Day: June 3, 2020

FFfPP — The Painted Ladies

Fandango19 Comments

3CB54876-AC06-47D9-BB8E-12CFA99FCE1EDavid and Adele would take their dog, Bandit, on his daily walks at the Alamo Square Park in San Francisco. On the east side of the park stood the row of iconic San Francisco Victorian homes known as “The Painted Ladies.”

“Wouldn’t you love to live in one of those Painted Ladies?” Adele asked David one beautiful spring morning.

“No way,” David said. “We’d have no privacy at all. People would be standing in the park across the street snapping photos of our home. And I heard that the people who live there are constantly having to deal with tourists knocking at their doors and wanting to have a tour of their homes.”

“Still,” Adele said, “These homes are beautiful, they are in a great location, with the park across the street and stunning, panoramic views of the city from the rear. How could you not want to live in one of them?”

“It’s an unrealistic and impractical fantasy of yours that we can’t come close to being able to afford,” David said. “Now let’s head home and get some breakfast. Bandit and I are starved.”

As David and Adele were sitting at their small kitchen table eating breakfast, David said, “Isn’t this interesting?”

“Isn’t what interesting?” Adele asked her husband.

David held up that day’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The headline read:

Iconic Painted Ladies to be Razed to Make Room for Luxury Hi-Rise Condos

Written for Roger Shipp’s Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner. Photo credit: MorgueFile March2020 file000508086684.

Good Morning America

Fandango30 Comments

73EB194A-1164-4DAC-8BC6-F6D924020171This is what greeted me this morning as I opened up my iPhone and went to my newsfeed.

According to the Washington Post article:

The scenes have been disturbingly familiar to CIA analysts accustomed to monitoring scenes of societal unraveling abroad — the massing of protesters, the ensuing crackdowns and the awkwardly staged displays of strength by a leader determined to project authority.


In interviews and posts on social media in recent days, current and former U.S. intelligence officials have expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.


“I’ve seen this kind of violence,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst responsible for tracking developments in China and Southeast Asia. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

It really does unnerve me as well.

Good morning America.

One-Liner Wednesday — Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Fandango22 Comments

FCDED809-BEB7-493B-A926-5FF376DE799D

“Watch what they do, not what they say.”

Rachel Maddow, American television news program host

I started watching The Rachel Maddow Show regularly in early 2015 as the 2016 presidential election race was just getting underway. Her weeknight show on MSNBC has since become Must See TV for my wife and me.

In the age of Donald Trump, Rachel has urged her viewer to not get distracted by what Trump says. He lies constantly and most of what he says is bullshit designed to divert and distract while he and his Republican enablers go about systematically destroying everything our country has stood for.

She’s warned us to not focus on the word salad and nonsense that he utters anytime someone points a camera and a microphone toward him. She suggests that we not pay too much attention to his crazy tweets, where he comes across like a king whose mind has been muddled by syphilis.

Instead, Rachel reminds us that “There’s no law that says you have to do and think and feel and focus on subjects of the president’s choosing…. Now, more than ever,” she tells us, “watch what they do, not what they say.”

Written for today’s One-Liner Wednesday prompt from Linda G. Hill.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #72

Fandango33 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

Things are pretty screwed up right now. The world is still dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. The United States now has had almost 1.9 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 108,000 have died due to the virus, far and away more cases and deaths than any other country.

There is significant civil unrest and there are massive protests in the streets all across our country over our inability to come to grips with America’s original sin of slavery and the social and political inequalities that continue to persist 150 years after slavery in America ended.

And the U.S. has a madman for its president who is threatening to deploy the American military against American citizens on American soil.

So for this week’s provocative question I’m going to try to shift your focus from the depressing to the exciting by asking you this simple question:

What is the one thing in life that you are most excited about right now? Why?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ 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. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

FOWC with Fandango — Lance

Fandango25 Comments

FOWCWelcome to June 3, 2020 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 “lance.”

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.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

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