The bougainvillea
yawns petals of snow
drifting in icicle arms [Read more…]
The Bedeviled Dictionary
(Inspired by The Devil’s Dictionary, which Wikipedia says is “a satirical dictionary written by American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce. Originally published in 1906 as The Cynic’s Word Book, it features Bierce’s witty and often ironic spin on many common English words.”)
Three of the definitions here were written by Ambrose Bierce. Can you guess which ones? [Read more…]
The Rainmaker, Charles Hatfield, and the Flood of 1916
By Patricia Maxwell
Today’s residents of Chula Vista have much in common with citizens of a hundred years ago. Make that a thousand years or more. Southern California has always been an arid land, with cycles of drought, interspersed with wet years every now and again. In December of 1915, San Diego’s city fathers tackled the issue from a completely different angle. They hired a rainmaker!
The impetus for their decision was the unfilled Morena Reservoir in the mountains sixty miles east of San Diego. A rock-filled dam had been completed in 1912, but the reservoir had yet to be filled beyond a third of its capacity. Other reservoirs in the area shared the same problem. None were filled and the city was growing.
The rainmaker, Mr. Charles Hatfield, said “I will fill the Morena Reservoir to overflowing between now and next December 20, 1916, for the sum of $10,000, in default of which I ask no compensation.” [Read more…]
‘The Best There Is’: World Mourns Artistic Maverick David Bowie
“I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman,” Bowie once sang.
By Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams
The world on Monday mourned the death of David Bowie, the iconic rock star, record producer, artist, and performer whose influence spanned generations and whose ideas constantly pushed boundaries of creativity, sexuality, and custom.
Bowie’s death was confirmed by a post on his Facebook page, which said that the artist died peacefully in New York City on Sunday “surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer.” He had just celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8.
Bowie, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London, was lauded as a performer who was always ahead of his time. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Wildfire Rain
Rain gnaws away earth
Uncovers thirty foot flames
Scent of moist ashes [Read more…]
Between Allah and Ennui
By Nat Krieger
When you tire of the televised prescriptions of funereal amnesiacs, and you’re feeling nauseated by generalizations repeated so often they become shorthand for not thinking, you could do worse than listen to voices from a Muslim land where the hatreds and the loves produced by the encounter with the West—specifically La France—have been cooking and periodically exploding for a long time. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Pomegranate Kiss
From Good to Bad and Back to Good Again
I sat around last night trying to think of something to write and decided to click onto a page of prompts which gave me a choice of numbers between one and three-hundred-forty-six.
Sometimes just closing my eyes and moving the little arrow around on my Mac Os X and clicking randomly does the trick but I went, this time, with selecting number fifty-six.
Fifty-six is kind of a big number in my life. I had just turned 56 when Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa. A Highway 56 is named after Ted Williams, one of my favorite baseball players. I was in the Tucson High Class of ’56 and my life changed massively that year, in the time it takes to flip a light switch. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Winter In La Jolla
Between storm fronts
Winter rappels down cliffs
tumbling into Pacific
Walks along beach alone
surveys
fish swimming in boulders
a leaf blown into rock
before La Jolla was a gem
and human eyes saw shores [Read more…]
Three Progressive Literary Stocking Stuffers for 2015
It’s Christmas week and as we do every year, the grown-ups in my family are keeping up the tradition of buying nothing for each other.
But for those of you who must endure the fear and loathing of the consumer frenzy, here is my annual list of books that might serve as good stocking stuffers for the alienated progressives or other likely suspects on your list (with a special focus on some of the best work that received less attention than it deserved) [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: Christmas
For Christ’s sake!
Opt out of Christmas
Save energy
unplug the lights
plant a tree instead of cutting one down
Wrap yourself up
keep the stockings on your feet [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces: A Moment of Silence
When bullets
fly back into guns
blasts
implode into casings
bombs
ascend into planes
missiles return
to grain silos [Read more…]
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