Radio could have saved her

Why, Mr. Marconi,

this is baloney—

you can’t keep this thing to yourself.

You really must share it—

one day folks will wear it,

on wrists, in their pockets,

or just displayed on a shelf.

At 1:45 pm, a message was received...warning of large icebergs in Titanic's path. However, Titanic's wireless radio operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, were too busy to relay what they considered "non-essential" ice messages to the bridge. They were employed by Marconi Wireless Company...to relay paid messages to and from the passengers.

Marian's prompt today at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads is for us to discuss “Radio has changed our lives and practically saved our lives.” (Rob Zombie)
Although I didn't listen to the entire video clip Marian provided, I can certainly relate to the statement.
I grew up in a small city in the mountains of British Columbia. Television didn't reach us until 1957, although we had seen some of it when we visited our grandparents in the Vancouver suburbs.
Therefore, radio was a large part of our indoor entertainment, along with the encyclopedia and a big orange book called "Who's Who in the Zoo"!

I distinctly remember hearing radio music in the 1940s, when I was very small. My parents would often say, "Kay, listen, there's Glenn Miller!" but the first song I really remember hearing was Red Sails in the Sunset by Bing Crosby. The first song whose lyrics I memorized from the radio was Shrimp Boats by Jo Stafford.
The family radio, occupying one corner of the kitchen countertop, was almost always left on in the 1950s. We were sometimes allowed to stay up late to listen to "the fights" with Dad, when Rocky Marciano was boxing.
Some of my friends, with the help of their parents, made "crystal sets" which were small radio receivers. I thought they looked like fun, but radio fun at our house really started when I got a transistor radio for Christmas, 1960.
Dad made an antenna for my little radio, going out my bedroom window and up to the roof. Late at night we'd try to get "far away" stations on it. Our biggest triumph was a radio station in Sacramento, California, which advertised Shakey's Pizza Parlor. I had never heard of pizza, and my father had only the vaguest notion of it. "I think it's a tomato and cheese pie," he said.

Skywatching changes in Rome

Starting with the above scene of a houseboat on the fabled River Tiber, my intrepid photographer captured changing skies during a day in ancient Rome, during our visit to Italy earlier this year. We can't help thinking of all the history that has taken place beneath these skies.

Richard Schear photos, 2013

Posted for

Skywatch Friday

Prelude to an imaginary report for Toads

Yesterday, taking the lead in a new Real Toads series on favourite poems, Kerry chose Preludes by T.S. Eliot, one of the English-speaking world's greatest poets. He wrote his Preludes as "a series of introductory poems for a longer piece that does not exist," said Kerry, but she loves them just as they are.

Therefore, as today's challenge at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, she has asked us to write a prelude to a longer piece that doesn't exist.

From Wikipedia

My prelude is a conversation between the president and vice-president of an imaginary American oil company considering the highly controversial process dubbed "fracking" (also referred to as hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking) in the oil-producing industry.

In my imaginary conversation, the president is beginning to get cold feet. However, his "vice" hastens to assure him that no problem really exists, that it is all in the minds of the complainants.

While the following conversation is in the imagination of this poet, many reports have described the dangers of this method of fueling the engines of the future, while others say it is perfectly safe.

 

Executive

Conversation 

Prior to

Producing

a Report

the oil company president said to his vice-

"I’ve heard this fracking gig’s not very nice."

replied his viceness while just oozing niceness:

"that’s 'fracking rig' sir and I’m glad to report

 we’re making, er, writing up lists for the board.

 thus far, the dangers don’t outweigh the profits,

 very few states complain: one is New York

 where they're so nervous, they’d squawk about pork

 and sure, there’s complaints about air pollution!

 bad smells in Colorado, it’s no wonder there:

 all those dead cattle would smell anywhere,

 with salts, acids, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene,

 radioactive materials, chemicals in Pennsylvania—

 complaints about us are a sure sign of mania,

 and they say 'heavy metals', but all metal’s heavy!

 brain tumor removal of course causes pain

 but that doesn’t mean that fracking’s to blame

 for discolored water that’s starting to bubble,

 they’ll say anything to get us in trouble!

 counting Wyoming, Texas, Louisiana—

 not too many states when you know we have fifty,

 and some Texans think if it makes 'em rich, nifty."

By Kay L. Davies, May 8, 2013

All's right in our world again

Photos by Richard Schear

All's right in our world because Lindy went for a walk with her daddy again. She's so happy to have him home! She loves her mom, and going for car rides, but her favorite thing is walking down by the coulee, with her daddy, at sunset!

Posted for
Our World Tuesday

An imaginary garden for Monday

Favim.com

Kerry used this photo for this week's Open Link Monday at the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, and I thought, "There it is. That's my imaginary garden!"
It reminds me of my grandmothers, and some of my great-aunts, one in particular. I can't identify any of the plantings but am hoping the purplish-green one in the bottom left corner might turn out to be heather.
I can imagine myself living alone in this little house, and having a friend visit for tea outside. For more Monday imaginings, please visit The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads link at the top of this page.

if I were to imagine

the imaginary garden

I think I would

imagine it

like this

Spring Flowers
Anna Langova
publicdomainpictures.net

a tiny house,

with picket fence,

both overgrown

by time’s greenery,

two chairs

with table between,

and time

to think, together

Kay L. Davies, May 5 & 6, 2013

Pet Pride: Lindy's not so proud of her mom

Lindy's dad walks her every day.
Today is another beautiful day,
but Lindy's daddy is still away.
while Lindy's mom has "sore feet"
(no, Lindy, it isn't something to eat)
so instead of roaming wide and far
on foot, they ride out in the car.
It's fun to go to the hardware store
where Lindy gets a treat and more
petting fussing and oohing and gooing,
but Lindy would really like to be doing
more walking, please, Mom.
Please, Mom? Please?
Out and about amongst the trees
or down at the coulee among the rocks
instead of home with boring old talks.

Posted for
Pet Pride
hosted by Lindy's friend Bozo
and his family in Mumbai, at their Pets Forever blog.
Lindy says, "Hi, Bozo, I can sure understand you wanting to go for a walk. I want to go for a walk, too, but my mom says she can't do it again today."

As I mentioned yesterday, about forests:

I found this on Facebook this morning, as if someone had read my blog and wanted to reply on FB. Well, okay, maybe not really thinking of me, but as if...

Here we have a university in the US quoting a professor at a university in India. I am from British Columbia, where the forestry industry is decimating many of our old-growth forests. When I moved to southeastern Alberta, and we bought our little hobbit house outside the city of Medicine Hat, I started planting trees.

Thank you to scientists such as Professor Das, who recognize that saving the trees will ultimately save the planet. Oxygen! Pollution control! Control soil erosion! Increase soil fertility! Recycle water! Provide homes for birds and animals!

Hug a tree today. It feels good. If it's too hard to hug, smile at it and say "hi"!

More than meets the eye

Yesterday, my blog featured a little bit of poetry about the loss of tropical rainforests around the world, from the point of view of all the beautiful birds which would lose their homes.

Many people responded to the pictures, to the plight of the adorable birds. And, from the way I had written my blog post, that's what they saw.

Of course, there's much, much more to it than that.
Cutting down the rainforests means more than loss of habitat for cute and not-so-cute critters. It means losing billions of plants and trees which take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. That means air to breathe. For me and thee.

Loss of forests, whether evergreen forest on the Canadian coast, or jungles in Madagascar, means, ultimately, loss of oxygen.

And then, we all die.

Simple, isn't it? But I didn't choose to look at the fate of the world when Hannah gave us the topic "tropical rainforest" to write about. I chose the prettiest pictures I could find online, and wrote a "fluff piece" that went against the principles of hardline journalism.

That's probably why I was never a hardline journalist. I couldn't or wouldn't see the ultimate outcome as it would affect the world's total population. I couldn't see the forest for the birds.

And, hey, it's not as if I've never seen a tropical rainforest. I have, in Mexico, in Ecuador, and in Costa Rica. The photos here were taken by my husband in Costa Rica, many of them in the rain.

That's why they're called rainforests, and all of these camera critters are creatures whose plight is up to people to decide. Live or die? Ask the people who cut down the trees.

Posted for

Camera
Critters
hosted by Misty Dawn.
Thanks, Misty!

Photos by Richard Schear, 2007

Edward Lear, born May, 1812

Edward Lear

W. Holman Hunt

Walker Art Gallery

Liverpool

At the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, after a month of a poem-a-day, we are relaxing a bit and letting our minds drift toward the style of Edward Lear, born more than 200 years ago, whose nonsense still makes us laugh.

Of course, you know I am staid and stuffy and oh-so-serious, and simply can't imagine nonsense, never mind write it, but for the sake of the other Real Toads, I will give it my best shot.

Almost everyone knows Edward Lear's most famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, which has been a favourite of mine since early childhood. But how many know he was an artist and an illustrator as well? It's as if someone existed, two hundred years ago, who was an amalgam of my dad, my brothers, and me. Mom, Dad, Clint and I always enjoyed this kind of do-it-yourself entertainment when Clint and I were young.

My favourite lines from that poem are:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

    They danced by the light of the moon,

          The moon,

          The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

My Edward Lear(ish) poem contains, however, no honey, nor even no money (wrapped up in a five-pound note), and is not based at all on The Owl and the Pussycat.

 

an old lady tried for a beard

after reading a book by Ed Lear

she said, “I have heared

that if I have a  beard,

with wildlife my beard will be smeared.”

she started with hair she adhered

with glue to her face as she peered

into a mir-

ror quite near

for her eyesight wasn't too clear

said hair she had just commandeered

from the side of her head, near her ear

and hoped, it appeared

that a newly-grown beard

to the false one would simply cohere

but the new beard, it didn’t appear,

although the old girl persevered

for nearly a year

as her family jeered

From the painting
"The bearded woman"
by Jusepe de Ribera.Prado Museum,
Madrid, Spain.Public domain.

that it wasn't bioengineered.

Lear's much shorter version of this ditty can be found on the Real Toads page.

Tropical rainforests: endangered regions

For the ninth and final Ecoregion in her fascinating series, Hannah challenges everyone in and around the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads to think about tropical rain forests.
Says Hannah: "Tropical rainforests have existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years.
"There are four different types of rainforest: Lowland equatorial evergreen rainforests; Moist deciduous and semi-evergreen seasonal forests; Montane rain forests, and Flooded forests.
"The rainforest has an interesting structure that's broken into layers: Forest Floor, Understory Layer, Canopy Layer and Emergent Layer. Different types of animals reside in these different layers."

Hannah illustrated her challenge with beautiful photos of monkeys, an owl, a koala, and one of the rainforest itself.
She also provided some links, one of which was to photos of tropical birds, which distracted and inspired me so much I didn't check out other links, I just began writing. I love when that happens. Thanks, Hannah, not just for today but for the whole nine challenges.

www.nicholas.duke.edu 

as long as my finger

as thick as my thumb

where does this beautiful

blue bird come from?

from tropical rainforests,

being destroyed,

daily by greedy creatures

(most of them humanoid)

www.bindependent.com 

these parrots

with colors

like sunrise

and noon

will find themselves

homeless

all too very soon.

http://www.painters-online.co.uk

the birds

get together

a conference

have they—

to try to decide

what to do. 

www.modes4u.com

we’re really quite helpless

says one to another.

“you’re right: 

we can talk,

 but who listens?”

whatdidyoubringme.homestead.com

Skies and reflections of skies in Italy

Richard Schear photos, March, 2013.

When we wanted to explore Italy's beautiful coastal area called Cinque Terre, we made the town of La Spezia our home base. We stayed in a homey little hotel near the waterfront, and enjoyed the delicacies from a bakery and two restaurants while we there. One morning, my husband got up early and managed to capture shots of the rising sun as it came up behind some naval vessels and some civilian boats.

Posted for Skywatch Friday
and also for Weekend Reflections

Words count with Mama Zen in the garden

If you don't know Mama Zen's poetry, you are really missing out on something. This woman can pack more meaning into a few words than any woman I've ever known. I can't imagine what it must be like to have a telephone conversation with her. She would have been using Tweet-length messages before Twitter was even invented.
Her challenge for us today is simply a word-count challenge. No particular topic or style. She just says, "No more than 45 words."
Well, you may remember I was really struggling with the prompt asking for a poem with all the words in alphabetical order. It was a disaster.
However, I had an extra 10 words, from A to J, of which I was rather fond.
This morning, that poem came together with the addition of photos by my husband, and a few more alphabetical words, making it 45 for Words Count with Mama Zen.

apparently,

better causes

do exist:

funding good homes

in jungles...

keeping lakes,

mountains

nearby

(our precious

qualities)

Richard Schear photos

really safe

to use.

vast wastelands

emerge, yet zealots

ambitiously

build careers.

diamonds 

extracted 

for girlfriends

have injured

jaws,

knees,

legs;

Machiavellian

new ogres

pretend, quite

realistically,

sadness.