A disagreeable point of view

 

 

A law school student in Florida wrote a paper espousing an unpopular belief; that our original constitution, when it said “We the people…”, only meant white people.  From there, the paper went on to describe how everything should be now, based on that interpretation.  Apparently, the paper won an award, not because it was right, but because it was well written.  There is outrage that a paper with that premise could win an award, even if it got a good grade.  An interesting debate: Should a person be recognized for writing something disagreeable if they do a good job writing it?  So many threads to pull on there.

 

 

Darn that Mazda

 

 

 

All these years, and it still won’t break so we can replace it.  Well, after 13 years we finally gave up and traded it in for a newer used car.

 

We found what we wanted on Carvana, and they offered us a fair trade on the Mazda, so we took it.

 

A 2023 Model 3.

 

It looks good in our driveway.

 

Clay-colored thrush

 

 

 

Same size and shape as an American robin.

 

Only different in the color.  And the range.  American Robins are ubiquitous in the U.S. and Canada, only occasionally visiting here in the Valley in the winter.  Here though, and in Mexico and Central America, the Clay-colored Thrush is a year-round resident.

 

Long-billed Thrasher

 

 

 

 

 

He’s a mimic, like a mockingbird.  We get serenaded with elaborate treetop songs.

 

White Ibis

 

 

With a couple brown immatures.

 

 

And a whole mess of other birds.

 

Snowy egrets, white ibis, white-faced ibis, some northern shovelers and mottled ducks in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s that time again

 

 

For the biannual annoyance.  Daylight Saving Time.

 

Time doesn’t change, we do.  We can’t spring time forward, we can only move our clocks to something that doesn’t represent what time it really is.  If the justification is to get people to work earlier, or kids to school earlier, just tell them to be there at seven instead of eight.

 

For the argument that it is necessary to continue the clock switch because interstate commerce requires it, Arizona and the adjacent states didn’t collapse when Arizona opted out of Daylight Saving Time in 1968.

 

 

 

Food Fades

 

 

My afternoon food fades.  Had them all my life.  I remember in high school hoping any complicated classes would be in the morning because I knew I’d be dozing through class in the afternoons.  Later, as an adult, I figured out the connection to food, to what I had for lunch.  I assumed it was a blood sugar issue and tried to figure it out from that perspective.  Maybe too much.  Maybe too little.  I could never get the pattern.  Maybe gluten.  Maybe MSG.  Preservatives?  No suspect held up to repetition.  Then by chance during a fade, I checked my blood pressure.  Well actually, Judy thought to check it and told me to do it.  My blood pressure was very low.  Both numbers were below a hundred.

 

I checked with Hal.  We sorted through hypoglycemia and hypotension and settled on the latter.  It’s not a big deal.  Nothing to medicate.  It’s just a thing, but now it has a name.  Post Prandial Hypotension.  A sudden drop in blood pressure after a meal.  Food fades.  The solution?  I continue to do what I’ve been doing all my adult life; watch for patterns and avoid the foods that make me crash.  It’s a whole lot easier to pick out the patterns now though, since I’m no longer trying to correlate with blood sugar.  Black coffee in the morning is fine.  I’ve figured out a safe breakfast.  A couple snacks for lunch, and dinner doesn’t seem to matter so much.  It’s working.

 

Mom had it too.  Two o’clock in the afternoon she’d have to lie down on the front room couch and take a nap for an hour.  She always wanted to be back up again by the time I got home from school, but sometimes she was still asleep.  She never made the connection to what she had for lunch or blood pressure.  I got there but it took me a long time.  And I had more resources available to help me figure it out.