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charm against boredom
Petals of narcissus after a storm Placed by the roots of an uprooted corm Miniature bulbs of grape hyacinth Neatly arranged at the base of a plinth Ready for planting again in the fall There to ensure that my life’s never dull.
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bedtime stories
Myths of the world largely unknown To the masses will ne’er be shown Some are forgot till the night dawns Bedtime stories told through dad’s yawns Haunt memories in remembered dreams Stories that were more than they seem Wisdom of ages told in a tale As three little sailors set sail Winken goes first into the night Followed by Blinken with nary a fight Finally Nod lays down his head Legends of old tuck them in bed.
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Tragedy at the Diner
Daily Prompt: By the Skin of Your Teeth: ‘Tragedy at the Diner’ is a fictional short story. What is there to say. I’m here only because I was quicker and smarter than someone else. I’m not proud of it; I’m actually a little ashamed. And I shouldn’t have been there at all that day. But, I had a few issues to work out and I wanted a drink while I did it. Grabbing a table far away from most of the customers, I started jotting down the pros and cons of my problem. I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around me. And I was actually making some progress with my dilemma. When I heard a strange noise, I looked up from my writing and saw the window shattering. I couldn’t understand at first what had happened, but things seemed to start moving in slow motion. It was like watching a replay on a sportscast, but this was real, here and now. Maybe the caffeine played a part, I don’t know. There was a truck coming straight at me sideways. It looked like a giant metal wall closing in on me like you see in those horror…
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Charity vs obligation
When there is a right to food, shelter and other items, there is also the duty of everyone to chip in to pay for that right to be guaranteed to the people that need it. When that happens it becomes an obligation. Many people find obligations to be too hard to keep up. They start to resent the people (government) ‘forcing’ them to comply. Charity on the other hand makes people feel good about helping others. If we truly want to help those in need, wouldn’t it be better to have these needs in the hands of charities? The government can help by not taxing the lands used for homeless shelters and other housing for those in need. What about the ‘soup kitchens’? Should they be tax exempt? Should they be located only close to the homeless shelters or should they be spread out so that even those that have a friend putting them up can manage to get to the soup kitchen easily? There are tales from the 1930’s of families sleeping in church pews, little children and grown men alike. This was a terrible time for people in need. We have corrected this issue by giving housing vouchers…
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The New Aristocracy part 1
I think I understood what the conversation was about, but let me put it into words to be certain. Let me know if I made any mistakes in the line of thought. What I understand of your view of the ‘new aristocracy’ is: We are headed back into an age where the aristocrats/nobles rule the land. They own the majority of the land and the burgers/bourgeois own only a small portion of the land. The nobles will then be responsible for the care of the lower class, the serfs and indigent. And the land upon which the serf lives will determine whether he is treated well or not. Other aristocrats will be able to lure serfs of a certain type over to his land if he wishes. And this time the land to which you refer need not necessarily be actual land, but an ID card or credit chit. (Aren’t we already there?) We have gone through a metamorphosis over the last few hundred years, which is leading us right back to where we were in the age of kingdoms. People seem to want someone to tell them what to do and think. We upset the apple cart and upon…
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Writers Prompt: Where Will It Lead
speculative fiction idea: current events as of Aug 29,2013: preface 1.) Syria gassing of men, women, and children…U.S. blames Syrian government, but there is a question of whether the rebels may have done it and claimed the government did it just to get the U.S. involved. Russia and China are vetoing the UN Security Council action vote on the matter, while waiting for more information from the inspectors. 2.) The U.S. still has unemployment problems, or rather, underemployment problems. With a pay rate of $8.15/hr, fast food and other low wage workers are complaining they can’t pay their bills. If full time employment is assumed, this is $16300/yr which is comparable to what an adjunct professor/instructor at a public college makes in a year ($18000), but considerably less than the lowest that full time faculty makes ($50000). The fast food workers would like to be paid $15/hr or $30000/yr. Mind you this is a no/little skill job compared to a 6-8 year college degree position. (Although one must ask how many fast food employees have liberal arts degrees.) Most may think that these two events are unrelated. However, the preponderance of un-under-employed workers in the U.S. may lead to a…
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Should Blue Laws Return?
Should we return to the days when stores were forced to shut down on Sundays so the employees had a chance to attend church and spend time with their families or go to other meeting of a more social nature? One major investment management firm thinks so. What about holidays? With Thanksgiving coming up and an increasing number of retail outlets opening for the day, we must keep in mind that each of those stores is preventing its employees from attending their family feast. Is this the employees’ wishes? Quite possibly, yes. We’ve been lowering the effective minimum wage over the years after adjusting for inflation. We’ve been eliminating the middle class in the meantime, making it more difficult for a family to support itself on only one income and continuing to push the idea of ‘keeping up with the Jones’. Are we doing the right thing? Do all of the employees working on Thanksgiving Day want to be there? Or, would they rather be home watching Dallas and Detroit play their rivals on the television? Or cooking in the kitchen, talking and having fun with family they haven’t seen in months? The answer to these questions is also ‘yes’. …
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3D Printing Impacts Us in More Ways Than We Imagined
In an age where we have machinery to plant and harvest the crops, tend to the cattle, repair the infrastructure and in general take care of every need we have; In the age we are approaching where we can tell a computer to 3D print a pizza for us and it will be ready in just a few minutes without having to go to the door to greet the delivery person; In this same age where we can have body parts printed for people who have been injured or abused their body to the point that they need new parts; In this age which is quickly approaching there will no longer be a need for the masses to work. Then, in that age, what shall we do? One will need to work only if they want something to do which cannot be satisfied by the entertainment systems of the day. TV, in the new sense, will be able to stream, on demand, whatever programming the viewer desires. Sports on the professional level could be virtual, to prevent injuries to the athlete, or they could continue to be actual physical events where people play for the thrill and the danger of…
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A Writers block cure for NaNoWriMo
When writing, sometimes it is best to get away from the writing to see and experience other things. This is especially true if you are having a writer’s block. By seeing other things, you might get a new perspective on the object which has consumed most of your focus. This new perspective may be the breakthrough to help you overcome your writer’s block. Sometimes watching/reading the news will give you an idea, or sometimes you need to get out and talk to people. Perhaps go to a nearby bar to find the local color as Faulkner and Hemingway did. Or, possibly, you should do the opposite; go somewhere completely alone and commune with nature as Thoreau did at Walden. The snap peas get lonely too. (Thoreau is rumored to have talked to his vegetables.) Whatever method you use, the point is to set aside what you are working on completely. Don’t think about it at all. Give your brain a break. Just like any part of the body, the brain gets tired. Eventually, you must come back to the writing that you want to get done. At this point you put on your favorite thinking music, cozy up to your…
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Courage is facing your fears
When most people think of someone who is courageous, they think of firefighters, soldiers, and other people facing extreme danger. But courage also applies to the agoraphobe who manages to go out into public or the person afraid of spiders who must enter a shed “full” of spiders to get the lawnmower out. Fear can be a rational or irrational. Many people think that something that they themselves are not afraid of should not be scary to anyone. Nearly everyone goes out in public almost every day. Whether it’s to get groceries or go to work. They think nothing of it. But what about the woman down the street who was ‘mugged’ while at the city park. Then after recovering from her injuries, was ‘assaulted’ on her way to work. A second stroke of bad luck hits her before she had fully recovered from the first. Admittedly this is an extreme case, not something that commonly occurs, but a true event. Could you blame her for being afraid of people in general, or men who looked like her attackers in specific? And if she’s afraid of people, how could she bring herself to go to a grocery store or work.…