A Foggy Lake Morning with Canadian Geese

We miss you two!

Hayden Bissell's Growing Up Too Fast

Soccer Girl, Sort Of!

As  the title suggests, it's foggy and cool this morning, as I cannot see Long Point, just beyond the dock, as the fog rolls in.  Lots of martin sounds, geese on our lawn(I had to chase them off three times before 7:00), and 50 degrees out though it's supposed to warm up and get sunny.  I actually slept in compared t the previous mornings, getting up around 6:30.  I am reading a thriller by Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo, but I haven't made up my mind yet how much I like it.  He has too many threads that seem unrelated at the moment, setting it in the present  but going back to WW II as well,  but I am not sure why, how the WW II characters will fit in the present.  I will just have to keep reading.

I was tempted to buy a couple of biographies this morning, on FDR and Bertrand Russell but over came the temptation and decided to get them from the library.  I did order through our library a new book called Scorpions, about the Supreme Court during FDR's reign.  It's supposed to be really interesting, as he tries to pack the court and they change the culture of America to a great extent.

Two ideas this morning that struck me.  One, from Jamaica Kincaid, a writer from the Caribbean, that cultures that embrace gardening, like the US and Great Britain, are basically colonial  cultures, ones that have exploited others.   That to value gardens, one has to have a certain amount of wealth, leisure, to raise gardening above the concept of farming.  Thus, a leisure class is necessary for this idea, a result of exploitative or capitalistic nations.  Interesting.  She also mentions how much cheap labor, even suffering goes into much of the food we eat.  For Kincaid, this thought helps her to enjoy something like strawberries all the more, as she sees life as predominately one of suffering for most people.  Thus, realizing the effort that goes into something like the strawberries on your plate, the thought that your culinary pleasures and riches, depend on the labor, or suffering of others, makes her appreciate them all the the more.

The second idea, "The more I know, the more I can bear," is from a book review of Jill
Bialosky's History of a Suicide,  her attempts to understand her 21year old step sister's suicide.  As she uncovers more and more of the facts, the background, of the suicide, the easier it becomes to get past it.  This is so true, I think, the worst being uncertainty, and how moving beyond this to some type of knowing or understanding is preferable and makes what ever that was unbearable, bearable.