Go Home!

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy.
--Giuseppe Verdi

"I can live anywhere in the world as long as I see Mjosa."
--Alf Proysen

I understand their sentiment, both the Italian composer and the Norwegian cultural personality. I can also relate to Dorothy, the main character in the musical fantasy, The Wizard of Oz, who says, "There's no place like home." She tries to go home and has so many problems along the way, big problems like witches, horrible flying monkeys and a cheating wizard. But she eventually finds out she could have gone home all the time. She clicks the heels of her ruby slippers together and says the famous words "There's no place like home."

I have lived in many countries and visited even more. It has been an eduacation in itself, learning about people, places, languages, foods, culture, and not to forget what we laugh about. I have noticed how humour varies from country to country, even though it gradually evens out the more international we become. 

Home is my favorite place to be, better than vacations in out-of-the-way corners of the world or on sandy beaches. There have been many homes in my life, but only one at a time. Home has been where I hang my pictures and have my closest family around me. It has been where I can truly concentrate on being me. It is where I laugh and cry the most, grow the most, and learn every day.

Presently, I live in a home in the land of my ancestors, the birth land of my mother and father, and it is a good place to be. I have given this home a name: The Duck and Cherry. No, it's not an English pub, in fact no alchohol in this house. Though I admit I was inspired by amusing and ingenious titles of pubs. The names are a pun on word translations of duck and cherry. 

Go home is not a punishment or an insult. I gladly go home.

Today's water color is called The Flower Farm - in my fantasy it is someone's home. 

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The Italian Romantic composer, Giuseppe Verdi,  was one of the two most preeminent opera composers of the nineteenth century. Wagner being the other. 

The writer and musician, Alf Prøysen, was one of the most important Norwegian cultural personalities in the second half of the twentieth century.