A Mighty Big Snail

All for the want of a horse-shoed snail!

Woke?

 Whut's thuh beg dayuhl 'bout bayin' woke? Ah been woke an' put tuh work ever' mornin'  since Ah wuz jist uh lad.

My Stupid, Stupid Brain

I've just discovered that the idiom "a hard row to hoe" has a specific literal meaning at its origin: to hoe a row is to turn a line of soil for planting. I knew the expression came from gardening, but I hadn't connected it with a specific step in the gardening process. I guess my brain makes for a hard row to hoe, but somebody's been at it, for look at all those furrows!

From Memory

Red sky at morning,

Sailor take warning;

Red sky at night,

Sailor's delight.

Is this right?

I mean: Is the wording correct, and is the meaning true?

Addiction Wisdom: Fool for a Cigarette

Where there's a smoke is far.

Nearly Proverbial Statements, Number 1

Home is where the hearth is.

Are Felt Wordplay 16

Click At: Chicken Scratching Kitsch Crustacean-Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kroger's Kinesthetic Klick-Klack Kimchee Kitchen!

Are Felt Wordplay 15

Click At: Chicken Scratching Kitsch Crustacean-Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kinesthetic Click-Clack Kimchee Kitchen!

Are Felt Wordplay 14

Click: Chicken Scratching Kitsch Crustacean-Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kinesthetic Kimchee Kitchen!

Are Felt Wordplay 13

Click: Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kinesthetic Kimchee Kitchen!

Are Felt Wordplay 12

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kinesthetic Kimchee Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 11

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art House-Hatched Correct Chick in Kinesthetic Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 10

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art House-Hatched in Correct Chick Kitchen

An Ozark Anecdote: Mostly Cherokee Side

A longtime Arkansas Ozark friend who is also part American Indian has requested that I supply her with anecdotes about the Indian side of my family, but she has also recently asked about my Grandpa, which gave me two different things to report on:

You asked where my Grandpa was from. I seem to recall that his people came from Kentucky, but he was born in Bexar, in a log cabin, way back in 1895. His people were educated, many of them ministers of the Calvinist persuasion, and Grandpa was prone to sprinkle his remarks with words like providence, predestination, and reprobation. He once called the Gazette deliveryman a reprobate for tossing our paper into a huge mud puddle!

Grandma was more forgiving. Her people were also educated, but autodidacts. Her father - on the Cherokee side - taught himself law and served (if I correctly recall) as county judge in Izard County. Grandma said that the Blacks who lived in and around Melbourne came to him for legal advice because they trusted him. He was born in 1876, or thereabouts, on the same day as a Black baby whose family was close to his, and the two babies were placed in the same crib. The two grew up together as best friends, but many of the Blacks moved away from Melbourne over time and into the Batesville area, so the two lost contact as they grew older. But my Grandma recalled riding in a horse-drawn wagon in the woods with her father, and they encountered a Black family in a similar wagon going the opposite direction. As they passed each other by, her father looked over and back at the Black man, and the Black man looked over and back at him, and they kept looking at each other as their wagons began to put distance between them, and her father said "I think that's my old friend!" The Black man recognized him, too, and they both halted their horses and got down, met halfway between the two wagons, and started pounding each other's back, happy to meet again. And my Grandma said that the two men laughed and laughed. 

I asked my grandmother if her father ever encountered any prejudice because he was Indian, and she said "Not around here, but he might have encountered prejudice [from White folks] when he took a trip to Oklahoma as a young man to visit the full-blood Cherokee side of our family." This part of the family had gone on to what had earlier been Oklahoma Indian territory. I realized from what Grandma had said - her careful use of the word "might" - that he must in fact have encountered some prejudice in Oklahoma.

"Well, there you have it, another Indian tale," I told my old friend, adding, "I might not have any more, but I'll send any that occur to me."

Are Felt Wordplay 9

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art Hatched in Correct Chick Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 8

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art Hatched in Chick Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 7

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art Hatched in Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 6

Chicken Scratching Kitsch Art in Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 5

Chicken Kitsch Art in Kitchen

Are Felt Wordplay 4

Kitchen Art: Kitsch in Art

Are Felt Wordplay 3

Kitschen: a room filled with kitsch.

Are Felt Wordplay 2

Everything but the kitschen sink . . .

Are Felt Wordplay

Kitschen 

Infamous Words

As Herbert Hoover saidn't: ". . . and a kitchen in every pot!"

Adage 2

As the old adage says about hand-washing: "Too many kooks spill the soap."

Adage 1

As the old adage has it, "Too many crooks spoil the plot."

A Novel Joke

Also written on that same stall wall:

Q: What plays God when it's frightened?

A: A Nietzsche possum!

Highly learned, clever wit.

Bowling Novel?

On the bathroom wall of a bathroom stall of Baylor University's Philosophy Department appeared these words in Autumn 1975:

"By God, don't say I'm afraid to come to your town . . . and bowl!"

From: The Great American Bowling Novel.

A Book Arrives

I had been waiting, sort of since Christmas, for a book from one of my mentors, and when it arrived, I sent him an email:

Your book finally arrived today (March 30th, 2021). I know now why it took so long to reach me.

I was expecting it at any moment and thus kept myself in a state of alertness so as to meet the delivery man at the door. My alert expectation, ironically, was sending out waves of such force that your book was being knocked away from its appointed round. Today, however, my wife noticed that I was struggling to stay awake at my desk, and she sent me to my room to take a nap. During that half hour, your book, no longer subject to my mind's forceful encounters, arrived safely, and my wife retrieved it.

 As she placed it into my hands, I perceived that it was heavier than it looked, a promising sign in a scholarly work. Like an alchemist, you must have transmuted much matter into gold. Hence the weightiness of your work! I look forward to reading it and reviewing it for Amazon. This will take some time, however, since I am just now approaching midterm and will be busy with students for the rest of the semester.

(Next Day: March 31, 2021)

I am attaching a 50-poem document for your amusement. Composing the poems took about 50 days, but I then went over them several times. You might not like them, which is okay. They are a bit odd.

Mentor responds:

Many thanks for the poems and the notice of the arrival of the book. Your telekinesis was protecting you from the base matter that, alas, I have not transmuted into gold figuratively or literally.

His weighty book speaks otherwise.

No Kidding

April Fool's Day has been cancelled, and today is another March 31st, despite your lying eyes.