warm tea (click to enlarge)

A full moon night seen from the front of our house.

We're on the countdown to Christmas. Every year I always say the same thing...it doesn't seem real to me yet. I don't know if or when it will. Maybe Santa will get tangled in my powderpuff tree this year and come inside for a hot toddy.

After a string of acceptances for poetry and haiga, I hit a lull and now am in a string of rejections. The ups and downs. That's what makes it all so interesting, eh?

Christmas Lighting at the Flagler

The Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, across the waterway from us, has an annual lighting of their Christmas tree. Traditionally, an organist plays carols in their tiny music room, complete with pipe organ to ceiling, the rooms are decorated to stroll past, and a choir sings in the enclosed courtyard. After that, the choir sings one number inside, the tree is lit, this year by the great great great four grandchildren of Henry Flagler (they flip a switch) and it's over.

My husband took me through by wheelchair since between my dizziness/fatigue and a recent flare of the knee with the strained tenden, no way could I walk it. Especially not for two hours.

I'm paying the piper today since I barely slept last night and am having some pain. Finally got up at 4 and changed my bed to distract myself and managed to close my eyes and halfway snooze for an hour.

Anyway, here are some representative photographs.


Front of Henry Flagler's former home, referred to also as Whitehall.


I'm just inside the main entrance in this shot.


The organist. The area to walk through (or roll through) was tiny, so we listened to a couple of carols inside and a couple more in the hall outside the room.


The breakfast room.




Henry Flagler's billiard room with the fireplace decorated.




The main caroling in the courtyard. This was as close as we could get. We waited too long to go outside.




The choir before singing Joy To The World, before the big lighting.


My husband by the tree. We outwaited everyone to get a good shot but could NOT outwait this woman who seemed determined to stand there until the place closed:-)



....and home along the ocean.

George Carlin....if he bothers you, don't watch!

Featuring the fantastic art of Anita Kreituse

The website of Anita Kreituse opens with these words..


Since Anita was a child she often felt the coexistence of simultaneous worlds at the same observation point. Worlds which are so difficult to describe. Worlds which do not compete for dominance but rather complement one another.

So she started to paint instead of talking about what she feels, what her dreams are made of.

I'm uploading a couple of her piece of work in large (when you click) so that you can see more closely her brushstrokes and the intricacy of her paintings. A trip to her page is well worth your time.







Enjoy!

Pris

OK, by popular demand..some of my 'kinda look like Joni Mitchell days shots':-)

As you can see, I don't look really like her, but there were enough similarities that, if someone wanted me to be her, he or she could see it.


Taken in the commmune


on the railing of Little Adventure at the end of a sailing day


In Harvard Square coffee houuse

On being a celebrity for a second....

Sam of the Ten Thousand Things has a video of Joni Mitchell singing 'A case of you' on his blog. I love that song. Take time to go over for a listen and to read some of his other good posts.

I shared the following story in my comment to her video and decided it was worth copy/pasting to share here, too...

When I was sailing through the Vineyard in my thirties, we anchored and went ashore for a drink and food at a nearby pub. A small band was playing. One came over, obviously flustered, and asked if I was Joni Mitchell. It was both flattering (I had her same trim build, same height, and similar cheekbones and the long sun-bleached hair) and yet heartbreaking. I saw the hope in his eyes...he was possibly being 'discovered' , since we'd told the barkeep we heard a band was playing when we came in. To say no I wasn't is a moment I don't think I'll ever forget. The moment I was 'Joni' for a second or two, the moment I felt what it must feel like to be a celebrity, the moment I dashed someone's hopes with no intention of doing so.

EDIT: The video on Sam's site has gone down his blog some, so if you don't find it, here it is again. Thanks for this, Sam!

If you've lived in one of the cities they've driven through...

This www.everyscape.com site will let you visit again. They drive a vehicle with a camera down most streets. You drag the view of the map over with your curser, click on where you want to drive, then hit an arrow. When you stop, you can pan all around and see the houses, buildings, well known places in detail. I lived in Boston for over six years and the last time I was back was in 1986. I was curious to see the places I'd lived. Where they still there? Had they changed?

This first photo is on Corey Road where I lived with my first husband while he attended law school. I commuted an hour out of the city to work. We lived on the bottom of this duplex. I'm loading two views. One shows the road leading up to it and it's the first duplex to the right of the photo. The second is a front on view as I panned the camera around. That door to the right was our entrance and the front windows were off of the living room.







From there, I located Upcrest Road where I lived in the commune. In 1986 it was still painted yellow with green shutters and a big tree out front. Now it's white. One view shows the commune to the leading right and the wall at the dead-end top of the street. The other views show the commune. The upstairs far right two windows were r's and my bedroom. The two in the middle were off of a common area. In warm weather we sat on that upstairs patio. I still have a photo taken on my birthday leaning against the railing. Those stairs were treacherous in winter!! And I won't even get into shoveling my VW Beetle out of the snow before dawn some mornings.







Boston, it was good to see you again!

My goodness...they let the animals out of the zoo!

I WENT OUT AGAIN TODAY!! I was on my last ream of paper and had put my last cartridges into my color printer so decided to go for it. Went to Office Depot.

I remembered they usually had one of those driving things at the door. My first time on one. The interesting thing is that I can never get anybody to answer questions in there. This time, a sales guy asked what was on my list and LED me to every single item. It was so nice because even tho I was riding, that store is big and I was swimmy dizzy halfway through following him around. Had a few near misses with some of the stacks of stuff in the aisles and one sales person moved pretty quickly to get out of the way when she spotted me weaving in her direction. :-) Left the paper in the car for the husband to bring in and got in the other stuff. Picked up a box of Christmas cards, envelopes and, of course, a candy bar.

Feel a bit limp now so I'm gonna crash. WHEW. The citizens of Lake Worth are safe again yet another day

American Poet Series by Didi Menendez

Didi Menendez, publisher of MiPo productions and gifted artist, is painting American poets who send her their photographs and whom she then chooses to paint. I was very fortunate to have a painting of myself done, since I love Didi's work. Click on American Poets (americanpoets.blogspot.com) to see her portrait of me.

This was painted from a younger photograph. I was 30 and sitting in a Harvard Square coffeehouse when my friend snapped the photo. I think this is one of the best earlier photos of myself that I have and Didi has turned it into a painting that will soon take an honored place in my home.

Thank you, Didi!

If the Times says it...

(When I first became ill with this disease after an energetic life, a busy career, I went from doctor to doctor, when able to drag myself to an office, terrified of the symptoms and hoping for help. For the most part, I received redicule instead. I was told:

1)I was crazy
2)I just needed a 'little rest' and it would go away
3)I must REALLY be depressed etc.

One doctor , a neurologist, ridiculed me and laughed at me to my face. An ENT I went to for inner ear testing, looked at the results, which said my inner ear was fine, and told me quite solemnly that I had a 'neurotic depression'. I told him I was a clinical psychologist who used to run treatment units and I'd never seen depression manifest this way and that this was no depression. He gave me a sorrowful look and said 'we never see it in ourselves'. Sigh.

The CDC said we were depressed and the world believed it, treating us this way. It also diverted research funds as did NIH until an investigative reporter discovered these diversions, a committee in Washington investigated, and things began to change. The CDC now has proclamied the illness as 'real'. Oh thank you , CDC, but no real funds go into research yet--more so into campaign ads.

We are truly the 'forgotten illness')

Please read the following article from The Times:

Frontline Report:
Chronic Fatigue No Longer Seen as 'Yuppie Flu'


By DAVID TULLER
Published: July 17, 2007


For decades, people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome have struggled to convince doctors, employers, friends and even family members that they were not imagining their debilitating symptoms. Skeptics called the illness “yuppie flu” and “shirker syndrome.

But the syndrome is now finally gaining some official respect. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in 1999 acknowledged that it had diverted millions of dollars allocated by Congress for chronic fatigue syndrome research to other programs, has released studies that linked the condition to genetic mutations and abnormalities in gene expression involved in key physiological processes. The centers have also sponsored a $6 million public awareness campaign about the illness. And last month, the C.D.C. released survey data suggesting that the prevalence of the syndrome is far higher than previously thought, although these findings have stirred controversy among patients and scientists. Some scientists and many patients remain highly critical of the C.D.C.’s record on chronic fatigue syndrome, or C.F.S. But nearly everyone now agrees that the syndrome is real.

“People with C.F.S. are as sick and as functionally impaired as someone with AIDS, with breast cancer, with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,” said Dr. William Reeves, the lead expert on the illness at the C.D.C., who helped expose the centers’ misuse of chronic fatigue financing.

Finish this article at The New York Times Online/

Then and Now: My college friend visits.

Marilyn and I were friends throughout college. During our senior year, her brother who'd been in the service, came to Stetson, too. We hit it off and dated throughout my senior year. The top picture is Marilyn and me mugging for the cam yesterday. Below it is a picture taken the summmer after college when Marilyn and Dick came up to Pageland, my hometown, for a visit. You can see how much attention brothers pay to their sisters:-)

Anyway, I'm tired, but enjoying the visit. It's extra special when a friendship lasts this long.

Click to enlarge.

Oh, on the poetry front, I just had another poem accepted by Empowerment4Women and a couple of haiga accepted for Sketchbook. Life moves on.

Is Hiliary the new AntiChrist? The Republicans surely think so!

Isn't it wonderful being a female candidate for President? Irregardless of whether you're for her or against her, it seems odd to me that the Republican candidates seem to find that attacking her is the biggest assurance they have for gaining applause or laughter in a speech. Is it just Hiliary or is the thought of a woman running this country still too damn scary for men to even contemplate? Were her anatomy different, would she be subject to these attacks that grow daily? Wow, Hiliary, I'm so afraid. Let me act like a sixth grader again and call you names. Maybe you'll go hide behind mama's skirt and won't try to play with the big boys again.

Yes, this kind of behavior makes me furious. Mud-slinging in any campaign is campaigning at its lowest. Why should I expect any different from the party that brought us George Bush,though?

See today's Washington Post online article:



GOP Primary Story Stars a Democratic Antagonist

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

They mock her proposals, utter her name with a sneer and win standing ovations by ridiculing her ideas as un-American, even socialistic. She has become the one thing the Republican candidates for president can agree on.

Hillary Clinton.

Earlier this year, the senator from New York was the subject of an occasional laugh line from former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Now, the trickle has become a torrent as the leading GOP candidates seek to one-up one another in a Clinton-bashing contest aimed at energizing their party faithful.

"The competition inside the GOP for who's the most anti-Hillary is going to pay dividends," said Greg Strimple, a GOP pollster and consultant who is not working with any presidential campaign. "Looking for that piece of anti-Hillary energy is what you're seeing right now."

Read the rest of this Washington Post article HERE

Lee Herrick brought back some old memories...

...by posting a youtube video of this group. This is one of my all time favorites by them. Now, if you don't know these guys, you were born 'yesterday'.:-)

Keeper of the Heads

(In the movie, Coming Home, Jon Voight speaks of the other side of war the Vets have to carry...they have to live every day not only with what was done to them and their buddies, but with what they did, themselves. It's an awful burden to carry. My former brother-in-law was in the jungles. After, he came to visit us and laughed about the ears on belts, throwing Cong out of copters, but he wandered for three years, lost and stoned. I would never wish war on anyone on either side, but it goes on...and the orphaned children roam the streets , selling their bodies for food)

_____________________________


Nights, when the rain falls like bullets
and lightning shocks the ground
with bomb-white flashes,
the heads in my basement talk to me.

My grandfather tells me I'm such a good girl.
My mother asks if I want rice.
My grandmother offers to brush my hair.
My father grunts in his sleep.

They speak for hours about the old days;
days before Ho Chi Minh wielded his fist.
Before the French. Before the Americans.
Days when our land rose in green stair-steps
to kiss the morning heat, and flowers
formed a rainbow along the jungle's edge.

My brother yanked their bleeding heads
off the posts surrounding our slaughtered village,
ears sheared clean for the Americans' belts.
He and I had been sent searching for roots.

I brought them here, well hidden,
even from my G.I. husband, the man
I seduced, married, and ultimately killed,
the man whose house I still inhabit.

Blood taken for blood given.

He never knew I killed many before him
during my days first as orphan, then bar girl.

My looks saved me.
I'm still beautiful, though silver threads through
my hair like tears.

Tears for our trampled rice paddies.
Tears for our streams bubbling with blood.
Tears for the slain water buffalo and barren trees
leaning into a sky burned orange by Napalm.

Tears, too, for lost innocence and
hands that will never again wash clean.



Pris Campbell
(c)2005