I have resisted writing here, about the weather we are having. The two big snow storms, on the two past Saturdays. The ice. The back-breaking shoveling which ensues. Everyone is talking about it, and posting photos, so it seems rather redundant here.
I had an idea, however. This morning. It was about ALL the people who say they “love the snow” and “bring it on” and such. I think that when we DO get these snow blasts, that the “Snow Lovers” must be gathered, and then dispersed, with shovels in hand, to all the residences of the “Snow Haters.” Once they are there, they can begin the snow shoveling and feeling the love.
To be completely fair, there are those of us who love the heat, the sun, the warmth. And so, on those very hot days, the “Sun Lovers” will all be gathered, dispersed, and we will go out and swim in your pools.
That’s all I will say about the weather today.
The next thing I won’t mention one tiny little word of, is The Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse of 2019. For heaven’s sake, such a name for Little Mona. Everyone is posting photos and talking about how very big the moon is right now.
I can only say this. The moon is pretty much the same size it was a million years ago, and every day since. I don’t get very revved up about the moon / sun events. Those two celestial bodies are up there every time I look. I make it a point to say hello to them daily / nightly. Last night, I went out walking with the dogs, and even gave it a grand howl. Louis ran back to the house. A pack of dogs started yipping in a far off field. Then quiet. I howled again.
Football is the other thing I will not discuss. The so-called playoffs. Blech.
No, what I am going to talk about today are meat slicers. Like the kind you see in Delis. I think they are incredible. Remarkable really. There we are, all bundled up, behind our little rickety grocery carts, and we wheel right up to the deli counter. Which isn’t much of a counter, but the front of a refrigerator, really. And we say, “A pound of turkey please.” That deli person pulls out a package of turkey. But one small observance here. It doesn’t even look like a turkey. No it looks like a huge pill-shaped hunk of meet. A cylinder with round caps on the end. How does turkey get to look like that? Anyway, the Deli person places that meat on the slicer machine, (after asking us how we like our slices — thin or thick), and just like magic, the thing goes back and forth, and a stack of sandwich-goodness appears. Miracles. In the Deli.
The machine was invented by a good fellow named Wilhelmus Adrianus van Berkel. In Rotterdam. That’s in the Netherlands. And he did it back in 1897, or so. How the idea came to him, I will never know. But he was a butcher, and apparently, he grew tired of slicing things with a plain old knife. Over and over again.
And over, and over again.
Kind of like seeing the New England Patriots, and Tom Brady, in the Super Bowl. Again.
But I am not going to talk about football. Because my Chiefs lost. And it snowed. Under a full moon. No matter how you slice it.
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“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
― Alexander Pope
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“If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.”
― Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
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“He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”
― P.G. Wodehouse
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