The Wordsmith's Forge

We went out hiking at the Grand Prairie Friends reserve today.  The wildlife diversity was excellent.  :D  We saw a white-breasted nuthatch, heard many woodpeckers and other birds, and heard a barred owl.  Walking the south river trail, there were multiple patches of mud, so I watched for tracks.  Mostly I saw human and dog tracks, some deer, but the most exciting was a probable bobcat!  The tracks were deep and crystal clear, much bigger than housecat (unless someone's Savanna Cat got out, which seems unlikely), rounded toe prints with no claw marks, and no feathering from foot hair like a lynx would typically leave.  The fact that there were dog tracks with clear toenails two feet away made the cat tracks all the more conclusive.  Here is a good comparison of different track sets.

Today is cloudy and mild, occasionally drizzling.

I fed the birds.  I've seen bluejays, doves, sparrows, a pair of brown thrashers, and a small flock of house finches.

Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup orange strawberry banana juice
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1 banana
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup ice

The texture is thin, the color bright pink, and the flavor delicious.  :D

Today is sunny and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen 4 bluejays, several doves, a robin, and a squirrel.

For my current set of tips, I'm using the list "101 Small Ways You Can Improve Your City.

70. Take a person experiencing homelessness out for lunch. "Listen to their story. A lot of people just want to be heard or seen as human. I think it would be emotionally very hard to be ignored or overlooked the way our community is in San Francisco. How did they lose their housing? It's often unexpected. San Francisco’s homeless population is diverse and ever-changing. Some people lose their housing because they went through a medical bankruptcy after a partner became terminally ill. Some are veterans who fought in our wars. It's always interesting, and then you start to understand the sheer scale of the problem and how difficult it is to keep people housed in this city, with all of their idiosyncratic financial or medical needs." — Kim-Mai Cutler, columnist at Techcrunch

dialecticdreamer is hosting Feathering the Nest for gentle fiction. Leave prompts, get ficlets!

As soon as this is posted, I’ll start outlining the next Aether Roses bonus story, and work on it in between prompts. If I reach a total of $150 in tips, I’ll post a 7500-8000 word story as soon as I’ve checked it for typos and html goofs. That doubles the words produced, and gives every participant at least one more story to read, and meets my criteria for providing good value to my readers.

Here is my card for the Leaky Pipeline Bingo Fest over in allbingo. It has several different categories. I have made a mixed card. The fest runs from May 1-31. (See all my 2021 bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.


LEAKY PIPELINE BINGO CARD

Native Americans	uncertainty / job insecurity	women / girls	support network	QUILTBAG people
black people	food science	being outnumbered	emotional first aid	failure analysis
teamwork skills	mentors	WILD CARD	emotional labor	feeling out of place
gengineering	lack of support	sexual harassment	Earth sciences	meaningful choices
inventors	artificial intelligence	futurology	activists	inclusivity

 Based on a donation from Anthony & Shirley Barrette, I have posted the remaining verses of "The Trail of Hope."  See the tribe's new home!  I'll get to work on posting the rest of the notes next.

This session's theme was "The Daughters of the Apocalypse." I wrote from 1 PM to 6 AM, so about 15 hours, allowing for lunch and supper breaks. I wrote 2 poems on Tuesday and 11 later in the week. Some of these required extensive research.

Participation was a little lower, with 12 comments on LiveJournal and another 62 on Dreamwidth. A total of 12 people sent prompts.


Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the April 20, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"Saving the Knowledge"
"Their Patchwork Heritage"
"The Trail of Hope" 

These are on layaway and will be posted as each is sponsored:
"The Little Shadow Across the Grass"
"Don't Let the Grass Grow"
"On the Path of Friendship"


Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from April 20. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include: ng_moonmoth, Anthony & Shirley Barrette, and janetmiles. Please welcome new donor freshbakedlady, whom you have to thank for the second freebie.


The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

The following poems from the April 20, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl are currently available. Poems may be sponsored via PayPal -- there's a permanent donation button on my Dreamwidth profile page -- or you can write to me and discuss other methods. There are still verses left in the linkback poems "The Arc of the Mental Universe," "Everything That Blooms," "In the Shade of the Mighty Oak," "Let the Children Lead Us," "Autumn's Palette," "Pumpkin Spice Prosperity," "Delight in Another," and "A Sense of Weather Changes."

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