Past Blogs

My  mother-in-law, Vera, sent e-mail messages before the computer was invented.  They were called letters, but I recently realized that she probably was one of the inventors of our modern messaging style.

She would write, “The birds messed up the window of the Maverick again this morning. ha ha”. (My mother-in-law was not a lover of wildlife.)  Substitute the smiley face emoticon for the “ha ha” and you have a classic e-mail or Facebook entry.

Another example: “I’ve been grocery shopping at 5:00 AM lately. ha ha”. The translation to that would be “It’s been 100 degrees in Tucson every day and I need to get the ice cream home early or it will melt.”

Vera also was in the vanguard of universal communication. She regarded every letter, to whomever it was addressed, to be available to everyone in the universe. This concept was a shock to me. In my family, a letter was an extremely private missive to be opened and read only by the person whose name was on the envelope. To violate this was the equivalent of a mortal sin.

My mother-in-law kept her mail next to her recliner. She would cheerfully pass around letters for her visitors to peruse. She would also include other people’s letters when she mailed her own letters to us. In other words, she had attachments. I quickly understood that when I wrote to her, I also was writing to the world at large. My letter would go viral.

When I started doing e-mail, my husband, an IT guy, wisely emphasized that I should regard absolutely nothing that I wrote on my computer as private. “I know,” I told him, “your mom taught me that many years ago.”

Post Script: Vera did get a Web TV, a gift from her techie grandchildren, when she was in her eighties. Although she had never typed in her life, she took to it like that proverbial duck to water. ha ha 🙂

Sex, faith and relaxation are three things that can’t be brought on by hard work. Perseverance in these matters yields extremely bad results; in fact, no results but frustration.

I fail spectacularly at relaxation. Throughout my life various doctors have said to me,  “Learn to relax.” I simply reply, “I’ll give you a million dollars if you don’t think of pink elephants.” If they laugh, they’re hired.

Note that I am not talking about sleep, something that I usually do very well at night and which I know is vital to health. I have not, however, taken any naps since I gave them up at age two. Why would I want to sleep during the day when so many interesting things are going on? Unfortunately, neither my kindergarten nor my first grade teachers shared that view.

Some people excel at being low key and some of us excel at being more like the Energizer Bunny…we’re wired. I probably couldn’t work with one hundred kindergartners at a time if I were a laid back personality.

If relaxation were contagious, I would be in the right company to catch it. My husband tried to snooze in the shower one morning and, luckily, woke up before he crashed. He can take a little cat nap anytime and anyplace. And I also live with the best cat nappers of all, the felines with whom we share our house. Cats have elevated relaxation into a fine art, sleeping an average of fifteen hours a day.

Despite all these splendid role models, I don’t think anyone should place any bets on my chances of becoming relaxed. Vive la difference!

Contrary to the charming tall tale, Paul Bunyan’s footsteps did not hollow out the Great Lakes. The glaciers of the last Ice Age are responsible for the Lakes’s creation. Huge advancing glaciers acted like bulldozers and scooped out the lake beds; retreating, melting glaciers flooded the depressions.

All winter long, we have been watching ice shelves build up along the shore of Lake Michigan and icebergs float around according to the whims of the wind. But last Wednesday morning was starkly different; absolutely nothing was moving as far as we could see in every direction. We felt as if we had gone to bed in Wisconsin and gotten up in the Antarctic.

What our eyes told us about the totally frozen state of our immense Lake was confirmed later in a news report. The Great Lakes are 91 per cent frozen, a record breaker. Forecasters expect the number to reach 98 per cent in a day or two. We are living in an eerily quiet world. The ever present sound of the waves has been silenced by the ice.

We noted another previously unseen phenomenon. Some of the ice in the Lake was bright turquoise, a color of ice we only had seen previously in the Alaskan glaciers.

Every living thing around here…..people, animals and even the plants….seems to be in a supercharged state of waiting for the first chink in winter’s icy armor. We are all ready, even though the thaw might require some ark building.

Garrison Keillor describes our situation perfectly. “We don’t do hobby winters up here,” he recently quipped.

“I don’t think we’re going to see many bright colors outside for about three months,” I remarked to my art students after they returned from winter break. We were already deeply into winter with gray skies, dirty snowbanks and the total lack of the color green.

“So we will be looking at art from the Caribbean Islands and Africa for our inspiration,” I continued. “If we can’t have bright colors and flowers outside, we will create our own inside.” Our subject matter revolved around vividly painted Caribbean buses, Spiderman Anancy stories from both Africa and the islands, colorful market days and African patterns and animals.

I had my younger students try balancing a basket of fake oranges, bananas and a toy chicken on their heads to get the feel of bringing home the groceries Caribbean style. As they were attempting this feat, the school’s young principal walked through the classroom door.  We invited her to give it a try. She made it across the entire room with total grace and the full basket on her head.

To celebrate Youth Art Month and the fact that flowers are blooming somewhere on the planet, we present this virtual gallery of our art. Happy viewing! Click here for a video version.

I do not like extremely windy days. The exhilaration and excitement of a windy day when everything is in motion provides joy to many people. All I experience is a distinct feeling of unease.

The pioneers in the Plains states had wind problems as well. Living in sod houses in a flat, treeless landscape with temperature extremes and recurring, relentless winds, some settlers were driven to the point of insanity.

Windy days also serve as a reminder of the power of nature. Exhilarating winds are capable of turning into tornadoes, hurricanes and dust storms. I will never be found at a hurricane party.

Loving science, I have tried to develop a more positive attitude toward wind. It is nature’s gardener, bringing down old and diseased trees and pruning limbs. Wind is also a fabulous sculptor carving rocks and creating magnificent sand dunes. Without the wind, one of my favorite places, Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan, would not exist.

Wind fills sails, waves flags, dries clothes, pollinates plants, pumps water and makes waves. Wind energy is clean, renewable and plentiful.

The winds have been howling all winter and March will soon arrive like a lion. Personally, I am looking forward to it going out like a lamb. I am a hopeless lover of peace and quiet.

Image Credit: signal.federatedmedia.net/thursday-signal-which-way-is-the-wind-blowing-yes/