Jar of Goodness Recap

Usually, when you do “Jar of Goodness,” you write down something you’re grateful for each week, and then you stick that slip of paper into a jar. Then, as part of your New Year’s Eve ceremony, you pour out the slips of paper and read them. If an entire family has participated, then the discussion revolves around who wrote what, and why, and general reminiscing.

But in this case, it’s just me, and it’s a virtual Jar of Goodness. So all I can really do is offer a list of my various Jar of Goodnesses. (See below.) Make of it what you will. To read all the J.O.G. posts, click this link here.

And what will I do this year? Should I continue the J.O.G.?

Actually, as I continued this weekly J.O.G. series, I’ve learned that my blog has pretty much always been a “Jar of Goodness.” In my blog, I usually focus on things that I like and love. Things I appreciate. The thing that’s different about the J.O.G. is the must-do weekly format (also known as a “deadline”), and the “permission” to have quite short, straightforward posts.

So for 2023, I think I’ll drop the J.O.G. concept, and just make a point of posting something weekly, or thereabouts. (In truth, many of my Sunday J.O.G. posts were written and uploaded on Wednesdays. Who knew that midweek was a better time for blogging?) Maybe I’ll still tag an occasional post as a “Jar of Goodness,” but I don’t see a need to make a weekly string of posts with that particular label. What do you think?

Also, I have a new idea for a regular series that could easily have twelve (monthly) parts, though it would probably be a stretch to make it weekly, with 52 installments. Maybe biweekly? We’ll just see how it goes. I’m still thinking about it. Stay tuned!

I can definitely recommend the Jar of Goodness for anyone. It will remind you to see the joy and beauty around you; it will exercise your “gratitude” muscles. You will feel more blessed, in mundane and in sublime ways. If you’re a blogger or journaler, it’s a good way to get back into a rhythm. It would be a great, and meaningful activity for a family, or a couple, to do together. I hope you’ll try it!

The 2022 Jar of Goodness Project

Jar of Goodness 12.25.22: The Holiday Season
Jar of Goodness 12.18.22: Heirloom Christmas Cookies
Jar of Goodness 12.11.22: New Car!
Jar of Goodness 12.4.22: New Gutters, and Done!
Jar of Goodness 11.27.22: Dormer Siding
Jar of Goodness 11.20.22: Artemis I
Jar of Goodness 11.13.22: Sunporch Storm Windows Done
Jar of Goodness 11.6.22: Little House Books
Jar of Goodness 10.30.22: Gans Creek
Jar of Goodness 10.23.22: October Day at Painted Rock
Jar of Goodness 10.16.22: Houseplant Dance
Jar of Goodness 10.9.22: Fall Color
Jar of Goodness 10.2.22: Deborah Cooper Park
Jar of Goodness 9.25.22: Old Munichburg Oktoberfest
Jar of Goodness 9.18.22: My Brother
Jar of Goodness 9.11.22: New Roof!
Jar of Goodness 9.4.22: Shakespeare’s Pizza South
Jar of Goodness 8.28.22: Native Prairies
Jar of Goodness 8.21.22: August 1993
Jar of Goodness 8.14.22: New HVAC System
Jar of Goodness 8.7.22: Dad’s Homemade Cookies
Jar of Goodness 7.31.22: Wait. Jar of Goodness?
Jar of Goodness 7.24.22: Menus for the Seasons
Jar of Goodness 7.17.22: Picnics
Jar of Goodness 7.10.22: First Aid Kits
Jar of Goodness 7.3.22: My 2003 Honda Civic
Jar of Goodness 6.26.22: This Couple
Jar of Goodness 6.19.22: Dad
Jar of Goodness 6.12.22: Air Conditioning
Jar of Goodness 6.5.22: Butterflies of June
Jar of Goodness 5.29.22: Missouri Wines
Jar of Goodness 5.15.22: The Black Walnut Tree
Jar of Goodness 5.8.22: Mom
Jar of Goodness 5.1.22: Clovers Natural Market
Jar of Goodness 4.24.22: Natural Foods Stores
Jar of Goodness 4.17.22: Oasis United Church of Christ
Jar of Goodness 4.10.22: Prairie Dogtooth Violets
Jar of Goodness 4.3.22: The Violets of April
Jar of Goodness 3.27.22: Lois
Jar of Goodness 3.20.22: Three-Chord Songs
Jar of Goodness 3.13.22: Sue
Jar of Goodness 3.6.22: Are the Neighbors Actually Moving?
Jar of Goodness 2.27.22: New Fridge
Jar of Goodness 2.20.22: The Katy Trail
Jar of Goodness 2.13.22: Adrian’s Island Jefferson City
Jar of Goodness 2.6.22: Hope Springs Eternal
Jar of Goodness 1.30.22: The Mosses at Painted Rock CA
Jar of Goodness 1.23.22: KOPN
Jar of Goodness 1.16.22: The Eggplant Leafrollers
Jar of Goodness 1.9.22 (Introduction)

Jar of Goodness 3.13.22: Sue

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

Technically, this week, it's the Jar of Bestness.

This week, I’m expressing thanks for my better half, my sweetheart, the love of my life.

Because her birthday is this week. Happy birthday!

I’ve pulled some photos of her that I think you’ll enjoy. Hopefully, she’ll approve of them, too.

Jar of Goodness 1.23.22: KOPN

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m thankful for Columbia’s own KOPN radio, which saved my life and continues to make our community interesting, intelligent, and artful.

KOPN is a community-supported, owned, and operated nonprofit radio station based in Columbia, Missouri. It offers a wide variety of news, talk, and music, including syndicated and locally produced material. The best stuff is the product of local volunteer DJs (board shifters), who have a passion about whatever their program is about. I’ve talked about KOPN before. (Several times.)

The programs are incredibly eclectic.

I’ve been a devoted listener of KOPN since about 1981, when I went to festival called Spring Fling. KOPN used to host the festival for several years, centered on Broadway and Ninth streets, closing streets in the heart of downtown Columbia. There were different stages at the festival, with rock, bluegrass, and so on. There were vendors with booths lining the streets: The international MU students group, the Ba’hai people, the local health food co-op and Catalpa Tree Cafe, the anti-death-penalty group, the anti-nukes group, artists, handmade jewelry and tie-dyed clothes, and so much more. Spring Fling provided a one-day festival that displayed the overall culture of KOPN. I felt like I’d found my people. (Indeed, I had.) I went home, turned the dial of my bedroom clock radio to 89.5, and listened to women’s music for the first time: “The Moon of Artemis” was on.

Times have changed. The radio—and radio’s place in our lives—has changed. My tastes in music have changed.

These days, I especially love to listen to KOPN while I’m driving to and from Columbia. Their weekday afternoon drive-time programs are great. The miles go right by.

It seems I’m usually in Columbia on Thursdays, kind of. And I’ve really been enjoying the program “Hepcat’s Holiday,” hosted by Carol Goodnick. It’s a program that was first on the air in 1986. It features jazz, jive, swing, and blues from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. Goodnick is an enthusiastic, informative, upbeat DJ.

Recently she did a show that was railroad themed. It was great! A few of the songs she featured were Judy Garland, “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe”; Leadbelly, “Midnight Special” and “Rock Island Line”; Sister Rosetta Tharpe “This Train”; Duke Ellington, “Choo Choo”; Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, “California, Here I Come”; and the Andrews Sisters, “When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam.”

This is seriously good stuff, vintage music, jazz history, well-curated. “Hepcat’s Holiday” is broadcast live each Thursday from 3 to 5 p.m. Central Time. So if you’re in Central Missouri, just tune your dial to 89.5 and catch the program on your radio.

But no matter where you live, if you go to KOPN’s website, you can not only listen live, but also, in most cases, listen to recent shows, for at least up to two weeks. This means that neither geography nor time zones or scheduling conflicts can interfere with your hearing a particular radio program.

KOPN, by the way, is entering an exciting new period in its fifty-year history. Since it first went on the air in 1973, its studios have been at 915 East Broadway, in the heart of downtown Columbia, although visitors must ascend an imposing flight of stairs from street level. Well, in 2022 KOPN will be moving to a new studio space—one that’s handicapped accessible. In a building that KOPN owns. Though the thought of saying goodbye to what I considered hallowed, historic space is rather sad, this is great news for the station, the organization, the community, the institution.

I encourage you to check out KOPN’s programming. I’m sure you’ll find something you find interesting and enjoyable. Maybe you’ll be inspired to send them a few dollars, like I have, over the years.

Anyway, this is my gratitude jar for the day.

Jar of Goodness 1.16.22: The Eggplant Leafrollers

This is my second installment of this, my online, blog-based, virtual “gratitude jar,” inspired by the tradition my brother and his family have been enjoying for years. A simple, weekly recording of something you’re grateful for. A.k.a., a “jar of goodness.” (They even seem to have a little theme song for it.)

So here’s this week’s thing I’m grateful for:

Our visitation this winter by eggplant leafrollers (Lineodes integra). What nifty insects! What a strange little appearance of nature, in the dead of winter.

(Explanation below the picture.)

This was on December 31. I only saw one at first—it was perched in our first-floor bathroom window. I was sure (well, pretty sure) it was a moth, but I couldn’t get it narrowed down to family, much less genus or species. I suspected it was in one of the crambid or pyralid groups, which are both huge families with hundreds of species. I didn’t have the time to march through all the genera on Bugguide, and I’m annoyed by the idea of photo-based digital ID apps, but fortunately someone on an regional insect group got it to genus for me. Hooray!

As caterpillars, eggplant leafrollers eat the leaves of tomato, eggplant, and other members of the nightshade family (yeah, toxic leaves). They roll the leaves, creating a little shelter for themselves while they chew. Aha!

Sue’s reaction was, “NOW I know what’s been eating the Jerusalem cherry plant!” (We have a big, nice potted Solanum pseudocapsicum plant that Sue got as a start from her parents way back when. It has beautifully dark blue-green leaves, bright orange, cherry-size fruits, and a lush, shrubby habit. It comes inside every winter to survive.)

As adults, eggplant leafrollers have a really snazzy pattern on their wings, with a big, uninterrupted brown swoosh running along the forewing. I keep thinking it looks like a brocade or a paisley. They perch at a 45-degree angle to whatever they’re standing on, like they’re doing a pushup, hold their narrow wings out in a V shape, and have the habit of curling their abdomen up into a C shape. The abdomen tip sometimes almost touches the head, making them look like a ring.

So it started with the one eggplant leafroller bopping around in our bathroom, perching on the window, the walls, the towels. Then, in the following week or so, I realized there were about five others on the first floor, in the room with the Jerusalem cherry. Perching on the walls, looking out the windows, standing on the drapes.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had compassion for them, since they’re screwed by Missouri weather and our bringing them indoors. Instead of hibernating, they pupated and emerged, their bodies expecting balmy weather, and now they have nowhere to go. Our house in winter is dreadfully dry. Showering, I would shut the door so steam would build up on the walls; maybe the moth in the bathroom, at least, would get some moisture that way. It always fluttered off when I tried putting water on whatever it was sitting on. Silly thing.

I haven’t seen any of them for a while now, so I guess they’re all kaput, dried up, lying crumpled in the corners of the room, waiting for the vacuum to erase them from all recognizable existence.

Now that they're gone, I kind of miss them.

Anyway, I’m grateful to get to learn about these little fellow earthlings, and the opportunity to show them some charity in the form of moisture and appreciation. I’ll have to look for their compatriots out in the wild next summer.

Jar of Goodness 1.9.22

Also known as a gratitude jar, happiness jar, New Year jar, or (related) friendship jar. It’s something my brother and his family have been doing for years. It’s simple, and you don’t have to buy anything. Just get a big jar (or whatever) (like, a journal or a blog would be fine, I think), and once a week (they do it on a Sunday), everyone in the family writes down, on a slip of paper, something they’re grateful for. And it can be anything. Keep it simple.

Then, at New Year’s, the family opens up the jar and reads the notes, kind of reviewing the goodness of the past year.

I don’t know if you noticed, but my attempt at the “Twelve Days of Thanksgiving” only made it to like, Day 5, because, well, the holidays. Plus each post was kind of an extravaganza. . . . So it’s probably a better idea to cultivate this mindset more regularly, yes?

So I’m going to give this idea a try, only with my blog. Each Sunday, I’ll do a little post about something I’m thankful for.

Here we go, installment number one.

I’m thankful for my brother and his family, and for the many ways they inspire me to be a better person.