YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and I am officially notifying you that I am sick and tired of winter.
Us Arkies are accustomed to uno, ein, one (1) snow or sleet event per winter. In these parts, winter is supposed to go away in March, if not before.
Normally in a few weeks I could take a country drive just to see the green fuzz that would be emerging on tree limbs.
Won’t be able to take that drive until late April, probably due to the compacted ice still lingering on some shady roads through the dark woods.
Nashville Chamber of Commerce executive director Tim Pinkerton has a good idea to get rid of those huge heaps of ice left over from the city’s grading of Main Street: Scoop it up and put it in the ponds that are still low.
It would also transfer lots of rich soil leftover on the streets.
One pond that is always low is in former-Mayor Billy Ray Jones’s front yard out on the Murfreesboro highway. If there are any fish in that pond they must’ve learned how to swim and breathe in slushy mud.
Both of my regular readers are hopeful that I will share some nutrition tips for existing during an ice storm.
Here it is: I try to cut down on needless exercise which just wastes calories.
Of course before the storm hit I laid in a supply of M&M Peanuts — enough to last me until Lent when I will lie to the Creator about giving up M&M Peanuts until Easter. I can’t even joke about how grateful I am that we did not lose electricity.
But I am extremely grateful.
Times like this make you appreciate electric workers, cops, firemen, first responders, ambulance drivers, doctors, nurses, paperboys and psychic advisers who work tirelessly through winter storms. Notice I didn’t say anything about the mail.
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ART FOR ART’S SAKE. When he was a young man, Michaelangelolololololo hammered and chiseled and coaxed so many statues out of giant blocks of hard marble that later in life his hands were obviously swollen and in perpetual pain.
He suffered from what we now know as ‘osteoarthritis.’
His affliction was been discovered hundreds of years later by experts who examined his paintings closely and were apparently able to detect tiny changes in style due to the condition of his hands which limited their dexterity.
They were also able to note subtle tell-tale clues of his hands in paintings OF him, including his hands, done by other artists of the day.
This is also a tribute to the powers of observation and the remarkable skill of those other artists.
Still, Michaelangelolololololo was able to paint masterpieces such as the Sistine Chapel by mentally overcoming the ache in his hands.
One article says that later in life, he couldn’t even write letters. Friends would write for him. He would merely attach his signature to the letters. He did not have a Presidential signature-machine.
And still he worked. He was seen hammering stone up until three weeks before his death at age 89. That was Feb. 18, 1564, and no one knew much about osteoarthritis then.
There were certainly not many television commercials about osteoarthritis, osteoarthritis cures, or lawyer firms who were willing to sue anyone for persons who had contracted osteoarthritis because of sculpting and painting. “It costs you nothing because if we don’t win your case, we don’t get a dime.”
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WHERE IS SHE, CHAPTER TWO? One thing the ice storm did was encourage me to watch more British mystery shows on tv. Lots of them were written by a UK lady author, Dame Agatha Christie, who was the subject of one mystery, herself.
She disappeared for 11 days once — maybe affected by the near-simultaneous death of her mother and her husband’s announcement that he wanted a divorce.
Dame Agatha’s car was found abandoned and wrecked in the English countryside, but there was not a sign of her.
She was missing for 11 days before being ‘discovered’ in a rehab hotel, claiming amnesia from the car accident.
But, she subsequently recovered and wrote her great mysteries.
Now, all we need to is to find Amelia Earhardt. I’m betting one of these days her ill-fated aircraft will finally be found.
The remaining question is: What kind of car did Agatha drive? (This was before she became Dame Agatha).
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from opening an email: 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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WORD GAMES. I love oxymorons: The veteran Razorback football fan hoping for a national championship was a cheerful pessimist.
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HE SAID: “Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” Thomas Merton, theologian and monk
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SHE SAID: “I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.” Martha Washington, nation’s first First Lady
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
