In the world of fine cuisine, amuse-bouche translates as something to amuse the mouth. It’s a single, bite-sized hors d’oeuvre that tickles your taste buds awake and leaves your tongue salivating for the next course. Although this waddle of penguins
may not leave you drooling in anticipation for the next course, a look at dinnertime in Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland might foot the bill… Continue reading
Shhhhh.
Listen.
Do you hear it?
The Calling?
It’s not only an invitation to adventure from somewhere outside ourselves, but also an intangible summons from deep within.
It rests on mist shrouded mountain tops, sways suspended above the oceans’ floors, and hums from deep within boreal forests and tropical jungles waiting for us to answer.
Now do you hear it? Continue reading
I am honored to have been included in the latest zine issue (#5) of Plots by Clots titled Bots & Tots, dedicated to childhood memories and growing up. My contribution, Vinnie Malone, is a work of fiction, but based on an experience I had when I was six. One name has not been changed. Can you guess which one?
“Frantic. I’m frantic!” Vinnie Malone’s dad is standing outside our front door yelling at my mother even louder than he did at Mrs. Malone when she shrunk his special pants – the one’s he wore when Mr. Kennedy became president last year.
She slips me behind her full skirt, probably so I don’t get whacked by accident. He looks like the bird I saw last week pecking at a dead squirrel in the middle of the road. Every time a car whizzed by it flapped its wings and hopped to the curb so it wouldn’t get smushed.
“Vinnie’s missing.” Mr. Malone runs a hand over his shiny head. I wonder how his knuckles can be so hairy when his head isn’t. Continue reading
Of all the things I expected to find in my tomato soup, this wasn’t one of them. A few seeds so small they’d slipped through the strainer unnoticed? Perhaps. A bit of chopped onion that had stuck to the pot and avoided being puréed by the processor’s whirring blade? That I could understand. A pinch of pepper flakes secretly snatched, sprinkled, and stirred into the mixture by some sly son-of-a-snicker-doodle when I turned to rinse my hands of a splash of garlic oil that stuck to my fingers was even a likely find. But this? No.
THIS was something you’d find in a scene they cut from The Godfather. Continue reading
Sometimes, when I feel stressed hurried, I think of this sapling. Although she has lofty aspirations, she is in no rush to achieve them. Grounded in the present, she reminds me to slow down, breathe, focus on myself and then broaden that scope to include the beauty that surrounds me.
Prompted by this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge : let your inner world and the outside one converge in a photo.
I’m feeling more peaceful now, how about you?
One homemade heart
trimmed in frilly,
white lace…
One arrow,
one promise
of a sweet,
warm embrace…
Once it’s notched,
drawn,
and trained
on his chosen bullseye,
Cupid first
blows a kiss,
and then
lets
it
~~~ fly ~~~
Even though the winter storms in Northern California are very different from those in Brooklyn, New York…
…they can make for a rather grey, dismal, and dreary day. Continue reading
Out of all the tickers that stopped at precisely 12:15 pm, Alastair Hoodwink managed to squeeze a few more seconds from his for a last word with his son Malcolm…
“When the world literally begins to fade into a blank canvas, rest assured, the end is nigh.”
The artist’s final thoughts, whispered in Malcolm’s elfin ear moments before he expelled his last tobacco laced breath, would normally have Continue reading
Alice Wetherby Pimms had a penchant for collecting governesses. Of her many peculiarities, this was perhaps the most curious, for in the first seven and three-quarter years of her young life, shipping magnate Roderick Pimms’ only child had procured precisely eleven of them. Rounding up, this would make it an average of 1.5 nannies in a twelve month period that had been employed to entertain the girl’s every whim. Imagine half a nanny. It conjures a frightful image, does it not? Nonetheless, many have attributed the ladies’ dismissals to Alice’s love of P. L. Travers fictitious character Mary Poppins.
This may clarify the child’s constant dissatisfaction with them; however, it does not explain their disappearance once they’d been terminated.
Now I’m sure you’re questioning Continue reading
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Donna Gwinnell Lambo-Weidner 
‘TWAS THE NIGHT OF BAH HUMBUG
when the Grinch played his part.
His slim, furry fingers fouled
my holiday’s start
by pointing out the turmoil bubbling up
in our world-
the hatreds,
the judgements,
the greed that had unfurled.
Indeed, ’twas too late,
for neither laugh nor smile,
would ward off the Humbug cloud forming
in true Ebenezer Scrooge style…
‘Twas the night between the longest and the Most Holy Eve Continue reading →
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