Greening

We didn’t have an especially cold winter but it is fully into spring now.  Plants and trees that need a bit of time to green up are visibly doing so.  Now, when I look at trees, it is not an illusion that buds and little leaves are there.  They really are.

Lawns are now green, too.  It is really spring.  We went to lunch and neither of us wore a jacket.

Yuck! A leg!

I rarely try to read something that is difficult to pay attention to.   But last evening, reading Oliver Sack’s “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Stories”, I read chapter 4, “The Man Who Fell Out of Bed”.  Sacks was a neurologist and the book in question is about unusual conditions that patients developed.  I may have fallen out of bed sometime but not lately and not often.  This chapter tells of cases of loss of the sense of proprioception, our sense of our own bodies and where our parts are, currently.  Chapter 4 is about a man who awoke only to discover a LEG in his bed!  Yuck and a half!  Some prankster must have put a severed leg in his bed.  Stressing and straining, he managed to push the repulsive thing out of his bed but as he did so, he fell out of bed, too.

Yes, it was his leg!  Nicely and properly attached to him, just as it should be.

Chomping at the bit

I have had little experience with horses.  The horse I was given at a riding stable in Britain tried to roll over on his back with me in the saddle.  If I hadn’t dismounted as he went down, he would have pinned beneath his weight.  As I recall now, our guide said something like “Oh he will do that now and then.”  

I realize that virtually everybody once depended on horses for transportation, as well as breeding and racing and plowing.  

When I can feel internal eagerness for something, I sometimes think I am “chomping at the bit”.  I looked the expression up and found it was once “champing at the bit”, that is, biting onto the metal bar that passes through the horse’s mouth as part of the gear used to guide the horse.  I have never bitten repeatedly on a metal bar, but I sometimes do feel I wish time would move along since I am ready and energized and eager.

Prices then and now

When I was a kid, things were different.  For one thing, a candy bar cost a nickel, you know, $.05.  Now, I received an email from a younger friend asking where were candy bars selling for “only” one dollar.  So, was a nickel the “right” price and a dollar “much more expensive”.  

I think prices need to be evaluated relatively.  If a nickel was very difficult to obtain then, but a dollar is easy to obtain now, there is probably a good argument to be made that the candy bar is cheaper now.  Sometimes, prices are evaluated in terms of minutes or hours needed to be paid that much.  To a large extent, minutes or hours of work seem more or less the same now as a couple of decades back.

Trouble with chicken and pills

They are not a big deal but they are certainly irritating.  Every now and then, I like to buy cooked chicken.  I don’t want a cooked chicken.  I want pieces of chicken: wings, thighs, breasts, etc.  But five or six times, I have looked at plastic bags of cooked chicken, been certain I am buying separate pieces and then find at home, that no, it is a bag of a whole cooked chicken.  Very annoying!

Lynn takes fiber pills but I bought her a type that she doesn’t like.  Please get the type she does like.  So, I went to the store, looked around carefully and bought the kind she doesn’t like AGAIN!  Can you believe it!  Talk about very annoying!  On second thought, you don’t need to. I have annoyance enough on my own.

Click on the purple

We recently had a stack of legal papers to sign.  Each place where a signature was called for had a purple spot on the computer display.   We were asked to click the mouse on each purple spot and our “signature” would immediately replace the purple bit.  All our clicks were witnessed by two members of the staff but I want to avoid taking a test on what I “signed”.  We did discuss what the papers said a week or so beforehand but still…

Poetry and me

Our former teacher told me about an event at the library and I got myself there.  It was a meeting of the local chapter of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.  I am definitely not much of a poet.  Here is a sample of my poetry.  It might be my entire production of poems.

https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/bill-kirby-poems

I have had courses in English departments that included work on and with poems.  I have never felt drawn to writing poems but I am quite interested in the best wording for what I am trying to say.  

Lynn and I have enjoyed the three part special on PBS by Ken Burns and crew about Henry David Thoreau.  I thought of saying to the small group at the library that they might enjoy reading “Walden” for the poetic images that imaginative individuals used in his book.

Blog statistics

Most days, as I finish a blog post, I check the web page to see that the post was posted nicely.  It is only a click or two away from the page and the owner (me) can see the past week’s statistics about the blog.  I am a fan and former teacher of basic statistics and I am interested.  The information of most interest to me is the number of blog visits during the past week from viewers in different countries around the globe.  Usually, there have been blog page views from Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America.  Sometimes, Australia too but not Antarctica.

Looking at babies and toddlers

When I look at a baby or toddler, I feel something happen in me.  It is usually a joyous moment.  It is so strong and so reliable, I wondered if what I feel is a common experience.  I looked up:

“is there a human reflex that is felt when an adult looks at a baby or toddler?"  Here is a link to what I found: t.ly/1Soiz

I guess what I feel is an innate nurturing response.  I really like the way babies stare at a face as though they are hypnotized.

I don't know!

Henry David Thoreau first came to my attention when I was about 14 years old. Our English teacher gave us a flyer listing books we might enjoy.  One was “Walden” by Thoreau.  The description of the book intrigued me and I bought the book.  At about 17 years old, I tried basing an English paper in college on the book. Last night, we gravitated to Wisconsin Public TV and the Ken Burns programs about Thoreau.  That got me reading Walden again.

Today, I read his question “How can he remember well his ignorance when he so has often to use his knowledge?”  That brought my friend’s description of worry about that day’s doctoral oral exam to mind: “They could ask me ANYTHING!”  She was aware of her ignorance of many, many subjects.  I have often wondered if some such stark focus on what one does not know is a pivotal part of being helpfully educated.