October's Bright Blue Weather

Fall is my favorite season. Time to make Pumpkin Pie and enjoy good Soup. Halloween will soon be here. The colors of Fall are so rich - eggplant purple, bright blue sky, bright orange squashes. Time for children to dive into piles of golden leaves with abandon. Life is good. Poet is Helen Hunt Jackson.

October’s Bright Blue Weather

O SUNS and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather;
When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,

Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.
O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.

Doggerel can be Sweet and Romantic

 From a poster named Flying Junior:

A MORNING POEM

My weenie is just tiny,
He's like a little mouse;
But even though he's little,
He has a tiny house.

He mostly likes to stay inside,
And come out for a peep.
But there is a girl he likes,
And dreams of when he sleeps.

Labor Day Tribute to My Mother - Polka Queen and Member of the IBEW with Folkways Music

Wow, Putin does NOT like Labor protesters, does he? Oh wait, that's McDonald's in Illinois. Then Mickey D's in NYC.

My Mother is Rosie the Riveter. Helen Cebulski De Angelis worked in an aircraft factory during WWII. She was the boss cook of the Sun Ray Pharmacy lunch counter in 1940's Trenton NJ for a time. Without graduating High School, she became an officer for the IBEW and sat on the Labor Board in Washington DC. Rest in peace, Polka Queen. You were a force of Nature.

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln

"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun." - Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist Party Candidate for POTUS, "An Ideal Labor Press," The Metal Worker (May 1904)

FOLKWAYS

 

Reducing Abortion Stigma Video Contest

Abortion Care Network created a contest for videos to help reduce abortion stigma. These are the winning videos below.

The second video by Ms. Emily Letts, an abortion counselor, has gone viral. What a brave young woman. Her video is not the only visual representation of abortion. See another HERE.