And I Lived in This Strange Culture

. . . I will explain to those in the next life that "I lived in this strange culture that believed that a giant rabbit sneaked through the world once a year on Easter morning and left edible colored eggs and candy in the shapes of eggs, rabbits, and baby chickens, especially to make little children happy, and the date of Easter was the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the spring equinox, and they believed that this Jewish guy 2000 years ago who preached unconditional love was convicted of blasphemy and crucified and died horribly, but woke from the dead 3 days later and that was the reason for Easter, they really believed this, and that this guy had died to pay for everybody else's sins for all time, and the people who believed this were really pissed if you did not believe this and especially if you told them the word Easter was the name of the pagan goddess Ostra and it was originally her feast day and rabbits and chickens were her sacred animals. Once I actually saw the giant rabbit, at the gym where I was taking Senior Yoga class, and it was sitting on a white throne with giant eggs under it, and local mothers were bringing their children to the giant rabbit, I guess for its blessing."

A Rough Draft of Spring

March has been very gray, unusually gray, or was that my imagination? No, my neighbor Terri noticed it too, and we pined for spring sunshine, but day after day it's as dark at 9 in the morning as if it's 9 at night, and most of the time, raining. It's rained eight days out of the last ten. Even my dream last night included rain. I was out in the rain and found the dead body of a pileated woodpecker and began crying. Nice dream, huh? Thanks, March. It's raining now.

Yes, how many gray days occupied the month of March 2018? How many cloudy days have besieged us until we are all slightly crazy with traffic accidents all along I-44 every freaking day? Or let's put it another way; how many sunny ("clear") days have we had in March? I searched for the answer and found it here. Exactly ONE sunny day all month so far: Saturday, March 3. There's a sunny day predicted for Friday, March 30; that's the only other, if it happens. TWENTY-NINE days out of THIRTY-ONE this month were cloudy, mostly cloudy, partly cloudy, snowy, "T-storms," or scattered clouds.

But before I learned this awful truth I woke the morning of the equinox, March 20, before sunrise, saw a blush of color in the east and excitedly thought, "I will take a picture of the sunrise and call it 'Spring Sunrise'!" and prepared my camera. Sunrises develop their color -- it's like stirring Crystal Light into a glass of water -- so I waited and snapped, anticipating more color, and what you see here, that little pinkish blush, faded and vanished beneath more gray, and since that day it's rained like all get-out. Yes, this is your "nature photo" for the month. I can't even remember what I did all this March except trying to see Black Panther on a Tuesday only to be told at the box office that the afternoon showing was all sold out.