Everyday Canvas

Old Cartoons, Music, and Winter

Prompt: Woohoo, it's the first Saturday of the new year. What cartoons as a child did you watch on Saturday morning? Do you ever get tempted to watch cartoons now?

At first, my mother didn’t like to have a TV in the house. Since I learned reading before I was four, books enchanted me a lot and I skipped the TV's lure. Then my grandmother wanted a TV. Since she was living with us, we got a small one in black and white. I vaguely recall watching Looney Tunes characters and Fred Flintstone. I didn’t like the cartoons in black and white, then, but I loved them in the movies, at the children’s matinee. Later on, when I was a bit bigger, I fell in love with Casper the Friendly Ghost. If I am not making this up, I think it was called Harveytoons. I still recall Casper’s kind and funny character and smile and I did love the recurring theme of good overcoming evil.

Nowadays, cartoons annoy me, especially the so-called adult cartoons, but I did watch cartoons with my children, especially the Charlie Brown’s gang and their adventures. Those we all enjoyed.

Prompt: "Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand"

How does it make you feel?


Elton John was so young then. I barely recognized him. I am not too crazy about his piano playing. Needlessly harsh fingering, here. The lyrics are okay, though.

On the other hand, I feel like wanting to run away, and then, put on Ravel’s Bolero or something or, at least, some Simon and Garfunkel.

My old ears, you know!

Prompt: "How beautiful thy frosty morn when brilliants gem each feathery thorn! Write anything you want about this.

“Thy frosty morn”
is lovely, when I watch it
from afar, on the TV screen,
since that image hides
the dead birds,
lying under broken branches,
not much of “brilliant gems”
and I imagine
how those feathers
must have felt like thorns
while they were freezing solid,
and then, I worry about
much larger beings
on city streets,
living in cardboard boxes,
shivering, with eyes closed,

which makes me wonder
why each beautiful thing
is also cruel enough
to carry its own special venom.

Sorry! I am not a lover of winter, and it is cold even here in South Florida. Extreme weather of any kind makes me irritable.