Category Archives: art

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Alphabeasts

ambulating antelopes
bellies bearing beer
carrying cantelopes
deride damp deer

elegant elephants
feeling fitly fat
give generous gifts
handing hippos hats

ignorant iguanas
jealously jeer
keen kindly kites
lilting laughing leers

many merry meerkats
nearly never notice
one old orangutan’s
pompous pronouncements

querulous quail
reject reports regarding
shimmering snow snakes
tearing through tunnels

undulating ungulates
veer vivaciously
wondering why whales
xerox xylophones

yellow yaks yell
zip zap zoo!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: zoo!

I wrote this sometime in the 1980s. My proof is the drawing by my mother. We had it in a show and hand colored with colored pencils. There is now a book with the same title by a Canadian author but it came later.

And hooray for the zoo! They are all asking for you!

Martha, what would the AI think of this poem? Heh. ChatGPT: “That’s a fantastic poem! I love how it captures the playful nature of alliteration and the whimsical imagery of animals. Each stanza has its own charm, and the ending with the “yellow yaks” is such a fun wrap-up! Did you create this as a fun project, or is it inspired by something specific?” Ok, so ChatGPT doesn’t get sonnets, but it likes nonsense poetry.

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Comfort?

Mother says we are at a Comfort Inn, but I don’t think so. I am NOT comfortable! Mother packed things for days and took them out to a car. Not the usual one! We don’t like it when she leaves, but this time she kept taking OUR things out. Our privy! Toys! The playtube! Our crate! We wondered if she was giving them to Other Cats, horrors. But then she put our harnesses on and put us in the carrier and in the new weird smelling car. The car went with us trapped inside! And it went and went and went.

We objected. Mother had a net between the front and back, but we both outwitted that easily. Sol Duc went under the seats. I sat on Mother’s lap. She stopped and explained that this was not safe. I knew that! Cars aren’t safe! She put us back in the carrier and moved things around and then we rode in our crate. We had food and water and our privy. We could see Mother and the horrible terrible trucks around us. We complained some but at least we were in the crate. We slept sometimes.

At last Mother stopped and put us in the carrier again. It smells very strange outside and we are NOT at home. She took us in to the Comfort Place. I refused to leave the carrier. She took the top off, but I can hide under the top.

We really do not know what will happen today. Mother can be very crafty. We outwit nets, but the car is more difficult. We do want to stay with Mother.

Last night we used the harnesses to make new art. We are crafty too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: craft.

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Old camera

The first camera I had was a hand me down from my grandfather. I don’t have it any more. The viewfinder would open and you looked down into it to frame the photograph. The pictures were square. It became difficult to find film for it quite quickly and small cheap 110 cameras were becoming plentiful.

I had a 110 cheap camera and did not like it much. My parents got a Minolta 110 in the mid 1970s with a built in zoom. I was hooked! It was much more fun to be able to frame my shot and I took many of the family photographs. That hooked my father in turn and I inherited electronic cameras with built in zooms from him: a Panasonic, a Canon and a Nikon. I think he was trying to find one with an image steadier that could stand up to him, but he had a bad resting tremor. He moved to a tripod and that worked much better.

I took the photograph at my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding in 2022. K is in his teens and we were both playing with cameras. This was the day before the wedding at a brewpub and before the rehearsal. I love that the photograph is off center and the circle behind him mimics the camera lens. I have permission to post!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: camera.

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Monster Fangs

Fangs for the prompt, heh, heh.

There are some pretty serious fangs or tusks or whatever on the monster. Why were captured women usually naked? I really like the imaginary instruments too.

I took the photographs in Italy in August 2023.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fangs.

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Curmudgeon?

I took this in December, at the US Botanic Gardens in Washington, DC. So who is this? Here: https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/buildings-grounds/us-botanic-garden/conservatory

“The USBG’s present conservatory is a two-part building. The front is a one-story limestone structure with 11 lofty arches inspired by the seventeen-century orangery at Versailles near Paris. The facade features four alternating keystones carved in the images of Pan, Pomona, Triton and Flora. At the rear is a glass and aluminum greenhouse conceived in the glass house tradition first seen in the 1850s Crystal Palace in London.”

This is either Pan or Triton. I only took photographs of three of the four: two female and one male. He looks pretty wicked, so I would guess Pan. Triton had a reputation for being grumpy too, disappointed in love.

This is the model of the US Botanic Garden Building. You can see the faces over each arch.

Here is the other side of the building.

And here is the view of the Capitol from the desert room.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: curmudgeon.

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A place for everything

and everything in its place.

I consider putting up a picture of my travel pile. Right now it’s outside the bedroom at my aunt and uncle’s because my daughter is still asleep. But I am still back at the Glenstone Museum: this is an interesting artwork. Does it belong? The paths wind around and we climbed a hill to it.

It grows in the spring. It still has a bit of a winter beard.

I might still be on quirky.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: everything must belong somewhere.