NPM19 - #26 - Making Connections

     The final Poetry Friday of April is hosted by Carol Varsalona at her blog, Beyond Literacy Link. She has the utmost pleasure of living near the ocean, and shares a marvelous poem, with pictures and a video, about the fog encountered there recently, her "Sweatshirt-Gray Day". Thanks, Carol, for hosting and for the ocean visit!

   Back to the book and Making Connections

Tabatha Yeatts has created a link to poems teachers and librarians can print for poetry month, titled "Poetry in The Halls". I'm grateful to be one of the poets!

Jama Rattigan has a post HERE with many poets' goals for April.

The Progressive Poem schedule can be found on the right.

          I visited our Museum of Nature and Science with Imogene on Wednesday. We wanted to see the newest exhibit about the five senses. You may have seen the pictures on social media. 
            Since then, I have thought more about Imi's and my conversation about the lines, how what we saw made changes in the way we felt in some of the rooms, the way our "seeing" changed perception. I connected to our current political climate, the talk of the Deep Web, the difficulty of seeing something that may be manipulated as truth, but is not true, and how we cannot tell the difference. Imi decided she might be dizzy if she looked long enough. Isn't that the same thing?
        Wolfram MathWorld defines a line here as "A line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions. A line is sometimes called a straight line or, more archaically, a right line (Casey 1893), to emphasize that it has no "wiggles" anywhere along its length. While lines are intrinsically one-dimensional objects, they may be embedded in higher dimensional spaces. 
         On a different note, as I scroll up & down, the small lines in the background of the picture on the left are flashing, something that is new I think because we can "move" that mural. Wow!

Lines

If you twist a line -

that straight one.

If you twist a line

of words, you might

find you’re bending,

bending truth.

If you bend truth,

you may find you’re

falling, falling off a cliff,

the cliff that ends with clarity
or not, perhaps only

falling into uncharted lands.

It may be a challenge

to keep from veering,

veering off the mark.

But inside your heart,

you’ll know the path

fixed by a ruler

makes a true mark.

Linda Baie ©

Last, remember that Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day. We are celebrating at the used bookstore where I work, and others in Denver will be, too. Wishing you a grand visit to your favorite store!

Poetry Friday - What We Believe

         Poetry Friday today is with Keri at Keri Recommends. Thanks, Keri! Hope your trip today was good!

         I'm continuing to write for Mary Lee's #haikuforhealing and Catherine's #commonplace marvels. It's a special part of my day to choose something I noticed, writing about something I want to remember.

          I visit Denver's Museum of Nature and Science nearly every week with my youngest granddaughter, Imogene, five years old. I pick her up at school, and we stop at the museum on the way to my house. We stay only about an hour or so, grab a snack at the snack bar, and then Imi chooses where to go each time. The museum is amazing, and we continue to find different places we haven't examined closely. This past week, that place was the one that displayed information about evolution. It's not easy to try to explain this concept to a five-year-old. I focused on major changes, from the beginnings billions of years ago (there is a video showing earth changing) and different animals' evolving in this most recent time up to today. Imi is always interested in what I tell her, and we examine the details of the dioramas, looking for things we know and don't know. I'm not sure what sticks with her for future learning, but she continues to ask good questions. This time, two appear to fit our general conversation. She asked: "I wonder when any of them (animals) got their teeth? They would need them for eating." and "How would it be if we lived with those big dinosaurs? We'd have to live in deep holes to hide."