Breakfast Club with the Boys and Yoga...Ah Routine

Hiking in the Spring Snow Yesterday

The Green of Spring at Long Point Yesterday as Well

Woodlawn

5:55

6:30

Spring Flower

Up early, about 5:50 for some reason, to a splendid sky of light off to my left and enshrouding darkness to my right.  I wonder who will win, the darkness or light.  It's 36 degrees outside and supposed to be breezy and cloudy, with a  good chance of rain.  I am glad I got most of my outside chores done yesterday.  Nothing we have to do today, of course, we are retired, so it's another great day.

Yesterday, we decided, because it was a beautiful, clear morning, to walk Long Point Park.  What a contrast to our 90 degrees hikes in a brown, rocky, sandy desert landscape of Scottsdale.  Here all was beginning to turn spring green, that bright, rich green only found in April here in the Mid West.  Trees are struggling to come into bloom, or were devastated by Sunday's snow.  Purple flowers are appearing on the vinca and unknown white wild flowers are sprinkled in the woods.  The paths were wet and muddy at times, thanks to the snow, but it was delicious to walk in the crisp spring air, surrounded by the burgeoning spring of Lake Chautauqua.  We took our usual trail, through the woods, out to the tip of Long Point, back through the grove of Guardian Locust trees.  Unlike Pinnacle Peak in Arizona, which was packed with hikers, runners and tourists, we met nary a soul, only a couple of fishermen at the marina's edge, wetting their lines.

We got back to the house around noon and tackled the job of cleaning up the mess of trees limbs and  branches that littered our front and back yard.  I had to saw in half the large limbs, stuff them into the back of my Pilot while Evie raked the smaller branches and put them in garbage cans. I made three trips up to Kinney's Woods, piling on more and more branches in their field.  Our yard is now clear of debris but the grass needs to be cut.  Later, after lunch, I watched the European Soccer semi finals between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, an amazing game.  One of the best players for the Real Madrid team is a German born Turk who I love to watch play,  I taped it, so I could go out and finish painting some of my dock pieces, getting them ready for the lake this weekend.  Unfortunately, the game went into an extra period so I was not able to see the last 15 minutes and never found out who won.  Perfect.

For dinner, Evie put together what we had left in the pantry with chicken thigns.  Always good, we enjoyed this dish with rice and salad, watching an amazing show from the previous night, as Jimmy Fallon had Obama on for almost an hour.  The show took place in Chapel Hill, NC, where Obama had spoken earlier in the day and it was a great show.  Barack is so relaxed, funny, confident and charming, at least to us.  And the students loved him.  It's worth watching if you missed it unless you are a Republican.  Then, it will only reinforce your negatives regarding him.

We view all events through the prism of our emotions and memes, looking for data to reinforce our opinions.  Thus, the Obamaites see only charm and intellect, the Right only pandering and wrong headedness.  This polarity seems a prescription for national failure and decline, according to a number of scholars, like conservative Dinesh D'Souza.  Because of interests groups, increasing polarization, as we all see the world through our prisms, we have a vetocracy, where nothing gets done.  "It undermines the secret of US's success; a balance between private and public policy." Anything one party proposes, the other vetoes.  Nothing gets done.  And we, as a nation, begin to decline.  Big money, pacts, and the increasing power of outside groups, their lobbyists, have led to this.  Partisanship and politics are so bad that Russ Feingold has suggested we might start having to have 'republican and democratic toothpaste.'  Everything becomes politicized.  Scary.