Poetry Challenge #64-Just Ducky
Rubber Ducky you’re the one! Rubber Ducky so much fun….
Grandboys splish-splashing back when they could all fit in the same tub.
Beyond rumors of the ducky jeep phenom and our grands winning ducks at swim meets, I didn’t realize just how big the duck craze was until a trip to Croatia last fall when I spotted my first Duck Boutique in Dubrovnik. And another in Split. I wonder how many ducks a day must they sell to keep the lights on?
Stores full of ducks for sale! @duckboutique.croatia
We always have a rubber duck or two bobbing in the bubbles, but this is quackers!
How did this rubber duck craze start? I turned to Reader’s Digest for the answer.
As the story goes, in 2020, by way of thanking a friend for helping her “calm down” after a gas station altercation, Allison Parliament bought a bag of rubber duckies to hide around her friends house.
““Before those ducks were scattered around an unsuspecting friend’s home, however, Parliament put a single yellow duck on a stranger’s Jeep in the store’s parking lot, with a simple, sweet note saying “nice Jeep.”
The owner of that Jeep saw her and laughed then suggested that she post about it on social media. She did, and that was the birth of a movement that now has more than 73,000 fans (and growing) on Facebook.” ”
Turns out there are duck stores all over the world.
Isn’t that ducky? Definitely quackers!
Poetry Challenge #64
Just Ducky!
Write a poem about a Ducky Bubble Party using some or all of the following words:
Bub, Bubbles, Suds, Splash, Scrub, Soap, Splash and Duck
Extra points if it rhymes.
If you need inspiration, here’s Bobbie Darian with Splish-Splash!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge about 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!
Want the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge sent to your email? Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl).
Poetry Challenge #62-Please Pass the Peas!
Remember this joke:
What did the customer respond when the Pub server asked what they wanted?
Answer: Whirled Peas
Get it? (You may not, but it is what we all want—world peace.) Alas, that’s not what this challenge is about, but it could be… You decide!
Say “St. Patrick’s Day” and visions of Corned Beef, Cabbage, green applesauce—and Tums pop into my head.
Say “Thanksgiving” and the menu switches to crispy golden roasted turkey, cranberry, stuffing, creamy gravy and pie, glorious pie, dance though our heads.
Say “Summertime” and it’s all about fruit, fruit cobbler, fruit crisp, fruit swirls, fruit juice dripping from chins…and pie. (Anytime of year is all about pie.)
Peas and pie are what led to this prompt.
Poetry Challenge #62
Please Pass the Peas!
Take a moment to imagine your favorite feast. What foods are on your table?
If you’re like me, that feast is going to include…you guessed it: pie! Several kinds of pie.
Maybe even this four-layer PieCaken sis-in-law Valarie suggested we try, specially created for those of us who can’t decide which kind of pie to choose. It’s One layer of pumpkin, one spice cake, one pecan pie, frosted together with buttercream and topped with apple pie filling. Yum! https://www.oprah.com/food/whats-inside-a-piecaken
However . . .
The characters in Ethan Long’s picture book FANGSGIVING are definitely not traditional. However they kind of are as they served up pie, too—pumpkin pie with maggot meatballs thrown in.”
Now it’s your turn:
In the spirit of whirled peas, imagine you are some alternate reality or you are some other creature. An animal for instance, or an alien . . . or maybe even a monster! What would your favorite feast be?
Take a moment to imagine all the fantastical foods your creature would love. Whip those words into a feast of a poem!
For the title, fill in the blank with whatever creature you are:
Please Pass the _______________
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
YUMMY! (So is this book!)
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge at least 3100 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!
Want the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge sent to your email? Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl).
Poetry Challenge #63-Five Books High
Do you have a pile of books? I always have a stack that I want to read. Sometimes it grows so large I’m afraid it will fall on me and hurt!
Here’s a snap of the top 5 Picture Books on my to read/reread stack:
One solution to the overflowing book issue is to use them to solve decor issues (preferably after you’ve read them):
Or use all those books to solve housing issues…
Since, as the song goes “It never rains in Southern California…”
In San Diego and other places, tiny houses are a viable solution for the housing shortage—
Here are the top 5 books in Cindy’s to read stack. (Notice a difference?):
Poetry Challenge #63
Five Books High
For this prompt, take a look at a stack of five books or five books on a shelf—yours, mine, Cindy’s, someone else’s….
Take the first word (not A or THE) and write it down. Use these words in a poem.
Here is one poem resulting from our practice prompt. The selected words from books titles in that stack were: cool miracle spell tamed bird
And here’s the untitled poem:
Watching the sun go down
was a cool miracle,
a study in pink and orange and red,
a mystical spell
that tamed the world.
And like the evening bird,
we sang one last word.
Your turn!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it. I’ll be waiting on my book couch…
Want more? Check out “10 Amazing Pieces of Furniture Made from Books” at Street Library
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge at least 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!
Want the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge sent to your email? Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl).
Fin Pal Asks: Are you having a good life, Norman?
Ask Norman HERE
In case this is your first time visiting, Norman is a “Star” fish!
(Really he’s a goldfish) & a “star” because he is a main character in these books. Click on the bookcover and the link will take you to the read-aloud of NORMAN ONE AMAZING GOLDFISH.
Hey Kids!
Do you have a question for Norman the Goldfish—about friends, school, pets, family, life in and outside the fishbowl? Send him a letter
Poetry Challenge #61-Riffing Off Queen
We Will, We Will ______(Fill in the blank).
If you finished that phrase with ROCK YOU then this post will be right up your alley.
If you didn’t then go directly to your viewing device of choice and watch Bohemian Rhapsody, the biopic about Freddy Mercury and Queen.
Freddy Mercury at his Zenith
…”caught in a landslide, no escape from___________(another test).
Not to give anything away (we all know Queen was a success) a high point in the movie comes when the band is plays its first stadium concert. They look out over the crowd and realize everyone in the stadium is playing-singing-performing with them! According to the movie, this prompts Brian Mays to create songs for the audience to perform. And thus, the blockbuster anthem We Will Rock You came to be.
Whether you know the lyrics or not, everyone knows the rhythm:
stomp-stomp clap/stomp-stomp clap/baam-baam boom!
Poetry Challenge #61
Riffing Off Queen
Write a rhythmic poem about something that rocks you. Or, about a rock… or a rolling stone (if you like Dylan or the Stones better).
First, set that classic We Will Rock You rhythm in your head by actually, physically, pounding out the beat: stomp-stomp clap/stomp-stomp clap/baam-baam boom.
Continue pounding out the beat as you compose each line of the poem.
Who knows, you may create another best selling song—at least have fun trying! Rock on!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge at least 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!
Want the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge sent to your email? Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl).
Poetry Challenge #60-Go Back Jack and do it Again!
We hear you! Seven minutes is not a long time! Unless, of course, you’re holding your breath…
Or waiting for news…
Creating a poem isn’t either of those things. So sometimes, in service of a poem, or a prompt, we need to, in the immortal words of Steely Dan:
“Go back, Jack, and do it again!”
Poetry Challenge #60
Go Back Jack!
Today, let’s take 7 minutes to revise.
If you have a few extra minutes, use them to go back through the poems you’ve written and choose one that you LIKE, that would be even better with a little more work.
Or, if all you have is 7-minutes, pull out the Terza Rima poem* you wrote, or started to write, or groaned at and quit, and give it another go.
*Just in case you “can’t find” the Terza Rima, click on either of these happy orange links and it will take you to the prompt.)
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
Now…because why shouldn’t the song be stuck in your head too: Steely Day &“Get Back Jack and Do It Again!”
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge at least 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!
Want the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge sent to your email? Click on Fishbowl link and sign up to receive email notifications from Kelly's blog (aka The Fishbowl).
2024 Annual Report & "WINNER-WINNER CHICKEN DINNER" Last 2024 GIVEAWAY Winner!
Happy mid-point of the 1st Quarter of 2025 Fishbowl Review!
My New Year’s resolution was to write y’all an update about what’s swirling in the Fishbowl AND FINALLY draw the winner of the 4th Quarter Winner-Winner Giveaway first thing… January 1st…
Well, that’s one broken resolution out of the way. (Have no fear, I will announce the winner shortly.) First the news!
The end of 2024 beginning of 2025 knocked me sideways. (Maybe not for the reason you might imagine.) My mother decided it was time to move on to better. Mom had been ill, physically and/or mentally for most of her life. On her 88th birthday, August 27th, she told me she was done, that there was such a thing as living too long. When Mary Ellen Silva made up her mind to do a thing, she did. She passed gently into brightness on Jan 3rd.
What some of you know is that my mother, what she lacked in physicality she made up for in creativity.
Several years back, Mom began drawing cards with fun pictures and saying on them, which she generously mailed to family and friends. Then, an avid reader, she turned to creating bookmarks. Bookmarks decorated with fun doodles, stickers, clever sayings and quiz show-style questions (answers on the back.)
This card of Elvis is one of her earliest—and a personal fav. It hangs in my office.
One day I asked if I could put some of them in the books in my Little Free Library. Mom flew into production. On a weekly basis she’d send me manila envelopes filled with bookmarks, which I happily popped into my LFL books. (The books often returned; the bookmarks never did.)
Mom’s last project was to be sure every caregiver received an envelope filled with bookmarks created especially for them—some 30-plus caregivers.
As mom lay dying, and in those days after she passed, everyone I saw at Cascades, her assisted living, told me about her bookmarks. Many had one in their pockets. So yes, Mary Ellen Silva McAndrews, artist name “Merry,” will live on, in all of us and her art.
People often ask me why I became a writer—more than that an author.
I think that’s why. In the same way, as much as mom loved creating art, she loved sharing it and enjoyed the idea of other people being moved by her creations—and by the idea of immortality through art.
Mom had this “glamour shot” taken when she and my grandmother went to a Vegas show. It was one she particularly liked—and why not?
The agony and the ecstasy! I’m writing on the tailwind of an incredible, once unimaginable, cycle trip in Southern Cambodia and Vietnam. A short clip of me riding through a village near Seim Reap is on youtube:
Big deal? Yes, it is! I planted my feet, smelled cooking, feasted on roadside visions, heard voices, music, laughter I had imagined more than 20 years ago. Literally! What many of you may not know is that along with my writing partner of 20 years, Ronnie Davidson (our pen name is “Jill Max”) I wrote a middle-grade memoir about a boy’s struggle to survive in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime—aka “time of the Killing Fields.”
The book, a memoir of a boy (now father) called “Mok” is the result of more than 4 years of Saturday interviews with “Mok” and copious hours spent reading everything we could to find out what the heck really happened in Cambodia, and why. The book was finally published several years after it was finished, after long agonizing years of “Yes, send it!” from editors followed by crickets. (Most deemed the subject too “tough” for children to handle.)
Strangers in Black by Jill Max, was published in 2006 by Royal Fireworks Press.
(Yes, the book is still in print. Available from the publisher and other booksellers, Amazon included.)
One delightful event during my time in Cambodia was a visit to The Green School, a non-profit school which supplements the free education program in Kampong Tralach. In Cambodia, free education is 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, with elementary schools in most villages but beyond that children must travel (sometimes long distances) for more. An expensive commitment for the family, and with education non-compulsory, not a priority. The Green School focuses on Computer Training, English, Ethics and it has a library. (I donated copies of my books, of course. What a thrill imaging people learning English with my stories.) Here’s a video from the visit.
What else? Segueing faster than a Ruthian hit, my non-fiction picture book The House That Ruth Built about the opening day game in the original Yankee Stadium, baseball history, and Babe Ruth’s big wish needs YOUR help!
While baseball folks of all ages—Sox fans exclude)—love the book! (The sidebars trivia, facts, and photos combined with Susanna Covelli’s authentic, gorgeous art are worth the price alone.) It hasn’t garnered the attention it deserves.
That’s where YOU come in. If you have baseball fans in your life—better on your gift list—buy it.
Even if you don’t: review it, add it to your reading lists, share it on your social, even just look at it on Amazon. Every bit helps!
Up Next? More Baseball! More Babe! Call it Spring Training for baseball lovers. It’s a gift book really. (Think Father’s Day, Birthday, Graduation, Inspiration—the what folks by for the baseball fans in their lives book! While I was collecting baseball facts and photos for The House That Ruth Built, I kept jotting down quotes by and about Babe worth chewing on. And better, became acquainted with Babe’s grandson and great-grandson Brent and their family friend Stu Dressler. The three of us, Brent, Stu and I, approached Familus with the idea of compiling them in a collection along with some photos from the family collection and elsewhere.
Out of the Mouth of Babe
comes out April 15th from Familius.
Check it out! Better yet, Pre-order it NOW! for everyone in your family (Red Sox fans INcluded).
And now! The moment you’ve all been awaiting: The Winner of the 2024 4th Quarter “Winner-Winner Chicken Dinner” Give-Away is….
(First an announcement: This will be the last quarterly giveaway. At least for the foreseeable future. Instead I’ll be hosting other giveaways. More about those later. )
The Winner of the 2024 4th Quarter “Winner-Winner Chicken Dinner” Give-Away is…
Joyce Uglow
BTW Y’all: Joyce is the author of STUCK! a Story about the La Brea Tar Pits. (Joyce, you will receive official notification by email, so check your spam folder.)
The lucky winner will win dinner with a chicken or their choice of any one of these fabulous prizes:
More exciting stuff! Along with writing a poem a day—for more than 3200 days—and creating weekly prompts to share with you, Cindy Faughnan and I began submitting our poems and have had several published. Most recently, my poem was chosen as Rattle Poetry’s poem of the month in November. Here’s the link to “All The Fixings”. It includes a clip of me reading it, yum!
And that’s not all! The weekly 7-minute Poetry Challenge will continue. I have more book news coming, which I’ll share soon. What’s most? I hope 2025 brings you all copious belly laughs! and lots of creative moments. I appreciate your support!
Glugs and hugs from the Fishbowl, Kelly
Poetry Challenge #59-If The Form Fits . . .
Sometimes You Feel Like Going Commando—poetically speaking, of course. Sometimes (often in my case) some structure, foundation, form is needed.
Poetic forms are like puzzles. You need to fit the right number of syllables or a pattern of rhyme or some other word trick into your poem and still come up with a subject.
They are fun to play with—and the results can be surprising!
Poetry Challenge #59
The Form Fits!
Today’s form is the Terza Rima.
The Terza Rima, which means “third rhyme” originated in Italy. Most English examples of Terza Rima are written in iambic pentameter.
This form creates three line stanzas with lines of any length where the first and third line rhyme.
The second line becomes the rhyme for the next stanza.
Keep writing stanzas until you’re done with your poem. The last stanza should be two lines that rhyme.
If you’re better at reading rhyme scheme, it goes like this: ABA BCB CDC DED EE
Here’s an example Cindy created :
Tah-Dah! Now it’s your turn!
Set the timer for 7 minutes.
Start writing!
Don’t think about it too much; just do it.
This puzzle is one from Bags of Love—a site where you can have custom puzzles made! Crazy!
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge at least 3200 days ago. We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the 7-Minute Poetry Challenge let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole dang poem. Scroll down and click on the comments!