Screens off? Settled in your favorite nook? Or at the dining table? Then, when was the last time you remember driving rain? I’m not talking the incessant drizzle here in the Pacific Northwest that can drive you crazy if it lasts for days on end – maybe that is some different kind of driving rain. […]
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Let’s Talk! – To Waken this Long-Cherished Morn (Tonna)
The more I learn the less, I realize, I know. Today’s prompt from Tyrean Martinson’s book is another such case. I had never heard the line before nor had I heard of English Victorian writer Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna. You might like to read up on this brilliant woman who was before her times in so […]
Let’s Talk! – Wishing the Earth Would Swallow Me Up
Have you switched off your screens, and are you ready to ponder the above prompt? Wait – didn’t we already ponder something very similar at the very beginning of this column, “Let’s Talk!”? Something about a moment that defines awkwardness? Let’s recapitulate that I defined it as the moment when we get caught at something […]
Let’s Talk! – In the Wide, Waiting Land
Are all your screens switched off? Are you ready for another pondering prompt by Tyrean Martinson? Then, what do you come up with when reading “In the Wide, Waiting Land?” First of all, I thought this might be a line from another poem. I found the Arizona March Song with the line “Where the wide, […]
Let’s Talk! – Holy Socks
Are you off-screen? Ready to ponder another one of Tyrean Martinson’s prompts from her book? And my, doesn’t she throw us a fun curve ball today?! In other words: Holy socks! (Or was it holy smoke?!) My first thought – I have to admit this much – led me up a garden path. Because of […]
Let’s Talk! – Ocean Swells
One of my favorite places is on the coast of the ocean. Any ocean. But preferably a place with a wide horizon and plenty of water to watch. There is something infinitely soothing about the swell of an ocean. Lie on your back and float, and you feel the regularity of the mechanism of waves. […]
Let’s Talk! – Marshmallows Melting in Hot Cocoa
What a typical American concept, I thought as I read this prompt from Tyrean Martinson’s book. Marshmallows and hot cocoa. Maybe, these days, it’s something common for kids in Germany as well. In my childhood I knew marshmallows and I knew hot cocoa – but they never came together. Hot cocoa is an item of […]
Let’s Talk! – What’s in a name?
This week’s dinner pondering is about a quote from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’ s claim is that naming is irrelevant, as “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet”. In linguistic terms this means that the signifier doesn’t determine the significant. Let me claim that this might […]
Let’s Talk! – Call of the Wild
Have you settled in comfortably, all screens off, to ponder another prompt which Tyrean Martinsson’s book gives us for today? You might expect me to go for the obvious, Jack London’s novel The Call of the Wild, the story about a pampered dog that gets stolen, sold, abused, and freed, eventually to find out that […]