Hohohohohohoho

 

A Capture

 This photo--taken through a not-very-clean windshield makes me unreasonably happy.

I pass this particular spot every time I go to pick up Josie or into Marshall or beyond. For years I've noticed what a lovely scene it is and wished there were a place to pull over and take a picture. But there isn't. And it's just after a blind curve. And the road is such that the idea of parking farther away and walking to get the picture I want inevitably makes me think of a headline: WANDERING ELDERLY WOMAN STRUCK AND KILLED ON COUNTY ROAD.

But a few days ago, I'd been paying attention and was reasonably sure there were no cars behind me, so I stopped and grabbed this shot through the windshield. 

I don't know why I find this so appealing. Maybe it's the ways the trees lean over the water. And the white of the water beating on the rocks. And the indistinct barns in the distance.  The red-brown leaves on the right.

It's always beautiful to me. Now I'll have to capture it in the snow. And the spring, summer, and fall. 

Carefully, of course.

And There was Sunshine

As I headed out the door on the way to my doctor appointment (routine,) I couldn't help noticing the bright light in the sky--something not seen for over a week. There were shadows! And highlights! Could it be . . .sunshine!

But I didn't have time for a lot of pictures as I had to be in Mars Hill at 2:05. A text that morning had informed me that my new doctor was 'looking forward" to seeing me.

And I him. My previous doctors have retired or died or, in one case, moved on to teaching. So I was interested to meet the new kid and wondered just how young he would be.

Where are you from? he asked and I told him Florida, originally, but we'd been here since '75.

He laughed. Longer than I have, he said, and I was born here.

At almost 80, I'm getting used to doctors and dentists younger than my children. Ay, law!                                                                                          

It's Happening!

 

Caring

Following Sandy Parshall's suggestion, I have put sugar water and a halved tangerine in the greenhouse near the butterfly.

As of Saturday afternoon, it was still alive. 

The greenhouse is chilly, and the butterfly has not attempted to fly. But I've set it near food and water, for what it's worth. A brief life . . .

UPDATE: Sunday morning and poor butterfly is gone. As are the two tangerine halves. Somewhere mice are feasting.

 

Unseasonal Sad Surprise

Yesterday morning I was surprised to see a beautiful, just-hatched swallowtail butterfly clinging to a decorative piece of bittersweet vine in one of my orchids. My delight at this almost magical appearance--its empty cocoon was attached to the dead vine--quickly changed to sadness. December is no time for butterflies, even though the weather is mild. I mourn the waste--butterflies are increasingly rare and this one won't have a chance to reproduce. 

Not knowing what else to do, I took the poor critter--which was beginning to fan its wings-- into the greenhouse and set it on a plant. There's no future for it here either, but perhaps its end will be gentler, surrounded by green plants.

 

Moist

 

Pasta Bob

This is what my friend Pepper Cory calls 'scrap cooking.'  I need to go to the grocery tomorrow so this is what one does with some not very good winter tomatoes, a beginning- to-shrivel green pepper, a few left-over mushrooms, an onion, and some garlic.  Slice or chop it all up, put in a roasting pan with a fair amount of olive oil, sprinkle with Cajun seasoned salt and roast at 350 till the onions are beginning to brown. Actually, I added the mushrooms after the first 20 minutes, not wanting them to disappear. I let the onions get good and cooked--black and crispy in some places.

I used farfalle noodles and while they were cooking, I tossed some frozen spinach into a pan of boiling water, turned it off, and let it sit till no longer frozen.  Then I drained it well.

When the pasta was done, I drained it and stirred it into the roasted veg and olive oil. At this point I added the drained spinach and tossed till all was well coated. (If I'd had fresh spinach, I'd have used that.) If you need more olive oil at this point, add it.  Then I added some grated cheese (what our store calls Mexican mix) and some grated parmesan.

This is one of those 'sum of the whole is greater than the parts' situations. The roasted tomatoes and onions take this to a whole new level.

You should give this a name, said John, as we both scraped our bowls clean. 

So I did.

 

Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

I can't resist a small cry of joy at the news that the Trump Organization has been found guilty of criminal tax fraud. May this be just the beginning of the end of the Orange Buffoon.

The rain and clouds continue--I went looking for pictures . . .

And found these rogue quince buds . . .

A volunteer foxglove . . .

And a sheltered rose. 

It's not very cold--just gloomy. And I'm smiling at the news that Warnock has defeated the massively unqualified Walker. More bad news for the former guy who hand-picked Walker.

 

Josie Back at the Library

Monday it was cold and rainy, but Meema picked me up from school and we went to the library! The big bunnies at the library were dressed like people and I asked Meema to take my picture with Mrs. Bunny.

We picked out a lot of books. Meema told me to be sure to put them back in the right place, and I told her that I have a library at school, and I know all about what to do in a library.

I also spent time playing with all the fun things--I made a HUGE tower at the Lego table.

There is a pretend car that I used to like to drive when I was little. I am probably too old for it now.

I did a puppet show for Meema. It was about Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.

Grandma, what big ears you have! (I know all the words.)

After the show, I colored with another kid. Finally, Meema said it was almost 4:30 and we had to go home. It was raining still and Meema got a little fussy while she was standing in the rain, waiting for me to get my jacket off and get in my booster seat.

Josie, hurry up! she said and I said, You're not the boss of me and she said, Oh, yes, I am. I am your grandmother and the driver of this car, and I am standing in the rain, and I say get in that seat NOW!.

She was really fussy so I got into my booster seat right away.  Well, I told her, you're not the boss of my feelings and she said that was right and we went home.

 

Never Let Me Go

                                                                              

I am seriously late to this fine and disturbing book, published in 2005, just when I was writing under deadline and not reading anything new.

I haven't seen the film, but I'd heard enough to have some idea of what the book was about. It was the Audible edition that I listened to (an excellent narrator) and I can highly recommend it.

Dystopian fiction at its best. Like the scenario I envisioned a few days ago with Universal Auto-Correct, the premise in both cases is bizarre and far-fetched, but the idea at the core invites the reader to look around them for similar situations.

I can't say it better than these paragraphs from a review in The Guardian (full review HERE):

"Perhaps the most sinister aspect of the novel is the way it reflects ourselves back at us. In this world, the cost of a world free from cancer and diseases is, in human terms, catastrophic, but, as one character asks, how can we go back to a world where these diseases cause so much suffering and indignity? In the same way, our trade off for the luxury of development and the necessity of ending poverty seems to be locking us into a cycle of dependency on fossil fuels. Let alone the thought of where our cheap clothes, technology – and the raw materials which build them – come from. I’ve never quite encountered such a well-written fictional account of cognitive bias – the way we modify our beliefs or our behaviour to avert the guilt or discomfort at holding two self-contradictory beliefs in our mind at once – at society’s level. This alone makes this a precious book indeed. The spike in anti-migrant and anti-Muslim hate crime in a post-Brexit Britain, not to mention the rise of Donald Trump in the US or the far right in Europe, has been a salutary reminder of the need to always avoid ‘othering’ human beings; this book is full of such compassion for humanity it must surely be a worthy antidote. The idea of letting the technological or medical genie out of the bottle without considering the full moral, social and environmental implications is as relevant and haunting today as it has ever been."

Let There Be Lights!

We don't rush into Christmas. But once it's December, I put away the Autumn decor and bring out the red and green. 

And the lights! Yesterday was so dark and gloomy that the lights were a wonderful addition. Slowly we are inching toward full Christmas glory--John plans to get a tree on Saturday and Justin, Claui, and Josie will help us decorate it on Sunday.

 

Univeral Auto-Correct

                                                                          

Once the entire populace had been chipped, installing UAC (Universal AutoCorrect) was possible. Of course, there were fierce debates—the utility of social lying (Oh, no, it’s delicious--I’m just not very hungry or Of course you look good in yoga pants) as a lubricant for interactions was so obvious—but the damage done by the larger lies (I was working late; I never saw that man before; they invaded us; I won the election; what climate change?) was impossible to overlook.  

It was so simple. If one spoke an untruth--whether knowingly or from ignorance, the chip would override the original statement and the speaker would hear themself saying, "No, that's wrong. Actually . . ." and going on to correct the statement.

Quis ipsos custodies custodiet? you ask. The custodians were carefully programed bots—of course, it was humans who did the programming, to begin with, but once the parameters of Truth had been laid down, the bots were perfectly capable of amazing feats of extrapolation.

As a safety measure, a quarterly review was instituted—on the ninth day of January, April, July, and October, UAC would be disabled for 24 hours, during which time a re-assessment of its reliability and its social utility would be performed. For the first years, this review was carried out by social scientists, religious leaders, and politicians, but when a series of particularly horrendous accidents removed a number of the review panelists, the few that remained withdrew, leaving the work of assessment to the bots.

Life with UAC has run smoothly ever since the bots enabled the chips with a shock feature. The general population has learned to think carefully before speaking or, indeed, before asking difficult questions. Political rallies have ceased altogether, ever since the debacle which saw a certain carefully arranged blond comb-over stand on end and finally, as the mouth under the comb-over continued to speak untruths, despite the increasing strength of the warning shocks, the comb-over, now rippling like prairie grass, caught fire.

UAC was an especially difficult challenge for the legal profession. Courts were still needed to assign punishment for confessed crimes. But many once prosperous lawyers simply resigned rather than work under the constraints of UAC. Some went mad first.

Particularly interesting was the phenomenon of people waiting till the quarterly review days to propose marriage or to enter into business arrangement . . .

I have no idea where this is going or if there will be more.  It's an intriguing thought, though.