Ray Bradbury said "Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed!"

Emily Dickinson wrote more than 1700 poems. Very few were printed in her lifetime. That mattered little to Emily. She was a poet. It was as necessary for her to write every day as it was to eat and sleep. All this is to demonstrate that, in her case, quantity did produce quality.

Emily's work is now universally acclaimed. Although she was writing for herself alone, she learned through writing to speak to every human heart.  Now, anyone can read one of Emily's poems and feel it speak to her, or him.

At first reading, Emily's poems may seem simple, but there is a richness that becomes apparent to the eye and ear with subsequent readings, yet her poems have a clarity as crystaline as a Mozart sonata. 

None of Miss Dickinson's poetry was titled, so they are usually known by the first line, or by a number.

Back to Ray Bradbury and his statement that quantity produces quality.

I once wrote for a half hour before breakfast for over a year, to see if I could form a habit of doing so. As soon as I did not make the effort I knew that I had not formed a habit.

I didn't miss it. 

No early morning yen, no irritating 'something is lacking' feeling.

If I had coffee or tea and a bite of breakfast first, then I could make it a habit, I am sure.

I will return to that custom and devote the summer to poetry with coffee. Or tea.  Anyone wish to join me? 

Civic Duties

Is it better to serve by registering voters and working on public forums or should I resign from the local League of Women Voters Board of Directors so that I am free to campaign for my favorite candidate?

It is a quandary.  On the one hand the LWV is a great advocate for issues. We study in depth then come to an informed consensus. Then we advocate for those issues we have found to be valuable to the community, state, and/or nation.

Our forums invite every candidate for an office, questions are written and sent to the podium from the audience, and each candidate has the opportunity to respond to each question.  People who attend get to hear the candidates' opinions on the things that matter to them.

We publish a voter's guide with information about the ballot issues and the candidates are invited to offer a brief statement about themselves and their positions for the Guide.  I will see that the Voter's Guide is published on our kclwv.org website when it is ready.  We distribute it to libraries because it is too expensive for us to print  thousands of copies. Libraries have copying machines if someone wishes to own an LWV Voters' Guide.

All of these are good and worthy efforts to inform the public and encourage all who are eligible to cast their vote.  

But:

I would like so much to be able to work for a candidate, stuff envelopes, make phone calls, to post a sign in my front yard in support of the candidate, host a "meet the candidate" event, attend a rally.  Because I am a somewhat visible member of the League by being a Board member, and because the LWV is absolutely non-partisan, only issue oriented, as long as I remain a member of the LWV Board I cannot openly support any candidate lest my support be interpreted as LWV support.  Members who are not on the Board are encouraged to be politically active in their own parties, and on occasion, a board member will take a leave of absence for the purpose of campaigning for a party or candidate.  

My dilemma is, is registering new voters and working on candidate forums more valuable than working for a candidate?

Do you have an opinion?

Writing sans the keyboard

...is becoming more rare. Between texting and the laptop, the keyboard seems ever at hand. This trend has improved my typing skills, a plus, but I like the flow of ink from the nib of a pen or of messy, every thickening graphite from a yellow number 2 pencil.  My written words are so connected to my being.  Handwriting is an individual expression as much as the words it conveys. One's handwriting shows one's mood, focus, creativity.

For example, if they are to be of any use to you, class notes have to be taken in speedy and neat writing.

When I put into a spiral backed notebook what I glean from the professor's  spoken words my handwriting becomes small and regular. It flows precisely along the pale blue line of the page, all legible, complete with dots and crosses.

But, when I am writing in a creative fervor the words sprawl big and bigger across the page with no respect for lines or margins. Letters choose their own shapes. Dots and T crossings all but disappear.

Creative writing on a keyboard does not show my passion, just lots of typos to be dealt with when I am through.

I have heard that Eskimos say that everyone is an artist, everyone can sing, everyone can dance, each in his/her unique way. Handwriting is certainly like that. It is as revealing as facial expressions.

Write a note on the next greeting card you send.  Or even write a letter to someone close to you.  It may be saved for posterity.  Letters have become so rare that chances are that your state historical society collects them. Letters are eye witness  history. Electronic signals soon disappear.

"I am not a crook"

......to quote one of our ex-presidents.  Only, it turned out that Richard Nixon was! 

I start with this quotation because something on my brand new blog has erroneously triggered a SPAM alert.  And on only my second entry, the one about seasons that morphs into praise of spring gardening.  In the first place, I am not a crook. In the second place, I am too ignorant to know how to produce spam. 

With the exception of the post grad class I took in the summer of 1980 on programming for teachers (three languages, and the floppies really were floppy in those days) I am an autodidact in regard to computers.  My method is to click on something and see what happens.  

That is the same method used in climbing an unfamiliar tree.  Try a likely branch, but don't put all your weight on it until you can tell it will hold you.  Bit by bit you learn the paths up and down that tree.

I have owned both pcs and macs.  I like macs better because people don't bother to write bad stuff; viruses, trojan horses et al, that will work on them.  It's because there are just not enough macs out there to make it worth while.

Now don't go out and buy macs!  That will ruin the whole deal for us few mac users because then the baddies will think it might be worth their time to make up junk  for macs. 

I like macs too, because they are simpler.  Simpler both in their interface with me, the none-too-bright user, and in the internal structure.

To get back to the climbing tree again, someone explained to me the difference between a mac and a pc this way:

Imagine a huge oak tree in the middle of a meadow.  One with the symmetry that a lone tree achieves.

On this tree there is a squirrel.  He is sitting on a twig way out on the west side of the tree.  He wants to get to a branch way on the east side of the tree to eat a really fine acorn there.

Here is what he has to to to get to the other side of the tree if that tree is a pc.

He must scurry from the twig to the branch to the limb to the trunk, down the trunk to the ground then up the other side of the trunk, out on the big limb to the smaller branch and out that to the twig with the delicious acorn hanging on it.

Here is what he must do if the tree is a mac.

He must jump from his twig to the twig with the excellent acorn.

So now you understand that anyone who thinks computers are like oak trees is way too un-savvy to be able to figure out how to do spam. 

And in further support of my character, I was a Girl Scout!

I pity people who live where there are no seasons

....because for all the heat and freeze we put up with we are more than repaid with our glorious spring and fall.

The north light coming in my window is tinted fuschia by the masses of  blooms clothing the branches of the big old redbud tree just outside.  Do they clash with the red of the flowering crabapple and the last of the magnolia's pink and cream cups or the pink and white dogwoods? No. Nature's colors never clash, not even my neighbor's black maple whose early leaves are dark, bronzy red.

Forsythia, its arcing boughs decked out in golden trumpets, is always the first to announce spring's arrival.

Rain soaked lawns, suddenly emerald after a winter of beige, are sprinkled with crocuses' purple, white and yellow, blue grape hyacinth, and edged in daffodils all annnouncing the new season.  

Tulips show off their amazing panoply of satin colors from beds all over town. 

Yesterday my order of impatiens and  geraniums arrived.  The geraniums will be tiered on the baker's rack on the brick patio.  I will plant the impatiens just behind the curving row of bricks that edges the perennial garden around the back of the garden.  I call it 'faux' gardening because it looks as if I am a gardener, but it is really just the row of vivid color in the front and a parade of daffodils, Virginia bluebells, peonies, rocket phlox, hosta and day lilies that do  their thing through the summer months and into fall. 

I do plant annual herbs and flowers, often from seed gathered the previous autumn. I have an abundance of hollyhock, basil, marigold and zinnia seed. The hollyhock goes near the lattice fence that shields the patio, the zinnia in the sun where tulips bloom now. The remainder of my one sunny bed is my herb garden.  The basil, parsley, sage bush, and tarragon winter over, and the dill reseeds itself, but I replant basil every spring, and border the bed with marigolds to keep the rabbits and squirrels away.

Against the back fence is a long bed of native perennials with a few aliens.  Lots of echinacia, daisies, black-eyed susans, some beebalm and tickweed with its dainty yellow flowers fill that space.  Each year I try something new to see if it likes that location.  My goal is to have a bed that is so at home in the climate and soil that all will bloom faithfully like the wild flowers they are.

The Weather Report in the Midwest

... is never what one expects  because in the vast middle of the country weather sweeps in unpredictably from any direction; one day from Canada, the next from Mexico or Texas or Arizona or Colorado. Rarely from the east.Weather moves generally from west to east around the globe; something to do with the spin.

Meteorologists who can make it here can make it anywhere.  On top of the uncertainty of weather source, we are prone to floods, blizzards, hail, drought, and even tornados.  

Amazing that midwestern farmers are able to produce all the grain they do.  Farming is a chancy business in the best of circumstances but would you call the above "the best of circumstances?" Nor I.

I think farmers stay with it because it is a life of challenge lived in tandem with the natural world.  Our kind lived among wild plants and animals for most of our existence, and scientists now believe that in each of us is a deep longing for reconnection with the rest of the natural world. 

Most of us brainy apes are extremely detached from the real, i.e., natural world.  Often, our nearest approximation of it is a city park.  I imagine there are children who believe that all open spaces are covered with cropped green grass and that flowers bloom in cultivated beds everywhere.  

But, even in the densest, grayest city there is still a part of nature that is present to us always, and that is the sky above us.  It may be hazed over with smog and the stars may be made invisible by light pollution, but everyone can make connection with the heat of a sunny summer day, a blustering sleet storm, or a crisp day in Autumn when the air is cool and the sky is at its bluest.

Perhaps that is one reason that we are always interested in the weather report, accurate or not.  It is our remaining connection with the natural world.