A Second Look, July 18, 2012

The extreme heat was back this week along with humidity. Meaning, I spent most of my time indoors. However, I did venture out to take some pictures of butterflies because this week found the arrival of  swallowtails along with variegated fritillary. They joined the cabbage whites and skippers that have been around for awhile.

 Also, I found a monarch caterpillar. We'll see if it can turn into a butterfly before a hungry bird has a tasty snack.

See the butterflies I found this week during a Second Look.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly on Tiger Lily

Black Swallowtail Butterfly

Skipper Butterfly on Cone Flower

Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly on Tiger Lily

Flying Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

Variegated Fritillary Butterfly

Variegated Fritillary Butterfly on Coneflower

Cabbage White Butterfly on Purple Sage

Monarch Caterpillar on Milkweed Leaf

Everything old is new again.

Recently I was looking through a box of old books and found one that caught my eye, A Paragrapher's Reveries by Mary Wilson Little. The book was published in 1904 and is full of pithy little sayings. I wasn't sure what a paragrapher was; however, I learned that it was a person who wrote paragraphs or fillers for newspapers. I also found that what I thought was an obscure book was available in many different formats and sold practically everywhere. This made reading the yellowed pages from an original copy even more interesting to me

Here are a few fillers copied from the book. Some of them may seem outdated and some of them are very applicable today over 100 years later. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

--The penalty of success is to be bored by the attentions of people who formerly snubbed you.

--The woman who sits up and cries because her husband is kept very late at the lodge doesn't bring him home any sooner, and only makes her nose as red as his.

--Quilting bees are going out of fashion. The women who can sew are dying of old age.

--Jack Frost makes a capital artist, but his pictures lack warmth.

--It's difficult to see why lace should be so expensive. It is mostly holes, and holes are not expensive.

--The pain caused by a bee sting can be instantly relieved by jumping in a mud puddle.

--In the trials of the canning season preserve your temper when you can.

--Happiness is the well-balanced combination of love, labor, and luck.

I Spy Blue

Can you find...

1. Freshly picked blueberries from Uncle Billy's blueberry patch.

2. My grandmother's good luck bottle.

3. A really fun memoir about the 1950's.

4. The oil that did not fix the car door squeak.

5. The natural peanut butter than no one likes.

6. One of Theodore's textbooks.

7. Bluebird eggs that have since hatched and flown away.

8. Theodore setting our flowers.

9. A cat spoon stirring squash and tomatoes from Aunt Martha.

10. Our new hydrangea.

11. The picture I didn't name.

Thankful Sunday--July 15, 2012

I am thankful that Uncle Billy has a 

bountiful garden that he shares.

The Wisdom of a Book Club...

Or eleven heads make good decisions. That is how it seems in my book club. I have been in this book club for several years now and I am always pleased with the group of books we select each year to read. This is mostly because I get exposed to a wide variety of books that I wouldn't necessarily pick on my own (or finish if I didn't have to discuss them). Upon looking at the last few years of what we have been reading, I found that my perceptions were right about our selections and variety. Every year our list includes memoirs/biographies, nonfiction, and fiction including mysteries, science fiction, and classics.

You may wonder how we come up with our reading lists. It's really quite simple. Once a year, every member nominates two books and then we vote on them. The only restrictions are based on availability and we sometimes bend those rules. That is how we get our diverse and well rounded lists. There is no plan, just the wisdom of the crowd.

The wisdom of the crowd has actually been explored extensively in a book that Wally introduced to me several years ago, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. Basically, the book examines the premise that a group can make better decisions than an individual even if that individual is an expert. A prime example of that (although not mentioned in the book) is my book club.

Maybe I'll nominate The Wisdom of Crowds for next year's reading list. We'll see if the wisdom of my group thinks that it is a good idea to read The Wisdom of Crowds.