FormForAll: On Free Verse, etc. • fish gotta fly

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fish gotta fly

Created for dVerse Poets Pub FormForAll, where Samuel Peralta's (aka Semaphore1) remarkable prompt On Free Verse, Picasso, and Yachting is all about "collecting tools, and bending the rules." I elected to bend the rules of the Tanka form for my free verse. It is incorporated into a short video that I shot of a piece of neighborhood art....a simple delight found around the corner from our house.

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Old Postcard Wednesday—Shore of the Pacific (the Fukushima activism edition)

Fish - Library of Congress Collection

Bluefin Tuna Radiation: Is There A Health Risk?
The Huffington Post  |

Posted: 05/29/2012

Bluefin Tuna, caught in California last August, showed radiation levels that were ten times the norm, according to a new paper from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Scientists believe that the radiation -- in the form of the isotopes, caesium-137 and caesium-134 -- came from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that began in March of 2011.


The rates of caesium-137 and caesium-134 were elevated about 3 percent, compared to previous years in muscle samples taken from 15 two-year-old bluefin tuna caught off the coast of San Diego, Calif.


"That's definitely the mark of Fukushima," David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University and a leading expert on the nuclear power plant meltdown who was not involved in the study, told The Huffington Post. "Most likely, the [tuna] would have eaten some contaminated fish off the coast of Japan and then swam across the Pacific ocean."


“That’s a big ocean. To swim across it and still retain these radionuclides is pretty amazing,” lead researcher Nicholas Fisher told the AP. . .

Kanbara - Fisherman Workers - Library of Congress Collection

 

30-minute Broadcast on Fukushima: “If anything happens, this is not just about the end of Japan, probably start of the end of the world” (VIDEO HERE)

 

 Fisherman Fishing - Library of Congress Collection

 

Senator on National TV: I’m so concerned about Unit 4 fuel pool — Tepco’s plan must be sped up — “It’s very clear there are substantial health questions that have to be addressed now” (VIDEO below) 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Former Fukushima worker  turned whisteblower, has reported TEPCO has been falsifying their reports.

 

Sardines - Library of Congress Collection

Fukushima Spent Fuel Pool 4 Risks U.S. Health and Safety

• Read excellent fact sheet containing background, many links for additional information - plus sign petition at Change.org HERE.

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Mag 119 — the dancer

Her beloved apartment was a six-floor walk-up in one of the older buildings near the park. The stone masons who toiled to craft the impressive slabs that distinguished it from the nearby structures composed of brick and wood were the same craftsmen who built the grand, sweeping curved drive leading to the marble conservatory across the river. Her great-grandfather was one of them.

"How will I know when I've made it to the top?" she had asked her father once when she was a nine-year-old ballet student dreaming of fame.

She remembered her father's reply. "It isn't important how high you go, Sweetie. What's important is that you live your life so that you can always hold your head high."

Now, years later, she enjoyed nothing more than gazing out from her window over the tops of the row of cherry trees at dusk, admiring the angles and patterns they cast on her small dance studio across the street.

Written for The Mag: Mag 119 that inspired with the above photo prompt (House At Dusk, 1935, Edward Hopper).

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Critique and Craft: Stream-of-Consciousness Writing • Ghosts

Ghosts

I am collecting ghosts.

Favorite cat was by the porcelain goose on the top

shelf near The Bumper Book, the book that holds

the ghost of my toddler self. I walked by and

smiled that smile that goes inside to me

and not out to the world. Another day, one was

in the bathroom sitting by the Italian sun bust— right

where she sat for my favorite picture of her—white

Feather-fluff, tail wrapped around her toes.

She seems porcelain now too.

There at the same sink I felt a touch so tender
on my elbow tonight—even turned to address my man

but there was no one there. 

Another message from an unknown sender.  

Mama lives in my laptop, the place 

she’d love most if she were still alive.

I’d show her all the tricks and she’d have the

Web mastered in no time, like she mastered

dealing cards, then Business, and quilting, calligraphy,

the art of love, and anything else she put her mind to.

She had no master. 

             Do I? 

Of course not. I am her daughter, the one who cried

in fear of shadows in my bedroom late at night and

nestled against her breast as she held me close—

never-ever saying that I did not

see what I saw. 

                                        MLydiaM ~ May 2012

Written for Critique and Craft—Stream-of-Consciousness Writing at dVerse Poets.

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Old Postcard Wednesday—*I Like the 70s*

The artistic flair on the back of this postcard intrigued me as much as the scene of the groovy girl with the Farrah Fawcett hairstyle on the front. Although mailed in 1981, the postcard is all 70s and was marketed by the seller with the title: I Like the 70s. I looked for information that would explain the unique coupon-like heart printed on the back but could find nothing.

Cecami  postcard scenes, it appears, were numbered (this one being #1318) but I could not find a history, nor could I determine if/when Cecami publishers stopped producing postcards. In a listing of Italian businesses I found this info:

Company Name: CECAMI
    Number of Employees: 11-50
    Main Products: Greeting cards
    Country: ITALY
    Address: 38, Via Valtorta 20127 Milano (MI) - ITALY

The Cecami website does not mention postcard publishing along with their greeting cards and wedding announcements. The following is from the website:

CECAMI in Fantasia ...... Greetings

In this simple but effective slogan that encloses the base ingredient for almost a century of its products, CECAMI.

The high quality of products and the continuing search for original solutions, are the characteristics of the different lines of greeting cards that are offered each year.

The market, especially in recent years, has rewarded the efforts of the company confirming the high popularity of the style Cecami. The special attention paid to changing market and to the changing needs of customers, you can say that tickets Cecami are equal to any occasion.

After Dick Clark died someone mentioned that he had said in an interview that Disco was his favorite style of music. I about gagged, but then that is only indicative of my lack of appreciation for Disco. It just was not my thing so I listened to the plethora of alternative music produced during the Disco era. I did go to one Disco club with a girlfriend.....once, and I mention that only so you won't think that I didn't give it a try.

Since the recent deaths of Donna Summer and Robin Gibb I've heard both them and their musical styles grouped together in commentaries and tributes as people marveled and mourned. Then I found this excellent article in Forbes that helped me to understand why it was that I could have liked a few Bee Gees songs very much while being apathetic to Donna Summer's music. The article is short so I am posting it here with link at bottom:

Robin Gibb, RIP: BeeGees Were NOT A Disco Group
                                            --by Roger Friedman

I’m very sad about Donna Summer passing away. She was the Queen of Disco. And her records– from “Last Dance” to “MacArthur Park” to “Bad Girls,” “Hot Stuff,” etc are classics. Her untimely death is a tragedy.

But too many people are lumping her in with Robin Gibb, who passed away yesterday at age 62. The Bee Gees were not a disco group. They happened to have success during the disco era because of “Saturday Night Fever.” But they were actually a British folk-pop group who evolved into something more interesting: a blue eyed soul group.

Their original phase of hits like “Words,” “Holiday,” “I Started a Joke”–were pure pop. They were right in the realm of the Hollies and the Kinks. In 1970-71 they re-emerged with two gigantic hits, “Lonely Days” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” The latter has been covered by so many R&B stars–not disco. The Al Green version is tremendous. As well, another Bee Gees song from their early days, “To Love Somebody,” is a favorite of R&B singers. It’s also been covered by the greats.

It was in 1997 when they teamed with Jerry Wexler, Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin at Atlantic, that the Bee Gees found their true calling. “Jive Talking,” “Nights on Broadway,” “Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)” are simply brilliant.

Because of the “Saturday Night Fever” movie they were drafted into the Robert Stigwood Organization. But everything from that album, plus “Tragedy” and “How Deep Is Your Love”–the latter a mini masterpiece–is a product of that Miami studio time with the Atlantic geniuses. It all stems from that.

What a terrible shame that Barry Gibb has lost all of his brothers, even Andy, the youngest. The Bee Gees music was so profound for pop, so ebullient with an underscore of sorrow. They deserved a better legacy. Robin and Maurice were always in the background but they made the group. Their loss is our loss. I hope when they see George Harrison and John Lennon and Brian Jones and Keith Moon they can all have a good laugh.

Anyway, find James Carr singing “To Love Somebody.” That will set you straight.

[Source: Forbes]

Hmmmm. I thought the Bee Gees sang the song fine themselves! Here they are in 1971. If the I Like the 70s postcard girl saw this concert she would have been quite young at the time, possibly traveling with her parents in Australia where this concert took place.....

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By the end of the decade the postcard girl might likely have been at this concert with friends, dancing in the crowd in her bellbottom pants. I wonder if she brought them out from a hiding place in her closet recently, just to look at and remember......




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