The most beautiful birdsong is that of the meadowlark. I miss them. I’m a hundred plus miles distant from where I grew up. Even twenty-five miles away from the farm, and twenty years later, the song was not the same. It was truncated, not as sweet somehow.

I can’t imagine they’d make very good eating, but I won’t judge what hunger necessitates. (See the TTOTC book and One of These Things is Not Like the Other.)

Lewis and Clark, other early explorers, traders, and the emigrants that followed, even contemporary travelers, have found themselves in dire straights in cold mountains and hot deserts.

This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Malay Wikipedia for the 1st week, 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know a woman who didn’t learn until she was nearing fifty that her father had spent a year in Stateville for stealing a chicken. Four kids to feed. Had lost a farm and home due to fire before the Depression hit. Even so.

She remembers at four or five overhearing adults discussing an eviction. One of them saying, “Well, I can’t kick them out in the cold.”

Purple Prairie Coneflower

Summer always returns. Here we have Indigo buntings, hummingbirds, cardinals and vultures. Prairie flowers and butterflies galore. (At least, until the chemicals and transgenics get them.)

I’ve never known hunger. Not like that. And I hope our children never do. It’s so much nicer when they can enjoy and observe the “flutterbys”.