- Image by Douglas Brown via Flickr
Category: writing (Page 5 of 23)
Hey Folks. I have decided to put something else out there on this blog, poetry. I have been writing poetry for years, some good, some bad, some just mushy to make my wife fall in love with me. I have decided now to put some of those poems out on Tuesday as well as some new stuff. Some of these are not super, I am not going to post the ones that I consider lame. There will probably be some classical stuff later on, I have a couple of “epic” style poems in Iambic Pentameter that are inspired my the old Roman and greek Poets, Homer, Virgil and the like.
I hope this will, if anything be at least some fun to read. Oh yea, there are silly poems as well, some still written on hamburger wrappers from an age long ago…:)
Today I don’t remember the story behind this poem but it is about Trees and Autumn. I am fairly sure it was a school assignment at some point. Anyway, Enjoy!
Autumn
By: Justin Matthews
Motion. Fluidity.
Poetry in its own right.
Beautifully Orchestrated Colors, Vibrant.
Red, Gold, Evergreen.
Fluttering in gentle breezes, Small sails.
Swaying in unison like Soldiers, Fallen Comrades and those soon to be.
Death all around; Cosmic Recycling.
Life bubbling within, while preparing for sleep.
Winter is nigh.
All told from the Trees, Fluidly moving in Autumn Breezes.
Comments are open and needed below.
-Justin
Good February everyone! I can’t believe January is over already. It is moderately cold here in Utah right now but not snowing. I am not sure if I like that or not. It seems like winter should either get with it and snow for more than 15 minutes (like it has the past couple of nights) or turn into spring already. I got the spring yard clean up/landscaping bug this weekend while watching some home improvement shows on HGTV. I can’t wait for the ground to thaw!
I keep hearing about this Alexa thing that apparently is important to be on the high side, in the top 100,000. So I decided to look up where my site is. On Saturday Jan. 30, I was at 12,829,290. All I could do was laugh. This morning, February 1, I was almost shocked to see I had DROPPED to 12,850,206. I dropped nearly 21000 spots in 2 days. I am not sure what this means but I will keep looking at it. At least it is better than the other website that I run with my wife Brendasquiltshop.com. That site doesn’t even have a ranking so 12,850,206 must be ok. What does it mean? I need to get out there more and not worry too much until I get some more incoming traffic.
And finally I so want to go fishing. Not ice fishing which should just be called “freeze your butt off while sitting on the ice” fishing but real fishing. From the bank, from the boat, standing in the stream I don’t care. Winter gets long some days and my gear calls to me.
Last fall our family went to Kidney Kamp. It is sponsored by the National Kidney Foundation and the Great Salt Lake Truck Show and it lets families of people with kidney disease and or kidney transplants a chance to go to camp. I am glad my 3 year old is in the latter category now. For 2 years that was the only camp we could do because they had facilities to do dialysis.
I digress yet again. This camp has a very small pond that they stock with fish and let the kids check out poles to fish with. Me, I keep a travel fly rod in the car and wanted to practice. But they only want kids to fish so I recruited my 9 year old and told her it was her first training session. We didn’t catch anything that day, the fish were more interested in the gummy bears that the kid across the pond was using for bait than a natural looking fly. Hmm, that is another post idea, Seeking out the flash we want instead of the stuff we need.
The lesson here is I will try to find a way to fish anywhere I can, even if it requires my kids to do it. I just want to fish. Anyone want to come with? My wife will be having our 4th child this July so I know my fishing outings will be limited, but I will still go some. Not actually going fishing will leave me time to work on my e-book about beginning fly fishing. I am reworking and updating a website I made in one of my college writing classes to work as a book. I should take pre-orders to force me to finish by my St. Patrick’s Day deadline.
Anyhow, Life is Great when you are satisfied with it. If you are reading this, You Are Awesome. Thanks for your support.
Justin
Today I am posting the e-mail that I sent out yesterday to my small but loyal e-mail list. This is something fun, and will only be available next week. So I am promoting it! Please consider signing up for my mailing list here. I promise not to sell your email address or trade it for cookies. Or to send you a bunch of garbage.
You have enough to read, so you will only hear from me for big announcements and *fingers crossed* monthly newsletters. Please sign up, it may not be the best thing you do today, but it won’t be the worst either! Plus there is a free e-book on writing tips for authors just for signing up.
I want you to know about a fun new Internet Game show called Bloggywood Squares. If you have been cruising the blogosphere for a while, you probably have heard of Mike Cliffe-Jones and Nathan Hangen. Or even their product, Beyond Blogging. You may also know Jordan Cooper, professional funnyman and owner of Not A Pro Blog.com.
They have teamed up for this new game show with some “celebrity” guests. It will be a fun watch over the next week at 7pm EST. The winner of the show will get a free membership to the beyond blogging sessions which are cool in and of themselves. You can also win a membership just for signing up for the sessions!
So head over here: Bloggywood Squares (affiliate link) and sign up for the fun!
have a good one.
Justin
You know once in a great while I get a good post that I just have to copy to or from this blog to or from the coots. Today is one of those. Enjoy!
- Image via Wikipedia
If you start thinking about pirates what comes to mind? Those fools in Somalia that may be effective but ultimately are hunted by every Navy in the world including the British, French and the Good Old USA and then shot with pinpoint accuracy in high seas by the greatest fighting force the world has ever known? Or do you think (as you should) about the so called Golden Age of Pirates, that time between 1650 and 1750 when pirates and privateers ravaged the Spanish fleets, all for gold stolen from the indigenous peoples of America.
That era holds a romance and fascination for this Coot that is for sure. That is why this weekend will be so fun. Today is my birthday as Ralph has so pointed out on Wednesday in this post, but contrary to his opinion the big celebration this weekend is for International Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you have never heard of TLAPD, now is the time to amend your ways. It is a day to celebrate pirates, and most things pirate.
Look at it this way, Pirates really were bad people. Rape Pillage and Plunder was their Modus Operandi and stealling other peoples ships is not very nice. But then again it was the Spanish….but I digress. Many pirates were larger than life characters with reputations that would never hold up today with a quick google search and the AP following their every move on sattelite. But over 300 years ago stories were spun and fear grew from the exploits of a few men.
Fast forward to a time where these stories are all that is left. A time when Hollywood was just getting started and needed stories to capture imaginations. Stars were born and pirates were movie stars. See the Sea Hawk or Captain Blood with Errol Flynn, they are still great adventures. Walt Disney loved pirates so much he made a whole ride dedicated to them. And then came Treasure Island. A movie based on Robert Louis Stevenson‘s book (go read it if you have not, it is great and the movie barely does it justice) that truly defined an imaginary world of pirates that we have all fallen in love with.
It was Robert Newton who played Long John Silver that has perpetuated much of how we think pirates were in the past. They may have been nothing like that but here we are now and pirates are cool. Look at the success Disney had with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, movies based on a freaking amusement park ride! People love them so much they had to modify the ride to fit the movie that was based on the ride!
But that brief and only partially accurate history brings us to two guys who had a screw loose and decided not to tighten it but to talk like pirates on an international holiday. John “ol Chumbucket” Baur and Mark “Capn Slappy” Summers created this fantastic lunacy and I have been celebrating faithfully for 5 years now.
Here is your assignment for this weekend. Go watch a pirate movie. Wear something black and Talk like a Pirate on Sunday! It is a bunch of fun. There are phrases and helpful hints over on the pirate guys website http://talklikeapirate.com. Spend some time there, download some songs, especially Tom Smith’s talk like a pirate day anthem. Oh and use this google address: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-pirate&q=&oe=UTF-8&tab=dw it will make google speak pirate at you…it’s pretty cool.
Be a pirate this weekend, you can be truly Cantankerous as a saltly sea dog! Now I just have to figure out how to teach Sunday School in Pirate….
-Justin
