“I wonder if leaves feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?”
The morning is wet and chilly. If Nala hadn’t whacked me a couple of times, I’d still be in my warm bed. I turned on the heat so the house will be comfortable enough for my shower a bit later. I have to go out.
Rainy days in fall are sort of ugly. The leaves on the ground get soaked and stick together in a brown mess. The bark on the trees looks almost black. The sky is ominous. Everything is dark.
When I was a kid, my favorite subjects were English followed by history and geography. I wasn’t a fan of arithmetic. I remember memorizing the times tables, the only way to learn them. One, five and ten were easy, eight and nine were not as easy. I also remember learning coins. We got work papers with pictures of coins and problems to solve like adding together a dime, a dime and a nickel. I’d practice at home with real coins.
I converse with my dogs. Nala usually answers. Henry listens. He always looks right at me when I chat with him. They have favorite words like treat, dinner and out. They both come when I call, Henry right away and Nala after a few calls. When she doesn’t come, I know she’s caught a critter. I don’t check anymore. I’ve learned she’ll come in when she gets bored or, in the case of possums, when they dupe her and pretend to be dead. She doesn’t kill the critters. She carries them around the yard then just leaves them.
After school, I’d go out on the warmer afternoons to play. I was never out long. Darkness came early. Once in the house, I’d watch TV until supper. My mother was always in the kitchen cooking. Supper was meat, potatoes and some sort of vegetable, a canned vegetable. We ate a lot of ground beef, but my mother was a whiz with ground beef. She served it in so many different ways. Her meatloaf was my favorite, especially the one frosted with mashed potatoes.
This is a four event ukulele week.
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October 7, 2024 at 1:47 pm
Hi Kat,
Today we have clear skies and a high temperature of only 90°.
My favorite subject in school was History, or Social Studies. I enjoyed English because I loved reading. My writing was not very good, and I hated grammar and spelling. Thank goodness they invented spell checkers. When I couldn’t spell a word, my teacher told me to look it up in the dictionary. If I didn’t know the spelling, then how could I look it up?
I also hated penmanship. I’m a lefty and my stupid English teachers made me turn my paper as if I was right handed. To this day I try to write using my left hand curled over the top of the paper. Not only is it uncomfortable, but messy. I remember my fourth grade teacher requiring us to buy and then use a fountain pen. I made a royal mess trying to use that beast. Years later, I discovered that they actually made left handed points for fountain pens. That would’ve solved the problem of dragging my hand over the wet ink. Ugh. This was in the days when teachers probably thought lefties were creatures of the devil.
I was also a math dummy. I remember my stupid guidance counselor in high school telling me I had to know advanced algebra and calculus to be a pilot. She was totally uninformed or just plain old ignorant. A little arithmetic certainly helps. Even pilots of my advanced age bought a circular aviation slide rule with which I did all the math that’s required to fly anywhere. These gadgets were available at any small airport flight school. Today, I have an App on my iPhone that does everything a pilot would require. She was probably confusing being an aeronautical engineer with being a pilot. Luckily, I ignored her advice completely. I can usually recognize bull shit when I hear it.
October 8, 2024 at 12:00 am
Hi Bob,
It rained most of the day and is supposed to keep raining through the night. The rain was heavy for a while.
You would have loved the dictionary where the words you are looking for are spelled phonetically. You can find the word the way it sounds to get the correct spelling. Often sounding out the word helps with guessing the spelling. I love to write and have always loved to write. Like you, I also love to read.
I remember the nuns also trying to change lefties to righties. Part of the problem was the nuns didn’t really know how to teach lefties to write, to hold their hands in the correct position so they went with what they knew. Did you know the Latin word for left is sinister?
I used a slide rule to figure out grading averages for kids. I never expected to use algebra or geometry, nd I didn’t.
October 8, 2024 at 9:21 am
I was not aware that we southpaws are sinister. Unfortunately, I’m a victim of the law of Primacy. Even though I learned to write incorrectly for a leftie, I can’t easily change to the correct method. When I bought my first Macintosh computer in 1986, I also bought a typing program called, “Typing Tudor II”. Now that I’ve learned to type, I rarely write anything longhand. I type everything as a note, or a text, or an email on my iPhone, iPad, or computer.
I won’t bore you with my feelings about teaching kids penmanship. If you can type you can communicate in the modern world.
October 8, 2024 at 11:16 am
Given Latin was so widespread and many of our words have Latin roots, I figured because sinister translated to left it prompted the change to right-handed. I know every freshman had to take key boarding which made sense by that age. I do agree that cursive needs to be taught to every kid.