Silence of the.....

...blogger. I have no voice. Laryngitis. If I tried forming words on Sunday - I could barely whisper. Much better today - I'm croaking. Mostly. DARN, I was supposed to sing the solo in Handel's "Messiah" Friday night! (Oh, I am SO making that up - I may have mentioned that I'm on the Federal No-Sing list.) I haven't even had the luxury of feeling really sick - just low on energy, sleeping a lot, listless. The medical term is bleeccchh. I've missed work all week {sigh}.

HOWEVER! Over the last few days, I've noticed some wonderful GOOD, some wretched BAD - and nothing ugly, actually unless you count my voice. Which you can't hear anyway. Therefore, here are a few observations in no particular order.

BAD: there's a flap going on in a small town nearby; they had a referendum about whether or not to withdraw adding fluoride to the water. the Village Board was against it (I don't know how many ist on the board.) Well...it was on the ballot, and passed (to add the fluoride) by a vote of two-to-one . Last night on the news they talked to one of the Board Members. He said, in essence, that he felt not enough of the population had voted; the fact that those who DID were strongly in favor of replacing the fluoride was irrelevant. Therefore the Board struck it down. SAY WHAT?? (May I add - he was an older gentleman clearly missing most of his bottom teeth. Probably should've had...say it all together now: FLUORIDE! Twilight Zone moment. Oh yeah.)

GOOD: Same news show: in Logan, North Dakota, many of the fields are flooding (that's not the "good") -- there was a lovely community effort, and 100 pregnant ewes were successfully put into big flat-bottom boats and successfully moved to some fine fields on high ground! They're due to lamb in about a month. HOORAY FOR ALL THAT LOVELY YARN SAVED! (Not to mention, saving sheepy mommies, that's a big mitzvah.) A round of applause for Loganites. I'll wait. In fact...stand up. Standing ovation. Yeah.

BAD: A big memo went around to all the businesses, &C around the Capital Square. I'll paraphrase: "To whomsoever has been carpeting the Capitol grounds with peanuts (that's close to literal), please cease and desist. The squirrels are, of course, loving it - but lots of schoolchildren visit the Capitol every day in the spring, and (are you ready for this?) a lot of children have serious peanut allergies and might be affected."

I am NOT downplaying allergies, and I know that there is a sensitivity that's literally life-threatening. But.....hasn't there always been? And most of the children touring the Capitol tour our Museum too...they're 4th graders. I just am of the mind that children in elementary school recognize peanuts and KNOW if they're allergic, and children too small to recognize them are in charge of mommies who DO know.

Now - apparently whoever was feeding the fat little rodents (and we all know at least ONE knitter and maybe two who have a serious problem with individual squirrels), were only trying to be nice. I also agree that CARPETING the lawn with peanuts is overdoing it. I mean, those things are good protein but they're also loaded with salt and can't be good for the squirrels. The memo should have said "Use only a FEW raw boiled peanuts in the shell". OK, 'nuff said.

GOOD: I'm writing now at noon, and it's 61 degrees out.

This is Lucy, my Mother's Day lilac. She stood naked all winter and I was VERY tempted to wrap little knit stemwarmers around her, but didn't have any on hand. She is, after all, a Wisconsin child.



These, ladies and gentlemen, are clearly LEAVES! I believe, therefore, that Lucy has given me permission to tempt the Fates, risk the sneaky foul old Frost Giants, and boldly declare:

It is SPRING!! HAPPY SPRING!