The Nature of Things

Bethany a t  Dandelion Pie   has a blog post up about ten things that she loves about her spouse and she invited other bloggers to chime in and link up.  Well, this seems like the kind of sappy thing that a young person newly in love might do, but what about a... um ...slightly older woman who has been with a man for forty years? Can she still find ten things she loves - or even likes - about him? That is my challenge, and,  just for the heck of it, I decided to give it a try. Here we go - ten things that still turn me on about the hunk that I married. He makes me laugh. Mostly intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. When you've been living with someone for forty years, this may be be most important quality of all. He does my laundry. Of course, I still have to put it away - he's not perfect. He gets stuff down from the top shelf for me. I'm not as vertically challenged as some women in my family, but I'm not exactly tall either. It's nice to have a man in the hou...

There have been some really good books published in the last year and I've been fortunate enough to have read a number of them plus having reread a few oldies but goodies from my past. As I look over the list of books that I've read in 2014, it's difficult to pick the cream of the crop, but I've considered each month individually and tried to pick my own personal Book of the Month. For some months, even that has been impossible and I've had to include more than one title. Here, then, is the extended list of my favorite books read (so far) in 2014. January : And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini - In my review of this book, I wrote, "This story stretches all the way from Kabul and the villages of Afghanistan to Paris, Greece, and, finally, San Francisco, but everywhere it goes, it is about family relationships and how we love and take care of those closest to us and what we owe not only to parents, children, and siblings but also uncles, aunts, cousins,...

I've mentioned here before that I am a sucker for lists. I find it hard not to read them, even the inane and sometimes offensive ones that appear on websites like The Huffington Post . They are "click bait" because Huffington knows that there are a lot of people just like me who can't resist clicking on them to see what's there. But occasionally one does come across a list that is actually worthwhile and useful. Such a list is this one: Lessons for Life by Regina Brett , columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer . (Hat tip to Elizabeth of Silver's Reviews for pointing me in her direction.) Brett sat down and wrote this list, originally, several years ago just after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since revised and added to it. It's a nice affirmation and reminder for us, especially on those days that aren't going exactly the way we had hoped. 1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small st...

The Institute for Economics and Peace recently released a report of its rankings of the 50 states according to their peacefulness. Their rankings were based on five factors: 1. Number of homicides per 100,000 people. 2. Number of violent crimes per 100,000 people. 3. Number of people in jail per 100,000 people. 4. Number of police officers per 100,000 people. 5. General availability of small arms. Using these criteria, these are the top ten least peaceful (or the top ten most violent) states: 1. Louisiana 2. Tennessee 3. Nevada 4. Florida 5. Alabama 6. Texas 7. Arkansas 8. Oklahoma 9. South Carolina 10. Maryland The thing that I notice first about this list is that most of them are in the South and that most of them are among the poorest states in the country. I'm not sure how Nevada managed to insert itself in the list, but it does have a very high unemployment rate and perhaps suffers from crime related to its gambling industry. But I would definitely surmise that po...

The political news frustrates and angers me. We seem to be a people determined to undo everything that the geniuses who founded this country set out to bequeath to us. But it takes news of what we are doing to the environment to really put me in a blue funk for days at a time. Like this article that I read on Huffington Post this week about nine types of habitats that are seriously endangered. 1. Mangroves: The mangrove is not a plant, it is a habitat that can contain a great diversity of individual species of plants - like holly, plumbago, hibiscus, legumes, acanthus, and myrtle. These complex habitats do the important work of capturing carbon and provide shelter for many species of animals. Unfortunately, they exist on valuable real estate along coasts and we know what happens when the needs of the planet collide with man's greed. Greed wins. From 1980 to 2000, 35% of mangrove habitats disappeared under the developers' earthmovers. 2. Coral reefs: These are beauti...

Every time you open a newspaper or check out a news website online it seems that you run across another report of some food that is supposed to be so powerful that it might even help you live forever. Often it is some exotic food that you might have to visit a specialty store to find. But there are some everyday foods that can give any of those exotics a run for their money. They may not help you live forever, but it is possible that they could prolong your life and they could definitely make your feel better while you are enjoying that life. Here are ten of them that you should be able to find in just about any grocery store and that you can easily work into your daily diet. 1. Berries - Fruits like raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries are high in fiber. There is evidence that they help to protect against some cancers. Plus, they are good for your sweet tooth. They are low in calories but taste sweet and can help satisfy that craving for a sweet. 2. Beans - They conta...

As an avid reader, I'm always interested in book lists. Lists of the best, the worst, the funniest, the saddest, the ones I wouldn't be caught dead reading - you name it. Give me an article with a list of books in it and you have caught my attention. I WILL read it! So when I saw the headline on Huffington Post about 13 books that everyone claims to have read even though they haven't , I was hooked. I had to read it. And you know what? I HAD read seven out of the thirteen. 1. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer - Probably like most people who have read it, I read it in school, in English lit class. That was a long time ago and today I can't claim to remember a lot of details about it, but I do remember that, at the time, I quite enjoyed it. 2. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville - I haven't read it, but maybe I should. From what I've read about it, de Tocqueville penned some very powerful and cogent insights about our democracy. 3. Ulyss...

Do you live in a dying city? 24/7 Wall St. is out with a list of ten U.S. cities which it says are dying. No doubt all of these cities have problems related to the economy and, in some cases, to their location, but I think most citizens of them would say that reports of their deaths are exaggerated. Here's what 24/7 said about cities that it believes are on life support: 1. Buffalo In 1900, Buffalo was the eighth-largest city in America. It was located on one of the busiest sections of the Erie Canal, the terminus of the canal on the Great Lakes. Thanks to its location, Buffalo had huge grain milling operations and one of the largest steel mills in the country. Buffalo prospered during WWII, as did many northern industrial cities. After the war, the manufacturing plants returned to the production of cars and industrial goods. The population rose to more than 500,000 in the mid-1950s. It is half that today. Buffalo was wounded irreparably by the de-industrialization of America. ...

The editors of ShermanTravel.com are out with a list of the most underrated cities in the country, and whaddaya know? We're on it! Houston might not be thought of as a prime travel destination except for people in the oil business, but, in fact, as the editors point out, there is a lot here to attract a great diversity of people. "Houston is proof that everything is indeed bigger in Texas. While better known for its big business and energy interests, this sprawling city also hosts top-notch orchestra, opera, and ballet companies, a dynamic theater scene, great museums, and the world-renowned NASA Space Center. Shopping reigns supreme here--you'll find a huge concentration of shops and above-par outlet malls--and its cosmopolitan restaurant scene expands upon the state's traditional Tex-Mex offerings . " In addition to all that, I might add that it has wonderful parks and several National Wildlife Refuges within easy driving distance for birders and other nature-...

So, I've been looking at Glamour magazine's poll of the 50 sexiest men in the world, and, to my chagrin, I realize that I have no idea who at least two-thirds of them are. The Jonas Brothers? Justin Bieber? Really??? Of course, the sexiest man, period, in this poll was Robert Pattinson, who plays a vampire in one of those phenomenally successful bloodsucker series that teenagers and wannabe teenagers love. I've seen his pouty, artfully disheveled visage in several publications over the past several months, so I could pick him out of a line-up, but I don't really know who he is. But many of the other "sexy guys" I couldn't even pick out of a line-up. I think the names and faces on the poll tell us more about those who voted in it than about who is REALLY sexy and who isn't. I suspect the average age of the voters was around 12. In my experience, 12 year old girls, and I assume all the voters were girls, have a very naive concept of sexiness. Yes...

I am a sucker for lists. Ten best this, ten worst that, just give me an article with a list in it and I'm almost guaranteed to read it. I'm particularly fond of lists of books. I check the various New York Times bestseller lists - fiction, nonfiction, paperback, trade paperback, etc. - at least once a week. Then there are those lists of "1001 books you MUST read before you die" and similar lists. Today, while tooling around the Internet, I came upon one of those lists. It is the Modern Library's 100 best novels . It is not just one list but two. The first list is the Modern Library board's list of the best 100 and the second list is a reader's list, apparently compiled from a survey. I went through both lists to see how many I had read. I found that on the board's list I had read 27 of their favorites, while on the reader's list, I had read 22. It's interesting to compare the two lists. They have some titles in common but overall they a...