Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
___________________________________
I realized I was gay in the shower one day with Barbra Streisand. It happened while I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating with Pert Plus.As I was belting out the chorus to my favorite song from ‘Funny Girl,’ ‘Oh my man, I love him so, he’ll never know…’ it hit me.
Most people become poets by inclination and talent, but Jack Prelutsky (1940 – ), whose birthday is this month, was taking lessons to be a singer, and he liked to draw. He had a teacher in elementary school who must have read poetry really badly, because he was convinced that he didn’t like poetry. Not at all.
He went to Hunter College for two years, studying philosophy and psychology. At some point after the third time he flunked English, he dropped out of school. He took the name Jack Ballard and began singing in coffeehouses in New York. He also had a series of day jobs: driving a taxi, moving furniture, busboy, potter, woodworker, door-to-door salesman, and working in a bookstore.
Prelutsky also had fun drawing imaginary animals, so one of his friends suggested he send in his work to some publishers. Maybe he could get a job as an illustrator. On an impulse, he jotted some little rhymes as captions for the pictures just before submitting them.
When he was called in to meet with Susan Hirshman, he was stunned that she wanted his work. But not the pictures it took six months to draw. She wanted the poems which only took two hours to scribble down. Hirshman told him he was a natural poet, and published his book, A Gopher in the Garden and Other Animal Poems, in 1967. She was his editor for the next 37 years, until she retired. At age 24, Jack Prelutsky had accidentally become a working poet.
He’s now published over 50 poetry collections, mostly for children, and was named as the very first ‘Children’s Poet Laureate’ by the Poetry Foundation (2006-2008).
‘Children’s poetry’ is often looked down on by “serious” critics, but it is the first doorway into poetry. If children peek around that doorframe and don’t feel welcome, chances are they won’t connect to poetry later in life either.
So for the child in you, and for any children you have in your life, read on – out loud is the best way!
_____________________________________
Poems from Kids Pick the Funniest Poems:
Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face
Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot.
Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you’d be forced to smell your feet.
Your nose would be a source of dread were it attached atop your head, it soon would drive you to despair, forever tickled by your hair.
Within your ear, your nose would be an absolute catastrophe, for when you were obliged to sneeze, your brain would rattle from the breeze.
Your nose, instead, through thick and thin, remains between your eyes and chin, not pasted on some other place — be glad your nose is on your face!
“Fear: Trump in the White House,” which came out Tuesday, is the truth, Woodward said, about an administration headed by a man he describes as “emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable,” and it’s already engendering outrage from President Trump himself.” (ABC)
Only the blind led the blind in Trump Tower, especially in June 2016. But more interesting is Barbara Res telling stories about her former boss, challenging the notion of the “adults in the room” and their agendas.
Trump looked at the panels where the buttons you push to reach a floor were located. He noticed that next to each number were some little dots.
“What’s this?” Trump asked.
“Braille,” the architect replied.
Trump told the architect to take it off, get rid of it.
“We can’t,” the architect said, “It’s the law.”
“Get rid of the (expletive) braille. No blind people are going to live in Trump Tower. Just do it,” Trump yelled back, calling him weak.
The more the architect protested, the angrier Trump got. Donald liked to pick on this guy. As a general rule, Trump thought architects and engineers were weak as compared to construction people. And he loved to torment weak people.
But did he think the architect would remove the Braille from the panels? Never.
[…]
Trump is really not all that different now, but the stakes are higher. And there aren’t many order refusers anymore either. Off the record, staffers tell reporters that Trump is out of control.
When you finally get to the end of Fear, you truly realize the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, since the last chapter demonstrates that Trump is really a “fucking liar”.
The real problems are all these GOP enablers who also need to go, including the anonymous NY Time Op-Ed author.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
The tweet seemed to indicate that Trump was aware, when he fired former national security adviser Michael Flynn in February, that Flynn had lied to the FBI about his Russian contacts.
If true, the revelation could dramatically bolster the obstruction-of-justice case the special counsel is building against Trump.
If Trump knew that Flynn was in the FBI’s crosshairs when he asked former FBI Director James Comey — whom he later fired — to consider “letting Flynn go” the day after Flynn resigned, that could bolster the obstruction case federal prosecutors are building against Trump.
Dowd drew criticism after he claimed that he drafted the tweet. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter said that Dowd should be disbarred for incriminating his own client.
Walter Shaub, former Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics , doubted that Dowd truly wrote the tweet, noting the phrasing, which said “pled” instead of the correct term, “pleaded.”
I dare you to tell Mueller you logged into POTUSâÂÂs Twitter account and wrote âÂÂpledâ and the rest of that, John Dowd. I dare you. https://t.co/gDBnISywGS
Shaub later said that Dowd’s reason for posting the tweet makes no sense, prompting him to ask, “Why would you write the tweet then, Dowd? Or did you?”
DowdâÂÂs explanation to CNN makes no sense. He claims he wrote the tweet claiming Flynn was fired partly for lying to the FBI, but he also rejects the idea that POTUS knew Flynn had lied. Why would you write the tweet then, Dowd? Or did you? (@NatashaBertrand makes a similar point) pic.twitter.com/3hfU1Nllls
It’s a fair question, but my guess is that Dowd was lobbing a Hail Mary to save his client. While it may not make a ton of sense, and certainly doesn’t make Dowd look good, there could be a method to the madness.
“I have not read Bob Woodward’s book, which appears to be the most recent in an endless cycle of accusations and misrepresentations based on anonymous statements from unknown malcontents. www.washingtontimes.com/…
![december_2017[1]](https://flowersforsocrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/december_20171.png?w=514&h=898)
![GettyImages-109875406[1]](https://flowersforsocrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/gettyimages-1098754061.jpg?w=454&h=297)
![Dm3FcX6X0AEXQL5_1_[1]](https://flowersforsocrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/dm3fcx6x0aexql5_1_1.jpg?w=517&h=234)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 