Day: February 17, 2019

Sunday Photo Fiction — The Legacy

Fandango13 Comments

60E8D740-BD31-4AB0-BF4B-8AB3BAD2A9D5The old man spent his entire life building log cabins. He built his first one with his father more than sixty years ago. He was in this late teens at the time, his whole life ahead of him. Now he was almost 80 and his days were numbered. He wasn’t quite broken yet, but he was certainly bent.

This was to be his last cabin. His arthritic hands, sore joints, stooped back, and atrophying muscles betrayed him on his life-long quest to be remembered as the “log cabin man.” He wanted his log cabins to be his legacy.

He was constructing this cabin for his youngest grandson, who was in the army and had recently been deployed to the southern border to help build that damn wall.

He was praying every day that he would have the strength to finish building the cabin. He certainly had the determination.  But it was a struggle.

And then one day, as he was notching out a log, the old man slumped over, unable to breathe.

His grandson was granted bereavement leave upon the death of his grandfather. And he swore that he would finish the cabin as an homage to the “log cabin man.”

(200 words)

Written for Susan Spaulding’s Sunday Photo Fiction and her photo. Also for the Word of the Day prompt, “quest.”

Song Lyric Sunday — Fool on the Hill

Fandango15 Comments

Jim Adams continues filling in for Helen Vahdati’s Song Lyric Sunday prompt. His theme this week is hills and mountains. My song choice for this theme is The Beatles “The Fool on the Hill.”

The song was written and sung by Paul McCartney and recorded in 1967 as a track on The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour album. It wasn’t a hit for The Beatles, but a 1968 cover version by Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 went to number 6 in the U.S.

The story behind this song is a very strange event that occurred once to Paul McCartney and his friend Alistair Taylor when they both walking McCartney’s dog together one morning. They saw a man on a hill behind them, though there had been nobody there only a couple of seconds before, when they passed. That man told them what a great view of London there was from the top of the hill. When the two friends looked back a few seconds later, though, the man was gone, although it was impossible for him to hide anywhere.

McCartney said that the song was about a man who is considered a fool by others, but whose foolish demeanor is actually an indication of wisdom. He said, “I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn’t taken too seriously. It was this idea of a fool on the hill, a guru in a cave, I was attracted to.”

Here are the song’s lyrics:

Day after day, alone on the hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him
Or the sound he appears to make
And he never seems to notice

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

And nobody seems to like him
They can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

He never listens to them
He knows that they’re the fools
They don’t like him

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning around

And in case you’re interested, here is the Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66 cover of “The Fool on the Hill.”

FOWC with Fandango — Optional

Fandango22 Comments

FOWCWelcome to February 17, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “optional.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.