Yesterday I was struck by a statement in an interview with the first Sri Lankan to go to Julliard. (Yes, the title of the interview is very wrong.)

It is such a clear–and terribly sad–glimpse of what it’s like to grow up in poverty.

I feel like people always tell me that, oh, it must be – you must feel like your dreams have come true because you’re singing, and you have a beautiful family. It’s all true. But the truth is that I didn’t really dream any of this because, for some people, there are certain things that one cannot dream. You can’t afford certain dreams…
…Because you can’t afford that dream because that’s not an option within your grasp.

When you’re poor, you can’t afford to dream.

And that’s what so many ultra conservatives don’t get. Then you are growing up in poverty, your life is not a road-map with unlimited highways and interstates and back-roads and alleys. Your life has one road–perhaps two–open to you. If you can get an education, then perhaps that road you’re on will branch out later in life, but for many, even that education is beyond their grasp.

This basic inequality is why I am politically liberal. Why I want all children to have as many roads open to them as possible, and I realize it is my responsibility to help make it so.

As projected, we had a lot of cold weather and rain in April, so I ended up reading a lot. Which is perfectly fine with me, though I would have enjoyed more hikes.

Science

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 (2012) Edited by Dan Ariely and Tim Folger (9/10)

Mystery

Miss Buncle’s Book (1936) D. E. Stevenson (8.5/10)
A Red Herring Without Mustard (2011) Alan Bradley (7/10)
The Golden Egg (2013) Donna Leon (6/10)
The Lighthearted Quest (1956) Ann Bridge (5/10)

Fantasy / YA

The Raven Boys (2012) Maggie Stiefvater
The Dream Thieves (2013) Maggie Stiefvater (9/10)
The Dark Heroine: Dinner with a Vampire (2012) Abigail Gibbs (7/10)
Girl of Nightmares (2012) Kendare Blake (5/10)

Audio

The Raven Boys: Audible Version (2012) written by Maggie Stiefvater and narrated by Will Patton (7/10)
Last Watch (/2010) by Sergei Lukyanenko translated by Andrew Bromfield and narrated by Paul Michael (7/10)

Fantasy

London Falling (2013) Paul Cornell (9/10)
The InCryptid Short Stories: Jonathan Healy and Frances Brown (2013/2014) Seanan McGuire (8/10)
The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013) Mur Lafferty (7.5/10)
Black Magic Woman (2008) Justin Gustainis (7/10)
Half-Off Ragnarok (2014) Seanan McGuire (6/10)

The books I especially enjoyed this month were:
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 (2012) Edited by Dan Ariely and Tim Folger
London Falling (2013) Paul Cornell
The Dream Thieves (2013) Maggie Stiefvater

Apparently, I held no paper books in the entire month of April–everything was audio or eBook. Which is fine, but feels rather odd in retrospect.

Both the audio books were of books I’d read previously (which is my preference, as strange as that may seem). But otherwise I managed to cut back on my re-reads. Not that there’s anything wrong with re-reading a book. I just have so many other books I haven’t read, I start to feel bad for the ignored books.

Lots of fantasy this month, though several of the fantasies were also mysteries. And I finally finished the non-fiction book I’d been reading for months. It was fabulous–far and away the best book I read all month. If you at all like science writing, I highly recommend The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012–I actually, I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve read in this lineup.

I’ve swung back to reading more female authors, which has dropped the percent of mail authors down below 50% for the year.

Now that it’s May, theoretically I’ll read fewer books and spend more time outside.

We’ll see.

Today’s word is: puke

“Aunt Michelle! Run in a circle!”
“I can’t! I’ll puke.”
Waitress: “Can I get anything for you?”
“Aunt Michelle is gonna puke!”

I’ve spent a great deal of time planting flowers and flowering shrubs in my yard, because I like flowers, and I like seeing them (there are a lot of flowers planted along my driveway, so I can see them every day, getting into and out of the car).

We had a flowering broom behind the house, but it died when we put in the parking space (it affected the drainage) we now have a Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida L.) which has survived in the spot.

The WV state flower: Rhododendron

Of course I have Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)

This Japanese Andromeda (Pieris japonica Compacta) was Michael’s pick.

Tulips aren’t generally my favorite, but I love the color of this one:

This flowering quince (Chaenomeles speciosa) isn’t in my yard, but all along the alley behind my house.

The trillium bloomed, but isn’t particularly photogenic after the cold snaps. My lavender didn’t survive the winter, nor did the heather, which I planted when we first moved here. The white bleeding heart didn’t come back, and although the pink bleeding heart came back, the late freezes killed the buds–so no flowers.

There are several other plants I’m watching, but I fear didn’t survive this winter.

Today’s word is: trillium

Saturday we biked along the rail trail, but stopped to hike through the Arboretum. There are an insane number of flowers out.

White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

There were also lots of red trillium, but all the flowers were closed.

Trout lily (Erythronium americanum)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Dwarf larkspur (Delphinium tricorne)

Bluebells/Cowslip (Mertensia virginica)

If you walk along the rail trail, the woods of the lower arboretum are covered with bluebells. It’s pretty amazing.

We even found mutants!

Friday was “Spring Holiday” for WVU, so Michael and I drove out to Coopers Rock for a hike. We hiked along the Rhododendron Trail and the Clay (?) Run trail.

My favorite: Water

Future Frogs!

If you’d like to find the wet spot with these frog eggs, the GPS coordinates are with the pictures. It was pretty close to where we parked, if you weren’t up for a long hike to possibly see peepers.

We hiked 4.8 miles according to the GPS, and our ascent was 949 feet. Which was the first part of how I got “100 flights of stairs” yesterday.

Let’s see if this works–here is (theoretically) a GPS map of our hike.

(I THINK IT WORKED!)

It’s spring! Sunday temperatures were in the 80s, and Tuesday, we had snow and freezing rain. In other of this, today’s word is: mother

Cherry blossoms are blooming on the riverfront!

Also, we spent time Saturday cleaning up flower beds and, essentially, starting over with the herb garden. I lost a lot of plants this winter, so I decided to add in some new things, including raspberry bushes.

Here’s how things looked on the rail trail early this morning:

Here’s how things look at my house.

Forsythia were one of Grandmom’s favorite spring flowers. She had a giant bush outside her front door, and every time we’d trim it, we’d get lectured not to cut it back too hard, so it’d still bloom the following spring.

She also loved daffodils:

It looks like only one bleeding heart made it through the winter.

But I planted some new blubs around the bleeding heart, so perhaps next year it will have more company than the ferns.

The recent anniversary of the Rwandan genocide reminded me of a discussion from years ago.

Sometimes I desperately miss those discussions, because it seems to me that if I don’t try to see why others believe the way they do, then my mind becomes stagnant, and I end up possibly holding wrong beliefs, because I can’t be bothered to stretch my brain.

The question that came to mind was:

Should we, as a society, use medical discoveries made during genocide & atrocities, ie, discoveries made by Mengele and others like him?

My opinion? I definitely fall into the Kantian category, but I’m perpetually curious about what other people think, and why, and of course I always like arguments that support my own belief.

Well, I suppose I can do another for Dr. Phil.

Today’s word is: physics

I saw more flowers than I expected to. Of course there were daffodils–including ones that had naturalized and were the only signs of houses that are long gone.

But I also saw Anemones and even a couple bluebells (most were almost ready to bloom–there were only a few open flowers).

Telling secrets:

These were easy to spot from the trail riding by:

Which led me to find these: