Sidetracked Charley

My birthday is coming up and Facebook is again urging me to have a fundraiser and beg all my friends to donate to it. What is it about Facebook and these fundraisers? What is in it for them. Or what is the advantage of me begging my friends to give money to my choice? Facebook does not match funds. Wouldn't that be nice. Two years ago I asked my friends to donate to Stray Hearts Animal Rescue in Taos and they did. I really am not sure that Stray Hearts got the money. No thank you note from them. Did Facebook receive that thank you? If they did they didn't thank me for making it possible. In that year I donated to a lot of my friends' causes. I gave to save the elephants in Africa, and the giraffes in zoos, and promote the cause of stopping climate change, as if that was possible. Then Corona virus hit and my studio was closed down. All the events which I used as a way to sell my wares were cancelled. My studio went to the dogs, literally. Art was deemed non-essential but an...

Yes, I live at 8725 feet above sea level, a hardiness zone of 3.5 to 4. And a statistic quoted on a ski resort site says we get 210 inches of snow a year. Note: it is wise to remember never at one time and oddly not accumulative. It snows and it melts and then it snows again and that melts. The most I can remember at any one time was 72 inches over three days beginning the year 2006 with a whimper. And that snow hung around for a long time. I perusal of blogs of that winter reveals a lot of references to the Alaska TV series Northern Exposure, the Little House on the Prairie books, and blizzards in general. But that was a very usual year. Old timers said the worst in 70 years. Mainly what I dread about the approach of winter, thankfully late this year, is the approaching dark. I would not have to look at the calendar to know winter is coming. Like birds, who know when to migrate, locals instinctively know when to build up stocks of firewood, etc. With me there is also a nee...

A long time friend of mine, some 40 years, and I were talking about our misspent youth yesterday. Though our lives, even when separated for years, have largely paralleled each other, we have one major divergent path. She got married and stayed married for forty plus years. Longest I have ever stayed married - nine years. But we are both attracted to pirates. So yesterday's coffee was about the pirates in our pasts. And since it was Valentine's Day we discussed that too. Her mate of all those years made a big deal of VDay. To look at my past you would guess that VDay had something to do with victory in Europe during WWII and I was on the losing side. I have only been sent flowers once. The man involved with the nine year marriage and much longer friendship knew to buy my truffles instead; when he remembered. How, one has to ask, can anyone miss Valentines? Trust me it is possible. I never much liked the day to be frank. I blame that on two things 1) Mom and Dad never see...