Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. ~ Guillaume Appolinaire

Three Questions, December 8, 2024

You can find the background to The Three Questions in my recent post about it. I’ll be answering the questions each day for the next year and putting this experience into a book. Here we go!

What was the most beautiful thing I encountered today?

Today on my walk, I came a cross a huge bush that was in full bloom. Bright, reddish-pink flowers covering the bush and shinning incredibly in the sun, truly beautiful.

What did I learn today?

What I learned today is that it’s been 44 years today since the murder of John Lennon. I was in high school at the time and a big Beatles fan. They were the only band whose albums I owned (I wasn’t the coolest teen) and Lennon’s death hit me and a lot of my friends hard. A group of us, mostly from the advanced math class decided we wanted the impact recognized. We selected a couple of representatives and sent them to the principal’s office to request the school flag be put at half mast. The principal refused.and this really pissed us off. So we staged a walkout, about 30 of us. We were out about a period when the principal came out to the area we were hanging out by the flag. He told us he understood that we were impacted but if we didn’t get our asses back to class we’d be suspended for a week. Given that we were all college bound and had never been in trouble (that didn’t include me) and mostly because we all know we’d suffer hell from our parents for getting detention, we caved and returned to class. It was a sad time, John Lennon had so much potential remaining, I looked forward to decades more of his music but it wasn’t to be, still makes me sad.

What made me happy today?

I am a big NFL fan, I’ve been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since 1973. Today the Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns, a team they lost to a couple of weeks ago and it was an important win. While it’s a minor thing, it made me happy. It followed on the heels of the Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team beating their first ranked team of the year yesterday, so all in all a good weekend for a sports fan.