CMMC: February Close Up or Macro This is a close-up of the Duke. I took the picture this afternoon. He's not a happy camper right now with an infected, bad ear -- which I'm treating. It takes a few days, and he hates getting treated. It isn't painful, but it's wet and cold. So he is also getting a lot of treats.

The Square Odds - February Have I mentioned that birds are messy? Birds are ridiculously messy. They toss seeds all over the place and poop on top of them. Then, they eat them anyway. They seem to have absolutely no concern about where they go, including on their food. I don't want to know what their nests look like. And when you've checked everything, throw those seeds around!

Last night we made a package of green beans. They weren't the "nuke'em in the package" beans we usually get. You were supposed to empty the package into a frying pan, and 8 minutes later (according to the package), they would be ready to eat. That was when the package warned us that "the food will be hot." Well, yeah. We cooked it.

The Square Odds - February Caught in sunlight, the Grackle looks like gold.

The Square Odds - February Whether it's a drawing or a photograph, this young Rose-Breasted Grosbeak makes me laugh. Those hooded eyes, the seed hanging out of his mouth. And of course, he is a baby with even more mottled coloring than the "grownup" birds. No matter how many times I look at these photographs, I still laugh. The Rose-Breasted Grosbeak -- again.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I dreamed of a locked room called "The Hall of Records." I was never able to enter that room. The other morning, I woke up to find a box next to my bed. Attached to it was a note: “Open me, if you dare.” Somehow, I knew it must be from that room. What was inside?

Editor: In 2022, Garry tackled a snowstorm, or should we say it tackled him? Mother Nature came through on the heels of the frantic predictions of a whopper storm. Skeptical New Englanders are watching the snow fall faster than the numbers on Wall Street after another week of gridlock on Capitol Hill. The snow was so heavy, it looked like fog.

The following first appeared last year on the SERENDIPITY website. "You must know why we are here." Chinese Eddie, Part 3 by Rich Paschall When Eddie finally made it home to Wuhan in the early days of the Coronavirus outbreak, much of the city was under lockdown. He gave up the apartment where he taught English lessons. He was not doing business in Mandarin Chinese lessons online.

Today is the day to talk about Bad Bunny. No, not the one below, but one of the most successful music artists in the entire world. He is also an American. "We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans." - Bad Bunny Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, has come a long way.

Encouraged by your encouragement, I did a few more birds, including a pair of Cardinals. They aren't as fat this year, probably because they have to compete with a giant flock of starving Grackles. I don't know if the Grackles are really starving, but they act like they haven't eaten in years. They act like that while they are eating, so I think that, like the Duke, they are permanently ready for a good feed.

It has nothing to do with hooking up or any other kind of sex. It has to do with becoming the closest of friends with a complete stranger for one afternoon, then never seeing him or her again. One year, about 30 years ago, I was visiting friends in Montreal. I was poor, didn't have a reliable car, so I took the bus from New York to Montreal.

The Square Odds - February Birds with snowy beaks? A bird flying low, so did this Cardinal see him? Or not? I love those snowy beaks. I hope the Cardinal doesn't mind. Hey, what's that? Wait, where are you going? Can I come too? I thought I saw a bird fly by... I was SURE I saw a bird. Maybe not.

The Square Odds I'm not sure if anything I've got is odd. I'm not sure that everything I've got isn't odd. Given the past couple of years, I'm not sure that anything is odd unless everything is odd or weird or bizarre. So let me start with "Birds Can Be Odd, Too." Two finches, separate species, hanging out in the flat feeder…

Last on the Card – January 2022 I think we -- as a family -- took more pictures during the past three or four days than we took the entire rest of the month. The huge blizzard that hit us geared everyone up, and since Owen had the perfect camera -- an Olympus Tough TG-6 -- ready to go out into the snow and ice?

This is one of the funnier old family stories and my family believes that it documents the first time being a conscientious objector was used as a rationale to get out of military service. The concept did not exist in World War I, when this story takes place. Abe was my grandmother’s brother. He was a nebbish and a schlemiel…

The Grackle looks very fat, but really, he's fluffy. When the weather is very cold, which it was the day I took the original photograph, it was near zero (F) with a blizzard in progress. It was also blowing winds near hurricane strength, so to keep warm, that Grackle puffed up his feathers. I think I have underestimated how warm feathers can be.

                                                                                As some of you may know, I wrote weekly posts for Serendipity from about 2014 to about 2019. Many of them were interesting family stories, retold often over the years. They start with my grandparents in Russia at the end of the 19th century, go through my parents’ lives, my childhood, adulthood and children, and end with my current life with Tom (also a Serendipity contributor) in around 2019.

Freeport, Long Island. It's in Nassau County, the closest county on Long Island to New York City. I grew up in the city ... in Queens, which is a borough of New York. Each of New York's boroughs has its own character and, in many ways, is a city in its own right. Certainly, people who grow up in Brooklyn identify themselves as Brooklyn-ites, and if you come from Queens, …

Thursday Doors

ByEllin Curley I have ADD which often makes blog writing challenging. I sat down to write abouthow much I love living in the woods, which right now is a winter wonderland. Then I remembered a minor incident in these woods when I was ten, involving a small snake,which triggered a severe, 30-year snake phobia. From there, my mind went to when it…

FOTD – February 4 – Tulip I have some of them! I even grew some of them. A little hint of spring before it's here. These tulips were originally posted in February 2022.

My Grandmother, Sarah, grew up in Minsk, Russia. Her father was one of the very few Jews there who were allowed to do business with the Russian Gentiles so he was relatively well off, for a Jew.  Grandma's mother was an aloof, Grande Dame and was treated like a queen by her family, including  taking baths in milk. In order to stay in the good graces of the Christian Russians he dealt with, her father adopted their pro-Czarist beliefs.

CMMC – Alphabet Letter A at the beginning of a word In order, they are azaleas, apple blossoms, anthurium, architecture, Aldrich Street, and Arizona. Azaleas

This is the second of a five-part series that first appeared on the SERENDIPITY website last year. Chinese Eddie Travels The World, Part Two, by Rich Paschall The first part of the trip to the United States went well. Eddie had seen many famous tourist spots around the country. He spent New Year's Eve in New York City and welcomed 2020.

From The Archives, by Rich Paschall The plan in December was to use items from past Decembers and fill in with some new ones. Marilyn agreed and added some new posts. It was the same for January, although we did not expect anything from Marilyn. She said she was through, but of course, she contributed to her blog whenever she could.