An anthropocentric view on life is the norm in some circles. You know — humans are the crown of creation, etc., etc.

Well,  yes, surely there is a lot to be said for humans. But there is also a lot more that one wishes could be said.

Fortunately, animals fill in a lot of those human gaps.

It sounds awfully trite, of course — calling every birth a miracle, that is. I can hear you thinking: Next thing I know, you are going to be telling me that clouds and tree trunks and beetles and volcanoes are all miracles.

Well, yes, as a matter of fact. Exactly so. How did you guess?

New York City is almost a country unto itself. (Some would say it’s more like an amalgamation of every other country on Earth, a kind of super-country.) New York City also has a reputation of being too big to be personal in any kind of meaningful way.  The warm, homey, hospitable venues and environments that you encounter on a regular basis in other parts of the country just don’t exist in New York.

Somewhere in your linguistic travels you’ve probably come across the expression, “of biblical proportions.”
Which means: on a grandiose scale. As in, “The volcano erupted before our very eyes, treating us to a spectacle of biblical proportions.”
Indeed, things happening in the Bible often (surely not always) happen in a big way.  Well, often enough, at least,

We often fail to see anything remarkable in the commonplace.

But wait (I hear you thinking),  isn’t that all but obvious? How could it possibly be otherwise? “Commonplace”, by definition, means unremarkable!

Well, not so fast. Yes, one can define the word that way. But by another,

We passed through New Orleans twice — in December and again in January — on the way from Texas to Florida, and then on the way back.

Few would dispute that New Orleans has a unique character. All great cities do, of course, but New Orleans has a totally special flavor about it. I could write a book.