Breakdown Howls – Verses

Published July 10, 2018 by Nan Mykel

BREAKDOWN HOWLS

Grab a piece of reality and

take it with you when you journey

to the other side!

Word salad is a symptom.

How can that be? Early English

sounds daft to me.

STOP!

Just stop it!

I need a respite.

Nit-picky poems, mine

always stop short of fearful

herculean struggles.

Everyone really does

hate a bully. When will

they remember that?

Prostitutes are now sex workers.

Slaves are enslaved people.

When will a versifier become a poet?

Some things last like

Days of Our Lives.

Others hit the tombstone circuit.

Evolution has set us up

to think with faulty data.

Defense mechanisms betray us.

I caught sight of me

in an alternate universe during the night.

She was me but younger and

so much wiser! She said

to tell you Hello. nan

Spiders That Fly, Oh My!

Published July 8, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Spiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away. This behavior is called ballooning. It might carry spiders away from predators and competitors, or toward new lands with abundant resources. But whatever the reason for it, it’s clearly an effective means of travel. Spiders have been found two-and-a-half miles up in the air, and 1,000 miles out to sea.

Visit 3 Quarks Daily BY S. ABBAS RAZA From Ed Yong in The Atlantic

U.S. Discourages Breast Feeding?

Published July 8, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Well,I did see the story about a breast-feeding baby being yanked from its mother’s breast into detention, but I didn’t realize we would put corporate profits ahead of breast feeding.

From NYT By Andrew Jacobs July 8, 2018

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly….Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

American officials sought to water down the resolution….When that failed, they turned to threats….Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs. The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

Health advocates scrambled to find another sponsor for the resolution, but at least a dozen countries, most of them poor nations in Africa and Latin America, backed off, citing fears of retaliation, according to officials from Uruguay, Mexico and the United States.

….In the end, the Americans’ efforts were mostly unsuccessful. It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

Horses Remember…

Published July 8, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Horses prefer to look at negative and threatening sights with their left eye, and positive social stimuli with their right eye. In the study, when they saw a model they had seen frowning earlier, they spent more time looking with their left eye. They also exhibited more stress-related behaviours, like scratching and floor sniffing. In contrast, when they saw a model they had seen smiling earlier, they spent more time looking with their right eye.

Many other animals have shown an ability to remember human faces, including sheep and fish. Wild crows will hold a grudge for years against people who have treated them badly, and even teach other crows to mob their enemies.

However, the horses seem to form an opinion about people based only on their expression in a photograph. “That’s something we haven’t really seen in animals before,” says Proops.

“The horse family has the most expressive faces after the primates, so logically they pay attention to faces and expressions,” says Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta. “Horses surrounded by people have ample opportunity to learn what our expressions mean.”

Journal reference: Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.03.035

Immigrant U.S. Soldiers Being Discharged

Published July 7, 2018 by Nan Mykel

According to the Associated Press, the Army has begun discharging immigrant soldiers and recruits who enlisted through a special program that would put them on a path to citizenship.

The AP was unable to find out how many immigrants have been discharged, but immigration attorneys said more than 40 have either been discharged or left with an uncertain enlistment status. “Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged,” the AP reported. “Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.”

(Excerpt from Salon by LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

JULY 7, 2018 )

I coulda told them that!

Published July 5, 2018 by Nan Mykel

Dogs understand your facial expressions and know what you’re feeling, study says

NICOLE KARLIS on Salon

Hilarious re-blog–Go to her site for more!

Published July 2, 2018 by Nan Mykel

tip skeptical

Careless

Published July 2, 2018 by Nan Mykel

I can relate to this so much. It sounds like my own thoughts tho not so elegant. I’d like to reblog.’

writing in north norfolk

Sometimes,
I can’t remember who I am.
I look at photographs and wonder,
where did she go,
that carefree girl, that careful mother,
so careless with herself?

I often feel disjointed, as if part of me
has broken off,
a branch
hanging,
buffeted by the wind of time,
and wonder, is it mine?

When I read a poem
that was written in my name,
I scrutinise each line for me,
proof that I write poetry
and find that careful,
carefree girl I so carelessly mislaid.

Kim M. Russell, 29^th June 2018

Teenage me My response to Poets United Midweek Motif ~ When I Think About Myself also linked to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night

Sumana has given us a thoughtful motif this midweek, and she begins with Maya Angelou’s poem ’When I Think About Myself’ – truly inspirational. She also includes poems by John Clare and Gerard Manley Hopkins…

View original post 17 more words

Remember This?

Published July 1, 2018 by Nan Mykel

FEB. 28, 2016

CNN interview

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know.”

—Mark E Andersen Daily Kos

U.S. Ambassador to Estonia James D. Melville Jr. Resigns in Protest

Published July 1, 2018 by Nan Mykel

“So I leave willingly and with deep gratitude for being able to serve my nation with integrity for many years, and with great confidence that America, which is and has always been, great, will someday return to being right.”

Daily Kos Saturday June 30, 2018 ·

durrati