I always loved to travel, and I had such good luck traveling. I remember once when I was traveling from one state to another, or maybe traveling across many states in one long dream of a drive, I stopped in a small town to get a lemonade at a sidewalk cafe. I had just placed my order, when a parade started, beginning with the very street where I sat. Marching bands, floats, various affiliations on motorcycles, politicians perched on the backseats of convertibles, banners, and signs, all made a stately twenty minute parade right in front of me. Such great luck! Caption: Good Luck Travels by Annmarie Throckmorton

I am an old woman with few defenses, it frightens me when this new proverb, is accompanied by photos of shooters. But since the bad guys, are armed to the teeth, good guys need weapons too. I heard someone sad and wise say, “Pistols are for assailants, rifles are for looters, assault weapons are for when the government tries to take your guns away.” ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The Second Amendment, 1791: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Caption: The Circle Of Society ̴ anonymous framed by Annmarie Throckmorton 2018

As a toddler my hair was very fine and blonde, then my hair darkened to a nice thick honey brown. As a young woman who was often in the sun my hair lightened again, this time to red-gold. As I matured, streaks of bright white shot through my hair. Then suddenly I was old and my hair is now brown with silver through it. Why? Caption: Red-Gold Youth Framed In Silver Age by Annmarie Throckmorton 2018

The adage is “in like a lamb, out like a lion”, and vice versa. This year in downstate Illinois gentle spring rains coaxed my irises up at the beginning of the month, and a late snow put a blanket on them this past weekend. It is not very cold so no harm done, in fact, the extra moisture will give my irises a boost. Every year of my almost seventy-year long life, I have heard people say, usually with trepidation, oooh, the weather is strange this year. So my takeaway is that the weather is strange very year. And, we can count on March and April to be particularly unpredictable. Caption: Irises Peeking Through Late Snow by Annmarie Throckmorton 2018

This happened about fifty years ago at one of my first jobs, so I cannot remember if the man, a co-worker in an upscale office downtown in a large city, whom I had never met before, grabbed a specific body part or my entire body. I fought free of him, and immediately ran with humiliation and fear out of the office, and down to the parking garage to find my car to go home. (In the early 1970’s there was no “protocol” for reporting sexual assault, and I did not have the experience to know how to handle anything like this.) Before I could get into my car, a uniformed security guard ran toward me yelling an angry command at me, “Hey you, stop.” He charged at me with his hands out to grab me.

This is a poem that I wrote in 2002, just before I aged old. Me And My Body My body is a stocky, happy little pony that I ride through life. It is always willing, but not always able, and sometimes it misses a step. In my dreams, I am always strong, always calm, always loving, all flowing from the heart of this stocky little body of mine. Caption: My Body Is Like A Pony by Annmarie Throckmorton, 2006

In 2015 I fully realized that I was old, not just getting old, but old with difficulties breathing, a body full of pain, and no longer good at walking. This meant that it would be unsafe for me to SCUBA dive, difficult to navigate during spelunking into caves, impossible to canoe or kayak, and simply no fun to go camping. So I sold my gear, equipment, and supplies, much of it going to the fit young woman who was first to answer my advertisement. I tenderly watched her bright happy face as she picked out what would now be her gear. I had been like her. Caption: Changing Gears by Annmarie Throckmorton 2018

I have a little worry box, You would think it very dear, The way I keep it near. Trying to manage my worries, I established a “worry box”, and whenever I worried, which was often in the decade that I provided the daily in-home care that my elderly parents needed, I wrote that worry down on a little piece of paper and put it in my worry box. From year to year I would dump out all of my worries, read them over, and see if there was anything that I had stopped worrying over. Back then, the answer was usually no. Caption: Worry About Worrying In My Worry Box by Annmarie Throckmorton 2014

03-22-18 Yesterday I was looking at fonts, copying and pasting to see how they looked. I thought I was working with free domain fonts. But I caught a virus. The virus blocked me from typing text in my Photoshop app. Any letter that I typed was commandeered by the virus which pasted this message, “Hmmm, actual font can be purchased from MyFont...” I was not trying to steal anyone’s fonts, but after this experience I will certainly never buy from MyFonts. Unsurprisingly, MyFonts.com has no email, no comment box, and no feedback feature on their website. I searched the site for “feedback”, and MyFonts asked if I meant “feedbag”. Aren’t they clever? Well, it turned out to be just a 24 hours flu

This is a poem that I wrote just a few years ago. Frog and Human Alike. There is a grossness about a frog, something appalling. A glimpse of a frog provokes a nervous apprehension and strange discomfort deep within me that is highly suspicious. Am I feeling a primal fear that I might revert to my animal origin and lose my humanity just by looking at a frog? But still this odd creature touches my heart and I want to understand why. So I looked for the similarities between being frog and being human. I suspect that to sit on the ground probably feels the same to a frog as it feels to me. The broad hind quarters rest on the earth in a familiar way. The limbs fold up or touch out for stability,

It has been a year since I have seen Agnes (pseudonym). In recent years I lost my parents, she lost her husband, and time passed. When I asked her how she is doing, she said “Well, I can still walk.”, so maybe it is understandable that she did not stand up to greet me as she used to, much less hug me hello as she used to. She initiated the topic of politics as she always does, and yelled at length, angry about President Trump’s faults beginning with “He’s getting fat, what a ...” I waited through her usual diatribe until she took a breath, and then diverted her. I talked to her about troublesome events in my life, and she listened carefully and made helpful comments. I reciprocated. Wh

I am thrilled. I can now spend my evenings in virtual travel throughout the globe with Google Earth’s updated version which I just installed on both my laptop and tower computers. (My Kindle does not seem to have an app for it.) Google Earth was easy to install, almost instantaneous. It works like a dream. I want to check out the ancient lava flows in the American southwest, and visit places I missed out on seeing in real life, like the Antarctic. My travel options are limited only by the circumference of the earth! Maybe I will go back to Mali, West Africa, although those memories will be hard to revisit. I bought a Logitech F310 Gamepad so that I can take full advantage of the Googl

My paternal grandmother did not curse, she would go only so far as to say “fiddlesticks” (she was a musician). My maternal grandmother would say “criminy” when extremely annoyed but she always looked as if she regretted saying that word of uncertain origin but which maybe derives from Christ (she was Catholic). My father remained silent unless provoked to the level of a hammer to the thumb upon which he would mutter “damn” under his breath, and look around to see if any children were present. My mother felt no need for self-control and cursed at will, but by 21st century standards her scatological expletives were mild. I cursed mildly and briefly in my early twenties when I realized that

Why is it even necessary that I, an old lady, have to spend my last minutes, days, months, years left in my life pleading with the authorities to do their job? This is not fit work for a woman. I wish some man would sort this out. A man, is there a man to take on this unpleasant task? Letter I wrote today asking for the assistance of the Unites States Attorney General in this matter. PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III United States Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530-0001 Dear United States Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, I am writing to you, the United States Attorney General, because la

Who does MyLife.com think it is to announce my political affiliation to the world, or my religion, or any other details of my life? And MyLife got it wrong. For example, I do not identify as Democrat, nor as Christian. The details of my life are much, more than that. Politics and religion are the most personal aspects of a person, and a person’s political affiliation and religion is much, much more than a label. For MyLife to state that I am a Democrat and a Christian is a LIE. It is for me, and me alone to announce to the world, when and where I want, the facts of my political affiliation and religion. I do not want MyLife braying random and INCORRECT details of my life because this

I remember the first year that I paid taxes, it was in the middle of the twentieth century. I was proud of finally being a wage-earner, and I was super proud to contribute to my country by paying taxes. (I still feel proud of my country in many regards, but about taxes? Not so much.) That first year I anxiously awaited my IRS W2 Form from my employer, with wages earned and taxes withheld, wondering why it took so long? I was chomping at the bit to pay my fair share. Then I saw how convoluted (at least for a newb) the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return-1040 Form was (no easy form back then). The IRS 1040 Form was riddled with government-speak. This did not seem fair. I knew that I was

SPOILER ALERT .... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... My master’s degree is in Sociology, and even as an old sociologist I have a responsibility to observe and comment on society. No sitting around in a rocking chair for me! Therefore, and although it would be much easier to obliviously play along, here is my take on Sims FreePlay*, which I played on my Kindle Fire HD8 in the winter of 2017-2018. Sims FreePlay can be played for free as advertised, if you are willing to go really slowly. To play at a normal speed would cost a lot of real-world money because the packs of game money, which are stylish, glittering, gold simoleons (§), sell for 99¢ to $99, and they do not go far. My ethi

Last night at the Amazon Appstore, on my Kindle Fire HD8, I purchased Aliens vs President(Trump) III (sic) by Smudgeware for $00.00, which is more than it was worth. The President Trump mini-version of this computer game is given away by Amazon.com Services, Inc., "Earth's Biggest Selection" where anyone can "Find, Discover, and Buy Virtually Anything". In the history of The United States of America has a sitting president ever been so attacked? The trivial answer is no, not by aliens slashing him to death in a computer game. The significant answer is that this violent little game is just one of thousands of multi-media provocations aimed at inciting attacks on the current presidency, see

All necessary translations have been made .... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Gaseous Entity-Ansible Dispatcher Gray Fog hovered authoritatively in front of the spacecraft crew who were assembled before it. Its amorphous body modifications were in stark contrast to the swirling bilateral forms of the four crew members. Ansible Dispatcher Gray Fog had several wraith-like attachments with which it habitually towed the concentric rings of its ansible apparatus. At the moment those wraith-like attachments were twitching in odd searching motions, seeking the ansible which had been disconnected and which would be operated by another entity for the duration of this mission. Ansible Dis

All necessary translations have been made .... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... “It’s spring.” “Yeah, I know.” “It’s time.” “Yeah, I know.” “Now.” “No.” “Why not?’ “You know why not.” Greenly (chamaeleo zeylanicus) looked at his newly beloved Bluexx (furcifer pardalises) with a mixture of longing, regret, resolve, and cunning. His green scales were shot through with shifting magenta bands of arousal. Bluexx looked deep into the little pink loving eye that Greenly had aimed at her (his other eye was looking skyward for reasons only his amygdala knew), and she curled her prehensile blue tail protectively around herself. His scales were green, what would that make their hatchlings, t