Vietnam As Destination, Vietnam As Muse

      Exactly three weeks have passed since the girls (my daughters and my nieces) and I made the journey back from Vietnam. It feels like a dream, those days walking through Saigon and feeling the energy of the city. The beach city of Nha Trang is my new favorite spot, and I’ve been to [...]

Read Full Post »

lang•widge

By Judith Ford     You’re Invited, lang•widge, March 27, 2010, Gallery Neptune in Bethesda, Maryland. Poetry is a lot like music. Music evokes visual images; visual art can stimulate poems. Read that backwards and it’s true that way, too. Last March, while visiting a friend in DC, I had the opportunity to experience all [...]

Read Full Post »

rain garden haiku (summer in Minnesota)

In The Rain Garden, BlackBerry Shots, Como Park, St. Paul, Minnesota, July 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. sizzling hot palette summer in Minnesota resting on the wing -posted on red Ravine, Saturday, July 24th, 2010 -related to post: haiku 2 (one-a-day)

Read Full Post »

One Of Many, Many In One

ONE MANY NAVIGATION If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north or south, Spanning between them east and west, and touch- ing whatever is between them, Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust, chest- nut, cypress, hickory, lime-tree, cotton-wood, tulip-tree, cactus, [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE — Trees — 15min

I don’t have a favorite tree. Not one — many. When I attended the ritual gathering for the oldest tree in Minneapolis, the Northern Burr Oak, I realized that the relationships people have with trees are varied and complex. One man had fallen in love with his wife under the oak; another woman had gone [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE: Trees — 15min

I’ve always noticed the trees where we’ve lived. Growing up on Neat Lane, we had out front a big sycamore that Dad kept trimmed into a tidy globe of leaves. In my memory, there is a sidewalk under the tree where the itch bombs fall and gather. We pick them up and for fun explode [...]

Read Full Post »

Homing Instinct

Homing In, Pigeon Coops at Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, NM, June 28, 2008, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.   When Jim and I started dating he wanted to take me to two places. One was the cabin his grandparents built in the 1940s, in the Pecos Mountains. The other place [...]

Read Full Post »

Dragonfly Wings — It Is Written In The Wind

Dragonfly Wings, BlackBerry Shots, Golden Valley, Minnesota, July 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. I’ve seen a dragonfly every day since I took this BlackBerry photograph on July 2nd. It landed atop a daylily in the garden on a sweltering afternoon. Earlier that day, I saw two dragonflies mating on the wing, [...]

Read Full Post »

WRITING TOPIC — TREES

Northern Burr Oak – 333 Years Old – 192/365, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. On Sunday I joined over 100 people in Riverside Park near the Franklin Avenue Bridge to pay tribute to the oldest known tree in Minneapolis. It is estimated that the Northern Burr Oak dates [...]

Read Full Post »

The Mekong Delta Through A New Set Of Eyes

Our guide was named Anh. Like Anne, but a long a. Ah. Ah-n. She had the look of a backpacker. At first. When I took in the rucksack and light jacket, I thought maybe she was a trekker who’d landed her dream job. Tour guide on a medium-sized wooden boat, fits about 20 passengers, floating [...]

Read Full Post »