WQW #11: St. Patrick’s Day Green

Although green is my favorite color, I didn’t wear it today and I’m happy to report I didn’t get pinched, although I wouldn’t expect to in Aldi or Trader Joe’s. 🙂 We moved here from the Chicago area and today (yesterday as you read this) the river will be run green. We stayed far away from downtown on St. Patrick’s Day as being around huge crowds is bad enough but when alcohol is involved, no thanks. However, Guinness was my entry-level dark beer so I have a fond spot in my heart for it. We did have corned beef and potatoes for dinner sans cabbage because I don’t care for boiled cabbage. Salad and good bread filled in nicely and tomorrow will be even better when the leftover corned beef and potatoes become corned beef hash. So good and I think even better than the separate ingredients the first day.

But green isn’t just for St. Patrick’s, it’s the color of spring, which is often how I think of it having lived in the Midwest for almost my entire life. When my parents used to come from Arizona to visit us in Ohio, they always commented on all the trees and how green everything was. I always felt that was a bit like the relatives who saw you infrequently starting by declaring, “My, how you’ve grown!” What had they expected?

“I just need green. I need to wake up and see grass and squirrels. I don’t want to see skyscrapers.” – Andre Leon Talley

The green I miss is the spring green, the here’s-what-you’ve-been-waiting-for green, a green that at its most beautiful serves as a background to spring’s wildflowers…

…or blossoms higher in the spring air.

“Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions.” – John Muir

In South Dakota near the Badlands, sometimes green is what draws your eyes.

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.” – Lois Lowry

In the desert, green is harder to find and better protected but much appreciated when seen.

“Every green natural place we save saves a fragment of our sanity and gives us a little more hope that we have a future.” – Wallace Stegner

And sometimes, well, it’s all about the green.

“leaves glow under
a haze of sunlight,
and hang
still on a windless
day”
― Bremer Acosta, Cosmos in a Tree

WQW #11: St. Patrick’s Day Green

It’s a new year!

I venture to say that very few have looked forward to a new year quite as much as everyone has looked forward to this one. Thanks for taking this journey with me and welcome to the next stage.

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.” ~T.S Eliot, Little Gidding

“Any new beginning is forged from the shards of the past, not from the abandonment of the past.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Each New Year, we have before us a brand new book containing 365 blank pages. Let us fill them with all the forgotten things from last year—the words we forgot to say, the love we forgot to show, and the charity we forgot to offer.”
― Peggy Toney Horton

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.”
― G.K. Chesterton, A Chesterton calendar

Vive la différence!

Tell me you don’t notice color (skin or hair or eyes), size, gender, etc. and I’ll say you’re being disingenuous. Tell me men and women are alike, I’ll say stop being ridiculous. (And heavens, why would we want them to be?) We do notice those things and that’s fine. Differences exist, they do matter, and that’s generally good. How boring it would be if we were all the same!

Where we really need to be is the point at which those obvious differences are only some of many characteristics of that person and they don’t, as Martin Luther King said, define the content of their character. If someone asked me how they would identify a friend of a difference race, why would I not mention color as one of the characteristics? Why wouldn’t I be called white? I am (and trying to stay relatively that way in Arizona to avoid possible skin cancer!!)

Let’s stop asking for the impossible and the ridiculous and start thinking about the inward person. We won’t move past all the nonsense going on now (and no, I’m not saying everything is nonsense, so just relax) unless we spend time with people who are different in situations where we can both/all meet as just people and not members of “groups” or “parties”, but people who may have more in common than we thought and talk civilly with each other. Then perhaps we can regain some measure of sanity. It’s easy to scream, blame, call names, and cause destruction. The hard part is actually talking to and listening to people who are different. The hard part is trying to actually do things that will deal with the issues and start helping to solve the problems while realizing it won’t happen overnight.

But it will only happen if we acknowledge that differences are fine and that people are generally just people, people to be treated with civility. Let’s be radical and give it a try.

“We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”
― Bill Clinton

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #101 – One Single Flower

Cee’s Len’s-Artists Photo Challenge this week features single flowers. I realized I’m spoiled for choice, but that’s not a bad problem to have.

My first photo, an iris, was taken with an iPhone and has been one of my most popular photos. Of course, the light is what makes it and I never again could get that same light. Then the older man who grew these beauties on his tree lawn died and the family dug them up.

“Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.”
― Luther Burbank

Now that we live in the desert, I think it only fitting that I should include a shot of a cactus flower. Although you might not think it, the cacti have some of the most beautiful blooms you’ll ever see. Just be careful when getting a closeup!

“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lens-Artists Challenge #100: The Long and Winding Road

Some days everything seems clear, even when the road ahead might appear long and far away.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Other days, you can’t really tell where you’re headed and feel as though you’re descending into darkness.

“Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that’s its beauty.”
― Amit Ray, World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird

I only went out for a walk.

Reading

I’ll be turning a few pages this week, so I wish you well and look forward to catching up this weekend.

Who’s responsible?

It’s tempting to let someone else be responsible for you.
Be the resistance!!
Be responsible for yourself whenever possible!

Kindness

Life