Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Children. Animals. Planet Earth.
But the planet is speaking to us.
Are we listening?
Not enough.
So we must speak for the planet.
Sing for the birds.
Dance for the children.
Hope. Believe. Speak.
Try to speak with kindness
Not with hate.
Whenever you can,
Strive for peace,
But not peace at any cost.
Balance the cost.
We each make a choice
Every day. Every hour.
All is not lost.
There are still possibilities.
Perhaps we may not go quietly.
Can we just go without screaming?
~~~
I keep wanting to add something, to clarify…. Maybe we do need to scream. Maybe some things are screamworthy. This just reflects my stream of consciousness. I don’t like loud. Chanting is good. Singing is good.
Sing it with me: “All we are saying, is give peace a chance.”
And…
I’m stepping out of the stream a bit now, because I found this relatively short TED talk about a quiet revolution. Susan Cain talks about quiet leadership and empowering introverts for the benefit of all. She offers this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
~~~
Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is……. “rev.” Use “rev” or find a word that contains it. Have fun! Thanks, Linda!
Our Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt for today is…. ““black, gray, and white.” Use one, use ’em all. Bonus points if you use all three. Have fun!“
There are a lot of colors in between black and white. Not just gray which some people spell, grey. I go back and forth. Most of the world, and most skin colors, are something other than black black and white white. Though it’s okay if your skin is black or white, but most people are not. Most people seem to be some combination of brown, pink, white, black, yellow, orange, red…… and then there are the green folks on the planet whose name I forget from the movie Avatar which is full of wonderful colors!
Some people like black and white photos. I like some other colors in photos. There’s a thing now where people are painting their rooms gray – sort of a dark gray. That might be okay for an office. Neutral can be good, but I think it would get boring in a house.
When I was a little kid, all we had was black, white, and grays on the TV. Even Lassie was in black and white, but I loved that show anyway, and cried when it was over. Now, I prefer color, unless I’m watching an OLD movie, like, It’s a Wonderful Life. I LOVE Christmas movies!
It’s a Wonderful Life does a pretty good job with black, white and gray, plus George Bailey’s imagination!
Color is one of the top ten things I am thankful for.
Living color!
This was a big deal in the 60s!
I’m thankful for Linda Hill, our SoCS host and her weekly prompts and our colorful wordpress community!
Happy Thanks Giving!
For more streams of consciousness, rules and guidelines, visit Linda Hill’s SoCS prompt post!
Our prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “cam.” Find a word that contains “cam” or use it as is. Enjoy!
Camera. I use my phone. There’s a camera in my closet that is frozen as in stuck. I am so not mechanical. Maybe one day, I’ll get it fixed or looked at. But my phone takes good enough photos for me – just for fun, for now. Cameras are amazing when you stop and think about it. So much of our culture depends on them, for better or for worse. Let’s keep the most beautiful, life enhancing pictures and videos.
Camping. It’s been a long time since I went camping. I miss the camp fire and the smell it leaves on my clothes. But I don’t miss the sleeping on the ground. If I ever go camping again, I’ll be sleeping on a THICK foam pad, or in a bed in a camper, or a cabin. Maybe I’ll have a camp fire in the back yard this winter.
Camel. I’d walk a mile for one in my twenties if it was the only cigarette available. Thank God I don’t smoke anymore! The camel is a symbol of sobriety, since camels can go a long time without drinking. But they can’t go forever, and they’d want water. Water is the best thing to drink as long as it’s not contaminated. We finally got a reverse osmosis filter for drinking water at our kitchen sink, because our city water is too risky. Some people call city water Gen X water which is one of the contaminants. Camels got the wise men to baby Jesus. I hope they had enough water.
Camelot! It was a song and a movie. So romantic. At least when I first saw the movie and the play. Seems like it was in high school. Now, I’m irritated at Guinevere for cheating on Arthur. But I don’t know if that really happened. But I still like the music in musicals.
I was going to try to capture the romance of the movie I watched in my youth, or the play, but alas, there is no use. Monty Python figured that out.
I trust that no animals were hurt in this silliness.
Writing this Friday evening, who knows how I’ll feel in the morning after getting my covid booster this afternoon. There’s going to be some movie watching for sure. It’s nice not to have any other plans.
Update: The nurse said effects, if any, from my 1/2 dose of vaccine which is what the booster is, would kick in after about 12 hours. It was more like 8. My immune system cranked up at 10pm last night and has been going strong since. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked staying with moderna for consistency, but at least I know I’m building immunity, or so I tell myself – chanting in my head: Immunity! Immunity! Immunity! Even if it’s not 100%. It’s a good thing. Now, I’m going back to bed.
~~~~~
For more streams of consciousness, rules, and more, visit out host, Linda Hill by clicking here.
Today’sprompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “boo.” Find a word with the letters “boo” in it or use “boo” as is and base your post on it. Enjoy!
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Boo!
Boo who?
Well, you don’t have to cry about it.
Ooooold joke. Works best when spoken, with a grandchild, niece, nephew, or someone who likes simple silliness.
I haven’t cried in a long time. Not real crying where I need to remind myself to breathe so my stomach and head don’t hurt. I know how to do that. I mastered the art of real crying at the turn of the century. Thankfully, no need lately. Oh, I’ll tear up a bit at a TV show. Just yesterday, watching a Blue Bloods episode I’d even seen before, I got a tear in my eye. It doesn’t take much.
Whining is another matter. I try not to whine out loud, except to the cat. But I will whine in my head. Why did I have a touch of vertigo yesterday? Am I not able to bend over and arrange my little pebbles on my winding pathway just the way I want? Is it a sign that I am being too precise. Funny how I want a pebble just a certain way, in a certain place, but it’s gotta look wild and natural at the same time. That’s my landscaping style. Maybe this stream will come back around with some photos.
I don’t like to be scared. Maybe there was a time when I liked scary movies. Now, I’m ready for the Christmas movies. Remember when we could scare ourselves silly as teenagers at sleepovers? Or later going to visit the old railroad tracks? There was this thing in North Carolina called the Maco Light. It was near a railroad station in Maco, NC. The name is similar to my maiden name with one less c, but definitely no relation. Some guy lost his head in a train accident. He was workin on the railroad trying to warn an oncoming train with a lantern. His head was never found, or so the legend goes. When I was in my late teens, it was said that you could see old Joe looking for his head, swinging a lantern along the train track. A bunch of us convoyed to Maco one night to look for the light. We didn’t see it, but we scared ourselves silly walking along the track in the dark quiet near midnight. We screamed when a generator came on. Or was it really a generator? I have no idea. That was what? 1975? We had fun with just our imaginations. (Okay, maybe some beer, too.) I think they tore up the tracks after that. Keep those crazy kids from comin out disturbin the peace…
Now, I don’t want to be scared. Ba Humbug on scary movies and headless railroad ghosts.
I do like my neighbor’s decorations though.
Neighborhood Decorations. I like smiley ghosts.
And then there are Patrick Swayze ghosts. The movie Ghost wasn’t that scary, except for the bad guys. It was more of a romantic comedy about a ghost. I might watch that one again.
Getting back to the winding path….
It’s taken me a few months to get my winding path this far. I had a lot of roots to dig through and work around for the bricks. It’s till a work in progress. Maybe I’ll add some bottle caps and melted marbles. A little at a time.
Before
Yesterday
Close up joy rock
Close up Compassion Rock
Close up Peace Rock
~~~
Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by Linda Hill. Thanks, Linda!
Thanks to Linda Hill for today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday : “if.” Start your post with the word “If.” Enjoy!
If you’ve ever read Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If,” you will know it is inspiring. It inspired me when I was in my early teens. Then, when I was in my early twenties, I saw an “If for girls” and an “If for boys,” in a gift store. It made me really mad. You see, the original “If” by Rudyard Kipling ended with the words, “You’ll be a man my son.” I overlooked that and took to heart all the ifs he listed, like, “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too, ” which I remember by heart. The idea that those “ifs” by Kipling could not apply to me, and that I had to have a separate If poem about sugar and spice and everything nice, (I really don’t remember what it was about, but it must’ve been something like that) really irked my feminist spirit in the 70s. I’m glad I haven’t come across it since, so maybe I should let it go for now.
Here’s a practical warning: If you ever come across pokeweed, with it’s strikingly beautiful, dark magenta berries and stems, BEWARE! Here’s a picture or three.
Pokeweed in early fall
Most of the berries are gone now
Here’s a better photo of the berries
Those of you who’ve been here regularly know that I’ve allowed an urban forest to grow in my backyard. I thought the pokeweed berries were pretty. Such an interesting color. So I let them grow, mostly where they wanted. I’d read that the berries have been used for dye, but to be careful, because they are also poisonous.
Since the pokeweed dies off in the late fall, I decided to cut or pull up about half of it on Sunday. I wore gloves, but did not wear long sleeves. The pokeweed is the only thing I can imagine that has caused an awful, itchy rash on my arms from where I carried the cut stems and leaves to the curbside plastic trash can for pick up. I won’t show you the photo of my rash, because, well, this is not Facebook, so I’ll spare you those details. But it’s weird that the blisters continue to emerge after five days. Thank God for benadryl and prednisone. One for night time and the other for daytime. I bought a long sleeved men’s shirt at the thrift store for when I cut (or more likely pull up) the remaining pokeweed after it’s all brown and dried out. Maybe I should wear a mask.
On a more positive note, lets imagine good what ifs. What if we all start learning how to get along better? What if we start protecting the planet better? What if we get a fun surprise? What if I make it to 90 years old and still have all my teeth? What if your dreams come true? What if you fly?
Speaking of flying. I took some photos of an egret yesterday at the lake with my friend. It was hard to get close without the bird flying away. But that’s okay. It came back. Plus there were alligators!
Before it flew away
After a while it flew back
Earlier we saw an alligator
Gator and turtles
Egret incoming
~~~
For more Streams of Consciousness, rules, etc, visit our host, Linda Hill and join me in sending prayers or good wishes for her son Alex to feel better.
Here’s the prompt: Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “lid.” Use it in the literal sense, use it in the metaphorical sense, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
“Keep a lid on it,” sounds controlling. Maybe even harsh. But there are times when it might be a good idea. At times in my life I have disclosed too much personal information, like a confession almost. Sometimes I have been too honest. Ocassionally socially awkward. So, I’ve had to slow down and think, except when I don’t. There have been no major faux pas lately. At least not that I know of.
Keeping a lid on something might mean keeping a secret, keeping something safe, like food, or like don’t tell anyone I said this, but…… Maybe it’s better not to tell, then. Getting back to self-disclosure, maybe a lid could be loose or tight. If it’s tight, there’s always a possiblity it could be opened again, but you might need help from someone safe. I’ve heard that “you’re only as sick as the secrets you keep,” but we still have to be careful who we tell our secrets to.
I remember when I was single, trying to open a jar by myself. So as not to do too much damage to my hand, wrist, and arm, which were already compromised by so much work on the computer, I would work on the lid for a while, then take a break. Hit it with a knife on the corners, try again, and take a break. There was this one time when I took it across the street to the neighbor. Other times, I took turns with my daugther. Don’t hurt yourself trying to open a jar. Now, I try a couple times and take it to David. His hands are much stronger than mine.
When we were dating for the second time around, we didn’t keep a lid on much information-wise. We wanted everything on the table. No big surprises. We were in our 50s and didn’t want to waste time. We talked about past relationships and what we’d learned from them. I guess how much you disclose depends on whether you want to date or a committed relationship. Of course we didn’t share every gory detail. I don’t want to think about those. Quick! Think of something else!
I try not to use plastic, but when I do, I try not to use a plastic lid, which means I have to be careful not to spill. Since I don’t use straws, I might get a smoothie mustache, but that’s okay. Here’s my basic smoothie recipe at home: Oat milk, Banana, and Peanut Butter. Add other ingredients as desired. Lids are optional. (But if you take it outside, you might want some kind of a cover to keep bugs out.)
FYI, I don’t know what this has to do with lids, but my spell check on WP has not been working for a while. I chatted with someone from WP yesterday and he? said something in WP was not compatible with grammarly, or something, but they’re working on it. He told me to go to settings in my browser which I tried, but it didn’t work. Anyway, I have to go over this again to see if I catch any misspelled words. Does misspelled have two s’s? Yes, okay. That’s good enough for now. Apparently spell check is optional for some WP sites. That would have been a good transitional line for this paragraph. Now, I’m thinking too much. Time to put a lid on this.
Thinking about a photo gallery, I could have written about Mama Cat’s vet visit. One year ago I trapped her at my chuch and took her to the vet before bringing her home. She was still quite feral and escaped in the exam room. Tuesday I took her to a place that specializes in cats. It went so well, I almost cried with relief. They took the lid off her carrier and she did not run away. The towel helped. Mama Cat has come a long way in a year. Now she has a microchip.
Semi-Random Photos:
Mama Cat at the vet
A relaxation technique
Wave Therapy
Anonymous Sand Art
Backyard Lantana
Backyard woodpecker
Tiny Mushrooms
Accidental hitchhiker about to go back outside
Down by the Riverside
~~~
Continued thanks to our SoCS host, Linda Hill. You can find more SoCS posts and rules at Linda’s Blog.
Today’s prompt is from Dan who’s filling in for Linda. You can visit both of them over at the virtual bar at Dan’s blog today. Here’s what Dan came up with:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “inspire/aspire/expire.” Use them in any form you like. Use one, use two or use them all if you want. If you use two, you get bonus points! If you use all three, Cheryl will put your next drink on David’s tab. Enjoy!
I hope to inspire, but more naturally than in the past. Because I like to be inspired, too. In my art folder here on my laptop, I have a folder named, “inspiration.” It has ideas from nature and other people’s art that I want to, not copy, but be inspired by, taking my own spin on them. Clouds inspire me, like this one:
If you know a lot about clouds, you might be able to tell I turned this upside down. Originally it looked like a bird or angel diving down to earth. Turning it upside down makes it a rising mermaid or angel or something. I like rising better than diving, though I do love diving under water. So I’m going to paint it rising, whatever it turns out to be. The head will be different. We’ll see what happens. Do you notice the face near the very top a little to the right of center? It’s kinda eerie/cool. The face seems to be looking over a shoulder or wing.
Aspire. I have aspired to be and do many things. Maybe the best is to aspire to be ourselves. Our true selves, not what others expect. I think of myself as an aspiring vegan, inching closer and inspired by the vegans at the farm where I volunteer. Been doing better on not eating fish. Gave up chicken a couple years ago (the chickens on the farm reinforce that) and stopped eating mammals in my early twenties. Cheese though is sneaky. Dairy productus show up unexpectedly in granola bars or veggie burritoes. Anyway, I’m not perfect, never have been, never will be.
Expiration dates are subjective. My husband will eat (almost) anything that smells okay even if it’s expired. I might go a couple months out from when something was said to expire. Maybe six months. A lot of food is wasted because it’s expired or looks funny, but it’s still good to eat. I’m glad people are starting to rescue and redistribute some of that. I got some free almond butter that had expired at the new food co-op down the road. Almond butter is something I don’t usually buy, because peanut butter is so much less expensive, and there’s something about almonds production that’s a problem, maybe with bees. I don’t remember. But it was a nice gift, the expired almond butter.
My energy level expired Saturday when David drove home from southeastern Connecticut to southeastern NC. He’s a tough guy. Just riding in the truck all those hours was hard on my body. We took the scenic route close to the eastern shore, because it was less traffic and less stress, though more time (15 hours with our stops.) We had considered stopping for the night halfway, but David seems to have an amazing ability to keep going which only inspires me to take a nap or take pictures. Oh, the reason for the trip – we had gone to visit David’s mother who is 86 and doing very well except for some vision problems. (We have all been vaccinated.) She was very happy to see us after five years and told me all about her volunteer work at the elementary school when her kids were little. I’m going to write another post about that sometime – about how she helped start a kindergarten, school library, and got things done as a mama bear back in the 1960s. But that’s enough for now. Here are some photos from our trip. I hope to stay home for a while.
Windmills in NC
Somewhere on the east coast
Abandoned house in Rhode Island
Nice view in Connecticut
Chesapeake Bay Bridge
Chesapeake Bay
Same windmills heading home
~~~
Happy October!
For more streams of consciousness visit Linda’s blog HERE. Be sure to look for Dan’s contribution at “No Facilities” in the comments.
Today’s Friday excellent prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is…… “puzzle.” Use it any way you’d like!
Puzzles are a big part of life. Big puzzles and little puzzles. Hard puzzles that take years and years to figure out, like, Is there a life partner out there for me, and where the hell is he? What’s taking so long? Oh, I need to work on me first. Finally figured that out. Now it makes sense. Self love and spirituality were pieces of the puzzle. And it wasn’t all about me.
There are easy puzzles, too, like what to have for dinner. What should go in the soup? Some things don’t fit, but must do if you’re willing to be adventurous. And then there are all those in between puzzles.
People could be like puzzle pieces. We need lots of different pieces. The best puzzles are diverse, with lots of different colors. Some of us are on the edges, some in the middle, and there are cornerstones. With buildings, cornerstones are important. And there’s more than one. Maybe even more than four. I don’t know.
What happens when we are missing pieces to our puzzles of life? We wait. We search, or we accept. Maybe we could even make our own piece of the puzzle. Like cut it out of cardboard and color it just right to fit. Maybe it will work. Then maybe we find the other piece. Or not. It’s okay.
It’s puzzling that some people refuse to get vaccinated and refuse or resist wearing masks. Some of them are my family members who I love dearly, and so I worry about them. I can’t just write them off. When I work to try to understand their reasons for not being vaccinated or wearing masks, there is more than one reason. But when I really listen, deep down it is about fear. Misguided, irrational, and confused, in my opinion, but still fear, not selfishness. I don’t know the answer, and I don’t know if I can change their minds. Still, I let them know about my friend who died from Covid and my friend’s son who died from covid last week at the age of 36. Neither were vaccinated. Still, I love them, my unvaccinated loved ones, with a little more distance, but just as much love as ever.
Here are a few photos from my grand daughter’s 10th birthday party. It was all about unicorns!
Unicorn Cake
Unicorn Piñata
Birthday Princess
Cousins
with Matching Rainbow Dresses
I don’t want to watch.
Grandma Necklace
Time to Go Home
Unicorn Dreamin’
For more on Stream of Consciousness Saturday, visit our host, Linda Hill, at :
Here’s today’s prompt: “pin.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb, use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
Remember bobby pins? My mom had a lot. There might even be one around here. They were for your hair, like mini barrets. She would put her hair up in little pincurls and sleep in them overnight with an x of double bobby pins in each curl. Better than those big plastic curlers in the days before curling irons or whatever people are using these days.
Straight pins could be (and still are) useful for sewing a hem or keeping two pieces of fabric lined up while you sew them together with a needle.
Pintrest is so full of everything. I don’t keep up with my account. There are only so many hours in a day and so many other things to do.
I don’t wear many pins. My mom had a lot. I pinned her angel pin to the lapel of my black blazer which I used to wear a lot but have not worn in a long time. Maybe I’ll wear it this Christmas.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? I guess it depends on the size of the angels, and several other factors that have something to do with divine magic.
There are also pins that I have called buttons – campaign buttons, cause buttons, save the whales buttons – but they are really pins, because they have pins and you can wear them on your shirt or purse, or whatever. I had a big collection once. Now it’s smaller and kept in a glass container in the kitchen. Why in the kitchen? I have no idea. One button/pin says, “Get stoned. Drink wet cement.” When I was a substance abuse counselor, one of my clients gave that to me. It was funny. And weird. (Do NOT drink wet cement!)
Now I’m going to my pictures and type in “pin” and see where that leads.
My mom’s angel pin
The “get stoned” pin is bottom left
dragonfly on closthes pin
This one is still on the mantle.
I don’t know where this pic came from.
My dad’s MASH hat has pins.
…
For more streams of consciousness, rules and stuff, visit our host, Linda Hill at her bloghere.
My friend Mary who is a pediatrician nudged me to get vaccinated early this year. I wasn’t in any hurry and might not have even been vaccinated if she hadn’t nudged me early on with a link to a local clinic. I wanted to see what happened. I knew from my side effects to the flu shot, that my side effects to the covid vaccine were likely to be significant, and they were. But now, I’m glad I got the shots.
Saturday I dropped some school supplies off to a community organizer. We chatted in her living room without masks. I had mine in my pocket, but knew we’d both been vaccinated. She offered me a hug as I was about to leave, and I accepted warmly. Not sorry about that. But maybe it wouldn’t have hurt to wear a mask. I found out yesterday that she tested positive for covid. I think she’s okay, but her daughter is in the hospital.
I’ve heard of a lot of people who were vaccinated testing positive for covid, but their symptoms are mild compared to people who have not been vaccinated. My friend who tested positive but was NOT vaccinated has been in ICU for three weeks and on a ventilator. He is ten years younger than me. He’s also a wonderful person who has done a lot for the community. God, I hope he’s going to be okay. Lots of people are praying.
I am thankful for my doctor friend nudging me to get vaccinated. I’m feeling okay, recovering from plantar fascitis and a pulled muscle in my back. My body is good at healing, if maybe slower than it used to be. Still, I think I’m going to lay low, take it easy, and wear my mask when I go anywhere. Life is precious.
Some of these photos are from the farm animal sanctuary where I prepare lunch on Thursdays.
Me in my angel mask
Leo isn’t so sure about his new perch.
The goats like the fennel in the chicken yard.
Patrick reminds me of a big dog.
Padre is so handsome.
A skink in my backyard.
Girl at the beach.
The vegan chocolate “ice cream” is my favorite.
Our Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday was: “my.” Start your post with the word “My.” Bonus points if you end your post with “yours.” Enjoy!
For more streams of consciouness along with rules visit out host, Linda Hill at this link.
Anything is Possible! 