Signs that spring is nigh

The weather has been warming, the days are growing longer and my timid little crocuses are popping their little lavender heads out of the cool earth in my front yard. Daffodils are beginning to send shoots up out of the gradually warming earth as well. Song bird mating calls can be heard in the early morning hours and the cheerful songs of dawn can be heard as I tiptoe down the stairs in the mornings to fetch my newspapers. Some trees and bushes are budding as well. People are out in shirt sleeves, flying kites, walking dogs, biking, jogging and doing more outdoor things again. Yes, spring is nigh at last. It smells like it, it sounds like it and it feels like it. Oh, I'm sure we'll still have some chilly days and nights yet - after all, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, so we're barely midway through March, but still, after a long, cold and harsh winter, it feels good to see sunshine, to hear bird calls, to see early spring flowers peeping up through the earth and to smell that familiar scent of spring in the air, a kind of heady, fresh earthy smell that indicates life returning after the long cold dark of winter. I always feel so alive again this time of year after practically wanting to hibernate all through the long cold dark nights of winter. I love getting out into the fresh air and sunshine and feeling the sense of renewal with a good hearty infusion of Vitamin D3 that sun helps our bodies to produce. I've never been fond of winter except for the beauty of a freshly fallen snowfall at night or early in the morning, sparkling like diamonds in the sun, but give me spring any day of the week. Maybe it's that I was born in the spring (late April), but I prefer the scent of newly blossomed flowers and the warmth of sun to cold air biting my cheek and chilling my bones. I await the blooming of my sturdy and hardy little lilac bush and next to it, the spindly old pear tree, whose pear blossoms only last a few short days but are a sight to behold each spring. And I await Blanket Hill on the KSU Campus turning into a sea of gold with over 58,000 daffodils planted there, one for each casualty of the VietNam War. It is a sight to behold and the scent of all those flowers in bloom is paradise! Ah, welcome spring! It can't come soon enough!

SOMETHING FISHY WITH CITIGROUP
So one week, Citigroup claims that without federal bailout money, it will go under, and the next week, it's claiming to be operating well into the black with a comfortable profit! Does anybody besides me see something fishy going on here? If they are doing that well, then why on earth would they need that bailout money, anyway? To wine and dine fat cats? So that the corporate bigwigs can keep their multi-million dollar mansions and penthouses and luxury cars and private planes? It's bad enough that it was just revealed that AIG used its bailout money to pay fat bonuses to its big shots, but now to find out that Citigroup has operated with a comfortable profit when they are standing in front of the government with their hats in their hands begging for money as if it was the difference between keeping their doors open and going under, why, it just begs the question: Who's minding the store these days? Where is the SEC in all of this? How is it that this kind of outrageous behavior is happening when the rest of our economy is sinking faster than the Titanic? And where is the outrage? Why aren't more people taking to the streets demanding justice? Millions are unemployed and all these Wall Street fat cats can do is to go to Washington, hat in hand, and beg for more money to maintain their lavish lifestyles while the rest of us struggle to pay our bills and keep the roof over our heads? I'm outraged just thinking about all of this and it seems like no one's doing a thing about it. I suppose it's just the cost of doing business on Wall Street but it's gone on like this unchanged for so long that no one seems to know how to change things to make things more fair, just and equitable. Maybe people are just so discouraged that they don't have the willpower anymore to fight Wall Street. Maybe everyone's just so down in the mouth about the economy and the general state of the world that they don't have the time to worry about a few Wall Street fat cats getting rich at our expense, but that's precisely what they should be worrying about, because that's why we're all in this predicament in the first place - runaway, unbridled and unregulated Wall Street greed. There should be marches in the street demanding justice for the ordinary Main Street working person. There should be marches on Washington demanding action. There's got to be something done about all this, before it continues unabated, because if things don't change soon, then we'll just continue being suckers whose hard earned tax money continues to make a few people very, very rich at our expense while we down here among the ordinary folk continue to scrape, struggle and fight just to get by day after day after day. We voted for change - now, let's see some.