This week started off with a truly lovely and delicious breakfast made by my darling little girl. And I have to admit that I tried making pancakes just like the ones she made a little later in the week; they were a failure! And later in the week, had to deal with internet outages, at the worst of times too (details later in the post).
So I am totally proud (and just a teeny weeny bit jealous too!) of my girl’s culinary skills. She is all of 14 and loves spending time in the kitchen, and is definitely more passionate about cooking than I ever was at 14 (I had my eyes glued to a book, more often than not at that time) and well, even than I am today!!
Poetic Sundays
The Forms so Far
The Harrisham Rhyme
The description of this rhyme reminded me of a popular Indian pastime – Antakshari, which is a singing parlor game similar to word chain games, where each participant sings a song starting from the last letter that the previous participant’s song ended with.
Likewise, this poetic form employs a word chain (somewhat of an internal one though). And I find it to be fun. Read on for more.
What is the Harrisham Rhyme?
Harrisham Rhyme is a modern poetic form created by Harrisham Minhas. To keep it simple, here are the rules it employs:
- It is a six-line rhyming stanza.
- The last alphabet of the first word of each line is the first alphabet of the first word of the next line. Note that there is no restriction on the starting alphabet of the first line.
- It has a rhyming scheme of ababab.
- Has no specified meter or syllable count.
My Example Harrisham Rhyme
The Harrisham Rhyme
Write a stanza with six lines
Each one with meter you desire
Have syllablic counts your mind defines
Enjoy free rein; with just couple things require(d)
Yea, just the couple – internal word chains in those six lines,
(and) ababab – which is the rhyme scheme set by her!
-Vidya (just a draft to show what this one has to look like)
h/t: ShadowPoetry
My example Limerick due from last week
Melodious Cacophony
Music practice was in full swing indeed
That clarinet needed a new reed
The trumpet joined too
It sounded like a zoo
The neighbors? Well, they fleed at full speed!
-Vidya (written recalling the early years of my kids’ band practice sessions at home, though it was the flute, not a clarinet, but needed the ‘eed’!)
Last Week
On My Blog and Home-front
My son, who is a junior in high school, has his AP exams going on. And it seemed like luck was not fully on his side during one of them. We had an internet outage, well, a couple of outages actually that day; and while I was on the phone with the service rep and my husband chatting, while social distancing of course, with a technician who was working on the problem out on the street, my son connected to his phone’s hotspot to work on the exam. The questions were not hard, and he worked on them easily; but when he clicked on the Submit button, he got a message stating his response was not received! Now, he needs to take it again during the makeup exam dates later in June 🙁 and he is not happy about it.
Now, we are keeping our fingers crossed for the exam he has this coming week, and all the other ones students have to take online everywhere. Hoping for days free of outages – power outages, internet outages, and what not.
As for everything else, we have had some rain (yes) and a little more progress on the gardening front (though not enough). And experimenting with drawing as well this past week. One of them below (in the style of the Madhubani traditional art form of India).
My Most Recent Posts
Did not get as many as I had planned or thought I would; but here is hoping for more this coming week.
Elsewhere
Thank you Charan Deep, for those kind words and compliments on your Reflections post!! They definitely made my day and my week!!
MyPhotoADay
Here are a few selections from my insta-feed this past week.
Upcoming
On My Blog and Home-front
At the risk of repeating myself, I do have a couple of different ideas in mind for posts, as well as some book reviews. So keep your eyes open for them here (and this time I promise you will see them here!!)
And those celebrations…
- While we are all still(many of us), sheltering in place, we can still do what this day celebrates virtually. It is National Visit Your Relatives Day on the 18th of May.
- And I know I am going to try (and enjoy) some sweet indulgences this week with all these National Days; starting with Devil’s Food Cake on the 19th, followed by some Strawberries and Cream on the 21st, and then Vanilla Pudding on the 22nd with tempting Taffy to top it off on the 23rd!!
- Martha, I love those beautiful creations you end up making with all those pennies from heaven. Just wanted to remind you (since you definitely already know) that the 23rd is National Lucky Penny Day!
- And then we have the world wide celebrations as well; not that the above cannot be celebrated everywhere too!! There is the International Museum Day on the 18th of May and you can look at this map to check out digital celebrations around the world.
- We then celebrate tea on the 21st with International Tea Day. I know I need my morning cup of chai (and then again many times) to get me through the day!! And each steaming cup is relished.
- The 21st is also the World Day for Cultural Diversity, one that is needed and a wonderful thing to celebrate indeed.
Wrapping up my Sunday Scribblings
So dear reader, this was it for my Sunday Scribblings. I would love to hear your comments on my post and if you had any favorite from the posts this week. And which of these days do you plan to celebrate (or any other)?
Did you have any planned/unplanned outages in your part of the world – power/internet/other essential services? What did you do to cope with it? While growing up where we were used to power outages means I do know how to deal with that, internet outages at a time when most of our connections to the outside world was tough though we did know we had alternatives.
But we are better prepared for the next time. We did learn, for instance, that Comcast does have a public wifi that its customers can connect to (note: this is while they are outside their homes; I need to try it out yet since I could not that day as we were still inside within the vicinity of a network it recognized though it was not working).
Linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Reviewer and the Sunday Salon.
Those pancakes look delicious!
Internet/power outages aren’t really that common here and we have decent speed etc luckily, since I have three at home online learning. I’m really glad these days we have an ‘unlimited’ plan with our ISP.
Wishing you a great reading week
Outages aren’t common here as well; this was totally unexpected and out of the blue so we found ourselves trying to figure out what to do next..
Thank you (I will pass on the compliments on the pancakes to my dd!) and hope you have a great reading week too
I enjoy reading your scribblings, seems to make me a part of your day! Those pancakes, oh my look delicious and the Happy Go Lucky sign have me some ideas for the fence in Lia’s garden. We can make signs of things she says or loves! Have a wonderful week!
Looks like your poem failed on the last two lines! Unless I failed to comprehend the proposed design.
Well, that last line – beginning with the bracketed and – does not exactly rhyme I hoped (where I used ‘by her’), but on the other hand ‘by her’ is returned as a rhyme for require/desire/…. in various rhyming websites, so I decided to use it..!!
And while there is no required syllabic count, it helps to have a constant rhythm to the words in each line.. those last two lines did not meet that…
Your poetic forms are always fun. Who knew there were so many? I love poetry and I have always enjoyed writing it. I’ve had two books over the years that I’ve especially liked. One is Strong Measures and it contains wonderful poems in a wide variety of forms. The other is The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach. I haven’t focused on writing poetry for many, many years, but I found these two books to be favorites from when I did.
Good grief! An outage during AP testing! I guess I should not be surprised. I bet internet usage has skyrocketed in the last few months. I know I feel like I never step away from mine. I hope those who are in charge of such things ensure there are no problems during the upcoming testing.
As always, I love your photos. The pairing of your photo with the Sylvia Plath quote makes your photo even more impressive.
Thank you!! for your comments and also for you noticing the quotes on my insta pics :)) I will look for those poetry books you mention..
Regarding the AP testing, I am guessing many students faced different issues this past week; so they have made some updates to submissions for all those failures due to technical issues (unfortunately that is only for the tests starting today, so my son has to do his makeup test in June..)