Weary of Lies

February 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In 1976, swine flu was discovered at an army training center, and several people got sick. Testing confirmed that the disease had spread to more than 200 people, and suddenly, public officials panicked. Money was poured into development of a vaccine that was intended to inoculate every single person in the United States. The scare stories were horrific, with countless news articles predicting a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic.

The vaccine was developed quickly, and people lined up for the shot. (Literally, a shot — needle-free jet injections shot from some sort of gun.) By then, for good reasons (unimportant to this story) I had developed a vast distrust of the medical establishment and didn’t want to get inoculated. At the time, I was managing a franchised fabric store, and the district manager told me that I needed to set a good example for my employees. And if I didn’t, I’d be fired. I was young and still too honest to even think of lying and just telling him I got the vaccine so, to my utter shame, I caved and got the injection. It backfired on him because I refused to make anyone else get the shot. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone except him that I was inoculated. Even before I learned the truth that I’d only surmised — that the whole thing was a misdirection, that there wasn’t going to be a pandemic, that the flu was mild, and that the vaccine caused various health issues for people, some not until later in life — I vowed that never again would I fall for one of their scarifying schemes.

I was lucky, and so far have managed to be side-effect free from that swine flu vaccination, but I never forgot that episode. I never told anyone I got the vaccine either, until just now — I was that ashamed of my lack of confidence in myself.

So fast forward to 2020. Same story. I admit, I was afraid — those scare tactics work even on people who are aware of them. But I remembered my vow, and though I didn’t lie, I never told anyone I didn’t get the vaccine. I couldn’t. People were willing to turn in friends and neighbors who didn’t comply with mandates, and even though I trusted the people I knew, I couldn’t take a chance. (At that time, they were talking about rounding up the unvaccinated and incarcerating them in FEMA camps.) Even with stories of the necessity for showing proof of vaccine and such, I believed I was right. Of course, I took precautions, staying home almost all the time, and on the rare occasions I had to go out, I made sure to keep away from people. By then, though, I wasn’t really worried about getting sick since I don’t seem to get the flu. (I don’t really know why. Something to do with blood type and stronger protein coatings on cells, or so I’ve read.)

As time passed, stories started coming out about horrendous problems stemming from the vaccine. Young people who now have heart conditions. Middle-aged people who died. Older people who developed severe eye problems. And more.

A lot of people who didn’t get the vaccine or any of the boosters are patting themselves on the back for their perspicacity, but I’m not. It’s just one of those things that life taught me: to trust myself, not the science. (Thalidomide, anyone?)

We’re still dealing with fallout from the shutdowns, but already people seem to have forgotten how much we were forced into giving up our autonomy. But it’s important to remember. And it’s important to remember that we were lied to.

The lies are still there — maybe not about diseases and vaccines, but oh, so many lies that it’s hard to find one’s way through the maze. But it’s possible, if not to figure out the truth, at least to recognize the lies. It’s about looking at both sides objectively without emotional ties to either. It’s about seeing the pattern (as with those two universal vaccination attempts, though admittedly, a sample of two isn’t much of a pattern). See who actually benefits from the lies; who ends up richer because of the lies; who acts as if their lies only affect other people, not them. (For example, if you hear someone say the oceans are going to rise in the next few years because of climate change and then they buy ocean-front property, there’s a good chance someone is lying.)

Just as with the vaccines, I seldom talk to anyone about things I’ve researched and lies I’ve uncovered because people believe what they want to believe. Too many people seem to want the same old story — a simple plot, a villain to hate, a feeling of moral superiority — and so the complexity of what is going on in the world slips by them while they remain emotionally entrenched in the noble myth they choose to believe. Luckily, I have one or two good friends who have done much of the same research as I have, so I can talk without getting a heap of programmed responses in return. But still, I am weary of the lies — a lifetime of lies — and weary of the people who accept the lies for truth without bothering to look further.

Oops. Sorry. I didn’t mean to get on my soapbox. I generally don’t let my guard down, but I am writing at night when I am physically tired, not just mentally tired.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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The “R” Thing

February 19, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I don’t know if I’ll ever post this because of . . . you know, the “R” thing. Still, I’m writing this for me because I think it’s interesting and because it’s something I’ve been noticing and thinking about.

I mentioned once or twice before that I sometimes listen to conservative black commentators. I started because I wanted to hear what they thought about white liberals insinuating (if not flat out saying) that blacks were too stupid to figure out how to get an ID in order to vote. Interestingly, most of those commentators ignored the issue, as if it had nothing to do with them because of course, it didn’t. The insinuation is merely talk from people who haven’t a clue what they are saying and no concept of how the world works.

I continued watching these commentators because they are smart and informed, they have great sources and resources, and they gave me a different slant on what was happening in this country. I especially wanted to hear things from their point of view rather than from the white liberals who are always telling us what blacks think (or what they should think).

That’s neither here nor there. It’s just something I did. But here’s what’s interesting: suddenly, I’m seeing a lot of these non-white people asking, “Where are the whites?” You’d think (if you listened to liberals) that living in a white-free world is what people of color want, but it isn’t. These commentators want what most of us want — to be known as Americans (or rather, United-States-ians since “American” suddenly means something different from what it always has meant), and they want to be part of a country where the races can intermingle. The first time I heard a mention of disappearing whites was from a black commentator who reviewed the half-time show. She said if it was supposed to be inclusive, “Where are the whites?” And then she admitted she missed seeing them.

Another black woman said that if it’s okay to promote black-owned business, then it should be okay to promote businesses as white-owned, but instead of doing either, she concluded, all these businesses should simply be promoted as “American-owned businesses.”

Then another black commentator noticed a white student being blocked from entering a “multi-cultural” area on campus and pointed out that “multi-cultural” by definition would include whites.

And yet another black commentator mentioned the difference between black pride and white pride — one is hailed as a good thing, the other evil.

And one often tells the history of slavery and mentions that whites are the only ones who fought to get rid of slavery, a practice that has gone on all over the world for thousands of years.

A prevalent comment left on these videos is from whites telling them they are betraying their race. Luckily, the commentators continue to voice their opinions despite this.

It seems ironic (or maybe fitting? I don’t know) in a world that’s trying to erase whites, where whites are made to feel ashamed of their heritage and skin color, where you can’t state simple facts if those facts include “whiteness,” where the European influence on the founding of this country is being overwritten, where an entire generation of white boys have been demonized for things that happened before they were born, it’s blacks who are pointing this out.

Maybe I am that “R” thing as so-called friends on Facebook once railed at me when I merely shared a post by a conservative black commentator who refused to be told what to think simply because her skin was a certain color.

Still, I think it’s an interesting turn of events, and apparently, since you are reading this, I decided it was interesting enough to post here on my blog.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Conspiracy Theories Coming True

February 17, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I came across a quote the other day: “I need new conspiracy theories. All my old ones are coming true.” I had to laugh because it sure seems to be right on.

When I was twelve or thirteen, I discovered the book, The Annotated Alice, which decoded the puzzles, wordplay and obscure Victorian references in both The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Around the same time, I discovered The Annotated Mother Goose, which gave the hidden truths behind familiar nursery rhymes. It astonished and delighted me to discover that there were secrets not commonly known to everyone, and that led me to a lifetime of trying to discover more secrets hidden in books.

My first discoveries were rather unimportant in the long run, such as the idea that the continents were all one land mass. At the time I found this theory, it was still controversial and ridiculed by scientists. Years later, in a science book I was reading, I came across the same idea, though by then, it was not a theory but an accepted fact. Shocked me, for sure! That, I think was my first acquaintance with a so-called “conspiracy theory” coming true.

As I discovered, there were — and are — many conspiracies in the world that form our lives. These aren’t theories so much as things “important” people do and enact without our knowledge. Sometimes the acts are benign, sometimes not. To keep the non-benign conspiracies from coming to light, people who find hints of these conspiracies are called “conspiracy theorists,” which is — in the minds of the conspirators — a way of diminishing the conspiracy hunters.

During research on such behind-the-scenes machinations, I saw the phrase “The New World Order” — the idea that an elite group was trying to steer the world toward a one-world economy, ideology, and ultimately government. Those words have been around for centuries (I came across the phrase in financial histories of the 1600s when the first central bank was established), but it was always a hush-hush idea, one that was consistently denigrated and denied. Denied, that is, until George W. Bush actually used the phrase in a speech. Shocked the heck out of me because I wasn’t sure I believed anything I’d read about that theory, but still, it was another example of a “conspiracy theory” coming true. (Despite Bush’s use of the phrase, “new world order” still seems to have connotations of conspiracy theory, though the term “world order” is commonly used now, which should tell us something.)

Sometimes those conspiracy writers are not at all the fringe lunatics they are portrayed to be. In fact, Antony C. Sutton, one of the first in modern times (if the 1970s are still considered modern times rather than ancient history) to write about those secret machinations was a graduate of the University of London, a well-respected economist, an Assistant Professor of Economics at California State College, and later a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, at Stanford University. Some people think his books about the international corporate elites that were behind much of the events of the cold war were well researched, but scholars never went for the books because they didn’t believe his idea of a global plot by a rich few; to them, it seemed his books were geared too much to the conspiracy crowd. And yet, here we are today, with words like “globalism,” “global elite,” and “the agenda of the liberal globalists” being bandied about as if they were sweets for the children. Shocking, but another conspiracy theory coming real.

It’s no secret anymore that world players have probably always used the world as their playground, but there are still some things that mystify me, such as the following:

In a single decade, 1861 to 1871, the United States fought the Civil War, the serfs were emancipated in Russia, Italy was unified, Canada was unified, the German Empire was proclaimed, the Austria-Hungary Dual Monarchy was established, Thailand was reorganized, the Meiji Restoration in Japan gave power to a western oligarchy, and Das Kapital, a philosophy for the New World Order, was published. It seems too much of a coincidence that global movements of such magnitude would rise independently of one another. Did someone, or a group of someones, rebuild Europe along with large chunks of the rest of the world? Could there be some sort of elite group that’s above even the globalists of today, someone or some assembly that they get their orders from? Now I’m being silly. Or am I?

With all the conspiracy theories coming true, why not this one, too.

 

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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Choosing Peace

February 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Dean Koontz often used a dog as a major character in his books, whether as a naturally superior intelligence, an enhanced intelligence, an alien from another planet, or even as an angel. Those books were not among my favorites because I couldn’t really relate to those dog characters. Although I seldom admit it, because in today’s world not being a dog afficionado is almost a sacrilege, I don’t connect to animals the way other people do. Of course, I don’t connect to many humans, either, but that’s beside the point.

As I’ve been watching dozens and dozens of video clips of the monks on their walk for peace, accompanied by their dog Aloka, I can’t help but think of Koontz. Although his dog characters are always golden retrievers and Aloka is an Indian Pariah dog, a street dog from India, I see a strong correlation between Koontz’s almost-an-angel dogs and Aloka.

In his own way, it seems, Aloka is bringing peace to the multitudes that pause in the strife of their daily lives to watch the monks and their dog pass by. The dog seems as happy and as calm and as peaceful as his companions, just going about his day walking, being mindful of his surroundings. What’s interesting to me, and what is so Koontz-y is that Aloka chose the monks. He started following them in 2022 during a 100+ day peace walk in India. Many other dogs also followed, but Aloka stayed, a quiet companion to the walkers, as if he knew what they were about and wanted to be a part of it.

When the monks decided to make their next walk here in the United States, they brought Aloka with them. And together, they fulfill their mission. No big pronouncements. No noise. Just walk. Be present. Be at peace. Aloka seems to have an additional job or two, showing absolute loyalty, and even though he is recovering from a January surgery, he seems to still take his job as protectant seriously, staying focused and watching over the monks from a support vehicle.

Apparently, some people follow Aloka more than the monks, but that, too, seems part of this incredible journey.

I came late to the walk for peace because I don’t really like videos, and besides, the first videos I saw were of various preachers trying to convert the monks, which seemed . . . inappropriate. But now I’m as mesmerized as everyone else.

Until I gave up consistent blogging, I used to participate in a blog-for-peace project every November 4th. Although I didn’t believe world peace was possible (because whatever the world leaders say, they really don’t want it), I thought it was important to stress that peace starts with us. The monks’ walk (and Aloka’s) reminds me so much of what the peace bloggers wanted — just to show that peace is possible.

And apparently, peace is possible. It is all in our minds, especially when we live in the present moment. Like Aloka, we just have to choose it. My wish for us is the same one the monks have left for us: “May we all find our way back to the present moment.”

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Holding the World Together

February 6, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
The most important invention in your lifetime is…
View all responses

The most important invention in my lifetime? That would be easy if it weren’t a toss-up between duct tape and twist ties. Still, together they make up the most important invention because between the two of them, you can fix just about anything.

A broken tool handle? Duct tape! A hose that’s sprung a leak? Duct tape! A quick fly trap? Duct tape! Blisters when hiking? Duct tape! A tear in your slippers? Duct tape! No packing tape? Duct tape!

I am using the name “duct tape” here, which is supposedly the correct term, though one use for duct tape that is not recommended is sealing ducts since the adhesive can come loose with heat. The name by all rights should be “duck tape” since the original cloth-backed tape was made with duck fabric — a heavy-duty cotton cloth. Either way, duct tape or duck tape, that ubiquitous product has many uses. People used it in crafts so often that now it comes in a multitude of colors or patterns. But I stick with the gray. It’s easy to use and so cheap I can keep one roll in the house and one in the garage.

As for twist ties? Again, a multitude of uses.

Need to stake plants? Twist ties! Electric cords a mess? Twist ties! Zipper pull broken off? Twist ties! Not enough tree ornament hangers? Twist ties! Cables and charger cords unorganized? Twist ties! No binder for loose leaf paper? Twist ties! Twist ties tangled? Twist ties!

I’m sure there are plenty of important inventions in my life time, but these are the two holding the world together.

Oops. I did a bit of research and discovered that both were invented earlier than I thought, though the form of those inventions we use today was developed during my lifetime

Duck tape (the original tape using army-green duck fabric) was invented during World War Two as a way of sealing ammunition boxes to prevent moisture. However, in my lifetime, the green duck became the grey duct that we are all so familiar with.

Twist ties — paper-wrapped wire pieces — were invented in the 1920s and patented in the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that a specific twist-tie machine was invented to create the better design that we use today.

Still, whatever their history, I stand by my premise that without these two inventions, our world would fall apart.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Figuring Out the End of The Wheel of Time

January 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I wrote about parts of the Wheel of Time that should have been edited out or at least shortened considerably.

One of those story lines involved the hero rescuing a nation from an evil king who’d usurped the throne while the daughter heir was off doing other things. In addition, the hero twice conquered another nation. He intended both countries to be ruled by the daughter heir who would have been the rightful heir under normal circumstances. But because he said he was “giving” her those thrones, there was a huge furor since she claimed they were hers by right. Except they weren’t hers by right any longer. He’d conquered both nations. He could have put anyone in charge as he did with other nations where he defeated the evil rulers. But she was angry at him because of that word: give. Sure, she didn’t want people to think she was his puppet and so she needed to gain the crown on her own by having the ladies and lords vote for her. But there they were, on the brink of a cosmic catastrophe, and she worried about them thinking she was a puppet? It seems to me that if all existence were at stake, that would be a minor issue. Certainly not one worth tens of thousands of words.

What makes the whole thing even sillier is that the city, Caemlyn, was a Camelot equivalent. (In the King Arthur Legend, The Battle of Camlaan was the climax to his rule.) So it might have made sense, perhaps, to waste time on a plotline that went nowhere if only to establish the importance of that city, except that the very first casualty of the cosmic battle was Caemlyn. So at that point it mattered not who ruled.

It surprises me that I ever bothered to read these books in the first place, and I probably never would have if I hadn’t been laid up at the time and desperately needed something to read. Then, when I realized what the books were with all their real-world references, not just homages to previous series, like The Lord of the Rings, but a retelling of the King Arthur tale as well as dozens of other myths and legends from around the world, I got interested in finding all the subtext. Then, when I found out how terrible the ending was, I decided to try to figure out the real ending. Which is where I am now. But sheesh. All that verbiage! Luckily, I know how to skim, and I am not at all adverse to skipping huge sections. (The seventh book took me two or three days to read. The eighth took me two or three hours.)

I am finding bits, though, that would have made the ending more interesting. The most obvious would be to have accepted that most of the characters had already reached the end of their arc and were ready for the last battle. In one case, the substitute author repeated an entire character arc. In another case, he simply undid the arc, erased the character’s growth and his acceptance of responsibility, and returned him back to his immature ways with no further development.

Another thing that should have been addressed is that at one point, the kings and queens of the northern nations all decided to head south with their armies. They did not like what the hero was doing to the southern nations, not realizing he was rescuing those nations from the forces of the Dark One, and they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them. So they decided to do something about it. The subtext (and even Robert Jordan alluded to it) was that this displacement was part of the dark side’s plan, and was helping to further disrupt the forces of the light. This coalition was going after the hero, and the whole thing was so hush-hush, that they were ready to kill anyone who found out or who got in their way. Not exactly a peaceful mission. By this time in the books, it’s obvious that nothing happens by coincidence, and yet combined, this northern coalition ended up with thirteen Aes Sedai (the women power wielders, who some called witches). And thirteen Aes Sedai, when linked could destroy the hero, no matter how strong he was against them individually.

And yet, despite this, the rather weak reason given during the substitute ending was that they were there to test the hero to see if it was okay for him to fight the Last Battle. Um, yeah. If this were true, all they’d have to do was send an envoy, asking for an audience. Instead, they took a force of 200,000 as well as all those Aes Sedai to deal with him. And if they found him unworthy and killed him, they would have doomed the entire cosmos to the dark side. Definitely sounds like a plan made by the evil ones.

Even sillier, they were acting on a so-called prophesy that had been handed down by word of mouth for 3,000 years, negating one of Robert Jordan’s themes, which is based on the game of Whisper, or Telephone, or Gossip, whatever it was called in your part of the country. In the game, someone passes a secret to the next person, who passes on what they heard to the next person, and in the end, what results is generally nothing much like what was originally said. His point was that things change over the centuries, that stories change, that names change. So the chance that this prophesy, passed down orally through the millennium, would be the same at the end as at the beginning isn’t that great.

Even worse, though this army that had been manipulated by the dark side to leave their lands could have become a great disrupter at the last battle, instead the substitute author brought in a devil-ex-machina — an entire hitherto unknown army of dark friends.

I’m thinking I’ll eventually give up my idea of figuring out the real ending (for me just to decipher, not to write). Until then, it is rather an interesting puzzle. If I can get through all the scenes that should have been edited out, that is.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Pat In the Hat

January 20, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.
View all responses

A patrician during the Roman Empire was a person of noble birth, an aristocrat who had high social standing and owned a significant portion of wealth and land.

A plebian was everyone else — the ninety-five percent who did the work: farmers, merchants, laborers, crafts people, who had no rights and could not own land.

Eventually, the plebians managed to attain equal rights through protests and walkouts because a city could not survive, nor could a non-working aristocratic class survive when there were no workers to do the necessary tasks of keeping the armies marching, the cities clean, and the citizenry fed.

Still, throughout the centuries, those two words have held some sort of power. Although I was named after the patricians, I never felt “patrician.” I always considered myself to be plebian and my name ironic, though I am glad of the name “Pat.” I would not like being called “Plebe.”

Actually, I never really liked the name “Pat,” though I took that version of my name as an author name since it seemed to have a nice strong sound and connotation. I also used the name to introduce myself to new acquaintances, partly to help them find me online but mostly because I didn’t like giving my real name to strangers. (It felt as if I were giving too much of myself to people I didn’t know and perhaps would never see again.) When I was mostly nomadic, this pseudo-name didn’t matter. It only became a problem when strangers became friends, or when online connections became offline friends, and by then it was too late to change names.

My writing career, such as it was, has all but disappeared, so what I call myself doesn’t really matter, but it was the name I’d used for so long, that it seems convenient to keep it. The truth is, I no longer know what my real name is. Or if I have one. I spend so much time by myself, that there’s no need of a name. I just . . . am. (I once wanted to learn the names of birds; then it dawned on me that the names of birds were names we gave them, not the names they gave themselves, so it seemed rather a silly project. If you can’t learn the truth from the inside out, then looking from the outside in didn’t seem to gain much.)

A week or so ago, when I had just loaded groceries in my car, I heard someone call out, “Pat!” Since I didn’t associate the name with myself, it took me a moment to realize that a good friend was calling me from across the parking lot. (I recognized her voice before I realized who she was talking to.)

So, until I discover my real name, “Pat” is fine. Besides, to distinguish me from all the other Pats in this town — at least a half dozen of us — people identify me as “Pat in the Hat,” which is kind of cute. And accurate.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Steeped in Symbols

March 5, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I have never paid much attention to iconography since I have no real feel for art or imagery. I think in words, process emotions in words, and come to terms with life and the world by way of words. In fact, until this very moment, I’d never even used the word “iconography.” I do know what it means, of course — the interpretation of the symbols in art, images that tell a story, especially religious symbols. It comes from eikon a Greek word meaning “image,” and graphe a Greek word meaning “writing.” Such “image writing” was the earliest form of writing. From what I’ve managed to glean, a pictograph is a simpler version of a icon, something with a single, specific meaning, whereas an icon is a symbol with a broader, more artistic meaning that generally needs to be interpreted in cultural context. (Oddly — odd to me, anyway — iconography is not the study of iconographs — iconographs are pictures formed of words.)

Not only had I never paid much attention to iconography, I’d never really paid much attention to the symbols and images that we are all familiar with until recently. I play one of those hidden images games, though for some reason I’m embarrassed to admit it. Still, I do spend time on the game, going from location to location to find the objects.

These locations are completely different from one another, and each is instantly recognizable. For example, a Christmas scene is obviously Christmas themed, a Chinese New Year scene is obviously Chinese themed, a haunted house is obviously Halloween themed. There are a vast array of images that evoke Christmas — stockings, trees, reindeer, cookies, wreaths, stars, snowflakes, candy, the colors red and green. (There are just as many images of a religious nature, such as nativity scenes, but those aren’t used in the Christmas scenes in this game.) Many recognizable Chinese images, such as lanterns, storks, conical hats, fans, and dragons. And many images that evoke a spooky feel — bats, gargoyles, brooms, witch’s hats, toads, tarot cards, wands.

The locations in the game don’t all revolve around holiday themes. For example, there is a laboratory, with images such as telescopes, magnets, funnels, bellows, oil lamp, and a medical mask; a train station with luggage, cameras, books, pigeons, and pith helmet; a seaside bungalow with mermaids, pirate hat, barometer, boat, toucan, books, and sandcastle.

None of these locations can be confused with any other, which has led to me to this reflection upon the images of our lives. We are steeped in symbols, way more than I ever imagined. This game reflects many of the cultural symbols of our lives, but there are all sorts of symbols. Religious symbols. Musical symbols. Occult symbols. Political symbols. And each of these symbols calls forth some sort of emotion. The news media in particular uses images to convey messages, and many of those images have become part of our heritage, such as Kennedy’s Texas motorcade, Nixon’s outstretched arms, the little Napalm girl.

I don’t know what any of this means — it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. But it does show me that as sophisticated and advanced as we think we are, our basic form of communication still seems to be the pictograph just as it was so many thousands of years ago.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

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It’s Groundhog Day!

February 2, 2023 — Pat Bertram

Is it still Groundhog Day when you live in an area where there are no groundhogs? When there is no creature to determine how much of winter is left?

The superstition is that if the groundhog sees its shadow, there will be at least six more weeks of winter, which is a sure bet since this year there are six and a half weeks between February 2 and March 20, the official first day of spring. If the groundhog doesn’t see its shadow, there will still be six and a half weeks until spring, though supposedly, the temperatures will be a bit milder.

But what if there is no groundhog? Will there be six more weeks of winter? It’s still a sure bet!

Groundhogs, also known as woodchucks, are flatlanders and live in the eastern portion of the United States. Here in Colorado, we have yellow-bellied marmots, also known as rock chucks or whistle pigs, and they prefer higher elevations. Although groundhogs and marmots are not the same thing, they are both rodents of the squirrel family. The scientific name of the groundhog is Marmota monax. The name of the yellow-bellied marmot is Marmota flaviventris. So technically, the name of this day should be Marmot Day.

But either way, no matter what sort of creature you use to foretell the demise of winter and the coming of spring, a wood chuck, a rock chuck, or a chuckleheaded weather person, it still comes down to the same thing — six and a half more weeks of winter.

To be honest, here in Colorado, that’s a good thing. Too often we get early spring weather and then — so much fun! — we get a late-season Indian Winter. (Oops. Can’t say that. Indian Summer is now called Second Summer, so Indian Winter would be called Second Winter.) The problem with that upsurge of winter once spring has started to make itself felt is that new buds are “nipped” by the late freeze, damaging crops, preventing fruit trees from producing, and decimating or delaying spring flowers.

Luckily, despite what all those seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators say, spring will be here in a matter of 46 days.

Happy Marmot Day!

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, history/myth, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

What Is Your Spirit Animal?

January 24, 2023 — Pat Bertram

Do you have a spirit animal? That’s the blog prompt for today: “What is your spirit animal?” I have no idea how to figure out what mine is. Aboriginal Americans found their spirit animal through a vision quest, some spiritualists find theirs through a dream, other people are lucky enough to have their spirit animal find them.

Me? As far as I know, I don’t have such a guide, and if I do, it hasn’t made itself known to me. At one time I wanted to do a long-trail hike, thinking it would also work as a vision quest, but that didn’t work out. I did try to do some of those quizzes that supposedly introduce you to your spirit animal, but the very first question on a few of them stymied me: “What is your favorite element — water, earth, air, fire, wood, space?” How the heck does one answer that? I mean, you need those to live. Without wood (trees) there would be no breathable air. Without space, there would be no Earth. Without water, earth, air, fire (energy) there would be no life.

I did manage to find one quiz that asked different questions, but most of the questions did not pertain to me, such as what sort of television programs I watch — news, reality TV, documentaries, and a few others. Since I don’t watch television, it was a bogus question, as were several others. Still I did stumble through the quiz, and according to them, my spirit animal is a raccoon. Supposedly, the racoon embodies creativity, discretion, and keeping your ideas close to your chest until you’re ready to unveil them. Sounds feeble enough to apply to almost anyone.

I also found a site that linked spirit animals to one’s birthday, so depending on what culture I espouse — Western, Chinese, Native American, Celtic — my various spirit animals are fish, rabbit, wolf, snake. Not exactly a unanimous consensus, or even a general consensus!

The only dreams I ever had that could possibly be considered a vision quest or a way for my spirit animal to make itself known were both white dreams. In the first, I was walking in the white sands of the desert, with a white sky above me and a white path stretching before me. As I walked, three white horses sped across my path, then four white bunnies in a bunch, then two small white squarish creatures I could not identify, and finally, one immense white owl. For sure a mystical dream! All of those creatures are powerful totem animals, except perhaps for the small squarish animals. Another time I dreamt of a white tiger, a spirit animal that is drawn to a soul with inner strength.

So there you have it — all I know about me and my spirit animals. Since there is such a plethora of them, it could mean I need a whole lot of help. It could also mean that at different times, I was influenced by different manifestations of spirit. Or it could mean nothing at all, which, to be honest, is what I tend to believe.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, history/myth, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 6 Comments »
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