Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, March 3

Feb. 24th, 2026 02:27 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "World Cuisine." I'll be soliciting ideas for cooks, fusion chefs, immigrant cooks, eaters, farmers, foragers, food scientists, inventors, recipe writers, famous figures in food history, cooks of disadvantaged groups who should have become famous, superheroes, supervillains, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people active in the food world, cooking, gardening, harvesting, foraging, preserving, writing recipes, discovering things, decolonizing diets, building or using kitchen equipment, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, kitchens, restaurants, food trucks or carts, campfires, barbecue sites, laboratories, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, picnics, grocery stores, farmer's markets, roadside fruit stands, U-pick farms, gardens, food forests, other places where people make food, world cuisine, ethnic cuisines, cookbooks, online recipe archives, permaculture, heritage diets, climatarian diet, traditional foodways, culinary archaeology, food sovereignty, drought-resistant crops, trial and error, ethnic spice sets, weird food, fusion food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, new ideas in cuisine, alternate agriculture, lab conditions are not field conditions, ethics of food, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One has to figure out how to feed a diverse, far-flung group of people who sometimes have special dietary needs.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, including some aspects of food science.

A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different diets.  This often poses challenges for the refugees.

Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find and prepare enough food to survive, when city libraries are out of reach.

Fiorenza the Wisewoman uses herbs and healing foods to care for her village.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania.  Igor enjoys cooking and has gotten at least one of the werewolves curious about cooking the human way.

Hart's Farm is a community with food used as one of the popular bonding methods.

Peculiar Obligations combines Quakers and pirates in the Caribbean, among other groups and places, leading to a wide variety of foods.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all of whom need to eat.  Primal soups and high-burn soups often have special dietary needs.  Comfort food and healing food are also very popular here.  The Rutledge thread includes Kardal and his food truck Syrian Foods, along with references to Vermont, French, and hippie cuisines.  Pain's Gray, Shiv, and the Finns are all fond of cooking too.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Birdfeeding

Feb. 24th, 2026 01:16 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy and cold with howling wind. A beautiful day to stay indoors and write!

I fed the birds. Unsurprisingly I haven't seen any.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/24/24 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

A flock of sparrows is braving the wind to visit the feeders.  :D

EDIT 2/24/24 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Well, I spent 40 hours at work

Feb. 24th, 2026 09:16 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
And I'm getting paid for every last one of them, including the 6 hours when the house slept and so did I. Normally, we're not actually supposed to sleep on an overnight shift - but almost everybody really does, so it's more like "don't get caught" - but c'mon.

For everybody at home, leaving without a replacement is not simply a fireable offense but an actual, factual crime. Also, I'm not sure how I would've gotten to the bus. I mean, it's right outside the door, and buses were running all night, but man, it was brutal out there. We needed a little shoveling, and neither I nor manager wanted to shovel, so we had to wait for the neighbors to get their sidewalks and then sorta patch us into theirs. (The transportation issue is also why I'm not blaming any coworkers who didn't come in. It was impossible. I genuinely don't think that this was a fixable issue, Staten Island got a lot of snow.)

In retrospect, what probably ought to have been done would have had to have been done in advance:

1. Manager should've taken as much discretionary money as possible, agreed to let staff order Chinese or whatever for two, three meals - something that reheats nicely - and offered to pay all our carfare home in advance, and then used that to straight up bribe at least one extra staff member to stay over the storm. With three of us, we could've had one on each floor and also could've more easily arranged sleeping shifts so somebody was awake at all times.

2. She also should've called up the families of those residents who frequently go home for an overnight and asked if they'd take their relatives from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. That's suboptimal for a lot of reasons - there's a reason they all live in a residence instead of with their families! - but it would've lightened the burden on us significantly if we'd had even just our two or three easiest residents away visiting their sisters and brothers.

But we all survived! My replacement actually showed up at midnight last night! But she declined to wake me on the grounds that I wasn't going home at midnight, and she was quite right. And then another staff member showed up this morning, and 90 or 100 minutes later my bus finally showed up. (And yes, I do insist on getting paid for that last hour and a half as well. I wasn't just sitting around, I was doing laundry, and supervising on the basement so that everybody else could handle the upper floors, and walking the guys out to their van so nobody slipped on ice.)

I'm home now, I showered, and I have the rest of the week off, off, off. Yay me!

If this happens again, I'm bringing a change of clothing.
dewline: "Truth is still real" (anti-fascism)
[personal profile] dewline
I'm skipping that. I have my mental health to preserve and plenty of other good people are risking their own to make sure that anything I absolutely need to know from that event will get to me.

Affordable Housing

Feb. 23rd, 2026 11:00 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The Paperwork Problem Behind the Housing Shortage

In more and more places, the rules technically allow incremental housing. Backyard cottages, accessory dwelling units, and small infill homes are legal on paper; beautiful, glossy images of these homes are shared on city websites and included in planning documents. Yet these homes rarely get built—not because of public opposition or failed rezonings, but because routine procedures treat small homes like major developments.

What we have is not a failure of vision, but one of process.


Read more... )

Today's Adventures

Feb. 23rd, 2026 08:05 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we went up to Champaign-Urbana to celebrate Black History Month by visiting black-owned establishments, along with some other stops.

Read more... )

On Trumpist ICE "Training"

Feb. 23rd, 2026 05:55 pm
dewline: Text: Memetic Prophylactic Recommended (memetic prophylactic recommended)
[personal profile] dewline
I assume there's a more thorough recording of Mr. Schwank's testimony before the US Congress available on YouTube?

https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social/post/3mfknbgfzcd2f

Birdfeeding

Feb. 23rd, 2026 11:38 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is partly cloudy and cold.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a flock of sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

I am done for the night.

Snow shows no sign of stopping

Feb. 23rd, 2026 11:45 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
And I am trapped at work!

I mean, the buses are running, but nobody else is coming in, and it’s not a job you can just shut down for the day.

Monday Update 2-23-26

Feb. 23rd, 2026 12:37 am
ysabetwordsmith: Artwork of the wordsmith typing. (typing)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Poem: "The Struggle Against Overwhelming Odds"
Poem: "Embrace My Fate"
John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds Order
Poem: "The Spectrum of Your Being"
Early Humans
Birdfeeding
Vocabulary: Bricolage
Today's Adventures
Science
Birdfeeding
Meteor Shower Calendar
Philosophical Questions: Life
Edible Landscaping Order
Meme
Photos: House Yard
Water
Birdfeeding
Books
Follow Friday 2-20-26: Active Communities on Dreamwidth Winter 2025-2026 A-I
Energy
Birdfeeding
Community Thursdays
Photos: Flowerbeds
Books
Birdfeeding
Hard Things

Safety has 49 comments. Food has 53 comments. Wildlife has 39 comments. Food has 67 comments. Robotics has 146 comments.


Last week's half-price sale in Not Quite Kansas went well. All sponsored poems have been posted, so you can find those via the title links on the sale page.


The 2026 Rose and Bay Awards are now open for excellence in crowdfunding. It's time to vote for your favorite projects!

The award period for eligible activities spans January 1-December 31, 2025.
The nomination period spans January 1-January 31, 2026.
The voting period spans February 1-February 28, 2026.

These are the handlers for the 2026 award season:
Art: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate art! Vote for art!
Fiction: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate fiction! Vote for fiction!
Poetry: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate poetry! Vote for poetry!
Webcomic: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate webcomics! Vote for webcomics!
Other Project: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate other projects! Vote for other projects!
Patron: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate patrons! Vote for patrons!

"The Struggle Against Overwhelming Odds" belongs to Not Quite Kansas and needs $34.50 to be complete. Raymond and Gideon get attacked on the way home from research.


The weather has been variable here. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large flock of sparrows, several starlings, one male and two female house finches, one female and two male cardinals, a mourning dove, and a fox squirrel. I flushed the great horned owl from the ritual meadow when I went out there. A skein of geese flew overhead, going north. Currently blooming: crocuses.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This poem is spillover from the October 2020 Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] wyld_dandelyon. It also fills the "demons" square in my 10-1-20 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Not Quite Kansas.

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the more detailed warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes feeling lost, an unprovoked attack, hellhounds, violence, gore, unexpected rescue, playing with prey, fatally injured opponents, minor injuries to main characters, awkward discussions, willing sacrifice, intimate magical healing, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

This microfunded poem is being posted one verse at a time, as donations come in to cover them. The rate is $0.25/line, so $5 will reveal 20 new lines, and so forth. There is a permanent donation button on my profile page, or you can contact me for other arrangements. You can also ask me about the number of lines per verse, if you want to fund a certain number of verses. So far sponsors include: [personal profile] fuzzyred,

355 lines, Buy It Now = $44.50
Amount donated = $10
Verses posted = 13 of 118

Amount remaining to fund fully = $34.50
Amount needed to fund next verse = $0.25
Amount needed to fund the verse after that = $0.75


Read more... )

Poem: "Embrace My Fate"

Feb. 22nd, 2026 10:39 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This poem is spillover from the October 6, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] librarygeek. It also fills the "How do you want to do this?" square in my 10-1-20 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Not Quite Kansas.

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the more detailed warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes feeling lost, sorting through a lair acquired by combat, reference to past abuse, cursed artifacts, damned souls, worry, magical body modification, restraint for safety, awkward emotional discussions, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

Read more... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
I picked out what I wanted from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. This catalog has the Safe Seed Pledge, meaning everything is non-GMO/toxin-free. My partner Doug further notes that they have the best, easiest ordering system of all the catalogs we use. Call up the Smart Order Form and when you key in the product number, the rest autofills, tells you if it's still in stock, and lists the price. \o/ Somegeek earned their coffee today!

Read more... )

Poem: "The Spectrum of Your Being"

Feb. 22nd, 2026 05:51 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This poem is spillover from the September 1, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] librarygeek. It also fills the "How do you want to do this?" square in my 9-1-20 card for the I Want Fries With That! Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Not Quite Kansas.

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the more detailed warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes feeling lost, a headless chicken running around, a fight with bit character fatalities, moderate injuries to a main character, messy medical details, an imprisoned demon, torture, binding magic, demonic healing, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

Read more... )
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
I didn’t guess that I’d be stuck with the roads closed until at least noon tomorrow.

Well, I’m getting paid every hour I’m here, at least.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Feb. 22nd, 2026 01:50 pm
altamira16: A sailboat on the water at dawn or dusk (Default)
[personal profile] altamira16
My book group likes this mess, and I do not.

I do not want to read books about WASPs who are oblivious to the world beyond the city that they live in. And even in that city, they are about some white people striving and oblivious to anything beyond their own attempt to make it.

They can discuss the trappings of wealth in detail, but when it comes to discussing people, it goes like this:

The interior was a fantasy of soon-to-be-cliched Oriental fixtures: large porcelain urns, brass Buddhas, red latterns, and self-postured silent deference of an Oriental waistaff (the last servile ethnicity of American's nineteenth century immigrant classes.)


Holy hell. That is racist.

Then if that was not enough,


In front of me a broad-shouldered man with the twang of an oil-producing state was trying to communicate with the maitre d'


This is racist against Asian people AND white people all in two paragraphs. The character making this observation cannot be bothered to figure out if someone is from Texas or Oklahoma, but they decide that the rude person in the restaurant is from Texas because who cares about anything outside of New York City. Truly, a literary achievement.

Now, this author is a talented and capable author, but was any of this scene really necessary?

In the first chapters, there are references to so many other books, as if it is inviting you to write a Ph.D. thesis.

The most obvious thesis id about how this book compares to "Great Expectations." The author invites that comparison so many times. One of the characters picks up "Great Expectations" and turns to Chapter 20 as soon as she hears from her friends to London. That is the chapter in the book where Pip, the young character from "Great Expectations" goes to London, and it is just a dirty and corrupt place to be.

In this book, like in "Great Expectations," there is a wealthy benefactor warping the characters around herself, but it is best to leave the details of that for the people who are interested in the book.

Chapter Six is "The Cruelest Month," and it starts with "One night in April" slamming you over the head with T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."


April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.


There are too many characters in this book that like to read, and they like to read the type of literature that is ruined by high school English teachers. These characters are absolutely obsessed with "Walden;" and I am happy for them for being able to conceive of Massachusetts, a state outside of New York, but not really.

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