Category Archives: play

by

Random confuse the engine search

A friend and I are using Facebook to message this am and she says she hates that Facebook is mining for advertising all the time. I said we should do a random confuse the engine search every day. Something silly! I searched enamel zebra hamsters first…. And it’s fun to watch the internet try!

What silly search would you use to confuse the big data mining on the internet? Go wild! Confuse your feed!

by

Z is for zest

Z is for zest. What do you feel zest for?

The photograph is our small town synchronized swim team in 2007 at the Blossom, the last meet of the season that we went to that year. Our girls posed outside where it was very chilly, and all of the exited parents snapped photographs. Zest on both sides for the team and for swimming!

Webster 1913 here
Zest (?), n. F. zeste, probably fr. L. schistos split, cleft, divided, Gr. , from to split, cleave. Cf. Schism.

1. A piece of orange or lemon peel, or the aromatic oil which may be squeezed from such peel, used to give flavor to liquor, etc.

2. Hence, something that gives or enhances a pleasant taste, or the taste itself; an appetizer; also, keen enjoyment; relish; gusto.
Almighty Vanity! to thee they owe Their zest of pleasure, and their balm of woe. Young.
Liberality of disposition and conduct gives the highest zest and relish to social intercourse. Gogan.

3. The woody, thick skin inclosing the kernel of a walnut. Obs.

Z

from Dictionary.com here:

noun
1. keen relish; hearty enjoyment; gusto.
2. an agreeable or piquant flavor imparted to something.
3. anything added to impart flavor, enhance one’s appreciation, etc.
4. piquancy; interest; charm.
5. liveliness or energy; animating spirit.
6. the peel, especially the thin outer peel, of a citrus fruit used for flavoring:
lemon zest.

verb (used with object)
7.to give zest, relish, or piquancy to.

Zest for life, zest for writing, zest for all of the A to Z feelings that I’ve written about in the 7 sins and friends and all of the feelings that I haven’t written about. They are all part of being human! And now: zest for breakfast, I’m hungry!

Hooray for finishing and hooray for everyone who participated whether they finished or not!

by

U is for ursine

U is for ursine. Have you ever felt ursine?

Ur”sine (?), a. [L. ursinus, from ursus a bear. See Ursa.]

Of or pertaining to a bear; resembling a bear.

Ursine baboon. Zool. See Chacma. — Ursine dasyure Zool., the Tasmanian devil. — Ursine howler Zool., the araguato. See Illust. under Howler. — Ursine seal. Zool. See Sea bear, and the Note under 1st Seal.

I am thinking of my sister again. My mother called me tiger and her bear. “Chris bear” was one of her names. Have you felt tigerish or ursine? We talk about a temper like a bear or hibernating when we aren’t feeling very social and then there are teddy bears and care bears and last night I saw the new Jungle Book movie.

I know the book well and loved it. I spent much less time with television. The movie is a mix of the book and the Disney version and I am considering the deviations. Sher Khan did not kill the wolf leader in the book, though he did influence some pack members. And the ending is changed and an interesting change at a time when we are afraid of the disconnect that many of us feel from nature. We are afraid that too many people and that sin of greed are destroying species and destroying the world.

And so I do feel ursine. Sometimes it feels unbearable. Sometimes I want to rear up like a grizzly bear and tear down the veneer of civilization. Sometimes I just want to sleep as deeply as a bear and dream…. dream of playing with my sister.

In my photograph, two cars have crashed in the Octoblast and one has been ejected forcibly: that is my sister bending over it…..

 

 

by

N is for normal

N is for normal. How often do you feel normal? Are your feelings normal? Are mine?

I kept my books from when I was little and I have some of my mother’s too. Some we wore out. I am thinking of Nobody is Perfick, a book by Bernard Waber. The illustrations are fabulous as are the sentiments from a kid’s point of view. Peter Perfect is held up as a model to all the other children: he is polite, he says thank you, he says please, he doesn’t roll in the glorious mud….. but…. the ending is very satisfying.

Does normal mean average? No one is the perfect average. Does normal mean the cultural norm? Are animals normal? Maybe we are all normal all the time: if a sparrow is normal and a deer is normal and a cat is normal even when she is acting like there is a phantom in the house…. maybe we are all normal too….

N

And since we’re on children’s books, I started playing with N words, inspired by another great children’s author….

Normal is nice, normal is nutty, normal is naughty and nasty and new. Maybe it’s nearly narcissistic to need to know that no one is not normal. It’s nasty to natter that Norman’s not normal. It’s naughty to name a normal nematode Abnormal Norma. Nodes newly known nearly never need normalcy. It’s not nice to knock nude nuts. Knight knapping is not as nice as night napping… nighty night!

Bernard Waber’s website: http://www.bernardwaber.com/

nematodes: http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/nematode/soil_nematode.htm

I took the photograph of my daughter and two friends at an October beach Hawaiian birthday party…Β  the coldest Hawaiian birthday party I’ve been to, so the girls were gathering wood for the fire.

 

by

C is for Credulous

C is for credulous. Have you ever felt credulous?

“willing to believe or trust too readily, especially without proper or adequate evidence; gullible.”

My young guest in the picture is not quite sure how to interact with the old lady: she is the old lady who swallowed the fly. The fly, the bird, the cat, the dog and even the horse have just been neatly delivered back out of her. My guest is not sure what she will do next. The world is a magical place.

C

Adults get caught up too, but in a darker version of credulous. Something for nothing. A deal too good to be true. A young relative on the phone, caught in another country, asking for help. Email from people saying that we have money from a distant relative who has passed. Calls over and over to my clinic that say they are from my long distance company and that they want to “help” me lock in service before a change…. I asked for a number to call back and was given the number of a sex line. I called my long distance company and they said, “Yes, they just lie.”

I think that fraud is on the upswing in the United States, but perhaps I am just a credulous person who believes that most people would like to earn their living in honest work and doing good for other people and the world.

by

Costume 8

This is the last in this costume series and now it’s revealed. My sister was not wearing a costume but she contributed to the festivities by showing off her ballet skills. Her daughter was more interested in dinner than ballet at that particular moment, even though they performed together. My sister loved to dance and loved the costumes there too.

Taken in 2009, Lake Matinenda, Ontario, Canada. My sister died of breast cancer in 2012.

by

A is for Avarice

Welcome to 7 Sins and friends, where each letter will be one of the rich diversity of emotions that we experience.

I choose avarice first because two of the sins start with G, so avarice will stand in for greed. The meaning is not the same, but they are related.

Avarice: insatiable greed for riches; inordinate, miserly desire to gain and hoard wealth.

Greed: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions.

So they are related. Have you felt avaricious or greedy? I am always greedy for books, I love books. I have a fence with a community library now, to try to free more books from my clutches, back to other people, but I still have more books than bookshelves.

atoza

When I was in fourth grade, I won a summer library reading contest. The books were chosen from a list. The newspaper sent a reporter to take a picture. He started piling books on a table in front of me. I objected! He was piling up different books from the ones I’d read! He explained that it didn’t matter, it was just a picture…. I didn’t really approve but I let him take the picture with the wrong books.

Avarice makes me think of our present election and the people running. We seem to admire people who build great wealth for themselves, but don’t we admire those people who do brilliant things for the world and for other people more? What do you think? And what do you feel?

The photo is George White’s father: this George White. This is my mother’s mother’s father’s father. He and his wife raised a Congregationalist missionary, George White,Β  who witnessed the Armenian genocide in Turkey in the 1910s. My grandmother wept reading the romance Lorna Doone at age 16 as they left Turkey, not knowing that they were fleeing the country.