Notices by dogtrax (dogtrax@mastodon.social), page 21

Like many, we didn’t take warnings about changes in ocean currents and warming waters to heart until the evidence was visible and visceral. When the Month of Moon Snails arrived, we were silenced by the beauty of these little creatures. And so many, too. Later, we noticed clams were gone. Then, other shell creatures. We began to wonder. We read up on Moon Snails. We feared their beauty, and avoided the beach. We all stared at the ocean, cursing the unknown and fearing the inevitable.
#tootfic

@Lapis happy day, pooch

I noticed
myself
in passing,
my oldest son
with a new haircut
muttering hello
on the stairs

#smallpoems

This time of year, my family transforms into weather analysts. All we need is a green screen behind us and a news ticker below us. We toss around terms like wind chill factors, warm fronts, stalled Arctic air mass, precipitation accumulation -- add in "bomb cyclone" (bearing down on us today). Mostly, we talk like that for one shared reason: what happens in the sky impacts whether we all have school or not. Today: no school. I'm waiting for the snow to drop. #smallstories Be safe today, @Algot

"The task was not to silence everything in my addled brain, but to introduce it to quiet, to perspective, to the fallow spaces I had once known where the mind and soul replenish."

-- from I Used to Be a Human Being, by Andrew Sullivan, in edited collection The Best American Non-Required Reading 2017, page 102

#smallquotes and #thinkingsmall

@Algot

Phonebots
always seem
to find me,
even when
I'm not looking ...

#smallpoems response to #smallstories

We walked in, laden with food. Outside, it was below zero. Inside, the cot shelter was filled with the homeless. We prepare, serve dinner there monthly. A 25-ish man smiled when he saw us, waved hello. He recognized my wife, as his former high school teacher. "I'm trying to get back on my feet," he told us, explaining how he lived in Florida for the past 14 years until his dad died. "It all fell apart." We fed him food and conversation, and hoped he found a warm bed that night. #smallstories

Remembering
Spring --
the flowers
courting bees under
warm sunshine
and the feel
of soft grass
beneath you
as you gazed
at the clouds.

#smallpoems (temps here are at -4 degrees F this morning)

“If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer.”

-- from Draft No. 4 (On the Writing Process) by John McPhee, page 158

#smallquotes

@wentale I can see your mother's fingers in the water, checking the soap from feel and experience alone.

@Algot Returning to images is like a return to memory, slanted through time.

Nothing can surprise you more than to look up at the night sky on a frigid evening and see a glowing Supermoon hanging aloft from its string. Resist the urge to pull out a phone for a picture. Maybe, don't even talk to the one you love who sits next to you, gazing, too, at this art. Supermoons are best observed in silence. Allow its light to shine with understanding that we don't, and maybe won't, ever know everything about the world and what's beyond. Revel in this uncertainty. #smallstories

@wentale I don't want you to not know about this Round 2 of #MusicCollab -- @mascha has link up and running -- https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfsTnSc8HGIMZ8FmD5xL9xz7yrUzvkYbPCBCLDd5WOAe9J9Q/viewform