#RDP

My Adventures In Sunday School

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RDP Wednesday: RIPOSTE

Alfred Eisenstaedt1941

When I was a kid, maybe six or seven years old, I used to take a break from going to Mass and I would go to Church- maybe once every other month or so with my friend Lori.

Lori’s family were Lutherans and when it was time for the Sermon, the kids would be shunted off to ” Bible Class ” with their age group.

I was a Catholic kid and I was into the drama that is Mass.I loved the ceremony and those statues that were in cages or standing against the walls. It was spooky and mysterious.  But we were actually expected to learn things and nobody bribed me with cookies and punch to get through my lessons.

When Lori went to bible class they got to draw pictures, have snacks and the bible verses they had to memorize were easy easy compared to the prayers I had to learn. I enjoyed Bible Class, it was fun.

Given my nature though I was getting a little bored until  one Sunday we ended class with a prayer that we sere supposed to say at bedtime:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my Soul to keep
If I should die before I ‘wake,
I pray the Lord my Soul to take.

My ears perked up and in that moment I decided maybe Bible Class had some promise after all.

That night I was saying this prayer over and over under my breath during Star Trek. I kept  it up at dinner. I said it at dessert and finally my Dad asked me what was I chanting so I ran through the prayer that I could have said backwards and forwards at this point and then I laughed and said:

” If I die before I wake-” That’s when a vampire when it gets a stake through it’s heart. Before it wakes. They die before they wake.”

” What?” my Dad asked- if you think he looked surprised at what was merrily marching down from my brain to my mouth involved Dracula and a child’s bedtime prayer,  he wasn’t.

For a minute there I saw Bela Lugosi’s Dracula saying this prayer before he slammed his coffin lid down on himself and I started to laugh. Whatever I was eating or drinking at the time went up into my nose and I started to sneeze and cough.

My Mom looked at me and said, ” Bless you”

My Dad looked at my Mom, rolled his eyes to the ceiling and he added to that,  ” Maybe this time it will stick. ”

Lucifer Drawing by Franz von Stuck

The Snakes and The Bees

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RDP Tuesday: The Bee’s Knees

Mary Louise Brooks-American Film Actress

My Grandmother and her sisters were born in the 20’s and hit  the 1940’s just in time to enjoy the Big Band Era with great gusto.

Flappers were cutting edge girls to the girls in my Grandmother’s family, so following that lead I also  suspect they were party girls, but  they never let on. They weren’t fooling me. They were. I knew it, they knew I knew it but for some reason they wouldn’t fess up.

During the 70’s when I hit my Punk Music phase and I wore leather and played guitar and road motorcycles they  thought it was cool. They were encouraging. ” Be yourself or be something else but don’t sit there and be nothing ” was the message I got.

Also a few of them could really drink men under the table and walk away from that table as sober as a Judge.

At any rate, they thought my ‘rebellious’ phase was ‘cute’ and I think they liked seeing me sort of skate along the wild side of life but the biggest take away I got from them was that they thought me and my wild friends were lightweights, compared I am assuming, to what they used to do.

I guess that streak of blazing my own path, which had started 20 odd years before I was born, was bound to leave it’s mark on me- in big ways and in small ways-

like this way:

Once I stopped by Grandma’s on the way to a concert in Seattle so that I could say ‘hi’ and show my Grandma my outfit. I don’t know  remember  what I was wearing but I cracked open her front door and called in for her to close her eyes.

I walked in and closed the door. Then I told her to open her eyes and I twirled around and said ” I am the Snake’s Hips Grandma…the Snake’s Hips! ”

My Grandma was standing there with a cigarette in her hand and she was smiling. Approval was stamped all over her face. ” You’re the Bees Knees Anita Marie. The Bee’s Knees “.

 

The next generation of women destined to be the Bee’s Knees in my family- my Granddaughter, Jemma.

Jemma Moscoso
2022
Photo A.M. Moscoso

 

Lil’ Critters

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RDP Friday: CRITTERS

Artist Unknown

Today is Endangered Species day, so I thought it would be a good time to go over a few animals that are no longer with us because humans are D$#@S.

The critters that I wanted to share here  were small and just going about their lives, not bothering anybody  and humans  literally wiped them off of the face of the Earth.

Consider this:

these creatures were  small and defenseless and the Modern World  still found them  and stamped them straight out of existence,  one by one,  until they were gone.

That my friends is a dedication to a task coming from cultures where some  people now work from home in their pajamas.

Who would have thought humans had that kind of fortitude?

I did not believe humans had that kind of backbone and determination and  I am at a time in my life where I really did think nothing could surprise me anymore.

 

Smooth Handfish
Declared Extinct 2020

For the first time in modern history, a marine fish species has been declared extinct. The smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis), a shallow-water bottom-dweller with spiky fins and a barb-like protrusion on its forehead, has not been seen since 1802, when French biologist François Péron helped scoop one up near the coast of Tasmania to bring back to Paris’s Natural History Museum.

The Bramble Cay melomys got its name from its habitat, the Bramble Cay—a small vegetated coral cay in the northeastern part of Australia. It was declared extinct in 2019

The Bramble Cay melomys made history as the first mammal to go extinct due to climate change. . Human-driven activities leading to warming ocean temperatures and higher sea levels contributed to their extinction.  

Lake Lanao Freshwater Fish Declared Extinct: 2020

Lake Lanao, one of the few ancient lakes in the world, was home to about 17 freshwater fish species. It’s the second largest lake in the Philippines and research estimates it to be about 10 million years old. Of the species it inhabits, 15 of them have been declared extinct.

 

The warning here is that it doesn’t matter how small you are, doesn’t matter how big you are and what kind of presence you have in social media. If you get in the way of Humans wanting want humans want  you’re a goner.

FYI- that applies to animals and plants too.

Artist Unknown

Carved In Stone

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RDP Tuesday: BUCKET LIST

[Blue Graveyard]
Hugo Steiner-Prag1880/1945

Dig a grave

fill a grave

by moonlight, by starlight, at dawn

I do not care

if it is raining or snowing or a hundred degrees in the shade

give me a spade, a shovel and a bunch of flowers to plop in the urn when I am done.

 

Haunt a house

draped in a soft white sheet

my hair in a braid

hanging to my waist like a  severed noose, my fingertips torn and twisted

I will haunt my house, your house, the empty asylum

where all of the clocks stopped at midnight and the basement doors are nailed shut.

 

Take a long stroll in the darkness

on a road with no sidewalks

lined with elm trees and broken streetlights

houses with missing windows and weed chocked yards

where there will always be a car that  breaks down

and the only other soul on that will be on that street  beside the the driver is me

 

under the elm tree in the darkness on a street where nobody lives

I am sure that all the  driver and I will be thinking about

is our bucket list.

 

Nina Leen1944-11
Night in cemetery where author Washington Irving is buried.