My streams of thought meet here
For Sammi’s Weekend writing prompt, here’s a mini-bite of prairie humor.
More Snow
Snow falls anew on prairie cities; mercury plummets. Planes depart daily from prairie airports, carrying snowbirds to southern destinations. The brave, the tough, the broke choose to enjoy the winter wonderland.
😉
Good morning everyone.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt for today is the word EXTINCT.
I pondered this for a moment, wondering what I could write on this topic. Lots of things have become, or are becoming, extinct. My thoughts went to a another blogger’s article I read recently, titled SAVE THE BEES. Click here to read.
They say one good way of writing poetry, especially haiku, is to contrast the very great with the very small. The universe versus one point of starlight. The person who’s just lost everything in a house fire holding the melted frame from their family photo.
This morning I thought of the major issue being discussed these days — climate change — versus the poor endangered bee. I see a certain irony in the fact that while folks are worried about our extinction due to global climate changes, the loss of this little insect will pose a grave danger to our planet, if the research that prompted Sue’s article is correct.
Yes, it’s sadly ironic that, in order to produce more food, many growers are inadvertently poisoning the very thing that helps them produce the food.
Fellow blogger Biff has done another Whatnot Wednesday and invites other bloggers to respond by likewise posting a bit of misc trivia. Here’s my contribution. (To further reinforce my caution in this morning’s post about name-calling.)
A Belisha beacon, consists of a lamp with an amber globe sitting atop a tall black and white pole, marked pedestrian crossings in the United Kingdom and other countries historically influenced by Britain. The flashing light warns motorists to watch for pedestrians crossing.
It was named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport who in 1934 added beacons to pedestrian crossings. The first one became operational on July 4, 1935. These crossings were later painted in black and white stripes, and have become known as “zebra crossings.” Since then, Belisha beacons have been replaced by WALK signals for pedestrians.
Not long after Belisha beacons were set up in London the King and his Queen were enjoying a pleasant drive through the city in the royal limousine. They passed an intersection where one of these lights had been installed.
“Pull over,” King Edward instructed their chauffeur. “I want to test one of these crossings and see how well they actually work,” he told the Queen.
The chauffeur parked the car a short way down the street and the King got out. He walked back up the street to the crossing and about five minutes later he returned. As he climbed back into the car he was chuckling.
The Queen looked at him curiously and asked, “What’s so amusing?”
He grinned at her. “One of my loyal subjects just called me a doddering old fool.”
OFF WITH HIS HEAD!
the red queen
flexes her guillotine
toady or kneel
“White, White, My World is White…”
Fandango’s one-word challenge: BECAUSE
Our world looks so different this morning because we’ve had a night of pure, fluffy snow.
Ragtag Daily Prompt : WINTER
After a week of spring-like weather, with temperatures descending for the last couple of days, Winter has returned to our land in all its glory. If it were sunny today, we could almost go snow-blind; instead, the sky is almost as white as the blanket of snow.
Your Daily Word prompt: OPTIMUM
Snowfalls like this afford our son-in-law some optimum earning opportunities. He has some contracts for clearing snow, so I imagine he’ll have risen early this morning and gotten his snow-removal equipment on the road.
Word of the Day prompt: RADICAL
When I got up this morning, instead of having my first cup of coffee and keeping warm inside, I responded radically: I threw on my housecoat and went out to sweep off the decks and stairs. You see, we have two cats that are eager to go outside and look around first thing every morning and they need a snow-free place to sit. Guess you could call me a super-indulgent pet owner.
Speaking of radical, have you noticed the drastic change in my blog header and background? The world was white before I signed off last night, plus US Thanksgiving is officially over, so I changed — seasonalized, if that’s a word — the appearance of my blog. What do you think of my new look?
And when I saw the various prompt words this morning, I decided that they’d all fit in a prompt about our weather, except…
Your Daily Word Prompt: WREN
There are NO wrens anywhere in this land. Every wren with a brain in his tiny little skull will be passing the next five months in some sunny clime, along with almost every other small nesting bird that spends summer here. We’re stuck with the dull English sparrows and the magpies, whose bold black & white doesn’t do much to cheer up our landscape. Maybe several blue jays will come back again this winter?
Now I shall take optimum advantage of this winter morning by addressing some Christmas cards because that season is almost upon us. This will be a radical departure from my usual Dec 20th mailing. 🙂
I hope you’re all enjoying your day, whatever your weather.
“Hey, Nix.” Tanner watched his brother punching the keyboard with his index fingers. “Finally working on that bestseller?”
“Nah. Just doing a bit of writing exercise…in preparation for the day. I googled ‘writing prompts’ to see if I could find one that would light my fire.”
“Well, miracles still happen, they say.”
“Talk about overload! Here are eighteen pages of writing prompts. A few sites give 365, one for every day. And here’s another with 101 writing prompts. Some are specifically for fiction, some for journal, some to use as story starters. Hey! There’s even one called ’40 really awful writing prompts that no writer should use.’
“Cool! Everybody’s gonna want to check those out. So, what do they call a really awful writing prompt?”
Nixon clicked on the site and scrolled down. “These were written by Kim Z Dale and they are…yeah…some are pretty awful.
“Like?”
“Here’s the first: Write a story set on another planet exactly like our own. Call that planet “Earth’.”
Tanner moaned. “Okay. A definite lack of imagination. But you could embellish it, right? Make it Earth, but have everyone get along, people all bubbling with goodwill. The Fountain of Youth has just been discovered and the world is full of happy, smiling faces.”
“That would be a mega-miracle. I think this is supposed to be a regular Earth with everyday people living normal lives, going to school or rushing off to work, roaring along the freeways, pushing and shoving for bargains and fast foods, eyes glued to their phones.”
“How boring is that? You need some high adventure, some major catastrophe. Hey, I know. You could have a regular Earth, with normal people doing their stuff, then they find out a giant asteroid is streaking toward the planet and it’s going to blow the world to smithereens. People all over the world stop to watch the skies.”
“Um…technically only half the world would be able to see this at any given time,” Nixon reminded him.
“Spoilsport.”
“Anyway, they wouldn’t just stand there watching the skies for months. From the time we first knew it was coming, it’d take at least half a year to get here. We’d have months to get ready.”
“But what else would we do? No point working, buying stuff, putting money in the bank. No point planting a garden or anything if the planet was going to blow up. Maybe a great time to travel. See the world while it’s still intact.” Tanner chuckled, then thought for a moment. “I suppose religious folks would spend the time praying the world would be spared.”
“Hey, I’d be joining them!”
“And some folks might decide to make peace with their relatives. Write about some guy making peace with his family because they’re all about to be wiped out.”
“That’s an idea. ‘Sorry I’ve been such a pain, everybody.’ Lots of hugs and kisses. Nah, too intense.”
“Hey, it sells. People nowadays love intense.”
“But you know, Tanner, the government would be saying ‘Not to worry, folks. We’ve got this.’ Calming everybody down, and NASA would be figuring how much to hit it with, long before it gets here.”
“Right. Most people would expect to survive somehow, though they’d be stocking up on survival rations, just in case. That’s what I’d do, trusting this would all blow over but ready for some fallout.”
“Yeah, a lot would say ‘It’ll never happen.’ After Y2K, when all the electronic and financial systems in the world were supposed to crash and things carried on like always, people have become cynics.” Nixon shook his head melodramatically.
“So are you gonna write about all this?”
“I dunno. It’d take hours. I see the Ragtag community does a prompt and their word for today is Embellish. And the Word-of-the-Day challenge is Miracle. Maybe I’ll try one of those and keep it short.”
😉
I regret that I missed doing Crimson’s challenge last week. I even had a good little tale…but may get to use it some other time. And my response this week will be a light verse, as I’m still deep in my ATCUSS project. (A Total Clean-Up of my Sewing Space.)
I’m keeping tract of everything I do so when the end of the month comes I’ll have a record to show for my efforts. So far I’m pleased with what I’ve accomplished. I’ve cleaned up drawers, pieced two blanket tops for our Sewing Circle (which is cheating, as it’s not exactly MY sewing but they’ll be happy), did minor mends on 3 garments, and turned four fraying collars on hubby’s shirts. (Does anyone else do that any more?) Then he decided to catch the flow and bought two more pairs of pants I needed to hem, and now a suit, of which the pants need some adjusting. Today’s project.
It’s been really cold here this week: -20 C this morning and we have a light dusting of snow. Two evenings ago I had a treat: looking out the west window I saw the great horned owl perched in a tree just back of our garage. All puffed up — one HUGE bird! When I see him around I make sure both our cats are inside. I’ve heard rumors…
Now back to the prompts. The Word-of-the-Day prompt this morning is LIGHT, and Crimson’s Challenge #52 is the following photo:
My response:
zephyrs rustle
the fallen leaves — your light laughter
my stale jokes
