Ozark Oddments: Shuddup! Shuddup! Shuddup!

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Shuddup! Shuddup! Shuddup!

And why would two reasonably sane (?) adults leap up and race through house and out one of the two back doors (yes, we have two back doors and no front door, it's a long story) screaming SHUT UP! Well, you might too if you had at chipmunks on both sides of the house “chipping” off and on all day long. And what do I mean by "chipping?" Aha. I'm glad you asked. From a Web site about chipmunks (http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=86): "chipmunks frequently call with a high-pitched chip or “chuck” repeated over and over (and over and over and over, emphasis added), at intervals of one or two seconds. This scolding noise is often made by a chipmunk watching an intruder from a safe vantage point. Some scientists think that it may also be the mating call of the female chipmunk." Mating call of the female chipmunk? Oh brother. If this is true, if this noise we are being subjected to sporadically all day long is being made by female chipmunks, well, we may be overrun with chipmunks. Chipmunks are adorable, so we haven’t even considered trying to eliminate them. They might send us to the looney bin though.

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"