Daily Create: The Last Penny

The Last Penny

The prompt for this morning’s Daily Create was about a Lost Penny, but I found myself thinking that with the penny being discontinued, there might be some time when there is one last penny. Somehow, that thought led to this story.

He was at his usual corner. Guitar tuned up and voice, warm. A little bucket was set up in front of him. People passing by, some making eye contact. Some, not. A few would toss some paper bills into his bucket. One little girl, about five, listened with rapture to his street corner serenade. He smiled at her and sang the next song directly to this little audience of one. When he was done, she whispered something to her father, who nodded, and the little girl came up, reached out her hand. A shiny copper penny fit snug in the palm of her hand. “The last one,” is all she said, and he took the coin and tucked it into his shirt. As he got ready for the next song, he felt the weight of the gift in his pocket.

Peace (raining like pennies),
Kevin

Music: Wander With Grace

I’ve been slowly recording some new songs and putting them out as singles via Bandcamp as opposed to gathering them together into an album. I might still do that – put the new songs under one roof. But for now, it’s a trickle of music. The latest is this one – Wander With Grace.

Peace (and melody),
Kevin

Daily Create: Childhood Tree Fort

Cheshire Treehouse

The morning prompt for DS106 Daily Create was to sketch a recollection. I immediately thought of the tree fort that the older kids in my neighborhood built when I was a little kid and how it became a refuge for a few waves of cohorts of kids in our apartment complex. I remember playing Spin The Bottle in there, and reading comics and such. It’s also the place where a hammer fell from the grasp of the one of the older kids and clocked me on the head, as I was mulling about at the base of the tree. I blacked out but seemed OK. Things were different in those days. No one saw the need to bring me to the doctor or hospital or anything. (Did we even tell my parents? I don’t recall.)

Peace (on the branches),
Kevin

Internet Phone Book Explorations: Notes Art

(This is one of a series of periodic explorations of the Indie Web via the Internet Phone Book project. I am on a personal exploration but also hope to lift the profile of sites I have found.)

Chris Silverman’s Notes Art site (“explorations in iphone notes”), which I found via the Internet Phone Book project, is a beautiful collection of artwork made with the Notes app on an iPhone. Honestly, I don’t know how they do it. I have the Notes app and all I have are words and PDFs. How in the world are they making such wonderful works of art? (Making a note to Self in my Notes app (ha!) — investigate this further).

As I took my time wandering through Silverman’s art, I starting to think, these works of small art are like the covers of New Yorker magazine. The artwork evokes a range of emotions in me — from curiosity to connection. The site is a little museum of art.

(via https://notes.art/work/2026-02-02/)

Since I wanted to know more, I clicked on Silverman’s blog and began reading more of their artistic intentions, and found a post that indicates that making art is a refuge. That’s something I can understand myself. I often lose myself in making music, pulling a curtain on the world around me so that at least for a bit of time, I get lost in the act of making art. (I also found a video about the Notes Art project, from a few years ago.)

Silverman writes, in what seems to me to be the aftermath of the recent US elections, in a grapple with how to deal with the reality of this world we find ourselves living in, particularly in the toxic era of social media platforms run by people like f-ing Musk and f-ing Zuck: “The compromise I made was that while #notesArt might exist on social media, it wasn’t going to be influenced by it. I knew I didn’t have any interest in memes or trying to go viral. I wanted to make and share art, mainly because that was an important aspect of my life that I’d mostly abandoned. Up until that point, whenever anyone asked me if I was working on any cool art projects, I said I didn’t have time. What I didn’t say was that a lot of that time went into scrolling through feeds.”

And then, later in the same post, Silverman adds: “Get offline for a bit. Go somewhere quiet. Walk in the leaves with someone who doesn’t stress you out or consume your energy. Take the time you need to refocus and prepare for doing what comes next.” (What came next is the current political battles against this president, if you ask me).

via https://notes.art/work/2026-01-10/

Later, I wandered back to the Notes Art page once again and got lost for a bit in the art. It was a welcome refuge.

Thank you, Chris, for sharing your art and your words. It feels like we all need constant reminders that our collective small corners of the Internet still have something beautiful to offer, even in this age of rage or chaos. We just need to find those corners, and those people.

Peace (and art),
Kevin

Daily Create: No One Is Here

No One Is Here

I have never used LinkedIn but from what I can tell, it’s becoming an empty space with lots of AI Chatbots running wild (I could be wrong). For the DS106 Daily Create prompt, we were asked to write Broetry, based on an observation of what is being posted on LinkedIn. I felt a strong Samuel Beckett reflex, and my eh, Broem, is more Godot than LinkedIn.

Peace (waiting for it),
Kevin