No to the development

The supervisors today turned down the development that I wrote about several weeks ago.

The planning commission had recommended denial and the supervisors agreed. They said it didn't match the county's comprehensive plan.

The developer was very antagonistic to the supervisors. He accused the county administration of underhandedness and the supervisors of spot zoning when they rezoned an industrial park in 1993.

About 60 people turned out to oppose the project.

I do feel sorry for the landowners, who are good people whom I know. They have other choices with their land but I don't know that they will get as much money for it.

It is always difficult balancing the rights of the landowner with the good of the community. But I think, ultimately, the greater good should always win out, with a compromise if possible. But that's just me.

I leave tomorrow for a much-needed mini-vacation. I'll be back October 2.

At that time I will have to be ready to take on my health issues as well as some financial issues, so I hope I get to rest up. The winter is looking long.

The Retirement Home

I spent the weekend helping my grandmother, who is 84. She is in the assisted living section of Richfield outside of Salem.

She was in one building and needed to move to another. This is because of money. Isn't it always about the money? Her personal funds ran out. She has some kind of insurance policy that will pay for her to stay in a semi-private room in assisted living for another year or so, and then I guess it's off to the "true" nursing home, with a bed and nothing personal around her, so Medicaid can pay the bills.

That is the future I envision, unfortunately.

I am not her caretaker. That falls to my aunt, who is, unfortunately, in Georgia. Her son, my cousin Matt, lives here, though, and so does my grandmother's sister Susie (who is 87) and one of Grandma's four sons. Also there is me and my brother, although my brother does not speak to anyone on Mom's side of the family, just as I don't speak to my father. And I have two other cousins in town but they don't speak to Matt or my brother but they speak to me.

We're a convoluted bunch.

Anyway, Grandma was supposed to be moved next weekend but suddenly she was moved Friday. I do not know why.

She moved into a room that she now shares with her sister-in-law Elsie. I have no idea how this came about and can only scratch my head at it. Aunt Elsie had something to do with it, I suppose, but I was outside the loop. I only know they didn't get along well when I was a child, and can't help but wonder how they think they can manage it now.

I decided to slip up there Saturday and see how she was getting along, because she was very nervous about the move.

When I walked into my grandmother's room, none of her personal stuff had been moved except for her special chair she sits in. She had one pair of underwear in the room. I don't know what she slept in Friday night. She had brought along her mattress pad and and a bedspread but no one had placed them on the bed.

I could not believe that they moved her and thought one pair of underwear was all she needed. I went over to her former room and found my cousin Matt in a dither. He'd been told, as had I, that maintenance was going to move all her things except for two pieces of heavy furniture. They had done nothing, obviously.

We were unprepared for a major move but somehow we managed to get her stuff together. Her personal items now consist of a big dresser, a cedar chest, a curio cabinet filled with dolls, a stuffed bear collection (about 20 large bears), her clothing (the closet's full), assorted food stuff, puzzle books, her TV, and about 30 pictures she keeps on the dresser. I was grateful Matt had brought along a friend.

I took over the move, which Matt seemed grateful for, and with effort we packed and transported. Then it had to be set up. We could not figure out how to get all of this into the room. The room is not tiny; it's about 12 by 7, maybe, but that is not large, either. We finally came up with a configuration. Matt and his friend moved all the furniture around but then left me to deal with the clothes, the dolls, the bears, the photos. . . . it was a very long Saturday.

Unfortunately in our hurry and frustration, we did not realize that Grandma's nurse call button was on the other side of the room, away from her bed. Her special chair was at it but not the bed. If she became ill in the night, she could not get help.

I asked the nursing staff about this before I left and was told not to worry about it.

I woke at 4 a.m. this morning worrying about it. So there was nothing to do but get up and go back up there today, nevermind that I was up there for nearly six hours yesterday.

I took my husband this time and within an hour we'd rearranged the entire room again. Now her nurse call is by the bed and her special chair.

To make matters worse, while we were moving the furniture around, one of the nurses came in and said they were glad we moved the furniture. They were worried about her inability to reach the call button and had "put in a request" for a cord extension so she could reach it. Meanwhile I guess everyone was supposed to hope for the best while the bureaucratic wheels of the do-nothing maintenance people turns.

I am furious with the nursing home for not taking better care of my grandmother. I am also rather upset with my uncle, who visited my grandmother on both Saturday and Sunday and lifted nary a finger to see that she was getting proper care and that her things were taken care of.

I am grateful that my cousin and husband moved the furniture. We showed up because we wanted to check on my grandmother and thought it was the right thing to do. None of us know what is happening or what needs to be done as far as Richfield is concerned. That is out of our control.

But I shiver when I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't gone.

The Lovely Bones

My book club is reading The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, this month. Unfortunately I will be unable to attend the meeting, as next week I will be on vacation.

I listened to the audiobook recently. It was a shivering tale and quite a commentary on modern society, this place where one life means so much . . . and so little.

I wanted to relay my own story of the "inbetween." Susie Salmon, the 14-year old dead narrator of the book, spoke of it frequently, and how she wanted to reach out to her family. Her family seldom saw her ghost but did at times seem to know she was there.

When my mother was terminally ill, she asked me what she could do to show me there was life after death. "Send me something orange," I suggested. I don't have much orange, either in the house or in the yard.

The day I came home from my mother's funeral, there was a wild black cat in my yard. The cat wouldn't let me come near it.

I knew right away that the cat was my mother. My grandfather had returned to my grandmother as a cat when he died in 1976. I remembered that, and I recalled my mother talking about it before she passed away.

Everytime I got upset that year, or had bad things happen (and a lot did), I saw that cat through my window. But it never let me come close.

The last time I saw it was a year later, on the first anniversary of my mother's death.

But the cat, of course, was not orange.

However, the first year after she died, near my birthday, a sandy orange dog showed up unannounced on my doorstep, just a few months after I'd had to put my own dog to sleep. He was a very sweet dog for a stray, but definitely an inside dog, and with my allergies, I could not keep him in the house.

My husband commented, somewhat dryly, "Leave it to your mother to send you something you couldn't use." She always did have that particular knack when it came to gift-giving. I was sure this was a sign from my mother, though, and I was quite distraught because my husband insisted we could not keep the dog. It seemed wrong to rid myself of such an omen.

A few days later, a friend gave me a rose for my birthday. I planted it in the front yard.

It bloomed orange, and still does.

The Stress Test

Today was my stress test. I've been having chest pains since the first of the month, and apparently checking out the ticker is the first thing doctors do when you hit middle age.

I had been stressing considerably over taking this stress test. I had one in 2001 for a similar problem. It came back fine, they never knew what the problem was, and I expect the same thing from today's results based on the reaction of the physician's assistant and the lab assistants giving the test.

Anyway, the test in 2001 nearly did me in. I weighed about 25 more pounds, I hadn't exercised in like, ever, and I was talking a beta blocker (which slows down your heart) for migraines.

When you take a stress test, you have to hit a particular heart rate and sustain it. When I took the test in 2001, not only was I out of shape, I couldn't hit the heart rate. They thought that was because of the beta blocker. So they kept me walking on the treadmill for a very long time. By the time we were done, I could hardly walk, my legs were so rubbery.

But this time around, I weigh less, and I've been exercising for at least a half hour nearly every day. The walk on the treadmill barely had me breathing hard and my heart rate hit its target in about five minutes and held there very nicely for an entire minute.

What was really cool, though, was the echocardiogram. This is a sonagram of your heart (like what they do to show a baby in a pregnant woman).

So this is how the visit went. First, the tech scared me by saying they might have to inject something in me if they couldn't see my heart well. I wanted no part of any injections and little tears began seeping out of my eyes. My husband was with me and he patted me on the arm and said, "You have to do whatever it takes to make sure you're alright. I love you."

Which of course, made me cry for real.

Then they made my husband leave and go to the waiting room. I would have preferred he stay, but I admit it would have been rather crowded.

Then it was undress time. Sexy hospital gown and all that. Then the hook-up to the EKG machine. I sat and watched the squiggly lines, not knowing, of course, what I was seeing. No red lights went off so that was a relief.

My blood pressure, though, was a little high, 124/96.

Then a resting echocardiogram. The tech could see my heart well and there was no need for injections, thankfully. I could see the valve of my heart fluttering, up and down, up and down. It was very cool.

Then she switched on the sound. Swwhooooshh hummm swwhoooshhh hummm swwwhhooooosh hummm is kind of what it sounded like.

After that, the walk on the treadmill. Immediately when it finished, you hope off the treadmill and onto the gurney so you can get another echocardiogram. I could see my heart going very fast and she hit the sound and there was a lot of sloshing and whooshing.

I lay there for just a few minutes. They took my blood pressure again and it had settled into a very good 110/70. "Boy, you were stressed out over this test, weren't you," one of the techs said.

The tech at the echocardiogram machine said the pictures were great and things looked clean, and the physician's assistant said to one of the techs that he didn't see anything and it all looked good to him. They aren't supposed to tell you anything but I swear I don't see how you could be human and not ease another's suffering and worry by saying something. The comments weren't directed at me but at each other but I felt a lot better for hearing that and I am sure they knew that.

I have to say, though, that this was a lot of concern (and expense, I am sure) and while I'm very glad to know I likely don't have a heart problem, I still don't know why I am having chest pains.

My plan now is to ignore them for a few days and hope they go away. If not, then we'll try something else.

The Painter Chapel

This monument, erected in 1996, is in memory of The Painter Chapel. Located on Catawba Road in a curve, it recognizes the legacy of my ancestors, Jacob and Mary Painter.

They once owned a large portion of the Catawba Valley, including the area where Catawba Hospital is now. That was even before it was Red Sulphur Springs.

They owned the property in the early 1800s (it used to belong to the McAfee's, hence the famous "McAfee's Knob" on the Appalachian Trail) and at some point they donated the land where this monument stands so that a church could be built. "Painter's Congregation" met in a wooden structure for a number of years and the building was used by Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodists.

The legacy of my ancestor's donation continues to this day, although in another site, and as I understand it, in a divided congregation that now worships in two different churches.

Jacob Painter was a gunsmith and it is said that he passed this on to his son, John, who made guns for the confederacy. Through his wife, Mary, I am related to my husband (we are fifth cousins), with a set of sixth-great grandparents in common. We were unaware of that when we met. What goes around comes around, I guess.

Jacob died in 1834. He and his wife were among the first settlers in Catawba. His first house was a log home built into a side of a hill, and a second log house was built near the entrance to Catawba Hospital. It was razed in 1964, a year after I was born. Jacob was a prosperous farmer, with a grist mill and a sawmill.

He and Mary had 10 children. A number of their descendents still live in the area. The family went on to settle Botetourt and Roanoke Counties. Some of these descendents went on to be judges in the circuit court, superintendents of schools, and at least two are writers (including myself).

My biggest regret is that the hundreds of acres of property has been sold and divided and sold again, with a great share being sold to the cement plant up the road. How sad it is that such a great swath of wonderful land slipped into the grasp of such a corporation.

The most hate-filled paper in my house

For inexplicable reasons, the National Liberty Journal began arriving in my mailbox in July.

I thought the first issue I received was a one-time thing, an announcement of the new "megachurch" in Lynchburg. The new and improved Liberty Baptist Church run by Jerry Falwell.

Yes, this is his publication.

But it seems I am now permanently on the mailing list. I am trying to figure out how to get off that mailing list, as this is the most hate-filled writing I have ever read.

It is not welcome in my home, this so-called "Conservative Christian's Newspaper."

I am not against Christians. Actually I consider myself to be one, having been saved and baptized. But if this is Christianity, I am not of this ilk. I am not into this hate-everybody-rule-the-world thing that oozes from the pages of this paper.

My God is into caring and concern and honesty and pacifism. He doesn't bang the war drums, or march with a fife while men fall dead all around him.

My God cries when we sin, he doesn't grab a bazooka and go blasting away at the sinner. He loves everybody, no matter what you do.

My God, in other words, isn't this god. Apparently the right recognizes this. Under a headline of "Gays 9, Christians O," a story about homosexual representation on television as opposed to Christian characters, there is this:

"As reported above, NBC's ER will reportedly have a Christian character for a few episodes this fall, but we are unsure of whose definition of "Christian" will fashion the character."

Hmm. So there are, apparently, many definitions of Christian. Kind of like there are many definitions of the word "run" in the dictionary, I guess.

Funny, that.

I'll take definition #2, please, the one that has the word "love" in it.

Whirling

I found an old beach picture on my computer and started fiddling with my editing program. The above is the result. I like.

I learned today that both my aunt (56 years old) and my grandmother have had their gallbladder removed. Grandma is 83, very fat, diabetic, and has no gallbladder. I guess you can live to a ripe old age regardless of the shape you're in.

I feel cheered by that information, for some reason.

The Filing Cabinet Drawer

(The happy couple, November 18, 1983)

This morning I decided it was time to clean the spare room. This tiny spot has three filing cabinets, several bookcases, the holiday decorations, and right much junk in it.

Three boxes filled with tax records need to be put away. But to do that, I need to clean out the filing cabinets, sending old records to the shredder or up to the attic.

So I opened the top filing drawer. It held no files, just piles of stuff, including one big fat envelope. Written on the envelope are the words "To Anita, With Love, Mom, 7/00." Ah. The envelope my mother prepared and gave me just before she entered the hospital, never to come home.

I had rifled through it before, of course. Then I stuck it away. And here it was again. The things my mother thought I should have. They included:

• Pictures of my nephew.
• Pictures of other family, including many I don't know.
• My school report cards.
• My mother's school report cards.
• Pictures of my mother, from birth to just before she took ill.
• Pictures of me as a child.
• My mother's high school essay on the history of Catholicism.
• The sheet music ("Royal Ballet") that I played in a piano recital in 1976.
• Two poems I wrote before I was 12.
• My wedding photos.

The above picture was one of the first to fall from the envelope. There we were, my baby and me, ready to take on a cake and the rest of our lives. Husband had a full head of hair back then; it's about all gone now, and what's left is silver. And there I am, with hair much longer, and body much smaller. Who are those people!?

I sorted through the photos, the papers, and thought about my mother. We had a rocky and stormy relationship my entire life. And here in these pieces of paper was all that's left of whatever was between us.

This is one of the poems she saved, written by her ten-year-old daughter:

What a rock has seen

There is a rock that belongs to me,

a big grey rock made from the sea.

If it could talk it'd tell me tales

of dolphins and fish and laughing whales.

It'd tell of the sea, calm and serene,

and turtles and shells and seaweed green.

Laughing mermaids and small sea horses,

and schools of fishes learning their courses.

I wish it could talk, 'cause I'd like to know

about laughing whales and where they go.

Because I've never seen one, and neither have you,

But my rock doesn't lie so it must be true!

O Ovaries I Hardly Knew Ye

In the news now, women who have had their ovaries removed, like me, have a higher risk of dying of a number of things, including cardiovascular disease.

You can read it in this story from ABC News.

As someone who had her ovaries removed in a complete hysterectomy at the tender age of 29, I certainly raised my eyebrows at this.

I have always been on some kind of hormone replacement therapy, although I don't take the full dose I'm prescribed. I take half a pill a day, not a whole one, because that has always been enough to cut the hot flashes.

Maybe that will save me.

But now I wonder if I've done myself harm doing that, although I guess something is better than nothing. The HRT I take is plant based, not animal based, and most definitely is not Premarin; that gave me horrid migraines. I take something called Estrace. I also drink soy and take a soy supplement.

Of course, HRT is also linked to heart disease. Heart disease anyway I look at it.

Most likely this wouldn't have me thinking too much, but since I'm still having chest pains, of course the "heart disease" part caught my eye.

I want to live to the ripe ol' age of 86. I don't want to die young. My life has been hard and difficult. I was really hoping at some point it would get a little easier.

I had endometriosis. Six years of trying to conceive through a nightmare of pain was the result. From 1988 to 1992 I had six surgeries, three through the belly button and three long cuts or smiley faces. I kept developing cysts the size of grapefruits on my ovaries and they would twist and grow infected.

It was like having appendicitis all the time.

I was on a lot of medicine and who knows what that did to me. And then the last surgery was the hysterectomy, although even then, when there was just a fraction of a percent of conception, I wasn't ready for that.

Surely the medical establishment did what it thought was right at the time, but who knows. I doubt the intentions now, althought I don't know what else could have been done. If I could have held out a little longer, maybe.

But I can't change that past, and now I can only go forward, armed with my HRT and my childless self. Now I just aim for a decently long and relatively comfortable old age.

Surely the Higher Power can help with that. . . .

Friday Night

Mabry Mill 2005

Friday Night

So I'm sitting home alone on a Friday night. I sent husband to the football game to watch the nephew; he's the backup quarterback.

I decided to stay home, because the night air bothers me. We hope to take a short vacation at the end of the month and I would like to be well. Or some semblance thereof.

I am not feeling very verbal tonight so I don't have a lot to say. At least, not anything important (so you can stop reading now if you want. My feelings won't be hurt.).

Husband says I worry too much. And I do worry. I worry about my work, my life, my health, his life, his work, his health, the house payment, the car payment, the grocery bill, what we eat, how we eat it, why we eat it, who we are, where we're going, how long we both will live, who will take care of us when we're old.

Not much, really. Just . . . worries.

I also worry about the nation, the economy, the terrorism and the way it's being used, the loss of civil rights, the loss of civility, the meanness in the air, the hateful attitude I hear on the radio and on TV, the evil that seems to be crossing the entire world and not just this land. All of these things impact me, daily, seeping into me and sapping my energy.

Sometimes I think I'm a blank slate, being written on constantly, with no way to wipe myself clean.

Inner thoughts are not fun. Probably no fun to read, either. I told you you could stop!

The Fall

Deer bathe in sunlight
Acorns at their hooves.
Autumn comes.
Leaves turn dull brown
Ruthless winds
fling them to earth.
Rain-slashed skies turn
gray, the light dimming
like a drowning love.
Autumn comes.
Guns bark out death
and while leaves fall
I leave you.

Thump-Thump

(Old picture, used the colored pencil filter on the editing software.)

Last night I again had chest pains, and I was up most of the night. This time I did not go to the E.R., as I didn't see much point in it.

I won't say I am not worried because I am. I have some risk factors for this chest pain to be heart-related.

My acupuncturist, whom I saw today, said not to worry, though my heart meridian was definitely out of sorts. In Chinese Medicine, the heart is not the heart organ, but the heart energy, and mine has always been out of whack.

Acupuncture Today talks here about the heart in Chinese medicine.

During the two years I have been seeing a Chinese Medicine practitioner, I have been touched by the language and the emotional quality of the care. My two practitioners have at times astounded me with great insights; the caregiver I am seeing now read my life back to me over the phone one night after only seeing me one time.

My heart energy never received what it needed to be strong when I was young, and I still struggle to give it what it requires to be healthy to this day.
My heart stays lonely even though I am today well-loved. But my heart stays hidden so safely inside me, no wonder the darned thing is ill.

Development Route

Last night I attended a meeting about a development not far from me. Called a traditional neighborhood district, the 60-acre project would bring in 91 homes (amended by the developer from 198, including five three-story condominiums) about 135,000 square feet of business space.

It would be located smack on the corner of Country Club Road and U.S. 220, in a rural farming district. The caveat? It's across from Ashley Plantation and in the middle of two golf courses.

The county's comprehensive plan (the guidebook for the locality) calls for the land to remain rural residential. That is, a house on 2.5 acres of land.

This has been difficult for me because of my work. As a freelance writer who covers the county government for the newspaper (it's complicated), I do my best to be objective and stay in the middle. I am the person who stands back and watches what happens, without a voice.

However, this development directly impacts me. It is not "in my back yard" but I would pass it every day, be affected by the traffic, and have to look at it.

When I spoke with the developer I told him I didn't appreciate his "enhancements" to what to me is already perfect. Mother Nature does a darned fine job in her creations, after all.

After much thought and a little prayer, I decided to send an e-mail to my planning commission noting my objection to the project. This was a big thing for me to do because of my concern, however illogical, that it might impact me professionally.

After all, the developer had already called my editor accusing me of bias because I mentioned the development in a story about water conservation.

The editor said the story wasn't biased, though.

And where is it written that a reporter/journalist/writer in the community has no rights and no say on what goes on around her?

I know my letter was read because several officials mentioned it to me.

In any event, about 85 people turned out to protest the development. The developer brought along 15 friends to attest to his character (though I am not at all sure what that has to do with anything), so there was about 100 people there. In a small meeting room, it was a standing-room-only crowd.

In the end, the planning commission recommended denial of the project. It now goes to the supervisors for their review and their vote.

I am not opposed to "growth" or housing or building, although I confess I would like to see a lot less of it. But there are proper places for development, and plopping a "town" down in the middle of nowhere just doesn't make any sense.

As one man said at the meeting, when the farms are all gone, what will we eat?

The museum of tomorrow

I wonder how history will find us. Not in the sense of what we did or didn't do. Not the label of the history books. The history books will say that certain things happened at the turn of the 21st century to change humanity. And it will comment upon them, rightly or wrongly, in the context of that time.

But the rest of us, those of us who won't go down in the annals of history as presidents or governors, how will history find us? We're in the digital age now, and our photos are on discs. Our words are online or printed on cheap paper that's inferior to the acid-free stock of the past.

I suspect that history will look back to the beginning of the 21st century and find a gap. Books on good paper, and newspapers of worth, will be abundant up until about 1990. And then the trail will vanish, or be found only in the landfills, where copies of The Herald might live for centuries, buried beneath the waste of today.

The legacy of the common man won't be found in thrown pots or cuniform. It will be found in the remanants of automobiles and the remains of a Cool Whip dish.

A thousand years from now, a museum dedicated to our time won't show how we went from daylight to lamps, as the county history museum is featuring this month. It'll show how we went from oil use to some other energy source, moving along the earth to leave our scars and badges in hot pursuit of the next big thing.

It'll have a desktop PC as an oddity, with no way to know what was inside. And inside that one PC, trapped like ghosts from another time, might be a lifetime of digital memories, belonging maybe to you.

Photos will be few because they're all tucked away in these boxes, unavailable. The museum curators will speculate: were they tall? Short? Fat? Do you suppose they were human?

When I was very young, I read a story, perhaps in a Reader's Digest, that made a huge impression. It was about an archeological find in some future time. It what we would know as an hotel room, a skeleton laid sprawled on what was left of a bed, facing a black box.

They worshipped this box, found in all rooms, this future archeologist surmised. He called it a primitive worship, so much so that he doubted the humanity of his find.

He ultimately decided they were human because they all needed privacy for elimination needs.

The story stuck with me because of the wrong hypothesis of the archeologist. His guesses were so wrong, yet so right.

What will remain of us, this society? Will we be remembered at all?

On libraries

I visited the Fincastle Library today. It was the first day the branch was open for business on a Saturday, and as a member of the library board I thought it behooved me to trot over and see how things were going.

Swimmingly, it turns out. I counted five people on the internet sign-up sheet as of 10:30 a.m. - one had signed up within five minutes of the doors opening - and one person in the genealogy room doing what genealogist do.

This pleased me greatly. I love to see a well-used library. I checked out a book-on-tape. I have been listening to the books in this library for a very long time. A while back I started picking authors from each letter of the alphabet, listening to every work the library had of that author, then moving on to a new letter. I am up to "S" and I am listening to Danielle Steel. I had never read any of her books, although I had certainly heard of her.

She is a romance novelist, very prolific. The first book I am listening to is called The Long Road Home and for the first entire cassette I wondered if I was going to be able to finish the book. Thankfully we have the heroine grown out of a very tortured (and more show-than-tell) childhood and are moving on to the romance part of it, so it is better listening.

I picked up a second book, with a title I can't recall because I simply pulled it off the shelf because it had Steel's name on it, with the hopes it will move along better. I am slightly amused that such a prolific author might be the first one whose books I skip, and I move on to "t".

How did I get onto that? I wanted to write about the City Library, not books! Specifically the plans to renovate it.

Renovation is a good idea. The downtown branch has a lot going for it, namely The Virginia Room. That's a treasure trove of history that needs nurturing and care. But the rest of the facility is not user friendly.

The stairs are difficult, the elevator and some hallways are scary, and space isn't utilized well. It's not designed for an internet world.

The location? Parking has never really been an issue, but then I always pay to park because that side street is a dead-end with a lousy turn-around. I never go down there at night, though.

Many homeless people gather at the library. Libraries are public and they have every right to be there. But some of those down-an-out folks scare me. I hate admitting that, but I was once accosted downtown by some poor fellow who wasn't in his right mind. He scared the bejeezus out of me. I ended up running away to no avail. So I ducked in a shop and called the police for an escort back to my office (this was when I worked downtown).

I guess an incident like that lingers with you. Actually, because of it I'm not crazy about downtown, period. I haven't been downtown since last March, and it'll probably be next March before I go again.

Which is again off-topic, sort of, but hey, it's Saturday night and my mind is roaming.

In any event, I am all for libraries, renovated or otherwise. They are the true containers of democracy, the spot where free-thinkers can meet other free-thinkers, even if it's in books. Libraries are the depositories of the great thoughts of mankind, and I love the looks of them, the smell of them, and the laughter inside.

Build more libraries for better tomorrows.

The meeting

Last night a group of about 55 met at the local VFW to discuss ways to stop development in the county. Particularly an impending development that comes before the planning commission Monday night.

One thing that really upset me during the meeting was hearing people say, "We just found about it Friday." I wrote about the issue and the story ran on August 23. That was two weeks ago, not Friday.

Apparently none of these people read their local paper. If people would read something instead of depending on the TV "news on your side" they might actually learn something about the world around them.

Do people want their news spoonfed to them? Why are folks too sorry to pick up a paper at the grocer, or subscribe? It's 50 cents on the newsstand - is that too high a price to pay to learn about the community you've chosen to live in?

And then to whine because they don't know what's going on. I think they don't care what's going on. Maybe they work in Roanoke and care about the city because something might affect their favorite parking space, so they read The Times. That's better than nothing, but it doesn't specifically cover this county.

And then there are people who read NOTHING.

This is a major dumbing-down of America, and we're all paying for it. We're paying for it with a "peak oil" crisis, with water issues, with overcrowding of neighborhoods, with sprawl, with loss of farmland, with pollution, with loss of timberland, with loss of life. Not knowing affects each and every one of us each and every day. We are all being killed by what we don't know.

But it's that screen glowing across the room that demands attention. Everyone's busy feeding it their mind cells, plucking their brains out one by one, hour by hour.

Why not read, and take in more than one source of information to sort it all out. If all folks do is watch one TV channel, the sources are limited and sometimes tainted to the point of being unrecognizable. Read!

Well, well, well

A springhouse that no longer has water flowing through it.

I have a (very long) story in the paper this week about water, or more accurately, the lack thereof. As the drought continues in spite of tropical storms, and as the grass browns and the pastures die, I wonder, as do many other people, where this will take us.

Wells in our area are holding their own, if they are drilled deeply. The shallow wells, that is to say, the older wells, were redrilled in 2002 during that particularly dry year.

Our own well runs fast and has a lot of water in it. It also has a lot of black grit, iron and lime. The black grit stops up the filters. The iron gives the plastic in the interior of the dishwasher a nice pink color. And the lime gets all over everything and ruins appliances.

We drink this water, filtered. I also buy water, an activity that would have been unthinkable in the first decade of my life. Nobody worried about water then. And most of it was fit to drink. That doesn't seem to be the case any more.

It worries me, but it doesn't worry the developers who are building their McMansions. I have a meeting tonight to attend about the latest development, organized by folks who aren't too happy about it.

I am not too happy about it, either.

Personal note: I saw my regular doctor today, and she will schedule a stress echocardiogram to be sure my chest pains from Saturday aren't heart-related. The test will go a long way toward ruling that out, and nothing gets injected in me.

No diagnosis yet, though.

Mind Images

The things that have stuck with me today:

The weather: lovely, pleasant, clear.

The signs at Exit 150 off Interstate 81, and how they dominate the skyline in that area.

My dentist giving me a good report (I needed some good news).

The short lines at Sam's Club, for a change.

A brochure I picked up at Nature's Outlet which talks about the AER bill. This bill apparently will make vitamin supplements be considered something that could have triggered a health problem. Then it must be reported to somebody, I guess the FDA. The brochure calls it a boon for trial lawyers who will soon be able to sue because you're taking a vitamin and have a heart attack. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion yet. A website that's obviously against it is http://www.nha2006.com, if you're interested.

A new paperback by Nora Roberts called Morrigan's Cross which is the first in a series about vampires. This raised my eyebrows as I thought she was a romance writer. But not enough to buy the book on this day.

No Romaine lettuce at Kroger.

Musings

I am feeling better, though still having some tightness in my chest. I think I will live.

I've spent the better part of the day pondering my direction. My work is sluggish and I need to look elsewhere. The writing I do for various newspapers is not enough, financially, to take me where I feel I need to be. This is particularly true in the current economic climate, which, in spite of the government's edicts, is not being especially kind to us.

So I want to augment. But I need to decide how I want to do that. Do I want a part-time job in an office? Do I want to be a sales person, maybe a Tupperware queen? Do I believe in myself enough to spend months finishing a novel, which may or may not sell?

Let's face it. I just spent part of the holiday weekend in the E.R. My health is not the greatest. I honestly don't know if I could hold down a job outside of the house, one with regular hours that requires me to be there. I used to. I was once a very good legal secretary. But I can't say I really want to go back there.

That leaves working from home and finding some way to supplement what I do already. And any of it means taking risks, chances, and movement. I am stagnant, like an old pool of water, and it's time someone threw a rock in me and forced me to shimmer and give up some of the dirt. And I need to do my own rock-throwing, before some boulder falls into my waters and splashes me everywhere.

Would that I could be like the doe, curious, cautious, and able to take a step and stomp my little hoof when I spy the interloper with the camera.

Botetourt County

I've started another blog devoted to Botetourt County, where I live. It will have links and news stories. This stuff crosses my desk all the time in the course of my freelance work and I thought I might as well stick it someplace for future reference.

Chick lit

I read a story today in Boston's Weekly Dig that insists that chick lit is destroying America.

The anonymous author feels strongly about this. Chick lit is part of the greater dumbing-down of the nation. The government, the writer asserts, is looking for ways to "devalue intellicutualism and criticism." Lower standards in writing help serve these governmental efforts.

The writer also says that those who defend chick lit call it feminism, elitism, snobbery, etc. when you say the genre has lower standards. The writer argues that we need a return to discerning taste.

I can't disagree. I have written book reviews for some chick lit books and while I seldom completely down a novel, I don't give chick lit good reviews. Usually the story line falters, or the characters are rather one sided. Sometimes the characters are unlikeable because they turn out to be nasty, not funny.

I love Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books. I am not sure if she's chick lit, since they are mysteries. I like some of Jennifer Cruise's books, not but all. Jennifer Weiner's last book did not do much for me.

Chick lit has its place, but I don't think that place is mainstream fiction. I have to agree with the anonymous author that this should be a recognizable genre so that more discerning readers can turn their attention to something along the lines of Jane Smiley or Barbara Kingsolver, neither of whom are chick lit writers. The writer says:

The truth is that chick lit is bad for America because it’s bad for ambitious, literary writers, male or female. And that means it’s bad for all of us. As America increasingly devalues intellectual rigor, education and compassion, it becomes harder and harder to find a good book.

I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is getting hard to find something worthwhile to read.

And I wonder what subconscious thing was going on with me, that I chose a little tree frog for my photo when I sat down to write about the things women read?

August Light

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I love the August sky and the way the light falls through the trees. It is gorgeous.









(This was supposed to go with the previous post, but I couldn't get it to upload.)

A trip to the E.R.

My plan was to clean house yesterday and write a blog entry in the evening. My plans derailed around 5 p.m.

I was home alone, cleaning my little heart out. Apparently literally, because I kept getting little twinges in my chest. I ignored it and kept on cleaning, using copious amounts of Lime-Away in the bathtub. We have terribly hard water.

By 5 p.m., I could no longer ignore the twinges in my chest and I started trying to figure out what was going on. I was also having some trouble breathing.

Bet you know where this is headed.

I sat down at the computer and typed in "heart" and "women" and there were some symptoms similar to what I was feeling.

Spots danced before my eyes. I thought I might faint. I grabbed the phone and called my mother-in-law, who isn't far away. No one was home.

So I called my husband at the firestation, and told him I was not feeling well. He arranged to leave and come home.

He came in, said I looked flushed, and drove me to the E.R.

Now, the E.R. at Carilion in Roanoke is under construction. I have no idea how long this has been going on, but there is no place to park and assist a passenger. All my husband could do was let me out. A graying security guard came to the car. "You having chest pains, ma'am?" he asked, and he escorted me to a wheelchair. Then he rolled me into the ER while husband went to park the car.

The security guard handed me over to a nurse, who wheeled me past my husband's EMS crew, who was there delivering a patient. "Oh, hi Mrs. X," said a surprised medic that I knew. I waved weakly.

Then I sat in admissions and waited on them to make sure I was who I said I was. The medic followed and after talking to me briefly, he helpfully went off in search of a tank of oxygen. Husband appeared and stayed with me, as did the medic for a while. It kind of confused the nurses I think because they thought I'd been brought in by ambulance.

Then it was off to "triage" where a nurse took my vitals. Temp, 98.2. Blood pressure, 163 over 112 or something, it was high. I was also shaking, in part from cold, and from nerves. Hospitals are not nice places to be.

Then it was back to admissions. I did not wait in the waiting room; they whisked me to a room. They ran an EKG quickly, and it was normal. This was done by attaching several pieces of adhesive with metal on them and running lines to them. Since I appeared to be not in trouble, I was left alone for a very long time. Husband sat with me.

The nursing assistant wanted to start an IV, but he could not find my veins so I asked him to cease his efforts. I have terrible veins. Eventually the doctor came in, and he spoke with me and asked my history. Grandfather died of a heart attack at age 56; he was the only one I know of with heart trouble. That was in 1976, New Year's Day. Who knows if he'd have lived it hadn't been a holiday.

The doctor decided to run blood tests and do a chest X-ray. A male nurse came around with a portable machine and did the chest X-ray. Then another nurse came and put in an IV to take blood, and left the IV in there, of course. She did manage to find a vein in my arm; in the past they put it in the back of my hand and my hand turned black from the bruise.

Anyway, the blood work came back fine for the cardio enzymes, whatever they are, but my white cell count was high. I don't have an infection that I know of.

Meanwhile, the chest pain had gone completely away. Even so, the nurse was offering me nitroglycerine. I declined.

The doctor said he spoke with my family physician. She thought I was a good candidate for a cardio watch, or something like that. I have seen my GP all of twice, she is a new doctor for me as mine retired in January. She doesn't really know me.

The E.R. doctor said they would monitor me and run a stress test on me in the morning and then I could go home. Okay. Up we go to this special "non admittance" 23-hour heart observation area.

As I settled in, a nurse told me I would be monitored and in the morning they'd give me the nuclear test. Then it would be an eight-hour wait, and they'll do it again.

Wait, I said. What is this nuclear test? Well, they inject radioactive stuff in you and it gives them a great picture of your heart. It's the best test.

I don't want anything injected in me, I said. Can't we just do a walk on the treadmill and be done with it?

Well, you get to do that, too, the nurse said. It's part of the test.

She called my GP back, who was insistent that I get this nuclear thing. I didn't want anything injected in me. The nurse even brought up the lady who does the nuclear test. The nuclear testing lady got rather upset with me, I think. She said, "It's just a little radiation, it's no worse than say an upper GI series," and my response was along the line of, "you're still putting something radioactive in my body."

Husband did not want me to have that test, either. Neither his father nor his uncle have fared well with it. So finally I said, I want to go home, and the nurse called the ER doctor, who said everything else looked good, let her go.

And here I am. My chest still feels a little tight and I did not sleep well, even though it was 1 a.m. by the time we got back home and in bed.

My personal unprofessional diagnosis? Asthma. We already know I have that. I was using a lot of chemicals to clean, and messing in dust, and I'd been outside to take pretty pictures, and the ragweed is everywhere.

It doesn't feel like a normal asthma attack, but I also am taking a different asthma medication, which I think has changed things somewhat.

I will follow up with my GP, who will probably be unhappy with me for not doing the "nuclear" thing. But I don't trust the medical establishment to do what is best for me. I fear all they really care about is their bottom line.

Let's just buy a hat and forget

During a recent chat with a developer, I asked if he was going to move his family into this great new “enhancement” he was planning for Botetourt County.

Well, no.

He lives on a farm that backs up to government-owned land. “That’s not the lifestyle I choose,” said the builder of the townhouses.

I don’t think living in a condominium, or looking at them, or fighting the traffic created by whoever does live in them, is the lifestyle anybody who already lives out here has chosen, but I don’t see that stopping developers from forcing it down our throats.

Yay for him for being able to “choose” while the rest of us watch helplessly.

What right do you have to close the doors? the developer asked.

My ancestors moved here in the 1700s, I said. My genes have been around for a long time. It ought to count for something.

The growth in this county is all about money. It is not about “enhancements” or community or doing good. It’s about greenbacks and $100 bills and getting yours while trampling on the backs of the farmers and others who’ve sweated, tilled, and toiled until they dropped dead in the furrows of the soil.

What will we do when the farms are gone? What will we do when we’re on the downside of “peak oil,” if we’re not already, and there’s no way a farmer can afford to farm?

I hear you poohing-poohing my concerns. Never happen, you say. We’ve got miles of land. Somebody will feed us.

Meanwhile, am I the only one who’s noticed that the produce from the grocer is rotting before I can get home? Noticed that the selection of vegetables is slim and none? Are we all going to live on macaroni and cheese?

One fifth of all U.S. energy consumption involves our food supply. We don’t farm with horses anymore. Check this out: synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, essential for high crop yields, are a byproduct of natural gas. Farm machinery, necessary to gather grain, uses gasoline and diesel. The factories that process all of that food and make the pasta for the macaroni require electricity. And all of those trucks hauling food 1,500 miles across the country so that it ends up on your table use countless gallons of fuel.

That’s why a bag of salad that used to cost $1.49 now costs $3.49. It’s why we have less disposable income to buy MP3 players or clothing or an occasional rib-eye steak.

Farmers cannot pass their costs along to you. They don’t get two percent cost of living increases. They’re on the bottom of the food chain. They’re the beginning, and they’re the end, because when they are done, the rest of us are done, too.

Petroleum is a non-renewable resource. Water is a non-renewable resource. Land is a non-renewable resource.

When we use those things up, that’s it. Finito. End of the line. Bye bye humanity.

Our food supply is in danger. It’s in danger from development, it’s in danger from the higher prices of gasoline (if you can’t afford it, it may as well not be there), it’s in danger because people don’t have gardens and grow their own zucchini.

Meanwhile, let’s applaud another new housing development, add more retail shops and watch with fascination while huge construction machinery in Daleville bulldozes the apple orchard, apples still clinging to the trees.

Maybe if we go buy a pretty little hat or a sofa for that new house, it’ll all go away.