What was I thinking?

I have a yellow folder that I put things into that might be a good idea for a future blog post. My mind is kind of busy these days with uninteresting things to the rest of the world, so I thought it was time to get some ideas from there. The problem is that I don't know what many of the things mean any more.

Here are a few of them in no particular order except how I pulled them out.

Written on a piece torn from a brown, paper bag. "Yellow (big)-rabbit bush, Yellow many-flowered--viguicva, Yellow--satisfy, Yellow--dessert blazing star."  I think these are flowers from our Southwest vacation that I was going to do a special Second Look post with. I don't think there's any chance that I could go back to my pictures and figure out all of these different yellow flowers. However, who knows? It might be a lot of fun to do that on a frigid January day.

Root beer floats--now I like root beer floats, but I have no idea what I was going to write about them

Should have returned Sharon idea--no clue

Daughters of the Mountain--a book about women coal miners. This could be interesting, but will take a lot of research

Capitol Steps program--Capitol Steps is a group that does political satire with songs and skits. We went to see them last January. Not sure what I was going to write, but anything I heard then would be outdated now because they do very topical material.

Godspell program--I actually do remember this one. We went to a performance and I got to go on stage from the audience. I was going to talk about the stage ham that I used to be (or still am.)

Johnny Appleseed--I think I was going to do more research and follow up on an earlier post.

Different light--microwave, pressure cooker. Anyone out there know what that means?

And as happened with many of those ideas, I've run out of time. Gotta wrap this up or I'll be late to work.

Until next time...

A Second Look--October 21, 2015

This week we had our first frost of the season. And the second. It finally feels really cold with temperatures in the 20's one morning and I don't like it. But I guess I will adjust. It's always hard with the first cold snaps.

There were a few a casualties with the second frost, but there is still life in most of the plants. The leaves continue to change and fall, but the color is not at its peak yet. In fact, it's hard to imagine that there are so many green leaves left on the trees when there are some many brown ones on the ground.

As much as I don't like the coming of winter, I do love this time of year with the russet colors, crunching leaves, and the earthy smells. Autumn. Yes.

Here are a few things I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

The sun came out and the bees were busy on the recent mum blooms.

The nettle survived the frost and has an occasional bloom here and there.

However, most of the marigolds were not so lucky. This is one of the few blooms that made it through the frosts okay.

There haven't been any coneflowers blooming for several weeks now and the birds have been enjoying their seed heads.  However, I found one more bloom this week.

And speaking of birds, the gold finches have lost their brilliant yellows of summer when it was breeding season.

Fleabane in the grass.

Sweet gum leaves

Grazing deer

Thankful Sunday--October 18, 2015

I am thankful for a hug.

When we first moved here, there was a shy, little boy, Manny, living next door. Gradually, he and Theo became best friends. Manny was here all of the time playing with the boys, spending the night, and going to soccer practice and Boy Scout meetings with us. We helped him with his homework and gave him friendly advice. I think he liked it over here because it was more stable than what was going on at his house.

Theo and Manny in their younger days
 playing with balloons.

However, long about the beginning of his teen years, he expanded his horizons and started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Skipping school, petty theft, and pot started to be part of his every day life. After one particular event, I told him he was not allowed in our house any more until he showed signs that he was trying to do better. My only requirement was that he cut back on the number of tardies and absences from school. In the meantime, I talked to his family about all kinds of services that could help him, books to read, and people to talk to. However, in their own way, they did what they thought was best and did nothing.

Manny never did make it back into our house. I talked to him several times, but thought it was important to remain firm both for safety reasons and for him to have some consistency in expectations--something that had been mostly lacking from his family. His behavior escalated to major thefts, jail time, drug dealing, and heroin addiction. A very sad thing for everyone--especially Theo.

Throughout the next ten years, he was in and out next door and I never had more than a wave to him. However, the other day he was sitting in his backyard with a friend and I went over and introduced myself to his friend and said hi to Manny. Manny said that it had been a long time and there was an awkward silence. And then he got up and gave me a big hug.

And from that big hug, I felt like the Manny, from years ago, was still in there somewhere and maybe he can find his way again. And for that I am thankful.

Buying for Boys and Girls

A couple of months ago, I listened to an interesting discussion on the Kojo Nnamdi radio show about gender marketing for kids. The show followed Target's announcement that they were going to take down signage for their toys and bedding with the words "Boy" or "Girl" in them so they would be more gender neutral. They were also going to remove the pink backgrounds from some areas. I found the discussion about how these conventions developed very interesting.

Pink for girls and blue for boys has not always been the norm. It first was suggested in the late 1800's but didn't become common until the late 1950's. A study in the 1920's in department stores showed that gifts for baby girls and baby boys were about 50/50 pink and blue for each one. Meaning, baby boys and girls were getting equal amounts of pink and blue gifts. And later when there was more differentiation, it was very culturally dependent. Blue is the color associated with the Virgin Mary, so in countries with a large Catholic population, blue was for girls. And red was associated with stronger things like blood, and since pink was a variation of that, it was associated with boys.

Also, there was more neutrality in clothing than today. In the 1950's and 1960's, girls had to wear dresses to school and boys wore nicer clothes also. Then they came home and put on play clothes. A look at catalogs back then showed a small section of dresses for girls, a small section of nicer clothes for boys and a large section of play clothes that were for both girls and boys--no differentiation. These went through size 10-12. Today almost all clothing is geared toward either a boy or a girl.

A look at the way toys were marketed also showed some interesting trends. When ads were studied from the 1920's through the 1960's, it was found that the toys that were marketed to girls had to do with household duties and boy's toys were geared more to building sets and cars. However, only about 50% of the toys had any kind of gender identification. Fast forward to today and a look at a Disney Store's website shows 100% of the toys are targeted to either a girl or a boy. But today instead of trying to sell girls little brooms or irons, they are selling princesses.

In between these times at the height of feminism in the 1970's, only 2% of the toys were marketed for specifically girls or boys. This neutrality declined until the mid 1990's when about half of the toys were now gender specific--just like it was in the 1950's. One other thing mentioned was that however toys were marketed when someone was growing up is what they think is the norm. Everything is compared to that.

So what does this all mean? I"m not sure but I do find it interesting that in the 1950's when there weren't as many opportunities for women, half of the toys were still gender neutral. And now in 2015, when there are many more opportunities for women, almost all of the toys are marketed specifically to either a boy or a girl.

This is a very complex subject with many layers--too many to explore in this one blog post. So I'll leave you now to ponder marketing of kids products over the years. What were things like when you were growing up and did you change how you bought things for your kids or grandkids?

A Second Look--October 13, 2015

Here are some things I saw this week 

during a Second Look.

One of the pansies that Kimmy and I planted over the weekend.

The first chrysanthemum bloom of the season. 

These mushrooms just sprung up in the last couple of days and covered quite a wide area--maybe 4'x3'. (I'm not sure that makes sense. Actually, not just these mushrooms covered that big of an area. These and others covered a wide area. Those would have been some big mushrooms!)

For years I have tried to get a picture of these delicate white flowers (can't remember thei name) and have finally done it. The problem has been that they grow on a mass of thin, delicate stems and leaves and the camera never knows where to focus. 

Wild cherries. These are an example of the many berries birds have to eat this time of year.

Tulip Poplar. The leaves are changing on this tree but not on some others.

Cows in the field behind us. This is an example of what the trees look like at this point in time. Change is happening but green is still the predominant color.

This is a funnel spider we found in our bird feeder. I hope to have more information about it soon. I've submitted an identification request to All About Bugs.  It's pretty curious looking, if you ask me.