DAILY PHOTO: Ukrainian National Museum [Chicago]
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Author Archives: B Gourley
PROMPT: Cultural Heritage
Daily writing prompt
What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
It’s not something that I’ve thought of much. In my youth, I was attracted to most every culture but that of my own ancestry. In my late teens and early twenties, I visited Liverpool two or three times (just across the Irish Sea from my ancestral homeland,) but (sadly) never made it to Ireland. I’ve been to over 40 countries, but not yet my ancestral homeland. I think that’s not so uncommon to come around to an interest in such things later in life.
But the answer to the question is certainly to be found in the literature. Yeats is among my favorite twentieth century poets (if not my favorite,) and Seamus Heaney is certainly in the running. Of late, I’ve gotten on an Oscar Wilde kick, and his work definitely appeals to my ornery yet thoughtful nature. Even Joyce, who I had trouble getting into in his role as novelist, is a writer whose use of language I love.
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Bovine Chiropractors [Common Meter]
A cow is an animal, &
animals are creatures.
So, having strong proclivities
is a cardinal feature.
Calling them "creatures of habit"
must be for a reason.
If creatures did not form habits
the term would lose cohesion.
But I digress, I must admit.
Let me get to my point.
You see, a sloping pasture must
be murder on the joints!
A random beast, who stood this way
& that, would balance out,
but standing each day - just one way -
could cause a hip blowout.
A cow that grazes on a pitch
must have unequal legs.
Maybe, all it would take would be
two tiny pirate pegs.
For wearing pegs on the downslope
side would align the hips,
but then on walks down to the barn
cows would be prone to trips.
For now, there's just one solution:
bovine chiropractors!
Because the cost will be so great,
I'm seeking benefactors.
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DAILY PHOTO: Art & Architecture in Chicago
The sculpture is called Large Interior Form (1982) by Henry Moore. It is located in the North Garden of the Art Institute of Chicago. The building in the background [across Michigan Ave.] is the University Club of Chicago.
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Five Wise Lines from Epicurus
Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.
principal doctrines – No. 2
Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is too little.
Vatican Sayings – No. 68
Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
Principal Doctrines – No. 27
Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
vatican sayings – No. 35
No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but some pleasures are only obtainable at the cost of excessive troubles.
Principal doctrines – No. 8
And Five Honorable Mentions:
[T]here are an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it.
Letter to Herodotus
Dreams have neither a divine nature nor a prophetic power, but they are the result of images that impact upon us.
vatican sayings – No. 24
It is pointless for a person to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
vatican sayings – No. 65
But one must not be so much in love with the explanation by a single way as wrongly to reject all others…
Letter to pythocles
Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.
Letter to Menoeceus
SOURCE: Epicurus. 2021. The Fundamental Books of Epicurus: Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, and Letters. Trans. by: Robert Drew Hicks & R. Medeiros. Independently published on Amazon. 45pp.
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PROMPT: Brands
None whatsoever. I have no loyalty to a logo. If you want my business, you need to provide a product or service that I need at a price &/or quality better than the competitors — every single time.
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Flower Divas [Haiku]
flowers are rock stars: standing tall & proud before the swaying grass.
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Waiting [Free Verse]
Waiting.
A space between.
Neither doing,
nor resting.
There's something in waiting
that lies beyond being.
An expectation without promise:
As with Vladimir & Estragon,
waiting on Beckett's Godot, or
the Old Man waiting
at Gao's Bus Stop,
There may not be a payoff.
Whatever it is in "waiting" that
distinguishes it from "being"
or "resting,"
it sucks!
All the excitement of expectation,
nullified by the possibility
that nothing will happen --
nothing good, nothing bad...
just a soul-sucking nothing.
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Five Wise Lines from Ben Franklin
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.
Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
Never confuse Motion with Action.
And Five Honorable Mentions:
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
