launch for "BrightSpots"

Here's a natural miracle along the northern sidewalk on Mountain Ave. in Tucson, just west of the fenceline of UA Farms. Catching winter's light rainfall and sheltered from the hot sun, a cluster of red primroses pop up from the rocky soil.

This image is the Spring symbol of the launch for "BrightSpots" by AnitaWrites. Please join us as we explore other images and short posts and, possibly create, face-to-face as well as online ways to highlight small miracles that demonstrate change that is happening.

yellow daffodils

I love the color yellow: yellow blouses (and variations on that color), yellow butterflies, yellow sunflowers, yellow daffodils. I love the word "daffodil"--it sounds funny and light, just how the flower appears. When it's a tight bud, the flower looks like a loose nozzle hose; then it opens and reminds me of the kind of bicycle horns I used to have on my Schwinn when I was a kid. Wordsworth had a more lyrical impression of the flower--what is yours?

_________________________

It was on this day in 1802 that William Wordsworth (books by this author) and his sister, Dorothy
(books by this author), happened upon a profusion of
daffodils along the banks of the nine-mile-long Ullswater Lake. Dorothy
wrote down a detailed description of the daffodils that helped inspire
Wordsworth to write the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" five years
later. It begins:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and
hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden
daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in
the breeze.

from The Writer's Almanac 4/15/12

WPA and writers

Congress approved the formation of the
Works Progress Administration on this date in 1935. The WPA was created
by President Franklin Roosevelt to relieve the economic hardship of the Great
Depression. The program employed more than 8.5 million people on 1.4 million
public projects before it was disbanded in 1943. Many of the WPA's projects
involved manual labor, but it also included literary and arts programs like the
Federal Writers' Project, which gave jobs to writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul
Bellow, John Cheever, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Walker, and
Richard Wright. Critics of the program said it encouraged laziness and shoddy
work, and claimed the acronym really stood for "We Poke Along," but Nelson
Algren said: "Had it not been for [the Writers' Project], the suicide rate would
have been much higher. It gave new life to people who had thought their lives
were over."from 4/8/12, The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It seems to me that we continue to have this tension about support of artists, the value of culture and the role of government--over 70 years later. When I walk the sidewalks of urban neighborhoods in Tucson and Phoenix, I see the WPA "stamp" in the concrete. Much of the work at Sabino Canyon and Mt. Lemmon (where we went today/Easter Sunday and saw patches of snow on the northern slopes along with gentle streams of water and green shoots of grass, tree buddings and pine saplings spreading new needles) was done by the WPA. Can we at least find some agreement that public works do benefit the common good--even if we disagree about what the "common good" looks like?

Eudemonia

Does the concept of happiness through reasoning have meaning for you? I consider how, when I plant a seed, measure the depth of soil and its content, place the pot so that it catches a certain slant of light (thank you Emily D.)--my actions are guided by reason, and so, in that instance, I am experiencing eudemonia. Can you conjure up moments of eudemonia in your life?

eudemonia \yoo-di-MOH-nee-uh\, noun:

1. Happiness; well-being.
2. Aristotelianism. Happiness as the result of an active life governed by reason.

We all seek eudemonia, but he thinks that it takes
a great deal of reflection and education to get a clear enough conception of it
really to aim at it in our practice.
-- Robert Campbell Roberts, Intellectual Virtues

They may have believed that we already do value duty, utility, and eudemonia, but it is debatable whether they need to make such
descriptive claims.
-- Jesse J. Prinz, The Emotional Construction of
Morals

From Aristotle, eudemonia comes from the Greek word eudaímōn
which meant "a good or benevolent spirit."

tasting by sight

from Hong Kong Fusion, Haddon Heights/Cherry Hill, NJ Region: fried ice cream with a cake-like crust--sweet but light, melting with each slow chew; mushrooms, noodles, green beans--tasty, savory with gentle service for a foodie's soul. We ate the dessert after the entree, but you could go for dessert first and have fun with your palate.

If you visit the area, or live somewhere close, don't miss this gem for a filling and affordable meal that beguiled my sous-chef son who said "this is the most imaginative and delicious Chinese restaurants I have been to and worth flying across the country to eat at again."

http://www.hkfrestaurant.com/

eating at El Corral at 93

This is a picture of dear old Dad, celebrating his 93rd birthday with a "mud pie" at El Corral in Tucson. He had just finished off five grilled shrimp and two rolls, loaded with butter before digging into this dessert. Yes, he has five stents to keep his clogged arteries going but he only got them at the age of 91! I can't imagine how many burgers, fries, salami sandwiches, Dairy Queen sundaes, and (since moving to the Tucson area with mom), Lucky Wishbone fried chicken he has devoured over the years.

Now, with the UA Basketball season winding down, I suspect a wave of depression may set in before (I hope) he can transition to a season of pool exercises at Cascades where he lives. Kermit sang, "It's not easy being green..." and others have lamented "it's not easy getting old." I see it in every visit I have with my dad: it's not easy to witness how a man--who, at 5 a.m., used to shovel snow off of our house roof in Elgin, Illinois and then go to work at Hillcrest school to shovel snow and ice off the sidewalks so the teachers and kiddies wouldn't slip and slide--now has to push his walker to the dining room. But he does get there to where he needs to go and so, when these birthday milestones roll around, we put on our birthday celebration faces and call out to the cosmos that yes, this son of Italian peasant parentage, continues to enjoy the just desserts of his life.

And: here's the link to El Corral: http://www.elcorraltucson.com/lp.html . We enjoy the food, the rustic western atmosphere and the sense of Tucson-time that this 1930s heritage place brings to our eating experience.

attitudes and actions

I am sharing this link because, as it happens today, my daily literature reminded me that the ONLY things I have control over are my attitudes and actions. So, keeping that in mind, here are word shifts that can reframe both: http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/become-more-optimistic-6-tricks.html

And "here's looking at you" on 3/1/12, Arizona Inn