The Thursday Ramble:Thoughts

I have read a couple of great books recently. 

Tribe by Sebastian Junger, a short book about human behaviour. He researched behaviours during war, Bosnia, London during the blitz, and Dresden during World War II. Behaviour changes in times of stress, people work together against a common enemy. The Blitz didn't break the spirit of the people of London, it galvanized their resolve, and deepened their hatred of the enemy. I wish we had leader who read. 

The Most Beautiful Walk In The World, by John Baxter describes the joys of walking, mostly as a pedestrian in Paris.  He weaves the history of the place, with the simple joys of walking about and telling stories. A joy to read. The world needs to read more. 

I am on a bit of a reading binge, at this rate I would surpass 100 books this year. I know there will be a slower time, I have four books loaded on my Kindle for this year's grand adventure, when I will slow to maybe one book a week for a month.  

The weather here is starting to lean towards spring, warm for a couple of days, the cold, then undecided.  Bone chilling and foggy, then sunshine and warm.  We have had longer periods of cold this winter than we do on average. The prediction is that the cherry blossoms will be later than the last few years, but a week in the 70s could change that in the blink of an eye. 

The first of the early spring flowers are out, snowdrops, and crocuses. I am looking forward to daffodils.  I have started painting spring flowers, from memory. 

My World of Wonders: March 11, 2026 Spring Flowers

What have I been up to in the kitchen? Pork schnitzel, blueberry coffee cake and fresh bread. Roast beef and mashed potatoes, red wine-mushroom - onion sauce. Beef stew. Sauteed cabbage and Italian Sausage 

What is on the easel? Spring flowers, the cold weather has delayed the spring bloom, so here are some bright yellows. I am on my second spring flowers painting. 

Who have I talked with this week? Ruth, Warren, Paul, Amy, Brad, Marcel, Mary, my Sweet Bear, Zack, Jon, Giuseppe, Ana, Susan, Larry, Rafael,  

Where have I been this week? IKEA, Aldi, filled the car with gasoline, Safeway, the gym, the community center, the Troll Park and a nice walk along the river. Huntley Meadows. 

What good has happened this week? Despite TurboTax crashing and having to start over - the taxes are done. It warmed up, the daffodils are budding, the forsythia is starting to show color. 

 

Tuesday Special Edition: A Warm Morning in Huntley Meadows, TURN UP THE VOLUME

Travel Tuesday: More from the Briscoe Museum of Western Art

 

Monday Moods: Don't Worry, Be Happy

It is a weird time. I need to finish our tax return, I need to do my brother's taxes, I need to see my doctor for prescription renewals, we are leaving on a grand adventure in a little over a month. 

I have to remind myself, that everything is under control.  

When I was growing up, my parents stressed over doing taxes, it was one of the only times they demanded silence in the house, and the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.  An irrational fear of making a mistake. An unhealthy pattern that I should have shed about 45 years ago, and persists. I will get them done, ours are relatively simple these days, it is just a matter of plugging the numbers in. 

My health needs are pretty simple, and have not changed much in a decade. And I am not out to live forever, just to be relatively healthy until the inevitable catches up with me.  And my doctor understands me - she even has a similar twisted sense of humor. I shouldn't stress, still it is one more thing to get done before we leave on the grand adventure. 

The trip is planned in detail, four airline flights, one train journey, one cruise (already checked in I have the boarding passes), six different hotel reservations, all done and planned.  Almost always something will not go as planned, and we will find alternatives and it will all work, it always does.  

And yet there is that low level background anxiety, it happens at this time of the year. I am reminded that most of what we worry about either already has happened, or never will happen. 

Bobby was right, Don't Worry, Be Happy. 

The Sunday Five: No Talking Please

1: Where do you go for silence? 

2: Do you have quiet neighbors? 

3: What can you hear in the middle of the night? 

4: Do you talk on your phone in public? 

5: Have you ever left someplace because it was too noisy? 

My Answers: 

1: Where do you go for silence? Anyplace at home is usually quiet 

2: Do you have quiet neighbors? Yes, thankfully. We can hear people passing by in the hallway, but we have had good neighbors. 

3: What can you hear in the middle of the night? Freight trains, the train tracks are a little over a mile away and most of the middle of the night traffic is freight. 

4: Do you talk on your phone in public? Almost never, but then I seldom talk on the phone. 

5: Have you ever left someplace because it was too noisy? Yes, restaurants, stores, the pool Sunday afternoon. 

Please share your answers in the comments. 

The Saturday Morning Post: Fast and Dirty

There is a concept in writing, known as the fast and dirty first draft.  The idea is start writing and not stop until all of the ideas have flowed onto paper. Don't edit, don't reread, don't revise, until you are exhausted, until you have given all you can give. 

I find that this concept applies to many creative endeavours, painting, drawing, even photography.  Create today, refine and edit later. One feature of digital photography that screws up a lot of creative energy is the ability to immediately play the image back on the screen.  For some this becomes an obsession, checking and even deleting images immediately. I am not saying I never check, but I check rarely, and don't delete. You may well find that the image that looks imperfect at the moment, has great meaning and value later.  Save the bad images. 

In painting, you can revise and repaint. One technique is to create a quick underpainting, and then revise, refine and edit in layers. Many of the old masters always painted this way. 

Pausing to edit, breaks the creative flow. There are two problems, while micromanaging the current idea, other ideas will slip away never to be recovered, and the creative flow can be difficult to restart once it stops. Don't stop, until you have a exhausted the creative flow or you have a complete first draft.   

Freestyle Friday: Smart Phones

Neil over at Yorkshire Pudding ranted recently about businesses expecting everyone has a smartphone. I agree with him that relying on apps only is wrong, and I have had a smartphone almost since smartphones first came on the market.  I was already carrying Blackberrys when Apple came out with the first glass faced "smartphone." I bought an android phone within a couple of years of the first smartphone. 

I bought the blackberrys for a couple of reasons, they had great international phone and data service and we were starting to travel a bit, the thing that tipped the scales for me, was maps on the phone.  The novelty of maps on my phone, rapidly wore off, one car has in-dash GPS, I have a portable Garmin unit to use in the other car and when we rent cars. I find maps on my phone to be annoying most of the time, and I think using a phone to navigate while driving is very dangerous, it should be outlawed. 

What kept me using smart phones is email. I check email on my phone several times a day. I solve Wordle on my phone everyday. I exchange morning text messages with three people on my phone. I seldom use it as a phone.  Honestly, smartphones make lousy phones, they are hard to hold, hard to hear. The flip phones of 25 years ago were better phones. I take photos with my phone. It takes good photos, and when I am away from home it is always in my pocket. The best camera is the one you have within reach. I check the news, looking for a particular obituary every day on my phone. 

I dislike the app world. I find it cumbersome to unlock my phone, find the app, then half of the time the app wants me to log in, enter a password, while the world is waiting behind me. I can, but I never have used my phone to tap and pay. I prefer paper boarding passes to electronic ones, I hate struggling to get the boarding pass to display. The battery never runs down on paper, it can on my phone. 

Five years ago, when I bought a new phone, my old phone was so short on memory that the phone store couldn't download the app to transfer my data to a new phone without deleting something. The guy asked if he could delete Facebook and Instagram from my phone. I agreed, and then I never put them back on. I freed myself from Meta on my phone. Try it, you will like it. 

So why do I carry a smartphone? I like having a phone with me for my use when I want to use it. I like having email and a camera in my pocket. I like being able to do a quick web search. When needed the maps come in handy (I used maps to find a restaurant in San Antonio, including walking directions.) I check the temperature outside on my phone. But I try to avoid being bullied into using it as my only means of doing anything.