Weather

Remember Howdy Doody? He had an Indian Princess on his show named,Princess Summer-fall-winter-spring.Even little three and four year olds could name the four seasons, unbeknownest to them, they had been taught. It may have been a few years later that they became fully aware of the meaning of those words.

We all learned the seasons and learned what to expect when the seasons change from one to another. We are now in the early days of Fall and we would expect a cooling down of the temperature. At first the days continue to be reasonably warm since we live in the North Temperate Zone, the average high is somewhere between the sixties and seventies during the day and dropping down to temps between fifty and sixty at night. The days are shorter. In December when winter arrives, we expect it to become colder and colder as we go into January and February, then in March Spring blows in and we experience both warm and cold days and cold nights as we approach Summer. Summer brings extremely hot days and nights!We all pretty much know the drill. Put the heavy clothes away and get out the light weight clothes. However, we can't predict with any accuracy what Fall will bring this year or of what Winter will be like. We have had some disagreeable, even harmful atmospheric conditions in the last few years that have been anomalous. We had a 'freak' mid-western hurricane whose straight line winds wreaked havoc with trees,some structures and thousands of power lines. Many of us went for days without power. It took the city about six or eight months to remove the fallen trees, branches,and other debris from the curbs of the city. Trees that had been standing for more than half a century were torn from the ground. In the following season we had a devestating ice storm that felled many more trees and more power lines and small shrubs and so on. We have had floods in places that have never experienced floods before. This past summer we had so many days in the 90's that we came to expect it. We had days of 90 degree weather in May, for Pete's sake.

The weather has become a 'bone of contention' At first when changes were noticed the meteorologists (some of them) blamed it on El Nino. The local weather was analyzed and compaired to recorded conditions. But eventually the scientists and others took it a few steps further and noticed changes throughout the world and realized it was a global problem. The Polar Ice Cap, is melting, lakes are drying up, even the largest bodies of water have shrunken or whatever its called. They have accumulated a lot of evidence that has convinced them that it is not a cyclical event; they are thinking that it could be anthropogenic. There is undisputed proof that the ozone layer has thinned.

If you can believe this, there are some that have turned the discussion of this anomoly into a political issue! Remarkable!

The Readers that I taught out of in the classroom for many years had many stories about the Indian Tribes and their culture. I'm sure some of you may remember the theme that was often presented in those stories. The Indians taught their young, from the very beginning of life, the importance of taking care of the earth so that the generations that came after them could enjoy the same gifts that they had. The responsibility of the Indians was to leave the Earth as rich as they found it.

I could go on here for a week but I am not informed enough to give any advice as to how to reverse some of the damage but I do know that tearing off the tops of mountains, burning fosil fuels, using aerosol sprays, dumping trash in the rivers and creeks,and ravaging the Rain Forest,etc. are harmful and PERHAPs contribute to(gasp)Global Warming.

I joked with Andrea about perhaps having a pool party on Christmas Eve for the family get together. Sounds absurd but who knows what the temperature will be. Just last month it was 102 degrees here one day and two days later it was 62 degrees. Whoes to say it won't be 85 on Christmas Eve?

Hey you guys, quit poking holes in the Ozone! Ciao

*anthropogenic means, man made.

Technophobia

For almost thirty-five years we've all been living in the era of technology. We're surrounded by it. Internet, e-mail, cell phones, I-Pods, computerized engines in our cars, the microwaves flowing through the atmosphere prompt AT&T to remind us daily, on our HD TV's, that we live in a world of possibilities. Yes, we do!

Just to list a few: we can track our kids,parents, stocks, neighbors, dogs, cats, weather, sports scores, sale items,movie critiques, and a variety of other things just by touching the screen of our i-phones. One of the ads for one of the newest phones shows a mother,that is out shopping, touching a screen on her hand held phone and seeing her young son at the dining room table doing his homework, she asks,"Why are you working in the dark?" With a touch of another image on her phone she turns on the chandelier over the table! How tender!

Another commercial shows a little girl tracking her dog, that seems to be running off on his own pursuits. I'm sure he has a chip inserted into his body.

Texting has become the number one method of communication. A mother was complaining one day about her young daughter that was riding in the back seat of the mother's car with one of her friends. The mother became aware that no conversation was going on, all was quiet in the back seat. She looked into the rear view mirror to see what was going on back there and found that the girls were texting each other. R U in trbl with U'r rents? Spelling has fallen by the wayside.

I always found it to be self satisfying to go into a library or in some cases, go to my own book shelves to seek information.I wanted to become a Renaissance woman. I wanted to be well versed in many fields of knowledge. Searching for knowledge, sometimes just randomly, was an exercise that I throughly enjoyed. I could go back to look at my reference books if the need arose. I looked upon that activity as a pleasure. There is something lacking in simply going to Wikipedia or any other reference engine on the internet to 'read up on it'. Boring and not at all challenging.

I have many reference books, one of them is entitled ,"The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy" sub titled, "What Every American Needs to Know." Perhaps if some of the polititians and some of the voters were to read a few books like that they would not be so prone to make fools of themselves in their every day conversations.(I used to reward my students by reading a passage from one of my books to them. When they worked well they would ask for the reward. They ended up learning many, many facts by the end of the year. Believe it or not they enjoyed it and loved to discuss some of the facts.

I'm wondering how far away we are from having computer chips embedded under our skin, perhaps on the head, then we would not have to carry those infernal i-phones, i-pods, GPA's and other devises with us. It could be called a 'head pod' and it would carry all the information, music, knowledge, etc. We could have a key pad on our fingernails or maybe our teeth,(that would be neat ,we could use our tongue to activate it). Everybody could know where you are at all times, maybe you could establish a connection to the people you wanted to converse with and could have 'hands free' communication. Head to head, so to speak.You could download books onto your chip and just close your eyes and 'read' at all times. The people without head chips could be called block heads. Time marches on!! Ciao

This is not what I set out to write at all!

It's Not Easy Being Me!

As I so frequently say,"It's not easy being me!" Throughout the years those of you who spent a lot of time with me, so often heard me bemoan the fact that I never had any time in my house alone! Doc always worked the afternoon shift (3PM until 11PM)which meant that he left for work at just about the time the kids came home from school. He was in the house half the time and the kids were there the other half. I was never alone in the house. I used to fantasize about the possibilities of what I could do with some alone time. I could sit and do nothing but enjoy some uninterrupted reading time, I could turn the radio up and sing along at the top of my voice, I could eat ice cream out of the container, I could dance to my heart's content, I could take off my clothes and dance around in the nude,scary thought, I could take off my skin and dance around in my bones! The possibilities were endless! Alas, it never happened! Well almost never.

It did happen once in the 1980's Gregg took Doc to a Trinity/St.X game! I had three or four hours to do as I wished! I thought long and hard about it before coming to the decision to get into a bubble bath and just lie back and ponder the imponderables.So I filled the bath tub with steamy hot water and added flowery scented bubbles and slipped into the tub with a sigh of perfect contentment. After what seemed like an hour or so, I arose from my heavenly bower, toweled off and returned to my bedroom to dress. Guess what? I'd been in the tub all of 15 minutes! It seemed like an eternity to me! I didn't know how to relax!

However, time marched on as it is wont to do and I ended up having the house all to myself all of the time. Be careful what you wish for.

There are some up-sides to living alone and some down-sides. The freedom to make all of the decisions regarding the day's activities,food choices, thermostat settings, bed times, and many others. The thermastat wars are over! If I don't want to turn the furnace on yet I don't do it! Nonetheless, I still find myself sort of argueing with myself. "I'm not turning it on yet!"
"Why not?"
"It's barely September!"
"But you're cold!" This goes on and on. I win a few I lose a few.

One of my ingrained habits has me puzzeled though. Every morning when I get up I worry with what to wear. Should I wear my green shirt or my blue, I can't wear the black, I wore that yesterday. Should I wear...wait a minute what does it matter? There are times that I don't see a single person from one week to the next. Why does it matter what I wear? I could just stay in my jammies if I wanted to but then I would feel like a slattern. What if someone DID come to the door unexpectedly? I was so glad when the weather cooled off enough that I could put jeans on. Problem solved, I can just wear my jeans every day. One of the pair of jeans will have to be replaced because over the summer they seemed to have fallen apart. They look like Charlie Chaplan pants, they need a patchin'. Now I just have to choose a fresh shirt each day, although why would it matter if I wore the same shirt two days in a row? Oh,well. I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Actually someone did come to the door unexpectedly once, he knocked, entered, kissed me on the head, called me Mama and went straight over and sat on my sofa. Problem was, I had never seen him before in my life and I ordered him out of my house! Thing is, though, I was dressed very neatly and had my hair combed! If he was expecting to catch me unawares I fooled him! I'm sure the police officers appreciated the fact that I looked respectable. Today,I have on my green shirt and a tan sweater! Oh yeah, and my jeans. I may go out later to empty the trash so in case someone catches a glimps of me they will see that my shirt is a defferent color than it was yesterday.

By the way, what ever happened to 'house dresses'? Not my style. Ciao

Septermber 11, 2001

This is the tenth anniversary of the "9/11" attack on the Trade Buildings in New York City. I could probably not write anything new about what an abomination that attack was. Millions of words have been written about that attack, far better writers than I, have written about it, but still, no person has come up yet with words strong enough to accurately describe or define the act that ripped the mantel of conplacency that we in America lived under. There are no words to aptly describe the evil that is Al-Quaida, no matter how vile, disgusting, obscene, or insulting the words are, they still are not bad enough to express the horror or hell that caused so much suffering for individuals and for the whole country. We cannot forget it!

That having been said, why are the daily papers and the news stations on TV showing us and telling us about the miserable state our country is in at this time? Why aren't we all on the same team? Why aren't we all in this together trying to work together to do what's best for our country? While we are all grieving still, over an outside force trying to distroy our country, why are we all busy calling each other names, rejecting any idea that doesn't originate with the party of our choice, why can't the governing bodies that we elected to speak for us, do their jobs? What is more important, their "jobs" (which they are not doing) or the country that we are all living in? Are they willing to destroy our economy and our country just to prohibit one party or person from being successful? Are they willing to neglect the sick and poor and starving children in our country because, to do otherwize, would diminish their superiority?

They are not bombing our buildings or trying to destroy our cities but their actions are slowly but surely destroying the fabric of America just as the Al-Quaida tried to damage our buildings and the people in them. Is it any worse to destroy the spirits of the jobless and the poor and eventually cause them such hardships that their lives will be shortened, than to fly an airplane into a building and kill lives and dreams along with it? Is it?

Today's news

I've been on this earth for many, many years and I've always been attuned to what is going on in the world. Probably,this is due to the fact that my parents were political people and active in the world around them. They came from a very small town in Ohio but were the grandchildren of Irish immigrants. My mother's family lived on a 1500 acre farm just south of London,O and my dad's dad was the town's only blacksmith. Horses were the mode of transportation in those pre automobile days so Grandpa was kept very busy. By the time I was born, both grandfathers had retired. Maybe because they were the families of immigrants they kept up with the world around them. The country was relatively new to them.

My first memories are of my mother getting a Maytag washing machine and Al Smith running for president. My dad schooled us on the events of the day and faithfully read the newspaper aloud to us each evening. I knew all about the Ku Klux Klan and Herbert Hoover and FDR, prohibition and anti-Catholic propaganda before I even went to kindergarden.

Some of the issues that were dealt with in those days are still on the agendas today and the ones that faded away have been replaced by more volatile issues. The KKK isn't heard about as much, not because of any solutions but because they just went more undercover. Prohibition was ended, not because it accomplished any good but becasue it spawned so much crime and so many gangsters that it was repealed. Anti-Catholosism is still alive and well but the rising distain and distrust of Muslims is taking over.

If you read today's paper you read articles on the very same things that were causing problems 80 years ago and will probably be with us for the next 80 years. If the country doesn't fall of its own weight in the next few years.

The media has pretty much taken over, and the internet and instant reports on everything is the rule of the day.