VIII
Spring’s first market day is given over to all things young and new. Tender greens, their leaves tightly whorled, tiny berries, spring peas, and fresh herbs crowded together with newly turned birchwood spoons and burlwood bowls and woolens and willow baskets woven in the slumbering months of snow. Lambs and calves and colts, trailing their [...]
Archive for June, 2008
Nora of the Mountain (part 8)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged blacksmith, children, fairy tale, market, spring, writing on June 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Nora of the Mountain (Part 7)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged banished, exile, fairy tale, frog prince, princess, writing on June 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
VII
The deeper pools, in which a frog might find refuge from the herons and kingfishers that ruled these watery reaches, lie under the bridge, shadowed by willows. The bank is steepest here. Nora tied up her skirts with her belt and began to make her way down the bank’s makeshift steps of roots and stones, [...]
Haiku (XI & XII)
Posted in haiku, poetry, writing, tagged haiku, poetry, writing on June 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Haiku (XI)
The silk of her sleeve,
as she lays aside her brush,
falls about her wrist.
Haiku (XII)
Asleep, he nods once.
His book, cradled in his arm,
forgotten, falls closed.
© Magdalen Jago 2008.
Proverbs: Our Ancestors’ “I Told You So.”
Posted in culture, writing, tagged culture, language, proverbs, understanding, wisdom, writing on June 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
What makes proverbs proverbial? So much wisdom in so few words. Pithy. That’s what they are. They get right to the core of what’s important or true or real or at least common to our experience.
Maybe that’s it. There is cause; there is effect. Over and over again. Repeatable. Observable. Millennia of repeated human experience [...]
The Mortgage Crisis: More than Greed
Posted in culture, life, society, writing, tagged greed, housing, ignorance, life, mortgage crisis, society, writing on June 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The mortgage crisis in the US has deeper roots than a bank’s lending policy or a borrower’s lack of knowledge of the difference between an ARM and fixed rate mortgage. Certainly ignorance on the part of the buyer plays a role, but I’d lay the blame at the feet of old–fashioned greed, the loan [...]
Nora of the Mountain (part 6)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tale, frog, mystery, true love, writing on June 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
VI
The path below the meadow is less steep, the brook less leap and tumult, more eddy and swirl. Here Nora and the cow could walk companionably side by side, Nora’s quick hands braiding a buttercup wreath for the cow to match her own. They had nearly reached the place where the path divides, one branch [...]
Nora of the Mountain (part 5)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tale, gnomes, mystery, writing on June 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
V
Halfway down the mountain, the path entered a woodland meadow, nodding with buttercups, which the cows won’t eat, and bluebells, which they will. There was the roan cow, quite contentedly and daintily plucking and chewing her way through them, one by one. Nora placed her hands on her hips and with a quick exhalation,”Ha!”, [...]
Haiku (X) Over Texas
Posted in haiku, nature, poetry, writing, tagged clouds, haiku, poetry, sunlight, Texas, writing on June 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
30,000 feet
below, cloud shadows lie pinned
by shafts of sunlight.
Fern-like arroyos,
brown frond, spread feathered fingers
over dusty plains.
© Magdalen Jago 2008
Nora of the Mountain (part 4)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tales, gnomes, mystery, writing on June 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
IV
The walk to the village was long, lined with and occasionally barred by tangles of newly exposed roots and hoary boulders shouldering aside mantles of moss and lichen. Nora named them for the gnomes that were fabled to live just below the summit of the mountain – Nipingr, Hornbori, Finnr, Eitri, Brökk – and began [...]
The Outlawed Playground and Childhood’s Demise
Posted in culture, life, society, writing, tagged childhood, children, climbing trees, culture, growing up, play, playground, reality, society, taking chances, writing on June 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
My brother who lives in California, USA, told me recently they’ve taken the swings out of their local park. Too dangerous, you see, so they’re banned. How do you outlaw swings? Really. Explain to me how you outlaw swings. If swings are so evil as to need to be outlawed (like genocide or rape) why [...]
