Jim O'Neil's most read articles

From wikapedia: Haiku (俳句) is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan.Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a kireji, or "cutting word", 17 on (a type of Japanese phoneme) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a kigo, or seasonal reference.However, modern haiku vary widely on how closely they follow these traditional elements. I often run a 4-7-4 pattern, I'm wondering if that cadence works better in English.

Super short, short stories. Mosty exactly 50 words.

Why thank you world, frankly I’m quite flattered. However I do feel it’s a bit much that you put the majority of folks out of work, close schools, restrict travel, transport of goods, sell out all the rolls of toilet paper in the nation, cancel public discourse, shut gyms, restaurants, bars, churches, etc., all just to protect little old me! It’s also rather nice that, to ease any feelings of guilt I might develop seeing the world stop just for me, that you state these actions are quite…

A story passed on to me by friends when I was visiting in Emmonak, Alaska: Hey, you want to hear shaman story? Youbetya? OK by golly, I'll tell you story: Long long time ago, nobody here, just the people, no white men, no snow machines, no four wheelers, plenty fish, plenty birds, plenty game, plenty of mosquitoes! Good life, good fishing good hunting, the people were happy. Tell the time, you look at the sky. The sky, the winds, the sun, the clouds, they all tell you when it's time t…

. Born in Ohio. Raised in Florida. Lived in New York City for 5 years which was a good reason to move to Alaska, Where I've lived for the last 40 years. Addendum: & during the 75 years to date that I've been on this earth I also...........

Just for the fun of it. Stream of consciousness: Dental visit is it that or another other that interrupted my sleep so deep within the night or morning around three I started my day just sayin'. And now it's five and a bit and I started the coffee brewin' downstairs while meanwhile upstairs up here splashed some watercolors but ahead dead heading in to the future I've got nothing going nothing planned so maybe go with the flow the story of my life seventy five years whodathought ears are itc…

Short story of my life to frame my thoughts on green: Born in Ohio, raised in Florida, lived in NYC for 4 years -which is the great reason I moved to Alaska. Looking back on my Florida years I recall a certain discomfort that I just couldn’t put my finger on at the time. In retrospect I suspect it was the constant greenness, the lack of seasons I had experienced in my very early years. New York City; An interesting period, States of Emergency called over 3 inches of snow. Taking the ferr…

1st try moving a photo in to an article, will see if it works.

Red Neck Buddha Cones: So! For many years I’ve been impressed with Zen Buddhism and zen koans (short, sharp, arguments illogically leading to enlightenment), so, so, so here are some of that pecker wood cracker, Bubba’s, Cones The Crud Cone We find Billy Bob watching then walking up to Bubba, who’d been sitting on the general store stoop listening to Weird Willy most of the morning. Billy Bob; “Bubba, what for you waste the mornin’s daylight listenin’ to that no account Weird…

Once back in the early fifties when I was growing up in southern Florida, I found myself up a tree. I was playing in the everglades, which then was my back yard. While most visitors see the glades as a sea of grass, it also includes islands within that grass sea, a few inches higher, but with completely different ecosystems, both flora and fauna. So! On one of those 'islands' I'd climbed up in to a banyan tree (Banyans grow a vertical trunk, send off horizontal branches and then drop down…

Hum. Back in the late forties, early fifties, we built a house and lived down in Perrine (It’s spelled Perrine, but everybody pronounced it PEErine.) in Florida, between Miami and Homestead. It was piney woods country, not many houses back then, not too many people. I was 11 or 12 at the time and had a dog, a Red Walker Foxhound, named Pal. Well, as happens in the piney woods, Pal used to pick up ticks that had no trouble working past his short fur and sucking his blood until their butt…

Just sayin' Sometimes I holler when the water's right But most nows and knows I float the flow. When on top the depth don't matter and down I find my ground. I had a lot to say about today, yesterday, But now the wind is blowing from the east and handy as that is, I'll take another tack. When all is said and done Then all is done and said, But then again, most often, one can appraise and, perhaps, rephrase. To clown or not to clown But where's the rub er nose? A la…

Started 10 December 2015 It happens once every four years but it brings many people to tears the long drawn out selection for the presidential election with nothing to choose from but rears. At last night's presidential debate After break she came back a bit late They started without her no one had to out shout her Everyone said it was great! There was a contender named Trump Who spoke, off the cuff from the stump What he says doesn't matter…

So! Back in the fifties In the middle of Florida 5, let's see, no, 7, of us had been, caving, spelunking but that's another story. None the less, after spelunking, we all hopped in 2 cars to head back to campus. Now It was a hot day, so we'd left the doors open on the cars. Drivin' back, in our car we suddenly heard a sound from 'neath the seat to my ear it was pretty damn close to a sound I'd head before, the dry repeating rhythm of the rattle of a rather peeved rattlesnake!…

Down on the farm, in 1984 It was a horror show But the oranges flowed like clockwork Sprouting out from Dragon's teeth Careful of the third wish. And now today They say The way is gay One should play No matter what may Yet I just read the words of dead Carl () and little rats feet 'cause nothing like us ever was. Two legs are good for bitter or for wurst Alex and his droogs are alive and sell Lanny's sister's long gone dead The soy boy a goyisch cup of Cheetos While the rat…

Bogland, written by Seamus H., a contemporary I was born in thirty-eight, he in thirty-nine. Bogland. I've never read it nor any of his works but I found myself in sync with him, at least temporally. An article in the Paris Review an interview. Heaney, a Mic from north of Erin Apparently made a living with rhyme For a time But used his laurels To obtain some chairs At universities here and there and there. No fault found with that, He'd a family to support. A wife and 3 child…

First, I'm sitting up here on top of the world, North Pole, Alaska, looking down at the KungFlu fiasco, Minneapolis riots, California scheming, screaming, etc. and none of that has had much, if any, real effect today, on my day to day life. It all, from here, of course seems unreal. I do allow that, just as a butterfly wing flap in Malaysia may predicate and progress to a snow storm in my back yard that, as I'm at the far end of a long supply chain, the giving up living to keep from dying in…

Yes, evolution is a theory. Yes, there are blank spots, weaknesses, holes in it. However overall it's a useful tool to explain and delimit our surroundings. I still remember spelunking, over 60 years ago, in Florida caves and finding, with delight, blind insects and blind fish. I remember then, at University of Florida, in Gainesville, seeing blind cave fish in a professor's aquarium and learning that, in two or three generations, in a normal, not perpetually dark, environment, they rega…

I was talking here with a digital friend, Gray Wolf , a gentleman quite, rightfully, proud of his American Indian heritage and it brought back some memories from the early sixties in NYC. At the time I worked for a time lock company and this story starts with me shooting the bull with a fellow worker named Jim Cavanaugh. While talking it came up that he originally wanted to be a high steel worker, one of the guys twenty or many many more stories up riveting the sky scrapers together.…

Sage advice Once upon a time in Japan... OK, so Kōbō Daishi was wandering around Shikoku Island and came across a young Buddhist monk squatting by the edge of a raging stream. There were well placed stepping stones across the stream but, on the first stone there were two weasels, one big one and one little ittsy bittsy one, stretched out enjoying the sun. So! Kōbō Daishi says to the young monk: "Wassup?" The young monk replies: "Downer man, I wanna cross this here…