Today I am still giving thanks, as I seem do every day, for just being alive. Surviving the wonderful food served yesterday adds to the wonder or survival.
Apparently lots of people have found that turkey is is not 'green' enough in today's world. I was not among them since I did not have to cook and was perfectly happy eating anything served.
There are three possibilities for the day after Thanksgiving; 1) a day of rest, 2) a typical day of work, 3) the masochistic ritual of Black Friday. I prefer a fourth alternative and am going into hiding until after Christmas.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
USELESS QUIZZES
What finger are you? I'm a 'pinky'
What mythological creature are you? I'm a Chimera.
When I go to a Chinese restaurant, I'm a Snake
Speaking of useless things...the dollar has hit a new low. Bush has made life better in lots of other places but seems to have made Bin Laden's prediction (that he would ruin the US economy) true. With the able assistance of our President, he has succeeded nobly.
What mythological creature are you? I'm a Chimera.
When I go to a Chinese restaurant, I'm a Snake
Speaking of useless things...the dollar has hit a new low. Bush has made life better in lots of other places but seems to have made Bin Laden's prediction (that he would ruin the US economy) true. With the able assistance of our President, he has succeeded nobly.
FRUIT
Our local markets feature pomegranates this season. Many have never seen nor eaten one and don't buy. As a kid, I would buy one and take it to a Saturday movie matinée...very messy to eat, even at home, impossible in the dark.
My clothes looked bloodied on the way home, but it sure beat buying popcorn. If you are interested in this fruit, follow directions on how to get to eat it.
Our earlier culture produced another, shameful Strange Fruit. I loved the song, especially in the angst of late teen age and when I hadn't the foggiest idea what it meant. The music was soulful and Billie Holiday was at her best, vocally. I recall with shock my discovery that the strange fruit were lynched bodies. The lyrics were quite clear for someone who could take them in. I obviously was not ready to comprehend.
In addition to Pomegranate, a gift of Nature, and man's Strange Fruit, we have Ugli fruit.
This is a citrus, native to Jamaica, and is sometimes known as
unique fruit.
As if Nature and Man isn't strange enough, we also have this anomaly. Looks like a fruit, acts like a fruit, but is a nut (the Cashew you see on the end of it). I bought a wooden one, thinking it was a strange pepper and commented loudly, as I am prone to do, prompting the salesperson to inform me it's real identity.
What fun to know something in trivia...hardly my strong suit.
My clothes looked bloodied on the way home, but it sure beat buying popcorn. If you are interested in this fruit, follow directions on how to get to eat it.
Our earlier culture produced another, shameful Strange Fruit. I loved the song, especially in the angst of late teen age and when I hadn't the foggiest idea what it meant. The music was soulful and Billie Holiday was at her best, vocally. I recall with shock my discovery that the strange fruit were lynched bodies. The lyrics were quite clear for someone who could take them in. I obviously was not ready to comprehend.
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
This is a citrus, native to Jamaica, and is sometimes known as
unique fruit.
As if Nature and Man isn't strange enough, we also have this anomaly. Looks like a fruit, acts like a fruit, but is a nut (the Cashew you see on the end of it). I bought a wooden one, thinking it was a strange pepper and commented loudly, as I am prone to do, prompting the salesperson to inform me it's real identity.
What fun to know something in trivia...hardly my strong suit.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
WATCHING THE LEAVES FALL
Once someone told me he was bored, just sitting, watching the grass grow. Today, sitting at the computer, I'm watching the yellowish maple leaves fall, trying to decide if it is snow or rain falling. I think it is sleet, pushing me into hunker-down mode, wishing it was spring. Neighbors have piled leaves all along the sidewalks, which the town is supposed to vacuum up. One year it rained and froze the piles for the entire winter. My mind goes back and pictures the annoyance it was then, assuming it the same this year.
There is a black roof top on a garage, two houses behind me, speckled with yellow leaves, gradually filling like a puzzle. Every once and a while a breeze blows more leaves down, covering more of the roof. Ah, that white stuff is beginning to accumulate. The temperature is 38 degrees. I tell the white stuff to melt! Like our current Administration, it ignores me and keeps piling up until the roof is now all white. The color of the leaves has gone just as our Autumn is fading.
The TV tells me that this is one of the busiest travel days, listing all the negatives of travel. I hunker down more and wrap myself in warm clothing, grateful that I don't have to fight the world outside right now. As I watch the talking heads on TV, misleading us all with their biases and misinformation, I revel that this is just the first snow, on fairly warm ground, rather than cyclone, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, wildfire or blizzard.
There is a black roof top on a garage, two houses behind me, speckled with yellow leaves, gradually filling like a puzzle. Every once and a while a breeze blows more leaves down, covering more of the roof. Ah, that white stuff is beginning to accumulate. The temperature is 38 degrees. I tell the white stuff to melt! Like our current Administration, it ignores me and keeps piling up until the roof is now all white. The color of the leaves has gone just as our Autumn is fading.
The TV tells me that this is one of the busiest travel days, listing all the negatives of travel. I hunker down more and wrap myself in warm clothing, grateful that I don't have to fight the world outside right now. As I watch the talking heads on TV, misleading us all with their biases and misinformation, I revel that this is just the first snow, on fairly warm ground, rather than cyclone, earthquake, tornado, hurricane, wildfire or blizzard.
Monday, November 19, 2007
WINTER IN NEW ENGLAND
My resistance to cold is blamed by me on my Mediterranean heritage, accuracy aside. A change in temperature to just one degree lower can make my teeth chatter. I can find more reasons to stay at home than a kid in school whose teacher doesn't buy 'the dog ate my homework' excuse. Today is the fourth day, so far, in which I have not set foot out my front door. Necessity, like the Grim Reaper, will drag me out today as it did for every day of my life in which my work was not in my home.
Thinking begins about when I went on vacation (in weather like this) to somewhere sunny and warm. I left in winter clothes, with thickened blood in my veins, getting thicker, as I traveled to the airport to depart for my destination in the sunny South. I arrive where it is hot but air-conditioned indoors. As I melt, waiting for my blood to thin, I constantly wonder why I am here and not home with my toys, where the thermostat maintains a constant temperature. It takes almost the whole time I am there for my blood to adjust. I cling to any air-conditioned place and try to stay out of the sun. As a tourist, small children grab at me, trying to sell me junk for a small cost. The amount of help a sale to me would bring is like spooning the ocean out with a teaspoon but my guilt level is raised as I see the poverty they must endure. I invariably buy some small thing from the most polite and pitiful child and try then fend off the scores which follow like locusts. The better stores tease with luxuries I can ill afford and would have no place to wear. Since I don't sun bathe or gamble, the choices of things to do (other than shop) are limited.
Air-conditioned bus tours are a first option, though quite interest-challenged. I don't really care to see how the rich live in their second mansions, which seems to be the main attraction in the Bahamas other than a view of the ports below where the rich moor their yachts, viewed from the highest point on the Island.
After a few days my blood compensates for the heat. I am forced to cram everything I brought, (now expanded from the heat, no doubt) into my baggage with the souvenirs I have brought to prove that I was thinking about people while I was gone. I will depart with totally inadequate protection from the cold, in which my thinned out blood will screech at me with discomfort when I finally reach my local airport. If I am lucky I will not be forced to stand in the freezing air for too long before the transport back to my normal life in the New England winter. With more luck I will not have to shovel too much snow and can do most of my shopping over the Internet, as usual. I can then spend my time looking at the pictures I took and remember what it was like to be too warm.
Thinking begins about when I went on vacation (in weather like this) to somewhere sunny and warm. I left in winter clothes, with thickened blood in my veins, getting thicker, as I traveled to the airport to depart for my destination in the sunny South. I arrive where it is hot but air-conditioned indoors. As I melt, waiting for my blood to thin, I constantly wonder why I am here and not home with my toys, where the thermostat maintains a constant temperature. It takes almost the whole time I am there for my blood to adjust. I cling to any air-conditioned place and try to stay out of the sun. As a tourist, small children grab at me, trying to sell me junk for a small cost. The amount of help a sale to me would bring is like spooning the ocean out with a teaspoon but my guilt level is raised as I see the poverty they must endure. I invariably buy some small thing from the most polite and pitiful child and try then fend off the scores which follow like locusts. The better stores tease with luxuries I can ill afford and would have no place to wear. Since I don't sun bathe or gamble, the choices of things to do (other than shop) are limited.
Air-conditioned bus tours are a first option, though quite interest-challenged. I don't really care to see how the rich live in their second mansions, which seems to be the main attraction in the Bahamas other than a view of the ports below where the rich moor their yachts, viewed from the highest point on the Island.
After a few days my blood compensates for the heat. I am forced to cram everything I brought, (now expanded from the heat, no doubt) into my baggage with the souvenirs I have brought to prove that I was thinking about people while I was gone. I will depart with totally inadequate protection from the cold, in which my thinned out blood will screech at me with discomfort when I finally reach my local airport. If I am lucky I will not be forced to stand in the freezing air for too long before the transport back to my normal life in the New England winter. With more luck I will not have to shovel too much snow and can do most of my shopping over the Internet, as usual. I can then spend my time looking at the pictures I took and remember what it was like to be too warm.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
A TRIP DOWN MEET THE PRESS MEMORY LANE
The longer I live, the more I observe world crises, environmental disasters, reflections of man's inhumanity to man, losses, evil in the world, and so much more sorry stuff. Many people have contributed to good, and many to evil. Meet the Press recently celebrated it's 60th anniversary with pictures that raise one's memory of people who came to power before today. Look for the slide show under the Caption of Meet the Press. By viewing the pictures you can watch the lucky ones age. Less lucky, gone through attrition and old age, assassinated or other reasons are seen as they were then Time stands still for John and Robert Kennedy and some others, Indira Ghandi being one of them. Others have grown old before our eyes.
There was a time when corporate owners had a hands-off policy in directing the news. That seems to be lost today when our media has become a free-for-all, biased voice, pushing its own self-serving agendas, politics and candidates. It is reported that "the news channels play different roles within their respective companies that are useful to note in trying to imagine how they might evolve in the future. Fox News is one of the stars of News Corp.'s TV portfolio. CNN is a solid performer for Time Warner, but not an enormous factor. MSNBC, by contrast, contributes little financially to either of its parents, General Electric (the NBC of MSNBC) or Microsoft (the MS). On the one hand, that might suggest MSNBC is in a precarious position, which has led to speculation about its owners' commitment to the channel in the long term. On the other, having multiple platforms to deliver news and other content may be central to both companies' strategies." You can get a more complete report here.
There was a time when corporate owners had a hands-off policy in directing the news. That seems to be lost today when our media has become a free-for-all, biased voice, pushing its own self-serving agendas, politics and candidates. It is reported that "the news channels play different roles within their respective companies that are useful to note in trying to imagine how they might evolve in the future. Fox News is one of the stars of News Corp.'s TV portfolio. CNN is a solid performer for Time Warner, but not an enormous factor. MSNBC, by contrast, contributes little financially to either of its parents, General Electric (the NBC of MSNBC) or Microsoft (the MS). On the one hand, that might suggest MSNBC is in a precarious position, which has led to speculation about its owners' commitment to the channel in the long term. On the other, having multiple platforms to deliver news and other content may be central to both companies' strategies." You can get a more complete report here.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
PLATITUDES
The longer I live, the more my head gets filled with platitudes. Some of them are useful to me and others make no sense. I've never understood the following, for example: Reach for the Stars. Being a relatively cautious and logical person, I know, concretely, it is impossible for me to reach a star and thus do not attempt what I am convinced will be impossible. Keep your face in the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows I've always found the trick to life is to find a way out of the shadows when you can't see the sunshine. A light box works well for me in that literal situation of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Dance like nobody's watching. Lastly, why would I dance as if no one is watching. If I feel like dancing do I really care whether someone is watching or not?
There are some are good rules, like: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Another I find useful is: The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Some are just good quotes to keep in mind, such as: I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires, or another Susan B Anthony quote: Independence is happiness.
Not unlike many others who like to think about and solve problems, I love this Joseph Barbera quote: That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming. Barbera also said, “Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can’t take the process too personally” Platitudes, quotes, or any mnemonics I use to keep my mind aware of the rules that work for me is what keeps me functioning. When I tire of a senior repeating himself, perhaps trying to prove himself still of worth to the world, I remember my mother saying, quietly, in Greek, when my father repeated himself endlessly: Listen to an old man's words, not his flatulence. Another pithy quote from an unknown: (1)Everything depends. (2) Nothing is always (3) Everything is sometimes.
There are some are good rules, like: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Another I find useful is: The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Some are just good quotes to keep in mind, such as: I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires, or another Susan B Anthony quote: Independence is happiness.
Not unlike many others who like to think about and solve problems, I love this Joseph Barbera quote: That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming. Barbera also said, “Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can’t take the process too personally” Platitudes, quotes, or any mnemonics I use to keep my mind aware of the rules that work for me is what keeps me functioning. When I tire of a senior repeating himself, perhaps trying to prove himself still of worth to the world, I remember my mother saying, quietly, in Greek, when my father repeated himself endlessly: Listen to an old man's words, not his flatulence. Another pithy quote from an unknown: (1)Everything depends. (2) Nothing is always (3) Everything is sometimes.
I do not pet strange dogs nor walk between a dog and a hydrant or tree. I do not wrestle with pigs in their home space or sty. Having gained adulthood, I no longer try to be center stage at all times. Once I learned the definition of infirmary, I try to stay out of them. I sleep when I am sleepy, even though it may mean waking up and finding my nose on the computer keyboard. I try to maintain a sense of humor through it all. From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. (Dr. Seuss)
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