Brett Ortler

THE MESSENGER But thou shalt wander obscure even in the house of Hades, flitting among the shadowy dead.—Sappho The joke, of course, is on everyone. Hermes, despite winged shoes, cellphone, pager, semaphore, telegram, homing pigeon, and a team of gesticulating First- and Third-base coaches from the Savannah Bananas, is incommunicado. He whirls to one person, then the next, only to receive the same repertoire of responses: slight smiles, shrugged shoulders, half stares, half smirks. Frustrated, he pulls up a café stool and taps some numbers into his Cassio pocket watch calculator—frantically scribbling calculations onto a used napkin. Someone ought to speak Greek! But after a century of wandering through stadia, bustling ports, bazaars, airport departure and arrival terminals, train stations, the god of boundaries is silent. Perhaps heaven is a place of reunion, but also a place to forget—lines on a map, pain, mother tongues, and it may be that the answers to heaven’s questions are obvious, but cannot be spoken at all. for Andrew

Did I name-drop the Savannah Bananas @thesavbananas.bsky.social in a #poem? I did. 💙📚

ICE breaks car window, arrests Northfield man at residential job site ICE agents forcibly arrested an undocumented house painter in Northfield, Minnesota without showing him a warrant Tuesday morning, according to his family.

ICE agents forcibly arrested an undocumented house painter in Northfield, Minnesota without showing him a warrant Tuesday morning, according to his family.

Silver Medalist. People the Planet Needs Now: Voices for Justice, Science, and a Future of Promise. By Dudley Edmondson. Adventure Publications, Cambridge, MN Page through this book, and you’ll see nothing but black and brown faces. These are indigenous individuals and people of color who are working towards solving environmental problems. Some of the 25 individuals profiled in the book work on issues involving clean air, safe drinking water, and open spaces. Others strive to provide opportunities for outdoor experiences. Still others are research biologists, science and environmental educators. Dudley Edmondson allows each to tell their own story. We learn about the challenges they and their communities face, how they’ve met those challenges, and their determination to create a better world.

I was *so* excited to see that Dudley Edmondson's PEOPLE THE PLANET NEEDS NOW was a Silver Medalist at the 2025 National Outdoor Book Awards! @nobabooks.bsky.social
💙📚#booksky

This is a video, without a long exposure, of the #northern #lights over suburban Minneapolis. Absolutely wild.

A northern lights photo without a long exposure, showing faint reds and wispy greens

This is a shot taken without a long exposure, and you can still see it. With the unaided eye it was brighter than this, and you could def. see the motion and columns, even with all our light pollution

We were seeing them all the way over the zenith into the southern portion of the sky. Unreal. (Coon Rapids area.)

A giant column of pink light in the northern lights

Wait, was the rapture TODAY!? #northernlights in suburban Minneapolis

The northern lights in bright pink and green

The northern lights in bright pink and green

The northern lights in bright pink and green

Whoa. A heckuva show. Visible to the unaided eye, and wild through a camera. Our horizon looked like an alien spaceship was approaching. #northernlights

Valentina Karatajute-Talimaa and Elga Mark-Kurik on Kreuzritter lake (Kryzhiuochiu ezheras), under an umbrella, north of Vilnius,Lithuania, 1977 (photo H.-P. Schultze).

Model of sacabambaspis helsinki

Did you know. That the meme-explosion that was the wooden model of Sacabambaspis (an Ordovician jawless fish) held at a Museum in Helsinki, was created by a pioneering Estonian fish paleontologist and palaeoartist, Elga Mark-Kurik. 🧵

What the Dead Tell Us About the Edmund Fitzgerald "We are holding our own" —the last transmission from Captain Ernest McSorley It's true for a moment, or a week, or a decade, then the radiologist finds a mass, gray and grainy as a photo of a moon rock or a friend starts forgetting, first the little things, movie plots, appointments, but soon she can't remember her favorite movie or slip loose of her seatbelt. Eventually, she doesn’t remember her children, her husband, her own face in the mirror. Living like this must be like trying to read from a burning book—the lucid moments are a page or two, but the paper is already browning around the edges and words are falling into ash as fast as you can read them. Now imagine that’s your wife: standing fast with the water sweeping over the rails, the ship listing, both radars gone, the great black wave approaching and the only way to go is down. For Joyce

For Midwesterners, the Edmund #Fitzgerald holds a special place in our shared history. Years ago, as a friend's wife was dying of Alzheimer's, I wrote this poem that alludes to the Fitzgerald.

#edmundfitzgerald

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Issues 8 and 9, Prose Poems (March-April 2025) This issue of Prose Poems features prose poetry by Michele Harmeling, David James, and Kevin Canfield

Heads-up, #poets and writers of very short fiction, since it's now SAD SEASON (not very many bugs!) Prosepoems.com is now open for submissions! We run prose poems, short-shorts, and very short fiction (a page long, max, preferably a paragraph or so. Details here: www.prosepoems.com/masthead-2/
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Also, I totes wanna get your new book at the Book fest! My wife and will have a table for our teeny press.

“Now boarding, tin and lithic class passengers.”

A tardigrade under a microscope; its brownish, with long claws on its legs, and protuberances on the front of its mouth; like a Milnesium species

May I humbly suggest...micro animal pals like tardigrades, rotifers, and nematodes. The (groanworthy) puns are right there too (You are tardi-GREAT!)

They are pretty darn docile little pals, too. When I took the photo, it actually approached me and just squeaked and scampered about. It's always a treat to see them, and when they glide it's pretty amazing.

Yep! Coon Rapids.

A plump flying squirrel at a bird feeder, glowing pink under UV light

Fun fact: Flying squirrels fluoresce under UV light. Here is one at my bird feeder in MN a while back. (I busted out a moth lamp for the photo.)

An image of bright green northern lights in a curtain-like shape just over the horizon through suburban Minneapolis trees

The sky’s awake so…
#aurora #mn

Really glad that two of our Anoka-Hennepin ISD-11 School Board Candidates (Simon and Deschene) retained their seats. That's incredibly important, and I'm also incredibly grateful for Abby Payeur's hard-fought (and pretty close!) campaign against steep odds.

GAR WEEK 2025 is HERE!!!

Join @garlab.bsky.social as we celebrate these awesome living fossil fishes and freshwater biodiversity for #GarWeek!

We look forward to hearing from YOU with any gar pics, puns, stories, GARtwork and questions this week!

Oh no!

The whole time, I kept thinking of Chekhov’s gun and…it didn’t go off. And it was NUKES. I hated it deeply.

A dorky white guy with a cape, fake vampire teeth on his front teeth, a stethoscope, and a nametag that says Dr. Acula, Hematology

Dr. Acula, PhD in Hematology, at your service. #halloween

Area Dads Issue Warning: ALL CANDY COULD BE POISON AND MUST BE TESTED (BY DADS) FIRST! Candy poisoning is a very serious potential threat. Consider the image at left: This seemingly harmless Mounds Bar had an Iowa-Class Battleship in it, a F-106 Delta Dart and the Pyramids of Giza in it! By carefully eating around those objects, the heroic father below sucessful protected his family. These candies must be carefully tested by area Dads: Mounds Almond Joy Butterfingers M&Ms (only the peanut ones) Count Dracula launches new tourism campaign "It's actually pretty nice here! Stay for free at our castle!" Images of a Mounds Candy bar, opened up to reveal an Iowa-class battleship, a F-106 Delta Dart, and the Pyramids of Giza, with a heroic dad shown below. The Dracula ad has the first-edition cover of Dracula, along with a goofy dad dressed up as a vampire.

So every morning, I make a Lunch Letter for my daughter by hastily photoshopping a note together, in a newspaper-like format. Here is today's #Halloween letter. It features the very real threat of "poison" #candy that must be carefully tested by Dad. 🎃

Y’all saw it here on Bluesky FIRST.

Trailer for #GarWeek 2025.
JOIN US November 3-7!!!

Anoka-Hennepin residents, don’t skip this election!

This person has clearly never seen Apollo 13

A yorshire terrier wearing a sweater and a tiny cardboard crown

#NoKings (aside from this honorary one)

Cc: @derekhennen.bsky.social you might like the (presumed) centipede!

A centipede in amber

A caddisfly or a moth in amber

A beetle in amber

A centipede in amber

So I always prowl auctions here in MN, and I am on the lookout for items to add to ye olde cabinet of curiosity. Initial hunches: a centipede, a caddisfly or moth, and maybe a sap beetle.