Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 18 January 2024

Welcome to Poetry Friday! 

I am excited to see what this week holds!  The talented and amazing Robyn Hood Black is hosting at Life on the Deckle Edge.
This week, just a small tribute to our discarded Christmas tree. 

Dear Christmas Tree

I’m sorry, dear tree,
to leave you this way,
lying outside
on this cold winter day.

We loved you, adorned you,
with lights and with bows.
You gave all you had,
you were great, heaven knows!

You held on so long,
at times through a drought.
We missed giving water;
your needles fell out.

Now you lie waiting
for trash pick-up day.
I’m sorry, so sorry,
to leave you this way.

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 11 January 2024

Welcome to Poetry Friday!  What is Poetry Friday, you ask?  Click here for Renee LaTulippe’s synopsis of how it all works.  To join the round up, please post your link below.

I recently acquired an old Monopoly game.  I sorted through the pieces and everything seemed to be there (except the rules of play).  The box specified that the game includes eight tokens, but oddly, this box contained ten. 

I am unsure which pieces did not belong:

• Top hat * +
• Dog (Scottish Terrier) +
• Race Car +
• Cannon *
• Boot *
• Person on horseback
• Iron *
• Wheelbarrow
• Battleship * +
• Thimble * +

* The six original Monopoly pieces in 1935.
+ The current Monopoly tokens list for current-edition games (plus: Cat, Penguin, Rubber Ducky)

After a poking around the internet (see here), I learned that many Monopoly pieces have come and gone over the years.  Some interesting tidbits:

• Over the years, the composition of the pieces changed. Pieces were made of Zamac (zinc alloy), a lead and tin mixture, paper and sawdust composite, and wood.
• During WWII, wooden pieces were introduced so that the metal could be used for the war effort.
• After the 1970’s the pieces shrank in size.
• In 1998, a vote was held to choose a new piece from among: Sack of Money, Piggy Bank, or Bi-plane. The Sack of Money won.
• In 2013, the Iron was retired, and the Cat replaced it after a vote among: Cat, Diamond Ring, Toy Robot, Helicopter, and Guitar.
• In 2017, the Penguin, T-Rex, and Rubber Ducky replaced the Thimble, Wheelbarrow, and Boot.
• In 2022, several pieces came out of retirement, and several relatively new pieces were retired.

Here is a comprehensive list of token comings and goings from this article:

Although I am not a particular fan of the game of Monopoly (I need more patience), I do find the tokens intriguing!

What do the changes in pieces say about what was happening in our society at the time?

I can see why the Iron and Thimble were retired because of the “domestic” feel associated with them, but what of the Thimble’s comeback in 2022?  Perhaps COVID-19 inspired us to become craftier?

For the pieces that have endured – is there something about those pieces that speaks to us on a fundamental level?  The long-timers like the Top Hat, Thimble, Dog, and Race Car are truly part of the "American persona."  Conversely, we decided it was time to set aside the Iron, Cannon, and Howitzer.  I can get behind those decisions.  The Boot, Wheelbarrow, Purse, and Money Bag all had long runs, but the T-Rex was gone in a flash.

So … do you think that selecting a certain piece says something of our personality?  Here are my (unofficial) personality profiles for the current pieces:

• Top Hat – formal, proper, organized, concerned with appearance
• Race Car – competitive, sporty, James Bond type
• Battleship – serious, super competitive, ready to take on anything or anyone
• Thimble – domestic, crafty (with whiff of shyness perhaps?)
• Dog (Scottish Terrier) – loyal, fun loving, up for anything, spunky, a little naughty
• Cat – independent, but willing to cuddle
• Penguin – concerned with the environment, doesn’t mind the cold
• Rubber Ducky – wacky, fun-loving, perhaps a bit immature, a child at heart

If I had to choose: Dog, Rubber Ducky, or Penguin would be my top three.  (You always need a backup in case you don’t get your first choice.) What about you?  Do you have a favorite?  Do you think there is any correlation between the piece a person chooses and their personality?

And now, a small tribute to the Thimble:

Thimble

Dimpled elf hat,
protector of fingers,
epitome of domesticity!

By day,
you shield against needles
deflecting stabs
in the war of stitches.

At night,
you retire to your
sewing-box sanctuary,
nestled among
scraps of fabric.

© Tracey Kiff-Judson, draft 2024

Thank you for joining me in my Monopoly-token ponderings.  Please share your link below!

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 04 January 2024

Yay! Poetry Friday has arrived and COVID has left the house!  Please visit the brilliant

Marcie Flinchum Atkins for this week’s Poetry Friday round up.  Thank you for hosting, Marcie!

Getting here was a long, hard battle.  Please allow me to elaborate …

Just before the holidays, The Green Goblin of COVID surfed in on a wave of phlegm. 

I immediately enlisted Sir Paxlovid, who I thought would be my knight in shining armor.  He fought a good fight.  For five days and nights, Sir Paxlovid went head-to-head with The Green Goblin.  A fierce battle raged!  The Green Goblin descended from my head to my throat to my lungs, burrowing deeper and finding refuge in the caverns of my internals.  Sir Paxlovid swung his antiviral sword and cut off The Green Goblin’s relentless advances.  On day six, Sir Paxlovid declared victory!  We embraced, and Sir Paxlovid left for his next conquest.  All was well in Traceyland.

On day nine, The Green Goblin crept out of his hiding place and started poking around, testing to see if Sir Paxlovid had truly abandoned Traceyland.  My head began to throb.  My throat began to ache.  On day ten, I inquired of the Wiseman Noseswab if indeed the expulsion was complete.  He assured me that, despite the signs, there was not a trace of the goblin in Traceyland.

Yet … the feelings intensified.  My four top advisors, Ms. Head, Master Throat, and the Lung Sisters, told me that something was amiss.  On day thirteen, I called Wiseman Noseswab back and demanded that he gaze into his crystal dropper again and tell me the truth of the matter.  He hemmed and hawed for fifteen minutes before admitting that indeed, The Green Goblin was back and running rampant throughout Traceyland once more. 

With Sir Paxlovid long gone, I knew that I would need to fight this battle the old-fashioned way.  I drank the secret potion – Plenty of Fluids.  I read poetry gifted to me by the fair maiden Jone Rush of MacCulloch.  A wise, friendly healer delivered an ancient remedy, Homemade Chicken Soup*, which I slurped down.  I soaked in a steaming tub of … bathwater.  This battle raged for three drippy days and three restless nights until … I woke up yesterday morning, feeling fine.  Ha!  I had slain The Green Goblin in my sleep!  

Today, I need to find that unreliable Wiseman Noseswab and ask him to confirm that we’ve eradicated the goblin, but I already know what he is going to say.

* This wasn’t just any chicken soup.  My healer-friend added a secret ingredient (a dash of Thai Chili Sauce), and she cut the carrots into tiny heart shapes!  XOXO, Kim!

And now, to go with the chicken soup … a poem about saltines!

Saltine

By Michale McFee

How well its square
fit my palm, my mouth,
a toasty wafer slipped
onto the sick tongue
or into chicken soup,

each crisp saltine a tile
pierced with 13 holes
in rows of 3 and 2,
its edges perforated
like a postage stamp,

… to read the rest just click!

Wishing everyone a healthy, story-filled new year!

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 20 December 2023

It’s the time of the year when giving takes center stage.  But … receiving can also be magical, especially when you know that someone put a bit of themselves into a gift for you.  I am honored to have received several lovely gifts from Jone Rush MacCulloch through our Poetry Friday exchange.  Please allow me to share with you some of the beauty that Jone sent my way.

First, I love the gorgeous photo on Jone’s card.  Her note was so thoughtful and kind!

Despite claiming that wrapping is not her jam, Jone added lots of festive touches to her gifts!

Many delights awaited under that beautiful wrapping job!

A mini gnome – in tribute to my Gnome post several months ago, but this gnome came bearing brown-butter-cardamom-pecan chocolate!  Yum!

A 2024 Calendar featuring Jone’s artwork, haiku, and photography.  Truly inspirational!

A beautiful forest-scene collage with stunning pines atop a page from her grandmother’s journal!  I simply adore this.

A river photo with that cool hagstone in the middle, taken at Wildwood Recreation Area, and a golden shovel poem overlaid (the end words form a line from my gnome poem!).  Note: this is also a magnet.

          The river calls ~ water poppling ~ while
 sunlit creases dance between trees.  Walking
                along the path, I feel the apricity on
       my back as psithurism clams my heart.  A
    chittering of juncos flit about the woodland.
                                    Dream time on the trail.

© jone rush macculloch

Oh, to see a chittering of juncos!

Lastly, Jone shared with me a book of poetry by her friend Paulann Peterson, a former Oregon Poet Laureate.  Paulann’s poem “Lake” reminded me of the many lakes I love!

I am presently sick with COVID (somehow, I managed to avoid it for four years and was getting overconfident, I guess!).  Jone’s gifts have helped me pass the time with lovely poetry and peaceful thoughts.

Thank you so much for your kindness, Jone!  XOXO 

I feel honored to have you as my new friend!

Jone is also our gracious Poetry Friday host this week.  Please visit her at Jone Rush MacCulloch for more Poetry Friday gifts!

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 14 December 2023

Happy Poetry Friday! 

Please visit our host, Janice Scully, at Salt City Verse for some holiday spirit!  She’s decorated her tree and baked up some fresh stollen.

A quick shout out to Michelle Kogan for her suggestion to try out Zentangle poems with the pages of some old books that I recently acquired.  What a blast!  I loved this experiment.  If you have any old books lying around, I highly recommend it.

Here are three that I created, with varying degrees of success.  Let me know what you think!

Mice
make everyone
happier.

Grateful
for everything.

Well, maybe not everyone and maybe not grateful.  Ok, trying again!

Wings
smooth as
sheets of polished sliver,
he was flying
in heaven.
Happy landings.

Ok, one more go ...

For a long time
with eyes tightly shut,
he remembered
everybody --
thousands and thousands.

You are 
one in a million.

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 06 December 2023

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week, we are fortunate to have the kind and charming Patricia Franz as our host. Patricia offers us a peek at her wish list for Santa this year.  Please enjoy visiting all of the Poetry Friday poets at Patricia's blog Reverie.

Recently, I found a massive Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of The English Language, Unabridged (© 1975) at a book swap. 

I picked it up, thinking that I might use its large pages for wrapping paper or art projects, but as I started paging through, I realized that I mightn’t have the heart to shred it.  This five-inch-thick behemoth boasts finger notches, speckled page edges, and most importantly that musty old-book smell. 

Do you love the smell of books?  The first thing I do when browsing in a bookstore is take a deep inhale.  Apparently, my dog enjoys “book smell” too because she keeps walking by and sniffing this dictionary.  She also sneaks a quick lick if she thinks I'm not looking.  I digress.

Among other contents, this relic includes:

• The Indo-European Family Tree of Languages
• An Outline of the History of the English Language
• Sub-dictionaries of: Biography, Geography, Noted Names in Fiction, Mythology, and Legend, Foreign Words and Phrases, and Scripture Proper Names
• Common Abbreviations
• Practical Business Mathematics
• Forms of Address
• Tables of Weights and Measures
• Special Signs and Symbols (Did you know there are symbols for Mercury, Venus, Mars?)
• Presidents of the USA  (With a 1975 copyright, how did they know Jimmy Carter would be president in 1977?)
• Vice Presidents and Cabinet Officers
• The Declaration of Independence
• The Constitution of the United States
• A Brief History of Canada  (Why only and specifically Canada, I wonder?)
• Charter of the United Nations
• Air Distances between Cities
• Geographical Features of the World
• Commercial and Financial Terms

Phew!  No wonder it is so thick. 

Also, it contains words.  Lots of words. 

There are some fun and old-timey words.

Of course, I had to try to mash these (almost) randomly-chosen words into a quick poem:

The Injured Gribble

Whilst perched upon my buckboard bench,
absorbed within a dream,
I came upon an injured gribble,
poppling in a stream*.

He’d clung among his gribble peers –
a glomerous, wet hunk.
Quickly, I discerped the fellow
from that gunky chunk.

I wrapped him scarfwise in my kerchief,
trying not to wrick,
and if you know your gribbles well,
you'll know that was a trick!

Thenadays, we all believed
that gribbles made good pets.
Nowadays, I have to say,
I’m having some regrets.

*Let's assume it was at least a brackish stream, as gribbles live in salt water.  
As for the gribble, he's actually kind of cute. 

Gribble, © Britannica

Well, the poem leaves something to be desired (it borders on the nonsense poem that I wrote several weeks ago), but it was a fun exercise!

Now, what to do with this brick of a dictionary...

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 30 November 2023

Today is Poetry Friday!  Please visit our wonderful host Anastasia at Small Poems for the story of her first poem sale.  It will make you smile!  You will also find lots of yummy poem goodness from our many Poetry Friday friends.

Recently, I had the opportunity to see Audie Cornish interview of Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker.  This is rather heavy, so brace yourself.

Ken Burns (source: Wikipedia)

Several topics stood out during the conversation for me.  Due to his multi-year research and work on both his Civil War documentary and his WWII documentary, Ken had interesting perspectives on those wars individually as well as their intersections.  Here are my notes on some of Ken’s comments:

Confederate Flags: The origin of what we consider to be the “Confederate Flag” today was not the primary flag used by the Confederacy during the Civil War.  In fact, it was unpopular in many states because of its resemblance to the US flag.  The “Southern Cross” version of the Confederate flag that we see today was a battlefield flag that gained popularity among various states around 1954, following the Brown v. Board of Education decision when the US Supreme Court decided that school segregation violated the fourteenth amendment.  Mississippi and Georgia added the Confederate flag to their state flags as a form of protest.  [Incidentally, the term “Southern Cross” also refers to the “Crux Constellation” visible from the southern hemisphere.]

Reich Citizenship Laws: The Nuremburg Laws, passed by Nazi Germany in 1935 to discriminate against Jewish citizens as a basis for the Holocaust, were modeled after US Jim Crow segregation laws.  For more on this, see here.

Hilter’s Intentions: During an interview for Ken Burns’s WWII documentary, a US soldier from Waterbury, CT, spoke of his discussion with a captured Nazi soldier.  The Nazi soldier, in accent-free English, asked the US soldier where he was from.  He replied, “The United States.”  The German soldier asked, “Where in the United States?” The US soldier replied, “The Northeast.”  During continued questions from the German solider, who nodded understanding throughout, the US soldier told the German soldier that he was from: Connecticut … Waterbury … near the Naugatuck River.  The German soldier asked if he lived near where Naugatuck River met a small steam (the US soldier said that you could practically jump across that stream).  The US solider was amazed that the German soldier had such specific knowledge of the United States, so he asked how the German soldier knew such details.  The German soldier responded that he had been through training, and he assigned to command that region of the United States when Germany took over.

Other Miscellaneous Commentary from Ken Burns:

• Humans communicate best through storytelling.
• Ken Burns quoted Mark Twain, who may have said, “History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme.”
• Throughout history, people have tended to organize their societies under dictators. Sometimes people favor dictatorship when the dictator shares their opinion, but once power is relinquished to a dictator it cannot be taken back.
• Be involved with government.
• Nothing is binary. Something can be true while its opposite is also true.  It is important to understand the complexities of situations.
• Although people’s attention spans seem to have decreased, there still exists an appetite for deeper understanding. Ken cited binge-watching as an example of this phenomenon.

Here is a poem by Witter Bynner (1881-1968) that feels apropos.

War

Fools, fools, fools,
Your blood is hot to-day.
       It cools
When you are clay.
It joins the very clod
Wherein you look at God,
Wherein at last you see
       The living God
       The loving God,
Which was your enemy.

To quote Ken Burns: There is no "them." There is only "us." 

Details

Written by: Tracey Kiff-Judson

Category: Blog

Published: 16 November 2023

This week, I had the opportunity to spend a day wandering the streets of Boston with no agenda besides starting at Quincy Market and ending near MIT on the other side of the Charles River before dark.  I salivated at the chance to do some people watching and listening – inspired by Alan Wright’s blog post a couple weeks ago. 

Many people intrigued me, from the man on the park bridge playing a mournful melody on an amplified string instrument, stopping abruptly every thirty measures or so, to nip a bite of sandwich … to the gaggle twenty professional perfume spritzers at Macy’s, each deeply concerned that I take a whiff of a new designer scent.  Do you suppose Macy’s pays by the spritz?  But a man who plunked down next to me at a table in Quincy Market fascinated me the most.

First, I must explain the setting. Quincy Market always delights with vendor after vendor displaying scrumptious treats.  This day, I noticed something new – a vending machine that turns out a stick of cotton candy while you wait. 

I watched the instructional video, which outlined these steps:

1. Insert cash and stand back.
2. Machine whirs to life and blows sugar webs.
3. Stick on robotic arm pokes out, rotates 90 degrees, and winds a pouf of candy.
4. Arm rotates to vertical and two robotic “hands” pat the candy cloud into a uniform ball.
5. Meanwhile, a new color of candy fluff billows below.
6. Robotic arm swoops down and winds another layer.
7. Robotic hands pat the mass into a uniform shape.
8. Voila! Arm pokes completed treat out through a window where the stick can be snapped free.

While the machine was entertaining, I was not in the mood for cotton candy at 10:30 in the morning.  I moved on, purchased a yogurt parfait, and found a table with my back against the wall where I could set up for some serious people watching.

As if on cue, an older man holding a stick of cotton candy pulled out a stool next to mine and slid in.  First, he admired his candy cloud.  Then he took selfies, smiling and posing with his treat.  I offered to take the picture for him, but he was so engrossed that he did not seem to hear me.  He stuffed his phone in his pocket and got to work.  Skillfully, quickly, he pulled off layer after layer and munched.  There was no lingering, no allowing the sticky sweetness to dissolve into his tongue.  No, he had more to see.  Now the cotton candy stood between him and his next discovery.  He brushed off his hands, grabbed his backpack with his tourist-group tag hanging from its zipper, and hustled away.  Who was waiting, perhaps on the other side of the world, to see him smiling with his fluffy treat?

Exploring Boston

Contraption discovered!
A new-fangled toy
whirs and produces
sugar-spun joy.

Plunk at a table,
send picture to home,
gulp down my treat.
Where next to roam? 

For some Poetry Friday treats, please visit the kind and incomparable Irene Latham at Live Your Poem!