• "It is at the edge of a petal that love waits." - William Carlos Williams


• "Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis

Takijiro Ohnishi... a tragic figure in history...

Email from Mom saying my Grandfather Cecil (sês-il... not see-sil) also had a deviated septum in his nose. I don't know if 'it's' hereditary or not either.

The grandkids are out of school for Christmas vacation (Oh Oh Oh !!!).

Weather: The Sabbath was glorious! with bright sunny skies. Monday mostly o'cast with a chill breeze. Tuesday was chill with bright sunny skies giving way to wisps of cirrus clouds late... Even Sacramento crawled from 'neath the fog! Rain expected on Sunday!!!

Finished James E. Talmage's "Jesus the Christ"... A rather scholarly treatise on Jesus' life and times... Most revealing and enlightening... A must read.

My downloaded AceHTML6.0 update from Visicom Media (actually only 5.5 MBytes... not 5.9 MBytes) caused me much grief. The file, apparently, became corrupted the first FOUR times I downloaded it... the fifth time a charm! Oh, the wonders of downloading large files over the telephone lines... "Never give up... Never surrender!"... what was that definition of insanity again?

"Phantasmagoræ "... Another nonce word for a title (well... maybe a twonce (sic) word... 'twonce' being a nonce word!!!)... 'phantasmagoric' being kin to 'spectral'. My poem-like entry lent much to build upon... it just didn't seem to be able to 'stand' by itself... so I also lend (see Verb 1. lend) a somewhat expanded, edited, form of my entry as Phantasmagoræ Deux. 'Borne'... or 'brought forth' in my use of the term. Note: Google has no listing for the term 'Phantasmagorae'... but there is a veritable plethora of listings for other variants of the word, including a poem... "Phantasmagoria" by Lewis Carroll in 1869... a jewel found!!!

"A Lover's Mettle " a Haiku: ... mettle... riposte. She loves me... she loves me not... she loves me...

"Apex " a Haiku: ... The photo for inspiration was of a person at the top of a dune... footsteps leading up along the ridge... blue sky above. Gave me pause to reflect on T.E. Lawrence whose book I enjoyed, though have not finished after more than 300 pages, titled "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"... the link being an eBook source of note for reading or downloading from The University of Adelaide Library, Australia.

Another Haiku I entered is more an Homage to a "Sponge Bob Squarepants" character, Mr. Crabs. "Sponge Bob Squarepants" is a cartoon on the "Nickelodeon" cartoon TV channel. You may need the updated Macromedia Flash7 player installed to access the "Nickelodeon" site... and please note that there are different downloads depending on your browser preference... IE6's/AOL's player and installation, being different from Firefox's/Opera's/Netscape's player and installation, for instance. I was inspired by a photo of a red crab, eye-stalks raised on the shoreline of a beach, somewhere, far from here, sigh!...

Titled here as: "Mr. Crabs": "Ar! Ar! Ar! Ar! Ar!... I'm off to make me fortune... in crabby-patties" The only reason to enter is to win a mouse pad... with the photo placed on the mouse pad and the Haiku printed on the mouse pad as well. It'd be a real kick if this entry won!

"The Ever-Never "... Our bubble of space/time is but flotsam, a mote, expanding/encroaching upon the elsewhere.

"Les Papillons Sont Libres "...Translation by Babelfish:
"Butterflies Are Free "...We butterflies wanting to flee this space felt between brambles, all that time traps to be broken.
It doesn't help that my French is lacking... the 'tiles' given mostly French words and snippets... but I did try!