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Here we are on Sunday, February 14, 2010 and it is Valentines Day so it’s not a great idea to spend all day at the computer unless the one you love can only be reached by computer.

Then it’s alright I suppose.   My girl is downstairs listening to the DVD of  Stevie Ray Vaughn I gave her this morning so I can slip away for awhile and think about this day in the relative quiet of the Citadel of Solitude.   I can read what other people more perceptive than I have said about love on this day and then reflect upon it.

I love you like crazy, baby
‘Cuz I’d go crazy without you.
~Pixie Foudre

This is so true.  And it doesn’t even go far enough because lots of folks go crazy even WITH someone special in their lives.  And who is Pixie Foudre in any case?

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  ~Albert Einstein

I wonder why Albert took time away from science to say something like this?  It seems perfectly obvious.  What is gravity anyway?  It’s a force apparently that pulls things down towards the ground.    I’m just drawing a blank with this one and I hope someone can help with it.  Because it leaves my mind EMPTY.

Albert was pretty crafty.  Maybe that’s what he was trying to do.  Because I sometimes feel like this when I think about love and especially about my own love life.

Not recently but in the past.   The mind really is not important when it comes to love.  It is better, perhaps, if it remains empty or thinking about food or sports.

The mind is like a refrigerator and it is not responsible for people falling in love but it allows them to live happily together if it is working well. ~  David.

Albert must have been unhappy to hear people talking about falling in love because hearing the word falling immediately caused him to think about gravity and science.  I wonder if he had time, really, to think about love?  I wonder what he thought about when he kissed someone?

A vacuum  in space?

Like I’ve always said, love wouldn’t be blind if the braille weren’t so damned much fun.  ~Armistead Maupin, Maybe the Moon

Now this guy is obviously more down to earth and clearly having an  enjoyable  time with love.   It might actually  be worthwhile to establish a braille-like language for lovers.  Because then you would have to teach it in school.

And then more students would take the time to go to school and really study.

And then they would all drop out and begin their real educations at an earlier age.  Also there would not be so many science majors confusing us with their love analogies to physics.

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Oh!  Slow down Nathaniel!  You’re going too fast for us buddy!!

I’m sure that some of the folks reading this in Nathaniel’s time probably thought s0  too.   Because back then in the amazingly puritanical past of America it must have seemed a bit X-rated to actually write about people sharing the same pillow.  I can remember, in fact,  much more recently  when a movie was not allowed to show a man and a woman together in bed.   Didn’t the Beaver Cleaver family all have separate bedrooms?  How was Beaver conceived?   Didn’t science provide means for artificial insemination back then?  Wasn’t the Pony Express involved?

Wasn’t Albert Einstein in charge of the program?

Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939

This is so true and it’s difficult for young lovers to understand in the first couple of hours of their relationships.   But then things like work, school, family, traffic, bills, old boyfriends, loud noises, The Tonight Show,  skin rashes, hunger and computer games tend to intrude upon their mutual eye exercises.    And then they definitely understand that it’s not just looking at each other.

But how do you get to the part where you are both looking in the same direction?

Ah!  That would mean you are interested in some of the same things!  Besides learning braille together!

My suggestion would be to learn to play Lord of the Rings Online together.  If you and your girlfriend both enjoy playing this game then you are set for the next fifty years.

Because the creators of LOTR  are always adding on to it.  People have actually met, fallen in love and married because of this  game.  Can you believe it?  These are the lucky ones.  I have heard that some of them didn’t even find each other attractive physically.  But it doesn’t matter.

Because they are always looking in the same direction together.

I’ve fallen in love many times… always with you.  ~Author Unknown
This is one of my favorite quotes about love.  There is something very mysteriously wonderful about it.

“Thanks”

To all the love

In you.

Last Friday I wrote a silly post and started feeling so good about life I decided to go out and take some photos. I took along my largest telephoto lens and headed for the butterfly exhibit at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. This we have photographed before but not with this lens. I was hoping to get some shots of the smaller but equally beautiful creatures as they flew above the bushes far over our heads. You can judge how this experiment turned out for yourself.

I hope you will let me know because it’s difficult to be objective when you’re the one making the effort to photograph these flighty little beauties. They hardly ever stand still. Their lives are so short! Maybe that’s why they seem to be in a hurry.

Dedicated to Robin Easton who made it home in one piece (hopefully) from her week long adventure in the wild.  Click on the music first and then the photo for the slide show.

The Tops/ Reach Out

Play – Reach Out, I’ll Be There

Botanical Garden July 09

Valentine’s Day is soon, originally uploaded by Davidlind.

kisses are a better fate
than wisdom.
~e.e. cummings

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In melody divine,
My heart it beats to rapturous love,
I long to call you mine.
~Author Unknown

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Grow old with me! The best is yet to be. ~Robert Browning

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We loved with a love that was more than love. ~Edgar Allan Poe

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Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart. ~Author Unknown

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On this day in 1752 The Pennsylvania Hospital opened its doors and became the first hospital in America.  The Emergency Room was a hospitable place for about fifteen minutes.

Someone should have taken a picture.  Oh wait.  They didn’t have cameras back then did they?

In 1812 on this day the governor of Massachusetts signed legislation that allowed the politically astute practice of carving up  voting districts or “gerrymandering”  to begin.  My voting district actually looks more like the debris left over from an atomic explosion but that’s a different story.   Boston was also in the news exactly 66 years later on this day when the Boston Bicycle Club was established.   It was the first bicycle club in America.

Much more recently (not on this date)  Massachusetts became the first state to give the Democratic Party a heart attack when it elected a Republican to fill the senate seat owned and operated by the Kennedy family for many years.

What can you say about the lovely people of Massachusetts?  Well. . . .  you can say that they are very creative people.  They enjoy reshaping the political environment while they are riding their bicycles.   And they are especially active the week before Valentines Day.  Hopefully they will need to rest soon.  I’m not sure I can handle too much more right now.

General Motors has also been in the news lately as it was back in 1937 on this date when it agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union.    At that time there was a strike happening and it ended after GM agreed to negotiate with its workers.   Hopefully this made the worker’s lives a little better.  I can imagine them now being allowed to see their families once a week and even getting some medical care when a car fell on them while they were installing the muffler.   It probably took them awhile to get to that ER in Pennsylvania but as long as they made it back before lunch was over all was  good.

You know that not every worker could afford a car back then.  Many of them had to ride bicycles to work.  That’s why bicycle clubs were so popular.

In Massachusetts.   The rest of the country was too busy for that nonsense.

If you were working six days a week and had to go to church for six hours on day seven how much time would you spend at a bicycle club meeting?

I thought so.

On this day in 1960 Jack Paar walked off the Tonight Show four minutes early because a censor had cut one of his jokes.    Those late night comedians sure are a testy bunch aren’t they?  Lately they have been acting up again.  Conan stomped off into the sunset after NBC wanted to cut thirty minutes PER NITE out of his routine.  Jay had so sit down and talk to Oprah after it became clear that he is a sadistic rat betard without a conscience.  Well maybe that’s being a little rough on Jay.

Did you know that Jay is from Massachusetts?  I’m not sure if he rides a bicycle.  He has lots of cars and motorcycles.   Maybe if he pedaled around on a bike for awhile he would start to see things differently and ask Conan to come back and do the Tonight Show.

Jay has done it for such a long time.  He really needs to do something different for awhile.  Maybe he could run for political office.  I could see him challenging Al Franken for his  senate seat somewhere down the road.   In a battle between comedians Jay is sure to win.

It takes a comedian to beat a comedian.  They understand each other.   It would be just like the time Godzilla met his match in a fantastic monster battle.  Or the fight between Mike Tyson and James “Buster”  Douglas that actually happened  on this day in 1990.    Did you ever notice that Mike Tyson and Jay Leno sound a lot alike?

A lot  actually has happened on this day throughout the years.  Nelson Mandela was released  after 27 years captivity  in South Africa.  And a French lass  named Bernadette said that she saw a vision of the Virgin Mary in France on this day in 1858.   So some good things happened through the years besides Mike hitting the canvas.

I needed to go see the dentist yesterday after a small piece of a tooth dislodged from its home of the last fifty some years or so.  It was an sudden departure and we didn’t have time to say good-bye.

I was nervous because the weatherman said it was going to start sleeting right when I was supposed to drive across town to see the dentist.

But it didn’t.   The weather was pretty nice and I did see the dentist without a problem.  Now I am home again and waiting for the numbness to leave my lip.   B has gone out to look for invitations for a wedding that is going to happen in May.  You can’t start too early where that stuff is concerned.

We are going to have a wedding and it is going to be on the beach.  Isn’t that nice?  I know it’s difficult to visualize here in the middle of all this snow.

There’s an alternate location indoors in case it rains.   But hopefully the weather will be nice.  The weather can be nice, right? I mean it is possible.

Update:   So yesterday was not too bad but late last night I could hear some sleet pounding the roof. At dawn this morning the weatherman didn’t seem too concerned about what was heading our way. The schools were not sure about cancelling classes for another day either. But finally they decided to go for it.  And then things started to deteriorate.

As I look out the window now the snow is not actually coming down.

It is going sideways.

It’s very windy and dark.  And the schools have made a U-turn as well. Classes are cancelled.  School buses literally turned around and took children back home.   If your kid actually made it to school (based on their more optimistic assessment earlier) they will hold him or her until arrangements can be made for a dash homeward.

Localities are really struggling with budgets these days and removing all this snow has just got to be messing up  their plans.  And the pot holes!   The roads are being torn up at an amazing rate too.

So many challenges and people are freaking out about the snow.   Watching the preparations for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver I was surprised to see that they are trucking in snow!  They don’t have enough snow!   Of course!  It’s all down here in Virginia and up and down the east coast.   I’m sure it’s expensive to bring in snow too.

It’s expensive to bring it in and it’s expensive to remove it.

Now they are saying that the roads are an “absolute mess”.   It seems like the storm that was supposed to go north of here actually came through the city.   Richmond is descending into chaos this morning.  Snowzilla has arrived!  There’s a seven car “pile up” on the expressway and over one hundred accidents in the area.  Parents are mad at the schools and Channel 12 is following the dispute but they are not saying anything about their failure to forecast this sudden and  severe deterioration in the weather as a possible reason for this mess.

And the school rep is being very polite and not mentioning it either.

Ha-ha.  They are so funny.  Maybe we should all just stay home until the coast is clear.

That’s an old expression but in this case it seems especially descriptive.