March Madness and other Musings

March weather madness . . .

Excuse me . . . was it not just spring? Like sixty-five degrees, crocuses blooming, trees budding, birds singing, etc. It's FREEZING today and there's snow everywhere.

This photo was taken last week on a day that was about seventy degrees with balmy spring breezes . . .
and THIS photo was taken yesterday after a veritable blizzard. I love how that one yellow pansy is sticking it's head out like "help . . . I can't breathe!"

March Madness, NCAA style . . .

Okay . . . what the heck? There I was, sailing along in first place among our family group brackets . . . I'd picked 7 for 8 in the Elite Eight and was feeling oh, so smug and then 3 of my 4 picks for the Final Four tubed their games. Louisville, Pittsburg and Oklahoma . . . ya bums! Now, because of my incessant trash talking, I've opened myself up to all kinds of mockery that will probably last, yea, even until the year 2017. This is what happens whenever I show the least interest in sports. I go down in flames. But this year I've learned my lesson. Next year, I do the bracket but I keep my mouth shut and don't even pay attention until the final game is played. Will someone please remind me of that next year?

Moving along to Nutritional Madness . . .

Just thought I'd give you a gander at what my pregnant daughter is feeding my unborn granddaughter. The breakfast of prenatal champions. That's all I have to say about that.

So much for Madness . . . on to musings.

I don't think I've ever posted a photo of our dog, Calvin, who will be fifteen years old this year. Calvin has a few little problems that are incident to age, namely some arthritis in his back and kidney disease. He's been a great little pet and an important part of our family since 1994 and it's going to be a sad, bad day when he takes his leave. So far, he's holding his own, just tolerating the special kidney health diet food that he has to eat (we sneak him treats) and looking hopefully at anyone who goes out the door that maybe they'll take him walking. He can still run fast, jump high and assume an air of superiority over all other dogs including the ones that are ten dogs bigger than he is. He may be a 10 pound neutered fuzz ball but as far as he is concerned he IS the alpha male! We love you Calvin!

One more thing . . . I just posted on my favorite books one that my brother sent me from Canada "The Book of Negroes". It's an absolutely wonderful read but if you look for it here in the USA you'll find it under the title "Somebody Knows My Name". Here's why according to a literary blog that I was browsing:

Americans Won’t Touch “Book of Negroes”
"Today on The Guardian Books blog, Award winner Lawrence Hill writes about why the title of his book wouldn’t fly in the United States. It’s a deeply interesting, thought-provoking piece:
It isn’t unusual for British or Canadian books to change titles when entering the American market. It happened to JK Rowling -- Harry Potter has no “philosopher’s” stone in the USA; and to Alice Munro, whose fabulous collection of short stories went from Who Do You Think You Are? in Canada to The Beggar Maid in the USA.But I didn’t think it would happen to me. When my novel, The Book of Negroes, came out last year with HarperCollins Canada, I was assured by my American publisher that the original title would be fine by them. However, several months later, I got a nervous email from my editor in New York.Of all the interesting things Hill shares with us here, this is the line that startled me the most:
When I began touring with the novel in some of the major US cities, literary African-Americans kept approaching me and telling me it was a good thing indeed that the title had changed, because they would never have touched the book with its Canadian title.Since the title derives from a historical document of the same name (one I’d heard of BTW, and I can’t be the only one) this just astonishes me. And it also makes me wonder: how can it be that, at a time when many people claim that reading is at an all time low, language seems to have more power than ever before?If you’re looking for Hill’s The Book of Negroes in the U.S., it’s published by W.W. Norton under the completely inoffensive and innocuous moniker of Someone Knows My Name. "