This is blog post number 1100 for me. I started this blog in 2021 not quite sure where it would go.
Over the years I’ve varied the number of posts that I wrote. 2022 was a big year coming off the second year of the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic (COVID). WHo knows what this year will bring as this is my 50th blog post for the year.
Natural history and photography have dominated the posts since the beginning and will continue into the future. I used to write more about viruses than I have recently. While I have an interest in epidemics and pandemics I think that people are tired of reading about such things.
Here’s a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker from earlier this month that I never used.
I also like writing about food and our garden, both of which play an important part in my life.
Comics have always been an important part of my life. As a young child I remember ready the “funny pages” every day. Today there are a few comics that I still read daily, but now I also spend a lot of time looking at political cartoons. Although none of them are in newspapers.
Speaking of newspapers. I can remember reading the sports pages growing up, as well as the puzzle page. Crossword puzzles are still part of my life, as are other puzzles. I no longer play bridge, but can remember bridge hands and how to play them. But I also remember the chess boards and how to win. Which reminds me of my Uncle Frank De Francis. In 1958 he came to Detroit for my Aunt Irene’s wedding. Later that year, or perhaps spring of 1959 my father and I took the train to Chicago to spend a weekend with him. There I became enthralled with his chessboard. I was working on putting together a model of a mastodon skeleton and he suggested, to my gleeful surprise trading the mastodon for the chess game. I was hooked. Here I was a little kid getting excited about chess, and then the chess puzzles in the newspaper. Later my Uncle Frank married a woman name Frances who became Frances De Francis, my new Aunt, with the same name as my grandmother’s maiden name Frances De Francis, although in Italian it was Francesca Di Francesco. Ah how memories are intertwined.
I’ve used the blog over the years to post some of my artwork, meager as it is. But many of my drawing are now in other peoples homes.
And there are the posts that are just about life. This is me at Whitefish Point. I was sitting on the bench honoring my good friend Michael Fitzpatrick.
Also books have been more prevalent in my blogs over the last year. Now that my neurological issues have subsided a lot, I haven’t had a full blown seizure since late 2020, I can now concentrate enough to sit and read. That is a pleasure that I had missed. It also allows me to draw and paint, which is more related to the tremors being gone.
So, what will happen the remainder of the year? Who knows. I know that natural history, books and the garden will still dominate, but what else.
Stay tuned for more…
Michael's Place 