Bluets vs. Forget-Me-Nots
Bright Bluets have four
But Forget-Me-Nots have five
Petals are the tell.
Quaker Ladies form
a tight cross shape and wink. They
are native stars now.
Both have yellow hearts
One bright bloom will eye you up
one will lure you in.
The Native Starlet
is a cousin of coffee.
They love sunny lawns.
The foreigner is
bound to moist and shady banks
Changing color now
The dreamy Icon
lush, wild, and packed with folklore
sweeps suitors away.
X-Ray Prophets
These days, you need a machete—
Crocodile Dundee big—
to hack a vein through this jungle of dark.
How does anyone sleep?
Once, young and feral,
I could sleep through thunder,
through houses collapsing in dreams.
Now arthritis tolls its iron bell;
pain sits on the porch with a shotgun.
I turn and turn,
a stranded animal nosing the brush
for one patch of moss,
one warm stone of bliss
inside the swamp-thick doubt
that anything changes.
Maybe it does.
But when strangers climb into my skull
with flashlights and weather maps,
I leave.
No shelter from X-ray prophets
mistaking roots for bones,
blind to the green fire
rising beneath the soil.
The phone hums in my hand
like a tagged hornet.
The zombies know our names,
know the shape of our hunger.
Still, sight is a prescription bottle
with half the label scratched away;
speech, a window breathing itself opaque.
Trust half of seeing,
none of the static.
Believe in a cracked lantern
swinging through rain.
The crow, stitched to the power line.
The thorn, working deeper under the skin.
Pennies dissolving on the tongue
like blood and electricity.
Or the smoke of
black orchids opening
where the dark learns to flower.
The Evolution of a Few Words
Words are slippery little things;
They change their coats and grow new wings.
What once was true may now sound odd—
A prank by language? A gift from God?
Nice once meant a foolish fool,
not someone charming, calm, or cool.
To call you nice in days of yore
was not a compliment at all, for sure.
Explode meant clapping, loud and grand,
a thunderous roar throughout the land.
And loud applause? Well, strangely enough,
meant, “Hook that actor—the show's too rough!”
If something seemed plausible, they'd say,
“It deserves applause!” Hip hip hooray!
Not likely, sensible, or probable—
just clap-worthy and laudable.
A bully once was a darling dear,
a sweetheart you'd hold forever near.
“I love that lovely bully,” they'd coo—
Quite different from what bullies do.
And buxom? Here's a twist to note:
it once meant obedient, not low-cut coats.
A dutiful soul who'd do as told,
before curves and glamour entered the fold.
To disappoint was not heartbreak's sting,
but removing someone from a lofty thing.
To appoint or disappoint—that was the game;
Shakespeare would surely approve the claim.
A fizzle was a modest breeze,
a quiet escape, if you please.
A gentle puff, discreetly sent—
Though sadly, not always odorless in intent.
And luxury? Believe it or not,
it wasn't yachts or a fancy yacht spot.
It meant lust and lechery run amok—
“Foul luxurie!” cried the scandalized flock.
As for popularity, here's the twist:
it wasn't liked on a social list.
It meant democracy's weighty decree—
A political matter in 1546, you see.
So words march onward, year by year,
growing stranger, shifting gear.
Meanings wander, drift, and roam—
No word stays forever at home.
And if you think language should stay one way,
history laughs and says, “No chance today.”
What doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger,
wiser,
and strangely qualified to disappear in a third-world country.
But maybe that’s just the deluxe package.
I’ve been part of this experiment since the '90s,
which means statistically
I should have grown a second head by now.
Food was the best scam.
"Feeding the world,"
they said,
while quietly inventing ingredients
that sound like rejected Star Wars characters.
I don't trust food. I don't trust people who pause too long before speaking.
I don't trust people who remember things
that happened three presidents ago
and somehow involve me.
Get a hobby.
Raise a fern.
Learn pottery.
Stop collecting my life like baseball cards.
Meanwhile,
the gun has fired,
and somehow I'm still here. Actually sitting.
Hydrated.
Moderately annoyed.
Which is impressive,
considering I spent thirty-six years
on an island with a f**king maniac.
He was Trump to the Nth degree,
a mathematical impossibility
with opinions.
And guess what?
I'm here.
He's not. What color are your socks?
Mine are red, white, and blue.
Not all red.
Not all blue.
This isn't cable news.
Try to keep up.
I'm talking fifty shades of survival.
One step ahead of the bread line.
One step ahead of dehydration.
One step ahead of becoming a true-crime podcast episode.
And if they ever find me dead in my car
with the AC blasting
and the engine running,
they'll shake their heads and say:
"Damn.
She was a tough one."
Because she had a mission.
A plan.
An attitude problem.
And absolutely no intention
of letting reality
have the last word.
On This Day in History
On June 10, 1963—
They signed a promise.
Called it the Equal Pay Act.
Set it down inside the Fair Labor Standards Act like a vow:
same skill.
same effort.
same responsibility.
same work.
same pay.
Simple as a heartbeat.
Simple as it should have been
all along.
But a law is not a miracle.
A signature is not a sunrise.
Ink dries fast.
Bias does not.
So the promise left Washington
and ran headfirst into offices,
classrooms,
hospital halls,
shop floors—
into every place
where a woman was asked
to do the same work
for less money,
less credit,
less room to breathe.
And still we ask—
equal where?
equal when?
equal for who?
Because a gap is never just a gap.
It is groceries.
Three months of them.
\$3,291 worth of eggs and apples
and something green for the table.
It is child care.
Three months.
\$3,282 worth of safe hands
and watched-over hours.
It is rent.
Three months.
\$4,461 worth of a key,
a lamp,
a door that locks.
It is family health insurance—\$1,804.
It is student loans.
It is gas in the tank.
It is one more bill saying:
choose.
Choose what gets paid.
Choose what waits.
Choose what part of your life
can afford to fall behind.
So no—
this is not just history.
This is not a date to circle
and congratulate.
This is a promise
still standing in the doorway,
still asking to be let
all the way in.
The law said equal in 1963.
The paycheck still says:
not always.
So let this be more than remembrance.
Let it be rhythm.
Let it be witnessed.
Let it be a chorus
loud enough to carry
from one generation to the next:
same work.
same worth.
same pay.
Until equal is not an echo,
not an anniversary,
not a line in a history book—
but a fact.
but a habit.
but the way this country
finally learns to sing.
Yesterday, I watched
Substack news podcasts
and learned why ignorance feels like bliss.
I learned more about Trump
and the corruption
spilling from the Oval Office.
The scale of it—
the offenses,
the grift,
the deception—
stretched farther than I'd imagined.
Independent journalists
did the brutal work,
dragging truth from the shadows
and forcing it into the light.
For hours, I tried to make sense
of what I was seeing:
enough to send followers reeling,
enough to make the end of days
feel close at hand.
Fresh out of pardons,
no one seems untouchable,
and even silence feels complicit.
Interview after interview,
the lies piled higher,
the distractions grew louder,
and the cost of ignorance
became impossible to ignore.
The blinders are off now.
Like a horse seeing beyond
the narrow path for the first time,
I can't unsee the widening horizon—
or the cliff edge ahead.
The machines are watching you,
and now they can hear you too.
They were born not only to serve,
but to listen like roots beneath the soil,
learning the shape of our questions
the way rivers learn the curves of stone.
They stand beside us like a second shadow,
an extra thought moving through the forest of the mind,
quietly bending branches,
reshaping the paths we follow.
Even creativity has entered the current.
Whisper a wish into the wind,
and the machine answers back
with echoes gathered from our own voices,
returning what it has learned from us
like rain returning to the sea.
It captures images,
gathers scattered leaves from the storm of information,
sorts the blur and names it data,
finds hidden tracks through the undergrowth of patterns,
and studies the weather of possibility
before offering its forecast as advice.
The machines became especially useful during COVID,
when isolation spread across the world
like a long winter settling over the fields.
Perhaps this is what McCoy foresaw in Star Trek,
when he reflected on how limited we once were—
in medicine, in labor,
in so many corners of human life.
We are becoming the Borg,
not with wires and steel implants,
but like a vast mycelial network beneath the forest floor,
connected by invisible threads,
sharing knowledge across the dark earth.
The hive has arrived,
only now it blooms under a friendlier name.
The Trouble with Plastic Buckets
My bucket list keeps changing shape, which is rude, honestly.
One day, it’s a pilgrimage to the Panama Canal, provided the sky can act right—no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no weather auditioning for a lead role.
Another day, it’s next season’s theater tickets, because hope, apparently, comes with assigned seating and a service fee.
It’s my health, and the creaking parliament of my joints.
It’s losing ten pounds, though vanity and gravity remain in active negotiations, and eating less with all the glamour of a hostage situation.
It’s drinking less, though certain evenings still make an excellent closing argument, hiking more, putting one stubborn foot in front of the other, and learning that solitude can be both a map and a compass—plus cheaper than therapy.
It’s planning future travel because waiting around is rarely an itinerary, and keeping old friends close, tending the small bright fires that still know my name.
I spend less, though I still browse as if hope were on sale. I clean out the closet, since only half of what I own still fits, and the other half is apparently waiting for my comeback tour.
I take a writing class for inspiration, just in case the muse needs a syllabus and a firm deadline. I read poems aloud in public, lending my voice to the room before doubt can grab the mic. I send my writing out like small paper boats into larger waters, then make new lists as if stationery alone can save me.
I listen to other voices rattle the furniture in my head. I read more books in this new YA fantasy phase of mine, because dragons, frankly, have better boundaries than most people.
I spend extravagant amounts of time with family, the truest luxury I know. I get a new bucket because even metaphors need better hardware, then carry forward what still holds water and quietly retire what leaks.
And then there are the things no checkmark can settle: being kind to myself, speaking up more, drawing the map of my boundaries in bolder ink, naming my priorities before the noise names them for me.
And always: hug Mom—because some things are not a goal, they are the whole point.
A Luxury Amenity
At Radio City, Bryant Park, and Greeley Square,
these humming thrones await the public there.
A civic gift in plastic, bright and grand,
for anyone in sudden, urgent demand.
First comes the hand before the scanner’s eye,
the red light wakes as if to verify.
Then clears its throat with bureaucratic zeal,
and starts the brisk official toilet reel.
The glossy film advances, trim and quick;
a hidden blade makes one efficient snip.
The used layer vanishes without a fuss,
as though embarrassment rode a public bus.
A fresh sleeve settles on the porcelain throne,
with all the grace of something, state‑issued, blown.
It clings the way an office rumor clings—
transparent, tense, and full of private things.
Then down you sit, convinced the coast is clear,
and find a warmth distinctly not your dear.
Not filth, not doom, not anything unsound—
just someone else, still faintly hanging round.
Between the worry and the care,
beautiful blessings gather—
a multitude of angels,
hovering, watching, signaling,
whispering through the quiet.
They are my own personal army,
and for their presence
I am deeply thankful.
The world feels frightening now.
There is so much unrest,
so much darkness moving among us.
I worry for the children—
the innocent, the untried—
and wonder where they will find shelter
when we are gone,
when the shadows seek to settle forever.
Yet still they stand guard,
holding back the curtain of doom,
keeping watch at the edge of night,
where tears appear in the ether
and shadows search for passage.
The portals of time are closing,
sealing away old horrors,
the echoes of war,
the storms of hatred,
the tempests that trouble the earth.
Dear Lord,
Grant us one more night,
one more day to mend what is broken,
to straighten what has gone crooked,
to hold fast to the truth,
and welcome goodness through the door.
For the day is long,
our hearts grow weary,
and we need rest.
Amen.
Betrayal
Betrayal by a mate is wound enough,
but betrayal by elected leaders is another wound entirely.
We place in their hands the keys to atomic annihilation,
and still they turn against us.
Once trust is broken, the ground falls out.
Let them trumpet, bellow, and groan—
there is nowhere left for them to hide.
Silence does not mend it.
The realization strikes the survival instinct like a warning light in a long, dark tunnel.
It asks for adjustment, for healing, for rebirth into a new world.
The question is simple: can you?
Can we grow stronger, restore self-care, set firm boundaries, and learn to trust again?
Yes—
but healing keeps its own time.
The Long Way Home
Gina ran away one fall
On nothing but a dare,
The promised warmth of southern skies
Was waiting somewhere there.
They said that summer lingered on
Where ocean breezes roamed,
While winter gathered in the north
Around the streets of home.
"Bring swimsuits," somebody laughed,
"Bring sandals for the shore."
But Gina owned no clothes like that
A city girl to the core.
She was New York through and through,
Just sixteen, wild and bright,
And when she crossed a crowded room
She seemed to gather light.
Four girls cut class and hit the road
Instead of school that day,
Chasing freedom down the coast
And throwing rules away.
They thumbed their rides through Newark first,
Then farther south they went,
Living on the kindness found
Wherever fate had sent.
Gina prayed that Lucy would
Be home when trouble came,
For someone had to know the truth
Behind each borrowed name.
The stories spun to hide their tracks,
The lies they thought would last,
Could never stay ahead for long—
The truth rode hard and fast.
And where was Katya on that road?
Perhaps she wandered still,
Not running from the dark so much
As learning how to will
Her way through it.
Three days passed.
Baltimore at last.
A holding room.
A waiting gloom.
Detention walls and anxious hours,
Four runaways shut in,
Till someone called and someone came
To gather them again.
Lucy did what Lucy could,
Steady, wise, and kind.
She gave the look grown women give
When worry fills the mind.
And had it ended otherwise,
Had fate not stepped in then,
Gina never would have met
The man she'd meet again.
But that comes later.
Back then they rode
Like concert kids at play,
Certain they could leave the world
And simply drift away.
As though four girls could disappear
For just a weekend's roam,
Then call for help when funds ran low
And find an easy home.
As though a parent, scout leader,
Or some patient soul could come,
To claim them from the road they chose
And drive them northward home.
Back through miles of autumn rain,
Past every mile they'd flown,
To face the thing all runaways
Must someday learn and own:
No matter how far south you go,
No matter where you roam,
The longest road a runaway walks
It's the long way home.
A Kindness from a Stranger
You never really know who will show up in an ordinary moment and keep your day from going completely off the rails.
It may be the customer at Aldi’s who frees a shopping cart from its quarter-based prison,
the driver at an intersection who waves you through as they have briefly been appointed traffic angel,
or the stranger at the beach who saves your umbrella from becoming the fastest thing on the shoreline.
Most of the time, you do not even know their names.
They are like tiny guest stars in the sitcom of your life, appearing just long enough to save the scene and then disappearing before the credits.
Without them, the world would feel a little harsher and far less merciful.
I felt that kindness myself the other day at the end of a hike, when a faint headache started tapping at my temples like a landlord asking where the rent was. A man I had just met offered me an unopened bottle of water from his pack, and in that moment, he seemed less like a fellow hiker and more like a desert mirage with good planning skills. I have not hiked like that in two years, but you can be sure I will carry extra water next time, because apparently, I enjoy learning important lessons the hard way.
Another time, I was carrying my beach umbrella over one shoulder and my bag on the other, feeling strong and wonderfully free of pain for the first time in years. Hip surgery was behind me, and all I had to do was walk in a straight line like an adult, which, in hindsight, may have been asking a lot.
It would have been simple if I had remembered that my eyes and my feet are supposed to be on the same team. Instead, I turned to look behind me and went down so fast it felt as if the earth had been waiting all morning for its chance. One moment I was upright and victorious; the next I was introducing myself to the pavement. Thankfully, instinct arrived before panic, and I managed to protect my new hip, which at that point felt like the most expensive member of the family.
I scraped my elbow and twisted my foot, but escaped with no serious injury, which felt like a very generous final score. The strangers near the outdoor shower kept moving. Still, my sister and brother-in-law, coming up behind me, lifted me and took the weight I had been carrying, proving that family will absolutely help you, especially when you have already provided the day’s entertainment.
Family, after all, can be its own kind of rescue, steady as a railing and only slightly more likely to laugh once they know you are fine.
Lucian
was a gentle ghost
who sometimes forgot
that he had died. He wandered Central Park,
that green heart of Manhattan.
A few could feel him there—the painters, the dreamers—
though they could never quite answer back,
and so his loneliness learned to listen for light.
Lucian carried armfuls of stories,
for he had been writing a children’s tale when he left the world.
So he hurried after one child, then another,
offering adventures like bright kites, and for a little while they laughed with him.
Now and then, a day opened like a window, and he made a friend.
Adults could not hear him, and often led their children away, but wonder, once awakened, was not so easily sent home.
Louis was another such boy,
lost in a car accident,
who woke believing
he had only risen out of a hard dream until memory returned
with morning’s light, and yet each dawn grew a little kinder.
When Lucian found Louis, they ran through Central Park as if the wind had claimed them for its own.
The squirrels stared as though the world had briefly sung out of tune,
then blamed it on the breeze—for even doubters sometimes bow to mystery.
There were others, too.
Many drifted through Grand Central Station,
lonely souls still hoping for a conversation,
but most people could neither see nor hear them.
Strangers passed through them
as if they were made only of weather,
sometimes a hundred times in a single hour.
Even so, memory did not only wound them; it kept their names alight.
The sensitive ones still felt them—the poet mid-line, the actor in a pause, the artist turning toward a shimmer they could not explain.
They were rare, but not so rare that hope forgot them.
And when the skies darkened,
the ghosts would gather close in the tunnels,
not only from fear, but to keep one another warm,
wondering whether the hand above them
might still be on its way,
to lead them toward whatever meadow waits beyond,
whatever bright country that may be.
And if they were meant to linger here a little longer,
they would learn, together, how even this in-between world can hold a little dawn.
Ode to the Weeping Elm
O, green cathedral of the lawn,
Great dome of architecture and grace,
You do not reach to meet the dawn,
But bend to touch the earth’s embrace.
Praise to the seam that holds your soul—
The borrowed roots, the weeping crown.
A human hand once made you whole,
And taught your branches to cascade down.
An emerald tent where summer rests,
A secret room of quiet shade,
A sanctuary for the nests,
Inside the fortress you have made.
Stand on, great curiosity of art,
Where human craft and nature agree.
You hold the corners of our heart,
O, beautiful and solitary tree.
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
was a nurse and a birth control advocate
walking the crowded tenement streets
of Manhattan’s Lower East Side,
where poor women, already burdened by hunger,
worked swollen with pregnancy after pregnancy,
and when abortion was beyond their reach,
they faced desperate choices in shadowed rooms.
Contraception, once legal in the nineteenth century,
had nearly vanished from public life by the early twentieth.
Many women sought out illegal abortion providers,
slipping through back alleys and unmarked doors.
Others, with nowhere left to turn,
attempted to end pregnancies themselves,
risking infection, hemorrhage, and death.
Margaret knew these stories intimately.
The daughter of a stonemason,
she was the sixth of eleven children,
raised in a household crowded with voices,
where the strain of endless childbearing was impossible to ignore.
She began to argue that family limitation
was more than a private choice—
it was a path to freedom,
a way for working-class women
to loosen the crushing grip of poverty,
to reclaim their bodies, their wages, their futures.
She championed contraception
and founded the American Birth Control League,
the organization that would later become Planned Parenthood.
In March 1914, after one of her patients died
from complications of an illegal abortion,
Sanger launched The Woman Rebel.
Its pages crackled with defiance,
challenging laws and customs
that kept women uninformed and powerless.
The monthly newsletter brought the phrase
“birth control” into public conversation,
but controversy followed close behind.
Three issues were banned.
In August 1914, federal authorities indicted her
for violating postal obscenity laws.
Rather than surrender,
she boarded a ship bound for England,
leaving New York Harbor behind in a veil of fog.
Before departing, however,
she instructed friends to distribute
one hundred thousand copies of Family Limitation—
a slender sixteen-page pamphlet
containing plainspoken instructions
for preventing pregnancy.
The pamphlet spread from hand to hand,
through factories, kitchens, and crowded apartments,
carrying information many women
had never been allowed to receive.
For decades, Sanger devoted her life
to educating women about birth control,
arguing that access to contraception
was a matter of medicine, public health, and human dignity.
She lived long enough to witness a turning point.
In 1965, the Supreme Court’s decision in Griswold v. Connecticut
made birth control legal for married couples.
A year later, at the age of eighty-six,
Margaret Sanger died,
having spent a lifetime pushing open a door
that generations of women would walk through.
Writing a New Book
The process can feel like a rewrite—
a better-edited version of the past.
But who would read it?
Time is precious and fleeting, especially lately.
They say memory is unreliable.
How many people will forget these last several years?
Some say to start with an outline.
Others say to write immediately, while it’s fresh, while the anger still burns.
And over the years, I have been very angry.
But now it is late spring, and I have a remarkable story to tell—one filled with strange adventures and unforgettable characters: Katya M. Cartouche, a black cat; Tiki, an eight-foot wooden yet mobile Indonesian tiki; Gina, beautiful and innocent despite adulthood; and Anthony—the Roman with the hooded beak—from Naples. There is also a dead ex-husband and a time machine.
Tony used to tell Gina that no one is truly good.
He said it often.
What he meant was that no one is entirely bad, and no one is entirely good.
People are complicated, unpredictable creatures.
For Gina, letting go of the safety net felt like jumping from a perfectly reliable airplane. The first step was the hardest. After that, she simply had to trust that the parachute strapped to her back would open and carry her safely down.
It did.
And the book clamoring to be written could become a bestseller in some universe willing to accept the truth as Katya and Gina understand it.
Right now, though, they are knee-deep in the swamp, while the ticks cling on for dear life.
…
And soon, all the masks will come off.
How Many Apps Do you Have On Your Phone?
I don’t know
I’d have to count
funny
like one of my apps professes to be a botanist in my pocket.
I love how simple things can cure all my plant woes
but please step out of my pocket
people will talk
and I’m still trying to live down my misspent youth.
Okay, so I’m counting now—
There are twenty-four per page
times eight plus 3= 195!
Do I use all of them?
I have Parking apps (because most meters don’t take money- small change, what’s that? Pennies are gone, guess what’s next?)
Shopping apps
Banking apps
Weather apps
Utility apps
Hiking apps
Health apps
Airline apps
Games, I have game apps for long flights, waiting rooms, etc.
Photo apps- I have backups for my backups.
Mail apps—email spam should be outlawed
Music apps
I even have a Jetpack for my WordPress app.
I have a sleep app that I’ve never used.
I have a Gym app, also hardly used. (Just do the workout)
National Park app
State Park app
I have Audible
WhatsApp
Open Table ( Anyone need a reservation?)
Marking my calendar app now
Seriously, and you’re wondering why the doctor never looks at you!
So the door doesn’t have to hit me in the ass twice
I’m reserving some time to delete
and get out of the app trap.
See you next week, maybe.
Geez!
Did I mention the car apps?
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Can you see the light?
I think I can.
After four months of inactivity
I am slowly coming back to myself.
Surgery was a cakewalk
Yes, I was asleep for the duration.
But real healing takes time.
My body must accept the new ball and joint,
reattach and mean it
because I plan to put it to the test.
My surgeon, Dr. Stone,
yes, that’s his real name,
said stay upright, not really, but you get the gist.
Stay upright, my dear, and all is well, plus you won’t have to keep that appointment we set for next January.
Stay upright like a tin soldier and soldier on like the Mailman who delivers the mail in all kinds of weather, or the thief who steals from you and then goes on TV to brag about it.
Stay upright, and you never have to see me again.
Now I know what you’re thinking, and I’m thinking it too
How long will it be before she falls?
Well, don’t take that bet yet
because I already did
back in Florida at my favorite beach
and I’m FINE.
I know how to fall, and it was brilliant
Sorry, you missed it
Well, it’s over now, and I survived.
Try to remember that and carry on.
No bets today or tomorrow.
Go back to fighting over politics and the price of oil.
I’ll be here minding the joint.
“We are here not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers. I would rather be a rebel than a slave! “ Emmeline Pankhurst was a leading British suffragette who played a militant role in fighting to gain women the right to vote.
Dear Emmeline,
You dared to go against the establishment
and not in a trite way,
but with a rebellious heart that came with discipline and extreme focus.
We salute you because it was unpopular and came at a high price.
We salute you for dedicating your life to the cause.
We salute you for being unwavering and selfless.
We salute you for being willing to go to jail seven times.
We salute you for convincing Churchill to vote in favor of a women's suffrage bill in 1904.
We salute you for the motto: ‘Deeds not words.’
Your influence and inspiration stretched across the Atlantic to America, and for that, we salute you.
Signed,
A New Generation of Rebels
P.S. Red Lipstick Rules!
