American Elephants

It’s December, approaching Christmas, but here in a Seattle suburb, we seldom get snow. Christmas without snow is hard for me. Snow and plenty of it (growing up in the Idaho mountains) arrives long before Christmas. Christmas is, by definition, snowy. I spent Christmas seasons in California, northern and southern, and in Phoenix, Arizona where snow is rare and sparse. It was hard! Here in a Seattle suburb, we occasionally get snow, but Mother Nature seems to have no feeling for the connection of snow to the Christmas holiday.

I can hardly imagine folks who have lived most of their lives in the northern states, and moved to Florida to retire, at Christmas. Or perhaps the climate scene outside doesn’t matter, or for that matter is possibly welcome as they don’t like snow anyway. I found it very hard. In my head, Christmas is snowy! No snow, no Christmas spirit! Very probably, people from the snowy Midwest are delighted to get away from shoveling and cold and all the work, and just sit on the beach. I have no idea, but Christmas without snow remains hard for me.

Actually, Spring without wildflowers is hard as well. I guess it’s entirely Seasons. I like defined seasons and the different things that belong to each season. At home in Idaho, I knew where each kind of wildflower would appear and when. The trail up to the Springs led up a south-facing slope, the most south-facing on our property and where you could expect the first wildflowers to appear before all the snow was gone. I imagine the folks from other parts of the country have particular seasonal things that are necessary and normal for them, and really hard when they find out that they have not only moved, but lost the seasonal indications that define the time of year. I haven’t seen that much mentioned anywhere.

Headline at Breitbart that struck me as profoundly funny! I guess if you are going to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, you just have to drop the Diversity bit! If you are going to be “Equal” you can’t mess around with being “diverse”. Heaven Forbid! Just struck me as funny. Noble aims get in the way of noble outcome.

Headline writers are not re-reading what they have written! “Equal “and “Diverse” just don’t go together.