBN:  978-1-64445-180-9 (ebook)
Bookshop.org              abebooks.com
5 Stars

The Beautiful Foolishness: poems by Wayne Lee

I love Wayne Lee’s poetry, I have two of his earlier books, and as soon as this one was available on pre-order, I pre-ordered. I love pre-ordering books for a variety of reasons: 1. It helps the publisher know how popular the book will be, 2. it gives the author a warm fuzzy and, 3. I tend to forget I ordered it, and then a month or three later, I receive a beautiful book in the mail like an unexpected and welcomed present. Another reason, some publishers base their royalty payments on pre-sales, and nothing else, and once the pre-sale is over, the royalty rate is set, and no matter how many books are sold later, royalty doesn’t change.

Back to the topic, Lee’s book: Lee is a Buddhist, and the peacefulness of Buddhism comes through in his poems, as well a deal of humor—foolishness—and the beauty of our world as it is. The first poem, “The Sky Has Spoken” begins with maintenance of life, “A magpie flies between you and the sun” and drops a dead bird at your feet, a raven flies overhead and drops the warm heart from a small being, “The sky has spoken in a language / you do not understand.” We ask questions, seek meaning beyond what was given, and our questions “rise like cottonwood fluff” and we “listen like a child / with a bright red crayon / poised above a pure white page.”

The poems are printed in four sections, each section its own, and each beautiful. I love “Approaching Home” which begins, “And then one day you realize / you’re close to home,” and ends with “to some familiar place / you’ve never been.” What a beautiful way to say you can’t go home again, you can’t step into a river twice in the same place, the world never stops moving.

There is a whole section of haiku, and the first is one of my favorite, “sitting at the feet / of the Buddha / a child laughs”. The last poem in the book, “Flannel Shirt” begins, “It’s the way the shirt hangs” and ends, “on the chair just right”.

Lee’s poems don’t just breathe life and give joy, but give us permission to accept the joy of being alive and to grasp that life in both arms and dance and laugh with it. Buy it, read it, live.

The Beautiful Foolishness: poems by Wayne Lee
Published by Casa Urraca Press
ISBN: 978-1-956375-43-5
Casa Urraca Press Bookshop.org
5 Stars

Please support Independent Booksellers, and if you’re a writer, check out Indie Presses.

The Things You See…

I was walking the SamSam the other day, and found this on the back of a car in our parking lot. I thought it worth sharing—and maybe getting 😉

“His voice deadly calm in the way that makes people check their life insurance.”
—another AI quote

And then along comes…

I’m Late, I’m Late…

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Happy Today. Have a fantabulous next seven days. I love you. I appreciate you.

Yes, I’m a little late. This past week has been, well, a week. A wonderful week, but still a week. I think I mentioned sometime past that I was taking a six-session workshop on Arthur Sze’s book, Into The Hush. The last session was Saturday 21 March. Then, because we did not have a great deal of time for generative writing during our sessions, on this past Saturday, the 28^th, we had a session of generative writing, during which I got two good first drafts (poetry) written.

When that session finished, I signed out of zoom, made a dash to the kitchen for my leftover hamburger from the night before, signed into another zoom session for almost two hours of a No Kings Rally for people who couldn’t make it to a local rally, or for whatever reason couldn’t attend. Our local rally is always fun, but it’s two hours of standing, not walking/marching, and my knees have finally convinced me they are as old as my birth certificate declares. The zoom rally was interesting. I had no idea what to expect and thought they may show clips of live rallies throughout the country, but nope, they had speakers, and the theme was science and what a debacle Bobby’s kid has made of Public Health. Speakers included Nancy Pelosi, AOC, a congressman who is a trained physicist whose name I disremember, and several other people, all interesting.

By the time I “returned” from the rally, I’d been on zoom a tad more than 5 hours, my eyes hurt, my butt hurt, and poor neglected Mister Sammy Brave Dog was begging for some cuddle time. Trust me, getting horizontal on my bed, with a warm puppy dog next to me was just what the doctor ordered. And then I had to get ready for the third zoom of the day—my weekly poetry critique. By the time it was through, I’d spent somewhere between seven and eight hours stuck in a zoom room. I was tired of looking at a computer screen.

I had 2 hours of zoom scheduled for Sunday, an open mic, out of the LA area, where a group of us meet every Sunday to read two poems. We have become a family. We have virtually held and supported each other through breakups, deaths, dreams unfolding to great happiness, and even had sibling arguments and makeups.

I had errands and baking to do in the morning, and in the early afternoon, I made a couple of fun phone calls to two of my sisters of the heart. Those were a lot more fun and interesting than cleaning out my emails 😉 which I did after my last zoom of the day.

The days before, when I could have been working on this post, I was writing, and working on my poetry.

10 Books to Read After Project Hail Mary

Part of my morning routine, actually, daily routine, is to check the news, and look for short things on YouTube that aren’t depressing. I came across one this morning that was interesting. A 15-minute 10-book book review on books to read or listen to, after seeing/reading Project Hail Mary. I’ve already read some, and agree with her assessment of them and thought you might be interested in the list. To see the video, click here.

Podjo

Thomas named this crow Podjo, Spanish for old friend. He came to whatever patio Thomas and Sheryl were sitting on, or near if he saw them through the window, to wait for his peanuts. He got to the place where he would eat out of Thomas’s hand, and brought a great deal of joy to Thomas in his last months. When I took Sammy to visit with me, we had to keep him restrained when Thomas tossed the nuts out his door for Podjo. Sammy wasn’t interested in Podjo, he wanted the peanuts!

Be well, be safe, be happy!

Can Our Sun Be Saved?

Hiking With the Elderly

A Hack from an Old Fartess.

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Happy Monday! Have a Great rest of the week. I love you. I appreciate you.

So, I’m at that age when my joints don’t work like they used to, they talk more than I do, and they sure aren’t a flexible as they used to be. And, I have a dog. And dog’s make offerings to the Grass Gods, and the Grass Gods are very specific that such offerings must be properly picked up and deposited in the large green altars at each corner of the apartment complex.

If you don’t know, the Grass Gods live at ground level. And old joints aren’t flexible, and being a good People Mommy to Mister Sammy Brave Dog, I need to pick those offerings up before the Grass Gods decree us homeless.

So I bought a 16” kitchen tong. I slip the GG approved bag over the grabby ends, bend over a wee it, pick up the offering, pull the bag over it, and deposit it in the large green altar nearest to wherever we were. Actually, I bought two tongs. I have one in my office to pick stuff off the floor that I drop. Works great for pens, papers, pins—-hmmm, maybe I’ll get another for the sewing area.

One can go to the pet store and buy a heavy plastic pooper scooper, and I had one when my toe was operated on and I couldn’t bend my foot, in fact I couldn’t walk on it flat, only on the outer edge. It worked great on grass, if it hadn’t just been mowed, and the plastic teeth could get under the offering and lift it. But if the offering was given on dirt, on rocks (we have a lot of both) the teeth couldn’t get under the offering. Yeah. Eeeewwwww!! But the tongs? Voila!

Poetry

I have written a tick over 2 poems a day since 1 Jan. There have been a couple of days when I haven’t written a new poem, but I’ve worked on some that were already written. I have over 100 poems filed, more if you count each version 😉 And a new flash fiction! With dragons!!! HUZZAH!!

Mr. Sammy Brave Dog

He is finally learning not to bark at everyone who walks down the community hall to their door. Or when someone walks by outside. It’s nice to have him much quieter like he was before we moved here, but it was nice, when we got a package left by the door. The problem was, he couldn’t tell if it was our door or the neighbors, it it’s a delivery person, or a resident. He still doesn’t spend much time in my office, but I can’t blame him. If I had a choice between laying on the floor or on a bed, I’d take the bed, too. Unfortunately, he won’t get into or onto a dog bed. He will, now and then, make a nest of the blanket on the floor near my chair. But it’s not as comfy as the bed. And there just isn’t room for a large chair, sofa, or bed in my office.

bed shark.

Billy the Kid

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Before I begin, here is your Monday Public Service Announcement:

Happy Monday. Have a great rest of the week. I love you. I appreciate you.

When I lived in Albuquerque, I started working on a book of poetry about Billy the Kid, aka William H. Bonney, aka Henry McCarty—his birth name. I was still in the research stage when life happened, and I moved back to Kennewick, and became involved in other things. I still dream of going back to New Mexico, Fort Sumner, etc., and doing research, and writing the poems, but then, I’m a dreamer, eh?

In the meantime, someone in my critique group recommended a book last year, Coming Through Slaughter, a fictionalized biography of New Orleans jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and is partly set in Slaughter, Louisiana, by Michael Ondaatje. I enjoyed the book, so when I found The Collected Works of Billy the Kid also by Michael Ondaatje, I had to read it, too. And I was not disappointed!

There is not a great deal known about Billy, but there is some information out there, and Ondaatje did a marvelous job of using what little is known as a springboard for his poetry and prose. It reads like a journal, or maybe a better description is a collection of his (Billy’s) papers, what were found, often without beginning or ending. Some of the poems actually have titles, or at least attribution as to who wrote them, as “Miss Sallie Chisum” by Sallie Chisum describing Billy “As far as dress was concerned / he always looked as if / he had just stepped out of a bandbox.” She goes on to describe his clothing, finishing with, “he was the pink of politeness / and as courteous a little gentleman / as I ever met.” From what I’ve found about Billy in what little research I’ve accomplished, this was a fairly accurate description of him.

By many accounts I’ve read, Billy was a gentleman, at least where the ladies were concerned. He dressed well, he was polite, he was bi-lingual (English and Spanish) and possibly tri-lingual. There is some information out there he spoke Gaelic, probably learned at his mother’s knee.

If you’re looking for a good and plausible book about Billy, I highly recommend The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. It’s great fun. If you’re looking for a scholarly account of the young man’s life, this isn’t for you. And yes, there is the conspiracy that Garrett shot the wrong man, claimed he was Billy, buried him, and collected the reward and that Billy once again escaped, made it to Mexico or someplace, lived a quiet life as a law-abiding citizen, married, and had a family, etc., etc., etc. Billy was a master at aliases and escapes, so this isn’t entirely unbelievable.

Oh, and in the interest of transparency, or just kinda interesting stuff, when Daddy was a youngster, he met a man who knew Pat Garret who is credited with killing Billy the Kid. We are closer to history than we sometimes realize.

My Friday

Those of you who know me, know I’m not really a morning person. Oh, I get up early enough, because when I wake up enough to answer the early morning calls of bladder and dog, I’m up. I try not to get up before 4am, but sometimes it’s earlier, and if I go back to bed, I just lie there for a couple of hours and I might as well be up and at the computer with my cuppa joe. Like this morning, Sunday. Yes, I’m up, but I’m not cognizant, I’m not ready for thinking, for talking, for doing much beyond watching something on the computer and maybe, if I’m lucky, getting a few words written on the virtual paper before me. Somewhere around 9am, I actually become functionally awake 😉

So, this past Friday, I signed up for a poetry workshop, that started at my time of 7am. It was something like 3 hours long, and very interesting. I actually got 4 poems written during that time. No, they are not ready to be abandoned, but they are good enough to warrant some editing and maybe submission. Then, later that afternoon, I attended my weekly workshop of prompts, and wrote two more poems, also pretty good first drafts. Aren’t you glad I don’t share all the poetry I write with you? Since 1 Jan this year, I’ve written 90. Boy Howdy, do I know how to have fun!!! 😉

How Many Days Until Mid-Term Elections?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You really think we’re going to have them? Nope, they ain’t gonna happen, my gentle families and friends. That’s why we’re in an undeclared-by-Congress war, so the Unnamed Person can claim an emergency, and take over and cancel elections, or have them with his goons manning polling places. Yep, we’re closer to history than we realize.

(Please, prove me wrong. Please, please, please.)

be happy, be well, be safe!

Happy Monday. Enjoy the rest of the week. I love you.

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How would your life be different if on the first day of school/kindergarten, you received a card or a note that said: “Happy Monday. Enjoy the rest of the week. I love you.” This card was from your teacher, and s/he explained everyone would make a card for the following Monday, to give to someone in the class, everyone would make a card, everyone would receive a card. And this card exchange would be every Monday for the rest of your school life, through graduation of High School.

How would your life be different if, every Monday through your K-12 school life, you learned to give and receive a gift, homemade or store bought, to one of your classmates? That’s thirteen years of giving and receiving gifts.

Your brain would have probably been wired toward the perspective of compassion and pro-social thoughts. You would have a moral identity reinforced by friends and family. You would see yourself as a helper person, a caring person, and an ethical person, all of which would help you in decision making.

Your aggressive reactivity would probably be reduced, your social confidence and belonging built and shored up by the frequent positive reaction with strangers and neighbors. Social anxiety would not be nearly as strong, your community attachment and long-term civic orientation would be strengthened.

Children exposed to structured generosity are more likely to engage in volunteering, cooperation, and nonviolent civic participation as adults. The net gain effect of 676* structured acts of kindness during developmental years creates a durable pro-social identity, higher emotional stability, and stronger community trust norms that persist into adulthood.

The immediately preceding paragraphs are paraphrased from:

America’s Real Threats – And Our Plan to Reduce Them (Without WASHINGTON0 Former Black Panther Speaks: Can America be Saved? This link is to his substack and is free. You can also find it on YouTube. I have his permission to post the substack link. I hope you’ll take the 23 minutes to listen to the whole talk. I hope you’ll subscribe, and watch/listen to all the videos in the series.

And, as my final paragraph on this topic, please think where we, as a nation, would be if this had started say in 1900, or 1920, or even 1940. And, please, become part of the nationwide network to think and act with strategy, not anger. It is never too late to change.

*The Former Black Panther was counting on 52 weeks a year times 13, most school years are closer to 40 weeks, I think, which would make it closer to 520. But then, there’s no reason during summers and school breaks, that giving couldn’t be carried on with neighbors, which would bring it right back up to 676 or so 😉

Uncoupling, Poems by Margo Davis

All couples will uncouple at some point. Train engines are uncoupled from train cars, children are uncoupled from beloved pets, parents are uncoupled from children, and lovers and life partners are uncoupled through mutual agreement or death. With the (presumably) exception of the trains, the loss of uncoupling brings pain of varying degrees, as well as freedom (of varying degrees) and maybe guilt, and even joy as we acknowledge the happy memories of earlier days, that our beloved is free of pain, of agony and now Rests in Power with their God.

Davis has a marvelous sense of humor that comes through in many (most?) of these poems, from the very first poem, Southern Tradition, “A Southern woman could / lace a rat with garnish / and pass it on. // the mixologist’s cocktails /…/ hurricane comin’!” One of my favorites being Better Times about the old codger, Lassie, Timmy and a three-foot glass of milk. Her humor is anything but juvenile, as noted in her last poem, Breathless In Portugal, “Messejana sheep take me / as I am. Uphill downslide I traverse //…Sleight of Hand. Oh tongue / that I never knew. I knew.”

I found this book delightful and engaging and one with poems I have read more than once! I heartily recommend it. Available through your favorite bookstore or online through https://Bookshop.org

On a More Political Topic

I believe I’ve mentioned a time or two, my favorite political pundit is Keith Olbermann, (my second favorite pundit is David Reddish, but that’s another post). It isn’t just the politics, I enjoy Olbermann’s personal discussions, too. Especially when he talks about famous people, or not quite famous people, he knows or has met. Keith’s sense of humor is marvelous, at least over the air. He is one of the famous people I’d like to have a cup of coffee with, though I’d probably be so tongue-tied I wouldn’t be able to put three words together that made any sense. Anyhow, Thursday’s episode (His podcast, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airs every Monday and Thursday morning) is a bit long, but the last part, where he talks about Robert Duvall and the movie Network is worth the price of admission. Network, for those of you who, like me, haven’t seen it, is a 1976 American movie about a fictional tv station, UBS, with low ratings, written by Paddy Chayefsky. Olbermann brings up 23 instances in the movie that were prescient to today’s tv networks that were not even thought of when the movie came out, and which when people saw it laughed because those things could never happen. Is it time for a movie? Starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Fobert Duvall, Wesley Addy, and a host of others. Although I could find places where it’s streaming, all the sites want money. Clap if you’re surprised.

Unbuilding (a Book Review)

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Just finished reading a fun book, Unbuilding by David Macaulay. It’s children’s lit, but great fun. In 1989, a Saudi Prince buys the Empire State Building, has it dismantled, labeled, etc., and put on a ship to Saudi where it can be reassembled. This is the story of Unbuilding the Empire State Building. It’s full of pen and ink drawings, and if you have any budding architects, engineers, or builders in your sphere, you might want to consider the book for them. It’s available from Bookshop.org or if you don’t mind a used book, from abebooks.com. Or from your favorite indie bookstore.

I’m going to have to try his other books. Well, some of them. He’s got bunches and they look way fascinating. He’s got at least 25 listed on Bookshop.org. ranging from Castle to The Way Things Work to Mammoth Math: Everything You Need to Know About Numbers to Rome Antics. I’ll probably skip the Mammoth Math—it’s hardback, and I prefer softback /snort/. (for those of you who don’t know, I prefer letters and words to numbers and equal signs)

However, since I’m on the topic of books, when Covid hit, I attended a book launch by Arthur Sze of his book The Glass Constellation sponsored by Rain Taxi. It was via a zoom-type of program, so no one was crammed in a seat next to 100 of their new best friends, we were all given our own little “room” on a screen. Sze was maybe a quarter of the way through with his presentation, and I had already ordered the book. I’d never heard of him before that night, but that’s how impressed I was with his poetry. When my book came, it’s a compendium of several of his earlier books, all bound together with new and selected poems. I literally consumed the book withing r or 5 days. I have since added several other books to my collection, including his latest, or one of his latest ones, Into The Hush. Not only do I love the book, but I was invited to join a group of poets who will gather for 6 meetings to study the book, its poems, and do writings inspired/based on his poems in the book.

The small group I am in (3 per group) decided to study/work on Letter to Tao Qian. Thanks to Favorite Daughter, I have The Silk Dragon II, a book of Chinese poems Sze translated, and the first 5 poems are by the Ancient Chinese poet, Tao Qian. It’s very interesting to read those 5 poems and find the references in Sze’s poem. Homework has never been such fun.

My Winter Gift from me to me this year was Sze’s book, The White Orchard. It is a collection of some of his interviews, essays, and some poetry. The most interesting parts to me are the areas where he talks about how he writes. He often uses disparate phrases and fragments of sentences for his lines, but all of the lines are deliberate, and in a deliberate order. Because we all bring our own stories to the ones we read, we are each given our own interpretation as to what his lines mean. Is he telling us to stop, relax, breathe, acknowledge there is evil in the world, but to spend more time on the beauty? I have started writing “like” Sze, but not like him. My mind is trainable, but I don’t want his voice, I want his style. I want to keep my own voice. I want someone to read my poem and say, “Ah, she’s read Arthur Sze!” It is very difficult for me to think in segments and fragments, but I have written a couple of poems with one-line stanzas, in disparate fragments. I am also working on a long, sectioned poem like he writes, with each section being in a different format. Those are the poems that caused me to order The Glass Constellation.

Of course, there are many poets out there I really like—the ever-gracious Naomi Shihab Nye, the late Lucille Clifton, the late Paul Monette, the effervescent Diane Seuss, and the incomparable Eduardo C. Corral. But I am in Literary Lust with Arthur Sze 😉

Imagine You Are Madame Dorion

So, I log onto YouTube and am looking at the videos on my home page, and notice a photo of buffalo in a snow storm that looks familiar, like one I took, and then I look at the words, and it IS one of my photos from when my friend and publisher of Madame Dorion put together a promo video for my book. Wow! Something from ten years ago showed up—a whole video of my photos. On my YouTube home page. If you didn’t get it on your home page, it is here — a smidge under 7 minutes. And, if you haven’t read the book, you can find it at your favorite bookstore (they may have to order it) or at bookshop.org. Historical fiction at its finest, not that I’m biased—or bragging. By the way, the cover on Madame Dorion was painted by a descendant of Madame Dorion.

And Remember

If you don’t yet have your copy of Saying Goodbye to Thomas, you may pick up, or order, a copy from your favorite bookstore, or order a copy here, at Bookshop.org. All proceeds go to the ALS Association and End of Life Washington/Death With Dignity.

William Stafford Challenge

Today, 16 February 2026, is the 31^st day of the William Stafford Challenge. The Challenge goes from 17 Jan to 17 Jan (his birthday, and we write a poem a day), on the 17^th of January, I had written 22 poems, having started on the first of January. By this morning my number of poems written is currently 68. More will come this day, I am sure.

Now, they aren’t all good poems, though a couple are, but they are all seeds to go back and edit, revise, and have good poems emerge.

A fond memory of my road trip through the Southwest a couple years ago. The tall skinny ones are saguaro cactus. It was warm. Blessedly warm.

Be Happy, Be Well, Be Safe

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Or, if you don’t celebrate Valentine’s day, Happy Saturday!

I subscribe to The Ekphrastic Times, the newsletter of The Ekphrastic Review, and received their monthly newsletter with this piece of art by Lorette C. Luzajic. I absolutely love it, and requested permission to share with you, and she readily agreed.

Image: Love Is, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada) 2025

Lorette is an award winning artist, and her work may be found on Etsy

The Ekphrastic Review is here

full disclosure: Lorette has published two of my poems, the latest is here

And yes, there will be the regular blog on Monday. If I don’t forget. I am old(er), you know—

The only correct answer to any question is an honest answer!

Coffee Break Escapes with Auntie Lenora

Short readings for short times

Best AI Quote EVER

And then along comes…

I’m Late, I’m Late…

Can Our Sun Be Saved?

Hiking With the Elderly

A Hack from an Old Fartess.

Billy the Kid

Happy Monday. Enjoy the rest of the week. I love you.

Unbuilding (a Book Review)

Happy Valentine’s Day