Month: June 2023

Flowering Dogwood

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week Poetry Friday is hosted by poet and artist Michelle Kogan HERE. Thank you for hosting.

Today, I am beginning a brief couple of week’s break from posting on Salt City Verse. It’s because I’ll be with my family celebrating our oldest son’s wedding. It seems a long while since we’ve had an important momentous event, besides holidays, to bring us together. I am excited!!

Sometimes good things happen at once. That is the case with the Flowering Dogwood blooming outside my office window. The tree is right against my window so when it blooms, it fills the window and I imagine a forest of dogwoods, though it’s only one tree.

Flowering Dogwood.

Why the name Dogwood? According to Google, one theory on the tree’s name is: “The common name dogwood comes from one colonial description of the fruit as being edible but not fit for a dog.”

I have noticed each year the small very pretty knobby red round fruit that comes after the flowers are gone. I guess I will assume that things not fit for dogs are not fit for humans, and though edible are not very tasty.

Here’s a haiku: 

Dogwood's full white blooms
catching light by my window--
time for a wedding. 




© Janice Scully 2023

Have a wonderful weekend! I hope I have some time to catch up with Poetry Friday when I’m away.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by the wonderfully talented poet and photographer, Buffy Silverman, Here. Please stop by and find out what she’s up to this week.

What is Poetry Friday? Find out HERE.

This week, I’m up to something captivating, at least to me: The Universe!

I’ve had many of my unanswered questions answered, at least partly, and I also have a whole host of new questions since reading FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE, written by robotics scientist, Jorge Cham and physicist Daniel Whiteson. Scientists are sometimes hard to understand, but Cham and Whiteson write with wonderful clarity not to mention wonderful humor. This would be a fun read for high school kids and a must read, in my opinion, for all adults. It is perspective changing:

If you think our solar system is big and we humans are very important, you’ll change those notions fast. If you think the current conversations among some in America is about urgent things, you come to understand see how small many ideas about humanity and our entire culture have become.

Just saying.

The book covers a great deal. For example, it’s given me an appreciation for just how humongous the universe might be and also how far away other possible civilizations might be. How likely is life in other parts of the universe? Have they already been here? Will they want to meet us or not so much?

In this book you’ll find discussions about the possibility of an after life and how that might work. You might come to understand that we are all made up of the same matter, (protons, neutrons, electrons, etc) but our particles are just simply arranged differently. Could this arrangement of a person’s particles be preserved after death and the essence of “You” be transported somewhere else?

Other highlights? Definitely the chapter on Einstein’s relativity equation: Energy is equal to Mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. E=mc2.

What is mass really? I learned to think about things such as a heavy rock differently. I came to understand that a rock’s weight is not due to the sum of all it’s particles, but the ENERGY holding them all together. In fact, we weigh what we weigh because of the bonds holding all of our particles together!

The chair in the corner of your office weighs what it weighs because of energy that binds it’s particles, (such as quarks and electrons) together:

So, if you sit in this chair, you will be held up by energy, (unless of course there is a nail missing or a screw loose.)

Mass is almost entirely Energy. Here is a Golden Shovel poem I wrote from a short quote from the book. 

Einstein's Theory of relativity

 ". . . we are luminous beings made of energy." (From Frequently asked Questions about the Universe, by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson.


Because of Einstein, we
find out that we aren’t what we think we are.
Can you sense the luminous
forces that bind molecules inside Human beings
together? Our arms and legs seem made
to appear solid, but we are simply sculpted of 
pure energy. 

© Janice Scully 2023

This book has been a joy to read! I am about to re-read it because it’s the kind of knowledge I want to remember . . . and maybe because the bonds between my particles aren’t as strong as they used to be? I wonder. Who knows? Maybe they grow stronger after age 30.

Have a great weekend!

Grateful Visitor at the Beach

Welcome to Poetry Friday! This week we are hosted by Tricia HERE. Thank you, Tricia, for hosting. I hope everyone is anticipating a peaceful summer. Mine will be a little busy and exciting, too, as our eldest son is getting married in San Francisco this summer. Big Yay!!!

There is no planning for me to do. (Another Big Yay!!!) I only hope we will get there in some appropriate wedding clothes.

I’m beginning this post with a quote. 

LIVE IN THE SUNSHINE, SWIM IN THE SEA, DRINK THE WILD AIR.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, found here.)

When I visited Santa Cruz, California last winter for a family visit, we walked along the ocean walkway drinking in the wild air and sea.

I was astounded, the density of wildlife, like these cormorants below, hanging out on rocks. I wrote a haiku previously about them for National Poetry Month Here.

I saw seals swimming under a pier, and mossy rocks like these, covered with pelicans:

The natural environment here, this amazing setting, is a magnet for surfers in wet suits, with a surfing museum and monuments to celebrate the sport:

SANTA CRUZ HAIKU

Pelicans and seals
Surfers out chasing the waves—
Earth their canvas.

A memorial to surfers who lived their lives celebrating the waves:

But the sky, the ocean and the wildlife, though resilient, are fragile. 

A Walk on the Santa Cruz Beach

How can it be that 
human life
can change something 
as huge and ancient
as our planet?

Today, I walk softly--
 
in awe of the thousands 
of cormorants and pelicans
diving and fishing
along the Santa Cruz coast,
on rocks glistening black.

©Janice Scully 2023

What would Santa Cruz be like without the rugged coastline, the birds, and the surfers? What would Syracuse, my home, be like without hills, lakes, and hundreds of robins to hear and watch?

What is the environment like where you live, the plants and animals that you think is special, that you’d like to protect? In the Badlands of South Dakota, below, perhaps rattlesnakes help make it a special place, to be respected.

Thank you, Tricia, for hosting. Happy June!!!