November 14, 2025 a thought for today, The fire burns brightest on one's own hearth. Danish Proverb

My life in photos for yesterday

The challenge assignment was “something colorful in the shop”. Well I don’t go in “shops” to often anymore. I shop mostly online now. However, I did stop in the grocery store just for a shot for this assignment. But while I was working at church yesterday I shot this photo.  I like the soften colors more in this one that in the grocery store. 

Next was “coins”. I have been saving coins in jars for a while. Looks like the pennies are on their way to being antiqued in a few years since they are no longer minted and used.

The last upload for yesterday was on of the “my choice” and another of my series of “still life”.  I usually have iced tea from a fast food place. This one I made on my own right here at home just for this upload....oh and I did drink it after the shoot. 

Life today. Happily a day again that I have been working with no deadline for the moment. So I would work for a while on the computer then take a break to grab a snack, pet the kitten, or straighten something or other. 

I got a little more work on the newsletter taking time to send a couple of texts for verifications on dates and meeting times that I need.

The air is not quite as cold as it was the past couple of days. I haven’t been outside to day but I catch sight of people going down the street along with the view of the autumn sky. It’s interesting to note the brightness and fading of the sun as a cloud passes by 

I think I will take time to put in my grocery order before I send my daily photos to their appropriate wifi destinations. 

I have the Christmas calendars all printed, now it is time to bind them. I also like to put a hole in the center to make them easier to hang. I thought about making some gifts for friends of quilled paper trees in mason jars. But I didn’t think of it until now. I’m not sure I would have time to get them finished in time with all the other holiday things on my agenda. 

The word today is merit.   Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. William Shakespeare.  The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.  Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. Alexander Pope.  One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. Voltaire.  The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs. Charles Baudelaire.  The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. Thomas Carlyle.  How vain, without the merit, is the name. Homer. Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness. Nathaniel Hawthorne.  If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it. Charlotte Bronte. Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. James Russell Lowell.  Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits which the branches ought to produce. Alfred Lord Tennyson.  It seems to never occur to fools that merit and good fortune are closely united.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 

The article title caught my attention. I thought I would give it a look to see how “families” are developed in the animal kingdom. I thought it may lead to the how and why there were differences in making families in different species. The article title is “Children’s books feature tidy nuclear families – but the animal kingdom tells a different story”.  It opens with how children’s books tell of “neat mum, dad and children family units”.  It goes on to say that with some families in reality this may make them feel like “outsiders if they don’t come from a traditional nuclear family set-up”. As it turns out all of the animals are not always a “tidy nuclear family”. A “nuclear” family is a mom and dad and children all living in one place together as opposed to an extended family which also includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The nuclear family in animals would be a male and female raising their “offspring” together. In the case of “mute swans the mom and dad share incubating eggs, feeding the young and teaching them to be “independent”. According to the article “single parenting” is representative of most of the animal kingdom. In mammals the female as the single parent feeds the young at birth then goes on to “raise” the offspring. This occurs in 90% of mammals. In speaking of single parent events the story mentions that in some single parent situations the parent is off looking for food while the young is left in the nest alone and most likely open to predators. In fish and amphibians the male may be the attending parent. This article mentions “homosexuality” in the sense of “same sex coupling” in over 500 species. There is one such case of a pair of penguins in the Central Park Zoo in New York in the 2000s where two males were given an egg to hatch and raise. According to the article that relationship lasted only for a few short months. Then the same sex pair split. Further methods of raising the young in the animal kingdom are sisters and grandmothers who teach and feed the young. I gathered from the article that this is called communal parenting.  Then there is the question of fostering and adopting even in the animal kingdom. As an example in the article a female “common” cuckoo laid her eggs in a different species nest for the “foster parent” to raise. It is said in the article that fostering and adopting is not uncommon in the animal kingdom. One of the stories is that there is a childs storybook that tells of how a mallard adopts an egg that eventually hatches as an alligator. To end the article it says “species adopt a variety of parental care methods to ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation.”

It’s DoorDash night for us. Last week I ordered pizza from DoorDash but it never arrived. Door Dash apologized and refunded my money. We’ll try again tonight. 

My life in photo for today

My first challenge and upload today is “flying”. I have a few photos of geese and other birds flying in  my archives. But I like to see the US flag flying in the breeze in my daily travels. So, so be it.

The second upload for today is “cool colors”. I didn’t know if I should use the shade of cool color for the upload a something that was covered in “cooool colors”. I chose this one. 

The last challenge upload for today is “my choice” and another of my series of
“still life”. As I was cleaning up this set up I knocked over and broke the bottle of wine. It was my cooking wine. The house was full of its presence.

Joy

bonus on a porch in suburb of Columbus