March 12, 2021 a thought for today, If a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove. Cheyenne Proverb

I have spent the last four days trying to make an appointment for my son to get his vaccine. I haven’t had any luck yet. I have tried six locations every day. I will keep trying until we get it done. That was one of the things that was on the agenda early this morning. 

The photo theme for March 11 was “k is for....”. I had a list of K words. Kettle, keys, kite, keg and so on. My house is over ninety-one years old. There are still a few of the smaller features in the house that have been here as long as the house is old or nearly so. One of them is a key hole and its cover/fixture. So that was my choice for yesterday. Once I uploaded the image to my group photo challenge site one of my peers saw the  image and mentioned that the knob (made of glass) also fit the theme. 

Since this is Friday, it is more or less an easy day on my list. The printing is done and there are no documents having a deadline. I still have to get the message/hymnal hand out folded and “packaged”. That won’t take more than half an hour. 

Easter is coming. I have an Easter Lily dedication hand out to do. I forgot to enter that message in the bulletin that I printed yesterday so I made a posterette (my original new word) to put where I place the bulletins. Then I sent an email to members. I just hope I didn’t miss anybody. I will need to get the requests for the dedications by the 21st. 

I should have some time today to work on organizing some more of my archived photos. It seems that is a never ending job but I enjoy doing it. Looking over old photos brings back memories. 

The word today is silence. Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together, Thomas Carlyle. The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do, Thomas Jefferson. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute, Josh Billings. The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed, Charlotte Bronte.  Silence is one of the great arts of conversation, Marcus Tullius  Cicero. Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence, Leonardo da Vinci.  True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment, William Penn. Silence is true wisdom's best reply, Euripides.  Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom, Francis Bacon. If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence, George Eliot.  When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze, Thomas Carlyle. Silence is the mother of truth, Benjamin Disraeli. Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish, Charles Caleb Colton. But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence than the strong man in his wrath! Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  

Today’s theme is “l is for....”. Again I had a list of ideas to use in a search. I settled on leaf or leaves. However it’s winter here and there are very few if any leaves left. My daughter-in-law gave me two house plants for Christmas to add to my indoor garden collection. A back story on these two is that I love unique stems or trunks of plants initiating sort of a Bonsai effect, which I am pulled toward. These two both had thickened, twisted and/or braided stems/trunks which gave them even a larger something to love and admire about them for me. Even of more interest, I noticed that one of the plants had been grafted, I noticed the graft site after some close inspection.  One of them has gorgeous leaves, well, all of my plants do, but I felt the photogenics for this one at this time. I used an overlay technique to give the final image a vintage effect. Once again, after I uploaded the final image to my group photo challenge site another of my peers asked if this was a Money Tree Plant. Sure enough it is.  Its official name is Pachira aquatica. Here’s an interesting note on the plant: “The five leaves typically found on a stalk are said to represent the five elements of balance: earth, fire, water, wind, and metal. Finding a stalk with seven leaves is incredibly rare, and also said to bring immense luck to the owner.....It has been said this plant reduces stress, anxiety and may also help lessen sleeping disorders.” 

This article is about some more changes that came with the pandemic. Grocers have transformed, but will shoppers follow? Before the pandemic hit there was personal shopping, or you could order groceries and have them collected by a staff member and delivered. You could even, in some cases, have full meals delivered. After the pandemic came on there was a 9% rise in “food dollars” from the year before that. Super markets never closed and were deemed essential. A lot of people started shopping online and orders were picked up, curb side, or delivered. Kroger’s “e-commerce business” has become almost as big as eBay. According to the article “it’s sales top Intuit, Xerox or Lvft and are gaining on Adobe, Uber and Wayfair”. Walmart and others say their e-commerce sales grew 69%. One of the Kroger customers in the story still personal shops but in this past nearly a year has cut the shopping days in half. She buys more at one time and cooks more at home than going out once or twice a week as her family did before the pandemic. She mentioned that it takes a bit more planning in preparing the list when going less often. Also mentioned in the article, there are fewer kids in the stores due to potential exposure to the virus. More in the article is that grocers are “bracing” for things to slow, “even shrink” as people feel safer to go back to restaurants less to the store. Wall Street was mentioned in the article. They want these businesses to grow their e-commerce to “wring profits out”. A question in the article was “Did the pandemic make e-commerce a permanent service for customers? Kroger, for one, is betting on it”. This was an interesting part of the article, Kroger is planning to automate home deliveries with robotics warehouses. Apparently besides e-commerce thinking there is a theory that both online and in-store growth “stimulates demand for each other”. When shoppers were shopping during the pandemic in the stores they had cut back on visits but loaded up when they did shop. Another change coming about is one of the stores may be “reducing human contact” by no traditional checkout lanes only self serve. Another possible change, new “smart cart” technology, Kro-Go, where the groceries will “tally as they go”. Something else mentioned in the article that adds to grocery shopping changes is that during the pandemic some customers may have chosen to do their shopping at smaller stores. 

Pizza!!

Joy