Celebrity Deaths Who Cares?

This week three celebrities died, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. They died in that order like Death was doing some celebrity countdown. Each one was a bigger celebrity than the previous. When the week culminated in Jackson’s death, hysteria filled the air and digital waves. Twitter and Facebook spiked with everything from the major networks stories down to the smallest “I remember my first kiss was to a Michael Jackson song” tribute on MySpace.

Do I mourn these people. Sure I do, in a John Donne For Whom the Bell Tolls sort of way, sure. But I didn’t know these people and neither did the 99.9% of the people who pretended their deaths were the end of an era. No matter what fond memories you have of The Tonight Show, Charlie’s Angels, or the Bad album, you didn’t know any of these people. All the internet equivalent of throwing yourself on their caskets does only one thing. It makes me sad…for you.

Over 140,000 other people died today. Their lives were just as important as Michael Jackson’s. They just aren’t in your iPod. Do you mourn their deaths? This year over 300,000 women died in child birth leaving 300,000 motherless children. Many of those same children died of malnutrition or curable diseases before their fifth birthday. In fact, 5.3 million children under five died this year alone. Did you mourn them? Did you even donate to a charity that was trying to prevent their deaths? 22 million abortions were performed this year. Less than 3% were done because the mother was at risk. That’s more than one abortion every 3 seconds. Did you try to help those girls in distress? Did you offer them an alternative? Did you just picket a clinic and make them feel worse about their predicament? More than half a million lonely people committed suicide this year. Did you do anything to reach out to any of them and try to prevent their deaths?

I’d venture to say, someone in your neighborhood had a family member pass away this year. Did you take them food or even send a condolence card? I was expressing these feelings to my sister-in-law this morning. A member of her church died this week. She didn’t know them very well, but she vowed to at least attend and help out with food or the nursery so others could mourn properly. That is how you deal with death. That is real. That is tangible. That is mourning.

Sappy, crappy, faux feelings for someone you never even met because you feel they touched your life doesn’t impress me. It makes me kind of sad. There are people on your street who could change your life in infinitely more meaningful ways than a few entertainers, if you would just let them. When was the last time your even spoke to your neighbor? Do you even know their names? If you got their mail, would you know where to return it without looking at the address?

Do us both a favor. Don’t post another stupid ode to Michael Jackson on your blog unless you meet a neighbor you haven’t met. No more fake feelings on Facebook about Farah until you visit a nursing home or hospice this week. Stop acting like you know these people when you don’t even know the names of the people you work with every day. Make death personal and deal with the people involved face to face. Then you’ll have something of substance to talk or write about.

You can check these and more statistics at the World-o-Meter.

Water. Cool Clear Water.

Summer is officially here. The temperature is pushing triple digits (Fahrenheit) and the talking heads on the news casts are doing their summer heat precautions shtick again. If my digital weather station is to be believed, the humidity inside my house is 71%.

But that’s OK. After living 28 in Alabama, you learn a few things about how to beat the heat. My grandparents live 80 years in L.A. (Lower Alabama) without air conditioning. They pickup and passed on a few tricks for survival, too.

Rule #1: Water. Drink it. Drink it all day. If you want to change it up, drink decaffeinated iced tea. Because…
Rule #2: Lay off the caffeine and alcohol. They are diuretic and sap the body of water.
Rule #3: Take breaks. Take it easy and rest in the shade often.

This third rule is why Yankees characterized Southerners as slow. We’re not slow. We just don’t move too quickly because of the heat. We’re smart that way. Life goes on. Chores still need doin’. We just know how to work with the heat and not against it.

Just to prove how important water is, here are some before and after pictures of my Angel Trumpets. In the before shot, you can see how the leaves are curling and drooping. The after pictures were taken only five minutes after a good soaking with water, just plain old water.

Plant one. Before.	Plant one. After.
Plant two. Before.	Plant two. After.

My advice for beating the summer heat is simple. Be a plant. Don’t move around to much. Let the breeze move you when possible. Drink plenty of water all day long. However you choose to beat the heat, stay hydrated.

Closing in on the Odd Little Happy

Weather is one of those things that we are hard-wired for. It’s our base brain which responds to weather. Sure, you can intellectualize it. You can quantify it with temperature and pressure. But weather is as primeval as fear, food, and sex. You’re not buying this, are you?

Think about it. What do we talk about? Our fears, good food, great sex, and the weather. “Nice day?” is one of the most common introductory phrases spoken. Like a fire, we stare at the sunrise. Who hasn’t laid on a hillside and made shapes in their mind from passing clouds? If we’re lucky, sometimes we have the perfect dinner, stare at the sunset, and follow it with great sex. See, your primeval brain can have a great night out.

We’re wired to pay attention to the weather like our lives depend on it and they do. Just like our ancestors, we need to know when to take shelter from a storm and when the season is right to plant our crops. Even our moods are affected by how much sunlight we see. People at extreme latitudes suffer more depression in the shortened days of winter. We should feel sorry for them, but during those long night, they’re having great sex so screw them, literally.

So where’s the odd little happy in all this talk about the weather? Today was gray and overcast. There was brilliant, ozone-creating lightening and rolls of echoing thunder this morning. It rained most of the day. True to the old saying, “Don’t like the weather? Wait a minute,” by 5 o’clock, the sky was clear and blue. The birds were back singing after hunkering down all day. The dogs weren’t afraid to go outside again and stopped peeing on the rugs. Things changed that quickly.

Some complain about the rain, but I don’t. I didn’t have to mow the lawn today or water it either. Free, nitrogen-rich water literally fell from the sky. Some complain about the sun, but I don’t. I just put on my sunglasses, pour a tall iced tea, sit on my deck, and took fabulous in the good light. Whichever the weather, you just have to learn to take the good with the good.

While your chasing the odd little happy, beware of reindeer-munching, semi-depressed Eskimos looking for a one-night stand and keep your eye on the sky. The odd little happy may be just behind the next cloud.

Following the Odd Little Happy

After yesterday’s post, I got several comments here and at the Facebook version which is autofed.  Over at Facebook, Cindy Gunnin commented using my new favorite phrase, “those odd little happys.” Then Michy asked for more pictures of my flowers. I decided that it’s not in me to deprive people of the small beauty I’ve tried to create. Therefore, today, I shall grant Ms. Michy’s wish and offer up a few out-of-focus shots of my flowers.  My digital camera really sucks for close ups so this is the best I could do.

I start out simply with the two-week-old Angel Trumpet my wife bought. This is her attempt to join in the grand experiment. The arrangement we apparently have is she will buy plants on-line or from QVC and I’ll do all the work potting and caring for them. I don’t remember signing up for that, but I’m sure she has some paperwork somewhere.	Angel Trumpet
Feather and Verbena Leftover Feather and Verbena	I emptied the window boxes. They were full of sundry perennials that I transplanted to the front yard. Sorry, I didn’t take pictures of that. My wife complained that she couldn’t enjoy the deck without “her” window boxes so I stuck some Feather and Verbena in them. I’ve discovered that Verbena is just about impossible to kill.
You may remember (Who am I kidding? You don’t remember. Here’s a link.) that I did a little concrete work to fix a downspout/drainage problem I had. I stuck a bunch of stuff there, but the Petunias really took off and took over. Sadly, the Dahlia were lost. Something about needing full-sun and the Petunias blocking the light.	Attack of the monster Petunias
Impatiens around a pine	Lastly, here are the Impatiens (pink) and Begonia (white) I planted in the front yard. I started with the Impatiens, but thought they had drown in the Spring monsoon we had. I went back and filled in the gaps with Begonia.
Unbeknownst to me, I have a green thumb and everything shot up together. The resulting bed under my Dogwood is pretty impressive, in my humble opinion. Here’s a couple of more angles. You decide.	More of the front bed

Impatiens (pink) and Begonia (white)

Here’s a parting shot of the same bed. I hope even virtual flowers made you smile today. Today’s odd little happy for me, in addition to sharing my flowers, was seeing the first lightening bug of the Summer.

When Do I Get My Red Rubber Ball?

Yesterday, I stopped by the Dollar General on the way home from work. Why? Cheap coloring books my wife could use as quilting patterns. Smart, no? But that’s not the point of this thought. It was the five-year-old girl with her mother, checking out ahead of me, that really got me thinking.

The child was proudly holding a 10-inch red ball. I think it had some cartoon character on it, maybe Dora the Explorer. She was so elated that mommy was buying her that ball. She repeatedly expressed her appreciation. For a moment, she had me convinced that $2.50 could buy happiness. I wanted to go back and buy a ball.

I wanted to go further back and be that innocent, to be in a place where something as simple as a red ball could make me that happy. It was a moment of clarity and confusion. It was a moment where my heart knew exactly how that little girl felt. In that same moment, my head couldn’t understand why I wasn’t as jubilant as that child. After all, I’m in the prime of my life. I’m earning more money than I ever have. My kids are grown and sort of out of the house. I have a wife whom I love and loves me more than grits. I have two little Chihuahuas who think me walking through the door is grander than the sunrise. The bank is letting me live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. The bank even lets me park a new car in the driveway. My yard is full of colorful flowers that I can point to and say, “I did that.” Thanks to years of hard work and steady insurance payments, I even have a new roof over my head. But somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to enjoy a simple red rubber ball.

Sure that little girl may lose her ball tomorrow. She may forget about it in a week, but for a few hours yesterday, that 10-inch sphere made her the happiest girl on the planet. When do I get my red rubber ball? When do I get that second chance at innocence? Is there a switch in my brain I can throw to tell my heart it’s time to be happy again? I know money can’t buy happiness, but I’m seriously considering taking $2.50 to the Dollar General tomorrow just to buy a ball. I’ll bounce it off my head a few times and see if that switch flips.

Or maybe, I’ll just be grateful for what I have. That was a pretty good list I just wrote. For someone, any one of those things would be their red ball. I’m going to go pet my wife and kiss my dogs.