C.B. Potts's Blog, page 6

What Is Our Duty as a Patriotic Citizen?

Patriotism. Boy, that's a big can of worms. Here's what I believe: To love one's country is to hold it to a higher standard. To love one's country is to question everything. To love one's country is to distrust one's government, for those who seek power most successfully generally deserve it the least; especially given our current system. To love one's country is to look at it with our eyes open. To love one's country is to acknowledge your debt to those who se...

Tuesday Morning

We were up so early; not before the sun, but almost. It was Nadia's last day of school yesterday (except for one field trip) and she came home with a cup full of red-stemmed seedlings. They are leaning up against the side of thier Dixie cup this morning; I'll have her water them in a bit. Susun Weed's barn burned down, I learned via email this morning. The problem of our wired world is the grief seeps in. Perhaps it's not good to mourn that one can feel. One can't always d...

Wednesday Morning

This morning, the cage in which the cats spend time outdoors, if it is nice, was full of blue jays. They'd worked their way in through the chain link fencing and were feasting on the bits of cat food that had been left behind. Then they all left at once, half a dozen of them, emerging from the cage in all directions at once, a flurried flight of blue.

If cat food is eaten by a bird, does it become bird food? One wonders.

Monday Morning

This weekend, we pulled the studs out of a pair of snow tires so I don't have to buy a new pair of tires right now. It's an odd little job, pulling studs. You use a pair of dikes, not the itty bitty but not the big ones either, and press into the rubber directly on either side of the stud. You need to go in far enough to grab below the flared head of the stud - snow tire studs are shaped vaguely like the buttons on your jeans, you want to bite into the narrow part - and then pull and...

Friday Morning

It is not fair to wake up irritated just because reality's got it all wrong. You're not your best in the mornings either, are you? It takes a little bit to get to here from there; somedays the distance from dream land to bright eyed and bushy tail seems insurmountable. Hah. Bright eyed and bushy tailed. The distance, my darling, only as far as upright and not-actively-snarling can take all day to cover sometimes. Why should I expect more of reality than I myself can manage?

Here's...

Thursday Morning

He asks why I wear so many necklaces, and I realize so many words in my answer - talisman, amulet, magic - will need to be explained. And in that moment, that flashing bright touch of insight, I see what a lover of mine saw way long ago: the exhiliration of introduction. How absolutely compelling it is to show someone the world is so much larger than they'd ever known. All of the wonders to be experienced for the first time.

It is a sensation related to but wholly unlike that when you brin...

Wednesday Morning

It is easy to confuse contentment for numbness, especially if you've ever been where the definition of good is the absence of actively bad. It is easy to let all things that have to be done in order for you to be the person you are eat up your entire life. It is easy to lose to that which is hard, and baby doll, it's hard out there.

Responsibility, man. If you'd come up like me, I could say 'the comforting weight of the yoke' and maybe hum a few hymn bars, and we wouldn'...

Tuesday Morning

The bleeding hearts have made it. They've survived another year and now, now in this cold, cold spring, are sending up the rosy pointed tips of their very first stalks. This particular bleeding heart I've been worried about, because a few years back I'd split it; it had been in danger of choking itself out. Ever since then, it greets spring with a great timidity. It is not a good thing, to see a plant made so afraid.

There are robins now. Robins and a quartet of black birds rule th...

Monday Morning

I am not hungry. This is a problem. I should be hungry, but I am not.

We are in between. Spring has sprung but winter remains. Along the road, where the snow plow's been and been and been again, we have in miniature a medieval take on Piedmont, terraced and overbuilt. Old ice grayed over can pass for many things. Fitting that the last snow to go takes on an aspect historical; it wants us to be reluctant at its farewell.

Snow has a difficult relationship with love. In a way, the flakes are l...

Friday Morning

Sometimes work is neat. I have to be very vague here, but one of the companies the marketing firm I write for represents is a big time legal firm. One of the things I'm doing is gathering up relevant articles, whitepapers and whatnot for said firm to distribute through their social media. Being lawyers, they read everything before it is posted on their behalf; very often, we get feedback. A good chunk of material I've gathered for them recently centers on a very high profile case involving so...