It has become increasingly hard to decide whether the sky is falling or not. The bewailings of my newsfeed plus the profuse clamor in my messaging app makes it appear as if the world is composed of mostly people of the Henny Penny variety. You remember Henny Penny … right? Well, for those who don’t or who have never heard the classic European folk tale, it goes like this:
The inciting incident: Henny Penny is hit on the head by a falling acorn and panics, believing the sky is falling.
The journey: She sets off to tell the king, gathering other farm animals (Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Lucy, Turkey Lurky) who join her quest.
The trick: They meet Foxy Locky, who offers to show them a shortcut to the king’s palace.
The ending: The group follows the fox into his den, where they are never seen again, and the king never hears their warning.
There it is, simple and plain and perfectly appropriate to our times. Our problem is not a lack of warnings, it is the din of their profusion.
******
******
It is something very close to Summer here in Paradise. Once this past winter’s not-very-hard grip on our lives had relaxed we have been seeing record warm temperatures. This week everything is in the 80s, and it is only May. Oh well …
Tomorrow’s weather forecast is: windy, hot, and dry. There is a possibility of “dry thunderstorms” as well. This is not a term that I have heard before. Is it possible that the weathermen and weatherwomen of the world have become totally bored saying the same old stuff from day to day and so they get together to coin new words and phrases to make their lives more tolerable?
When I was a lad we did just fine with the words fair, rain, windy, cold, and stormy. There were no polar vortices or dry thunderstorms or bomb cyclones back then, nossir. We made do with the simple terminology that we had and were glad to have it. My mother never sent me off to elementary school with the words “Now put your mittens in your pockets and wear those overshoes like I told you, there is a chance of thundersnow this afternoon and you want to be ready for it.”
******
******
It’s nearly two a.m. and I have the back door open to let in some cool night air. There is a great horned owl out there in the dark who is excited about something and is letting us know about it. Some of my favorite creatures, owls. Endlessly interesting. Cruising silently in the blackness only to drop down on some unlucky small critter who never knew what hit it. Those eerie calls … the variety of habitats they occupy … just have a look at this gallery.
From upper left they are great gray owl, barn owl, boreal owl, great horned owl, and snowy owl. If I could wish for one of their attributes it would be the ability to turn my head around nearly 180 degrees to check out what’s behind me. It would be an immense help while driving my car, for one thing. And just think if you were going to try to sneak up on me from behind to cover my eyes and say “Guess who?” and suddenly there I was staring you right in the face. Unnerving, eh?
******
******
That little blue dot button over there in the sidebar may need an explanation. In the 2024 election year Democrats in the Omaha area came up with this simple image that says volumes. They were surrounded by Republicans and the idea that they were a blue oasis in a highly red district caught on.
I like the idea enough to have stolen it from the Nebraskans to apply it to our own situation here in Paradise. Two-thirds of the votes cast here in Montrose County were for a criminal for president in 2024. Two thirds. My, my, my.
******
Little Home In The Valley 