Perception vs. Reality

I have a cat that until he came here had always been housebound:  three years and he had never touched grass, or seen snow, or felt the wind rippling his fur.  He had never played Chase The Leaf, or Drink Muddy Water,. or Climb The Tree and Pretend to Get Stuck. His voice box, I am pretty sure, had been removed, since the only sound he can make is a tiny rusty "acckkkk acckkkkk".   In two years he has never voluntarily allowed us to touch him.  If you do pat him, he curls into a ball and waits for it to be over.  When he goes out, he is frightened of wind, refuses to touch snow, and despises rain and cold.

In reading around the blogs and on the net, I see something most disturbing;  women/parents  who treat their own children in just this way.  I can understand being fearful, I can understand holding your breath while your kid goes to the neighbor's, alone, for the first time.  He's scared too.  But it does seem that we have somehow become a nation of frightened people and we're teaching our kids to be the same way.   Play dates, constant supervision, cotton wool carefully placed where they might fall, emotionally or otherwise. 

I blame, partly, the media and the instant-on culture that gets its news in a stream, all day.  We hear about rapes in California, and women in Ohio lock their doors.  We see almost first hand car bombings, police stakeouts,  robberies stopped in progress.  The immediacy is numbing.  Children are abducted or abused or killed and we now hear about all of them, continually.  So we pull the drapes and keep our own kids close.

What seems to have been lost is a sense of proportion, a sense of what is appropriate in our own lives.  It also seems we are now unable to sort out what is truly dangerous and what we perceive to be dangerous.

To teach a  child caution is one thing.  To teach them to fear is to hamstring them for life, unable to function in a difficult world,  and stunned when they finally realize what's out there and how ill-pepared they are for any of it. 

Essay from the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/04/when-words-that-shouldnt-last-last.html?mobify=0

This Is What I'm Doing Now (6WS)

somewhere, sometimes,  never

somewhere the rain is falling straight down
the way it always does
dogs still bark at the wind after dark
the earth still moves in various ways
for various reasons
the wind in the pines reminds me
of the ocean on dark still nights
traveling relentlessly
up the beach           you told me once
that often in your sleep
you dreamt of that sound
only you were at the ocean
and could hear pines sighing
in the wind as the tide
hissed over the sand      the rain
still falls straight down
perhaps on you
sometimes on me
but no longer at the same time
or for the same reasons

crocuses daylilies and bare ground oh my

The first wine is the sweetest

There's nothing like that first sip,  all the piquant flavors still mixed and floating on the surface:  savored slowly,  inhaling the bouquet.  swurpswurpswurpswurp...

Damn but that was worth the wait

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers --Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops at all-

And sweetest in the gale is heard-
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea-
Yet  never-in extremity-
It asked a crumb of me.

About anonymous posts

Lately I have been receiving several 'anonymous' posts, all but one of which contains a link back to either a gaming site, an adult (hur hur hur) dating service, or something other.  Those are not accepted links, all of them being commercial and of doubtful content.  If anyone wishes to post an 'anonymous" comment  which does not require registration or signing in,  please leave a name in the post so that I know you're real.  Even something as simple as "Mary" or "Jeremy" and a brief comment  as to where you found this. 

That may seem like overthinking, but the last thing I want is to find myself overrun with gaming sites, dating services, and all the possible problems those things bring with them as baggage.

Margaret and Helen

Just found this, it's hysterical, well worth the trip to read.  >>>>>>>over there too

http://margaretandhelen.com/2012/annual-report/

Curse the Cursive

Until recently I had no idea that cursive handwriting had disappeared from the landscape.  As I understand it, 44 states have mandated that it need not be taught at all,  and in many states even printing is barely taught as well.  Yes, there are studies that show kids with skills in cursive writing remember better,  they have better motor skills.  They are, as one woman put it, more graceful.  
When I have to remember something my first instinct is to write it down.  I may lose the paper, but I remember what's on it.  I no longer use cursive except for documents or letters,  but it exists in my head.  If I need to memorize anything my first step is to write it out, whether it's a poem or a shopping list.

The fast forward to all of this is a bit other-worldly, and has not really been addressed: any of these children who have no working relationship of cursive writing will also be unable to read it.  That simple.  May not sound like much, but how will they be able to get a job in, say, the field of history?  or as a librarian?  Not all documents are digitized into print mode.  And any older documents that need to be studied are lost to them.
How do you read old letters, old documents, wills, deeds,  legal decisions from the not so distant past?   To further extrapolate, since I am in an extrapolatory mode:  if these documents are unreadable except by a  few "old folks", who will read these when those old folks are no longer there--who will even know how to translate them into 'readable' format?

http://bangordailynews.com/2013/04/07/education/cursive-handwriting-disappearing-from-public-schools/?ref=latest

"Fresh" "Meat" is now on "Sale"

If there never was any doubt in your mind about the reality and the freshness of what is being offered,  this should firmly remove the absence of doubt

6WS (Show My Face "link" in sidebar)

Visuwords

Thought I'd bring this one forward,  I want to add a few things to the list on the right but Google is having trouble (are we surprised) with some of its features.  This one doesnt go anywhere but it's fun to doodle with.

http://www.visuwords.com/fullscreen/

Digitizing the World

(thank you to Ron for reminding me) One reluctant step at a time, we are turning ourselves away from paper to digital everything: no one writes letters, they use email or a Messenger or cell phones. 

Books are now downloaded into handheld readers,  newspapers and magazines almost always have an online presence. 

My dentist is taking 35 years of patient records and digitizing them. I have no idea what he does with the paper records, but its a bundle.  And yet to destroy them would mean no paper backup to the digital backup...If there were a fire, the paper is gone. If there is a power outage the digital stuff is inaccessible. 
The solution would be to also make copies of each and store THEM someplace.  oh yeah.

I see it as causing more work and only creating one extra layer rather than removing anything...

It's Been That Kind Of Week (6WS)

--and at the end of it all you think, "if I had a dog,  he'd have thrown up on the bed at 3 AM,  on the new white duvet cover that I purchased, the day before they went on sale..."

the dog and I are very grateful that I don't.

Scary to think about, maybe

I have been reading  comments across the boards about people who post photos of their very young children, grandkids, and the neighbor's new baby on public sites.  Facebook, Twitter, even blogs abound  with photos of small children and babies, many of them in various states of undress or no dress. Yes babies can get away with it,  but I'm thinking that too many people forget how utterly public these photos are.   Pasting a naked butt shot of your granddaughter on Facebook is the equivalent of posting that same photo in a shop window in a large city.  You cannot control how many people see it, or who those people might be.

Pedophiles and kiddie porn guys regularly haunt such places.  Think about that.  Unless you have a site locked down for family only,  you have no say--or knowledge--about who is watching.  It's not about giving out personal information, although I  think we all do, inadvertently;  we get comfy with our posts, our 'friends', our blogs, and drift a bit.  But when someone starts posting picture after picture of  their kids, be sure someone is going to find them. 

Somebody said, and I agree, keep those pictures in an album, or a shoebox,  and if you have to show them to someone, do it in email. 

It Hurts to Lose Old Friends (6WS)

Anywhere on the net we may encounter people we like, people we dislike, and sometimes those we grow to love.  For whatever reason,  and sometimes you never do find out why, some of them just disappear forever, overnight, without a trace or a word.  

It's a very fine thread that ties us to them;  no bigger than a strand of  spiderweb, in a way;  and once that strand is broken you finally have to accept that Gone is Gone, pack up the memories and move on.  Not that it works quite that easily, or gently.

Someone once said to me, "if something happened to you, how would I know?" 
He made a good point:  there are a lot of people out there that I know by only a first name, or a handle of some sort, and often not even what state they live in.  I guess the only way is to accept them as Five Minute Friends, always aware that the thread one day will break at one end or the other,  and go from there.

So Many Books, So Little Time (6WS)

(thanks to Cessie at 6WS for the inspiration for this)

Whining from the Frozen Tundra

We're down to counting sticks of wood in the shed and there is talk about scraping the snow off the stuff outside in case we need it.  It's the Ides of March  and we have barely a cord left inside.  I had hopes of at least limping into April with a bit left,  but this morning at 6 AM the outside temp was a hearty 6 above zero. O, please.   The house was an equally brisk 52. 

A three stove day, for sure.

But, she says bravely, straightening her shoulders and reaching for a wooly sweater, but it is the middle of March,  the days are getting longer,  the sun is a bit more useful than it has been, and April is out there somewhere. 

And whatever became of the Ides of, say, September...

Where's my mud? Where's my spring?

SPRING FEVER

Here where the slow light softly falls
on barren ground unstirred by spring
and frost still honeycombs the walls
there is no sound, no moving thing:

not yet the brush of leaf and wing,
nor yet the sturdy, dainty bloom
of  poplars prophesying spring.
Here is no spring, not yet, not soon.

Only the lengthened afternoons
gathering up the winter days
and chilly geese beneath the moon--
winter yet, with winter's ways.

Spider update

I found her this morning,  finally  released from her single strand of silk,  fallen into the space between the two windows.   I guess any life, no matter how small,  matters, if only to the creature involved.  And now and then, to others who somehow get involved too.  

small addendum:  the post that  this one refers to has been taken down:  it had become a magnet for seach engines of the spamming variety,  and there seemed no way to end it without actually removing the post itself. My apologies for anyone who happens upon this and thinks, 'what the hell...". 

Six Word Saturday

snow snow snow...

wood wood wood...

http://www.showmyface.com/