Did The Big Bang Bang?

This is tricky.

 

A fist-sized frog lives in an environment beneficial for its food supply but tricky for a home. His home is mobile, warm, and swarming with the frog’s favorite food—flies. The downside of this living arrangement is that he might suddenly feel an earthquake—the “land” beneath his feet lunging at a remarkable speed, or suddenly submerging into water. Water? Well,  that’s okay for a frog, but froggy dear, watch out for the mud.

The frog is living on the back of a Water Buffalo.

You know that the presence of frogs is one indicator of a healthy ecosystem. Scientists have found that when Water Buffalos move into abandoned areas, they bring with them, an abundance of frogs, bats, and plant life.

It is estimated that Water Buffalos number more than "200 million across 77 countries on five continents.” (BBC) These animals have long been used as plough animals and treasured for their nutritious milk. (Their milk is higher in protein and fat than that of dairy cattle.) Now, they are earning a reputation among conservationists as handy landscape managers.

For decades, local farmers have allowed their water buffalo to roam freely as they carve channels where fish, frogs, and other species enter. These, in turn, feed the wetlands migrating birds. 

 

P.S. I chose the title The Frog’s Song for my non-fiction book published by Regal House Publishing. The subject isn’t about frogs, although Coqui frogs are in there, but because I read that symbolically, the frog calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.

The Frog’s Song is a journey.

One day, my family of one husband, one daughter, one seven-month-old grandson, two dogs, and two cats, and this narrator took leave of their senses, put their house up for sale, and moved to a tropical island to live off the grid.

The journey is what life is about. And this was our journey. It left a sweet spot in my heart where our ten incredibly green acres once existed. 

 

To read more about The Frog’s Song, please go to my website: https://thefrogssong.com. (Read about our leaving. It isn’t in the book.)

Better yet, go the Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+Frog%3Bs+Song+by+Joyce+Davis&ref=nb_sb_noss.

I was hoping it was FREE on Kindle Unlimited, it sometimes is. Keep checking. I don’t know why the price varies. It’s like the weather.

 

And now...

 

 

41

 

Why is the Sky Blue?

 

 That question was my test for a potential husband. However, there were other prerequisites.

The man I married could answer my question, but he's a physicist. A young man I dated after high school could not. No disrespect, I couldn't either. This non-knowing about Blue Skies boyfriend, a sweet kid, a farm boy, was fun to be with—we went to movies and bowling, and he fit in well with my folks.

One day, while the boy was visiting, I started my period but found that we had no Kotex. I told Mom, and she told Mike, who volunteered to go to the store for me. Mike invited my boyfriend to go along with him. I was embarrassed to have two men buy Kotex for me, but that's life, right?

This boy left for a while for a job in California. Soon after, I got a call from the florist down the street from the dental office where I worked. I walked in to pick up my gift and found it to be a carload of flowers—so many that I was embarrassed again. It was too bad for the florist and me; we should have celebrated that marvelous event.

Shortly after that, the boy came back into my life from California. This time, he was driving a brand-new Buick, cream-colored and beautiful, half a block long as cars were then. He sat me in the car, pulled out a ring, and asked me to marry him.

I was dumbfounded and squeaked out, "I don't know you well enough to marry you."

To my shock, he cried, and I didn't see him after that.

I watched Oprah interview Jean Houston, where Huston asked Oprah what she wanted. Oprah isn't afraid to put it out there; she wants to make a difference in the world and has. She is fearless in interviewing spiritual teachers, talking about souls, and interviewing prominent people in those fields.

In her effort to ask the hard questions, she doesn't let timidity thwart her forward movement. She gave up her talk show and is now serving the greater good. She isn't afraid to say she follows her inner guidance and attributes it to Jesus. 

I want a piece of that sort of action. 

 

42

Did The Big Bang Bang?

 

I am a seeker, and since you are reading this book, I figure you might be one as well. Although you probably didn't know what you were getting into when you picked up this book—but then, I didn't know what I was getting into when I began writing it.

I've spent hours writing, and if you have read this far, you have spent hours reading it. Thank you for spending your time with me.

 So, I ask, dear one, do you believe in God? Do walk-ins exist? Are near-death experiences real? Do you think the Bible says it all, and that's it? Like the Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it? Are we everlasting souls? Do we reincarnate? Did all souls come into existence with the Big Bang? Was there a Big Bang? 

Did the Big Bang bang when there was no one there to hear it?

Did we always exist? Are there other planets like ours? Is life a common occurrence in the Universe, or is it rare? Are we unique or common? What do other human-like people look like? Have you ever thought we won the genetic lottery by being born, one egg, one sperm, and viola, us? 

Many of those questions are on par with "Prove there is a God." They are theoretical. But we are getting closer to the answers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Are You Doing?

 

What can I say? My hands are freezing, so I can hardly type. The heater hasn't chased the night chill out of my office yet—I don't know where it will go—it's beautifully sunny outside, so maybe the sun's warmth will soak it up.

 

Sweetpea is happy, though. She's under my desk with the heater. I've been watching the Discovery channel's documentary about The Alaska Bush People, and I think some of their weather drifted down here. Those Alaskan people, The Browns, lived in the bush, off the land, hunted, fished, slept in sleeping bags, on the ground, in make-shift huts, cut trees to make shelters, scavenged items from dumps, and finally got a house built. The next thing was to create a bed for the parents. (There are nine in the family—seven kids.) They hauled the bed, which weighed a half-ton, for it was made of logs, up to the second half-story, and who was the first to hop on the bed? The dog.

 

Those kids aged 12 to 32 are well-spoken, well-educated, hard-working, inventive, with definite personalities and playfulness. And all were home-schooled. They know how to hunt, fish, build inventions like smokehouses, elevators (for moving meat up a tree to keep it away from bears), and a clothes dryer. And they often recite poems at night under the glow of a campfire.

 

They do find they bump into modern conveniences once in a while when one gets sick or injured, and then, there is the challenge of finding a mate.

 

This contrasts with billionaires who live in palatial mansions with more conveniences you can shake a stick at. (Ode to my mother, I still wonder what “shake a stick at” means.) I'm not saying one is better than the other physically. Instead, I'm curious about values, morals, and living instead of existing.

 

Don't think I'm longing for Alaska, though. I prefer warm climates, although my hands are still blocks or ice.

 

We tried living off the grid once—it could work with a few more solar panels, and you don't take all your worries with you when you go.

 

You know, I've talked about our time on the Big Island in the book The Frog's Song by Joyce Davis. I still honor Jamie Royal, CEO of Regal Publishing, for feeling it worthy of publication. Only some people find it worth buying, though. I need to learn marketing—for, with excellent marketing, people will buy books worse than The Frog's Song. 

 

And this week, I'm gradually learning some of the intricacies of the computer, for a new Real Estate website has yet to be made live. And I've screwed up my laptop, removed plug-ins, jammed things up, and put them back—it works better now. So I figure it's the storm before the calm.

 

It will come together.

 

Tell me about your week.

 

 

"Breathe in the sweet air of limitless possibilities and make life as rich as you know it can be." 

 

Ah!

 

 

In Case You Missed It:

 Rude but funny.

 

You know what the most significant distraction for anyone who works on the computer is don't you? Of course, the Internet.  Yet it's fun to start the day with a chuckle.

 

From Jay Leno's Late night came this from a 100-year-old woman: 

Leno: "I heard you went to Universal Studios yesterday."

 

"Yes," she said, "the wind was blowing and I was wearing a skirt and holding onto my hat. 

 

"A young man came by," she said. He told her, "Lady, you better hold down your skirt. We can see everything you've got."

 

"Honey," she said, "everything I've got is 100 years old. But this is a new hat."

 

 

Here's a challenge:

 

Read the excerpt from the children's book, The Snail with a Right Heart, and not buy it.

 

I couldn't.

 

https://www.themarginalian.org/the-snail-with-the-right-heart/ 

 

 

 

With fascination, I read the lengthy excerpt of Maria Popoya's book printed in The Marginalian--biology, the origin of life, snail reproduction, and Jeremy, the snail with a shell coiled the opposite direction of most every other snail. And with his its internal organs opposite as well.

 

And then came a "but," and the excerpt ended.

 

What?

 

What happens next?

 

It's going to make me cry, I know it. 

 

The book is in the mail.

 

 

★ A Kirkus Best Book of 2021: A Best Informational Picture Book

★ A Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) Loveliest Children's Book of 2021

★ A Spirituality & Practice Best Spiritual Book of 2021

 

All of the author's proceeds will go to the Children's Heart Foundation, whose quarter-century devotion to funding research and scientific collaborations is shedding light on congenital heart conditions to help young humans with unusual hearts live longer, wider lives.

 

 

And on the home front--a friend who is cruising into a broken heart.

 

Take a lesson--don't get scammed by a promise of romance with sweet talk and I love you's from a chat room.

 

My husband says romance/money scams are a billion dollar business. And schools to teach the scammers how to prey on hopeful hearts.

 

Here's her story: He is (supposedly) off-shore on an oil drilling rig, and has mortgaged his home to invest in some scheme that will make him 9 million dollars, so he can retire in style.

 

He says he has a Scottish accent and immigrated to America with his father when he was 20. Our friend and he are only texting, no speaking, but have exchanged pictures.

 

He says he is off the shore of Louisiana, which would be in a 3-hour time zone from where she lives, yet their visits are 12 hours apart. Hum. What's wrong with this picture? Many things actually.

 

She's in love with him and thinks they're engaged. Yesterday he sent word was that there was an explosion on board the rig and financial loss. [Plus an Emoji sad face.]

 

The plot thickens.

 

The heart is a lonely hunter, someone said, and wrote a book by that title. Luckily, he's across the globe, and she's here, and she is holding onto her money with an iron fist.

 She could read a novel, but this is more fun.

  

“No man* knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything. At the back of our brains… [there is] a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence.”—G.K. Chesterton