Somewhere in the world

It can be discouraging to look at the trouble spots of the world. ISIS is on the move. The Middle East is always a mess. There's economic turmoil all over the globe. I could go on and on, but the news already does that 24/7.

However, while all this bad news is going on in the world, Grenada is celebrating Carnival. That's one heck of a big party. Don't you love a party big enough to shut a whole country down? Forget about trying to get anything productive done. It's time to party.

Maybe that's one of the things wrong with the United States. We've become all business. Even our biggest holiday, Christmas, is now just a time for retail excess. That can't be good for a nation's soul. It makes us grumpy.

Even Europeans know how to take a month off in the summer. In spite of that they have a high standard of living.

Of course, I think nobody knows how to party like those folks in the Islands. Maybe it comes from living in a place warm enough to not need clothes. You can't take life too seriously when it's possible to live on coconuts and sea food.

I grew up in New England, where if you don't take life seriously enough you freeze to death in the winter. My ancestors who lived in Canada had it even worse. It's like we don't want to party too much. The problem is that it takes too much work to survive. My distant cousins who were kicked out of Canada and settled in Baton Rouge know how to let the good times roll. When you don't need much heat and can cook up critters that live in the ditch in front of your shack, life can be easy.

The Snow Birds head south to Florida to avoid the cold and that's not a bad thing at all. If all goes well I'll be sailing the coastal waters of Florida again this winter. Still, it's not the Caribbean. That's why my longer term goals involve a boat just big enough to comfortably sail those warm island waters. Maybe I'll join in at Carnival one year.

-Sixbears