Our theme this time was "Witches and Wizards." I wrote from 1 PM to 4:30 AM, so about 13 hours 30 minutes, accounting for breaks. I wrote 8 poems on Tuesday plus 2 later in the week.

Participation was up, with 11 comments on LiveJournal and another 28 on Dreamwidth. A total of 12 people sent prompts.


Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"The Disappointing Daughter"
"The Unretired Witch"
"What Wizardry Is All About"

"New and Innovative Approaches"


Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from October 7. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include: janetmiles and Anthony Barrette. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There is 1 tally toward a bonus fishbowl.


The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

The last month has been eventful. In multiple ways, good and bad.

As some of you may be aware, I had a job. And the emphasis is on had, because I don't have it any longer. It didn't work out. I was able to handle my job just fine when I was working ordinary hours and things were quieter. But over the past few weeks, this had started to change. Working conditions generally were getting worse. I was working overtime every week, I was having to work with particularly nasty chemicals, and I had to clean up after small children, which was gross and stressful because I don't like small children. While I tried to hide my distaste, I was less successful than I thought and my boss offered to shift my hours.

I'd have accepted that without much thought... if the changed hours weren't from 7:30 PM to 2:00 AM, except one day when I'd be working 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM (except actually usually around 9:00 PM). And I didn't have to shift to that new schedule in two days.

For a while I angsted over what this meant for my work ethic, but after talking to some people I've decided that I just am not good at emotionally handling that kind of work and it's better I left, because if I didn't things would have gradually gotten worse and I might have lost the job anyway, but on worse terms. Multiple people I know, offline and online, have said that they could tell the job was making my mental stability decline.

So now I'm job searching again. Hardly a worse time for it, though I'm hoping that I might be able to sell my art (and possibly writing) to--I won't say make ends meet, because I am nowhere near that good, but at least make it so my debt from graduate school doesn't grow as quickly. Or let me occasionally get new supplies. One or the other, most likely.

Other than that... well, there's some stuff that's private enough I only want to talk about it in an access list entry, but in this public one I will say that I missed leaf peeping season. Pretty much all of them have turned already and I didn't get to go to any of the nice woods I know where you can admire all the pretty colors. Perhaps next year. One of my orchids is starting to form buds, so there's at least that. I'll post photos if and when they fully

I also wrote something for a contest on the SCP wiki and it did adequately. Go check it out here, if you like that sort of thing.

Lastly, I got to rejoin one of my RPG groups. We're going to be starting Wildsea--it's a game where your PCs sail a vessel over a planet-spanning ocean of trees--and have designed this awesome living manta ray-esque research vessel together. Really looking forward to making my character and getting to play.

We went up to Champaign-Urbana today.

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Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface

Fungi were Earth’s first ecosystem engineers, thriving long before plants ever took root.

Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, researchers reconstructed fungi’s ancient lineage, revealing they were crucial in shaping Earth’s first soils and ecosystems.

Today is cloudy and cool.

I haven't fed the birds yet, but we heard a great horned owl hoo-hooing out in our yard!  :D  That's awesome.  I don't think we've had one since a few years back when an owl and several crows fought over the yard for the whole summer.

EDIT 10/28/25 -- I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, possibly goldfinches.

I put out water for the birds.

It's spitting rain.

Unraveling the Drama Between Hank Green and the Knitting Community

Hank Green has been a knotty boy. One of the latest episodes of his YouTube show, SciShow, is all about knitting and how science is elevating the lowly craft to a place of actual importance. You know who finds that take distasteful? Knitters.

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Hidden 5-mile wide asteroid crater beneath the Atlantic revealed in stunning 3D

A massive crater hidden beneath the Atlantic seafloor has been confirmed as the result of an asteroid strike from 66 million years ago. The new 3D seismic data reveals astonishing details about the violent minutes following impact—towering tsunamis, liquefied rock, and shifting seabeds. Researchers call it a once-in-a-lifetime look at how oceanic impacts unfold.

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, November 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Fairies and Fey." I'll be soliciting ideas for fairies, seelie or unseelie sidhe, the Wild Hunt, elves, other types of fey, Radical Faeries, other queers, tricksters, contraries, rebels, adventurers, mentors, historians, explorers, magic users, partners, teachers, leaders, dark lords, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, fantasy species, activists, other unusual fantasy folk, doing magic, doing things backwards, causing mischief, breaking rules, caring for the land, exploring new territory, meeting new species, upsetting predictions, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, other fantastic activities, Underhill, faery rings, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, castles, ruins, dungeons, dragon lairs, schools, kitchens, campfires, libraries, apothecary shops, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, faerie magic, unusual magical systems, magical artifacts, enchanted musical instruments or weapons, quests, time periods other than medieval, governments other than monarchy, dragons, unicorns, enchantments, potions, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, fey time distortions, time travel, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia is about live happy lesbians in a quirky fantasy world.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy about a blacksmith and a golem.

Dragonsilk is about trauma and recovery.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household, where the line between truth and fantasy isn't always clear.

The Ocracies features all the political systems other than monarchy.

The Odd Trio is about a family consisting of a dwarf, an elf, and a human.

P.I.E. is urban fantasy about paranormal investigations,

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. Eric the Elven King has interdimensional refugees. Officer Pink features centaurs and mystic shifters. Vybra of the Broken Angels specializes in fantasy sex and often dresses as a fairy.

Practical Magics is low fantasy with a prosaic focus.

Quixotic Ideas is contemporary fantasy where magic integrates with modern life in positive ways.

The Ursulan Cycle is genderbent King Arthur.

Or you can ask for something new.

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

These are the content notes for "The Clearest Signal."

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These are the location notes for "The Clearest Signal."

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Here are the character notes for "The Clearest Signal."

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This poem came out of the October 2025 crowdfunding Creative Jam. It was inspired by prompts from dialecticdreamer and readera. It also fills the "Broken" square in my 10-1-25 card for the Fall Festival Bingo. This poem is posted in exchange for the City Engines stories that dialecticdreamer has been posting about Frank the Crank and belongs to that thread in Polychrome Heroics.

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I am finally re-employed! It took a good long while, but I've been working away since earlier this month. It's a challenging job (in a good way!) with an interesting company, and it's located in a city I like quite a bit. Best of all - it's a hybrid position. I somehow managed to get everything I wanted. And the money is good, too.

I've been moving ahead full steam with Bookcrossing and Bookcrossing Zones. I've established two so far - one at a farm stand, the other at a Family Center near me. Both are going well, I think. The Zone at the farm stand happens to be in the same town where I'm working, which means I'll be able to tend it on a fairly regular basis. The Zone at the Family Center is slightly more hands off, but the woman who runs the center seems thrilled with aseanchai and I have been able to do. (I've roped him into helping, poor thing.) The Center needed cookbooks and DIY books, so we reached out on social media and via Trash Nothing. I was FLOORED by the response. We've donated over a hundred books to them, and we have even more to give them as well. I just need to get them registered on Bookcrossing. (A project for Thursday night, perhaps - it's supposed to rain here.) While we've never asked for anything from the Center (and fortunately never needed to avail ourselves of their services), we've received both books and bread from them. The bread was given to my brother, since he has a couple of kids. The books were overflow items that had been donated by others and had to be removed to make room for the cookbooks and DIY books we brought in. We are sorting through them (some are tattered, others are DEFINITELY not family friendly); the plan is to recycle the copies that are too worn or damaged and give away or donate the ones that are not. There are a good number of kids books in the lot, and fortunately most of them are in good condition. They will be part of our Halloween treat selection.

Don't worry - we aren't total monsters. We are giving away candy, as is tradition, as well as dice left over from my previous job. We'll have mini potatoes (gotta have your Halloween potatoes!), the aforementioned books, and some packs of ramen. That last one makes me rather sad. With SNAP benefits slated to come to a halt on November 1, a West Virginia group suggested giving away shelf-stable foods to help kids and families. We got 24 packs of beef ramen; I wish we could do more. I think the plan is to have them available as a free choice, possibly mixed in with the candy and potatoes. Any ramen that isn't taken will either go to the family center or the food pantry that my aunt helps run at her church. We can afford ramen if we want it, along with a lot of just about any other food we want. It's more important than ever that we remember that and do whatever we can to help people in need. 

Of course, I say that while at the same time delighting in the fact that we're a double income home again. We did pretty well in saving money while I was unemployed, but we did have to put a few purchases on hold. Chief among these delayed purchases is a new couch. We were gifted ours by my parents, but unfortunately it is showing its age. It's uncomfortable to sit in no matter what position, and it's high time we do the adult thing and *sigh* buy proper furniture. Next up will be a new bed and mattress - that's another comfort issue, as well as a sleep quality one.

For now though, I'm going to indulge in the purchase of fancy spices, fancy beans and fancy hot chocolate. Because sometimes you just have to celebrate small successes with small joys. But before that - I'm going to help a local charity by picking up some items from one of their wish lists.

Today we went shopping for Samhain supplies.

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Today is cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen several sparrows and house finches, two goldfinches, and a male cardinal.  :D

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/27/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/27/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

dialecticdreamer is hosting Feathering the Nest today, with its standard theme of fluff and comfort.  Leave prompts, get ficlets!

Alien Anthropology: Towns without Farms

Explore diverse Neotect cultures thriving without agriculture on the planet Tira 292b. This video examines nomadic and sedentary societies, showcasing unique adaptations to varied environments. Observe how these sapient beings navigate resource scarcity and seasonal changes.

This video not only does a great job of showing how Neotect aliens develop culturally, it uses examples from diverse human cultures and technologies. I have a suspicion that it was made by someone who, like me, learned history and social studies by getting kicked out of those classes for saying "The book is wrong."  It is an unusually astute example of a creature that "thinks as well as a human, but not like  a human," which is my favorite kind of alien.  :D

I advise establishing a secure anchor before rappelling down into the rabbithole.

I captured this image to illustrate CNBC and Company Man examine Spirit Halloween, spooky tales of the Retail Apocalypse for Black Cat Day.