Mesmerizing

The thing on the Google home page is really mesmerizing today.  I am sure there is a name for that thing.  Anyway, it is an ice skating rink and people keep coming and going on it.  Do they change it every day?  Is that someone's job?  I remember seeing results of a contest they had for schoolchildren to compete for a design for it.  The display was at the American visionary museum in Baltimore.

I am still really annoyed that I have gotten sick.  Can't seem to get out of bed lately at a timely hour.  I prefer to just lie there with my thoughts because if I listen to NPR I get side-tracked.  At least I am not coughing all night, but I AM coughing enough to feel the hurt.  This AM was hoping that a friend would call and invite me out to breakfast.  The first phone call was from The fraternal order of police.  I told them I was too sick to talk.  Then the census lady called me.  I was relieved that the only two questions were:
- Are you still retired? (Yes)
- Are you looking for work? (No)

Finished new Barbara Kingsolver book, Flight behavior.  I think she is my favorite author.  The title is apt and refers to the situation with the monarch butterflies, which are somehow in the wrong place, and also to the interior life of the narrator, a married woman eeking out an existence in that place.  There is tension between the life of the poor people who live in this mountainous region and the out of town environmentalists who want to save nature.  The main character is married with two kids and her family wants to sell off the land.  But she discovers a whole field full of monarch butterflies and it becomes a subject of scientific research and a tourist attraction. Dellarobia starts working for the visitng scientist and develops a crush on him.  Although this ultimately does not work out (his gorgeous wife comes for a visit near the end), it allows Dellarobia the courage to leave her husband and go back to college. The butterflies are in the wrong place (probably due to climate change) and Dellarobia realizes that she is in the wrong place, too. A telling moment in the interaction between the cultures is when Ovid (the scientist) gives her the carbon footprint test.  He tells her she should eat less red meat (she is trying to GET some red meat), eat out less (she hasn't eaten out in two years) and fly less (she has never flown).