I love turtles, and I love butterflies.

This 2019 WikiMedia Picture of the Year gives me both.

I subscribe to two daily poetry email lists: the Poem of the Day from the Poetry Foundation and Poem-a-Day from Poets.org.

A recent Poem of the Day was Tell the Bees by Sarah Lindsay, which intrigued me enough to go look at some of her other works.

Like a lot of people, I'm not always sure what to do in any given situation to avoid getting or transmitting the COVID-19 virus.

I came up with a few questions that, I think, are helping me avoid unnecessary risks.

Note: I wrote this to share with people who, like me, might be a little too laid-back about preventing COVID-19 transmission. If you are already anxious or over-anxious about the virus, please close this window, NOW, and go look at comforting cute animal videos or calming pictures of trees.

A friend told me Thursday morning that KFOG was shutting down for good - and they were doing a day-long farewell broadcast, featuring lots of Ten at Ten episodes and Live from the Archives sets. Thanks to him, I was able to tune in and listen to almost the whole day. It brought back a lot of memories.

Just before I went to bed, it occurred to me that it might be cool to put together a quick website commemorating the station and especially its golden age.

Friday morning, I registered the domain and started building.

I've been watching some of the SpaceX launches lately, and on the latest one, the announcer kept talking about the satellites being deployed from the dispenser.

All I can think of when I hear the word "dispenser" is, of course, Pez dispensers.

I am quite tickled at the idea of a spaceship-sized Pez dispenser dropping satellites into space.

... because the last time my mom visited, she was wondering about the city's wild parrots.

(Photographed this morning at Fort Mason.)

I was checking Joshua Kosman's blog to see if he'd posted anything lately (alas, he has not), and I was stumped by the phrase "the tentative Alphonse-and-Gaston footwork between Nelsons and the string players " in his entry about hearing the BSO perform Mahler's Ninth.

I've been trying to reinvigorate my language skills, so I've started reviewing some of the languages I've studied, switching to a different one (Spanish, French, German, Italian) each week.

I thought music might help reinforce the vocabulary I was picking up, so I trawled the library for pop CDs in other languages. I had no idea what any of these bands would sound like; I figured I'd just check them out and give a few repeat listens to anything I enjoyed.

Thanks to Google for informing me that today is Alexander Calder's birthday, via a beautiful Google doodle on their home page. I love the shadows.

I was lucky enough to grow up near Chicago, where I got to see the Calder Flamingo every time I went downtown. I've always especially loved his mobiles.

The American Masters episode on Calder was marvellous.