“Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” used to be one of the highlights of my week.  As a little girl I would glue myself to the television on Sunday evenings to watch this amazing show which, if I recall correctly, was right before “The Wonderful World of Disney.”  What a terrific Sunday night line up for children.   A bit of nature and a bit of fantasy, both coming right before bed time.  Plus, it was a good way to end the weekend and mellow out before thinking about having to go to school the next day.  Of course, I didn’t realize I was ‘mellowing out.’  I was just happy to have such wonderful shows and neat new things to see each Sunday night.

OK.  Now, fast forward several decades.  I am all grown up and living in St Louis, MO.  St Louis happens to have a world class zoo, one that had some involvement from Marlin Perkins.  I also happened to work for an international company that was having a ‘team’ get together in San Diego, CA.  WOW.  I had never been to San Diego.  Flash back to the ‘Mutual of Omaha’ show.  Maybe, just maybe if I was very, very lucky, I would have time to visit the zoo!

Great flight to San Diego and great meetings with my ‘virtual’ co-workers.  Fun to meet people that I had only ever met through cyberspace.  And what great good luck–we were all going to visit the wonderful San Diego zoo!  I could almost not contain myself, which was not very cool or appealing to some of my co-workers that were 10 or more years my junior.

We all went on a bus together. No, it wasn’t a nice, cushey, corporate type bus. Instead it was a rather well worn actual school bus with no cushioned seats, no extra springs, and no amenities (meaning, in a polite way, bathrooms). And, yes, I was quite surprised that we weren’t regaled in a more exulted manner since we had come from across the country for the meeting. Although our fabulous, international company was making money hands over fists, it didn’t have enough extra cash to send us to the zoo in style. Still, we did get to go and that was a treat in itself.

We were unloaded and set out to discover the fabulous San Diego Zoo. Well, I have to say it was not what I had dreamed of all my life. There were lots and lots of small cages with animals in them. It was nothing like the well landscaped and nature scaped living areas we have for our zoo animals in St Louis. The St Louis zoo has areas like The River’s Edge, and Sea Lion Sound, Red Rocks, and The Wild providing naturalistic settings for the animals. I may have been missing part of the San Diego Zoo or maybe the part I should have been seeing was the Safari Park. I’m not sure, but I felt let down seeing those animals in small cages all lined up next to one another.

On the other hand, there was something wonderful that I had not anticipated. The hummingbird house was excellent and such a fun surprise. I was able to see varieties I had only seen in books and it was a real thrill. Not only that, but outside with all the flowers and blooming trees, there were dozens of hummingbirds zipping around and buzzing past my head as well.

I will always credit Mutual of Omaha and Marlin Perkins for giving me a love of wild creatures and nature. His involvement with the San Diego zoo and our St Louis zoo helped set the stage for young people to experience wild life for generations past his life time.

I can’t say that I was happy to get on that dumpy school bus and leave the San Diego zoo behind, but I am proud to be able to say: I went, I saw, I was buzzed.

(FYI, Marlin Perkins dob 3/28/1905, was from Carthage, MO; Walt Disney dob 12/5/1901, grew up in Marceline, MO, not all that far from Carthage.)

So, I have become increasingly irritated with radio and TV talking heads starting every sentence with the word ‘so.’  It has become so pervasive in the media that I now find myself saying it constantly without thinking about it.

So, what I did was look up the use of ‘so’ in the Urban Dictionary to see if I could tell when all this horrible misuse of the language started.

Most of us can remember the childish retort we used to use to indicate a state of non-caring, “I’m going to the baseball game.” “So what?”

Evidently that was too long of an expression and was eventually shortened to plain ole, “So?”

Sometimes it is used and echoed by another person, usually when there is nothing at all to really say. “So . . .,” repeated by the other person, “So . . .?”

I recall my Mother sometimes would refer to someone that had done something particularly bad as a, “so and so.”  Perhaps she knew the language was deteriorating and this was her precursor of the decline.

Often repeatedly, and sometimes incessantly, ‘so’ is used by speakers incapable of beginning an idea at its beginning, those seeking to stall for time until a thought congeals, or those desiring a familiar starting point as they venture into the dangerous world of communication. Beginning each sentence with “so” has been called “using a verbal” to enhance one’s chances of hitting an idea squarely or to ‘tee up’ an idea of otherwise small merit. “So, when we got to Sheila’s, I was like, oh my god!” ‘So’ is often paired with ‘like’ to give extra emphasis to a statement.

And then there is the use of ‘so’ as an adverb to enhance a specific idea or action, “I am so going to get that dress!” Or, “We are so going to that movie.”

It is guessed that the overuse of ‘so’ started with TV shows such as Friends, and Will and Grace, or even before those shows, with Valley Girl talk. In other words, not from a place of high intellect. (I admit I liked those shows too, and even now sneak in a viewing of Friends in rerun with some guilty pleasure.) The Urban Dictionary also says the usage was first picked up by teenage girls and gay men. I don’t know about that last part, although the gay community does some times pick up trends before the rest of us.

Which brings me to my particular point of irritation. On Saturdays I have a little extra free time and, while I am doing housework or cooking, I listen to the lighter banter, weekend type, NPR programs. They include many interviews and game shows and questions always come up. For example: “How did you develop that idea?” Answer: “So, I was working in my yard and the idea just came to me.” I will swear that every other sentence on NPR on Saturday afternoons begins with ‘so.’ And, after listening to it for an hour or two, I pick up the pattern. I can’t help myself.

I’ve even thought of putting a jar on the kitchen counter for me to deposit a quarter every time I start a sentence with ‘so,’ similar to the old ‘swear jar’ some of us used to keep handy. I could call it my ‘so and so’ jar to pay a little homage to my Mom. But, for now it is just a thought.

On second thought, the sooner I start, the better.

So, I guess I’ll be dropping by the bank to stock up on quarters.

(FYI ‘SO’ is also used in popular language as an acronym for ‘significant other.’ In the Twitter world, ‘SO’ can mean ‘share on’ or ‘services offered.’)

That is, the last one until September.

 Our family tradition is to say ‘White Rabbits,’ only on the first day of a month with an R, however, I am finding out that other people say it the first day of any month.  Some folks say ‘Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.’  I am not sure if saying it three times brings more luck than saying it just once.  I haven’t tried it myself.

Does saying ‘White Rabbits’ bring good fortune or keep one from having bad fortune?  Well, from my personal life, I would say yes, certainly yes, it does.  I have always felt so lucky I haven’t felt a need ever to actually carry a rabbit’s foot with me, or a lucky shamrock, or lucky penny, or any other lucky talisman.  And, now that I know that some people say ‘White Rabbits’ the last day of a month, then say ‘Hare’ on the first day of a month, I am not inclined to change my routine.  Plus, it seems like having a summer vacation to not have to say ‘White Rabbits’ on the first day of months with no R.  Having four months off is kind of the gift you get for saying it the other eight months.  It does get to be a pain to always remember.

I was interested to see some folks add a ‘Brown Rabbits’ or ‘Black Rabbits’ at the end of the first day of every month. That must be the part that keeps away bad luck but no one is quite clear on it. And then there is saying ‘Brown Rabbit’ at the end of the day while walking backwards down a flight of stairs. Now, that one is pretty scary. If you can do that and not fall, well, I would say you are pretty lucky.

I haven’t ever mentioned the horse shoe over the door to my house, have I? That one is another of my Mom’s doing. In fact, I now have her lucky horse shoe. My only fear is that it will fall off just as I am entering the house and that will be the end of me.

It won’t happen in a month with an R in it though. I’ve got that one covered.

(FYI: The Webster Dictionary includes this description of superstition:
“a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.” I like the sound of false conception of causation. That could also cover most of our political conversations/rants as well as our chatter about why our diet didn’t quite work.)

I have been very fortunate in my life and am feeling gratitude today.  Here are some of the good things I am noticing this morning:

It’s a beautiful spring day and I can get outside and enjoy it with my husband

We have a yard full of birds I enjoy feeding, watching, and photographing

We had a wonderful evening with a friend we haven’t seen for almost a year

Our friend has a good relationship going with a very nice man and she’s the happiest I have seen her ever

The house is clean and the laundry is done

I have a wonderful Easter dinner planned for later today

I’m having a ‘good hair’ day (rare one, that)

The weather forecast for next weekend looks good enough for bike riding

Since it is Easter and I have lots to do, that’s all the gratitude I can put in writing. But there is so much more it would fill all the pages of the giant dictionary I have by my desk.

Here’s hoping you also have a heart full of happiness and gratitude today.

“To live is to leave traces.”  Walter Benjamin

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to bid on and ‘win’ a wonderful piece of art.  The young artist was a person devoted to looking at the plastic waste we humans produce and turning it into something of wonder and beauty.

Sarah Frost is an American artist working in multi media and typically produces large installations.  She has created works in New York, London, France, and her home town of St Louis, MO.  Her most notable works are made with discarded computer pieces ranging from keyboards to mouse parts to the tangle of miscellaneous electrical cords we all have collected somewhere in our basements or garages over the past 30 plus years.

When you see her wall installations of keyboard components, they look like lovely mosaics.  Your first thought will be, “Oh, those are keys.” And, your second thought will be, “I could have done that.”

But, you didn’t.

You didn’t even think of it.

Sarah did.

Something of fascination for me is that she dismantles the keys from the keyboard and has bins of them that she draws from, all separated by size, color, shape. The keys are not cleaned first. They all carry traces of use. Ewww–you know what I mean. Keyboards get dirty. I clean mine periodically but I know that the ick on them is from my own fingers and no one else uses my computers. Sarah’s take on the ‘ick’ factor is in keeping with her overall philosophy of repurposing and celebrating used computer parts. In her own words:

“Each key has a unique history and bears the imprint of the thousands of taps by countless users.”

I would encourage you to take a look at the beauty of Sarah’s installations. There are several on line locations where you can view her work. http://www.blog.evajuliet.com/2012/12/artist-sarah-frost.html is good and so is Sarah’s own website which includes some of her other ‘recycled’ works on exhibit: http://www.sarahfrost.info/

I hope you find her work as interesting as I do and enjoy discovering the art of QWERTY.

“I see the bad moon rising.

I see trouble on the way.

I see earthquakes and lightnin’

I see bad times today.

Don’t go around tonight,

Well, it’s bound to take your life.

There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

Written by John Foggerty; released April, 1969 by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Do you notice when there is a full moon?  What about when there is a crescent moon?  I don’t pay too much attention to the times of the moon unless I am outside on a full moon night and get totally ‘moonstruck.’ But, I can always tell when there is a full moon by the way people drive.

Although delivery room doctors and nurses and police officers may argue this point, there are all kinds of studies debunking the myths of higher birthrates and higher crime rates during full moons. The one thing that hasn’t been debunked is the increase in auto accidents and incidents. Numerous studies over several decades show there is an increase in auto accidents during two times of the month. One time is the day of and day after a new moon and the other is a several day period before and after the full moon. This makes the full moon period the most dangerous for drivers.

Is this increase in activity because of some atmospheric pull on people or car engines? Or, is the increase during the full moon simply because people are on the roads later at night? Or, maybe because people don’t use their headlights because the moon is so bright? The studies don’t give any conclusion as to why the incidents happen. They only indicate that it does happen.

We are currently two days past the full moon peak and I would suggest you be careful on the roads. Not saying it will ‘take your life,’ but you might end up with a dented fender.

Not me.

I’ll still be sitting on the deck, totally moonstruck.

In my financial advisor work I talk with people about legacy quite a bit.  This is usually in the context of financial legacy but sometimes it will pull towards emotional, family, and community legacy. There is much a person should and shouldn’t do with their estate when they leave this earth, but there are more things a person can and should do while living to leave a lasting legacy. And I’m not just talking about money or the spiritual, educational, and social values people instill in their children.

Recently I read a blog by the co-founder and current President and CEO of Saint Louis Bread Company (known to people outside of St Louis as Panera Bread), Ron Shaich. Ron was saying that over the Christmas holiday he had spent time caring for a very ill, elderly uncle. Ron was his closest living relative as all of the older generation people had already passed away. The point of the blog was that it is not what we have at the end of our life, but it is the relationships we have had, and some of the good things we have done for other people during our lifetime, that really count. His uncle might have had a great deal of money to leave to various charities and it would have been appreciated. But that was money, it wasn’t the essence of his uncle.

If you know about Panera, you will know their goal is to serve quality food and they have recently starting adding stores, Panera Cares, that allow patrons to pay what they can afford to pay. We have two in St Louis now and they are working out quite well. Some people pay extra for their meals and others pay little or nothing. Ron wanted to establish a model for the ‘Cares’ cafes that would be sustainable financially, and provide a good environment, free of judgment, for people to get a good, healthy meal, even if they didn’t have funds to pay for that meal. I consider Ron to be a big hearted man with an exceptionally good business sense. He also has a very strong sense of family and social responsibility from the corporate view.

Several years ago I read a little book called, “The Last Lecture,” by Randy Pausch (Hypernion, NY, NY, 2008). Randy was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon and was asked to give a final class lecture, a special talk given at the end of a school term. Just a short time before he was asked to give the lecture, he had been diagnosed with liver cancer and knew he had only a limited time to live. He agreed to give the lecture and he did not give it about dying. Rather, he gave the lecture about the importance of living ones dreams, overcoming obstacles, and helping to enable some else to live their dreams.

Perhaps if we lived as if we had a limited amount of time, we would live better and help others live better. We might seek more diligently, and with more urgency, to live our own dreams and enable others to live theirs. We might be able to create a living legacy, not just with our children or those we personally know, but to total strangers our efforts might reach.

And maybe, just maybe, we would be able to leave a good lasting impression.

Or should I say, “About what is all the flap?”

Grammar aside, I have been very interested lately in the photos taken by Stephen Donnelly of birds of prey and more particularly, his photos of owls.  The pictures are stunning and detailed, showing the birds in flight as well as still.  Owls are majestic, like our Bald Eagles, but are completely different in their flight habit. The reason for this is not only in the shape of their body and wings but also of the design of their feathers, some being serrated and some being downy soft. They soar, swoop, and dive almost silently.  A faint ‘swoosh’ is all you hear as you walk through the woods and one flashes by you in a chase for a squirrel or mouse.  By the time you realize the sound was an owl, it is usually out of sight. I am sure for a squirrel or mouse the old war saying about a bullet must be true, “You never hear the one that hits you.”

Another bird I see often in the summer months and encourage to visit by placing many feeders around the house, is the humming bird.  We only have one variety in the St Louis area, but it’s a beauty–the Ruby Throated.  If you are sitting outside, almost dozing off, and hear something like a very, very large mosquito near you, it is usually a hummingbird.  Their wings are designed completely differently from those of owls or other birds and, because of the design and because they ‘flap’ so fast (up to 52 times a second), they create a ‘hummmmm’ sound.  Their ability to hover, dart, dash, and fly a slipside fascinates me.

But, the question about the ‘flap’ is about pigeons.  They not only make loud flapping sounds when they take off, they also make verbal sounds, as if to announce to the world they are leaving.  The timing of the sounds is inopportune I think since they are usually taking off because something threatening is coming near or is after them. Going silently might be more protective but they just don’t seem to be able to do that.

Words of flight are so inspiring we use them in our every day talk to describe human actions or activities. Soaring (this is good), diving (not necessarily a good thing), gliding/coasting (usually bad but could be good), hovering (usually not a good thing), and whiffling (maybe good, maybe bad) are some of the flight terms we use.

I don’t know that there is a term we use when we act like pigeons at take off. I have seen people behave the same way though. Instead of gliding off silently like an owl, they go away cursing and shaking the fist, or showing a middle finger. They complain, whine, and generally make a scene.

There isn’t a one word term for these actions, but it does often generate a question, “What’s all the flap about?”

I didn’t even notice it until we went to an antique and consignment shop last May.

We don’t usually take time anymore to go to this type of shop but we were passing by one Saturday, the front window display was appealing, and we had a little time to kill, so we dropped in.  It was one of those shops with a combination of consignment items for resale but the owner also happens to be an antique sales person.  They are, sometimes, interesting places and sometimes they are full of, and I hate to word it this way but it’s true, junk.

We looked around and it seemed like a pretty nice place. It was full of lots of things we used to own but don’t anymore, and some things we wanted in the past, but don’t anymore.  I was thinking we would just leave without any purchases when my husband said, “Are you sure you don’t want to add to the collection?” 

My first thought was, “Which collection?” but I didn’t say it.  Instead, I turned to him and asked what, in particular, was he referring to?  He pointed to a sphere, about 6 inches in diameter, enameled with deep blue background and gold and red stars. 

Until that point, I hadn’t noticed we collected spheres.  As I thought about it, I realized, my goodness, yes we do.  We must already have half a dozen or so on display, mixed in with our other nick nacks and keepsakes.  Then, as I thought more, I realized we have even more than that.  All this time we had been adding spheres to our ‘stuff’ and I hadn’t even known it.  They just seem to call out to us when we are shopping.

There was one time I did think about it cognitively.  We, in St Louis, live near active fault zones, particularly the New Madrid fault.  There was a time when I was arranging things on our shelves and in our china cabinets with the possibility of a medium level earthquake.  The spheres were on my radar then because I thought they could do some major damage in a big trembler. I imagined them all breaking loose from their various domains and rolling like bowling balls, taking out masses of other nick nacks along the way. With that in mind I took some time to stabilize them and make sure none were near anything of too much value, just in case.

But, beyond that, I had never really done a ‘head count’ of the spheres and never really thought of them as something on my radar list to collect. They seemed to self collect, silently reaching out to me as I walked by them in a store or flea market. It all seems very mysterious to me now. Are they spheres or should I be thinking of them as orbs? The word ‘orb’ is used sometimes to suggest a range of supernatural paranormal phenomenon without varifiability (as in the unexplained dots or lights you might see in a photograph). In scary movies, you might see an orb or two following a person through a house or chasing them down a stairwell, certainly trying to harm them or scare them to death. They indicate spooks, ghosts, energy from the ‘other world,’ spirits, or–maybe even angels.

If I have to think of this not-intentionally-collected collection as a group of orbs, I am hoping they are of the energy ball type or maybe even, if I am very lucky, angels.

Millionaire. A word that used to inspire awe and envy.

I say ‘used to’ because being a millionaire just ain’t what it used to be.

The word was first used in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman and was originally spelled with 2 ns. One n was dropped when it was first recorded in English in an 1816 letter of Lord Byron’s. It finally broke into print in an 1826 novel, ‘Vivian Grey,’ by Benjamin Disraeli. Another version of the word, ‘millionary,’ was used by Thomas Jefferson in 1786 while he was serving as a Minister to France. The first American printed use of the word was possibly used in the 1843 obituary of New York tobacco manufacturer Pierre Lorillard II. (Wouldn’t you just know he would be a tobacco manufacturer?)

Millionaires used to be able to buy and furnish exquisite mansions. They used to own private planes to travel between their exquisite mansions. Now, as they currently report, being a millionaire isn’t enough to get you through retirement, unless you have a very good pension, and we all know pensions are quickly vanishing.

Other great words have come along to replace the impact of ‘millionaire.’ They are ‘mega-millionaire,’ (having over 2 million dollars), ‘hyper-millionaire,’ (having over 100 million dollars), and ‘billionaire.’ You know, I have worked in the investment and estate planning fields my entire career and have worked with very wealthy people as well as some of modest means. Still, I have a hard time wrapping my arms around the thought of having a billion dollars. Where in the world would you keep it? Hopefully, not at a bank in Cyprus.

I had a wealthy client a few years ago that was in the ‘mega’ range. He wanted to see what a million dollars in cash looked like. The local Federal Reserve bank helped us out with that one. Interesting to take a tour of the Federal Reserve and have them be so accommodating. FYI, that person was a lottery winner, and like me, had a hard time grasping that amount of money.

For now, the words ‘millionaire’ or ‘mega millionaire’ are enough for me to still be in awe. (No envy here. I am not a material girl.) But, it won’t be long and we’ll be coming up with words to replace ‘billionaire.’

Wealthy, by any other name, is still wealthy.