Various and sundry items

So much going on here and never time to write. I miss writing and made a resolution to write more in 2009. I do write, of course--I even do a lot of personal writing when I'm facilitating professional development with teachers--but not the kind of "this is what's going on today" type of writing that helps keep a record of day-to-day goings on and helps me to sort of put things in their place for order and structure. I have a meeting tonight with NB candidates, so I'm allowing myself a lunch break and a little writing time. I need to get five pounds off that crept up on me in the fall, so writing during lunch might help to make that happen. We finally got all the bulbs in the ground. My shoulders, neck, back, and the backs of my thighs are very sore from wielding the shovel and all the bending involved. We had several boxes full of bulbs--probably seven or eight hundred altogether, possibly even a thousand. A nursery up Mama's way overstocked their late-winter bulbs and had them on a trailer for delivery to the landfill. They alerted the community to come and take what they wanted, and they loaded down people's car trunks and truck beds with them when they showed up. Mama dispensed huge sacks full to several people, including us. For several days, I'd go out and plant 50 or 60 daffodil, narcissus, tulip, and crocus bulbs. Still, after a week of it there were so many bulbs still to go that began to despair of ever finishing. Then Tim got the idea to make two island beds in the yard. He prepared the beds with a plow on the back of his tractor and bought a load of topsoil from someone up the road. He and I went out and put hundreds of bulbs in the prepared trenches, then he covered the bulbs with the new dirt. It was over in a couple of hours and beats the heck out of the shovel method I was using, one bulb at a time. Now we're going to add trees and flowering shrubs to the beds. I can't wait for the bulbs to bloom. The way we massed them, they should be quite striking. I am reading my day-by-day chronological Bible this year. It is arranged chronologically, which means it is different from a regular Bible because Job comes right after Genesis 11, the psalms are inserted within Kings and Chronicles, during the time frame in which they were written, the gospels are all intermeshed, and Paul's letters are interspersed throughout Acts. The readings are divided by date, so that if you start on January 1 and read the daily readings every day, you will have read through the Bible by December 31. I can't stick with a schedule of that sort, of course, so I got through Abraham way ahead of schedule and am skipping straight over to Acts. I'm itching to get to those epistles and refuse to wait until October. I'm also reading a collection of Teddy Roosevelt's writings. What a man. That's about all I can say. They don't make 'em like they used to. Where are the statesmen anymore? Have you ever in your life seen so many constitutional crises as we're having these days? Every day, it seems, there's a constitutional crisis. Trouble is, not many of those folks in Washington seem to have read the constitution. Makes me want to cut a switch for sure and get up there and clean house. Teach your children the constitution, please, or else don't encourage them to vote. People got all excited about the huge voter turnout among the youth in the last election. I'm all for voter turnout, but without an informed electorate, we're up a creek. If they don't have knowledge of history, government, and yes, even economics, they don't need to be at the ballot box. How can they make an informed choice? Through what will they filter the rhetoric? When I was growing up, my parents made sure we watched all the presidential debates and watched the political conventions. Afterwards, there were debriefings where they'd explain to us what we'd just heard and seen. I knew the difference in liberalism and conservativism when I was a preteen. That's why I know GWB was only masquerading as the latter, and not very effectively at that. 

 Arne Duncan? What? It's all over, folks. First of all, the fact that he is not an educator is a slap in the face to every teacher in the nation. Will the insults never stop? But I never expected BHO to appoint a teacher anyway. No one ever does,  but good grief. Arne Duncan? I don't even have words. If you're not drinking green smoothies several times a week, why not? Get on to it right now. My friend put me on to them, and at first I was drinking them every day. I have to admit it did get old though: peeling and chopping fruit, washing spinach, cleaning up the blender. And I had an old blender and there were spinach leaves I was having to chew. Now I'm all set with a new blender, and I do the smoothies 3 or 4 days a week. Try it. Today.