megan mortarboard

 Often life's little pleasures are encountered with our taste buds.   I started to reflect on this and recalling some of my favorite foods. Every Christmas my parents took the family to visit Aunt Bess, at her farm. She made the best  bread that I ever tasted.  That taste still lingers in my mouth, and I have not experienced anything near its divineness from the regular bread shelf at the grocery store. In North Manchester, Indiana, where I grew up, there was Clark's Root Beer stand.  Here you could purchase the best Spanish (chili) hot dog on the planet.  That taste has not left me either. On my birthday, Peggy serves up my favorite banana cake for dessert, along with my request for a Sloppy Joe to consume.  Every year that taste desire seems to return, even over the option of dining out and having an exquisite meal. These little pleasures are not limited to some remembered tastes. At aunt Bess' farm I enjoyed not only eating her delicious bread,...

 I remember, as a kid, when I really was confronted with pain.  I had been playing,  in the park across the street from my home, and I stepped on a bee.  That bee took revenge on me and I ran home screaming to Mother.  She applied a home remedy, a salve made with baking soda, over the wound and I quickly calmed down. Another encounter I had with the insect world, was an attack from an angered wasp, while helping paint our house.  Apparently I disturbed the wasp's nest and that precipitated an attack.  That wasp's sting was really a few degrees more intense than the bee sting I got in the park.  This time I had to go into the house, lie down and rest.  Eventually a fever ensued, but in a few hours I was ready to continue with my job, albeit much more cautious about getting too close to a wasp's nest. Physical pain from a bee or wasp sting is immediate and evident.  But psychological pain can match the intensity of a bee sting over longer ...

 Not a Smiley Face sunshine, but the rays of the sunshine really did find me.  After many years , in my younger days, unbeknownst to me, the sun really did catch up with me.  Not being aware of the damage that UV light has on the skin, my friends and I used to aspire for a red-burned skin, acquired at the beach,  that turned golden.  It was the state of mutual acceptance and pride to wear the golden brown. Now I have, at my doctor's office, a thick folder holding many sheets of paper describing the appearances of skin cancer, of the basal cell type.  One of the first of these was located on my shoulder.  Numerous other growths came along, on my nose, my ear, my face and, recently , my neck.  It is certain that the sunshine found me. I am grateful to my doctors who have been helping me to identify and excise these cells before they become a problem.  Having training in chemistry, I've personally experienced the global threat of a thinning laye...

 When I retired from teaching in 2002, I sat down at my desk and wrote down what I might want to explore in my retirement years.  One would probably title this a "bucket list."  But you could call this a "wish list." One wish I had was to attend the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque, NM.  Peggy and I were able to attend this event by joining a program called the Road Scholars.  Through this program we had special privileges to view these huge balloons up close, and see some 400-500 uplift into the atmosphere.  It was quite a sight! Our wishes can be varied and somewhat evasive.  We don't always get our wishes, as we all learned in kindergarten.  But I highly recommend formalizing some of your wishes into a list.  We don't always get our wish, but by putting down our wishes on paper we may find direction to actually accomplish some of them. It isn't hard to make a wish.  The difficulty lies in how to make what you wish for a reality. Cather...

This word directed me to thinking about the term, metamorphosis.  I thought about the amazing transformation of the caterpillar into the beautiful butterfly.  The caterpillar feasts on leaves or foliage to prepare for its next stage where it envelops itself into a cocoon.  Here its body is totally digested and transformed to a butterfly that breaks through the envelop into the sunshine and air.  And to all of this we stand in awe to follow this creature as it lands on the flower and trees around us. Change is difficult process, as we witness this in the various stages that an emerging butterfly must go through.  So, too, lasting change in our personal lives has a history of fears, pains and struggles.  Even so, there can be a degree of triumph when change deepens our life with others. " The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new,"      Socrates "The measure of intelligence is the abili...

Of various lists of the wonders of the world, one rated its ten top sites as:    1)Parthenon in Greece,  2) Easter Island in Chile,   3)  Taj Mahal in India,  4) Colosseum in Italy,   5)  Angkor in Cambodia,  6) Teotihuacan in Mexico,   7) Petra in Jordan,   8)  Machu Picchu in Peru,  9) Great Wall in China, and   10)  Pyramids in Egypt.  Out of this list I have visited two...the Colosseum in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.  So I'm batting .200 (20%)! However, I think I delight even more in the many wonders that are near me.  I enjoy visiting the Brookside Gardens, here in the DC area.  It features many varieties of trees and flowers.  Their color and shapes continually amaze me.  I've spoken before of the wonders associated with birds, their colors, shapes and amazing travels in migration. I look forward to upping my "batting average," regardi...

 My wife and I have fond memories of "new adventures" through travel experiences.  The Road Scholar program has provided us with adventures such as: hiking in Zion National Park, working on a float that was entered in the Rose Bowl Parade,  witnessing the Balloon Festival at Albuquerque, NM, learning about the impressionist artists in France, and exploring the remote island, Dry Tortugas, in the Gulf of Mexico. Each of these adventures offered a vision of someplace we've never been before.  They expanded our view of the world.  This required that we leave the known confines of our home and step into an unknown environment. A "new adventure," however, does not necessarily have to relate to travels.  Adventure is found in taking on a new project or task...volunteer.....join a group...try a creative endeavor or hobby...cook a new recipe...put your house up for sale..., etc.  All of these are new adventures in their own right.  (Notice, I didn't ...