April 30, 2013                                     Madison, IN

Alas!  This is my last legitimate day to play the Fool, in my expanded April Fool's month!

But will I rein (reign) myself in?

Probably not.

My poor partner!  Not only do I occasionally vent about my own family, but I frequently harangue about other people's families - other people's fictional families!

Not only do I have fits of paranoia, I have fits of pronoia and much as I have tried in the last decade or so to uproot them, bouts of superstition.

I am burdened with a deplorably expert recall of dreams, nightmares, twinges of imagination and fits of doggerel.

Spring is a springboard for flights of phantasmagoria, Summer a constant simmer, Fall a plunge into leaf-dusty depradations and Winter a stone-cold plunking funk.

So beware, all those who enter here.

The Folly of this site is an unending season! 

April 29, 2013                                     Madison, IN

Well, the Catholic Church has played it wrong again.  I'm beginning to think it is determined to be our chief April Fool!

Firing a teacher for honoring her mother's life and memory by mentioning her female partner's name IN AN OBITUARY is not smart, Christian, or good.

Don't make a fuss against pedaphilic priests - keep their deeds private for decades and transfer them to new preying grounds, but fire a teacher who honors her own mother in her obituary.

What did this have to do with the Church?  It was not the teacher's life.  It was her mother's life.

Ha, ha, ha!  They just can't get it right - an ossified institution that beats even me! - for foolishness.

Later on I will have time to look up more details about this news, but the nugget is there.

Another nugget of coal for the Catholic Church's crown.

April 28, 2013                                    Madison, IN

I didn't want the red Oldsmobile.  I didn't want a car at all.

But over the years I gradually came to appreciate it and its reliability and comfort - not to mention its pick-up, which I swear saved my life more than once.

Now we are trading it in and I am grieving.

I've never traded in a car before.  My first car got "totaled."  My second and third cars got sold to the recyclers for a pittance, in order of their purchases reversed.  I was happy to see both of them go, having become more trouble than they were worth.

This is the first car I am actually trading in spite of its worthiness and I am not happy about it.

The newer car will have lower mileage.  It is hopefully less likely to break down, although it almost seems like blasphemy to suggest the old one would.

But our latest prospect is silver - the color of an aged head - instead of red, the color of deep blushes and vitality!  It isn't as compact and shapely!  It quite possibly eats more fuel.

The only consolation this new car offers is that if we are camping and rain threatens, we can sleep in it instead of having to choose between a possibly wet tent and the expense (both monetary and cost-to-the-environment) of driving - sometimes a substantial distance - to a hotel.

The idea of snuggling up together under a metal roof has its romantic and comfort appeal.

But sigh.  I stand on the balcony and look down on that little (really medium-sized) car and know I will really miss it.

My partner thinks the dealership might use it as a loaner.

I hope so.  I hope I get to see it glide by occasionally in the possession of someone else whom I will envy.

Better a break-up than an ugly divorce, I say to myself.

But my sweet old car doesn't deserve this.  It really doesn't.

April 27, 2013                                    Madison, IN

I was foolishly talking about the difference between men and women (can we really generalize?) when it comes to old clothes.

"Women," I pronounced, "don't like it when stuff gets old and shabby.  Men never want to let old stuff go" - here I saw my partner's expression change ever so slightly - "as long as they love it!" I finished hastily, as another idea I had read crossed my mind.

He smiled and said, "And that could be a very good thing when it comes..."

"I know, I know - the thought passed through my mind, too.  When it comes to old women!"

We laughed.  It's true!  A damn good thing.

April 24, 2013                                     Madison, IN

I am stunned by the reiteration of the mother of the young men who bombed the marathon in Boston:  "I don't care if they kill my son after they have already taken my older son... I don't care.  I don't care... I don't care...."

She is obviously hysterical, which shows that of course at some level she does care - deeply.

The thing she reminds me of most, though, is that old Indian woman who was captured on film saying passionately "We would rather give our daughters to (some God of death - I don't even know what the religion was) than give them to" foreign white people (as in putting them up for adoption to American infidels like us.)

Religion is such a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, the admonitions to "Let it be"  and "Let go and let God" can be a consolation like no other.  Witness its persistence over the millenia.

On the other hand, it could almost be a license to not care at all:  (Shrug!)  It's out of my hands.

Somewhere in between those two extremes of attitude comes the passion that is compassion.  Caring/not caring.  Somehow our caring becomes a more impersonal still strongly felt thing.

Is this real?  If it is, I believe must become a physical manifestation of our caring - an act of charity which preserves our sense of concern for others at the same time it preserves our own sanity and ability to accept the world.

I feel for this mother (who has effectively lost two sons) because she is obviously torn between the two extremes of caring and not caring.  She may still be in the grip of a denial so strong that she cannot bear to look at the reality that the rest of us, by now, pretty much take for granted.  (Good luck, by the way, at finding an impartial jury for this trial!)

And the truly sad thing is that this habit of extreme thinking manifested in her sons is something she herself has unconsciously and unintentionally taught them.

I really feel compassion for this messed up family.

What kind of action can I take in my life that might be different from what I have done in the past?

Ha!  I remind myself of a Quaker query.

Oh, well, there are worse kinds of thinking to emulate.

 

April 23, 2013                                     Madison, IN

20,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan?  Obama has expanded these operations drastically?  According to Jeremy Scahill (Dirty Wars:  The World is a Battlefield) such acts on the part of the U.S. are making more enemies for the U.S.

And we can't say they are unusual, or the acts of the militant few!

Or maybe these horrors are acts of the extremist few, but they are, unfortunately, also perpetrated by officials of the U.S. government.

No wonder I find myself "accidentally" pressing my remote off button instead of the mute!

That doesn't save me, though;  these things are happening whether we like them or not.

Back from the kitchen, where I was making breakfast, I turn the TV on again.  Now the screen is showing flooding along the Illinois River, which is not supposed to crest until day after tomorrow.

Meanwhile, on an ad I failed to mute:  "The back of our Subaru is where she grew up."  Poor deprived child.  Child abuse!

I wonder if the ostrich with his head in the sand feels any peace?

April 22, 2013                                     Madison, IN

Last week, walking along the path through the woodlet bordered by the river, the river park, and the sewage treatment plant that the heritage trail unfortunately goes past for a short way, I ran into a young man birdwatching.

He's a biologist interning for Big Oaks Wildlife Refuge (Hi, Andrew!) and he was trying to get an idea of the bird life so they could help improve it in this newly purchased area for the enjoyment of the public.

The list of birds he had observed in a mere two hours put me to shame.  I have been living here for two years and hadn't seen that many, I was inclined to think.

So to distract myself from the uphill climb, I started counting.  By the time I finished my walk I had recalled seeing at least three dozen birds, and by now my count is up to 44 or so.

It gives you an idea of what you could enjoy here with any sort of effort at all.

Not only birds, but mammals are here.  He saw a couple of otters up on Cripple Creek (on the other side of the railroad from the Trail) and he has smelled the musky odor of a fox.

On my walk yesterday I smelled a really strong smell, and at first thought, "Fox!"

I wish.  I think it was dog poop.

April 21, 2013                                     Madison, IN

Enter ) Parenthesis and Dot.

) Parenthesis, with a bow:  After you, my dear. 

Dot (who cannot bow):  I couldn't possibly!

) Parenthesis:  But whyever not?  It's the most logical thing in the world!

Dot:  Sometimes, yes, sometimes no.  I don't know.  I just don't think it would look good.

) Parenthesis:  If you are worried about what the others might think....

Dot:  It isn't that! I can't put it into words. It just doesn't feel right.

) Parenthesis:  I can't understand why you always want to put a stop to everything.  See?  There you go again.

Dot (helplessly):  I don't mean to.  It's almost as if I'm submitting to a higher power.

) Parenthesis:  That's just ridiculous.  There is no higher power than logic.  You are being so... one-dimensional!

Dot:  What can I say?  It's my nature.  I can only soften it by saying it again and again.... 

) Parenthesis:  And you do!  You do!  Sometimes you even do it holding a big stick!

Dot:  You are being unfair.  That has nothing to do with me!

) Parenthesis:  Says you.  (And what about when you associate with that guy who's so twisted?) 

Dot:  Oh, that doesn't have anything to do with me, either. He's just hanging around...  I didn't want to tell you, but you are obviously all bent out of shape.  I'm just more comfortable with both of you.  Between you.

) Parenthesis:  Who?  Are you talking about my twin?  But sometimes he's so far away.  Why should that make a difference?

Dot:  Let's put it this way.  I'm trying not to put a stop to everything!

Besides, sometimes you two need a buffer.  Maybe that's why you always have one... I don't know.

) Parenthesis:  I don't get it.

Dot:  Okay, I'll illustrate.  You just said "(?)"

Well, what I'm trying to say to you, is that (.) feels better to me than ().  Looks better, too.

) Parenthesis:  Whatever.  You get around much more than I do.

Dot:  It's just the times.  You'll come back in style!

) Parenthesis:  There you go again with the big stick.  Just because you say it with emphasis doesn't make it true.  No one takes me seriously anymore.

Aside:  But I can't win.  She always gets the last word.

Dot:  And I ought to get it first!

) Parenthesis, aside:  (Did that make any sense at all?)

Dot (ruminating):  Now with your brother, that might be an entirely different thing... but then, I rarely even get close enough to him to speak....

April 20, 2013                                      Madison, IN

Well, now we know how these young men who perpetrated the Marathon Day massacre in Boston could do it.

Absent parents, for one thing.  Why did they leave?  I'm still not clear with whom they left their younger son.

The dad calls his son "an angel."  Sounds as if he couldn't do any wrong in the Dad's, which might be another way of saying he is compliant and malleable.  An angel in his hands might become a devil in the hands of others.

The mom is blaming and angry against the FBI.  She is "100%" sure her sons have been "set up."  Her children can do no wrong.  (Anyone who says there is a zero probability of something happening, is always wrong.)  This attitude of blaming is not good modeling and can really twist a young person's mind.

On another subject, I have wondered for a long time why the FBI hasn't published pictures of suspects more often in the past.  The public has a lot of eyes and knowledge.  Yay for the people!

P.S.  Don't worry about this kid and his Miranda rights.  He's smart and savvy and he already knows them!

Foolish me - blame the parents!  Hey, at least I'm not so audacious as to psychoanalyze him, although if you ask me...

Ha, ha, just fooling!

April 19, 2013                                      Madison, IN

The other day I was walking along, enjoying the summer/spring weather when I was arrested practically midstride by a fragrance that delicately shrieked, "Spring!"

It being the edge of a commercial area, I was taken aback by this seasonal hit.  Here, practically at my left elbow, was a magnolia - one of the varieties with medium-sized pink petals which I cannot yet distinguish.

I stuck my nose into a blossom hanging over the fence, and what do you know, this tree was the source of the evocative fragrance.  It surprised me - when I think of magnolias, I tend to think of scent not at all, or of heady perfume.

Maybe I better investigate these showy magnolias with my nose as well as my eyes.  If you go to buy a magnolia, pay attention to the scent as well as the form and blossom!

Ha, folly!  I'm probably preaching to the choir, here.

But that warm day really brought out the smell of growing plants.  Walking by the spice bushes in the pioneer garden, I got smacked in the face by their wonderful bouquet, which is cumin-like but fresher and more complex.

Reminds me of my plan to compare the olfactory contributions of boxwood with the spice bushes, to see which was more likely to have been the source of the distinctive never-to-be-forgotten heat waves in the bishop's garden of the National Cathedral in D.C.

Silly me!  That was probably a oncetime experience created by the mixture of twenty herbal floral offerings.

Magnolia and spicebush did not act alone.  They were joined by a gang of the more common spring thugs that associate themselves with our memories and emotions - those hits of fruit blossom and hyacinth and daffodil and tulip.

No wonder we get giddy in the Spring!

We are punch-drunk from sweet invisible assaults.

April 18, 2013                                       Madison, IN

I never heard the words "generation gap" until I was in my teens.

Psychologists were talking about the lack of understanding and communication between generations.

When I hear people whining about the younger generations, it makes me want to laugh.

We are the ones who have created the younger generations!

Maybe the reason the beat and rock generations were so disaffected from the culture was that the Dads and Moms, having survived the Depression, were obsessed with material things.  On top of that, many Dads were suffering from war-induced mental illness, the Moms struggling with their own identity issues.

Maybe the reason the younger generations today are the way they are (however you perceive that to be) is because this is the world we have created for them and they are adapting as best they can.

Shake our heads over the younger generations?  Foolish, foolish we!

The only reason our elders aren't still shaking their heads over us is that they've shaken them off!

April 17, 2013                                        Madison, IN

The only communities in which the world's major religions work now seem to be those that try to add to their membership, protect that membership from information the leadership deems unsuitable, and cut off nonmembers and rebels.  Evangelical work is highly valued.  The "truth" is something only allowed to the elete.  This also goes for power.  The rank and file are supposed to nod their heads in humble agreement.  Accept, accept.  Those who will not do so get kicked out or are forced to run for their spiritual (sometimes physical!) lives.

Well, being excommunicated or shunned doesn't have to mean possible death anymore (at least in a relatively free society - I guess I might only be talking about a small part of the world) and use of the Internet proves it.

"Forgiving" your enemies in the old-fashioned way will become relatively meaningless.  In a closed community the members have to forgive in order to get along with each other.  In a teeny local world not to forgive means big trouble or at least spiritual malaise.

In my proposed new religion forgiving is more possible.  Removal from an offending environment helps.  I try to forgive those who have hurt me.  I may even forget them for long periods of time because they have become irrelevant to my present concerns.  It is a big wide world out there with many other people and issues worthy of attention.  Why get mired down in past attachments and quarrels?

This doesn't relegate my offenders to "the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth."  I can find new people with whom to interact - so can my erstwhile offenders.

Go ahead, be reborn!  It's okay.

I truly believe that people who cannot do this are obsessed.

 P.S.  And that is very foolish, as all my friends who have endured my obsessive times, will shake their heads over and simultaneously nod their assent!

April 16, 2013                                        Madison, IN

We need a new religion.  An ecological religion and a humanist religion.  No, I won't really call it humanist, because I haven't really studied humanism that much.

From what I can tell, though, humanism was a good idea, but it didn't go far enough.

How about this:  God is all of earthly Life.  People are not caretakers of the whole protoplasmic world except in the same way we are caretakers of our own bodies.  If we don't take care of our bodies, we as individuals will die.  If we don't take care of the world, the human race will die.

There are those who believe that "the chosen" will fly away (ha, ha, anachronism) into space to find a new home, much as we flee to higher ground after a flood or, despairing of our own lives, look to an Afterlife.

In the new religion, the way to be saved will be to husband the Earth.  (In Christianity, ha ha, the Church is often considered "the bride" of Christ (thus feminizing all of its members.)  In the new religion, au contraire, we would all become masculinized.  Ha, ha, how's that for the ultimate in feminism?)

 Ahem.  Anyway.  Our new religion will not be organized - an anathema!  No, it will truly be a "faith" which reveres and worships the world and ourselves.

Our creed:  "We believe in the human race.  We adore the human race and the world we live in and the creatures we live among."

Our practice:  Study, preservation, and development of the whole.

I refuse to call this April ruminating foolish.

April 15, 2013                                         Madison, IN

When I was a girl I was walking in a dry riverbed near my great aunt's home in Waynesville, Ohio and found a flint arrowhead.

I have seen similar arrowheads from nearby locations on the Internet selling for $30.

So, for those three seconds of time (I calculate this based on the way I calculate my "earnings" when I pick up spare change) I was making $3600 per hour.

 My best-paid moment ever!

But would I give up that arrowhead?

Not for a measly thirty dollars.

That accidental experience was priceless.

Of course, if I were trying to make money finding fossils and artifacts, I would have to put in more hours, and that lucky find would probably not pay for one day's time "on the job".

My point being?

You expect a point from me, the April Fool?

I'm too busy prospecting, er I mean introspecting, for hidden treasure!  (In my head and heart, heh.)

"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest.  Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!"

April 14, 2013                                         Madison, IN

How are we April Fools?

We brake for squirrels driving in front of people who won't brake for anything!

We hang on to big bad habits that will make our lives miserable in a few years.  (Speak for yourself, say you?  Well, good for you!  I guess I shouldn't make assumptions.  Ah, but who of us is not addicted to at least one big bad habit?)

Ha, ha, we judge others by ourselves!

We learn from experience.

We don't learn from experience.

We are afraid of being foolish!

And the very worst, most foolish thing -

We spring clean in April!

April 13, 2013                                         Madison, IN

I was reading a book about Norman Rockwell the other day and saw an illustration of a little girl in a fun house whose skirt was blown up, exposing her upper legs (and possibly et cetera) to view.

Immediately I thought of the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt flying up around her thighs.

Was that intentional on the part of the director, I wonder?  Was that a little generational in-joke?  Or an unconscious reference?

Anyone who has read much history has learned the pleasure of the experience of, "Oh, that is where that festivity came from!" and "That is who we have to thank for the abolition of that bad but socially acceptable custom - no wonder we think he was great!"

We learn from history (especially the history of science and medicine) how many people have been ignored before their helpful experiences and insights were heeded and adopted.

How much more from reading herstory!

Ha!  Folly to even mention it! 

April 12, 2013                                          Madison, IN

The other day I was talking with a neighbor when I glanced over at the hills across the river and pow!  I noticed that they had turned green, seemingly overnight.

They are a pale chartreuse, if such a thing is possible - oh yeah, I just remembered the liquor, which is just that!

Anyway, the streets of Madison are now abounding with blossoming trees and shrubs.  This is it!  This is spring!  If you are coming, come soon.

I went up to the Hanover campus yesterday and saw the biggest pile (that is the only word for it - or maybe mound?) of forsythia I have ever seen in my life.  I want to express its size in acreage, but that would be April Foolish of me, and we can't have that!  Nosiree!

True Spring Fever has not hit me yet, and maybe it just can't this year.  Maybe Spring Fever has to have progressively if fitfully warmer weather, to build up gradually to a crescendo of dithering celebratory headiness.

We shall see.

April 11, 2013                                          Madison, IN

Thinking in bed this morning about the fact that my children are living in Albuquerque, NM, the home of Beavis and Butthead, I remembered the first thing in that TV show (watched by my teen-aged son) that caught my attention was the word masturbation.

Not only did that word catch my attention, but the episode made me laugh hysterically.  I started to play with it (the word!) myself.

What is the derivation of masturbation, I wondered.

Creating a master of urbation (the process of becoming citified)?

The formation of a penile mast?  (Ha, ha, I actually accidently wrote fomentation the first time round.  Maybe should have left it.)

The state penultimately brought about by perturbation while trying to say a mass?  (I was almost afraid to put this down, but I'm Aprilly follatious now and know no limits!  Besides, it's 4:00 AM and I cannot be responsible for my actions.)

Usually at this point I would usually report the actual derivation of whatever word is writhing at the point of my scrutiny, but the fact is, I can't.  Like most of society's bastards, its origin is unknown, or at least shrouded in mystery.

Actually Latin masturbare is close enough for me (!) but you are welcome to look it up in Wiktionary or Wikipedia yourself for their far-flinging explanations.

There you will find a beautiful drawing by Klimt of someone masturbating.

A woman.

Yeah, just the sex we usually associate with masturbation.  Just the sex who were sniggering over the word on the Beavis and Butthead show.

Well, shiver my timbers!  April fooled again.

April 10, 2013  (ha, ha, I almost wrote Apill)   Madison, IN

If April is the cruelest month, then it may be a bitter pill to swallow, but April here this year is May elsewhere.

It has finally turned to Spring, gorgeous Spring, and everything is blooming from the candytufts I can see from my back window cascading down the stairs of the property behind us to the yards chock full of daffodils visible to passersby on the walk to the library.

But enough of rhapsody.  On to mockery!

On a Chris Hayes show (yesterday, was it?) a guest said something like,  Why do scientists have to study the furry-finned oblong strangulator moth, anyway?  (Um, you get the idea - a form of being less popular (no household name recognition at all!) than Beyonce.

If I had false teeth I would have dropped them.  Is this man an IDIOT?

Chris' response was not what my response would have been.  He said that studying such a critter costs an insignificant part of the budget.

My answer would have been, "You never know."

You never know what will prove helpful to humans when it comes to knowledge of the reality of the cosmos we live in.  Even a minor perusal of popular scientific literature will teach a citizen that.

What came first, knowledge of how malaria spreads, or knowledge of the habits of the mosquito?  Who first started playing with what we now call gunpowder?  What are some of the  deadly harmful gradations from a live bee to a dead bee?

(Does this national TV guest also mock the religious study of ancient Biblical and Confucian writings?  What good is such study of well-trammeled texts, after all?)

Here's my bitter pill for all such sloughers-off of pure scientific research:

An hour spent studying some part of the world around us, especially part of it rarely observed by other humans, is worth more than one hundred - no, one thousand - hours spent poring over ancient religious texts.

After all, scientific study gives us a picture of the world around us, and we all know a picture is worth a thousand words!

As for those who love to study ancient texts, many ancients were interested in the world around them and made observations that today's scientists would do well to heed.

Try unlocking those texts, too!

April 9, 2013                                         Madison, IN

I'm kind of glad (er, I think maybe) that I have been dedicating Aprils to explorations of folly, because it has made me aware that all civilizations are hotbeds of folly.

At least, if you believe that folly is disconnect from reality.

Our religions are made up of fantasy that either comforts or tortures us.  To be either comforted or tortured by religious ideas is the height of folly, if the universe is, of itself, impersonal.  But it makes sense that we can't believe that - because to us humans, worse than abuse is neglect.

Our collective understanding of our history is a fantasy.  It seems as if we get the "true" story of what happened in our countries' formative moments decades if not centuries after the fact.  This would be obvious if it we were talking minor adjustments to the truth of the matter, but I fear we are not.

Our concept of ourselves as a national identity, therefore, relies on unreality to a staggering degree.  We are living in a fantasy.

I am so rocked and disillusioned by what I am seeing in our legislative bodies via peoples' rights to vote and be on equal terms with our fellow humans that it is obvious that I, for one, have been living in a fools' world.  I am not happy at all that I am being forced to part with my own fantasy about my fellow human beings.  To quote an unknown woman who meant something else entirely, "I want my America back."

Even our own memories are a fantasy.  I "like" something on Facebook and then remember, "but I did something against that" or "but I said such-and-such a thing.  I did not mean to offend, but it was at the least insensitive."

Oh, well.  Maybe at least the consciousness of our collective and individual follies will keep us humble.

Ha, ha!  Nah!  That suggestion is the height of folly!

April 8, 2013                                         Madison, IN

Oh, follatious frambois!

Flailing fumble and flueful frunch.

Flinches futtering amidst the flangles of phalanges' fluitful flippancies.

Waspish, wold weriness wastes whorly waps.

Why not fwatter or fweek?  Worse fairness!  Gorse fweek!

Fwest or afwer, fwunk and fwooster.  Fwun.

Fwun and fweek!

April 7, 2013                                         Madison, IN

Yesterday was IT!  True Spring.

So why don't I feel like gamboling?  I seem to remember I kind of understood why lambs gambol, but walking my two miles seems to be all I can muster.  Oh, I did weight-loading exercise!  I bought a few things from the dollar store half-way through my walk and carried them.

Actually, it was literally the Dollar Store.  Now that I know from my wintry reading (well, it was just the other day, Spring reading, but the content was wintry) what a rich jerk the owner is, I don't want to shop there at all.  I don't, however, see much choice.

But I must lighten up!  Not be a fool, believe in the weather!  The forsythias the daffodils the pointy-leaved splayed-open little early tulips the little teeny Japanese ground cover beauties the struggling yet blooming edge-of-the-asphalt-path monkshood!

Gambol, gambol!  Sag, sag - I don't know.

Yes, you do!  Don't believe in society!  Believe in the weather!  Believe in the fleece around the waist that should have been left at home!  Believe in the fleece above, the blue sky, the sun, the sun, the too-seldom-seen-all-winter-sun!

I don't know.

It's dark.  It's the wee hours (much worse than the witching hours.)  Aaaaargh.  Am I suffering from the greatest folly of all, the inability to play the fool?

Ha, ha!  More - har har!  Foolish wishful-thinking thought!

April 5, 2013                                        Madison, IN

Is folly fallacious?

Is empathy towards horses equinimity?

Does fast forward mean starving from here forever?

Is a smorgasboard a s'more gas board?

Is a filly a fillee, meaning one who is good (in an owner's eyes) for nothing but filling up on her dam's milk, (or sperm or a new horse, hopefully a colt?)

And what's with calling a father horse a sire, and a mother horse a dam?  What's that all about?  Something I'll have to look up when I'm feeling silly enough.

Meanwhile, a new tenant has moved in downstairs (in my absence) and now our bedroom smells like cigarette smoke - even with two air filters in the room.

Folly to stay - I'm going on a long walk!

April 4, 2013                                      Madison, IN

Yesterday I wrote about folly even though I didn't mention it explicitly.  An insistence on exploring without planning could definitely be considered foolish - and irresponsible in one way, at least.  When I do it by auto I leave a carbon footprint the size of a clown's shoe.

Today the sun was shining and the sky was blue.  I saw bloodroot in the pioneer garden, which was a pleasant surprise.  I wonder if it, a wild flower with red sap, has been blooming there since the time of the pioneers?

The cherry trees along the river haven't started blooming yet.  I did see one first little blossom alongside a south wall a few days ago (a pear?  Ha, ha, maybe that is where appear comes from - the beautiful onset of bloom in the spring, the earliest fruit to bloom being a pear!  Silly.  Too many other blooms come earlier by far.)

Nobody played any April Fool's trick on me this year.  Since we were heading towards Paducah for Jos to report to his exciting new job, I don't think it even crossed either of our minds.

Maybe it is that winter is too fresh in our minds - I, for one, am not giddy with Spring yet.

But I am sooo looking forward to it!

April 3, 2013                                      Madison, IN

Just got home after spending the night in Nashville so I could visit my mom.

I took a long way home, as usual.  Longer than I planned, as usual!

On 31E north of Lebanon, TN I saw more white flowering fruit trees in a relatively small region than I have ever seen before.  Made me think that some real charmer must have been selling them a decade ago.  They were still not in the full lavish height of their bloom so it's not too late to see them.

When I got to Bedford, Kentucky (almost home!) I recklessly to see how the length and difficulty of the drive through would compare to my usual route up 421, which is pretty twisty.

I bit off more than I bargained for!  A sign was posted on the highway along the river (just a dozen miles from home) that the road was out!  The idea of going back was just too intolerable, so I persevered.  Maybe there would be someone at the barricade could help me avoid retracing 15 miles.

There wasn't, but there was a narrow paved road that went practically straight up away from the river.  What the hell.  I took it.  It was numbered 1492 and I think I have seen that road come out somewhere or other in the direction I wanted to go.

This was beginning to be an adventure.  If I hit a dead end and had to turn around, I would only have magnified my problem.

At one point I had a choice between going straight ahead or turning left.  I turned left because there were several dwellings there (one of which was flying a Confederate flag and another which advertized concealed weapons class (which I read as glass.  It just confused me, but it was kind of scary, too?  Was this a private drive?)

Not far down the road a young man was working outside.  He was very kind, told me to turn around and proceed up the other branch, where there would eventually be an orange sign that would tell me what to do.

I did, and it did, but oh, such a plethora of hills and hairpin curves I have never experienced in my life!

Kentucky is a pretty exciting place.  Beautiful, too.

April 2, 2013                                                     Paducah, KY

Maybe I pulled an April Fool's surprise on you yesterday by putting up an unexpected article, but it is no joke, unless you expected to see an April Fool's Day menu.  (Not a bad idea, that!)

You know my attachment to foolishness is not over yet, though.  I expect to celebrate folly for the whole month.

Since I am now in the city which shelters the National Quilt Museum that will be my primary goal this morning, other than walking around taking in the sights.  Any other discoveries I will have to report on later, probably tomorrow.

I'm on a hotel computer and a warning about add-ons just popped up.  Since I don't know what that means, I am quickly going to sign off.

Later!

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