Under the weather

Why do we say we're "under the weather" when we're sick? I have no idea why, but it got me thinking about weather ... and googling for photographs of storms and lightning. That's when I found this absolutely awesome photo of a tornado AND a bolt of lightning. I had no idea something like this was possible. Looking at it makes me shiver!

What I really want to write about, though, is the understory. No, not under a story. The understory of a forest is the group of small trees, shrubs and vines that grow under the taller trees or, specifically, under the canopy of tall trees. Once I had a book about Oregon and my memory says the book's title was Understory One or something like that. Now I cannot find the book, which is probably in a box way back in the stacks in storage. If anyone is familiar with this book, please tell me the title so I can find it. I would like to include it in our Book around the States list for Oregon. Thanks.


This bird lives in the understory of Panama. Isn't it beautiful? It's called a green-honeycreeper, as it says along the bottom of the print. Click on the photo to make it larger.

Whatever floats your boat

by Bonnie Jacobs



The round sun rises red above the foothills outside my window
as I contemplate the red sky in this photo of Bermuda
with a melting pat of butter left of that day's sun.

My trees are as dark and still as this boat's sails.
Without so much as a gentle breeze,
the sailors cannot sail into the sunset
even if they wish.

"Whatever floats your boat," the saying goes,
but my boat was sold years ago
after damaging storms battered the yacht club.
Now no wind can move me across the water,
no water float my boat.


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Oops! It must have been Bonnie's BOOKS blog, and not her WRITING blog, where she's giving out those kitty treats. I don't think I like all this water.
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Me?

The prompt at Weekend Wordsmith says this:

YOURSELF ~ What is it about you? Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Do you know yourself? Tell us about you.

Never have I had any trouble telling people about me! Does that make me egocentric? Maybe, but I hope not. Usually telling someone something about me reminds them of something about them, and I learn more about my friends that way.

In high school we were required to write an autobiography in English class. An autobiography about a teenager? Yeah, right! All we could write about was our family and how we fit into it. I was named Bonnie for my mother's only sister and Lillian for my father's only sister, and therein lies the problem. Lillian's mother, my grandmother, could see the writing on the wall, that I would be called Bonnie because that name came first. So she set out to nip that little problem in the bud. How? By giving me a nickname. I don't know how many nicknames she tried, but I do know about Teensy and Bitsy. Those were suggested because I weighed only five pounds when I was born and could "sit" in my father's hand. (No, that isn't a photo of MY toes ... we didn't have color photos in the olden days.)

Bitsy stuck, but please don't call me Bitsy. I hated the name, especially when I grew taller than the other children, many of whom had to crane their necks to look up, up, way up at me. On the first day of first grade the teacher called each of us up to her desk and asked, "And what are you called?" The mothers were standing around the wall, and mine assumed I'd go into a long story (as I'm doing here). But no! I said, simply and distinctly, "Bonnie!" And I've been Bonnie ever since.

Zippo bubblegum

Once upon a time when I used to go to summer camp, I ended my letters home with this and similar "radio commercials" about made up products:

"This program has been brought to you by Zippo Bubblegum, the only gum with the built-in zipper. You'll never again have pink gum popped all over your face when you use Zippo, the only gum with the built-in zipper!"

Can you imagine a big pink bubble with a zipper along the side? I guess you can see I was always a little bit weird, maybe more than a little bit.