Send in your post card, post card!
Fabulous prizes you can win so
be sure to send your entry in....
Write down your name, address, your zip
so we can save and catalog it!
(We'll sell it to marketers you don't know
- they got things to sell and wares to show.)
So send in Your name address your zip
- we'll sell it for decades in triplicate!
Be sure to send your entry in, for
fabulous prizes you can win!
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*The original founders of Contest Newsletter were a couple whose hobby turned into a newsletter with several million subscribers. It all because too much I guess. and they sold it -- but the new owner turned out to be a mailing list company who really only wanted the subscribers list. Comprised mainly of seniors and folks willing to respond to adds and offers with a post card - it was a valuable list, nick-named "The suckers list." This was just before online contest entries became a thing. Ah well.
This is very old writing of mine. I thought it might be time to put it up here....
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| At Hogsback in VT, photo by R. Nethercott |
3 states of being, 2 properties of the cosmos
Old but mischievous children had gathered to hear this old one’s tale. They whispered to each other. Each had a different hat and a different face and different way of speaking. They laughed and drew pictures in the dirt with sticks because they were merry children though they were not young. Each had traveled many years to hear the particular words of this tale.
The ancient sat cross-legged on a log. The fire light lit the grey eyes and translucent skin and the white hair. A faint smile flickered also.
“Many and One, whose other name is ALL greets you and is you,” the old one began. The whispers stopped. The fire hissed and danced. Her voice was neither young nor old, neither sharp nor soft.
“Before the path of ALL was ONE,” she said.
“And ONE was at peace, without dimension or division or dissension or delusion. And that is the first state and the best. The undifferentiated state of one..”
One. One. ONE. The name of ONE burst in whispers down rows of attentive children. Some sat forward on logs or stones, some crouched, some leaned against trees. A few reclined in the grass.
“And after ONE sat silent, being and containing Unity, containing the matrix of the ONE endless formless self for many millennia, the ONE became curious. And that is the second state and is also the best: The state of curiosity.”
Curious. Curious. Curious. The word rippled among the children like wind through meadow grasses.
“And what the ONE was curious about was what might happen if the ONE mind concentrated all its thought on only one intersection at the center of the matrix of the One formless self. And it was so.
“And from the thought of the One, matter sprang into being, expanding into the formless, endless self of the ONE> And it was entirely the thought of the One, and it was also the energy of the One and it was, itself, the One.
“Yet is was various -- so the One became Many and One, whose other name is ALL.
ALL. ALL. ALL. The children set to whispering again.
“And from that first property of All - Unity, came the second simultaneous property of All - which is Variety. And from those two great properties of Many and one, come our unity and variety.
And even so, we ourselves are many and one and all life and all that is and is not: all is many and one - Unity and Variety
And all that is, and all that is not - All is the thought of the One, and energy of the one, and is, itself, One - Many and One whose other name is All.
And after Many and One became and sent matter and energy spinning and expanding into the undulation of time; the one mind marveled at the Variety, and at the Unity, and at the expanding bubble. And Many and One, All was filled with Wonder and delight. And that is the third state, which is also the best: the state of Wonder.”
I'm hoping eggs were laid and we might see a caterpillar or two later in the season!
It's bad enough that medical care in the US is so expensive that people regularly go bankrupt and lose their homes to predatory collection policies at for-profit hospitals. But now private equity firms have begun buying up vet practices - and why? They see easy profits - vet care costs have increased 60% since 2014 according to PBS (see link at the bottom) which beats the heck out of inflation.
This month I am aware of two - not one but TWO - people of limited means, living only on social security and insured by Medicaid being taken advantage of by veterinarians perhaps from avarice, or by rigid adherence to the idea of always doing all the procedures you can just in case. (An affliction human medicine also suffers from....) Some sensitivity to people's financial situation should be a factor as well. If they can't afford it, what alternative approach might be presented?
One person's 16 year old cat had stopped eating and cried constantly in pain. The vet did several thousand dollars of x-rays and blood tests ON AN ELDERLY CAT THAT WAS CLEARLY SUFFERING whose owner was on Medicaid. Instead of advising that a clearly suffering 16 year old cat that stops eating for three days, is telling you something about their will to live -- that the kindest thing is to do, is the really the hard thing - to stay with her and hold her in your arms while she is medicated across the rainbow bridge, and have the last sight and sound she experiences be her beloved care-er, comforting her with pets and soft words.
And this literally poor pet owner leaves her crying kitty in the vets care, goes home and her pet dies all alone at the vets. The next day she is called in, not to pick up her kitty - but to pay a $2,175 bill. This fragile elderly person on Medicaid...
NO COMMON SENSE. NONE.
For the other person, the vet is still pushing dental cleaning, dental xrays, dental work, more blood work & kidney tests on a 16 year old cat who is already on palliative care and is comfortable - a cat that is eating, sleeping, peeing and pooping, going out and laying in the sun on the porch, laying in her dads lap - still enjoying life. But of course who doesn't want to spend more time in the hospital being stabbed and probed, far away from your human, and the house and yard you have always known and loved - just in case they can find something more expensive to treat and bill your income poor human being for?? NO COMMON SENSE. While she is enjoying her life -- LET HER LIVE IT.
Allegedly it's all the interests of your pet. But wouldn't you know - many local vet practices have been bought up by giant corporations whose policies and procedures are not to do the kindest thing in the end - but to make you pay them every last cent they can possibly bill you for....
PBS on private equity buying vet practices
"We are in free fall off a cliff here. I don't know where we land......The kind of authority that this administration has claimed for itself and exercised -- over Congress, the Supreme Court, the States, the American People, citizens, immigrants, and aliens alike -- is without precedent in American History - the end."
-- American Political Historian/author Jill Lepore
- a response poem to Patricia Smiths poem "Medusa"
Too Much Drama,
all those hormonesthe burning and bravadofollowed by anxiety and self-doubt.I don't miss them,not even a little
The old gods have feet of clay
and petty, vengeful hearts.
Explosions of thunder,
stabs of lightningseem relaxing by comparison.
I'd take a solitary sunrise
seen through thistle and milkweed in the meadowor a humming bird busy in the red bee balma wood dove on the roof-line....
-- Mad Mar Walker, (Mistryel) July 5, 2026 at a "Sunday Writes" session led by Faith Vicinanza at VSG Gallery.
I also have an old Medusa poem:
Love and Mirrors
When courting Medusa, don't call her by that name. Let her have her delusions as she allows you yours.
Let her have her memories of a time when soft hair cascaded down her back and men reached to touch her cheek.
When you come to take her, lose the mirrored glasses, close your eyes tightly lest she see the snakes reflected, transmogrify to marble, cold statuary in your garden of love.
And who would be Medusa then? Or was it you all along?
-- Mar Mar Mistryel Walker (p22 - from my first poetry chapbook Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding (Puzzled Dragon Press, 1998)
