Story: The Man On The Pole

The Man Pole Leeds Newsletter

An excerpt from a short story that I wrote, inspired by my neighborhood, just ran in our community newsletter. The story focuses on a wooden man that sits atop a utility pole. That part is true. There is a man on top of a pole.

Man On The Pole

It’s a mystery how it got up there and who put it up there. (I am sure some old-timer knows but nobody I have asked seems to know and more than a few people didn’t even know it was up there). I noticed the other day that the Man’s head was starting to bend and fall apart.

My narrator goes around, trying to find the answer but only gets more and more confused, even as his own complicated story and past begins to fold in around the Man.

You can read the whole story here.

Peace (and fiction),
Kevin

Poetry: Wobble

Fermata

The prompt for Haiku this morning was “note” and I immediately though of musical notes, and then, how I can’t ever seem to hold a single note without a bit of a wobble.

Peace (phase shifting),
Kevin

Internet Phone Book Exploration: Home Row

Image

This is one of a series of periodic explorations of the Indie Web via the Internet Phone Book project. I am on a personal exploration but also hope to lift the profile of sites I have found.)

Christian Montoya‘s Home Row site is a small collection of interactive games and activities, and while it is not complicated, there is something pleasing about coming across a small website built with a design of simplicity. There are some art and word games there. I poked around and built a little pixel musical note with Christian’s Not A Wordle activity.

Note

And then I checked out his DIY Wordle creator, and now you can play my DS106 Daily Create-inspired Wordle game, if you want.

I still don’t know what Chublins are/were (they look like cute NFT marshmallow creatures) but I like this description that underpins the endeavor: “Chublins is an art project inspired by and born in online culture. The artwork is a celebration of how we express ourselves within the medium by which we connect …”

Finally, I used his PixEmoji art tool to convert a previous collage art project into pixels.

Pixeled

I had an enjoyable time exploring Christian’s site and always appreciate when people like him make free, fun activities and toss them up onto the web for people like me to discover. You can learn a lot more about Christian’s work at his personal website. I admit a curiosity about the interactive story builder FoxTales project, but that will have to be for another day, if that project is even still active.

Peace (and fun),
Kevin

Daily Create: The Last Penny

The Last Penny

The prompt for this morning’s Daily Create was about a Lost Penny, but I found myself thinking that with the penny being discontinued, there might be some time when there is one last penny. Somehow, that thought led to this story.

He was at his usual corner. Guitar tuned up and voice, warm. A little bucket was set up in front of him. People passing by, some making eye contact. Some, not. A few would toss some paper bills into his bucket. One little girl, about five, listened with rapture to his street corner serenade. He smiled at her and sang the next song directly to this little audience of one. When he was done, she whispered something to her father, who nodded, and the little girl came up, reached out her hand. A shiny copper penny fit snug in the palm of her hand. “The last one,” is all she said, and he took the coin and tucked it into his shirt. As he got ready for the next song, he felt the weight of the gift in his pocket.

Peace (raining like pennies),
Kevin

Music: Wander With Grace

I’ve been slowly recording some new songs and putting them out as singles via Bandcamp as opposed to gathering them together into an album. I might still do that – put the new songs under one roof. But for now, it’s a trickle of music. The latest is this one – Wander With Grace.

Peace (and melody),
Kevin