Nature is powerful! If you pay any attention to the world around you or to the news, you already know this. If nature’s power were not enough, we see that nature is changing because climate is changing. Wildfires rage in the western United States. Floods that used to occur once every decade are now occurring…
I slept fitfully last night. I had some mild anxiety about a presentation today – the first student presentation I’ve done since the pandemic started. Although I was confident with the information I was presenting and how I was presenting it (this took a little bargaining), there was still that familiar twinge of fear and…
Last night I awoke at 1:40 a.m.. I was wide awake, bothered by thoughts that I’ve had before concerning conversations, comments, things I notice during social events, and even just while out in the community. I felt like a cow chewing on cud swallowed previously and brought up again to be chewed on some more….
Typically, we are quiet people. Rarely is there a television on in our home before 8 p.m. and only occasionally is there music playing. I like the quiet, but I do like the sounds of nature. Recently, we’ve been cooler in the midwest. This is especially true of the temperatures at our cabin this past…
It’s August! The monarch butterfly season is in full swing! Soon, the monarchs we see flying through our yard will be on their way to somewhere else, and it’s not just the next yard! It will be on to the next state, and the next, and the next until they reach the over wintering grounds…
Today is Silent Sunday, a day when I offer my own photographs on a theme of my choosing. There is no permission to duplicate in any form. Thank you!
Last night, I finished reading Butterflies in November by Audur Ava Olafsdottir. It is a novel set in Iceland by an Icelandic author. I found it to be a quirky tale without a lot of plot, but entertaining to read. The ending was awful, as it just abruptly stopped, as if the writer said, “okay,…
In Writer’s Circle, over four weeks, we have worked on haiku, nonets, clerihews, free verse, and now couplets. Out of all of these types of poems, I found my students stymied at the couplets. In part, I think this is because I spent less time explaining them. The poor couplets were squeezed in at the…
Today, I returned to volunteering. In preparation, I watched videos on YouTube, took an online orientation from Monarch Joint Venture staff and familiarized myself with forms as well as how data was to be recorded. I am now an official volunteer for the IMMP or Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program run by Monarch Joint Venture. But,…
The alert went off on my phone. Heeding it immediately, I told my husband and dog. We had to go to the basement. County M and W. Route 108. Stevenstown. I know the area well. It’s not far away. Possible rotation. Green and red pixel colors mixing on screen. Dark storm clouds fill the sky….