Kickass Message to Boo

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, seeks the keeper’s help in sending a message to Boo, a smallish schnauzer-type dog that once lived with the keeper and Phyllis on the Mazomanie hill and who could play the piano and dance, and who invalidated the keeper’s long standing custody arrangement and …
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Kickass and “My Shadow”

Attribution: Matthew Bowden www.digitallyrefreshing.com, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, hands it over to the keeper on this Groundhog Day of shadows, as he—the keeper, actually recalls from grade school days, the first few lines of Robert Louis Stevenson “My Shadow.” Impressed with the duration of such memory clutter, the …
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Kickass and the Groundhog’s Shadow

Attribution: Anthony Quintano from Mount Laurel, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper passes along news that the Repub’s attempts to impeach the groundhog and replace it with a weasel has stalled as the entire weasel family—which includes the badger, serves notice that they …
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Kickass and Baby Photos

Attribution: Photos by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis shared an entertainment exercise with fellow Vista West residents in which the challenge was to identify baby photos with current subjects. While the results were mixed, there was one verity: at one point in their lives every …
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Kickass and Old Love

Attribution: Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, considers himself fortunate to share living quarters with the keeper and Phyllis as the two of them fill their days with one project after another and try to participate in Vista West community living.  Phyllis, as a photo artist and computer acrobat, and …
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Kickass and the Old Bridge

Attribution: Randen Pederson from Superior, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, thinks that by now the keeper should be accustomed to seeing the destruction and replacement of the many things he remembers being built—shopping malls, huge business complexes and roads and bridges, like the Blatnik bridge connecting Superior and …
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Kickass Remembers Louie

Attribution: Photo by Wesley Mc Lachlan on Unsplash Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in noting the life and death of Louie Lancaster, a gimp legged little old bachelor who worked as the neighborhood hired man during the keeper’s growing up years. Louie came to northwest Wisconsin from somewhere in Illinois as the Great Depression was winding …
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Kickass and Writing Helpers

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in noting that while writing is mostly a solitary undertaking, the mechanics of getting words out to readers involves many others on both personal and professional levels.  Currently for the keeper the capable hands of Phyllis keep him in the game with …
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Kickass and Oil Barrel Drums

Attribution: Steelasophical, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in posing the question: can the senior residents of an Independent Living facility be satisfactorily entertained by a man using sticks to pound on what was once part of a 55-gallon oil barrel? If the facility is Vista …
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Kickass and Vista West Sailing

Attribution: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper’s latest winter survival technique is to imagine that the Vista West building that he and Phyllis live in is actually a big cruise ship with an uncertain itinerary; and one of the daily entertainment opportunities is to try to guess …
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