As I pulled into a parking space early this morning before the San Diego day had warmed to a toasty 72 degrees fahrenheit in midday, a honeybee settled onto the hood of my car… I’m guessing it was trying to keep warm, or maybe it was stunned by the lime-green brightness of my little Chevy Spark. Whatever the reason, I was reminded that these little hard-working insects are endangered. Instead of being concerned that we might get stung by one, we must worry that losing the wild honeybee would mean endangering many of the crop plants that produce much of the food we eat. Southwestern California winters are mild enough for the bees to continue working. I found some of them gathering pollen from shrubs in our back yard on this day when the northeastern states in the U.S. are hunkering down under a frigid Arctic weather system.
It’s altogether appropriate that I found the worker bees on a day when I received a special gift of music from Russian friends. Zhenya and Andrey composed and recorded two blues pieces and sent them digitally by e-mail. I got their permission to share the music on my BLOG. Smolensk is the hometown of the great Russian composer Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka, so it’s not surprising that young people grow up there with a love for making and playing music. Zhenya and Andrey were medical students at university in Smolensk with my good friend Anton.
The translations are mine, so they may be slightly off the mark.
Dusty Road Пылевоздушная дорога
Old Love Ashes Старые золы влюбленности
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