turned the heat on today, a first since spring rains stopped one of the markers that winter’s approaching in SF not that’s it’s ever really cold, or hot, for long but it’s a wet windy chill when it comes and at 3:30 it’s also time for lighting (also oddly early) #SanFrancisco

as fall stiffens into cold a bit of #AEHousman for #SmallPoemSunday 🍂🌨️ 🕯️ @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

#SFSidewalkHaiku #240 Autumn dawn perhaps sweeter in brief crisp light Til snow, still blooming ©️Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/10/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (first snow) #Haiku 🌱 🌧️ 🍂 🌨️

…only ones ever making money off this are lawyers and political fundraisers wonder what a decade of delays and court costs will be - until this too dies like those who propose it

country charts 🤠 🎶 are now topped by an #AIartist (owned anonymously) with just enough grit and mississippi delta in their shtick, singing about “kicking rocks” and living through hell to people who have actually “been beat down” …and they’re buying it as authentic don’t hate the player I guess? 🇺🇸

#SFSidewalkHaiku #239 fading autumn blue hydrangea graying into snowballs © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/11/2025, 📷 10/26 #dailyhaikuprompt (fading) #Haiku 🍂❄️ #SanFrancisco

#alphabetchallenge #weekTforTelevision, 📷 02/09/2025 #SiliconValley (though I’ve never seen the show) #SanFrancisco from #SkylineBoulevard (State Route 25) between Redwood City and San Mateo #lookingnorth #scape #bluesky

a bit on the drakes, mother and son, by me today #SmallPoemSunday #poetry #ekphrastic ✍️ 🎶 🇬🇧 #thedrakes @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

a bronze chair mimicking a castoff, throwing a nice shadow in the Pacific sun a bit of comfort and #publicart #streetart while waiting for the MUNI (#NJudah) #SanFrancisco and a bit late but under the wire for #alphabetchallenge #weekSforShadows

let the “serfification” of 🇺🇸 continue apparently we’re all to be renters but also responsible for maintenance costs and taxes (and are some of these newer homes being built even designed to last 50 years?) let’s insure NEW generational wealth takes generations to build 🧵/1

which grain of sand stabilizes a seacliff or holds back the sea © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/02/2025 #senryusunday #senryu #poetry⏳

many #SanFrancisco streets, sidewalks, walls, and backyards (mine), sport cobblestones from the 1870’s thru the great quake or castoffs re-purposed myth says they’re ballast, but first was wood, then American River rocks and the common basalt style pavers are from Northern California quarries 🌱 🚶 🌇

#SFSidewalkHaiku #238 each pink bloom hot defiant even calling out to Spring…elsewhere ©️ Rick Ehling 11/07/2025 ✍️, 11/06/2025 📷 #Haiku #haikusaturday 🌱🇨🇱 #cistanthe #rockpurslane

and a 🎁 of #poetry for those of you who need a break from doomscrolling too #waterlilies #monet #roberthayden

I too hope #sandwichguy #SeanDunn decides to go into the restaurant business 🇺🇸🥪🍽️ let’s all crowd-source his menu 🙋🏼‍♂️ Sandwich 47 “the trump years II” baloney, white bread, mayo…ketchup and the tiniest pickles you’ve ever seen and the price goes up monthly but it’s listed as a best buy or favorite

this iron wind cares not for last year’s blossoms, fruit, or leaves © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/03/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (north wind) #Haiku 🍂 ❄️ 🌸 🍑

november moon falling, marching, mourning ending in thanks © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/03/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (moon rise) #Haiku 🌚 🍂 🗳️ 🥁 🍗

Nancy Pelosi deserved her victory lap, aging better than most of the gerontocracy But it’s time for the new I hope that doesn’t mean her daughter (I hate dynastic politics) We have two excellent announced candidates, more now are sure to enter 🇺🇸 #California #SanFrancisco (📷 from the web)

#SFSidewalkHaiku #237 November flowers Reflecting sunlight Signaling change © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/04/2025, 📷 11/03/2025 #Haiku 🌱 #treemarigold 🇺🇸 #itsmorningagaininAmerica #California

and the 🍒 on the 🍨 #Proposition50 called in #california by AP just after voting closes A good day for 🇺🇸 is a bad day for fascists

“if I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”

…a gift of #daylightsavings ? the seamlessness of #brunch without the late night dancing #beitrima #SanFrancisco 🫓🧆 🍽️ (conveniently on both sides of the sunset tunnel, #NJudah)

#SFSidewalkHaiku #236 in spring showers and autumn morning mist, monkey flower pauseless © Rick Ehling ✍️ 11/02/2025, 📷 04/17 and 11/02/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (endure, morning) #Haiku 🌱🌿 #California #nativeplant

sad and true and the killer of what I like to think of as “neighborhood restaurants” Places that opened all day and closed maybe a bit later that allowed us to relax and entertain without cleaning and then recleaning the house Extensions as opposed to destinations

…“I am a Nomad’s son” for #SmallPoemSunday a bit on time and living on this day when we try to reset both by #Jidimajia, in translation by #WangPing @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

the #Aztecsun at CCSF Mission Campus on Valencia is out 24/7, it too has little use for daylight savings time. #SanFrancisco #sunday 🌞 🕐 🕛 #publicart

meanwhile #californiaforever hums along… yet here 700 acres, roads, utilities, amenities = $0.23B in unpaid loans per #hoodline, the loan makes up HALF of the lender’s portfolio (NYSE: CMTG) careful what you wish for #california (if even the rich aren’t biting things aren’t looking good)

i presume only possible because of all that raking that has been preventing #california forest fires? 🙄 🌲 🎄 how much does this cost to move across country? during a shutdown? when you can’t pay for food for the poor and lower middle class? 🇺🇸 #shutdown #whattheycanpayfor #bahhumbug.

happy halloween with one of my mild phobias (only the venomous kind) 🐍 🫦 🎃 🎁 #science #herpetology #ophidiology

today a bit of concrete poetry from April’s poetry challenges for #SmallPoemSunday #poetry @tomsnarsky.bsky.social and also #senryusunday

like bagged fruit i wake from dark sleep ripe to write a swing and a miss i strike another line as meaning eludes me © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/25/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (ripe swing) #Haiku #senryu #3lines

a bit of melancholia for the moment too early for #SmallPoemSunday but small enough #poetry

guess who blinked. 🙄 #sanfrancisco

City Lights gets ready for the coming invasion with banners and protest #poetry by their founder #lawrenceferlinghetti Love Portland inflatables, Boston’s crowds, and LA and Chicago’s conviction, but one thing I know for sure is that #SanFrancisco can put on a show and knows how to protest

When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents to consider race during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned because agents will “promptly let the individual go.” For these Americans, that wasn’t true: https://propub.li/47aawMD

a very polite rejection, timed to avoid the news cycle ( #nokings and all ) a rejection still "It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it". -Webster during his argument in the 1818 Supreme Court case, Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward

crab, mussels, seaweed in a single tidepool Neptune orders soup © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/13/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (ease seaweed) #Haiku #senryu #California 🧜🏽‍♂️ 🦀 🦪 🐚 🌿 🌊 🍜

drunk on fermenting crabapples a squirrel sunbaths © Rick Ehling 09/13/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (apple, warm sun) #Haiku 🍎 🥃 🐿️ 🌞

#SFSidewalkHaiku #235 six feet of - not your mother’s impatiens - staring down my shears © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/13/2025, 📷 02/02/2025 #Haiku #NoeValley #SanFrancisco #California 🌱 #impatiens #gardening #alphabetchallenge #weekPforPink

…before the infusion center #SmallPoemSunday #poetry #caregiving 🍜 @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

© Rick Ehling 📷 09/30/2025 #silentsunday #SkySunday #lookingnorth #theGoldenGate #SanFrancisco #California

I. can an ant sing like a cricket retirement II. nest stocked time to learn if ants can sing III. ready to take off his ant suit a cricket retires © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/12/2025 🐜 🦗🪞 🪩 3 versions on a theme, soon to be tested #senryusunday #senryu #poetry

what chapter in “why we need to just #taxtherich“ are we on? …sorry i’ve lost count (if we taxed them appropriately we wouldn’t need their “charity” AND we wouldn’t have to care about their opinions)

#SFSidewalkHaiku #234 Autumn fading gold Leaves dry then fall Yet here too, new life blooms ©️ Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/07/2025 📷 10/01/2025 🌱 #haikusaturday #Haiku 🍂

Sent. #yeson50 while we still can vote…mail in or other #california And yes I’d prefer ending gerrymandering everywhere but enough of Republican and supreme court games on #votingrights

i wrote a paper on Machiavelli’s The Prince, drunk on chianti after a night dancing in Florence falling asleep and waking to another inkblot on pensione sheets too embarrassed to look at the returned graded paper, i tossed it back in the US i found out i got a citation for the paper/course F* AI

between sea and cliff, tumbling into wet, I find a crackled bottle with paper inside reading “better watch the waves” © Rick Ehling ✍️10/08/2025 📷 09/2018 #tankathursday (message) #tanka #fortfunston #SanFrancisco #thePacific #GGNRA

walking Fall’s forest with Spring’s ghosts - fallen leaves crack echo and whisper © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/06/2025 #dailyhaikuprompt (ghost) #Haiku 🍂

#SFSidewalkHaiku #233 october’s sunset with poppies still answering setting seeds for Spring © Rick Ehling ✍️ 10/06/2025 📷 09/15 🌱 #California #dailyhaikuprompt (seedlings) #Haiku

“More than 80 percent of voters want to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Democrats are demanding must be part of any spending deal before they will allow it to move, according to a new poll from KFF.” #trumpshutdown #GOPshutdown #healthcareisahumanright #taxtherich 🩺 #ACA 🇺🇸 🎁