Random

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Doomsday

According to twice-wrong Harold Camping’s most recent prediction, the world will end on October 21, 2011.

If that isn’t a good day for you, how about October 16? I was recently alerted (by a caring friend who was quite serious about this) to the impending destruction of the earth by a small, nondescript assemblage of ice and dirt that is currently heading for the core of the solar system. That’s right. On October 16, 2011, on its way out to space again, the comet Elenin will pass by Earth at a distance of “only” 21 million miles. (By comparison, Venus is 23.7 million miles away.)

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Three Things I’d Always Wondered About

Ever have one of those nights where you wake up at 3 am and your brain turns on and starts going around and around, wondering about stuff? You aren’t lying awake worrying about paying the bills or fretting about the assignment due next week. In fact there’s really no reason to be awake… except you are. And you’re thinking things like:

  • When it rains, why don’t sheep shrink?
  • How do porcupines mate without stabbing each other?
  • If bulls are colorblind, why are matadors’ capes red?

Sound familiar? If so, then you’ll understand where the rest of this post is coming from. If you have no idea of what I’m talking about, continue reading—and don’t blame me the next time you’re wide awake in the middle of the night, wondering.

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Green

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. I’m one-eighth Irish, so it is my right—my duty!—to mark the day with a celebration. I’m not much into green beer (or any other color beer, for that matter), and corned beef and cabbage actually hail from New England, not Ireland. However, having visited the Auld Sod, I can attest that it is very, very green. It is so green that the green grass reflects in the clouds, and they look green! The Blarney Stone (in the castle shown at left) has green algae growing on it (all those kisses add to the slime factor). And green is my favorite color.

Therefore, in honor of St. Pat,  today’s blog is all about things that are green.

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Battered Birds and Fish Fatalities

In case your New Year’s resolution was to avoid all news media, you should know that as the year turned to 2011, approximately 5,000 dead Red-winged Blackbirds, starlings and grackles fell out of the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. About the same time, around 100,000 young drum fish washed ashore on the banks of the Arkansas River. And on January 4, two million dead juvenile spot fish floated to the surface of Chesapeake Bay.

Of course, once you have a few articles on a topic, many more are sure to follow. Similar events that may have escaped notice a few weeks ago are suddenly headline news:

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Happy New Year’s Eve… or is it?

as_janus_rostrum_okretu_ciachIt’s New Year’s Eve. I know I should be excited about this (and I am definitely looking forward to a friend’s party tonight), but I’ve always struggled to find meaning in this particular holiday.

It’s not like we’re celebrating a specific event—like the 4th of July or the resurrection. We’re not celebrating a honored person—such as George Washington, or St. Valentine. We’re not even marking an astronomical event. The winter solstice was ten days ago on December 21.

Rather, our celebration is based purely on the calendar being what it is. So, why do we celebrate January 1 as the start of a new year?

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What Do You Want to Know?

Have you ever wondered about such conundrums, but despaired of ever learning the answer? Well, despair no more. Cecil Adams will use his superior intelligence and amazing talents of investigation, and tell you “The Straight Dope.”

Think of a snopes.com with a somewhat sarcastic, but very funny, twist, and you have Adams’ blog. With the byline, “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973 (it’s taking longer than we thought),” you know it’s got to be worth your time.

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Say What?

dord

Among the approximately 200,000 words in the English language (give or take a few), “Dord” is unique.

Oh, it’s in the dictionary, or at least it used to be, right there between Dorcopsis (a genus of small kangaroo) and doré (meaning gold). But it doesn’t mean anything. In fact, it was there by accident. Dord isn’t really a word.

Turns out that for five years, from 1934 through 1939 , Webster’s New International Dictionary mistakenly included dord as a real word, defining it as a noun meaning density.

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Do You Rite Good?

I saw this posted (as written) on Facebook a while ago:

ok this may be a little harsh but I really don’t care….why do foriners look at us with a dumb ass look on thier face when we don’t understand what they are saying….hello you are in America at least make an effort to learn our language I mean come on your welcome here but don’t make us feel like ass’ becuase your to F$%king lazy to learn english. Sorry everyone just had to get that off my chest.

waist-511Hmmm. My first thought was that this person is being a bit hypocritical—clearly they haven’t learned English either! And in my experience, usually the situation is reversed, with American tourists rude and frustrated that English isn’t spoken in other countries.

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Celebrating a Blog-a-versary

It’s my anniversary. Not my wedding anniversary, it’s my blog anniversary. Compost is one year old today.

I’ve learned a lot about blogging in the last year. My first lesson was that the crowds would not be beating a path to my URL. It takes time to show up in the search engines. It takes time for interested readers to find my blog. I want you to know that I treasure each and every one of you who comes my way, whether you drop in once and move on, or whether you hang around and even comment occasionally. Thank you all.

I also want to thank those who have been guest bloggers on this site. My husband Pete, my son-in-law Jeremy and his brother Andrew… you’ve all contributed articles I was proud to post. (Would you write some more, please?)

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www.compost-blog.com

I’m announcing a new name for my blog!

My kids are going to be so relieved. I will no longer be pestering them for inspiring names, names that subtly indicate this site’s awesomeness. After much soul searching and months of intense contemplation, I am changing the name to… Compost.

I can hear the thundering silence. “Huh?” you say, “Compost??”

Too late. I’m committed. I already spent my $9.98 for the domain name www.compost-blog.com and I can’t afford to change my mind.

Besides, it fits. For one, I’m a gardener. Compost is a big part of my life. Well, a significant part, at least. And compost is a good thing. You take leftovers—veggie parings, weeds, frost-killed flowers—and turn them into something valuable. Most gardeners would give a lot for a big pile of finished compost.

In the same way, I’ve had good and bad things happen in my life. What amazes me is that God is able to take my past—all of it—and turn it into something sweet-smelling and life-producing.

That’s what I want this blog to be. Fun, helpful, instructive, but most of all, life-producing.

So please change your bookmarks or RSS feeds, the three of you who actually regularly read my blog. Just don’t go away. The only thing changing is the name.