Now you see it.

Our two peony bushes are blooming this week!

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Yesterday around 5:30 our power went out. I was able to still read or a while, and opened the windows as well for cool winds. It was affecting several thousand people in mostly small towns in Asheville area, but not Asheville itself. I finally lit some candles to just see around things, though I had a little flashlight as well as the phone flashlight. It was mainly boring!

The power company said it would come back on by 9:30, and they would let us know the cause. They texted later that the cause was major power lines being damaged, but they didn't say by what. Some FaceBook people said it was sun spots, while I was inclined to think it had to do with high winds. 

Power came back on after I'd fallen asleep, around 10:30, and then I put on the C-Pap to help me breathe. I had horrible cough when I woke up. Probably from pollen/dust that was invisible wwhen I had opened the windows (and taken a cloth with some cleanser on it across the screens as well as the cracks in the sills where glass/screen/framing meet. I closed all the windows when I went to bed around 9:45. It stayed nice and cool all night both inside and out, and wind is still twisting the trees outside my windows as I write this.

I'm so sorry to hear of tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky. And yet I'm grateful that I have power to heat my coffee this morning, while I know there are hundreds of families who have a damaged home now. May we remember we are all connected.

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"After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011, when the Fukushima nuclear power plant was on the verge of collapse, a small group of people stepped forward – not soldiers, not politicians, but courageous technicians, engineers, and scientists. Many of them were already retired. They volunteered to stay where few wanted to stay: inside the danger.

"With destroyed cooling systems and radiation levels thousands of times higher than the legal limit, these men and women risked their lives to prevent the worst. They became known worldwide as the "Fukushima 50."

"Equipped with protective suits, they took on tasks no machine could do – pumping seawater into overheated reactors and working amidst the rubble. They knew what was at stake: not just their health, but the fate of an entire country.

"What they did was not heroism in the traditional sense. It was quiet courage, deep responsibility, and the will not to look away in the darkest hour. Many of them didn't want recognition—only the hope that their efforts would save lives and prevent the unimaginable.

"Their courage will never be forgotten."

Posted on Facebook page: Facts that will Blow your Mind.

Just what are they thinking?

Sorry guys, but when faced with a sinkfull like she was, no wonder she thought she needed a man. (Incidentally, spell check was positive I wanted to talk about sinful, rather than sinkfull!)

Sharing with Sepia Saturday, where everyone is strolling along together.

Wonderful (75 year old) 1960 photo by fashion photographer Ormond Gigli. The building was about to be demolished so in 24 hours he arranged all the models as well as the Rolls Royce for this photo. Owner of building agreed if his wife could also be included. These were some daring models!

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Today's quote:

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity. -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

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And since I do use Wikipedia often... look what I found this week from Substack: 

Everything is philosophy

In the introduction to a post about living a more intellectually interesting life, Utsav Mamoria shares a fun fact from the results of a study on Wikipedia.

How to live an intellectually rich life

—Utsav Mamoria in Tumse Na Ho Paayega

Go to the main page of Wikipedia.

Click any link that leads to a Wikipedia entry. For that page, click the first hyperlinked word in the main text. Keep doing it—your journey will look something like this [above].

Now try this for several pages. Make them as varied as Nuclear Gandhi, Cow Tipping, and Exploding Trousers.

All of them will lead you to the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy.

In 2017, three mathematicians from the University of Vermont published a paper titled Connecting Every Bit of Knowledge: The Structure of Wikipedia’s First Link Network. They tested this hypothesis over a dataset of 4.7 million English Wikipedia articles and found that Philosophy was the page where the highest no. of articles ended.

95% of all Wikipedia articles led to philosophy.

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A teapot from my past...

As I was about to put the bamboo handle on it.