May 14, 2025 a thought for today, Knowledge is rooted in all things, the world is a library. Native American Lakota Proverb

The first upload for yesterday is “my choice” one of my series of shadows. This is my front door with Venetian blind shut and the sun allowing the wind chimes on the front porch to present a shadow.

The next upload was “in my head”. This was a hard one to find a description of something in my head. So I used the thought of the goose on in the parking lot at the shipping mall. 

The last upload for yesterday was “reflection”. This one was taken a while back. It is a window on a store that has been closed and left empty, almost. 

Life today. Half of the street in front of my house got paved today. I was surprised they didn’t finish one half then go down the other side to finish it....not so. It’s nice to have at least part of it done. 

This has been an easy going day. I got a couple of the plants I have ordered for the new window gardens. I have a full sun window garden and a low light window garden. The two plants that I have started are full sun. I was a little concerned about them being so new and the sun today right around noon was bright and hot so I was trying to get some light cover over them. I use to have shear curtains that I would put over my house plants when they were outside for the summer. When I went down stairs to get them from storage they were gone. They must have gotten tossed when we cleaned the basement last. So I spent some time trying to rig up a bit of shade with pieces of medical gauze. It’s working, sort of.....not as well as I had hoped but it will have to do for now. 

There doesn’t seem to be to much on my agenda for today. So I am taking it slow and easy. When I get something new, like my new plants in my “new garden” I am like a mother hen. I am back to the back room checking on them as I look out the window every half hour or so. I have a bit of the worrywart issue when I look at them because they are drooping slightly. Hopefully they will perk up soon. 

This is one of those spring days that the sun is warm and bright part of the time then a soft gray cloud passes by. They are predicting some more rain today then a pretty hefty raise in temps for the next few days. Maybe we are going to have nice few weeks of spring before the summer gets here. 

The first upload for today is “what’s in my bag”. At least it is not to much as messy as it could be. I also like the way the tan-ish color show against the gray of the bag.  

Brian just came by to do the weekly mowing. The grass has been really healthy this season with all the rain we have had. It is doing as well as the dandelions were a couple of weeks ago. 

Tomorrow is printing day for me at church. Then I should go to the lab for a blood draw for my next check up at the doctors next week. 

The next upload for today is “can’t live without”. This is the view I see on Sunday mornings as I sit in church. I would have a hard time doing without this. 

The word is advantage. The present time has one advantage over every other - it is our own. Charles Caleb Colton.  Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. Thomas Jefferson.  Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself. Thomas Browne.  He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against. Confucius. You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent. Alexander Hamilton.  There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots - suspicion. Demosthenes. Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger. Francis Quarles.  Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage. Benjamin Disraeli .  Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. William Godwin.

The last upload is “my choice” and is another of my series of shadows.  Another view of one of the shadows of my front porch swing. 

Article: I just caught in the title that here is a bit more history about our city. Here is the title, Why Columbus Never Built A Subway And What It Built Instead”. So, Columbus doesn’t have a subway system as many of the large cities in the US do. This article tells how the intercity transportation has come about in Columbus. The story starts with “a bustling streetcar network. From there as time went on there was a “handful of bold transit ideas that came close but never quite happened”. It is mentioned the public transportation here in 1852 with “horse-drawn omnibuses, evolving into horse-drawn streetcars along major corridors like High Street”.  By 1892 transportation was “fully” electrified, we were a “leader in early urban mobility”. The systems covered and connected “Bexley, Upper Arlington, and Worthington”. I read that it helped with the growth of the city. The article went on to say that by the 20th century Columbus was like many American cities as it went from streetcars to buses. In 1974 the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) took over the bus service from the Columbus Transit. the Company. At that time there it grew to “27 municipalities and 17 townships across five counties” and has continued to grow. In 1987 there was talk of a Downtown Monorail. It would have been a “sleek, elevated system that would connect downtown to Port Columbus (now John Glenn International Airport)”. But it “never got off the ground”. So despite the types of transit “initiatives” we never got a subway system.  We had tunnels in town....under the Union Station in the 19th century but that is a close as we got to a working subway system. Those tunnels were “intended for pedestrian and streetcar use”. 

Quick spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. 

Joy

one of the bits of green in our city