Friday, May 29, 2020

Adjusting ...adjusting...adjusting

Those of you who use WordPress or another interface to Blogger may find this post neither here, there or anywhere.  Blogger has developed a new "better" interface.  It seems that it is designed for mobile devices because we all read blogs on our phones/tablets?  I am sure that many people do read the more popular blogs on their "mobile devices" but most of my readers probably do not.  I cannot imagine reading something like a blog on that tiny screen.

Anyway, this new interface, and the super-simple symbols and the relocation of stuff is making me a little dizzy!  I got all cozy with the old-fashioned model.  Yes, they do allow us to go back and use that, but I will work on this and stretch my mind a bit.

I cannot figure out where the HTML interface button/link might be in case I have some coding adjustments... I will have to work on that.  Maybe HTML coding is so old and obsolete that no one uses it directly anymore?  Oh, THERE it is! 

Now I am going to load a photo...just to see if I can do it!  Most of the interface stuff is still there only somewhere else-there...Now to make the photo bigger.

... I think you can see the little color-coordinated spider on my evening primrose better now.

There is a link on the original bookmark fro Blogger that says I can go back to the older, more familiar interface.  I will now go ahead and publish this and see if it works.  The AARP (organization for retired folks) says learning new computer programs is good for you.  I hope this counts as a new program!  It is certainly learning.

The world changes endlessly and we must keep up or wave as it passes us on by.  Nothing wrong with being left behind, but only if you want that.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

If Time Were Not a Moving Thing


With so much time on my hands these days I  go through books faster than usual.   I had read the book "Time and Again" by Jack Finney a few years ago. I had forgotten that I had read it and started to re-read it just last week and then remembered how I had found it somewhat intense and a bit claustrophobic. It is a science fiction book about an artist being selected to create time travel with his imagination/self-hypnosis and this will be used by the government to change what they want to change in the past. It was a well-constructed novel based on factual historical events in New York in the late 1800s.  There was a rumor that the story was going to be made into a movie by Robert Redford, but that fell through.

Now, I have turned to read "Speak, Memory" by Vladimir Nabokov because...well, why not go back in time with a great author? It is an autobiography.  He begins recreating his first impressions of his life way back into toddler-hood. What an impressive memory he has. It reveals lovely patterns of existence and symbolism in the context of the turn of the Century in Russia in a wealthy family.  In the prologue he explains that all of this was edited by intense give and take from older siblings and other friends who seem to remember some of it far differently than he does.  

" I have journeyed back in thought---with thought hopelessly tapering off as I went---to remote regions where I groped for some secret outlet only to discover that the prison of time is spherical and without exits."

That is the fugitive of time.  We see one creative side and another set of eyes that passed with us through that same window will throw cold water on that memory washing away a rosy color from our glasses and coming up with evidence of something very different.  It is almost as if our memories of our past life are "but a dream."

OK. ENOUGH with the song lyrics.

Nabokov also said "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."  Well with that depressing perspective I will admit I can now move forward with fewer expectations on the importance of my leaving a memory or even a footprint!

"Initially, I was unaware that time, so boundless at first blush, was a prison. In probing my childhood (which is the next best to probing one’s eternity) I see the awakening of consciousness as a series of spaced flashes, with the intervals between them gradually diminishing until bright blocks of perception are formed, affording memory a slippery hold."  Nabakov again.


Above is a photo looking back to our dock, a memory for this year. Our first venture across the water in almost a year since the recreational boating lock-down was lifted this holiday weekend.  My husband was thrilled and I brought a book in case he had luck at his old fishing hole.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Seven Good Things in No Particular Order

Since the "visit of the virus" there have been some unexpected changes:

1. My son and daughter-in-law have met dozens of people in their neighborhood, mostly people who walk dogs like they do.

2. The garden supply catalogs and retails stores are sold out as people re-discover backyard gardening.



3. My septic system is benefiting as we have learned to count toilet paper squares to be frugal with our small stockpile.

4. With the box delivery of random vegetables and fruits, Hubby and I are now eating veggies that I avoided and now I think we are more broad-minded in our taste as well as healthier. I get more veggies than I usually use, and thus that is also good forcing me to eat fiber!




5. Free-lance repairmen have become valuable at our house and I think we are valuable to their gig list of work as they face unemployment. We have had a fuse box repaired when hubby cut through the electric cord of his hedge trimmer, a boat transom repaired that was ages old and the electric box to our yard gate fixed.

6. The grandkids actually sit in a chair in their driveway and visit rather than spending time in their bedrooms, even though we see them less.


7. My house cleaning is no longer smash-dab but thorough and careful.  (Unfortunately, no one sees it!)

What are some good things you are enjoying while we work on staying healthy?



Thursday, May 14, 2020

Are You Home?

We are still on an upward curve in terms of infections and deaths, but our Governor is slowly and not so carefully opening the state back up. We are bravely driving up to see the children and drop off garden plants this weekend. No touching and using masks, but because the drive is over an hour and we are visiting both families, we will have to use one of their bathrooms. I am going to ask them to run the fans for a while before we go inside and for their sakes run it for a while after we leave. Odd the things we request of our children these days.

I will pack some snacks because I am not sure we can feel safe eating anywhere...even outdoor sidewalk cafes!



Above is some Pasta Fajoli I made a while back.  Haven't made this since I was a teenager!

I am feeling a bit useless these days as the friends that I have called have no needs, although I do check on them.  Guess I just have solid pioneer friends.  My kids are also doing well and so glad that all four of their careers are still moving along with full employment.  That is perhaps what I worry about most when I let my mind wander down that "What if..." vein.

My gardens are super lovely as the weather has been perfect spring.  Coolish with just enough rain to make the plants grow!  And, as usual, the natives fight hard not be overlooked and overshadowed by the full-blossomed hybrids.




Anyway, I may stop by your place this weekend and drop off some tomato plants, some pepper plants and some basil. Will you be home?

Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Sigh


Something I read today:


"What weight do we apportion the fact of life versus quality of life? At what point of psychological and economic degradation is that quality unacceptable and is the life worth putting at risk? What number of lives, if any, is it OK to endanger so that a much higher number of lives can be bettered? What’s the higher number? And how should betterment be defined?
Sweden’s herd-immunity approach provided one set of answers. Michigan’s lockdown provided another. Whichever fork a given place or population takes, it’s making a profoundly moral decision.
A friend of mine recently asserted that no matter the Covid-19 data in July and August, all college campuses should welcome students back for the fall semester because young people aren’t the primary victims of Covid-19; because the current disruption to their lives, if prolonged, could strain them in ways that haunt their futures; and because they have so much future ahead of them. They warrant a little extra consideration.
Implicit in that reasoning is that older people, who are vulnerable if the resumption of business as usual spreads the virus, warrant a little less.
There’s no way to sugarcoat that, and there’s no point in being anything less than wholly honest about the implications of the transcendently difficult choices before us."  Frank Bruni,  New York Times

Someone on Facebook responded thus:
"Wonder what it costs for a two week stay in ICU? Families then have to bury their loved one. Legal fees for will probate. Cemetery plot if one is available.
All that expense and suffering. And then, medical people that spent fortune to train. Throwing it into the bonfire to care for humanity.
If we are reducing this to a matter of money, then the answer is NO. The economy will recover anyway. Your portfolio will eventually go back up. Yearly profits will not be as high. But the human cost is unspeakable. The children left without a parent. That price is too high and the economy is not worth needless deaths. I do not accept that nihilistic nightmare."