FUNNY BREAK

Published January 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Bird dressed in trousers…

HEAR YE, HEAR YE

Published January 8, 2021 by Nan Mykel

You can be a Republican and still be honest, but possibly you can’t be Trump and still be a real Republican.

I hope the inauguration won’t be a super-spreader.

I don’t think it’s productive to villify those who were acquiescent until njow. The present and the future is all we’re got now. I don’t want to waste my present in outrage. That’s Trump’s script. Never knew shaming helped anything.

This isn’t a Pollyanish response–it’s very pragmatic.

TOTALLY unrelated question: when you say something’s on the right or left side, are you inside looking out or outside looking in?

I WISH JOE…

Published January 7, 2021 by Nan Mykel

and Kamala would secretly depart on a pleasure cruise, returning unannounced January 20 and be inaugurated in a secret hideaway. Crowds/or attendees would be prohibited due to the coronavirus. The outgoing president would be frisked, of course.

WHAT MOVES YOU?

Published January 7, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I may be primarily talking to other females, since it appears we have more access to the emotional realm than males, but let’s not stereotype! So, I’ll just talk about my own experience, and you can try it on for size.

Images have the power to touch me directly, bypass thoughts and go straight to that place in the unconscious which is vulnerable to experiencing something like beauty. There ought to be a different word for that tingly connection between in here and out there. The photo above touches me whenever I see it. I almost always find myself smiling when I experience it. It’s almost like it elicits empathy in me.

I looked up beauty on Google and see that it’s been taken over by personal attractiveness. So what is the word for what I mean? I’m talking about what produces a warm soothing fulfilling experience in response to a (shudder) “stimulous.” Sex and scratching don’t count.

Webster said “pretty” (shudder), then “qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.” That’s more like it.

So, I guess for me beauty is a feeling that strokes my insides, and can be quite restorative, a real pick-me-upper. Thinking of restorative I remember being surprised by how soothing it felt when I googled “birds.” I think I responded to their vulnerability and the unbelievable variety in their coloring and other features. I suspect another thing that moved me was seeing how evolution has produced such great and–yes, beautiful variations in birds, a very handy treatment for mild depression. Well, I see this began with a sleeping pony and ended with birds, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with personal attractiveness.

If anyone “Likes” this, maybe they can share their appreciations in a comment?

I NEVER FOUND THE WORDS…

Published January 6, 2021 by Nan Mykel

…TO GO with this photo. I did find an interesting New York Times headline from the past, however, of a different time and cave:
China’s Last Cave Dwellers Fight to Keep Their Underground …www.nytimes.com › World › Asia PacifMay 13, 2018 — Officials have told them to leave, and offered them modern homes, but the residents of Zhong cave in remote southwestern China are ..

Anyone willing to try to add their own words to the photo, in the Comments section, please share.

PEACE

Published January 5, 2021 by Nan Mykel

INNER PEACE – If you can start the day without caffeine
If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can conquer tension without medical help, If you can relax without alcohol,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs, Then You Are Probably The Family Dog
And you thought I was going to get all spiritual …
Handle every Stressful situation like a dog.
If you can’t eat it or play with it, piss on it and walk away.

(This passage originally came from my mail and before that came from a friend’s French Canadian friend. I claim no credit or anathema for it.)

THINKLINGS

Published January 5, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I DON’T like to think of canine pets as “dogs.” It doesn’t seem right. And of course the word for female canines is even worse…I found some warm quotes about canine pets at Konrad Lorenz on Google. “The bond with a dog is as lasting as the ties of this Earth can ever be.”

AS A CHILD I thought I might become a detective when I grew up because I could tell the good guys from the bad ones so easily…. (The good guys wore white hats and the bad ones, black hats.)

ONE SURE NEEDS a lot of faith in the miracles of evolution to avoid belief in intelligent design! I’ve been doing some “escape” reading in Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell (Simon and Schuster (1982), and the concept of information theory is just beyond my ken. It’s exciting, however, to think that the unconscious rules of grammar pre-dated the acquisition of language. Some think it’s true for music and even numbers. And to imagine what kind of communication scheme Neanderthal engaged in with his burial customs, etc., grabs the imagination. Interesting that child prodigies can be considered mutations from a hypothesized biological process yet not from the influence of a past life. (Not that I believe that; I’m just messing with you.)

SPEAKING OF messing, I wonder what precipitated our president to mess his pants on the eve of the runoff election in Georgia today. Gee, and on January 6 violent conspiracy theorists from all over the USA are invited to party wildly in Washington at 11 a.m. on the day the vice president is scheduled to present the results of the electoral college to the senate.

HOW ABOUT a way to inform bloggers that one of their followers (or those followed) has died? I’d like to leave an obituary that my daughter could enter so blog friends would know why I’m no longer writing. Writing a cheerful obituary would be a challenge.

PANDEMIC PUTTERINGS

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

If still alive when the pandemic passes

Will anyone be willing to get off their…chairs?

The cloistered world of expanded mind

Fits, as time goes by.

Patches from old songs flitter

Among recycling litter “As Time Goes By.”

Jumping spider in the tub

Takes on significance, that’s the rub.

The phone sings its cradled song

As mail from good causes go unopened.

Poets need not rhyme; or not;

Nor dress. Time o’erflows with polka-dotted

nights, several times a day.

Outside, a passing motorcycle farts

and while I ply my art alone I find

that self-quarantine works for me

just fine.

WHOA!

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

On the farm my grandmother used to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me.” She said “harm,” not “hurt,” I realize now. I realize and understand how the “n” word can hurt, but until today I had not realized how the “alien” word could hurt the recipient but also affect the listener or reader. It gave me the creeps when I came across it in an article about ICE today. And…

I broke my rule about noting the source of information worth re-visiting, and I am unable to find once again the full details about various punishments against the female detainees who reported their gynecological abuse at the hands of and/or direction of Dr. Mahendre Amin at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. The original report was made by a former nurse at the center in September. Women who went on a hunger strike following the alleged abuse in detention had their water rationed, and two were deported.

At some point ICE reported it had quit sending women to ICDC for treatment. Forty female detainees submitted testimony on their alleged gynecological abuse while in ICE custody to the Middle District of Georgia Federal Court on Dec. 21. I have no additional information about the current status of the whistleblowers’ punishment. (Partial source for this story is Victoria Bekiempis in the December 22, 2020 Guardian.)

LIVING ON THE EDGE

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Not everyone has the luxury of wonder. Far too many have been driven from their own country into a bleak, hungry future. Self-conscious about my fortune, I wrote State of the World in 2015:

If we lay out human experience what do we see?

A percentage warm, snuggly, well-fed and free.

And the others–many others–less lucky than we.

Why have we been blessed and not the others,

no more deserving than our other brothers.

Yet I still hide with you, warm under the covers.

I read that the scourge of agent orange still wreaks havoc on the babies of Vietnam

As for our country’s health coverage for the birth defects of our women veterans who served there, the statement is that:

VA recognizes a wide range of birth defects as associated with women U.S. Veterans’ service in Vietnam. These diseases are not tied to herbicides, including Agent Orange, or dioxin exposure, but rather to the birth mother’s service in Vietnam.

Mysterious, eh?