Of Hearts & Minds (& a Little Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez)

Since tomorrow's Valentine's Day, I figured that's the obvious thing to blog about today. But, as always, as I tend to ramble, these are random thoughts and will probably wander through various topics. So here goes ...
I've heard a lot more comments about Valentine's Day this year -- positive, negative, and just different. Seems like the holiday of love is provoking criticism from those who perceive it as a couples-only event. Some single people just have too much to complain about. While it's true that Valentine's Day is largely marketed for couples, it's not for-couples-only. It's an occasion for everyone to celebrate and express the love they have for special ones (I was gonna say "people," but I think some humans even extend it to their pets) in their lives. And while love is the major emotion we celebrate, Valentine's Day is also about expressing gratitude and just sending positive vibes out into the cosmos. So friends, family members other than spouses, co-workers, teachers/students, neighbors, that person who did something nice for you once whom you see around town every now and then -- any and all of them may be ones you want to acknowledge on Valentine's Day.
Or maybe not. In recent years, several libraries across the country have been sponsoring Anti-Valentine's Day programs for teens, where activities include things like decorating broken heart cookies, making anti-v-day cards, making black duct tape roses, watching depressing or horror movies, destroying/altering/rewriting romance novels, making gocks (goth sock dolls or puppets), and decorating with a lot of black. It's a way to help teens who aren't in a relationship or who just hate the whole commercialism surrounding February 14th.  But recently, a librarian posted on a listserv that her library got a complaint about its anti-v-day party. The complainant asked how anybody "can be opposed to love, kindness and friendship that is especially shared on Valentine's Day." She also said she was "appalled and very disappointed" that such a program was being held. (She obviously doesn't get teen angst surrounding romance.) In response to this librarian's post, another librarian posted that her library once got a complaint about their anti-v-day event, with the suggestion that they "should be teaching the teens about the Christian meaning behind Valentine's Day and taking them to nursing homes so they can learn the real meaning of love." (Yeah, right. That'd go over real big!)
And since Fat Tuesday is only a few days away, there's not much time left to "laissez les bon temp roulez"! So stuff yourself with chocolate and other goodies while you can -- that is, IF you're one of those who gives up vices or limits excesses during Lent.
So, in closing, HVD, HA-VD, and LLBTR!

In a Fog and/or the Horrors of Hoarfrost

All right, I mentioned a couple posts back that I wanted to talk about fog, since we've had so much of it lately -- and we've still had quite a bit, along with a lot of hoarfrost. First, the fog.
I've always loved foggy days. The foggier, the better -- as long I'm not driving in it on the highway. I love being wrapped in the mist. On foggy days, I wish there was a woods nearby that I could walk in! It's mysterious, romantic, fantastical. I've always loved clouds, too. (In junior high, when one of my teachers had us write our goals for life, I wrote that I wanted to go to France and photograph clouds, since my three loves were France, photography -- and clouds!) Fog is like a cloud come down to earth. Actually, it IS a cloud come down to earth. When I was in MOB (Midnight Oil Burners) in high school, I wrote a poem about fog. It went something like, "A sleepy Sunday morn/I walk out of my door/Into a cloud of fog," and people think it's going to be this sappy thing. Then I talk about seeing my car, which at the time was a white 1960s-era Mercury Comet, and say "Knots tie in my belly./I am sick." The Comet wasn't really a bad little car; I was just trying to say that suddenly I was transported back into the real world by the sight of something real and solid -- my car. I know, if you have to explain your poem, maybe it's not that good -- but former MOB member and classmate Freddie Kaplan, who's now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, actually got it and had nice things to say about it (although I doubt he even remembers my poem now). Anyway, I love fog and have enjoyed these foggy days. I mean, we could have had a lot worse weather -- like ice storms.

And having so much fog this time of year has had an added advantage. Along with the fog, we've had hoarfrost. I can't believe so many locals have mentioned that they've never heard of or seen hoarfrost before. Where have these people been? I've known about it practically my whole life. I asked my kids if they remembered ever seeing it before, because I couldn't remember how often we'd had it in the past -- although I was fairly certain the kids HAD seen it before. (I just wasn't sure they remembered it, since I couldn't remember when we'd last had it.) And they remembered seeing it before and knew what it was. Our local ABC affiliate, KAKE-TV in Wichita, even had a piece about it on their "Good Question" segment a couple weeks ago. Seems someone didn't realize the way this phenomenon was spelled and thought it was an obscene word. Jeff Herndon, the newscaster who does this segment, explained that "hoar" means "to grey with age" and hoarfrost turns everything grey or white. I admit it's a bit unusual to have had so much fog in winter (and therefore so much hoarfrost). But it's just like when we get in cycles of a lot of rain or a lot of high winds. It's not like it's some bad omen or something. And it's been really pretty with all the treetops tinged in white. It killed me not to have one of my cameras in the car with me as I drove through parts of Hutch that were exceedingly foggy and "hoarfrosty" some of those days! I had to settle for taking a few photos of what little hoarfrost we had around our yard, which wasn't much.
I just hope it's a long, long time -- long after I have hoary hair -- before my brain is truly foggy!