Sunrise

My daughter took this picture a few mornings ago. She was at work as the sun came up and she thought it was beautiful so she took a picture and shared it with the world.

What is it about sunrises that speaks to us so deeply? The promise of another day? The beauty of the colored sky? The return of light after darkness? The awesome expanse of grandeur slowly spreading across the sky and surrounding us? The beauty of a new beginning?

I admit that I don’t know. Don’t have a clue.

I just know that I’m glad my daughter shared this picture with the world because perhaps it’s all of those things jumbled together and because of her we too can experience that lovely morning.

Can’t have too many beautiful sunrises.

Smoke Knows How To Cat

I admit it. I’m a cat person. And a dog person and a horse person and more.

But for the last few years my life companion has been feline so my animal musings these days tend towards cats.

I love a cat on my lap and Smoke isn’t shy about telling me when he needs ‘lap’ time. He’s also not shy about telling me when he’s hungry, even if it’s two in the morning. Especially if it’s two in the morning. And I’ve not needed an alarm clock since he came to live with me because he makes sure I don’t oversleep.

In other words, he’s an expert on being a cat. If he ran for president of the House Cat Society, he’d have a good chance of winning. He knows every nook and cranny of his kingdom as well as the idiosyncrasies of his subjects.

But I love him to pieces. Including when he’s asleep. Maybe especially when he’s asleep. Like in the picture. He’s so cute.

And so quiet.

Onion Rings

I love onion rings. Love them. Actually, I love anything fried but onion rings hold a special place in my heart.

But there’s a problem with onion rings and I’m throwing this out for any entrepreneur who wants to start a new business.

The one and only problem with onion rings is that whomever makes them seems to always use huge onions. This is a problem because, as anyone who eats as many onion rings as I do knows, it’s nearly impossible to eat just a part of an onion ring. Impossible to bite down and just get a bite sized portion because if you try, what happens is that the onion slides out and drops to the ground (ugh!) leaving just the fried coating. And you can’t fit an entire very large onion ring in your mouth in one bite. (Unless you are willing to look like a greedy fool.) So you are left with the coating and no onion.

Maybe it’s old age, but I simply can’t eat a whole, huge onion ring. Sooooo — like I said —- if anyone out there starts making fried onion rings with onions that are small enough to eat in one bite, I’ll be first in line to get some.

What Month Is This?

I woke up this morning and looked out the window and stared in shock. Why? Because the world was white. Again. It snowed last night. It actually snowed. Inches.

Yesterday the snow was almost gone. Some in the woods where the trees are thick enough that the sun doesn’t reach and, of course, the places where snowplows left huge drifts. But that’s all.

This morning, though, it’s white out. Again.

It looked like it looked last week. Again.

How did this happen?!

After the first shock of all that whiteness when the world had already turned brown, I realized why.

It’s March.

March is the month when we can have green shoots coming up through the dirt one day and blizzards that strand motorists the next. Yesterday was a day of tow trucks pulling motorists out of ditches a bit west of us. You know – west – the direction from which our weather comes.

So I should have known it was coming. I shouldn’t have been surprised that the world was white today.

More to the point, I should have just reminded myself that it’s March and not been surprised by anything at all.

Pandemic Personalities

The pandemic has divided people into two groups. One group likes to be with people. The other group would be happy as hermits.

I belong in the latter group. I’d make a good hermit. I loved moving to the wilderness where my neighbors were trees and wild animals. I loved the slow pace of life, following the sun to know what time it was, watching the snow pile up in the winter, and just generally listening to the silence and taking as long as need be to understand what it was telling me.

When the pandemic came into our lives and with it, lockdown, my family reminded me, laughing as they spoke, that the world was now the way I’d always thought it should be. Private. Quiet. Slow. And isolated.

I’ve been reading the thoughts of others in lockdown and I’ve discovered that many people reacted the same way I did. They loved it. They still love it. Though we hermits can’t wait for the pandemic to be done with we wish that solitude would never end.

Because some people are public people.

Others are private.

The Other Side Of The Story

The other day I listened to a podcast giving ‘the other side’ of a well-publicized trial. It was with something close to shock that I realized that yes, there actually was another side, one that the newspapers for the most part, didn’t report.

Hearing the things that most of the media did not report made me remember that newspapers and other media outlets aren’t in the business of providing news. They are in the business of making money.

That’s a whole different thing.

They report what will sell the most newspapers or garner the most views and, therefore, make the most money.

Getting real news from the media would be sooooo easy and soooo nice for lazy people like me. But it isn’t likely to happen.

The thing is, I know how to do my own research.

So I guess I just have to remind myself to get busy and check things out for myself every time the news media says whatever it says.

Hmmmmm – Think for yourself.

Isn’t that what wise people have been recommending just about forever?

I like butterflies. I was overjoyed when we noticed a patch of milkweeds on the edge of our yard and decided not to cut them because they are where Monarch butterflies live.

We watch the Monarchs. It’s wonderful.

But even as I am glad for Monarchs, I must admit that I prefer the other butterflies. The really huge, gorgeous ones. Yellow and green and red and every color in the rainbow.

Actually, I don’t know all the colors that butterflies can be. I just know that I love bright, beautiful colors and I also love butterflies.

I put them on my handmade cards. I look for pictures of them. And I watch them in real life.

I guess I’m just like almost everyone else on Earth.

The Irish

Top ‘o’ the mornin’ to ye all.

I’m practicing my Irish brogue.

When I was a kid, my father told me we were part Irish.

Not much, he said, but I figure even a little bit is enough so I can wear green in March and talk ‘Irish.’

I’ll keep practicing.

Thursday — Questions

How long will it take to get humans on Mars?

This is not a rhetorical question.

Not too long ago, I was gifted with a piece of property on Mars. I have a deed and everything and it’s posted on my wall, complete with the signature of the Official Land Registrar, John Carter, of course, so that means it’s for real.

The thing is, I’m not getting any younger and I want to inspect that property myself or at the very least, have someone else inspect it for me. That means getting to Mars pronto!

I’m thinking of emailing Elon Musk and telling him to WORK FASTER!

Wednesday — People

During the years that we owned a resort on a wilderness lake, our only neighbor was an elderly lady who owned many hundreds of acres of lakeshore, including a point that jutted out into the lake and was used by both fishermen and duck hunters as a place to stop for a shore lunch.

She didn’t mind them using her property and she never complained about the litter they left behind, which was considerable.

Every autumn just before the snow started to fly, she’d drag a few huge garbage bags and a rake through the forest to that point – quite a long walk for an elderly woman — and clean up after those thoughtless fishermen and hunters.

Perhaps they didn’t realize that trash accumulates even in the forest. Perhaps they didn’t think about an elderly woman making her way through the forest dragging their garbage behind her. Perhaps they didn’t care.

She could have posted a ‘no trespassing’ sign. But she didn’t. Instead she let them use her property and kept it clean herself. Every year, as long as she was physically able.

We never helped because we didn’t know what she was doing. Because she never told anyone. She just did it.

When we found out what she’d been doing all those years, she simply said she didn’t mind spending a day cleaning her property. It’s what homemakers do and the forest was her home.

I think the world could use more people with that philosophy.