It's here again! Can you believe it? No way man- I can just hear Barbara Bizilia saying that now... Groundhog Day- oh my! Once again scoundrels tease us with visions of fun in the sun, knowing we have been existing in the midst of overcast skies. The merriment-makers play upon our sense of the mystical, inviting us to descend into the world of weather prediction what-ifs and fortune telling, all the while hoping to sell us a stuffed animal, or perhaps a keychain fob. What's that? Oh please tell me it is so- no shadow sightings, right? 
"Earth is the insane asylum for the universe."- Maxine (the cartoon)
Hmmm... maybe we have yet to crack all the codes, maybe we will find, as we continue to discover the secrets of the world around us, that the so-called Dark Ages are still upon us. So many, many interesting discoveries these days- click on the kitty picture for info on what I am calling Cat Danger, for lack of any better technical term.
"Few situations - no matter how greatly they appear to demand it - can be bettered by us going berserk."- Codependent No More
More interesting science news- click on the 1903 Triscuit box for info about links being made between viruses and weight gain- catching fat from each other, so to speak. Additionally, courtesy of Jay, some info related to the "Groundhog Day" movie alluded to in the first piece on this page: Deja Vu.
I guess every age of man has thought it had just about discovered and defined everything we needed to know. When talking with elders I have often marveled at the changes they saw in the 1900s, in their lifetimes: radio, television, indoor plumbing, heating houses with other than woodstoves, telephones, cars, phonographs, planes, refrigerators, washers and dryers, stoves that cook without wood, mimeographs, electric typewriters, jet planes, reel-to-reel then cassette tape players, word processors, VCRs, faxes, computers, cell phones, CDs, the internet, yadda, yadda, yadda- you get the idea. It seems we still have not reached the end of the knowledge journey, the place where we know everything- is that a surprise?
"My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too."- Peter De Vries
Seattle and the rest of the state are exuberant, looking forward to Sunday's Super Bowl. It is fun to have the home team do well.
Jay and I listen a fair amount to a local NPR station, KPLU, and were surprised to be listening this morning to the regular Seattle Audubon Society BirdNote radio show and hear a program on the exotic sounds of the Seahawk (<= click to listen to an mp3 of the show).
"I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun."- Katharine Hepburn
The Seahawks played a good Super Bowl game today, even though the pot at the end of the rainbow was different than the one sought.
Guess the cheerleaders got tired of how the team left the bathroom- click on the rainbow picture to see how the girls fixed the fixtures...
"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours."- Bertrand Russell
I have made it to the local hospital a couple of times to catch a weekly closed-circuit educational broadcast from the university. The topic varies each week for this hour and a half presentation; all have been interesting. The series goes on for about 10 more presentations- great and it's free too!
It is interesting to be roaming hospital halls again- familiar sights, sounds, smells. I marveled today at the comfort I felt there, remembering my first foray into medical social work and how uncomfortable with the surroundings I was- I remember remarking how the hospitals were filled with sick people! The social worker is not sent to see fortunate, happy people- who among them needs a social worker anyway? No, go see the 32 year man with the shaved head who was just told his newly discovered brain cancer would end his short life in about 30 days, or the family with the premie in the nursery who the nurses think might have some domestic violence going on, or the young high-powered company exec who is now learning to feed herself again. Interesting stuff that seemed scary and hard for quite a while... but now, those places are familiar haunts.
When Kira spoke about becoming a nurse, I mentioned that hospitals pay very well and always need nurses, but she reacted strongly to the idea of working in a hospital, especially an ER. I replied something about how our comfort with different settings changes over time, that it is hard to work with children when your own are young... she looked up at me. This evening I walked down the hospital halls, out to my car and wondered at this comfort I felt with the setting. Ah, yes, it is the laziness in me! The place is full of people with great needs- one need do so little to do so much there.
The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.- Pablo Casals
Once again we made it over to the Rexville Grocery for one of their special events- the champagne, chocolate and cheese tasting. For a mere $2 entry fee, we tasted wares from purveyors of chocolate, cookies, BBQ sauce, cheeses and champagne. I had a little taste of six different champagnes- each good and a little different, but I am not a big champagne fan so did not buy any. Also had a prettily decorated valentine heart cookie, a taste of 5 or 6 flavors of BBQ sauce utilizing those Bugle chips, and small pieces of interesting chocolate- including a pepper chocolate. The cheeses were heavenly, once again, and we purchased a small wedge of an incredibly yummy blue cheese- quite surprising.
Of late we have been enjoying a nice salad I have been making of good mixed lettuces, some balsamic salad dressing, a sliced and chunked apple, a large handful of walnuts (roasted in the oven) and crumbled blue cheese- a great supper with a hearty bread alongside.
"Take time every day to do something silly."- Philipa Walker
I have enjoyed John Prine's music for decades now. Last year Jay and I went to see John in concert- the first time seeing him live for both of us. When I wrote about our outing on my page, my cousin Diane was astounded because she is a self-described John Prine freak and did not know of my liking for the artist.
Diane is very happy these days- John won a Grammy (best contemporary folk) for his "Fair & Square" album. Way cool man! A well-deserved honor. If you click on the picture of the iPod you will get lyrics to an old song of John's I really like, or you can click here to go to John's fansite to check out some his stuff...
"A musician must make music; an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."- Abraham Maslow
Science sure is coming up with lots of astounding discoveries lately, sometimes altering our perceptions of reality by pointing out the tenuousness of our assumptions, and apparently this search for knowledge will continue to bring bountiful bunches of new ideas until our minds burst from all of the thinking. Yikes!
Click on the picture of the Palm Pilot for yet another scientific discovery- beware though, this item is "R" rated...
"Those who agree with us may not be right, but we admire their astuteness."- Cullen Hightower
Jay picks up magazines at the local library quite regularly, to keep me entertained...
I always go through The New Yorker initially to check out the cartoon jokes, and maybe read a poem or two. Right now we have the Dec. 12, 2005 issue and, 
in my usual first-go-through, the first stanza of a poem by C. K. Williams got my attention- see if it grabs yours too:
PRISONERS
In the preface to a translation of a German writer,
a poet I'd never heard of, I fall on the phrase
"He was a prisoner of war in a camp in the U.S.,"
and a memory comes to me of a morning
during the second war when my parents,
on a visit to the city they'd grown up in,
took me to what had been their favorite park
and was now a barbed-wire-encircled compound,
with unpainted clapboard barracks,
where men, in sandals and shorts,
all light-haired, as I recall, and sunburned,
idled alone or in small groups.
I'm told they're German prisoners, though I know
nothing of the war, or Hitler, or the Jews--
why should I?-- I only remember them
gazing back at us with a disconcerting
incuriousness, a lack of evident emotion
I'd associate now with primates in zoos,
and that my mother and father seemed unnerved,
at a loss for what to say, which I found
more disturbing than the prisoners, or the camp,
a reaction my mother must have sensed
because she took my hand and led me away--
the park had a carrousel, she took me there.
Are there still merry-go-rounds,
with their unforgettable oompah
calliope music and the brass rings?
If you caught one, you rode again for free.
I never did, I was afraid to fall;
I'm not anymore, but it wouldn't matter.
I go back instead to those prisoners,
to the one especially not looking at us,
because he was shaving. Crouched on a step,
face lathered, a galvanized pail at his feet,
he held-- I see it, can it be there?--
a long straight razor, glinting, slicing down.
- C. K. Williams
I looked around the internet for information on WWII prisoner of war camps in the United States. Yes, indeed, there were numerous prisoner of war camps in the US with prisoners brought over here for safe-keeping. There were also camps that held people of German descent brought here from Latin Amercian countries who might be dangerous because of their "enemy ancestry". Unfortunately, there was more to learn.
The biggest surprise was to find that the United States had internment camps that held American citizens of German ancestry and their American-born children. In my wanderings I found information about similar treatment of Italian Americans. Some of the GIs fighting overseas had parents and siblings imprisoned in internment camps back home in their United States. Like the Americans of Japanese ancestry interned here during WWII, these Americans too lost their homes and livelihoods along with their freedom and dignity. The internment of these people was "pre-emptive" it seems- they had committed no crimes, but were thought to be dangerous. Each of the four pictures in this section links to a website with more information.
The human mind is always very interesting- mine is like a sieve. Quite recently I ran across an interesting piece on a new book that seemed to be about our ability to classify groups of people into enemies and non-enemies, and then change the composition of those groupings quite rapidly. I cannot tell you where I read that or the name of the book, despite my own interest in reading it. When I read that article I thought of a remark I had read somewhere, also recently, about how non-threatening the Japanese were when the author, as an American, arrived in Japan in the aftermath of the atomic bombings- the war was over, yet they were not treated as an enemy and that lack of enmity seemed remarkable to him. Anyhow, it seems to me this all fits together somehow or other... and has implications for the life we are living today.
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.- William H. Borah
"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."- Ellen Goodman
Recognize the "kids" playing music in the picture above? I ran across them a year or so ago when I heard an NPR piece about a newly released CD with various artists singing songs written by a man sometimes called America's first great songwriter, Stephen Foster. I checked out the Beautiful Dreamer album online and followed links, ending up on the website for the band playing Camptown Races on the CD- The Duhks (pronounced "ducks", you know, "quack" and all). Wow man... tattooed punk twentysomething Canadians playing Americana music with a soulful voice, banjo, fiddle and more.
Interesting.
I bought their CD (cover at right) and shared it with friends. A couple of months back I ran across the Duhks concert schedule and was astounded to see that they would be playing one venue in Washington state- at the Lincoln Theatre in Mount Vernon, no less! We waited for the tickets to go on sale and snatched them up, getting to see this great young band in person in our own town this last Thursday evening. We were not disappointed. The group is full of incredible talent and makes great choices in music to play. To top it off, they appeared to be enjoying themselves immensely.
If you click on the picture of our ticket stubs a short mp3 of theirs will play, and other pictures link to relevant information... The Duhks will be playing in Remus, Michigan September 9th and 10th, for those of you out there in Michiganland who are interested in catching their wonderful show.
"I often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics."- Richard M. Nixon
To head out of the valley going south, one goes up Conway hill. The town of Conway consists of a public side, right off of the freeway, and a less public side, where the old, true downtown is, or was. When one passing through gets off the I-5 freeway on the way up Conway hill, the findings consist of a combination antique store, wine tasting room and deli and another combination store with gas and things... these two get pretty good through traffic.
Heading farther down the street, one notices that the homes are raised up about a story above ground level. The Skagit River has had a history of being particularly unruly in Conway. The teeny main drag still has a nice antique store, functioning post office and a place to eat. A good Saturday afternoon ramble...
Click on the Conway sign to the left for a page of pictures from our Saturday ramble there.
Enjoying coffee this Sunday morning, reading with jazz on the radio, I hear a song whose lyrics catch my attention... and dance me to the end, of love. The announcer kindly illuminates the subject for me (something that, as you know, does not always happen) and mentions the lyrics are by Leonard Cohen-- launching me into an internet search, of course... I found a sweet music video of the song by Samina (requires Quicktime, unfortunately). Very nice, yes, dance me to the end of love.
"Before he closed his eyes, he let them wander round his old room . . . familiar and friendly things . . . which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted on for the same simple welcome."- Kenneth Grahame
Jardot's World: February Edition, 2006
All pictures on my page link to somewhere... go ahead, click!
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