My Girl

There's a magic to watching a toddler make a wish on a dandelion puff. And you even get to write a poem about them when they take a nap.

Smile

Primatologists trace the smile back over 30 million years to a grin stemming from primates, who often used barely clenched teeth to portray to predators that they were harmless. The smile may have evolved differently among species, especially among humans.

I Understand

Martians have fair, brownish skin, thin and slender wrists and necks, and six fingers. They also have large yellow coin eyes and soft musical voices. When Martians die, they melt and seem to dissolve into white ash and are common used for hospital ceiling tiles (Place smiley face here.)

Common Veteran Story

What does a story have to do with a veteran? Many of you may be asking that question, but if you are a veteran, think back to your time in the service. It more than likely will bring a smile to your face, maybe some outright laughter, fond memories and quite possibly some tears. Stories are what bind veterans together; it is how we speak with each of our brothers and sisters in arms.

Hot Dogs

Sausages are one of the oldest forms of food. Franks, or frankfurters, originally come from Germany, from the city of Frankfurt. But the hot dog as we know it was introduced during the St. Louis "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" in 1904. Frankfurters were being sold with gloves, and the vendor was running low. The vendor, reportedly, asked his brother-in-law, a baker, for help and improvised rolls as a way to hold the dog. And thus the hot dog was born!

Tool

Corpus callosum, bundle of nerve fibres in the longitudinal fissure of the brain that enables corresponding regions of the left and right cerebral hemispheres to communicate.

Ephemeral

As a written form, poetry has a unique style and structure when compared to other types of writing. Poetry often includes deliberate line breaks, sound patterns, word counts per line, and rhythm, which makes it different from prose and contributes to how readers recognize it.

You Never Know

You say you never know to mean that it is not certain what will happen in the future, and to suggest that there is some hope that things will turn out well. You never know, I might get lucky. There might be an even bigger one — I doubt it, but you never know.

Marriage

Some readers see poetry as inherently difficult to understand, and this can set you up for having a hard time enjoying readingit. "Much of what's good in contemporary poetry right now is fairly accessible... Ocean Vuong, Tina Chang, Victoria Chang, Analicia Sotelo, Jenny George, Morgan Parker, Tracy K. Smith, and Kate Baer, to name a few." Poetry is also more accessible than ever in the sense you can find a lot of it for free (including here.) "The beauty of the internet is that you can read full poems online..."

Coward

Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique. Curiosity is a useful attitude, especially when it's free of preconceived ideas about what poetry is or should be. Effective technique directs your curiosity into asking questions, drawing you into a conversation with the poem.

I Shouldn't Say This

Many people consider poetry to actually predate literacy. (Although how peop;e could read peotry back then, I'll never know) The oldest written works were all appeared in some poetic form. The style is believed to have aided memorization for oral transmission. In thsoe days, storytellers had lousy memories.

Help

Writing poetry can be therapeutic, because whether we're writing or reading poems, they help us engage our senses and our feelings. This provides a good merging of poetry and psychology. And isn't psychology all about helping?

Just Released:  Detour to Danger, Connie Murphy Mysteries E-Book #8

Connie Murphy is a senior drug investigator with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She is dedicated to protecting public health and safety, but while conducting seemingly routine inspections, intrigue and danger intervene. As you proceed through the series, Connie grows as an investigator, and you get to know her personality, interests, family, love life, and more. The Connie Murphy Mysteries are based on my experience as an FDA investigator. Detour to Danger is the eighth e-book in the series.

Random Coworker

An ER nurse and her coworkers decided gummy bears needed to be renamed based on color. They decided the yellow one was suffering from liver failure. The green one was vomiting. The blue one had hypothermia. The pink one was mildly anemic, the white one had bled out, and the black one was dead.

Pandemic in Florida

As of December 2021, among all US states Florida had the eighth-highest per capita case rate. As of July 2021, one in every five new COVID-19 cases recorded in the United States came from Florida.

Cancer Scare

For Cancer, the fourth sign in the zodiac, the motto is "I feel, therefore I am." But sometimes that motto can be a scary, not a comforting, thing. Interestingly, "Cancer" is an ancient word of Indo-European origin, derived from a root meaning "to scratch."