And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that I get up at about the same time every day, winter and summer, and so walk into the east facing living room around 7 a.m. Today (Feb. 26) I was greeted by blinding sunshine streaming in the window, the first time I had noticed that since last fall.

So the days are getting longer, by as much as five minutes every two days.

For some reason, I thought incorrectly that this was a Leap Year, but it isn’t, so we are into March.

March is the battlefield between seasons.

We had thunder with freezing rain one night.

And yesterday morning, when I went to get the morning papers, a male cardinal was loudly proclaiming his territory with vociferous song.

With a forecast for more measurable snow this week, we had lost pretty much most of the more recent snow. It was amusing to notice that thawing had turned a set of rabbit tracks into tracks worthy of an adult kangaroo. That sort of action is the same which is responsible for turning tracks of ordinary humans in the snow into Yeti tracks!

There is a commercial on television that shows a man dropping his cell phone into the space between the car seat and the center console. He tries to find it while driving and has an accident.

Well, I was stopped when I dropped my car keys into that space. I had dropped other things there before ... an envelope, a note pad. So I confidently reached down to retrieve my keys, and could not make contact. There is not a lot of room there, and in addition to the ignition key, there was the automatic control box, a house door key and an antique Austrian schilling, which has some sentimental value, although worth only 12 and a half cents at its best time before the Euro replaced it.

I had to seek professional help, and he turned himself into a pretzel to get into position to retrieve it. If I had gotten into that position, they would have had to call the EMTs to extract me!

It would be amusing if it wasn’t so serious, but I marvel at the way representatives of the political extremes can read the same facts and arrive at totally opposite meanings.

I can understand it.

As someone who covered many meetings where controversial things were discussed, I was often surprised to hear from others who were at the same meeting, but heard something entirely different from what I heard, to the point where I would wonder if, indeed, we had been at the same meeting!

Present situations and past experiences color our interpretations, no doubt.