Obama dances!

Youtube is filled with political speeches, videos ..you name it. In this one Obama dances. Hey, he's pretty good.

Want to learn more about haiku?....haiga, tanka...

Robert Wilson interviews Jane Reichhold about haiku in Simply Haiku, just out.

Follows is an excerpt from that interview, found here. The entire issue is excellent!

RW: Some people in the English language haiku community espouse the belief that metaphors are an anathema to be avoided at all costs when writing haiku. Do you agree?

JR: Haiku is poetry and as poetry it uses poetical devices. Metaphor is one of the oldest techniques and the Japanese use, and used, it in their poetry in haiku form also. The huge and vital difference is the way the Japanese express their metaphors. It sometimes takes a while to understand how when two images are set side by side they are forming a metaphor or simile. Quoting from the Introduction:

Instead of saying "autumn dusk settles around us like a crow landing on a bare branch" Bashô would write:
a crow lands
on a bare branch
autumn dusk

The simplicity and economy of those words demand that the reader goes into his or her mind and experiences to explore the darkness of bird and night, autumn and bareness, and even how a branch could move as the dark weight of a crow presses it down. With a map of the reader's past he or she is writing the rest of the verse and making it poetry.
By following this example of simply juxtaposing the parts of the metaphor, English poetry has made great advances for which the Japanese never get the credit they deserve.

A beautiful gesture for CFIDS Awareness Day--May 12

I received the below email yesterday (printed in part below). The song is beautiful, as is the rest of her music. I highly recommend a visit to the link in the note below. Thank you again, Susan.

Today is CFIDS Awareness Day. Listen to her song. Google CFIDS. Visit my about me pageon my website to learn more.

Both my link and hers open in a new window.

Susan's note:

I've put up a song on my band's Myspace page related to living with undiagnosed CFIDS:

http://myspace.com/cinderbridge (If it doesn't start playing immediately, click the "Everybody Knows
About Me" link.)

My aim in writing "Everybody Knows About Me" was twofold. First, I wanted people with CFIDS or similar invisible illnesses to feel they weren't alone -- that not everyone believes it's just hypochondria or laziness. Second, I wanted to make nonsufferers understand why it's silly to believe that CFIDS/other invisible illnesses are just hypochondria or laziness.

If you like the song, please give the link to your readers. The most important thing that can happen for people with CFIDS is a cure, or at least more effective treatment. But since I'm not a doctor or a medical researcher, the best I can do is try to help create an environment where voters think it's a good idea to fund CFIDS research at a higher level than hay fever.

Thanks for listening. I hope you like the song.

Yours,

Susan Wenger

Cheek to Cheek (haiga)

Taken in the eighties of the then little girl next door. Click to see in larger size.

Sharing a wonderful photographer.

Geoff Sanderson, an online friend of mine from Yorkshire, England, a wonderful photographer and haijun, just shared his daughter's slide site on Flickr. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. These are more than just photographs, in my opinion. They're art forms. She has an incredible feel for texture and color in her shooting. Take the time to look at even a few. You won't regret it.(Her user name is with the photos)

Click Here!

Chesapeake Bay: we continue to deplete our natural resources.

(photo taken in the Chesapeake is from THIS SITE. Click to enlarge. It's gorgeous)

THE MOMENT that Chesapeake Bay watermen had been dreading arrived Tuesday. Faced with a dire drop in the blue crab harvest, the governors of Maryland and Virginia announced sharp new limits on the volume of sooks (as female crabs, the ones generally used to make crab cakes, are known) that can be taken from the bay's waters. The new rules mean that inevitably, and through little fault of their own, some watermen will be driven out of business and out of the only way of life they have known.

Read the rest of the article from The Washington Post HERE

Personl Note: I spent a month in the Chesapeake Bay on my sailboat trip in the late seventies. The Bay hadn't yet been polluted by population overgrowth and unaffordable condos all along the once gorgeous shores and harbors. The upper bay was in trouble with water pollution but steps were being taken already to clean things. Anyone in a small boat could crab and we did just that while anchored at St Michaels. What confuses me is that NO female crabs could be kept. You faced a stiff fine if found with one on your boat, whether private or commercial. The law made good sense. The females were responsible for keeping the Bay populated and crabs were plentiful then.

It seems that somewhere along the line the laws changed...or perhaps more lenient laws were in effect with a commercial liscense that the general public wasn't told about. Females have a distinctive red marking on their bellies, however, and I never saw any in restaurants or stores that sold crab. Sometimes we think the planet will provide for us forever. I think not.

Amnesty video

A friend sent this. Powerful and well done.

A photographic story telling session:-)

Geoff Sanderson, a photographer friend of mine from Yorkshire, England, and I were emailing about a particular digital effect on one of my images, so we started talking about how I used to create montages in my Boston, pre-computer days, with an old enlarger using my bathroom as my darkroom.

This is part of what I wrote him:

I learned that when I would shine half of a negative onto developing paper(blocking the half with a cardboard with torn edges that I kept moving slightly to avoid a straight line there...then reversed the negative or put in another and did the same with the cardboard from the other side, I got my montage. It was hit and miss since you don't know what you have until it goes into the solution, but I got a few neat ones. I still have one I haven't lost. I'll hold it up to my webcam and send it from there. I was really lucky in lining up those bricks unseen.

My shot (click to enlarge):




I found this little story from Geoff this morning, thought it was delightful and asked his permission to post it.

Geoff's reply:

Yes, that was a brilliant piece of montage, alright! There's a story in that picture, though!

**************************************

Gemini

A poor but beautiful young girl was seduced by a rich businessman, and became pregnant. In the usual course of time, she gave birth to twin boys. A few months later one of the babies became ill and had to go into hospital. One day the girl was walking through the streets, holding her other son, when she came face-to-face with her seducer as he was getting out of his car. He was startled to see her with the baby and, not being a heartless man, fell into conversation with her. He arranged to meet her later at her small room in a poor part of town.

He told the girl that his wife was unable to conceive, and that he would adopt the boy and bring him up as his own. He was unaware that the child had a brother, the girl having concealed the fact from him. His only stipulation was that the girl renounce all rights to the child, and never attempt to see him again; in return, he would educate the boy and bring him to inherit his business empire, and would give the girl sufficient money to be able to live comfortably for many years. After much soul-searching, the young mother agreed.

The sick baby made a good recovery, and the girl took him to live in a town a thousand miles away from where he was born. Her money enabled her to start a small dress-shop, and take on a girl to help her with the baby. She soon found that she had a natural flair for business and an eye for street fashion, and her shop flourished. Soon she opened another shop, then another, and business was booming. In a few years, she owned a chain of fashion stores, with her own brand of accessories and perfume. She was able to give the boy a good education, and he gained a place in the top business school in the country.

Her son proved that he had inherited both his mother's flair for commerce, and his unknown father's sound financial ability. He took over the management of the fashion chain, while his mother concentrated on the artistic direction. Under his direction, the business grew to a point where it became unwieldy as a family-owned enterprise, and they decided to launch it on the stock market and thus gain the injection of capital necessary for expansion.

In the intervening years, the other boy had prospered under his father's tutelage, and had been become vice-president of their investment company. His particular flair was to buy into young, up-and-coming quoted companies, acquire a big enough share of the capital to give him a seat on the board, then use his financial acumen to take the business to even greater heights. Always on the look-out for such businesses, his attention was attracted to a chain of fashion stores down in the south which was soon to go public.

The usual feelers were put out, using intermediaries who specialised in such deals and, when the fashion chain was launched on the exchange, his company bought as many shares as they could get hold of. As often happened to newly-quoted companies, the share price sank over the first year, and his firm was able to buy sufficient stock to become the majority holder, after the original owners.

It thus became necessary for the principals of both business to meet and discuss intentions and strategy. Both these young men had built their success on sound, down-to-earth attitudes, eschewing the outward show of luxury. So it came about that the meeting took place in the rather shabby business district of a midland city where they both happened to be interested in some property. Leaving their cars behind, they both strode out down the street to the meeting that was to change their lives for ever ...

Story by Geoff Sanderson, illustration by Pris Campbell. April 2008.

(Don't we 'got fun', as the song goes:-)

A Sudden Stillness

A Sudden Stillness


She told it at family gatherings, until
I felt sure I remembered, too,
from some space between lifetimes--
my kicks inside her wet womb
before storytime with her first graders.
Once upon a time and I lay still,
listening to the tales unfold,
was stilled again as a newborn with colic,
pain carried away by the wings of once upon
into the late rainy nights.
Now, I know she was Mnemsyne, divine lover of Zeus;
I was her child-muse, gifted these sacred
stories yet to be scribed, my feet motionless,
my heartbeat a mere breath in the wind.





(This poem, too, was inspired by the challenge Robert Brewer threw out in this post in Poetic Asides. Thank you, Robert. My Muse needed some stirring up) I've honed the poem slightly since posting on Robert's site.

Love Hurts

sara struts to the stage
checks that her pasties
on her double A breasts
still stick in place
The guy with the pimples,
second table out,
looks as nervous as she feels
behind her revlon red smirk,
but she's gotta make money--
the kid screams all day.
she has a nice ass,
legs like a willow,
uses her fan to hide
what's lacking up top.

his friends push mr. pimples
up front with a fiver,
expect her to take it,
shun him back to his seat.
his eyes are the eyes
of a boy she once loved.
that was a long time
before these nights at the bar.
she kneels down to kiss him,
lost in her dream, then turns abruptly
when the dj starts the next tune.


(this poem was written as a response to a challenge thrown out by Robert Brewer over on Poetic Asides)

Featruing Charlie Musselwhite!

I'll be visiting other blogs soon. I'm better but still limited enoigh in the typing to not do much yet. In the meantime, enjoy a great blues video!

Sketchbook Journal is out

Click HERE to open Sketchbook on its contents page. Sketchbook publishes haiga, short forms and free verse poetry, the latter only recently. The link opens in a new window, so you won't be taken away from blogger.com.

If you look under haiga, you'll see three collaborations between me and another haijun (her images, made from Fractals, and my haiku), then also on down in the lefthand column, under author's names (this is their poetry section), three poems in the journal. I like this journal, so am pleased to be in it.

Pris

Earth Hour ...tonight between 8-9 pm

This post is going around the world, via the Internet:

It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?

The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour - Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney's energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for one hour.

With Sydney icons like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House turning their lights off, and unique events such as weddings by candlelight, the world took notice. Inspired by the collective effort of millions of Sydneysiders, many major global cities are joining Earth Hour in 2008, turning a symbolic event into a global movement.

*Extract taken from www.earthhour.org

Register yourself at http://www.earthhour.org/user/jDlR to show your support, if you wish!

Pris note: I'm going to do it. While it was symbolic when done in only one place last year, it has the potential to be much more if widespread. We waste so much energy it's amazing.

Vietnam Era music

This site has a selection of some of the best music played in the sixties and early seventies. Look for the playlist section. Each playlist has a down arrow beside it. Click on the song and it plays in the music box on the site. I'm not sure how they're doing this without violating copyrights, but enjoy. A lot of these bring back the memories.