Monday, September 5, 2016

What? It's Almost Over?


Summer, I hardly knew you.
When you were a kid, did you want summer to never end or were you anxious to go back to school?
I was on the side of wanting summer to last forever. Well, I would let winter in there, for I loved the snow too.
Then I did. Now I’m not racing down hill on a slid.
Oh but the summers, three whole months--heaven. 

Oh, later on when I was a teenager I had to pick cherries and peaches and apricots, but that was preferable to school. And I could ride my horse.
With my affection for horses, you can see why I must wish on a white horse now and again.

Want to have a conversation?



My horse wasn’t white and truth be known I prefer non-white horses, but they can be quite spectacular when cleaned up and gorgeous, and they are for wishing upon.

This is the only known surviving  picture of Boots and Joyce




Guess I’m waxing nostalgic, realizing that life changes and the body changes, and I’m not young anymore. 
Youth, you didn’t hang around long enough.

Richard Bach, author of Illusions and Jonathan Livingston Seagull said, “If you wonder if your mission on earth is over if you’re alive it isn’t.”

So here I am attempting to follow my mission, putting one foot in front of the other, and letting my fingers do the talking.

Odd that I didn’t like school, for I love reading, and learning, but being penned up for 6 hours a day, plus preparation and riding the school bus or walking to school—that shot the entire day.
I have mentioned before that one of my pet peeves is homework which ought to be called school work, but isn’t, because it is school work brought home.
Let kids be kids.
While I am on the subject of learning I found that the Barnes and Noble bookstore is kept afloat by selling adult coloring books, a new craze.
Walking through Barnes and Noble the other day I noticed that they are filling the tables with the classics—Hemingway, Steinbeck. Great, read those, but I wondered where the new Steinbeck's are. 



Ray Bradbury said, “If you can read you have an entire education.”

Thursday, August 25, 2016

I'm Dumb

But not this dumb


#Jon Morrow said if I’m not getting massive traffic on my blog I’m dumb.

He gives away massive amounts of free stuff. If I want it, however, I must sign in with my email address. He must have me on his counter at least 20 times. Sneaky.

And then driving my ten-year-old grandson (eleven in October) to our house today and hearing about how he could make a paper thin computer keyboard proved Morrow right. I am dumb.

The paper-thin keyboard could be made with graphite. Graphite is an electricity conductor, pencil lead is graphite. It’s a little more complicated than that if one draws a circuit board with a pencil, and with wires, clips, a ground—human fingers work as the ground—and a  USB port one could type on the paper. That bit of news was followed by states of matter of which people think there is three, solid, liquid and gas, but he said there are four. The fourth is plasma, that is a state of being. And Star Wars Light Sabers are not made of light, he said, but of plasma. Next, he told me how they made the robot BB 8 in the latest Star Wars movie.  BB 8 is round and rolls, and if his head fell, my grandson says, he would still work. The body and head work together with magnets. And Tesla could create earthquakes, and stop his own…

My brain is fried.

Except, somewhere in the recesses of that brain, I am smarter now.
.
This week we found five acres and a cute little house we liked, decided to put in an offer the next day figuring it would go fast. The following day the owner chose one of the three offers that came in that day. And it was not us. What? One buyer came in with half the money for a downpayment. The nerve.

And here I had already mentally put in a brand-new kitchen.

I grieved for about 10 minutes, then said, “Okay great master, you have something better in store.” And I am relieved. I can breathe easy again. Sometimes the Great Spirit just has to watch out for me.
  
What did I want to talk about today?

Oh yes, I wanted to ask about this conundrum…

Happiness.

Most everybody says they want to be happy.

People search for happiness.

They pray for happiness.

They read Oprah about it.

Many write about it.

Our constitution says that everyone has a right to pursue happiness (not necessarily to have it) which implies that it is something everybody wants.

Why then are most stories about suffering?

If someone is just happy they are boring.

Give someone a dreaded sickness, allow them to overcome it, and people lap it up.

The hero must struggle.

The hero must overcome obstacles, he must work for it. If he just went with the flow and life was good, nobody would want to hear about it.

Well, we might ask him this: “How did you do that?” But if it came easy it would be suspect.

Please explain this to me.


I’m dumb.