Taking a Chance on Spam

Blogger seems to be doing a better job of trapping spam. So, since we all hate it,  we'll try turning comment moderation off.

You really ought to hear it done by Ella Fitzgerald.


Things are mending now 
I see a rainbow blending now 
We'll have a happy ending now 
Taking a chance on love 

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Also, she's beautiful.

Death Dawn

About that time of day I'm a little sleep-drugged and wobbly. Chore One is to set the Mr. Coffee gurgling. In my altered state, that requires intense concentration
lest I omit the coffee, the filter, or the water. *

In the groggy process this morning something flickered in my port side peripheral vision, maybe twenty yards south of the uncurtained kitchen window, near the pickup. I registered two adolescent rabbits. No big deal; they're all over the place. Then something dark whooshed down from a nearby cottonwood.

The lucky bunny found shelter under the truck. The hapless sibling was last seen squirming in talons a dozen feet up and climbing.

The light was poor so I can't be sure, but I offer odds that the bandit was a rough-legged hawk even though they shouldn't be here in this season. They are scheduled to spend summer in the arctic north, making little hawks, but perhaps the settled science of global cooling offers an explanation.

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*(I know people who can bound out of bed and instantly whip out a bowline on a bight with the left hand while jotting down differential equations with the right. I hate them.)

Lazy River Sing Your Song

Even miles and miles above the head of navigation at St. Anthony's Falls, the Mississippi is a substantial river, wide, deep, and fast. We have claimed a 13-mile stretch of it as our own ...

....including Moose Island,  a pebble and shingle bar named for a GOOD Dog of treasured memory. This time we made it our lunch stop, premium sausages ludditically cooked (pick up some wood and set it on fire; sorry Mr. Coleman).

A thirteen-mile paddle is by no means a heroic endeavor, but it it often strains ancient muscles and even younger sedentary ones. Not so this trip, even though the evil shape-shifter raven whistled up a goodly wind in our faces.

Wisakedjak held the more powerful magic this day, and his current vanquished the raven wind, permitting what you see -- three canoes and a (barely visible blue) kayak rafted for a free drift down to Clearwater. We actually paddled perhaps one-half of the distance, maybe a little less.

Lazy is good, of course, but there's always one guy who overdoes it. We woke him up when ever it was time for Cokes or sandwiches.

My latest pome

I be not a ze, nor am I a zir.
My dad took a look and said I ain't her.

So "him" I am stuck with for all of my alls,
a captive of both those imperious balls.

It's pleasant enough for this hillbilly, hence
I harbor no envy for androgenous prince.

Or princess mayhap, depending, you see,
on the position ze chooses when needing to pee.

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For crying out loud.