Cloudscapes

When you use gmail to let someone know you're going to have a colonoscopy, then use the spellchecker, the word "colonoscopy" is not recognized. But gmail helpfully offers you "cloudscape" and "kaleidoscope." So, tomorrow is my day to enjoy a cloudscape. (The real fun, of course, comes the evening before, as the actual procedure is not bothersome.) In the usual way of the world, the air has been full of cloudy mentions of late. The news that a friend who is only 35 has colon cancer, front page news about the detection procedure, and several other mentions in the media of the disease. Not a good week for clouds or people. But maybe if you live out in the Pacific Northwest, things are different; no one has ever heard of such a thing. They live their happy kaleidoscopic lives out there, filled with oysters and geoducks and beautiful cloudscapes over the Pacific. (With very sincere apologies to Porter, if he see my words, because he knows that this is not true. Maybe it's only in GoogLand that there is no disease.)

P.S. Those folks at GoogGroundZero must be too busy having fun at the mothership, because they apparently don't know about geoducks either.)

March Comes In

... with its brezzes loud and shrill, and the etagerie on the front porch falls over, startling the cats indoors, while a long branch of white pine clanks onto the roof of the car and the windsocks are flying straight out. Suddenly, it seems, the bulbs are all blooming -- iris reticulata, snowdrops, daffodils, crocus, two colors of grape hyacinth, and one Forsythia blossom. The Old Farmer's Almanac announces St. David's Day, St. Piran, St. Perpetua, Daylight Savings Time, then Pure Monday, Palm Sunday, the vernal equinox, and Easter. Surely the non-Christian world has observances in this month as well, but they're not in the OFA. There's a lot going on in the world, but it's good to look at what's happening in right around you.