Is it really savings$

Hi all, a random article and thought I ran across...

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/31520,opinion,you-switch-ill-be-in-the-pub

so maybe I won't or shouldn't drive the extra miles to save what I think is a lot of money! guess I need to factor in gas, my time, and carbon footprint now!

Happy Birthday to MOM

Happy birthday greetings to Mom, aka Grandma'Margie.
Hope you are having a wonderful day.
love,
the kids

Unworthy?...nah, just laden

Heard this song, by Cheryl Wheeler, the other day while streaming WUMB, a folk station out of Boston. To hear her voice and intonation for this song is very funny. But then when you actually read the lyrics it is pretty sad about how much guilt we ... I mean I ... LOL, needlessly carry around about the things we must do, and ... ah well, just read the lyrics.

Have a listen while you read:

Lyrics

• Unworthy
• Words and Lyrics by:
• Cheryl Wheeler


• I'm unworthy, and no matter what I'm doing,
• I should certainly be doing something else.
• And it's selfish to be thinking I'm unworthy,
• all this me, me, me, me, self, self, self, self, self.
• If I'm talking on the phone I should be working on the lawn
• which looks disgraceful from the things I haven't done.
• If I'm working on the lawn I should be concentrating on
• those magazines inside, since I have not read one.
• 
  
• I should learn how to meditate and sew and bake
• and dance and paint and sail and make gazpacho.
• I should turn my attention to repairing
• all those forty year old socks there in that bureau.
• I should let someone teach me to run Windows,
• and learn French that I can read and write and speak.
• I should get life in prison for how I treated my parents
• from third grade until last week.
• 
  
• I should spend more time playing with my dog
• and much less money on this needless junk I buy.
• I should send correspondence back to everyone
• who's written, phoned or faxed since junior high.
• I should sit with a therapist until I understand
• the way I felt back in my mom.
• I should quit smoking, drinking, eating, thinking
• sleeping, watching TV, writing stupid songs.
• 
  
• I should be less impatient when the line just takes forever
• 'cause the two cashiers are talking.
• I should see what it's like to get up really early rain or shine
• and spend three hours walking.
• I should know CPR and deep massage and Braille
• and sign language and how to change my oil.
• I should go where the situation's desperate
• and build and paint and trudge and tote and toil.
• 
  
• I should chant in impossible positions
• till my legs appear to not have any bones.
• I should rant at the cops and politicians
• and the corporations-in indignant tones.
• I should save lots of money to leave Audubon,
• plus all the rocks and animals and plants.
• I should brave possibilities for plotting plums of problems
• prob'ly blossomed, plausibly from
• blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
• blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I'm unworthy.
• 
  
• 5/20/97
• (P) May 27, 2003
• 
  
• Penrod And Higgins Music / Amachrist Music
• ACF Music Group
• International Copyright Reserved

EARTH DAY, April 22

So where were you on the First Earth Day, 1970?

I was eight...in the third grade...don't think I really became aware of Earth Day till the fifth grade. For some reason I remember having Globe/Earth stickers on my notebook in the 5th grade.
I do remember being very earth conscience growing up. Into nature and saving endangered animals. I even had a subscription to Ranger Rick given to me and had it for years. That mag came out about the same time as Earth Day began, I believe. My kids get it now, yes, even over here.

So what are you going to do for Earth Day? Ride your bike to run an errand, recycle that paper or plastic instead of throwing it in the trash, hang a load of wash on a drying rack or outside, or maybe lower your water temp...
I could go on like a Good Little Earth Girl and a child of the 70's. Got your rainbow suspenders ready?

Poetry

I'm reposting something that we have really enjoyed ... so ... enjoy.

Poem: "Diary of a Church Mouse" by John Betjeman from Collected Poems. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. Reprinted with permission.* (buy now from Amazon.com)

Diary of a Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the Vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame. For me the only feast at all
Is Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my want
With ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen head
To burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stair
And gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to taste
These items ere they go to waste,
But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desire
To be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly rat
Comes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no God
And yet he comes... it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat
(It screened our special preacher's seat),
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear the organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't' see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

-------------------------
this is why we love The Writer’s Almanac.

... do good work.

*the disclaimer text at the top is verbatim from The Writer’s Almanac site - hope that does not get anyone (like me) in trouble.

Post-Easter 2008

He is risen indeed!

Great words for an Easter Sunday!

Our Easter weekend was wunderschön, albeit rather cold. How cold? VERY cold. Snowing cold.

Woke up on Easter Monday (a holiday here in Germany) to a couple of centimetres of snow on the ground. Tuesday morning we, therefore, packed up the kids, packed up the sleds and headed for the slopes of Marzell.



Down in the valley of the Kander (in Rümmingen) we only had a little snow, and only for a little while. Up in the valley above Marzell (slightly higher altitude) there was at least 15cm of snow, a nicely packed base, and not too many people on the slopes.

These pics may not do the coldness of the day justice, but you can get the idea ...


Mama Fox hits the slopes!


Papa Fox does too ... (he's riding a sled that sits about a foot off the ground - so the snow was at least 10")


The youngest contemplates the cameraman as a target (but thankfully reconsiders)


The middle kit prepares for another run


... and the eldest in a flurry of snow

Mittersill, Austria

Just before the Easter weekend, we took a (long) drive over to Austria for a meeting of Germanic-speaking folks (at least, those with our company). A group from Texas came to help out with our kids, while the parents all met during the day. Here are some pics from the week ...

Wilkommen in Schloss Mittersill


The alps above Pinzgau


view from the Schloss


V and freund with their bridge


Easter egg hunt

More will come - we're thinking ...

They have cameras everywhere ...

... this is our cat (at least one of them - if not a composite of both!):



... at least the dog comes in when you open the door.

Dat Wrasseklie Wabbit

Adding a little to your knowledge base of nature and Kulture.... and it is German in origin...who would have thought:

Spring has sprung, which means it's time once again for that usually shy and secretive mammal the rabbit to endure a brief, yet intense period in the spotlight. Rabbits have since ancient times been considered symbols of hope, life, and renewal, particularly during springtime when fertility levels are highest. Then along came Easter and with it a whole new level of responsibility for the rabbit.

It was actually a European hare, or brown hare, that held the impressive credentials of being the original Easter Bunny, according to a Germanic legend dating back to the 1500s. The ritual of children preparing nests and eagerly anticipating the arrival of Oster Haas (Easter hare), who delivers brightly colored eggs on Easter morning, has taken place in German-speaking countries for centuries. In the United States the cottontail rabbit has been designated as the official deliverer of Easter treats. This is easily evidenced by the lyrics in popular holiday tunes such as "Peter Cottontail," and the presence of that signature fluffy white behind in every commercial rendition of the Easter Rabbit imaginable.

For the whole article and pictures click on:
enature.com/articles/detail.asp?storyID=563

Paul and I saw a Hare in the woods several weeks ago...so that makes 10 sitings of "wild things". And it is HUGE...I believe that it really could hold a basket . When it sat up straight, its ears were well to mid thigh. Then it hopped off...or rather a loping hop.

The kids get out of school today for TWO whole weeks...and we are dyeing and painting eggs today!

The Big Fire

Yesterday evening, as it was getting dark, the whole village gathered to mark the end of the Fastnacht season. In our area, the tradition is to celebrate this by having huge bonfires. This symbolizes the beginning of spring and Lent, and also the chasing away of the snow (if we had any, ha,ha)

Lent btw is an ‘old English’ word for spring... then we wait expectantly 40 days, 46 if you count Sundays, till Easter. Easter is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox. Wow...gotta love how nature plays a part in this...God never seems to be too far from His creation.

... Back to Sunday night.....this is an evening for all the villages up and down the valley to create their own huge fires...we are talking stacks of wood and brush piled as high, deep and wide as a very large house! Not your nice little bonfire on the beach while your bopping to the Beach Boys...this is serious fire. And the Germans really get in to it...they love their fires...they have fires and torches at Christmas for night time wanderings, the fireworks for New Years are all shot off in the streets for at least an hour or more, there are fires at every gathering to roast wurst or stockbrot over with your self sharpened stick that you cut yourself from the woods, and every home has candles that they really use. So these folks know how to “do” fire.



Half of our family had this flu bug raging through the house, so I took the healthy crew (the oldest and the youngest) and we had a blast. The whole village, it seemed, had turned out for this and it was only the Rümmingen folk, as every other village has their own celebration. I was pleasantly surprised with how many people I actually know and how many are more than only “wave to buddies”.

We stayed long enough to for the kids and friends to have a good game of hide and seek in the shadows of the fire...and of course there was wurst and long sharp sticks...but that story is for the next post.