five lovely things…march 29

Hands up if this feels like the longest March on record.  How have we lived so many days in just one week?

Here’s my collection of five lovely things for this week:

1. Neighborliness showing up all over the world
Right across the river in St. Paul, Minnesota, a growing collection of neighbors, young and old, has been gathering every evening, standing at least 6 feet apart in chalked circles on the pavement, and exercising together.
Such a friendly way to connect while staying safe! You can watch the clip on our local news here.

Other neighborhoods have been creating bear-spotting adventures for young children on walks, riffing off the excellent book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.

2. Little Women (2019)
I am in love with this movie. It is a pure glory. If you didn’t catch it in the theater, or if like me you did and are happy to watch it over and over again, you can buy it now from multiple sources. I watched it last night and ahhhhhh! It is so good.

3. The fascinating lives of animals
Last week I posted a link for the cool webcams at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Another site, called Explore, has gobs of livecams from around the world.
Thumbnail images allow us to see if animals are active at a particular location and then click to travel there.
On one visit, I watched elegant, champagne-pink spoonbills at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm,
a nesting bald eagle in Decorah, Iowa,
some snoozy baboons in South Africa,
and a panda taking a cooling bath in China.
There are lots of bird cams as well as rooms full of puppies, sheep barns, bears, tropical fish, watering holes in African game preserves, sharks, and lots more.

4. Talented people helping me laugh
This guy’s brilliant performance featuring clever, corona-modified lyrics to Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious is fantastic!

And if you haven’t caught the Tonight Show from Home with Jimmy Fallon, here’s a charming, family-friendly episode. The shows are super short. This one is 17 minutes long and features sound effects and graphics by Jimmy’s 6-year-old daughter, pandemonium courtesy of his younger daughter, and a Zoom visit with Lin-Manuel Miranda. Goofiness abounds.

5. Nature poetry
If nature is healing to you, you’ll resonate with this piece by Wendell Berry.
Even if I can’t get outside, I can go to wild places in my mind:

“The Peace of Wild Things”
from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Coming up this week on Orange Marmalade:
*more encouragement re. juggling kids, work, and life in isolation-ville
*reading while the libraries are closed — a few suggestions and resources
*a cool science project to do at home, perfect for Corona-times
*and quite possibly some reading suggestions for 13 and up — I’m hoping to pull a list together
Stay well, and look for the lovely!