Today, to illustrate this week’s Photo Challenge Theme (“Contrasts”), self decided to focus on PAIRS.
Contrasts 4: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
June 30, 2014 at 10:23 pm (Family, postaday)
Tags: beagles, memories, nostalgia, pets, postaday, postaweek, Wordpress
A Poem About Dentists on EUNOIA REVIEW
June 30, 2014 at 1:32 pm (Artists and Writers, Links, Women Writers)
Tags: admiration, appointments, Eunoia Review, Literary Magazines, Mondays, poetry
Self has a dentist appointment, later today. She is not at all looking forward to the prospect.
This morning, she checks in on Eunoia Review and what does she see?
A poem about dentists.
How’s that for synchronicity, dear blog readers?
Here’s the first half:
Inheritance
by Katherine La Mantia
The dentist showed me
the x-rays where the
radiation lit up my teeth
like strings of lights at Christmas.
can you imagine how
marie curie glowed
And she pointed with
her pen tap-tapping
on my molar
or bicuspid, I don’t know.
the metal rings shrill
hammer on enamelShe showed me where
she would put metal brackets
and metal wires
and how she would
pull
What a beautiful name. The poet has. Katherine La Mantia.
Katherine La Mantia is an undergraduate at the University of Georgia.
Stay tuned.
Contrasts 3: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
June 29, 2014 at 3:21 pm (Family, Places, postaday, Recommended, Writing)
Tags: artists residency, Ireland, memories, postaday, postaweek, Saturdays, travel, Tyrone Guthrie Center, Wordpress
Contrasts: Light and Dark . . .

Son’s Room. The painting was done for $20 by an artist in Great America, Santa Clara. Son was six or seven. He’s wearing a San Francisco Giants cap.
Contrasts: Youth and Age . . .
The people in the photograph must long have passed away, but their image endures (Love the crease in the photograph itself: makes the photograph seem very fragile).
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
On Secrets/ On Witchcraft
June 29, 2014 at 6:17 am (Links, Surprises, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Dublin, inspirations, Ireland, Literary Magazines, memories, Saturdays, short story, travel, websites
A few weeks ago, self announced that Café Irreal would be publishing her story “The Secret Room” on Aug. 1.
But when she wandered over to Café Irreal today, she saw that in fact, her story was already live, and had been live since May.
Here’s the link, dear blog readers. Read, review. Self adores feedback.
* * * *
Here’s something else she encountered today.
While browsing through the British Museum blog, she stumbled upon an article on Witchcraft.
And here self found an answer to a question which has often nagged at her: Why are witches usually women?
The piece makes clear that accusations of witchcraft were always personal, as evidenced by the fact that people most often brought up charges of accusation against people they knew well — i.e., their neighbors. And the fact that many of the accused were old women, or widows, or orphaned women, or stepdaughters, makes very clear that the targets were “the most dependent members of the community.” The ones, in other words, who were least likely to fight back or defend themselves.
These female dependents (the preferred pool for witches) were the ones “whose names figure most frequently on the lists of people in receipt of poor relief, and they were the ones most likely to be caught up in the situation of begging for help and not getting it.”
Being perceived as powerless and being perceived as a threat — such a curious contradiction. In both instances, these two have more in common with perception and have precious little to do with reality.
Which is what led self to write a very curious short story called “Toad.” Which she will begin sending out shortly.
She finished it while sitting at a coffee shop on Lower Mount Street in Dublin. Quite close, in fact, to Ballsbridge, where her B & B was.
OMG. Witches. Toads. Lower Mounts. Ballsbridge. Self’s brain was filled with medieval imagery, almost the whole time she was in Ireland.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Contrasts 2: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
June 29, 2014 at 12:35 am (postaday, Traveling)
Tags: Ireland, memories, postaday, postaweek, Saturdays, travel, Wordpress
Pictures taken on the bus from Dublin to Monaghan. It was a very long bus ride. Self had gone to Dublin to watch a friend’s play at The Cobalt Café, but she could only stay a night.
She posts these pictures because they are all of horizons. This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is CONTRASTS and horizons — at least in self’s mind — always involve contrasts.
Correction: the two shots of trees by the roadside aren’t horizons. But there’s a clear demarcation between foliage and sky. So it’s still a contrast.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Weekly Photo Challenge : Contrasts
June 29, 2014 at 12:08 am (Uncategorized)
Loved this constellation of photographs on this week’s Photo Challenge: CONTRASTS.
All images shot and processed using my iPhone.
Gallery created for : Photo Challenge Contrast
Contrasts: WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
June 28, 2014 at 1:36 am (Food and Drink, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: concerts, Dublin, Events, Fridays, Ireland, music, postaday, postaweek, summer, travel, Wordpress
The theme for this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is CONTRASTS.
Red and yellow are contrasting colors, aren’t they?

The Optimists Club of Redwood City sells chips and franks at the weekly concerts that run all summer in Stafford Park, two blocks from self’s humble abode.
These were the back-up singers for one of the bands at Ozzfest, June 10, at the Button Factory in Dublin’s Temple Bar (held, appropriately enough, on what would have been Judy Garland’s 92nd birthday). There are all sorts of contrasts in play here: one signer is dark-haired, the other is a platinum blonde. The women are illuminated, the stage behind them is shadowy. While one woman sings, the other waits for her cue.
And another shot self took at the Button Factory. The contrast lies in the use of red and green spotlights —
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Guest Blogging
June 27, 2014 at 4:59 am (Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: flash fiction, Literary Magazines, short pieces, websites
Self is the July 2014 guest blogger on Cecilia Brainard’s Travels (and More) with Cecilia Brainard.
She’s never been a guest blogger before, so she was a tad nervous.
But it turns out, all she had to do was send Cecilia a few pieces, a picture, and a bio. Whew!
Here’s the link to Cecilia’s blog. The two stories Cecilia posted are “All the Missing” (first published in Phoebe) and “For Sarah Balabagan, OFW.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.