It was one of those magical unscripted moments in life. Robin and I were taking our first brisk walk of the year on unpaved paths. We climbed up a rather steep section and voila! We were greeted by a flock of about twenty mountain bluebirds.
As we continued to move forward so did the birds, fluttering up and resettling a few yards further along time after time. After a few minutes they decided to try another part of the park and at that point took off without us.
Beautiful birds with that iridescent blue plumage shining in the sun. Natural magic.
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From The New Yorker
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I am presently fermenting mushrooms and cucumbers, and am about to start some sauerkraut. Fermentation is an interesting discipline with its own lore. For me it’s a new hobby but once it was a large scale mode of home food preservation.
As hobbies go, it’s a very inexpensive one to get into. A few jars, some salt, a handful of vegetables and off you go. Wait a few days and get a (so far) pleasant surprise.
Unlike the heady aromas when I used to brew my own beers, lacto-fermentation produces only the mildest of odors, all of which are compatible with life.
One of the websites promoting this process warns that if you ferment for long enough one day you will likely get a jar that has gone off, and the odor produced is “putrid.” That is a word that doesn’t even look good on paper.
I’ll keep you posted. BTW, the mushrooms were delicious.
[BTW – that image above of the beautiful vegetables in jars on a shelf was taken from the internet to illustrate an article on fermentation. They only look like that for a day or so and then they begin to lose that bright color and appear much more subdued and dull. But it makes for a better photo.]
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Watched yet another video clip of Caitlin Clark, as Iowa beat Nebraska for the Big Ten title. It is phenomenal what she has done for not only women’s basketball but for basketball in general.
When I was a teenager and watched tournament play I would afterwards be inspired to go out in the backyard, turn on the yard light, and play a game of 1 on 1 with my brother, imagining myself as playing in the game I had just watched.
That was, of course, men’s basketball. When I was a kid the women’s game was invisible.
Today if I were a teenager and had just watched Clark play I would be out there at that backyard hoop once again. Pretending I was sinking those dropback three pointers. Just like #22 did. It’s come to this. I have a girl for a hero.
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The movie Barbie didn’t win much at the Oscar ceremonies, but let’s face it, the Oscars are a self-promotional exercise for the movie industry and why should you and I care about who gets what honor? But Barbie will be forever (which means at least until next Tuesday) remembered by me for this short speech by America Ferrera’s character. Not being a woman, of course, brings into question my legitimacy in even making a comment, but if it isn’t the truth … well … I bought it as the truth.
I thought it encapsulated the impossibilities and contradictions inherent in being a woman in America very well. I thought to myself how exhausting that life would be. How much easier to be a man, which of course has its own set of impossibilities and contradictions, but that’s another story for another movie character to tell in a movie that hasn’t been made yet.
Kudos to Barbie for telling truths and making them look so good we almost don’t notice that coloring gut-wrenching pain and sorrow a vibrant pink doesn’t mean that they hurt one bit less.
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From The New Yorker
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Back when I began to explore Buddhism, more out of curiosity than anything else, there was a recurrent theme that attracted me very strongly, and it went this way:
Wanting to be taller, better-looking, smarter, more athletic, a better dancer, more successful, and more empathetic are all just stories that you are telling yourself and they make you miserable. There is no reality to these unhappy tales that you don’t give them. So why not stop?
Now that I think about it, the way was prepared for me by reading the book The Four Agreements. Same theme. We daily judge ourselves by the laws written in an imaginary book that are read into our heads by parents, schools, churches, and random others throughout our lives. Rules and laws that are 95% wrong, but that we agreed to way before we would ever have been able to defend ourselves against them.
The book asked the same question: So why not stop?
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Little Home In The Valley 