Interesting reflections. The only Wiccan I know personally became a Wiccan because she needed a higher power to get through AA and didn't like anything else. She's been sober for over 20 years now and that is about the best endorsement of a religion I've ever come across. Your title should really be Muslims and Christians and Jews, if you want to get that Wizard of Oz syncopation.
Sort of a persuasive argument for why religion should be subordinate to the law. Remeber, it took a war and a constitutional amendment to do away with slavery of one sort. We still haven't passed an Equal Rights Amendment addressing women's issues.
As to Glen,
"But, Glen your an intelligent Mormon for Christ sake."
I believe you haave an extra M in the above-quoted sentence.
I'm sort of buying the sentient lizard men scenario. My understanding is that there are currently millions of them on earth and most are members of the ABA.
I'm not so with the concept that we teach atheism in the schools. We really don'rt. We just leave spiritual belief/nonbelief systems out of the science curiculum, at least where we do it well. Here in the south, thee is a tendency toward creeping creationism, but that is another story.
I thought this little essay was pretty entertaining.
Interesting reflection on an interesting piece of the natural world. I'm not exactly sure I would have gone this route with it myself, but that is part of the wonder of nature. We all perceive it from our own perspective.
A few technical points:
In the last sentence of paragraph one you are inferring the bear is male based on no evidence I can discern.
The next sentence is a bit hard to follow. You might consider something like "I knew from cartoons that bears ate picnic baskets and had vague inklings from Forestry Department materials, that they might also eat an occasional camper."
The next part seems to be the crux of this piece. You are drawing the distinction betweeen your expectation and reality. I would have enjoyed having you hit this a bit harder. Why was this unexpected and somehow disappointing?
The sentence beginning with "How many shows..." does not appear to be complete, or at least it seems to be missing something essential to my undestanding of it.
I followed the question about what god wants for me. You then however seem to make a new analogy of the log that is inconsitent with the earlier one. I think where you are going is maybe that the answers are like bugs in a log and we need to pulverize it like a foraging bear to get any satisfaction.
I'm not sure why you bring in the rights of man at the end here. It sort of muddied things for me. Are you really concerned with the inalienability of the questions or more their inherency in being human?
Very lovely sentiment and nicely expressed. The language is all very simple and striaght forward, but it is raather artfully structured.
I particularly liked things like "What you expect is for me to help you feel ashamed..." and "if the ghosts of your grandfathers make you afraid..." I find both of those to be very effective phrases.
I find it a bit hard to imagine, in this modern day, when many won't even be responsible for their own actions of yesterday, that people still feel burdened by the sins of past generations, but I suppose this still lingers. and poems are about what you encounter, not what I think is likely.
Pretty entertaining, and about time that message got delivered to the Pope. This world really has no problems that a 75% population reduction wouldn't completely cure, or at least make them to where they only bothered the people who made them.
I like the background on this one, with the pope messing about on twitter. Seems like most of our leaders, be they lay or religious are doing it by the numbers. How many people like it on facebook or some such.
I'm less sure about the fairy as a messenger device. I liked the personality of the little critter though.
As to the last question, of course he'ss senile. I don't think you qualify for that job until you're senile.
This is a nice simple little descriptive piece. You convey both the feel of the time and place and the feeling of the author for the place. I realize you may be doing it for effect, but several of your phrases that are punctuated as such are not complete sentences. In line two you might consider changing brutally to brutal, or eliminating the word yet. Either will make that phrase more correct.
It almost flows like free verse, if it were reformatted.
I liked the analogy of the hats for the way we tend to mold ourselves to meet the expectations of others. We all do it a degree, some minorly and some pathologically.
A also liked the way you handle the strain of trying to maintain that perfect form, or to wear the hat perfectly and how doing that for so many people in our lives, ultimately jumbles who we are. We can't keep the hats straight.
You present an excellent argument for endeavoring to be ourselves.
I thought the rhyme scheme was very effectively handled and well thought out. You didn't have any lines that felt like you sacrificed meaning for a forced rhyme. The rhythm also seemed consistent and was not too bouncy for the subject matter (a problem I often see in rhymed poetry).
Good theme for a story! Buzzards come in quite a number of varieties. I find it all pretty entertaining to think of someone who would concern themselves with things at the level of a toilet plunger when dealing with their father's will. A good friend of mine once described her grown children as greedy and venal little people and the term sure seems to apply here!
The only thing I had a bit of trouble with was why, in what feels like rural America, you would think there was a dead ferret in the field? Here those things are domestoc and not likely to be out there, so it sort of muddies the location a bit.
I like the spirit expressed in this song. I always find it hard to really evaluate lyrics though, in the absence of music. I'm not certain what 8-bit living refers to, because I don't know how far your back your nostalgia stretches and it may also be a coloquialism I don't get. Eight bit makes me think of the following:
Old Spanish coins- in which case you are amazingly ancient if you find them nostalgic,
Old Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 8s- which would be a bit recent to qualify as real nostalgia for any but the younger set,
A misstatement of 8-track, which is nostalgic for people my age, and sort of fits the music mode.
Anyway, the enigma I think, causes me to over think the thing.
I do like the who-cares-what anyone-else-thinks attitude.
I like most things river and this one is always an interesting one to me, even though I've never seen it. Maybe it's because I'm one of the only people I know who forced himself to read Thoreaus "A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" cover to cover. I have since learned that it is only recommended in small doses.
I liked the rhythm of the poem and I particulalry liked the contrasting of the storied past with the relatively mundane present. The pollution thing is an almost inevitable constant with our rivers, but fortunately the heavy industrial pollution is getting better!
Very entertaining! It reminded me of going out to our parking garage after work one day and finding a poor distraught woman looking for her car. I helped her search floor by floor and no luck FInally we called teh police and I waited with her in case she needed a lift home. The police arrived and took a statement from her, getting make, model license etc. He then asked her if there was anything else of value in the car. When she responded "Like what?" He mentioned things likie luggage, tool boxes... "Tool boxes" she muttereds and then stopped dead and said "Oh my god! I drove my hisbands truck". And it was sitting right where she'd parked it.
I really like the way you imbue your nameless characters with personality. Makes the story fun to read.
BTW, I am of sufficient age to remember LSMFT, when I can remember anything at all.
I can;t exactly tell what is going on here, but I really like the entire story it tells. It sounds as though the author is looking out a boat instorage and recalling a very frightening incident, real or imagined that has made the idea of putting the boat back into the water to terrifying to consider. It sounds like a shark near miss. It also sounds like she is caught in that place where burning the boat sounds like the thing to do, but for some reason she can't quite bring herself to do it.
Sometimes enjoying wilderness is a conceptual thing, since we aren't really in one until we are at least one link down on the food chain, and that is not very comfortable for most of us.
This sounds like a lovely place to get out and enjoy nature. I liked the description of the water and the wildlife. I tend to be a bit of a stickler for calling a spade a spade and do not really like the term "sucker fish". Given the habitat description and the description of the suckers flopping and tousling and clouds of mud I wonder if they might have been common carp.
Nothing like being alone on the water to make one think deep thoughts and perhaps even empty ones head and just enjoy.
I don't see the traditional ratings options, but that's okay. I'd give this a 4.5 anyway. Having served my time on many a trip with characters like you and Nitza along I could really identify. I used to spend time trying to be a helpful do-gooder, but I learned long ago that most people are not on these trips to acquire a skill, they are on them to have fun and often the best way to do that is to just hit every obstacle in the river and enjoy.
I like your description of Nitza's metamorphosis especially. I found myself wondering if she was getting into it, or if she had just realized that the best way to make the pain stop was to finish faster. I thought the talk of subpoenas and felony indictments were the only part that went a bit too far.
I love this poem because it is so very evocative. Any of us who have ever negligently snapped a skirt on with the grab loop inside know that feeling of panic when you reach and it isn't there. It does seem like a brief eternity as you grab the bungee and force your fingers to rip it free. It's truly a testament to the need for a really effective roll!
You have to love a good kayak song! There is something about the rhythm of paddling that almost requires you to invent songs in your head or select songs to move you along. I'm about ready to start my by-water Christmas bird counts for teh year and this one will probably be stuck in my head. I also find Stan Rogers to be an excellent source of proper kayak music. Try Barretts Privateers or Flowers of Bermuda.
Definitely a realistic account! You have to wonder about Ted's general state of sanity, unless of course he just wanted to get the question asked without much risk of acceptance. Sort of a "Don't say I never asked you!" insurance policy.
This said, it's hard for me to imagine a trail that is discernible that you can't haul a canoe down. Sara sounds like one of those grudging good sports- not really into it, but willing to along as long as the going is easy. Definitely not someone anyone with any sense would bring on a trip with a long portage on a wet trail. Still, Ted sounds like he lacks a proper enthusiasm for the task or he would have made it.
This is an interesting concept for a story. I can see a couple of different themes being possible. It would lend itse,lf to either the idea that we continue to be helpless caprtives of our own bodies after our death, or the idea of a person being prepared for cremation and waking up to terrified to fight. It is really unclear from this story which way you are going and I think that detracts a bit from its impact on the reader. In this case, the surprise of finding out what is going on is almost anticlimax whereas some clues or even a bit of backstory would have had the effect of increasing the tension.
I really think that this has a lot of potential. Increasing the description level and altering the visual format on the page would probably help. I could see this being a great descriptive exercise at about twice to three times the curtrent length.
Clever idea. I think the key to good Limericks is to keep perfect rhyme and rhythm and this wanders a bit. Nantucket is certainly classic location for such things to take place, but unfortunately it just doesn't quite work with pocket. Leaving out teh word bottle in line five would keep the rhythm a bit smoother. I'm not precisely sure what the last five lines are for. They seem to be an entirely separate thing.
Nice alligator story. I liked the action in particular. I also liked the cautionary information about not leaving reptiles in parked cars. It's a sad lesson many of us have had to learn through bitter experience. A few little techneical things:
Last word in paragraph one should be passion, I believe.
The first sentence in paragraph two is hard to follow. Do you mean the habitat is over 150 years old or that the gtors are/ If the second, then I think you mean unchanged for 150 million years.
It seems to me that that the part of paragraph two relating to the capture of the alligator should be a second sentence. Also, the discussion of the pellet gun incident sounds like you are saying that in general, pellets to the eye are not serious in gators. I think you mean that your gator here was not seriously injured.
In your description of Gwen, it might read a bit smoother if you describe her as a lovely, level headed black woman. I think you describe her competence and concern really well.
In descriiong your geographic scope of operations, is Hanahan another county. It isn't clear from the wording, but I think perhaps it is. That paragraph actually fits nicely with the introductory part of the story. If you move it, it makes the last paragraph a tighter conclusion.
Finally- just as a general rule, it's gator rather than gater- at least down my way they are neighbors. I can see a small female out my back window as I write this.
Nice rant! I sort of like the 'question everything" kind of mentality protrayed in it. That's not a bad approach to take in life, in my opinion. I think the author must be fairly young, because some of the questioning seems almost reflexsive and not based on anything necessarily questionable. Sometimes, we decide on a role we want to play and find it hard to know when we are being oursleves and when we are just staying in character.
The writing is quite good in this. It is however, physically jumbled. You're not giving up your rebel status to use paragraphs and make it easier on the readers eyes. There is stuff in there that, even though in the format of a narcissistic rant, is worth considering. I think a lot of people won't read it just because it is hard to look at.
Interesting question. I think day dreaming is like most things, some is good but more is not necessarily better. There times when a person is under real stress and needs to focus on fixing life. Accomplished day dreamers can live so completely in their heads that they are nearly delusional. They suspend belief in their unpleasant reality and believe the fantasy plating out in their head.
I do believe that we all have not so much power over our feelings as power over how we react to them..
Very informative and enlightening, but you failed to mention at which point in this geneology they descended from trees and began to walk upright on the savana. I think that's a really piece of this and one that is far too often neglected by scholars who get all hung up on the begats.
I am a great appreciator of a bit of sardonic humor and this has a nice tongue-in-cheek quality to it. And after all, tis the season for all things Christmas!
Okay, that is a very expressive and honest little rant about what many of us do to ourselves in order to accomplish what either society or other people in our lives demand of us. I liked the image of the skin that has become too tight and confining and no long absorbs environmental stimuli in a way that allows the wearer to feel alive.
I was particulalrly struck by the part about not seieng yourself in the mirror anymore. FYI- the next phase of that is when you are no longer certain you exist, outside of a receptacle for the expectations of others and can no longer even want anything, because you have simply forgotten how. Then you check the mirror just to be sure even the husk is there.
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