What's Up?

   Happy New Year everyone! What's up where you are? …probably not the temperature unless you live in the southern hemisphere right about now! We're in the midst of a cold winter--not unusually so--just seems that way to people with short attention spans and no appreciation of history. 
   I grew up reading Little House on the Prairie, and those blizzards out on the Great Plains were larger than life the way Laura wrote about them. I could picture Pa's whiskers with icicles, feel the blast of colder-than-ice air as he came in from the chores in the barn, and hear the wind clawing at the sod house. I shivered with Laura as she almost didn't make it home from school alive one time after a storm came up quickly.…I also remember watching television news in the '70s showing bundled Bostonians and Buffalonians digging out their cars in front of their houses. 
   I do not subscribe to the Climate Change/Global Warming hyperbole. I do subscribe to the journal Science and can refer Chicken Littles to any number of interesting research articles about man's effect--or rather ineffect--on the temperature of our planet. Just saying…
   ..and now I'll hop down off my soapbox. Speaking of which: I am resolved this year to get it out and step up on it. I've come to a point in my life that I can no longer be silent about what I see going on around me--no matter how politically incorrect the topic may be. I hope to inspire others to do the same. I think we'd all be better off if people started discussing and thinking about what's going on in a lot of places in our own countries, and around the world, take that a step further, and actually DO something. How many of us aren't even keeping an eye on our local goings-on? Are we checking out each night when we come home tired from work? Are our eyes looking down--at our electronic devices--instead of into those of our loved ones, friends, neighbors, and colleagues? And more importantly are we engaged as citizens? I am starting conversations around me. I'm finding people are ready--and even relieved to hear someone start talking. I think this could be good for all of us.
   So--plan on a conversation starter along with the cards--I think it might be interesting to see how it works out.