Once upon a blue moon

a new year is born!

baby jesus menagerie

Celebrating the Return of the Sun

photo taken in Italy, of a friend's wine cellar.

I want her in my living room.

Happy Winter Solstice!

outside my window

snow frosts my apples.

Have your turkey and eat it too

In 1947, designer Barbara Orr Ehrhart (pictured) demonstrated her love of turkey not just by having it for dinner at her Oregon wedding, but also by making wedding dresses out of turkey feathers for herself and her bridesmaids. LIFE captured the oddball ceremony, feathers and all, in these photographs.

For several months, Ehrhart collected 34,000 white plumes from 300 turkeys. The bridal gown was made of 500 yards of white plume feathers from a truckload of White Holland turkeys. The bridesmaids' dresses came in feathers dyed yellow, pale green, and black. One gown was valued at $18,000 -- the equivalent of nearly $175,000 in today's dollars. - Life Magazine

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Ha.

Silhouette Masterpiece Theatre

by

Wilhelm Staehle

ancestral apples

I picked bushels of apples from the trees my grandfather planted

on our family farm forever ago. I unearthed the old harvest ladder,

and climbed as high as it took me.

I looked down and saw the ghost of my mother, lamenting the rotting apples,

that she would have made into applesauce and pies.

The Yellow Transparents were her favorite. Mine too.

I can taste the tartness of her applesauce, the crisp sweetness of her pies,

in every delicious bite...

Mother Moon

All Saints Day

My Mother's Birthday

Six years gone from this world,

but still keeping in touch.

Waiting.

I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting 

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the second coming

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona

and I am waiting

for the grapes of wrath to be restored

and I am waiting 

for them to prove

that God is really American

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped into church altars

if they can find 

the right channel 

to tune in on

And I am waiting 

for the last supper to be served again

and a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting 

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting 

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to like down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously awaiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting 

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and TV rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am waiting for retribution

for what America did to Tom Sawyer

and  I am waiting

for the American Boy

to take off Beauty's clothes

and get on top of her

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting 

for the green mornings to come again

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Off visiting the Hobbit Folk

miniature scenes of Penny Tomson.