Happy Mailbox

I’m sending out daily haiku for the annual World Peace Poetry Postcard Festival and had received two cards followed by a pause. Got a fabulous card Saturday and today hit the jackpot with four more!

Today was the first day of post-furnace-blowup-replacement cleanup. I gathered up a lot of cleaning supplies and committed to doing a room or two a day until it’s done enough to move the small (not) furry cats back. I did one room today. I’ll just say it’s a strong argument for no doo-dads!

I had done some cleaning OUT of stuff while the new furnace was being installed and that’s out at the curb for tomorrow’s trash.

Happy Mailbox

Cats of Sunday

Swoop of cat whiskers
All of a Sunday Morning
Waiting for breakfast

From the Quote Box – More Guidance

A man’s duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life. — Plato

I spent part of this morning working on poems and then fetching sunflower seeds for the tiny but very hungry birdies. It was wonderfully pleasant to be out in the sun, temps in the forties and the sky so blue. Big puffy white clouds.

To divert myself from the world over the past few days I’ve watched quite a few instructional videos about watercolor. Last night I watched Frank Clark who walked through quite a few exercises, doing a landscape in one color, using simple shapes to suggest people, fruit and things like boats. He talked about sky, horizon lines and foregrounds. He uses goat hair brushes which are pretty strange but wonderful. Can’t argue with someone who can dash off a fair landscape in a few minutes (with hairdryer at hand) using 8 colors and three brushes.

I’m learning myself that most of the time things get done with bigger brushes so it doesn’t surprise me when I see these video guys using brushes that are 1 1/2 inches or bigger.

Anyway, I gathered up what I’d seen and sat down with the two latest paintings which were lacking proper foregrounds. I played around with my biggest brush a one inch wash and it did a pretty good job of being ragged and rough when dry. I played with holding the brushes by the far end and that just needs practice and repetition.

When those had grassy and melted areas here and there I slapped some blue and grey washes together and created a big bright blue sky with puffy white clouds sailing by. I didn’t let myself leave the foreground empty. That way I can start a new painting next time. No more dilly-dallying. Do the work. Keep making art. Do the work.

Meanwhile, Paint Hits Paper

I did this and a couple other things purposely towards having them for postcard fronts. I’m doing World Peace Poetry Postcards and combining it with National Haiku Month and, for lack of a better title, “People, are you crazy??? Do the right thing you Congress people and others!” postcards as part of the 10 actions in 100 days continuation of the Women’s March.

Today’s Mail and Thoughts

Tonight as I was leaving work, I was chatting with another co-worker (also in the “older” bracket of my worksite) about stuff. I was telling him what my next month’s goals were – world peace poetry postcards, sent also to legislative/congressional sorts etc. We both expressed amazement that all this stuff had been going on – for one week. Felt like months. He felt the same way.

As I drove home I was thinking about the chat and it now occurs to me that what I’d been describing – passing along articles and tweets and screenshots of tweets to my facebook pals, explaining how to vet things, where to find primary sources, keeping the story in the news – was much like what I’d just seen on a live feed of Elizabeth Warren talking to a protest crowd at an airport. She was holding a megaphone (apparently non-working) but she and the crowd had fallen back to the Occupy human megaphone technique. She’d say a sentence or part of one and the crowd around her would repeat it verbatim so the people in the back could hear it.

So be it. I can be like that. I can be the pebble tosser that maybe finally pushes someone to make a call or a donation or to talk to others about what’s going on.

Also today, I made a bigger than normal donation to WAMC our local public radio station. I rely on them for news and commentary and they’re rightfully concerned that the federal funding for public radio will be pulled. It’s not a big percentage of their budget but it’s a meaningful one. They added 1/3 of the amount they’d lose onto the fund drive that’s about to start and will keep that money squirreled away just in case.

I want to make a donation to ACLU but I need to button down the info for my company match first. Not gonna throw away the match!

Came home and this was in my mailbox. Between these and my big safety pin I think I’m in good shape.

National Haiku Month is Coming!

I was looking at the 10 Actions in 100 Days website and thinking about sending postcards (seem to do that pretty regularly although not on political topics) and then remembered that February is National Haiku Month. In the past I haven’t done a theme throughout the month although some days generated multiple haiku around a subject.

So folks, I’m going to try writing haiku on National Topics of Interest (to me, anyway) and I’m going to send them out into the world on little pieces of paper and see if a ripple happens somewhere.

If you want to generate a back and print it, here is a link to the 10/100’s printable postcard site. You could come up with your own or use commercially available postcards to send your own messages, haiku or not.

Day 17, Late Night Haiku NaPoWriMo NaHaiWriMo

when writing sonnets:
iambic pentameter;
haiku: seventeen

Poetic thinking
can follow many pathways
enjoy each of them.

there should be a name
for groups of wand’ring haiku
traveling as one.

Day 17 NaPoWriMo NaHaiWriMo

Reaching a milestone?
Pataloha shirt I own
has been reissued.

Plus this from the days of cool rayon shirts, now in cotton/poly. Mine’s a reddish background:

Day 16, NaPoWriMo The Eve of Haiku Day

Get ready, it’s almost National Haiku Day! You know – the Seventeenth! You know what to do (google it people – there are a lot of good haiku sites out there):

Some warm up haiku
For National Haiku Day
All in seventeen

April Seventeen
in two thousand and sixteen
write haiku all day

This clump of haiku
written late on the sixteenth
should get you going.

Tomorrow’s the day
It’s National Haiku Day
Embrace the haiku.