Max

I’ve written about Max before

He had a distinct personality, as all dogs do. Though part Terrier and part Chihuahua, he looked like the dog in the photo above. My mother gave him to me as a birthday present when I was a teenager, but he stayed with them when I went away to college and during my two tours in the Air Force. By then, of course, they’d become too attached to let Max go.

Max didn’t like other dogs. When one walked past, he’d leap up onto the back of the davenport, hackles raised, tail curled tight and…

My father was big on positivity. Growing up during the depression, abandoned by his parents and left with his three brothers to fend for themselves, he learned early the need to depend on himself and how things would work out if he only persevered.

Thus, he became a can-do person. If he hated anything it was to hear me say “I can’t.” No matter what the obstacle, his mantra was “if there’s a will, there’s a way.” Surviving the Great Depression and the attack on Pearl Harbor (he was stationed at Hickam Field that fateful Sunday morning), he knew tough…

Water drop painted on a stone.

The rainstorm that passed through this morning inspired me to select this photo of a stone painting done by my wife. Stone painting is one of her newly developed COVID hobbies. I hope you enjoy it and my 6-word story.

The story is written in response to 6-Word Photo Story Summer Challenge, Mary Chang Story Writer.

For details on the challenge, see

At Mary’s request, I’m tagging the following poet-writers to consider joining in the fun:

Hollie Petit, Ph.D. , Ching Ching, Bingz Huang, Sandi Parsons, Cindy Shore Smith, Sandy Gold, Juanita Nieuwoudt, Rosalind…

Poetry

Rain
Coming
From afar
Darkness surrounds. . .
Storm clouds gathering
Smell of rain in the air
Now the pitter-patter comes
Lightning flashes, thunder booming
Rivers flow; kids playing in the street
Such a great relief from mid-summer heat

© 2021 Bob Jasper. All rights reserved.

Melissa Coffey’s prompt inspired this Etheree poem. Thank you for tagging me, Melissa. I had not heard of this form before. I enjoyed reading your examples and trying my hand at creating one.

To learn more about this form and see her wonderfully-crafted examples, see her story at:

I wrote this poem as a…

I’m thinking of words this morning and their power. They move us. They can lift us up or cast us down. Seldom do they leave us where we started. They tantalize us; they beg us to do something, think something, be something.

“When we remind ourselves that our words have an impact on the world at the level of energy, we may find within ourselves the desire to be more aware of our use of language.” ~ www.dailyom.com

Words contain power. They are bundles of energy, each one amplified by those that come before or after it.

I’ve also been…

I woke up this morning to the chirping of a single bird. I used to rise early and sit on the porch in the dark, in the quiet of the morning, and listen for his initial chirp. This morning, I happened to be awake and heard it a little before 4:30.

In my corporate days, it got to be a game, waking early and listening for that first early-morning chirp. I’d listen and record the time in my journal. To wake up before that bird, I had to set my alarm for 4:00 a.m., …

“In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

“Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.”

If this Propublica report doesn’t make the blood of the American taxpayer boil, I don’t know what will.

How can the richest Americans, some…

No bombs are being dropped; no bullets fired, but damage is being inflicted and costs are skyrocketing.

Evidence of it was heard as politicians and cyber experts voiced concerns about the security of the 2016 and 2020 elections and Russian attempts to interfere.

Recently, the White House issued an open letter to businesses throughout the country asking them to take steps to harden their networks against criminal ransomware attacks.

“All organizations must recognize that no company is safe from being targeted by ransomware, regardless of size or location,” Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said…