Three Interesting Things

1. It has probably been a decade since I went to Salt Lake City for dayjob reasons.  But while we were there, I insisted I needed to see the lake.  And so I and the one co-worker who felt similarly drove out there, and circled past.  It was winter, there was snow, so we didn't get out of the car.  But it was gorgeous.  So, hearing about how climate change and drought have affected it, saddens me.  This article talks about some of the efforts to address that.  

2. In Wellington, one family has some native birds nesting underneath their house.

3. A DC born artist is part of two Broadways shows coming soon. 

Support the Things You Love

I missed talking about this last week, when it was National Library Week, but as anyone who has ever working in any sort of customer service job, which is a lot of them, people are so quick to tell you what they hate. 

And fair. I am currently trying to get information from a company that I have paid money too, I get it.

So it stands out when people take the time to tell you what they love. I wrote a love letter of sorts to my library this year. I made a point to reference specific things they were doing that I loved, books was obviously a feature. I mentioned branches that I frequented. Access to learning and to COVID tests that I made use of. And ways it had improved my life. 

First, it is so much more fun to write a letter about all the things you love about something. Try it. 

Second, I wanted to mention specific things that I loved, in the hopes that those would continue. 

And third, I wanted to mention how it had helped me. 

We are also in a tight budget season this year in DC, I am going to mention libraries as a thing I love, on the list of things I want more of. It's often easy to get stuck on the newsy bits of the city budget. But libraries, funding for shelters, for youth programs, also are parts of the city budget. And I plan to advocate for them. Your list may be different. 

And of course love letters can also go to grocery stores when a particularly helpful person got something taken care of, or to bus drivers who are fabulous. I think we all get customer surveyed to death these days and it's hard to remember that you can just reach out on your own to whomever or whatever you want to lift up. Like acces to books. 

Three Interesting Things

1. I am really enjoying NPR's sibling series, and this one about grief with siblings was interesting. 

2. American University's student paper wrote about the shrinking local news coverage in DC.

3. I enjoyed this story of two friends who first met in DC, and have stayed touch throughout the years.

The Things You Get Used To

I've had glasses for a while now. It was distance where it showed up first. The first glasses I bought fit tightly on my nose. I mostly wore them when driving, at sports, plays, things like that. 

I remembered when I realized that there were a group of people who knee me through my sports attendance who only saw me in glasses. And how weird it was that those people thought of me as a glasses person.

This happens in other ways too. I was in one group, where someone once asked me, after I did some new member interviews, if that was the most I had ever talked in a single day. (A friend of mine died laughing when I recounted this.) 

We all contain multitudes, and nit everyone gets to see every facet of us. So it can be weird when things collide or shift. 

Last year, I got progressives. I had started to find my eyes at the end of the day were having issues. And realized that I was working harder to see some smaller print, and maybe I needed to give my eyes some additional support. 

It took months to get used to them. I was in the very lucky position that a lot of my middle distance vision is still very good, so the contrast between the things that are blurry when wearing progressives versus not, was an adjustment. 

But now I'm used to them. (Okay, I may have typed some of this without them, but still, I reach for the glasses every day. Plan how many pairs to bring on trips.)

And recently I looked at my face and felt it looked different, and realized, it was because I wasn't wearing glasses. I have grown used to my face with glasses now. 

Three Interesting Things

Baltimore is fundraising for the families of the workers who died in the bridge collision.

1. Sibling relationships are fascinating to me, and I find the fact that this story mentions that birth order is less important than some think, while covering a story with very stereotypical birth order, fascinating.

2. The founder of Trans Day of Visibility is thrilled at the success.

3. Jemele Hill wrote about how this baseball gambling story is part of a long line of gambling and sports stories.