Friend's Ships

April is poetry month.  Some of my friends have taken up the challenge, hosted by NaPoWriMo, to write a poem a day for the entire month.  I admire poets and wish I possessed the talent to write any form of poetry...not just bad haiku.  Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a poetry reading at the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley.  Mary, Kathleen and I went to the poetry reading to hear Lynn recap her adventures in dating.  Her travails are quite humorous.  Lynn is one of my gifted friends and is posting daily poetry on her blog, On and Off the Page.  She is seriously talented with words, and her hand-made journals are awesome.

Medora, North Dakota hosts an annual cowboy poetry gathering.  This got me thinking...if cowboys can have their own poetry week, why can't rockhounds?  So, by the power vested in me (which, sadly, isn't very much), I hereby proclaim the week of April 17th Rockhound Poetry Week.  Our friend, Vern, is my favorite rockhound poet.

Our Rockhound Gang near Kemmerer, Wyoming

Vern's way with words never ceases to amaze me.  Out of a jumble of words, he creates incredible poetry.

Words of Friend's Ships by Vern

In honor of Vern, and the newly christened Rockhound Poetry Week, here is his latest poem.

Friend's Ships

I know we're not your family but it feels that's the case.

I only need to close my eyes and I can see your face.

Years have slid away from us, you're in my thoughts each day.

And rarely does a night go by when your name don't I pray.

I always try to join with you, whenever I'm in town.

I fear my words have hurt you or my actions let you down.

Life has gotten hard these days and time is drawing lines.

But hope the storms all pass you by and in your life God shines.

If something sad has rent the tie that's bound us in its love.

I pray you can forgive trespass as sure as God's above.

But if my selfish doubting heart has caused a turn away.

Or else there's really nothing wrong but living day to day.

Well then this note may seem obscure or else may cause a rift.

I only mean to keep you close, friend-ships are known to drift.

4/19/11

Vern

Textorizer II

Thanks to Linda, a fellow "More Thinger," I was introduced to Textorizer. This site allows you to upload a picture, add some words, and it will convert your photo to a "text" picture. Here are my results:



This picture is is of a New Mexico sunset from our trip there last month. For the text, I used "Deming, New Mexico sunset. The best things in life are free!".

I think bold, simple images may work the best, but I encourage you to play around with any photo. This is a flower from my garden. The text I chose for this picture is a poem by Olivia Taylor entitled "Flower".


Textorizer saves the image as a .svg file. I converted the .svg file to .jpeg format at the FileFormat website. This allowed me to upload my "text" photos to Flickr and to post them in my blog.

Thanks, Linda! This is a fun image generator that I will share with students and staff. I plan on playing around with it more. The picture/word pairings are limitless!

Tag Cloud of President Obama's Speech

tag cloud of obama's speech - red, white, blue
Originally uploaded by emilychang

January 20, 2009