To Blog Or Not To Blog

We had snow three times last week. Some days, the high temperature never reached freezing. Some days, the wind chill never got out of the teens. But not today; today the temperature is 77°F. Tomorrow is supposed to be the same. But a cold front is forecast to come through tomorrow evening and by the end of the week we might have snow flurries. This roller-coaster temperature is called “January in central Virginia”. January used to be a very cold month; it was February that was roller-coaster. But global warming has moved everything up a month. I have to start mowing my lawn a month earlier than I did ten years ago. So it’s understandable that February arrives in January.

I just ate lunch. I made a ginger garlic stir fry with chicken. It had white meat chicken with snap peas, water chestnuts, red peppers, broccoli, whole grain rice and ginger garlic carrot sauce. What, you thought I ate PBJ sandwiches every day? Nope. I enjoyed my lunch. It was quite tasty, thanks to the nice folks at Lean Cuisine. By the way, what the heck is carrageenan?

But I digress. I wanted to write about my recent lack of blog posts. It may seem like I wrote only one blog during the past week, but I’ve written several. I’ve only published one blog during the past week. Most of the blogs I wrote were not up to my usual standard of mediocrity. They didn’t pass the VirtualWayne Quality Control test.

I wrote a blog called “Thinking About the Universe”. I wrote about the nature of space and time, and how remarkable it is that there was a time when neither of them existed. I wrote about how both of them came into being 13.7 billion years ago with the appearance of something physicists call space-time. I wrote about how “empty space” is actually something rather than the nothing it appears to be. I wrote about what might have existed before the Big Bang. But after all this writing, I asked myself how many people would be interested in reading this kind of article. It would seem to have a narrow audience. And so I quit writing that blog.

I wrote a blog called “Thinking About Guns”. I wrote rhetorically that perhaps we should amend the Constitution so as to give every person the right to drive. We’ll abolish driver’s exams: no written test, no eye test, no driving skills test, no license. I asked if this would make the roads safer. And I wondered about the fact that I haven’t heard anyone warn that licensing drivers and registering autos is the first step down a slippery slope that will lead to the government confiscating everyone’s cars. I wrote about a waitress I knew who got into an argument with her boyfriend (or maybe he was her husband; I don’t remember the details). The man pulled out a gun and they fought over it. The gun discharged and the bullet went through a wall and into her little boy’s bedroom, hitting him in the arm. The injury was so severe that doctors had to amputate the arm. I wrote how that was just one of the 14,000 child gun injuries this year that you won’t see on cable news. But after all this writing, I asked myself how many people want to read another article about gun violence.  And so I quit writing that blog.

My “drafts” folder has 53 unpublished blog posts. Some were not finished because it seemed I took a wrong turn somewhere and the blog was going down a disappearing road to nowhere. Some didn’t seem good enough to post. Here (below) is one of the 53 blogs that didn’t make the grade. I wrote it over a year ago. Now it’s a blog within a blog.

O Mio Babbino Caro I like this song: “O Mio Babbino Caro” ("Oh My Beloved Father"). Sometimes, when I’m in the kitchen shoving a carrot into my juice monster, I’ll notice I’m whistling it. “O Mio Babbino Caro” is a soprano aria from the opera Gianni Schicchi composed in 1918 by Giacomo Puccini to a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. Many sopranos have sung it, from Florence Easton at its premiere on December 14, 1918, to such notable sopranos as Maria Callas, Joan Hammond, and Sarah Brightman. But my favorite performance is by 11 year old Jackie Evancho. She sang it on American Idol (here). Here’s a longer performance with lyrics in Italian and English. I like that she doesn’t just stand and sing; she tries to act out the emotions of the character Lauretta.