Okay, so not nature nature, but if you were using translation apps or a thesaurus, you’d end up concluding that nature is the environment and environment means surroundings which means neighborhood and anyway the new old restaurant just opened downtown and I had Pad See You and it was a source of perfect happiness like the Disney* ideal.

This was particularly pleasing to me because for some years pad see you was a favorite dish of mine from the downtown restaurant which was reliably delicious. And then last year the restaurant was taken over by new ownership and food got steadily worse until one night the pad see you was so bad that it was inedible and I had to throw it out.** But last month the original owners returned, took over the restaurant, renamed it, and just this past week re-opened with the same great food we were all*** craving.

So that has been a shining example of a good thing lately, a much-needed break from the Everything that keeps raining down thanks in large part to experts as-seen-on-TV and now seen in government posts. Still, with National Poetry Month now behind me I’m back to focusing on columns like the above and my free semi-monthly newsletter to which I would encourage you to subscribe, but of course if you don’t want to then none shall make you.****

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* “pad see you real soon!”

** those of you who know me will understand just how unimaginably bad food has to be for me to simply throw it out, given how many almost-inedible dishes I have made at home and then worked hard to rescue.

*** even you, you just don’t realize it if you haven’t had it.

**** as opposed to Catholic school, where nun shall make you.