Human Rights Day Today

 The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to Narges Mohammadi, 51, of Iran.

 She was arrested 13 times, convicted for five and sentenced to a total of 31 years and 154 lashes, for activism, campaigning for human rights, in support of political prisoners, and against the death penalty.

32 Years Ago Today

Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989

Bob is 80 today

.... "I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children ...

I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world ...

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley ...

I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'
I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin' "...

____________________________________________________
[Excerpts from Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall"]

April is Poetry Month

Yesterday

Inspecting their new feedtray

Out on a Limb

Yesterday, three mourning doves, resting

Sunday morning visitors

Boiled Egg Art

in his lunchbox today,
a little surprise

cracked him up

and then
he ate it

My country, adrift

Today

4th of July 2020

Julian

Little chipmunk that lives under the shed,

having his breakfast

Social Distancing

                                                                                              awynart2020

They're BACK!!!!!!!

Two rain days last week & the snow is pretty much almost all gone.

Nice little surprise this morning while out back feeding the tiny birds:  

                                THE GEESE ARE BACK!!!

I so admire their native stick-to-it-iveness. (They can travel 800 miles a day if necessary).

Been watching their departures at the beginning of winter every year, and their return at the beginning of spring. It never gets old.

Two weeks now into self-isolation due to Covid-19.  It's so quiet.

No traffic, no chatter, only the birds and the wind.

You can wave hello to the mailman or the garbage truck guys, or see an occasional

neighbor walking solo outside past your window --but for the most part life-as-usual

is on hold.  (Two and a half more weeks to go till we know when (or if) this new 'now' will be extended.) 

Introverts have an easier time of it.  Also, you spend less $ and learn to be

more self-reliant.  It forces you to look at things differently, that you might not have

done so otherwise.  Kind of like a forced re-setk, that you can learn from.

Life goes on. 

Welcome back, geese!

old untitleds, resurfacing

awyn inkwash 2013

you wake up only when
the dream you're having
can no longer come true

you wake up only when
it's the same old you again
and not that dream person

you wake up in suspense
at what will happen next in
the dream that just ended

              ~~  Bill Knott

Please, no more

-13 F but at least it's sunshiny out 

The Day Democracy Died

 

"Out of these gawky flitterings . . . emptiness"

No Possum, No Sop, No Taters

He is not here, the old sun,

As absent as if we were asleep.

The field is frozen. The leaves are dry.

Bad is final in this light.

In this bleak air the broken stalks

Have arms without hands. They have trunks

Without legs or, for that, without heads.

They have heads in which a captive cry

Is merely the moving of a tongue.

Snow sparkles like eyesight falling to earth,

Like seeing fallen brightly away.

The leaves hop, scraping on the ground.

It is deep January. The sky is hard.

The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

It is in this solitude, a syllable,

Out of these gawky flitterings,

Intones its single emptiness,

The savagest hollow of winter sound.

It is here, in this bad, that we reach

The last purity of the knowledge of good.

The crow looks rusty as he rises up.

Bright is the malice in his eye ...

One joins him there for company,

But at a distance, in another tree.

-- Wallace Stevens

Visitor at the Wall

Time is Running Out for Planet Earth

Positively Presidential

Democratic candidate for President, Pete Buttigieg

Mayor of South Bend, Indiana
Served in Afghanistan
Speaks 7 languages

"Democratic voters believe 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is more electable than a host of more established candidates, including sitting senators, according to INSIDER polling.Nearly 34% of registered Democrats who said they'd vote in the 2020 primary believe Buttigieg would beat President Donald Trump in a general election race."  [Source]   


  

There are no words . . .

Trump tweet - May 13, 2019:

"Under my administration, we are restoring NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!

Trump tweet - June 7, 2019  (today):

"For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon -- We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

[This, from the "stable genius" who thinks that climate change is a hoax and that noise from wind turbines causes cancer.]

The Peanut Gallery

Made some more mini bookmarkers

Free Mittens!

 

Out for a walk last week I spied a clothesline strung between two trees.

I remember reading about this in the weekly Hebdo.  The sign says "Une Ville Tricoté Serrée"
("A Tight-Knit City").  Some people in the community got together to offer free mittens, tuques
and knitted scarves to anyone in need of such. 

One finds a lot of handmade knitted or crocheted winter items here at craft fairs, thrift stores,
yard sales, or charity made by women, young girls or retired nuns.  The library around the corner
ran a volunteer knitathon recently.  So, a seemingly endless supply available.

Half the items in this photo were gone by the time I returned back from shopping.
The next day the empty clothespins now held replacement knitware.
What a cool idea:  A winter clothesline of freebies, in case you lose one of your mittens while sledding, someone walks off with your hat by mistake at the coffee shop, or the wind grabs
your scarf and carries it over an impenetrable snowbank.


Speaking of winter ...

Supermarket parking lot: where they dump

the plowed snow. It will be there

until the end of March.

Oh joy, the shovel's around the corner,
 leaning against the side of the house.

Keeping Current

On Obstructionism, Agendas, and Ideology:

A long, very interesting presentation outlaying, historically to the present, the
intentional obstructionism--based on an ideological agenda--of one individual
and his particular political party.  [See entire article here.]


My translation of one of their strategies, were it to be rendered visually:

From tweetbursts to sound bites to misleading headlines, we are being distracted . . .  constantly.
Get too close to discovering what's really going on behind the curtain and you're fed the
"Look-at-this-instead!" mantra.

I wouldn't count on that working forever.
Too many waking up now.

Love and Peace to All

Question to Ask Before the Full Moon Tonight

These holidays ablink 
with cultural 'must'itudes
    of costumes adorned
        ceremonies performed
              traditions enacted . . .
Hey moon, if my New Year's resolution is 
not to wear the bottoms of my PJs rolled
       anymore
(which habitude suggests is non-deprogrammable)
--  does that mean change is
         improbable?
Or are you hinting I've not yet sorted out
what goes, what stays,
in this on-again off-again
soul-self evolution


_________________________________

If

A song comes along out of nowhere today, asking
"Would you go, or would you stay?"
Could apply to love, a country, a situation, the uncertain future.
If X, then what?  Do we already know the answer, deep down.

A Little Moment

 At the bus stop

on the way to the post office this morning -

an elderly couple

side by side on the bench.

She's holding his face in her hands;

gives him a kiss.

My eye catches them in the act.

Their eyes catch me looking.

She laughs and places her hands in her lap.

He grins.

The smile on my face

(inadvertently let loose during the smooch)

still lingers.

Love never gets old.

I bet her kiss has made his day.

I know this unexpected

little moment

just made mine.

                                     ~~ awyn 

Bookmarkers!

Fun mini art pieces today

Experimental handmade paper cut-outs
with a practical purpose

Poem No. 27

 [Found on page 40]


Hermes
a.k.a. "magnet

of the wise"
talks about

a fallen pearl
that can only

be retrieved
at an un-

fathomable
depth

where earth's
core pours

in molten sheets
to cover

the sea floor
fire and water

mix to forge
the buried Self

a blind creature
no eyes have seen

that generates
its own radiance

from no visible
source

       ~ ~  Paul Pines

Excerpt from "Book Two: The Absent One," in
Divine Madness (Marsh Hawk Press, 2012).


    

Goodbye, Tom Clark

 Tom Clark (1941-2018)

Thank you, Tom Clark, for your poetry and presence in the blogworld.  

May your adventures beyond continue.