Hello and happy spring one and all!! We’ve had a preview of spring for several weeks now already here in the Ohio Valley. Grass is growing, trees are budding, and flowers are popping up. I’ve already dealt with my spring allergies like a month early. Pollen is flying high. You might’ve heard about this white stuff that was on people’s cars up in the northern part of West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia. Not surprisingly it ended up being pollen lol!! The pollen I’ve seen here on cars is green. Not familiar with white pollen, but…
So spring has arrived… The year is moving on. Middle of March already. It’s hard to believe that in June will be two years since my mom passed away. How two years already?? The grief is still there and I think always will be. Like all my other griefs, it’s one that I will be carrying around on my back with me for the rest of my life. As they say, it never goes away. It just lessens over time. Time does not heal all wounds. There is scar tissue. Reminders. Gosh, I get so overwhelmed sometimes at a memory that will just pop into my head unexpectedly and catch me off guard. I have lots of memories. This happens often. My sister made meatloaf the other day and took dad some, so when I was there that evening and saw meatloaf I just thought how mom’s meatloaf was the best - although I hadn’t had it in several years because I’m vegetarian. Still - she made the best. I could smell it. Or - I saw peanut butter ice cream at Wal-Mart the other day. Mom loved peanut butter. She also loved ice cream. I wondered how she’d like peanut butter ice cream. Two of her favorite foods put together. I wish I could tell her about it or pick it up for her to try. Well, she’d probably just buy it herself and tell me to try it when I next popped in. She had a 4-pack of Reese’s cups left in her freezer that she would never get to enjoy. To say day-to-day with these constant memories isn’t hard… If any of you have lost a dear parent or special person, you know… And then there are cats… And the house that burned down… It all adds up. It’s a wonder I’m still sane.
I bide my time with lots of hobbies. I love words and languages. My life is pretty much words and languages (when it’s not cats or cleaning house). I’m surrounded by it. Word search and crossword books, book shelves with books, notebooks for writing in and studying… I’m on Duolingo, which is a total language party for me. So many to choose from!! I signed up for French of course, but I didn’t want to do basic. I took this test so I could skip ahead. How far, though?? I moved way up to about unit 40, and it’s still pretty easy for my intermediate skillz, but I thought I’d use it for review. I’ve tried all kinds of languages on it. Unfortunately there isn’t a course for Icelandic, which I also study. I try them out - and end up dropping them. I always end up deciding French and Icelandic are enough and none really resonate with me like those two. Lately I thought I’d try the languages of Britain. I signed up for Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh - on top of the Dutch I had signed up for before, and I actually am really liking the Dutch. These are - rather difficult. And brings up what I DON’T like about Duolingo. Being a seasoned language learner, it is lacking in some things; and why I always prefer to learn from textbooks, and if I decide that I really do like Dutch enough to want to dig deeper into it and study it, I will buy a Dutch textbook. For one thing, and this would really help with the Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh, and also the Danish I dropped about a month ago - it’s best to learn pronunciation first. It is a grand help. Learn the alphabet and the letter sounds. Learn the various combinations. So that when you see a word you can pretty much figure out the pronunciation and know what’s going on if things get weird - which they did with Danish. Danish isn’t pronounced the way it looks for so many words. I couldn’t really understand the speaker. Does “d” sound like “l”?? Why was the word for bread sounding like “brool” when it was spelled “brod”?? I figured out on my own that Gaelic is verb/subject/object. How about explaining that first?? Which brings up a pet peeve of mine: language-learning ISN’T memorizing phrases. How are you supposed to converse with someone in another language if you’re just sorting through your brain trying to find the right phrase?? And I have this problem with most of the online language-learning I see. Not just Duolingo. Most of it is just vocabulary and phrases. You do need the words, and knowing basic phrases is okay, but it’s important that you know how the language works. The grammar of it. There is little grammar-teaching on anything I see online, and this includes most youtube videos. You can’t do serious language-learning this way. Granted, when I was doing Italian briefly on Duolingo, the guidebook did have grammar, which was good, but I’ve seen very little grammar in the other guidebooks. Just lists of phrases that you could listen to. Maybe I didn’t get far enough in them. There is some on the French as well. The grammar is important if you want to become fluent. This is why I like textbooks. It has it all divided up into lessons. Vocabulary lists, dialogues, grammar notes, exercises (and you want a book with exercises and answer key in the back so you know what you’re not getting). I will always do most of my language learning via textbook, and you can find them online on Amazon or other bookstores. Do a search for the specific language. You can even buy short stories books in various languages now. I’ve got one for Icelandic. The company has them for several languages. I’ve got a couple French readers. There is more variety in language-learning materials these days in the book area, and I find these way more helpful. I use the online stuff mostly as supplement. Hearing and listening is also very important, and online is good for this. You can find various things on youtube such as movies or radiostations in your preferred language. But definitely hit up the books and get yourself a good dictionary in the language you’re studying. You will take your language-learning to new heights if you put in the study.
I was watching a bit of PBS at dad’s the other day. There was a local show talking to some people who use herbs and wild plants for healing. It was interesting. The one older woman they were following around was barefooted and gathering some plants, talking about various things she uses for her own health issues. I know a few things but not much, but I wondered - these are like “wise women,” right?? It would be cool to know how to use plants for tinctures and such to heal. Wild medicine. I’m already a strong believer in food as medicine. I’ve recently stopped taking the manufactured multi-vitamin I took, though I decided to get some B-complex and calcium. I bought a large bag of kale, bag of spinach (2 superfoods), and a box of granola to try to get many of my other vitamins. Plus whatever else I eat if I try to eat healthy. You need the vitamin C for sure. Orange juice is good for that. Actually it was on the spinach bag that I saw it had calcium and protein!! I need a lot of protein since I’m vegetarian, of which I can get from eggs, beans, nuts, rice, and dairy. There is a lot of stuff in your surroundings if you live rural that you can eat - at least if you’re hard up but don’t really want to in your daily life. There are dandelions. I think you can eat the whole flower, including stem. My mom went gathering dandelion greens with an elder neighbor we used to have years ago. There are small wild “strawberries” you can eat. I’ve tried them. Not real flavorful, but if you’re needing some food… Pine needle tea. You can eat cat tails - I think it’s the inside of them. Violets. Mushrooms if you know the safe ones to eat. Berries. I’ve read in Thoreau before that there is a wild potato!! A lot to study and learn, but you could probably live in the wild if you had to and were in the right spot. I’m not so sure you’d get a full belly, but maybe you wouldn’t die. ????!!!! Plus if you eat meat there are various wild animals, so… I became a fan of “Mountain Men” last year watching it at dad’s and then watching it on the History app here at home. I read the Eustace Conway bio by the chick that wrote “Eat Pray Love” believe it or not - she actually knows him personally and is a good friend. People like him you can learn from. I wish I knew who that woman was I saw on PBS. I’d like to look her up. I went looking for some “wise woman” info online. Thought maybe there would be some courses. There were a few, but mostly seemed to be money-making things or group things. Who needs that anyway?? I suppose you can learn a lot of it yourself - and again there are books you can turn to as well for a lot of various info. I found a good one last night on Amazon - the Native American Herbalist I think it was called. Was three books in one. And there are others. I think maybe the moral to my whole post and what kind or wraps things up is: books are always needed. Books go in-depth. They explain and show and are right there even when the electric is out and you can’t get online or there’s nobody around to show you. I will always be around books and - as always, be surrounded by books and words, as I have always been.