What beautiful days we have had lately. I can hum the great Satchmo’s tune, What a Wonderful World and totally forget the devastation of the past disaster. We may not have Hanging Gardens in Picayune, but just check out our Azalea blooms in the spring. We have our own wonders of Pearl River County.

I have been hearing a lot about the Seven Wonders of the World…..ABC news is advertising a new list. I began to consider what I knew of the wonders of the world and tried to name a few. That is when it became confusing for in my memory bank I could not rationalize why I wanted to put the Empire State Building, the Grand Canyon and the Pyramids of Egypt on the same list. What constituted a ‘wonder’?

I of course had to ‘Google it’. Did you know there are several lists? There is one list from the ancient world, one from the natural wonders of the world, the modern wonders and the forgotten wonders of modern, ancient, and natural.

If you ask me, there are too many lists. Let’s just leave it to one list of wonders and stick with it. Before too long we will have the seven American Wonders, the seven Chinese Wonders and unfortunately for Iraq, the list will have to be shortened to two wonders since insurgents will probably blow up the other five.

You might recall from the ancient wonders list the Hanging Gardens of Babylon….which if you put your finger on the map today would put you 50 miles south of Baghdad. It may be hard to visualize such an amazing garden in so hot and sandy a place.

From the Medieval wonders list we have Stonehenge. People still are wondering about the purpose of the stones so maybe that is why it is on the ‘wonders’ list.

The Leaning Tower of Piza is also on the Medieval list. How low will it go? They should rename it Limbo Tower.

Not to be forgotten or it would be on the forgotten list is the Great Wall of China which is so grand that it is visible from space, so what does the wall divide? Or is it a privacy fence? Maybe they need to move the wall between North Korea and China or better yet, on the 38th parallel. After all, what else are you going to do with such a large fence?

Then we have the list that concentrates on natural wonders. Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, and the Northern Lights make up a few of the lucky seven on that list. You won’t find any Celebs on that list because there ain’t nothing natural about a Hollywood Celeb.

But we also have modern wonders which include the Empire State Building, with or without King Kong, it doesn’t say. The Golden Gate Bridge and the Panama Canal seem reasonable modern day wonders but the engineering feats may have been surpassed by now.

How old am I going to feel if I have outlived the modern wonders list? At least I can’t remember the ancient list.

So who makes this wonders list? When do they update it? For some reason Good Morning America gets to announce the new list, but from who? Who are these panelists of experts? Hopefully not the same guys who pick the Oscar winners. And why is ABC picking an eighth wonder. Do they have permission from the ‘bonnefied’ list makers of the past?

What if the wonders list becomes another top ten list which has to come out every year? How special will a wonder be if it can be bumped off like last year’s celebrities? Too many lists could cause wonders to lose their ‘wonder’ status. Then every New Years we will be wondering about the new wonders. Now that’s redundant in so many ways.

Why is the news media tampering with the list anyway, it could get real political with democratic blue media pushing their opinions of what wonder should be elected and then the response from the republican red media may snap back and debate will erupt. No wonder will be picked and nothing will get accomplished.

And what is a wonder anyway?

The definition of the word is to be filled with admiration, amazement or awe; to marvel. Have you ever seen a sight that has created this reaction within you? Like the first time you saw a mountain, or a rainbow, a shooting star, or looked out a window of an airplane? Or maybe something even more intimate like the face of your firstborn child?

I can not compare my personal wonders to a real wonder from the list, because I have not seen an official wonder. I think I must put it on my to-do list….Laundry, pick up milk, see natural wonder.

But that is not all the Seven Wonders of the World lists. There are the forgotten lists, which if you ask me, I have forgotten pretty much all the lists now that I know there are multiple lists. How did these wonders become forgotten? Especially if they are still around? Why were they bumped to the forgotten list? For example, Angel Falls, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Niagara Falls are on the forgotten natural list? Who could forget such big things? I remember Niagara Falls every time I watch Superman 2.

That’s it; I think we need to protest the lists. It is called the Seven Wonders of the World and not the seven lists of seven wonders.

Despite all the bad news, Armstrong and I agree, I see trees of green, red roses too

I see em bloom for me and for you and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue; clouds of white….. Bright blessed days….dark sacred nights; and I think to myself …..what a wonderful world. Yes, it’s a wonderful world filled with wonders and I have a wonderful life to boot!