December 2, 2020 thought for today, You won't help shoots grow by pulling them up higher. Chinese Proverb

The top of the agenda for today was a trip to the grocery store. That was followed by a trip to the drug store to pick up Sue’s meds and for me to see if I could find some pet safe ice melt, Kroger didn’t have it. I first stopped at Certified, they hadn’t gotten it in yet. Since we were at Walgreens I decided to check there, they had it! Mission accomplished. 

While I was at the store, I snuck my camera out to get my theme photo, “yellow”, lemons and roses. I mentioned “snuck” in the last sentence because some stores don’t like people to take photos in their store, I don’t know Kroger’s policy. Some stores don’t mind. I think if I talked to the manger to tell them the circumstances, an amateur photographer on a photo club assignment, they wouldn’t mind. 

This month my photo a day club’s overall theme is “colors”. Yesterday’s theme title was “white”. This time of year in Ohio white is kind of easy to find. We had a snow fall last night. So I made several shots of trees and cars and shovels topped off with snow. 

I had a couple of other tasks to complete before going to church to print tomorrow. I had the message/hymn lyrics to format. Then the shut in envelopes to print. Next a sheet of hymn titles for the choir director. 

After those chores were done, I worked on the annual family calendar. 

Lowell stopped to clear up some of the results of  the house maintenance left overs that had piled up. 

I put groceries up in stops and starts. I still have some left to do. 

The word today is philosophy.  There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections, Joseph de Maistre.  To know the hight of a mountain, one must climb it, Augustus William Hare.  Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils, but present evils triumph over it, Francois de La Rochefoucauld.  There is but one philosophy and its name is fortitude! To bear is to conquer our fate, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton. To believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere Philosophy, Thomas Browne. ...there are some who are naturally fitted for philosophy and political leadership, while the rest should follow their lead and let philosophy alone, Plato. True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is, Victor Cousin. Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul, William Gilmore Simms.  There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so, William Shakespeare.  Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures, Nicolas Chamfort. Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, Ludwig van Beethoven.  Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant, Edgar Allan Poe.  Whence? wither? why? how? - these questions cover all philosophy, Joseph Joubert. Things do not change; we change, Henry David Thoreau. The fool’s life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future, Epicurus. There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality, Seneca the Younger.  At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst, Aristotle.  

As I mentioned earlier in this story, while I was at the store I made a few shots of yellows. I chose the
one I captured of yellow roses to use for this upload. 

This article is another story about animals....what could be bad about that? At least it’s a break from the pandemic. This article is about a “snowy owl”. Apparently they are not an everyday sight at Alum Creek. Since I haven’t met Harry Potter and his adventure at this point in my life, I learned from this article that this owl species is a “real live Hedwig”. I learned from the article that Harry’s  Hedwig , postal carrier, is a snowy owl, is “a magnificent bird who habits the Arctic regions. There is art work in European caves from 30,000 years ago that depict the huge white owls. On November 22 a visitor to Alum Creek Reservoir saw this amazing bird. The find was immediately announced on social media resulting in several dozen folks interested came to the park. The art would appear on cameras. Apparently after several hours they remained hidden. There seems to be an unwritten rule that one must stay at least 200 feet away from the owl. The owl had been seen earlier resting on top of boulders along a slop in near the dam. Eventually after a few days the owl turned up. Over a hundred people came to see it taking photos to mark their visit. According to their reports the owl is “spectacular”. Females can be two feet long and weight about five pounds. They have a wingspan of five feet. It was noted that the owl’s eyes are golden and about the size of a human’s eye. One of its favorite meals is a small rodent that will be grabbed silently in “gargantuan talons”. They have been known to capture Canada geese, great blue herons and gulls. This was interesting, there are 14 neck vertebra that allows it to rotate its head 270 degrees. After doing some research, it was noted that the snowy owls that may have come to Ohio in past years came from the Ungava Peninsula of northern Quebec. Normally the adult males remain in the Arctic. It has been recorded that every four or five years the owl may come to the Midwest usually coming after “lemming outbreaks”. Many of the owlets venture south in the winter to hunt. Apparently this is not one of those winters so there will be fewer owls this far south. That’s why this year seeing the snowy owl was a pleasant surprise for many. 

We are having baked spaghetti and fried bologna for dinner. 

Joy