Going searching for the sun

When my daughter passed through Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport a few days ago on her way to New York City and we met for a brief reunion, she asked me if there was anything I would like her to bring me. Rather nonchalantly, I said, "Anything with the name Rolex on it would be nice." Equally nonchalantly, I assume since she and I have more than a bit of an attitude, she emailed me this photograph along with a few others. Notice the name on the building .... get it? She gave me "something" with the name Rolex on it. She also included two or three photographs of what appeared to be a vacant apartment in which she is staying during her time in New York City. In reality, it is vacant, but it is not an apartment .... it is an office space overlooking Times Square which rents out at $30,400 a month. As I mentioned previously, she likes to hang with rich liberals.

Happy Birthday, Ole .... wherever you are ....

Where I live ....

Here is a description of where I live which I recently wrote in a reply to a comment .... I put it here so a few others might also read it:

The house is nice and warm and in a quiet/peaceful/relaxing neighborhood. People of all age groups, all religions, all political beliefs, all races reside here in sort of a state of harmony. It is a model for the way the world should be .... and could be .... if it were not for the power mongers and innately evil among us.

Weather report ....

This blizzard left behind sixteen inches of newly-fallen snow here. The western side of the state received as much as twenty-three inches in some places. Two more inches are expected to fall yet during the night, and another two are predicted for Wednesday and an unspecified amount again on Saturday.

I have plans for the summer which include being in and on the water a great deal, and I would prefer not having to cut through ice to reach it. I always am eager and impatient for summer to arrive, but, it seems, that I am a bit more than usual this year. There are a number of reasons for this frustration, but nothing a few hours lying on an isolated beach beneath a brilliant sun will not cure.

Concert for April ....

Bon Jovi will be at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul on Saturday, April 28. Ticket prices range from $441 to $1667. Richie Sambora is no longer with the band, but the rest of the crew will be there -- as will I. Will you be?

Later, baby ....

I think the time has arrived for me to disappear for a few weeks. I will label it a sabbatical. By definition a sabbatical is "a period of time during which someone does not work at his or her regular job and is able to rest, to travel, do research or whatever ...." I think I will do a bit of each and, possibly, more. In any case, I will be absent ­­-- totally/completely/absolutely -- from the sea of blogs for a few weeks and will return in time for Memorial Day. Until then -- be well and stay safe ....

Spring in MinneSNOWta ....

I am not certain if this is a post or a weather report or a whining session -- perhaps, a bit of all three. I will leave that for the reader/viewer to determine. Most of Minnesota is locked into what I would call an "old-fashioned blizzard." It began Friday with rain, then turned to freezing rain, then turned to ice/snow pellets, then, finally, to snow. Snow will continue to fall until around mid-afternoon on Sunday. My immediate area had received about ten inches of new-fallen snow by five o'clock Saturday afternoon, and isolated pockets are expected to receive as much as two feet before the system moves on eastward. As it stands right now, the first fourteen days of April are the coldest on record for the month and it is the fifth snowiest April ever .... it might well be No. 1 when this storm ends. The top photograph was taken through my open garage door looking down the street and the bottom photograph through my open patio door viewing a portion of the back yard. By the way, I am an old-fashioned kind of guy .... I still shovel the snow from my driveway and for a few paths for Buddy ....

 

Father & daughter pass by .... & curious me

Statistics often are boring, so I suppose it is boring to attempt to visualize the more than thirty-eight million individuals who passed through Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport during 2017. Whatever .... here are a few who were waiting to collect their luggage about five in the afternoon on Tuesday. Notice the blonde standing sort of in the center with her back to me? Me is Fram, who took the photograph. That blonde young lady is one of my two daughters. She is just as camera shy as I am, perhaps even more so, but there absolutely is no reason for her to be that way. She has her mother's looks and is an authentic doll. She was on her way from Portland, Oregon, to New York City. We met, we ate lunch, we talked, we hugged .... we went our separate ways.

Two songs today, with variations of one ....

Kerry Livgren & Kansas .... "Dust in the Wind"

Hans Zimmer & orchestra .... "Chevaliers de Sangreal"

Both are beautiful ....

Both are magical ....

Both are mystical ....

See if you do not agree ....

By the way .... winter is very reluctant to depart this year. Six to twelve inches of snow are predicted to fall between Friday evening and Sunday morning, with forty mile-per-hour winds driving it. Many spring storms come out of the southwest, and are notorious for heavy snowfall .... long live winter ....

That is all it was: Curiosity

Among my names should be the word "curious."

For whatever reason, I will be reading something or watching something and feel an insatiable desire to know more about it. That is exactly what happened to me a few days ago while watching a 1964 episode of the Western classic, "Gunsmoke," on television.

For one reason or another -- mostly because the television show was before my time -- I never saw the original broadcasts of "Gunsmoke."

For one reason or another -- mostly because of the dismal nature of most television programming today -- I have taken to watching occasional reruns of the show featuring James Arness as Matt Dillon, Amanda Blake as Kitty and Milburn Stone as Doc Adams.

In this particular episode entitled, "The Glory and the Mud," Matt is talking to Jack Dakota, an old, retired lawman who had just closed his Wild West show and come to Dodge City looking for a "lost love" from long ago.

There is a "retarded" man in the show who goes by the name Cloudy. I suppose in this age of political correctness, I should refer to him as a "mentally challenged" man .... but, I was taught as a journalist to write as briefly and as tightly as possible to save space, and the word retarded is considerably shorter than the words mentally challenged. Chalk it up to knowing which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Matt and Dakota and Cloudy have been talking. When Cloudy leaves, Dakota says: "You know, he's lucky in a way."

Matt: "How do you mean?"

Dakota: "He'll always be a child. Not like the rest of us. Man once, child twice."

The words, "man once; child twice," struck me. I recalled words to that effect in William Shakespeare's play,"Hamlet," but had no idea of their origin. Sure enough, in Act II, Scene II, Hamlet says: "Hark you, Guildenstern; and you too: at each ear a hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet out of his swaddling-clouts."

Rosencrantz: "Happily he's the second time come to them; for they say an old man is twice a child."

From there, a further look .... Biblical? I wondered.

Not really, I discovered.

There are references to the saying/concept among the Old Greeks, noteably Plato around 400 BC ("The old man then, as seems, will be twice a child.") and Sophocles around 450 BC (".... old as he is now, and train again, for the aged man is once again a child.").

It was at that point the search ended .... for now, anyway ....

I suppose I always will be wondering about the who, what, where, when, why and how of those words, although the only purpose in knowing the answers would be to satisfy my curiosity.

Those words:
"Man once; child twice ...."  

Something to ponder, I guess ....

But not something to look forward to, I think ....

"Just gimme some truth now"

 A final blast of winter (not really the final .... more snow is expected Sunday into Monday) has covered my front steps with a new layer of snow. I have not and will not shovel it clear .... I am counting on this not being another year like that of 1816, known as the "year without a summer," and that the snow will eventually disappear even under the warmth of a northern sun.

I often say the "busiest" part of my dog, Buddy, is his nose. Here is an example why .... his head is buried up to his eyes in snow, attempting, I would assume, to catch the scent of whatever creature passed this way before the recent snowfall.

Buddy's ears are sort of extended above the snow, so he evidently is able to hear the "serenade" of the cardinal perched high in the tree. A male and a female cardinal have kept me company all throughout this harsh winter. Brave birds, for sure ....

This is all for this post other than a song, "Gimme Some Truth," by John Lennon. "Tricky Dicky" might be long dead and buried, but "Cry Wolf Donnie" has arrived on the scene to give the old-time crooks a run for their money. It seems to me the world is overdue for another John Lennon .... ya think!

By the way, my daughter, "the artist," recently moved from Tacoma, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, and will be flying through here on Tuesday on her way to New York City for a week or so. She likes to hang with the wealthy liberals, if you get my drift. I will be meeting her at the airport for a brief reunion and to buy her a vegan lunch .... hmmmm .... while she waits to change flights ....

April showers arrive as snow/snow/snow

Some say the month of April is Aphrodite's month. Aphrodite, you might recall, is the Greek goddess of beauty/love/pleasure. Nowhere that I am aware of is she associated with winter or snow .... yet, here we have it. About eight inches of wet, heavy snow fell Monday and Tuesday, and more is predicted for Sunday into Monday. FramWinter ended when March ended, but, I guess, no one mentioned that to Aphrodite. By the way, a personal finance organization study determined Minnesota is the least stressful state in which to reside. It was followed by North Dakota, Utah, Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The study was based on finances, healthy people and less family-related stress. I assume the study was concluded before our April snowfall.

Happiness .... wherefore art thou, happiness? 

[Part 2 of 2]

When I was a college boy, I spent a considerable amount of time and energy reading philosophy, religion, history, mythology, anthropology .... well, I am sure you get my drift. Among those I thought the wisest and sort of idolized was John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher and political economist who was active in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Mill advocated utilitarianism, a version of consequentialism, which states that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. He wrote a number of books, including one entitled, "Utilitarianism." It was published in 1863. In that book are the following sentences:

"And this leads to the true estimation of what is said by the objectors concerning the possibility, and the obligation, of learning to do without happiness. Unquestionably it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, even in those parts of our present world which are least deep in barbarism ...."

By the way, Mill also favored women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery .... as a member of Parliament, he argued that the oppression of women was one of the few remaining relics from ancient times, a set of prejudices that severely impeded the progress of humanity.

Hmmmm .... enough wandering and moving along back to the topic of happiness .... what it is, where it is, how to find it and how to keep it.

It would seem most people believe happiness is found within one's self, rather than without. If that is so, and I am beginning to think that it is, that would mean I have been looking in the wrong places and engaged in an exercise of futility.

I had thought this "part two of the happiest people" would be a rather long, drawn-out attempt to explain in more detail my concept of happiness, but then I decided -- rather abruptly -- by doing that I would only be repeating things I have thought/said/written countless times before.

Happiness, for me, is momentary -- has been, in the past, anyway. As for the future, that is yet to be, so, we shall see ....

Hearing the song, "Ever Dream," by Nightwish and Tarja Turunen provides me with a few moments of absolute happiness .... so, once again, here it is for me to listen to and drift away with so I might brush up against serenity while I sift through my inner being for a means to give happiness permanency ....

Also present is the song, "Rainbow Eyes," performed by the band, Rainbow. Ronnie James Dio is the vocalist and the magician with a guitar is Ritchie Blackmore. I love the song. The young lady is very attractive, but, actually, it is the scenery which is the center of my focus and which captures my imagination.