May Day is Ah-MAY-Zing!

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Gather all the little children
With May flowers in their hair
For they shall dance
Around the maypole
For they shall dance
The day away

May Day blessings to all – A little May Day poem by Athey Thompson

For me, the month of May is the BEST not only because of Mother’s Day but it’s also my birthday month.

Last year Mother’s Day and my birthday fell on the same day. It’s an extra special treat for my two favorite days to be combined into one celebration.

The best known modern May Day traditions include dancing around the maypole and crowning the May Queen. Fading in popularity is the tradition of giving of “May baskets”, small baskets of candy or flowers. I think we should revive that adorable custom, don’t you?

Just in time for May Day, I found an adorable porcelain flower basket at Goodwill for about three dollars and I HAD to bring it home with me.

So far, this month started off in an ah-MAY-zing way.

Since it wasn’t a great video, I won’t post it, but THREE coyotes came to visit last night– THREE! — all together, and early this morning at first light, another coyote visit was captured on my wildlife camera. That’s NEVER happened before and I am soso excited.

The weather is warming up; all the fruit trees are flowering, the roses and ceanothus and lavender are in bloom, and baby birds are hatching.

Beltane, which takes also takes place on May 1st, is a celebration of the abundance of Earth and the forces of Nature. Bonfires are traditionally set to engender a sense of connection with ourselves and all living beings, but that wouldn’t be a smart thing to do in our wildfire ravaged state, so the flame from a safe candle must suffice.

Happy May Day and Happy Beltane!

Suspire: Word of The Day

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The word of the day is “suspire“(15th century): to let out a deep sigh.

The verb suspire is considered obsolete today—we might only encounter it in poetry.

In Robert Frost’s poem “Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight,” he wrote: “And from that one intake of fire / All creatures still warmly suspire.”

Not only is it a literary way to say “breathe,” but it also rhymes nicely with “fire.” The Latin root is spirare, “to breathe.”

Sometimes I sigh and sometimes I forget to breathe until I remember that I need to take a deep breath.

Info curated from https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/suspire

Interesting Facts About Germany: University of Göttingen (In English and German)

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My son spent his junior year abroad at the University of Göttingen but never knew about some of its important historical connections.

Randomly, I found out about an interesting educator, Emmy Noether, from the early 1900s.

“What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?”

That was the response of more than one (male) faculty member at the idea of Emmy Noether joining the University of Göttingen to teach mathematics in 1915.

Instead of receiving the title she deserved, Emmy spent years teaching courses, often under the name of a male faculty member.

The official hierarchy dictated that it was HIS course and she was an assistant. More egregiously, she wasn’t paid for her work; she relied on the support of her family to survive.

In 1919 she was permitted to officially teach and began receiving a small salary in 1922.

As a teacher, Emmy was known to speak loud and fast, for being generous and thoughtful, and genuinely cared about her students.

In addition to being an excellent teacher, she also made numerous significant contributions to research in mathematics and physics.

The other interesting fact about Göttingen is something I wasn’t aware of until I watched the Academy Award winning film Oppenheimer.

In 1926, the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen to study under Max Born. Göttingen was one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical physics. (I didn’t know that fact, either!)

World War II interrupted the work and lives of most American physicists. In 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed to the Manhattan Project, code name for the project formed to develop an atomic bomb.

My son attended UofG to further his advanced degrees in Germanic languages and literatures, not the world of science.

Because I am THAT KIND OF MOM, I visited him while he was in Germany and spent a week there. I actually stayed in a visitors room in his dorm. This structure was built sometime during the cold war era, at least I think it was, because it was DISMAL and gray and cold and unwelcoming and the bathrooms were hardly luxurious – but it was fun to see the original Angel Boy in action and meet his classmates and friends.

Best of all, I got to be the obnoxiously proud mom as we did a lot of sight seeing and he was able to use his fluent German language skills all over the country.

Except for (and because of) the snowy blizzard debacle, it was a memorable Germany adventure.

A big thank you to Herr Professor Angel Boy for helping me properly translate my words.

Ein großes Dankeschön an Herrn Professor Angel Boy, der mir geholfen hat, meine Worte richtig zu übersetzen.
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Interessante Fakten über Deutschland auf Deutsch: Universität Göttingen

Mein Sohn verbrachte sein erstes Studienjahr im Ausland an der Universität Göttingen, wusste aber nichts über einige der wichtigen historischen Zusammenhänge.

Zufällig erfuhr ich von einer interessanten Pädagogin, Emmy Noether, aus dem frühen 20. Jahrhundert.

„Was werden unsere Soldaten denken, wenn sie an die Universität zurückkehren und feststellen, dass sie zu Füßen einer Frau lernen müssen?“

Das war die Reaktion mehrerer (männlicher) Fakultätsmitglieder auf die Idee, dass Emmy Noether 1915 an die Universität Göttingen kam, um dort Mathematik zu lehren.

Anstatt den Titel zu erhalten, den sie verdiente, unterrichtete Emmy jahrelang Kurse, oft unter dem Namen eines männlichen Fakultätsmitglieds.

Die offizielle Hierarchie schrieb vor, dass es SEIN Kurs war und sie eine Assistentin war. Noch schlimmer war, dass sie für ihre Arbeit nicht bezahlt wurde; Sie war auf die Unterstützung ihrer Familie angewiesen, um zu überleben.

1919 erhielt sie offiziell die Erlaubnis zu unterrichten und ab 1922 erhielt sie ein kleines Gehalt.

Als Lehrerin war Emmy dafür bekannt, laut und schnell zu sprechen, großzügig und rücksichtsvoll zu sein und sich aufrichtig um ihre Schüler zu kümmern.

Sie war nicht nur eine hervorragende Lehrerin, sondern leistete auch zahlreiche bedeutende Beiträge zur Forschung in Mathematik und Physik.

Die andere interessante Tatsache über Göttingen war mir erst bewusst, als ich den Oscar-prämierten Film Oppenheimer sah.

1926 verließ der Physiker J. Robert Oppenheimer Cambridge und ging an die Universität Göttingen, um bei Max Born zu studieren. Göttingen war eines der weltweit führenden Zentren für theoretische Physik. (Das wusste ich auch nicht!)

Der Zweite Weltkrieg unterbrach die Arbeit und das Leben der meisten amerikanischen Physiker. Im Jahr 1942 wurde Oppenheimer in das Manhattan-Projekt berufen, Codename für das Projekt zur Entwicklung einer Atombombe.

Mein Sohn besuchte die UofG, um seine weiterführenden Abschlüsse in Germanistik zu machen, nicht in der Welt der Naturwissenschaften.

Weil ich so eine Art Mutter bin, habe ich ihn besucht, als er in Deutschland war, und eine Woche dort verbracht. Ich wohnte tatsächlich in einem Besucherzimmer in seinem Wohnheim. Dieses Gebäude wurde irgendwann in der Zeit des Kalten Krieges erbaut, zumindest glaube ich, dass es so war, weil es trostlos und grau und kalt und abweisend war und die Badezimmer kaum luxuriös waren – aber es hat Spaß gemacht, seine Freunde zu treffen und den ursprünglichen Angel Boy in Aktion zu sehen.

Das Beste von allem war, dass ich die unglaublich stolze Mutter sein durfte, da wir viel Sightseeing machten und er seine fließenden Deutschkenntnisse im ganzen Land anwenden konnte.

Abgesehen (und wegen) des Schneesturm-Debakels war es ein unvergessliches Deutschland-Abenteuer.

Grow Wings of Kindness

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“…acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love”― Rumi

Earth Day 2024 – Sustainable Living

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I almost forgot that today is also the first night of Passover, so here’s a couple of suggestions to create a vegan Seder plate. Substitute a roasted beet for the roasted lamb bone (no one should be eating babies, anyway) and for the egg, try seeds or flowers, because they’re symbolic of spring and hold the potential for new life like an egg does.

Back to Earth Day, the theme for 2024 is “Planet vs. Plastics”.

Sustainable lifestyles are considered to be ways of living, social behaviors, and choices — that minimize environmental degradation (use of natural resources, CO2 emissions, waste and pollution) while supporting equitable socio-economic development and better quality of life, not only for us, but for future generations and Mother Earth.

That’s what I like to think I’m doing when I visit my favorite consignment shop (haha).

I attended the very first Earth Day celebration in 1970 at Balboa Park in San Diego with a crowd of about 70,000 people. The weather was beautiful, about 68 degrees, and I must have skipped school that Wednesday.

After all this time, I can’t remember who I went with or how I got there but I do recall walking from booth to booth looking for free stuff and having an unpleasant encounter with a San Diego cop, probably about being truant.

There is a vague recollection that I swore at him and he got all puffed up and intimidating, threatening to call my dad until I told him to go ahead, my dad was a lawyer…and then he walked away. Miss you, Daddy, and thank you!

Gaia, known as the mother goddess, was the personification of Earth. She’s described as a caring and nurturing mother figure to all of her children, plants, and other living creatures on this planet.

If we take care of Mother Earth, she’ll take care of us!

Here are some way to live a more sustainable lifestyle from the Center for Biological Diversity.

🌎  Think twice before shopping.
🌎  Ditch plastic and switch to reuse.
🌎  Take extinction off your plate.
🌎  Simplify the holidays.
🌎  Choose organic.
🌎  Ditch fast fashion and animal-based textiles.
🌎  Be water wise.
🌎  Drive less, drive green.
🌎  Green your home.
🌎  Boycott products that endanger wildlife.
🌎  Fight for the right to choose when and if to start a family.
🌎  Take action.
🌎  Use your voice.

Backyard Bobcat Bliss

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More magic!

I can’t post video any other way on WordPress so I hope you’ll be able to view this spectacular bobcat that came to my garden DURING THE DAY with a RAT in his mouth!

Here’s how the story unfolds: Yesterday morning around 6:30 a.m., I saw something on the lawn. I went out to look and it was a mangled rat. Hmmm, I said to myself, that’s gross, but I bet a hawk or owl dropped it. A little later, I walked up the stairs and took the SD card out of my wildlife camera that’s situated on the lower half of the hill and brought it inside to check, like I do on a weekly basis.

I was absolutely blown away by this video!

Bobcats (and coyotes) visit most nights, but this is the very first time I’ve captured video of a daytime stroll through here — with the added bonus of a meal.

It might look as if he walks away, but keep watching for his return along with an early dinner. As he makes his way down the steps, I realize the bobcat is the reason for the rodent remains I found on the lawn. This bobkitty is so jawdroppingly beautiful, I’ve watched the video at least a dozen times.

Bobcats are incredibly elusive animals and a bobcat sighting is a rare occurrence. Although bobcats are primarily nocturnal, they may be seen during the day while hunting/foraging for food, especially between April and July when they are most likely to have dependent young.

The only part of this momentous event that makes me a little sad is that I was HERE at that exact time and didn’t have a clue that I should have looked out the window that faces the garden as it would have been the greatest day in my life, right up there with seeing wolves in the Lamar Valley at Yellowstone, (although the temptation to want to run outside and say “here kitty, kitty” and pet him is strong.)

I am beyond grateful that these creatures feel that my garden (and me) are a safe haven to explore.

What might it mean? Seeing a bobcat carries a powerful spiritual message. It could be a sign that we need to tap into our inner strength and independence. The bobcat embodies resilience, encouraging us to stand our ground in the face of challenges.

Additionally, the presence of a bobcat might be a call to explore the mysteries of our life. It’s an invitation to delve deeper into our personal spirituality and uncover truths that may be hidden or suppressed. A bobcat can indeed be seen as a good luck spiritual symbol. https://lifeadventurously.com/spiritual-meaning-of-bob-cat/

This is a good time to remind us all about the horrors of using poison to control rodents:

Rat poisons don’t just kill rats; they kill wildlife too. Wildlife species are exposed to anticoagulant rat poisons when the poisons are used in urban and agricultural areas to target species such as rodents. But those who consume the poisons do not die immediately of the internal bleeding they are intended to cause. It can take more than a week for a poisoned rodent to die. In the meantime, the poisoned animal may be vulnerable to predators, and if a predator such as a bobcat preys on the poisoned rodent, the bobcat becomes poisoned too. Thus, poisons enter local food webs and become especially harmful to animals at the top of the food chain. Through a process called bioaccumulation, animals at the top of the food chain absorb toxins from eating lots of different prey animals, but their organs cannot filter out the toxins, causing the poisons to accumulate in their systems. As a result, some of the most iconic species in California – bobcats, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, owls – are the most vulnerable to this indirect poisoning.  https://panthera.org/blog-post/surprising-effects-rat-poison-bobcats

Miracles and Magic

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Let’s go
To where the magic waits for us
Where our hopes, our dreams
Our wishes. Come true.
Athey Thompson

Yesterday was a magical day full of miracles.

In the garden, I looked up in a tree and saw two hawks mating! (I didn’t take any photos to protect their privacy.) Last night one of the wild baby bunnies was on the deck and scratched at the screen door like it wanted to come in the house (I didn’t open the door, but I was tempted), and the third miracle is that my adorable little vireos are once again nesting in a brand new bird house!

Vireo

“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles” — Walt Whitman

Reflections: In The Garden of Thoughts

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That’s one of the messages that emerged about being unplugged for almost a week…it’s important to make time to see and feel what’s in our hearts.

In solitude, there is healing. 
Speak to your soul. 
Listen to your heart. 
Sometimes in the absence of noise we find the answers.

Mirrored on the lagoon.

Photo credit Enchanted Seashells

Another one of my secret spots to take a break, breathe, and reflect.

Looking west toward the ocean; peaceful, not a ripple.

Photo credit Enchanted Seashells

**Quote from a lovely little inspirational book by Dodinsky.

Cyberspace Issues: Hardwired

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Finally, finally, I have been reconnected with the World Wide Web. The information superhighway has been restored.

It took the technician hours because it wasn’t a simple repair, apparently. Since I’m always interested in learning about pretty much everything, I watched him troubleshoot the problem.

Not my actual box, but similar.

First of all, somehow, there was an actual broken wire in the little junction utility box that houses all the wires on our street. Just mine, not anybody else. Weird, right?

He fixed it but that didn’t resolve the issue. He showed me his Ipad map that pointed to another broken wire seven hundred feet away, down the street and around the corner. He went there, didn’t see a problem, but his map then told him the main issue was a broken wire two more blocks away on the main street.

When he opened up that particular utility box, he had to sort through hundreds of twisted wires of various colors and find the one that eventually connects wifi to my address. When he did that, he discovered that it was broken in half, not connected at all.

He repaired that wire, came back here, we rebooted my router and got a strong connection. After doing a few more tests to make sure everything was successfully in working order, the technician left.

I asked him how often similar things occur and he told me that it happens fairly often because the wires get old and no one ever checks them unless there’s a problem like I experienced.

I’m grateful he didn’t give up!

CRAZY, right?

At some point, I’m going to examine my relationship with the internet. I’m not happy with myself and how I felt about being unplugged cold turkey. It caused emotional and psychological distress. I don’t have an addictive personality but this felt very much like descriptions I’ve read about withdrawals. It’s time to self reflect and try some neuroplasticity.

At some point, I’ll do that, but right now, I’m tap tap tapping away, SO happy to be reconnected.

Day of Reckoning | Doomsday

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I’ve had a really tough last few days. My WiFi broke on Thursday– I mean really broke. and there was nothing that the telephone tech could do to fix it so I had to schedule an appointment for a real, live human to appear in person.

The even worse news is that no one can come until Tuesday. TUESDAY.

That’s a lifetime, right? Nowadays, to be without internet access grinds our lives to a complete stop. I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to be so reliant on this technology.

I thought I was really smart and tethered my computer to my phone’s cellular data until I got the message that I was using too much data, so I had to untether…unplug completely.

In some ways, this really feels like the end; doomsday, my own personal day of reckoning. I guess I didn’t realize how totally dependent I’ve become on the internet — in every aspect of my life. I confess that I felt a level of anxiety, stressed out because it was as if I was marooned on a desert island, cut off from the rest of the world.

I was lucky enough to still have a radio because I couldn’t listen to music any other way. It was like turning the clock back more than thirty years.

No computer, no social media.

I had disconnected from cable TV a while ago but no WiFi meant that I didn’t have Prime or Netflix or Roku and I was stuck with only a handful of local stations. Crazy.

I found a couple books to read but it didn’t take me very long to finish both of them. I polished all the furniture, I washed windows, I cleaned out the refrigerator. I worked in the garden. I actually got a lot done, much more than if I had wasted time on the internet.

Psychology Today says excessive use of the internet is known to negatively impact a person’s mental health. It has been associated with mental health issues, such as loneliness, depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Cybersex and pornography hurts our minds, souls, and relationships in so many ways — it’s incredibly sad.

While the internet has completely revolutionized the way we live and work in the modern world and opened up opportunities, it’s also closed the world. I believe that, too.

The internet transformed communication, information dissemination, commerce, education, and social interactions in unprecedented ways, reimagining the way we live, work, and interact with one another.

In the old days, we used typewriters to write papers or letters — or we hand wrote them. If we wanted to read a book, we went to library — or the bookstore. There were no e-readers or digital downloads.

If we wanted to hear a song, we listened to it on the radio or we bought a vinyl record, tape, or disk.

If we wanted to watch a movie, we either went to the movie theater or watched whatever came on television, and later we had Blockbuster to rent movies, remember that?

Upon reflection (since I’ve had a lot of time to THINK) I think life was better because there was more one-on-one interaction. Being alive didn’t feel as disposable as it does now. We didn’t expect everything to happen instantaneously. We didn’t give up as easily on things. We didn’t discard things as quickly. We learned how to take care of them and mend them if they broke. We didn’t feel the need to rush out and buy the latest new thing that was being sold, and then obsessively track its every delivery movement. (That’s me.)

It hasn’t been easy, that’s for sure. I only lasted three days before I packed up my laptop and drove to the (empty) city parking lot to access their free internet.

This is where I am right now, sitting in my car, typing away on their signal. After this, I think I might hit up Amazon and look for a new table runner to accent my now beautifully polished and shiny dining room table.

The pain is real. How long could YOU last unplugged?