In The Light Of Spring

When Thoughtful Words Mattered

"Child welfare ought really to cover all sorts of topics, 

such as better water and sanitation and good roads, and 

clean streets and public parks and playgrounds."

- Marjory Stoneman Douglas

I read a short article in my email today, from 

http://www.ehn.org/, about the woman who’s name

 adorns many places in Florida, (Including a high school 

that is now the starting point for sane laws regarding firearms).

Students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who survived

 a preventable massacre are currently being vilified in the 

predominantly right wing biased mass media. 

They will not be pushed aside of talked down to. I support them 

and all those who will vote for the restoration and future of 

our democracy.

Treehouse squirrel snacking

This quote was in my email feed from Finimize and I liked it. 

I removed the cookies so you could freely enjoy Eleanor Roosevelt’s thoughtful observation. 

(click the link if you want to visit a modern financial news site)

Spring Is Still Busting Out All Over

The cactus that never quits

Some of the applications and programs that I have been using 

for years are changing in unfortunate ways. Some are changing 

to subscription services, some have been bought by other 

companies and some are making poorly considered changes 

just for the sake of changing.

Stunning iris in Dottie’s garden

Even this blogger site is “modernizing” its way toward 

uselessness and will soon be unusable for writers and bloggers 

who prefer to create from their own minds, rather than be 

trapped in a collection of cut and paste stickers, templates 

and other border walls.

I originally designed my Phil’s Place page layout to provide 

just the right balance of white space, shapes and blocks of 

text that would visually convey the spirit of my musings. 

That worked for a few years. Only small adjustments have 

been required. Like redesigning the masthead and changing 

the size of images and trying to keep text from being converted 

to something ugly, (like Arial).

Happy hummingbird baby

I think where Apple, and now Google are going in 

the wrong direction is by trying to combine smartphone 

apps with real computer programs. At least that is my 

experience with photography, music recording, video 

production and graphic design.

The latest updated, redesigned, unusable or abandoned 

Apple programs like GarageBand, iMovie, iWebs and iPhoto 

are perfect examples of planned obsolescence and bad judgement. 

The iPhone versions are cute and that is nice on iPhones. 

I am using older versions of the Mac applications because 

the new versions lack the controls needed for original works.

Magic iris tests million colors retina displays

That’s my excuse for not writing this blog for awhile. 

The last time I published it, everything was reshaped and 

rearranged to where things got all squished together and text 

ran off the page. It was horrifying to see this carefully crafted 

blog discombobulated and trashed by poorly written code.*

I suspect that something weird will happen here, too.

*It did happen and I have had to chop up the text to fit this mobile 

App format. I think it looks like shit. I apologize.

Today’s Video;

Peace

Freedom Without Oppression

We are adults here.


We speak, think and behave like adults.






































We can see this world with child like wonder.

We are capable of taking responsibility for our actions.

We each try, in our own way, to address the harm done by those who behave impetuously.

I would like to share with you a paragraph from today’s Daily Word;

The headlines and conditions of this world may say one thing, but my heart knows this: Freedom is an inside job, and I take responsibility for establishing it in my own life. Whenever I feel tempted to look to circumstances and the outer world to set me free, I remember to search within. Here, I find my free spirit, ready to move with me in all that I do.

And finally, We all need to eat, and my inner digestive microbe colonies would like me to have breakfast.

Thanks for reading

New Years Wishes

Less Noise Please

We have made life difficult, precarious and sometimes deadly for the other 
occupants of planet earth.

I think we need to draw up some guidelines limiting our behavior that will 
benefit the natural order and save beings that are getting killed by destructive 
human activities.

Here are a few simple ideas to consider for future prosperity;

Ban all air traffic during migrations and mating seasons. You have no idea 
how much that would mean to the billions of life forms we inadvertently kill 
by filling the air with noisy machines and pollution. Animals, microbes and insects 
cannot hear the mating calls that will help them keep their species alive. 
Nor can they hear predators approaching or listen for food coming their way 
if they are a predator.

In fact, we should halt all construction, mountain top removal, clear cutting, 
development construction and industry during the seasons of spring and fall. 
When people discover how pleasant life can be when they can actually hear 
nature's soundtrack, we may realize how many things we don’t need to do anymore.

I am writing tonight’s blogpost with flu-brain. It is interesting how a fever can 
cause gaps in ones thinking processes. Little things that don’t get completed, 
yet the timeline keeps moving along.

Today I headed out to check the mail only to discover that I had put on shoes 
without socks. I got back to where my shoes were and saw my socks sitting there 
right next to my chair. So I grabbed a sock, put in on and put my shoe back on. 
This time, I was almost to the door when I discovered I had only put on one sock.

Eventually I got the mail.

At the time, I think my temperature was only 100.8. It doesn’t take much of 
a fever to unbalance our precisely organized minds. I wonder if I discussed this 
topic in 1979. That time when I had the Hong Kong flu and lost hearing in my 
right ear for a couple of months?

There were no blogs back then, but we did have a choice between Sony 
Betamax or VHS that year. (you might enjoy reading about how American 
corporations flooded the market with VHS and pushed Betamax out of the country. 
Just look it up on google. There are hundreds of articles and other documentation 
about the videotape war)

But I digress. Noise pollution is a real threat to life on earth as are the activities 
that create the noises. Like strip mining or road building. I wrote a song in 1970 
while camping at 9,800 feet in the Sierras. It was titled, “You Can’t Escape The 
Jet Plane”. One airliner or a single jet fighter plane would erase 5 or 10 minutes 
of natural soundscape. It would take another 20 or 30 minutes before the natural 
symphony was synchronized and harmonious.

What did our ancestors do when they saw the place teaming with life and  
abundance? They killed and ate the low hanging species to extinction.

If we don’t put the brakes on our appetites soon, we will have destroyed the 
only planet that will have us.

Happy New Year