Attribution: Flickr user baejaar (Dheepak Ra), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will be assisting the keeper today as he campaigns for the office of April Fool, which has been more or less vacant since 1492 when Columbus landed in America and said, “So nice to be here in …
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Category:Holidays
Happy Easter from the Pen in Hand Blog
Photos by Geoff Carter Down the Rabbit Hole
The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: The Best of Irish Cinema
Artwork by Michael DiMilo The Pen in Hand’s Top Ten St. Patrick’s Day Movies By Geoff Carter It’s that time of year again, that special day of days set aside to celebrate the joy of being Irish. Green beer, corned beef sandwiches, the wearing of the green, The Chieftains spinning on your turntable, and a …
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Kickass and Birthday Open House
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will be assisting the keeper today as he sponsors a St. Pat’s birthday open house for Phyllis who was born on March 16 some years ago in Canada and frequently threatens to go back there given the current flow of US political “news.” Phyllis …
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Kickass and Birthdays
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in assuming the awesome responsibility of helping Phyllis and great-granddaughter Margaux celebrate simultaneous birthdays while not ignoring St. Patrick’s Day. It was a triple threat challenge that seemed to invite the simple solution of a keg of green beer. But there …
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Kickass and Old Valentines
Attribution: Chordboard, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis on this Valentine’s Day to contribute age-appropriate material that is immediately in the public domain and therefore up for grabs for “old” friends use. *Roses are red, violets are blue, I love you through covid and …
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Kickass Remembers a Valentine
Attribution: Amada44, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, on this eve of Valentine’s Day, indulges the keeper as he recalls how he once spent hours using a new pocketknife to carve “BS & AH” into the bark of an oak tree in the most remote corner of the cow …
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Mighty Love
Artwork by Michael DiMilo Originally Published 2/14/2022 By Geoff Carter In her novel Surfacing, Margaret Atwood wrote “The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.” She‘s probably right, although what passes for love today might not be as important to us as snow …
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Can’t Buy Me Love
Attribution: Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash By Geoff Carter When I was in elementary school back in the early 1960s, St. Valentine’s Day was the day that brought life and color—and candy—to the gray slushy doldrums of grade-school winter. Everyone would attach manila envelopes with our little names block-printed on the front —our “mailboxes”—to the fronts of …
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Oh, Christmas Tree
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter (Originally posted in December, 2019) Each year, in the family holiday tradition, my wife and I venture out to buy our Christmas tree. We’re lucky enough to live across the street from a big tree lot so we don’t have very far to go—we can walk right over. …
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2024: Out of the Frying Pan
Artwork by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter New Year retrospectives are, for the most part, eminently predictable. There are the usual lists of notable storms and natural disasters, celebrity memorials, messy political scandals, blockbuster movies, and the newest eye-dazzling technologies. People like lists. They’re quick, easy to read, and distill even the most complicated issues …
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Kickass and the Happy New Year
Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis, wanting to keep their coughing colds something private and precious, cancelled out on Andy and Ohm’s New Year’s eve party and therefore missed an opportunity to revisit their former Mazomanie home on the hill and to share the …
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