More Butterflies

They warm the cockles a bit, don't they? Reminding one of spring blososoms and walks along green paths. So we have butterflies in February just when we're experiencing brisk cold days with crystaline blue skies ... just when a scientific board that some of the world's governments many have to take seriously have said unequivocably -- as most of us knew -- Yes, global warming is a fact. It may be ameliorated but it is irreversible. Big changes are alelady underway. Duh!!

So I'm contemplating big matters like the melting glaciers and shrinking of Greenland and that storms and droughts and all kinds of things are going to happen and that a lot of people sleeping peacefully last night in their mostly flimsy Florida homes were struck by a terrible tornado which destroyed their homes and killed 15 of 20 of them. The next minute I am looking at butterflies I made to be matted pictures and getting picky ... I decided three would be better as postcards with borders that would add a color and pattern interest the mat doesn't. The one on the yellow background above remains a picture -- it's visually strong enough. Others weren't and will be replaced in the next week or so. Postcards are always usable, perhaps sellable.

... So, I'm not so much rambling as juxtapositioning [ha! how's that for an excuse?] ... the big issues and the petty ones are all mingled in my mind ... as in most people's, I think.

Or how about the lead article in tomorrow's Times Magazine about "designer dogs"? it's full of the children's riddles, what do you get when you cross a Laborador and a poodle? A labradoodle. What do you get when you cross a beagle and a basset hound? A bagel. No kidding. Jez-Louise! At one point the article points out that in most pounds you have all sorts of mixtures that might have such unlikely names if some breeder set up the liason instead of letting dog-nature take its course in the suburban backyards. So the environment is changing and people with too much money and too little good sense fall for marketing gimmacks that suggest it's better to pay several hundred dollars for a dog than to go to the shelter and fine a cutie to take home. As we old foggies have been fond of saying for a few hundred years, "what is the world coming to?" We don't know but we do know butterflies are free.