Month: April 2017

Trump—101 Day Summation—Via Word Association 

Well done! Read more at alotfromlydia.wordpress.com.

A lot from Lydia

These are my expostulations

Of an event beyond imagination

An electoral college upset expectations

Installed thanks to Russian insinuation

Leading to an arguably rainy inauguration

Alternate truth— a Trump foundation

Regardless of his cognitive limitations

A crowd size yuge— with magnification

Popular vote loss— his preoccupation

He employs his friends and their relations

Both Kushners too— immediate integration

Trump commenced his weekly golf vacations

Million dollars a day—Melania’s tabulation

Trump extended family spring Vail infestation

Regardless of tax payers indignation

Worldwide anti Trump demonstrations

First on his list—eliminate banking regulations

Next—a laughable so called negotiation

With big-pharma on prices of medications

Healthcare bill- a promise fluctuation

Without any diplomatic negotiations

Or foreign leader communication

They must read his daily twitter quotations

He has called obsolete—The United Nations

Put North Korean on notification

WWIII a prognostication

Ended U.S.immigration

Commenced immigrant deportations

The Constitution has seen depreciation

To distract from Flynn’s capitulation

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Concert Shaming

A Facebook friend started a little guessing game on the social media app and it’s now gone viral. The idea is to list ten concerts and have your friends guess which one you haven’t attended.

I tried to play. I did. But when I realized that all of my groups seemed rather lame compared to those of my friends and acquaintances I deleted the post in progress. I didn’t have the Stones or Paul McCartney or Elton John on my list. No, I had Merle Haggard and Tanya Tucker, Charlie Pride and Brooks and Dunn. Big acts in their day, but I definitely have concert envy after reading some of my friends’ lists.

But just for grins, here are ten concert acts. See if you can guess the one I didn’t see in person. And try not to make fun of my taste in music. 

1. Dixie Chicks

2. Three Dog Night

3. The Fifth Dimension

4. The Cowsills

5. Hootie and the Blowfish

6. Huey Lewis and the News

7. The Captain and Tennille

8. Garth Brooks

9. Boyz 2 Men

10. Foghat 

Salad Days 

Cleopatra contemplated and thus reflected,
“My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood”

According to Shakespeare, her dalliances with the emperor were viewed as the flighty romance of her dewy youth,

Would the mighty queen have bothered with something so mundane as a salad? A woman who chose 

Death by asp would not have bothered with a paltry bowl of greens. Pomegranates and honey, beer and bread, 

Figs and nuts aplenty, but salads most likely weren’t on her menu. Unless, of course, it was a Caesar salad. 

Scones, battleships, and why the London underground’s called the tube

A proper, and amusing lesson in pronouncing one of the world’s finest words. How do YOU pronounce scone? Read more from notesfromtheuk.com.

Notes from the U.K.

Last Sunday, I opened the paper to find almost a full page devoted to a burning question: How do Britons pronounce the word scone?

I’d been under the impression that everybody who isn’t me pronounced it—as the article explained it—so it rhymes with gone. I’m not sure how useful that is, since for all I know the pronunciation of gone shifts from region to country to class to ethnic group. I pronounce it gawn, although I don’t drag out the W. The pronunciation they’re relying on is, I think, something closer to gohn. Or is that gahn?

English is such a mess.

Still, gone is a good enough place to start. Let’s leave it there for a minute or three.

Irrelevant photo: A bunch of junk I picked up in a few minutes on the beach, mostly plastic rope from fishing nets and a few other bits…

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Hold Steady

Will you yet be moved
By sleight of hand,
By hook or by crook,
Or consequences grand?

Will you yet be called
To arms,
To conscience,
Consequence, be damned?

Will you yet be taken
By surprise,
By force,
When violence commands?

Will you hold steady
Standing firm,
Taking stock,
As your conscience demands?

The Ballad of the Washing Machine

The Ballad of the Washing Machine
(with apologies to all poets)
By Leslie Noyes

A dark and stormy night, it was
(With a nod to good old Snoopy),
Thunder boomed and lightning struck,
All our appliances then went loopy.

The tv died, our elliptical fried,
Repairmen were soon called,
And all was made as good as new,
Except for the washer, there we stalled.

I made plans with GE service,
A technician soon would arrive,
But he fell ill, and couldn’t come,
For another week we’d strive.

Off I went to the laundromat,
Two baskets full of clothes,
There I was accosted in broad daylight,
By a man who didn’t know “no!”

The GE man was finally well,
When he arrived with a smiling face,
“All you need is this new part;
I’ll order with due haste.”

A week went by and he returned,
The part was here and ready.
“Oh dear,” he said, “This part’s not right!”
I felt less than steady.

So I returned to the laundromat,
With detergent and some mace,
But no one messed with me this time,
I had on my mean game face.

Seven more days I waited for news,
We finally got a part,
Back came the man from old GE,
“Oops, I hate to break your heart.

“Your machine is unrepairable,
It suffered a fatal blow,
So I can’t help you; sorry folks,
This washer has to go.”

I muttered a phrase beneath my breath
It rhymed with “duck, duck, duck,”
Then traipsed off to the laundromat
Hoping for better luck.

Now I must buy a new machine,
And it won’t match my dryer,
This model is no longer made
And the cost will be much higher.

This ends my tale, at least for now,
I’ve run out of patience and bucks
There’s nothing to say, but that old phrase,
That rhymes with “duck, duck, duck.”

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