What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. Look at us. We run a tightrope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now! This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From the Sea.
If life is a balancing act, then you better get Stressless with Balance Adapt at Traditions Furniture in Downtown Overland Park.
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain
Pretty Polynesian baby over the sea
I remember the night
When we walked in the sands of the Waikiki
And I held you oh so tight
Oh, I’m a travelin’ man
Yes, I’m a travelin’ man
Yes, I’m a travelin’ man
Whoa, I’m a travelin’ man
Ricky Nelson, Travelin Man 1961, Songwriters: Leon R. Wilkeson / Ronnie Van Zant
About half of all dog owners according to the American Kennel Club, and the odds go up if you are a woman.
Paws-itively!
In winter, a dog is better than a heated blanket. The sound of his or her snoring like meditation music, a holy Gregorian chant. The rustling of his or her body, a soothing, healing massage. Plus, look at it like a security blanket, a guard against intruders all night long. Okay, in summer, it’s too hot, but by then, Fido has figured it out just the same.
Hey, if we think in primordial times, dogs lived in packs. With you, it is a pack of two.
Dogs are loyal, brave, patient, and understanding, qualities that might, if your dog sleeps in the bed, rub off on you.
Super hero, Chris Evans, aka Captain America, likes to go home, after saving the world, and cuddle up next to man’s best sidekick — his rescue dog, Dodger.
“Our native woods are too scarce and too valuable, to degrade them to wasteful and unlovely uses.”
Paraphrasing Gustav Stickley,
“The Destruction of American Forests,” The Craftsman, November 1909
I am a “tree hugger” and a “tree hugger” will I always be.
As a child my friends and I climbed trees; with hammer and bent nails building rickety platforms on the sturdy branches of oak trees, so that we, along with our squirrel friends and the birds, could watch the world from on high. Thus we knew what eagles saw as they soared among the clouds.
As the father of two wonderful children, I lovingly planted trees, one for each, and watched them grow tall and strong.
I am a tree hugger.
I am an unabashed wanderer like Robert Frost or Thoreau. One who loves to walk in the woodlands, who loves to watch the trees in spring turn green, and spot the lovely dogwood flowers white and pink. In summer, to lay beside the river stream beneath the shady sycamore and elm, and in the fall to stroll the mountainside of America’s parks in awe of colors red, yellow, and gold from the maple and cherry trees.
Do not despair that winter steals Nature’s leaves and leaves the branches bare, for the pine and the cedar will forever be evergreen.
Good News!
Good news to all my fellow arborists, the North American hardwoods that come from Appalachian and Adirondack forests are growing considerably faster than they are being harvested. So much so that the American timberlands that stretch from Kentucky to Maine have doubled in volume.
Good news for wanderers like me.
“In life,” Gustav Stickley observed, “beauty and satisfaction are borne of economy.” Thus a walk in the park is good enough for me.
Winter seemed to last forever, the sky was gray, the earth was cold and brown, the branches of the trees were bare, the birds had gone who knows where, until one day …
Then beautiful spring came and Nature resumed her loveliness. In the forest the violets bloom blue and purple, tufts of grass are green, and Robins proudly show their red breast as they chirp and sing; thus my soul spoke to me, it’s time to go outdoors again, it’s time to plant and grow again.
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Asleep in her Stressless recliner, suddenly she woke, startled that the door and the window were bright, quickly realizing that it had snowed throughout the night when she heard the crack of a branch, snapping because it was covered in snow.
Her soul swooned slowly, listening to the snow falling faintly around her, blanketing the now frozen land and the trees, faintly falling, turning the world white and pure. Surely she thought, as she gently rocked, that she was part of something greater. Something wondrous and beautiful. And stirring in the back of her mind were the memories of her childhood.
Drawn by these memories, she rose and went outside with nothing to wear but a a knit cap, a sweater, jeans, and boots. The snow flakes were still swirling, the snow climbing her calves and filling her boots, the world a wonderland like that of the snow globe she treasured as as a child. Wasn’t it beautiful, she thought, to walk on something no one had ever walked on before, making her feel special, which she was.
Then it came to her, the idea to do what she had done as a child. To lay in the snow, to look at the heavens, to catch a snow flake on her tongue, to make a snow angel, to become one with the earth and the sky.
Finally, tiredness and cold overcame her. Her nose was red, her fingers frostbitten. The beauty of snow can be bitter and sweet. As she returned to her home, she thought:
Thank goodness for snow, for snow like a rainbow, like a bird singing in Spring is Nature’s reminder — no matter how old you are, a reminder to the rich and the poor, the proud and the humble, no matter where you have been and how much you’ve seen, that things could still be new if you are willing to believe that simple things in life still matter.
Let us sing the praises of the birch tree, the Lady of the Northern Forest.
It’s white peeling bark that children remember most. And now grown who cannot bring to mind the image of an Indian’s birch canoe gently making its way down a river or across a lake. What child does not remember Hiawatha’s Sailing, “Give me your bark, oh Birch tree, growing by the rushing river, tall and stately in the valley, I a canoe will build me, that will float upon the river.”
The tree of the North in among the oak, the yellow larch, and the green spruce. Home to the Siberian wolf and cover to the tundra. Its sturdy roots cling to the steep terrain of cliffs and mountain slopes. To the Siberian shamans it is the cosmic tree, the tree of life. In Roman times, in May, the boys would display their love to the girls of the village with birch branches just bloomed, placing in front of the doors of their homes the white branches with their tender leaves of green.
In Scotland, the Birch is the traditional Yule log. “Birch into the fire goes, a sign of what the Lady knows.” Betulaceae, The Lady of the Woods. Beliefs surround the Birch. The branches and wood are believed to ward off evil, banish fears and build courage. On the morning after Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, use a Birch Broom to brush out the old year. Add cut bark to your cloak to protection spells, drink birch beer to fight spirits.
In the 13th century Red Book of Hergest this warning is written to Lug son of Ethliu, Celtic warrior king and savior, to wit, “Thy wife will be seven times carried away from you into fairyland or elsewhere, unless birch be her overseer.”
Knowing this the Lady says, “Birch into the fire goes, a sign of what the Lady knows.”
