Wednesday Quotes on Equality – Rozoff
17
06, 2020
15
06, 2020
Ouch That Hurts!
During a recent storm, we heard the dreaded loud bang in the wee hours of the morning and lost power. The transformer in our back yard had blown.
Again.
It happens with every storm because the shrubs are so tall and thick. Wind blows limbs against the wire and trips the switch.
At daylight, power company line workers macheted through and reset the transformer switch.
Same thing happened the next week when another windy storm blew through and knocked out power again.
To give you an idea how tall the shrubs were, the transformer (now visible) was surrounded.
The privacy is nice, but electricity is better.
My brother brought over his pole power saw and removed the top five feet. Our backyard was covered with the tree branches.
Limbs were still too close to the wires.
Now that we could reach them, we dug out our smaller power saw and finished the job.
That’s when we discovered the killer vine.
Let me tell you, those thorns hurt like the dickens when they poke you.
Just ask little Buster who, in his quest to help, got one tangled in the hair on his ear. He yelped in pain from the vicious thorns.
I clipped the vine loose and the vet cut the remaining piece out for us. No way could we hold Buster still to remove it ourselves.
It’s a sneaky, sneaky vine.
You cut it down and it pops back up attaching itself to the shrubs, the fence posts, anything, and everything creating a deadly tangled mess.
Dowsing weed killer does no good. It seems to thrive and reappear.
The war is on. I now suit up like a jousting knight and trim the vine whenever I see it spring up. Wish me luck.
12
06, 2020
Lessons from the Storm
A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
We have an amaryllis in our front yard. This year it has bloomed twice and is particularly lovely.
Last week we had a horrible hail storm. Beekeeper Brian was at work, so I was home alone and it was loud and scary.
As I watched out the front window, the gutter came down.
It was disconcerting to say the least.
The insurance adjuster came by yesterday, and we are getting a new roof and gutter.
My only question to him was – can we take the gutter all the way down now? He assured me that was fine as he had pictures.
It will be a relief not to have that reminder hanging off the roof.
Meanwhile, when I walk through the living room I can see out the window the fallen gutter and the amaryllis.
I realized this morning how hard it is to look past the gutter to see the amaryllis. The gutter is much closer and represents a very scary time. But if I focus really hard, I can see the amaryllis which is quite beautiful and makes me smile.
This is very much how life is right now. The things that are closest – the pandemic, the civil unrest – are scary and hard to see past. But if I focus really hard, I can trust there will be beauty beyond it all.
For now, I will choose to look at the amaryllis.
10
06, 2020
8
06, 2020
What to do while in Coronavirus Chaos
We’ve been cooped up now for weeks and, while restrictions are loosening, we’re still stuck with time on our hands.
But, on the plus side, confinement has given us opportunities. These are things I’ve done:
- Learned technologies like Zoom, Skype, Facebook video, Facetime, and so many others.
- Attended online tours, lectures, and conferences from the comfort of home in my pj bottoms.
- Read new authors and re-read favorites.
- Watched documentaries, movies, and series and revisit favorites.
- Discovered new hobbies and lots of new recipes.
- Toured familiar and faraway places online.
- Organized and sorted junk drawers, pantries, garages, closets, bookshelves, photos, etc.
- Work in my yards weeding and trimming. Planted flowers and mini-gardens.
COVID-19 continues to lurk about. New cases are on the rise again. We need to do what we can to curb the continued spread.
Practicing social distancing and wearing masks is a major part. Staying home is still the safest.
Still, finding energy and focus during the coronavirus chaos can be hard. Staying positive and keeping yourself occupied is a key to getting through.
Maybe you haven’t been able to do some of the things on my list above yet. Why not try your hand at a few?
5
06, 2020
Stream of Consciousness
A blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
I really enjoyed my English classes in high school. I remember reading James Joyce. I don’t remember exactly what we read, only that he used a technique called stream of consciousness.
The way I remember it being explained is writing as your mind wanders, like right before you fall asleep. You just move from one topic to the next with only a thread of connection.
I believe the children’s version of stream of consciousness is seen in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff.
I thought about this as I got ready to go to work this morning.
I opened the fridge to make my salad for lunch and remembered I needed to clean out the produce drawer. We have some peaches in a brown sack that needed to go into the drawer.
So I cleaned the drawer and moved the peaches.
Then as I moved the peaches I saw my jar of sour dough starter. That reminded me that I was taking some to a friend this evening so I took it out to feed it.
Then I remembered I wanted to take some blueberry bars to our community group tonight also. I got them out of the back fridge and moved them into a different container that would fit in the front fridge where I could see it.
Then I remembered the teacher I am helping at school right now asked me to bring my paper shredder to school so I went to get it. When I unplugged it, I saw all the dirt and dust and dog hair that had been under it so I cleaned the floor in that area.
I loaded it into my car and came back into the kitchen to get my lunch and my water. When I opened the freezer to fill my cup with ice, I realized the ice trays needed to be emptied.
At this point I needed to get to work and I was afraid if I emptied the ice trays, I would remember something else so I went to work.
So instead of saying I got sidetracked I say I had a “stream of consciousness morning.” It sounds so much better.
3
06, 2020
1
06, 2020
Quarantine Isn’t Something New
These COVID-19 pandemic days of self-isolation have made quarantine a common part of our vocabulary.
But did you know the word’s been around since the 9th century?
Its quad root dates to the Proto-Indo-European or PIE language kwetwer, and linguists trace the PIE language to between 4500 BC to 2500 BC. We hear quad in words like quadruple and quadrilateral.
Quadraginta is the Latin word for forty. Quarantena referred to the desert where Jesus fasted for 40 days. In both Italian and French, the word also applied to Lent.
Today we we use the word to mean a period of isolation to prevent the spread of contagious disease.
The use of isolation traces to Middle Ages and Renaissance and the plague-ridden 14th century when Venice required the crews of ships from afflicted countries to remain at anchor offshore for forty days before docking.
According to The Visual Thesaurus, being quarantined isn’t all bad. There are famous cases of creativity that have risen from periods of quarantine.
- Shakespeare wrote King Lear
- Isaac Newton worked on his theories of optics and gravitation
- Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron, a book about people telling each other stories during quarantine
And stay-at-home authors create word origin searches like this to blog about. Which, if you were honest, is probably more than you wanted to know about quarantine.
What have you done while you stayed at home or quarantined during this COVID-19 pandemic?
29
05, 2020
Cuddle Ducks
A Blog by Chicken Wrangler Sara
This transition from house ducks to outside ducks has been the smoothest ever. I was concerned, as always, that the smaller ducks would have to go through an initiation before they were accepted into the flock.
This did not happen.
I started by putting the ducks in the wire cage in the pen with their new friends.
Usually it takes a fair amount of time for the littles to venture out. These ducks are particularly attached to each other so they went out together.They spent a few minutes cuddling and surveying their surroundings.
It reminded me how important it is to have a friend when facing a scary situation.
Before long they were eating and drinking. I could rest easy for the rest of the day.
I went to check on them before I went to bed. I was going to put them in the coop but I found them cuddling in the middle of all the big ducks.
They were safe at home.
27
05, 2020
May Flower Quotes – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
About the Graphic
Hubby Dear snapped this picture of a Texas Star Hibiscus with our digital camera. He has an excellent eye for capturing floral images. Don’t you think?
About the Quote
The word amen is a Hebrew word used frequently in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. According to Bible Study Tools, the verb form is found more than one hundred times in the Old Testament and nearly seventy times in the Gospels.The Common English translations are “surely”, “truly”, and “so be it.”
People around the world say the world in personal prayer and the liturgy, affirming what is spoken or prayed. I like to think, like Holmes, that Nature also says amen or so be it with every bloom.