| || floor, shaky, untold, misfit, hats off to you.
Image from the Internet.
The opening poem contains all the words (or variations of them) from today's Jumble.
Comments are welcomed!
Do not explicitly reveal any of the actual answer words until after closing time, but embedding them surreptitiously in comment sentences is encouraged.
6 comments:
Wilbur and Keith, my hat's off to you!
I fell down on my job, but you two came thru!
Your poems yesteryore were truly great,
Emblems that you have the genius to create!
My excuse would be shaky, but then, so am I.
I feel such a misfit no matter how hard I try.
My story untold, because there's nothing to tell,
My "art", words and pixels, I never can sell.
I could have been great, had I chose better paths.
Sang from the rooftops, had I used even half
Of my youthful potential, instead I frittered it away,
And now on the floor of magnificence I lay.
Wilbur, you poem yesterday was really extremely good! As fine as anything I ever did in better days that are past, and better than the weak treacle I've been doing recently!
And Keith, yours was even better than that! I envy the facility with words you displayed yesterday! Sincerely, it was great!
My posting so late today was a simple matter of oversleeping. (Combined with depression -- it's a good thing this blog seems to give me something with a purpose, no matter how trivial. Trivial, since it seems only 4 people care about it, but at least they do with some passion.) However, for future reference, Tony C. (Anonymous -T at the Crossword Corner) has the keys and knowledge to start a fresh page each day if I'm incapacitated. I've also just sent invites to Keith and Wilbur to be emergency admins, and Misty and Sandy if you'd like I'll add you, too. Figuring out how to make use of those keys will have to be your own responsibility.
Technical stuff:
The daily Jumble is available at the earliest, ~6pm, at Shockwave. I take two screen shots of it, one at normal size that I crop for the letters and bubbles, and a second at double-size magnification that I crop the cartoon from, and then paste those onto the previous days image. I just use MS Paint, the simplest painting program I know of (and so outdated I have to go out of my way to keep it available every time Windows "upgrades"). The J6 is Sunday only. I used to take screen shots of it at the ChiTrib site, ~10pm, but it needed cropping and cutting and pasting so much I gave up and just copy the cartoon from there any more, and re-type the rest myself. I hope the bubbles I retype are large enough to be useable? If I were willing to wait until the USAToday site, I could crop the cartoon from there in color, but lower resolution so it's slightly blurry, and not available until maybe 2am. Misty, if you want to see it in color, just check out that USAToday site each Sunday.
(BTW Wilbur, the second word yesterday was waive, not some form of weaving. Sorry.)
Owen, you are the best blog organizer anyone could ever hope for, and we owe you so much gratitude--especially for your message today, and for the amazing information you've given us about how you go about the job of posting for us every day. No, I'm afraid I could not do it, much as I would love to, but I'm thankful that others in the group will help if they're needed. But we really need you, and thank you, every day.
You're poem today was especially heart-warming, Owen, and happily, it gave me the third Jumble word, which stumped me. With that, I got the fun solution, and was delighted to have your poem confirm it right away. Thanks for that, on this day. And thank you for the suggestion on where I might find the color cartoons, if needed.
Owen you were both ahead and behind the times
Blank verse became favored over our snappy rhymes
Soon another genre the less gifted did tap
Yes, you'd surely have been grand master of rap
Yes, I got waive and weave mixed up.
No real problems today. My technique borrowed from OMK of jotting the letters separately, fe. SIT/FIM gave me #3.
I had to work at the riddle-solution. The last word was a given. Fortunately, as I'd laid out the letters in a different order, the first popped out.
And, I too, really liked OMK'S response poem, FLN. What I like best is anticipating how you, Owen, are going to incorporate the J's.
I'll check my Gmail as to how to set up the jumble blog. Caveat: I do everything on my Android cell.
WC
First, let me catch up by just re-posting the solution hint from lat last night. Here goes:
The carpenter worried his apprentice hadn't fastened the corner joint firmly enough.
"See how that wobbles?" he said. "That's soft. Do glue it again, and be sure it hardens before putting weight on it."
Next, I'll honor Owen's kind tribute by echoing it back.
To you, good sir, all honor.
As you well know from our many testimonials, we are all deeply indebted to you. We are each of us in awe, simply amazed by your output. Yes, there are times when the rhymes feel forced or the meter goes astray, but then there are sublime pieces (such as today's offering) that more than make up for the weaker ones. How could it be otherwise when you are so wonderfully prolific?
Your theme today is a too familiar one. You must know that all men of a certain age live rueful lives. Even when we are lucky enough to enjoy relatively comfortable existences, we nearly always fall short of the goals we set for ourselves.
I am pretty sure that no matter how successful a person may appear to the outside world, he or she harbors misgivings about how much further they might have gone in this relatively short blink of life.
I often reflect on the opportunities I might have followed up if I had known how rare those openings would be. But then I remind myself of a simple truth, that I had only so much capacity for effort. There were times when I was coming off of several exhausting projects--and found it more congenial to withdraw, to rest for a time, than to pursue the next chance for fame & glory.
I think sometimes we need to be kinder to ourselves. I wish that for you, dear Owen. We know you to be a gentleman of extraordinary ability and near-Herculean effort. That you cannot do (and could not have done) everything that came your way, please consider giving yourself a little more of a break.
With love,
~ OMK
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