The Seven of Pentacles–Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the lady bugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, after
the planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

I came across this nice Spring Time poem as the weather forecaster is telling us that snow and wintry weather is about to descend down upon us
IN  MARCH
(uhhhhhhh just 10 days away from Spring)
which is enough to make any Thermometer
(AND US)
be a little more than confused

THE UN-CONFUSED THERMOMETER 

Sometimes a Place 
can have all four Seasons
in one day
that’ll schizophrenically 
have you guessing how to dress
so you’re not shivering or sweating
at any unknowingly moment
confusing the most sophisticated
of Thermometers  
And yet you meet 
THAT Heart
that’ll have you begging
for the harshest of Winter’s Terriblesnesses
so IT could forever be Warmed
Now any Caring Catalyst
S            H            O            W            S 
that it’s not the Season we’re in
we dress for
but the Season we bring
to the worst
t e m p e r a t u r e s
a confused Thermometer
can ever read.    .    .

HOW’S YOUR HAPPINESS THERMOMETER.          .          .

Is    it    R I S I N G

Is    it    F A L L I N G

Is    it

S             T             U             C             K

By many accounts, Americans are living in contentious times. Yet they report being happier in 2017 than they were in 2016, according the 2017 Harris Poll Survey of American Happiness, shared exclusively with TIME MAGAZINE

That’s not to say that Americans are especially happy overall; only 33% of Americans surveyed said they were happy. In 2016, just 31% of Americans reported the same.

The Harris Poll, which has been conducting a happiness survey for the last nine years, surveyed 2,202 Americans ages 18 and older in May 2017. The survey was not designed to measure why Americans are or are not happy, but John Gerzema, CEO of the Harris Poll, has some ideas.

“It’s really interesting that Americans’ overall happiness went up from last year—a year of alt-facts, mean tweets and robots coming for our jobs,” Gerzema says. “Either people are becoming immune to the news, or there’s a promise of change for so many Americans that felt alienated.”

The people who reported being the happiest were men and women in high-income households and those with a high school diploma or less. Republicans and Democrats experienced similar increases in happiness levels (but Republicans tend to report higher happiness levels overall, Gerzema says).

Overall, men reported a greater increase in happiness levels compared to women, though they were more likely to say they were frustrated at work. Millennials were the most likely to say they were optimistic about their future: 79% said they were. However, 77% said they worried about finances, and slightly more than half said they were frustrated with their career. Despite the back and forth over health care changes, 53% of Americans surveyed said they rarely worry about their health, up from 48% in 2016.

Some of the biggest changes were in how people felt about their spiritual lives. In the survey, 71% of Americans said their spiritual beliefs were a positive guiding force to them, compared to 66% in 2016. Americans also say they feel close to their relatives; 86% said they have positive relationships with their family members. “One hypothesis is that we are trying to control what we can,” says Gerzema. “Maybe we are turning off cable news and turning back into our families and communities and faith.”

Americans have never been the happiest bunch, Gerzema says. In the nine-year history of the happiness poll, the highest happiness index was 35% in 2008 and 2009.

Distraction and a lack of control may be part of the reason why only about a third of Americans say they are happy, Gerzema says. Close to 40% of Americans said in 2017 that they rarely engage in hobbies and pastimes they enjoy, and 75% said that “my voice is not heard in national decisions that affect me.”

“To me, it feels like a cultural lack of presence,” says Gerzema. “We are so caught up in our texting, multitasking, jobs and commutes that we seem to have less and less free time. Older people age 65+ are the happiest.”

Despite the happiness gap, the majority of Americans remain hopeful, and 72% say they feel optimistic about the future. “We are not that happy, but perhaps that’s ok,” says Gerzema. “Optimism, but not necessarily happiness, seems to be part of the American psyche. Perhaps we wear it like a coat of arms.”

S   O.          .          .

ARE    YOU    H A P P Y

Are      you      happy?

If you were to fit into a survey right now

would you be on the upside of being happy

or on the low side of being happy?

What’s

YOUR    HAPPINESS    THERMOMETER    READING

 Are you happy with your life

Are you happy with your job

Are you happy with your family

Are you happy with your self

There will always be questions when we talk about happiness

because by the way that the world takes look at us we’re not all that happy

or does the world actually have it wrong.          .          .

 Right now

at this very moment what makes you the happiest in your life.        .        .

not what do you dream of that would make you happy

W          H          A          T

ARE  YOU

Happiest with right now in your life.          .          .

Could that get better

Could that get worse

Could that actually be shared.          .          .

Are you responsible just for your own happiness

Of the happiness of others

ARE   YOU   RIGHT   NOW

H               A               P               P              Y

with this machine gun kind of questioning.           .             .

Well something tells me

it won’t be a pill

 intervention

 therapy

voodoo

or  a  particular  kind  of  psychic  surgery.          .          .

It  certainly won’t be prime time days

 it’ll be something in yourself

from yourself

maybe a recognition

maybe a throwing away

of all that could lead to your happiness

and ultimately

the happiness of those around you.          .          .

O R        N O T.           .          .

YOU      TELL      ME!