Electricity and Deregulation

Apparently I wasn't clear in my post yesterday about my electric bill giving me a migraine. Let me try again.

Virginia is already a deregulated state with regard to electricity. This came about in 1997, I think it was, when the General Assembly passed "The Virginia Electric Utility Restructuring Act," which allowed direct retail sales to consumers as of January 1, 2002.

What was supposed to happen was competition among electric companies, as in, two or three would be calling you up and saying I can sell you this for that, and you would choose. You could shop around for the best rate.

But what happened essentially was that electricity went on sale at the wholesale level and the consumers were still stuck with the same companies. I mean, I haven't had anyone from say, Dominion Power or whoever else sells electricity in Virginia (I don't even know who that would be) calling me up to say they could beat Appalachian Power's rates. Have you?

In fact, I know people who are right on the line with Appalachian Power and Craig-Botetourt Electric Cooperative who have tried (within the last year) to switch from one electric company to another, and they have been told they can't do that.

So much for deregulation.

Here is an old story - 1997 - that I found written for The Virginian-Pilot. As you can see, the concerns raised here, mainly that consumers would end up with higher bills and no choice, basically have proven true.

So now here we are, 2007, and the Virginia General Assembly has before it bills to institute "re-regulation" of electric companies. These are House Bills 3068 and Senate Bill 1416.

Essentially these proposed bills would stop deregulation and restore control of your electric bill to the State Corporation Commission (SCC), which previously set rates based on multiple factors, including but not limited to corporate profit.

The proposed bills add consumer protections and place restrictions on the utility's ability to raise rates. It also provides incentives for new generation plants and environmental equipment, all subject to SCC review.

In short, it puts energy costs back in the hands of the government and takes it out of the profit-driven, greedy CEOs and stockholders who only give a damn about themselves and could care less if your grandma freezes to death because she can't afford to heat the house.

I have already told my state representatives that I support "re-regulation."

(And on a similar subject, Verizon is asking the General Assembly to deregulate pricing restrictions on your phone service. A story about it in the Washington Times is here. I don't know about you, but I sure miss AT&T and Ma Bell.)

Outerspace Photos

I ran across some wonderful pictures from the Hubble telescope today. Go and see something beautiful.

The Electric Bill Migraine

I've been having trouble with the photo upload on Blogger of late. Must be the pains of the new version, eh?

Today has brought me a migraine, something I've not had in a while. I am blaming this one on the weather front that is moving in, since it just feels weather-related.

My electricity bill, which I received yesterday, was $300 for last month's use. That is the most it has ever been and is not indicative of an increased use in power, but instead reflects the 25 percent and up increase of Appalachian Power. I have written a couples of stories over the last several years on deregulation of the electric companies, but I don't know that many people can grasp the issue.

The stories I wrote dealt with Craig-Botetourt, one of the power cooperatives. They increased their rates 25 percent in 2005. APCO followed suit this year. I guess they thought Exxon was getting more than its fair share of our "extra" money.

I am not sure the public interest is best served by letting prices rise until we're all broken and bleeding and living in the dark. Some things are rather important and are requirements of basic humanity. Heat is one of those things. And since a great many people heat with electricity in the absence of coal and wood stoves these days, then it appears to me that regulating such a basic necessity might be something to consider.

I have no idea where that came from, as I did not intend to write about electricity when I sat down here. Actually I had nothing on my mind, so here you go. A little blip of something I think about. The price of my electric bill.

Grocery Shopping

I never wanted to grow up to be a grocery clerk.

However, that is what I've become now. Every time I go to Kroger and find they only have two clerks at the checkout, with the lines backed up to the beer in the back, I become a grocery clerk. And I don't get any kind of break for it. No 10 percent off or anything.

I use the "self check outs" only when I have to. I am very slow at them and prefer to use them only when I have less than five items.

Today I had a good 20 items, but the lines were long. The lines in Kroger generally stay long. Then you have to decide if you're going to stand in the line or go through the self-check thing.

When I use the self check outs, I can never find the bar code. I fumble with my food. I try to keep it neat and orderly and can't. Stuff goes everywhere.

That woman's voice irks me, too. "Please scan your item." "Please place the item in the bag." She says that so quickly that you never have time to get the item in the bag before she speaks. And then she'll tell you to do it two or three times because you're not fast enough.

"Please wait." "Please contact the checkout clerk." I get that one a lot. "Please scan the next item." I get that one a lot, too. "Do you have an coupons?" "Thank you for shopping Kroger!"

All of that for $36 worth of food. Which in this day and age, isn't very much.

The old folks at home

Last night came word that my great aunt, Susie, whom I have written about before here and here, is in the hospital.

Most likely she will have to go in a nursing home, apparently the same one my grandmother, who is her sister, is in.

While that will make for easy visiting for family, it won't be an easy chore getting my great aunt to admit she needs care. But she can hardly see, has diabetes, is very frail. ... she's in her 80s. She needs someone to look after her now, just as she looked after everybody else all of those years ago.

It saddens me considerably to see us trotting these older relatives off to the nursing home, but apparently not to the point that I would stand and argue with my husband about inviting them to live with us. For one thing, I know I am not physically or emotionally capable of dealing with either of them, no matter how much I love them. For another, our house is quite small compared to most of my other relatives. But even so, if I thought it would work I would find space for them.

So I am just as guilty as the rest in this throw-away, ignore them attitude society has towards the elderly. Grow old, grow useless certainly seems to be the motto. But up until Aunt Susie went into the hospital, she was crocheting afghans and giving them to the "old people" in the nursing home. She wasn't useless at all. She was still being productive.

My grandmother, on the other hand, hasn't been productive for 20 years. She gave up on living a productive life in 1985, when her house on Riverside Drive in Salem flooded for a fourth time, and never looked back. She is quite content to be catered to.

I must be somewhere in between these two women. I don't mind a little catering if I am very sick, but most of the time I just want to be left alone to do my work, whatever it might be. And I like to be busy doing something. I am not very good at sitting and watching TV.

The way we treat our elderly today is, I think, a very damning indictment on society. Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, Christ said somewhere, or so I am remembering. So just look at what we're doing, tossing these wonderful old folks to the wolves. Shame on us. Shame on me.

I don't know what the answer is. Things are different now. It's not like when folks lived on a farm and you could place a pot of green beans in front of the old folks so they could snap up to take up the time and still be productive. We don't have small chores and jobs and things that make people feel useful, we have machines that do all of that. And I think, regardless of what some might think, that people do need to feel useful.

Feeling useless is about the worst feeling in the world.

The Blue Country

In the far Blue Country I see

hazy dewdrops on a yellow rose.

The blossom sprang

from the heart of a locust

struck by lightning;

I pricked my finger on its thorn.



From that element my magic spread,

seeping into chambers that reverberate

with bird song and the lullaby

of a breeze. Come

to this enchanted place

those vales of dark mist, white shadow

and time in the fringes of the mind.

A Year of Wonders

Last night, the Blue Katt bookclub met for the last time at Blue Katt Gallery. The gallery is closing, but the club will continue on.

We read A Year of Wonders by Gwendolyn Brooks. We all seemed to like the book very much.

Our book club is somewhat, well, different, in that we don't just discuss books. We meander and wander and our minds go off on many different directions. We relate the theme to our lives today. We just dive in and who knows where we'll end up. I love it because it really brings out my creativity.

Last night's book was about the plague in the 1600s in England. Somehow we went from that to the media and its impact upon everything. Don't ask me what tangent we followed to get to that point, as I have no idea.

At one point I noted how the smallest things in the media can make a difference, and spoke about this article in the Guardian (U.K.) about how the media uses "Allah" as opposed to "God" when discussing Islam and related topics. Of course I learned long ago that Allah and God are the same thing. Islamic worshippers worship the same god as the Jews and Christians, they just, like the Jews and Christians, don't agree on everything. It would be rather odd that they did, given the many sects and divisions that this monolistic religion has wrought.

The point about how the media can subconsciously manipulate was well taken with this example, the ladies agreed.

But what would a bookclub meeting be without me acting crazy? I don't know, because I always seem to bring on gales of cackles with my comments. As our discussion continued, we got onto memory and memorizing facts and data. Several of our members are school teachers, and they said they no longer have children memorize.

I suddenly had a commercial from the 1970s come to mind, and I blurted out, "I can remember a jingle from a drugstore company from my childhood." And Dreama says, can you tell us? So what do I do? I start singing:

Evans Drugstore, Evans Drugstore!

Good Prescription Service!
Intersection at Airport

and Williamson Road!

Delivery in the city, and in the county too!

For drugs, comestics, school supplies,

it's Evans Drugstore!

Of course, howls of laughter followed, and then that was added to, and my embarrassement short-lived, when someone else suddenly recited a Crest toothpaste commercial.

I think it is sad that children are not memorizing. I memorized all sorts of stuff - Patrick Henry's speech (Gentlemen may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace!), Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven, (Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door, tis some visitor I muttered, tapping at my chamber door, only this and nothing more) and other various and sundry facts and figures and musings.

Not to mention stories. Once we had an oral tradition, and our lives were passed down through stories and tales told over campfires. We could recite a long line of begats, knowing our ancestry for generations. But we can't do this anymore (well, not most of us, anyway, I can go back seven generations if you really want me to, but we've already established I'm rather weird. Well, okay - there's me, G.H.B., my mother, C.L. Harris, my grandfather, Sally Painter, his mother, George Washington Painter, her father, John Painter, his father, Jacob Painter, his father. There you go. Seven generations, back to 1802).

I can not imagine what we've lost. All of that heritage and lore. Fizzled away and gone. Why, if someone hadn't remembered about this village in England that shut itself away to keep the plague from spreading, there would not have been a book for us to read! At least, not that story.

But I am digressing and losing my thoughts, so I had better get back to work.

Thursday Thirteen

There is a meme called Thursday Thirteen which I learned of from Colleen over at Loose Leaf Notes.

As best I can tell, you list 13 things and it doesn't matter what. I don't see on the TT page anything that says, write about thus and such this week. So I suppose you just do whatever.

As I doubt I could be a regular at this, since I am such a non-follower of rules and things and this has rules if you want to be an "official" member, don't expect too much. I just thought I'd give it a whirl and see if I could even come up with 13 things.

So here I go. I think I am writing about "cold."


1. We had our first real winter weather earlier this week. Mostly ice, and only enough to make me worry if I could get the car in and out of the driveway. Which, after a day of warmer weather, was not a problem.

2. I met with a client this morning who had a cold. Within six hours, I had a cold. Can we say "low immune system"?

3. My feet stay cold and I keep a small heater at my desk. It doesn't seem to help but this part of the house stays warm because the little heater keeps the heat pump from cutting off and on. The thermostat's back here.

4. My body temperature as a rule runs about 96.7 degrees, which is far colder than the 98.6 it is supposed to be. When I have a 100 degree temperature, I am really running a high fever. But it is very difficult to make the doctors understand this.

5. There are 18,800,000 results for the word "cold" if you plug it into Google.

6. I have been using Zicam Cold remedy whenever I catch a cold. I came home and used some today in the hopes of keeping my client's cold at bay.

7. I own quilts made by my grandmother, my husband's grandmother, and my great aunt. We sleep under one my grandmother gave us to stave off the cold, but it is store-bought not handmade. The handmade ones are too precious for every day use.

8. I don't mind the cold, but the wind drives me crazy. Give me zero and no wind over 30 and windy any time.

9. I think I average about 10 colds a year. I have to be careful because I go into bronchitis very easily.

10. I like for it to snow and then melt. That is the best kind of cold and snow.

11. Sometimes I look outside and it just looks cold. That, of course, is because it is.

12. My husband rarely catches cold. He is very healthy.

13. I bet they cure the common cold before they cure cancer. There's not as much money in the common cold.

The Long Tuesday

I spent the day in a supervisors' meeting, watching the proceedings. That is what I am and what I do. I am a Watcher.

Most newspaper people probably are. We watch and take notes and wrinkle our nose at the things that make no sense to us. Then we try to sort it all out and make it make sense to everyone else.

During the afternoon session I nearly fell asleep as the men droned on and on about zoning. Without citizens there to liven things up with objections or consternation, it grew very wearying indeed.

My head ached when I finally returned home at 3:30 p.m. and I've been good for nothing ever since I entered the house (it's 5 p.m. now). I ate something, figuring the hurried lunch I'd grabbed was having a poor effect upon my pitiful brain. My mind isn't quite so languid now.

The winter weather seems to have withered away, though I see now they're calling for a chance of snow showers tomorrow. I have to drive to Salem tomorrow so I hope that shan't occur. I am not much on driving in bad weather if I can keep from it.

All in all, not a bad day, just a busy one. Some days it seems I just move from one activity to the next, with little thought inbetween. It's not a bad way to live, being productive and busy, but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

By Susanna Clark
850 pages

I received this book for Christmas and finished it last night. It is a very long book.

Now, what to say about it? If you like fantasy, or mystery, or both, as I do, you probably will like this. This isn't a fantasy of the Tolkien vein, as we've no elves. Just faeries, two magicians, and lots of weather magic.

The two characters for which the book is titled are wonderfully flawed fellows who you ultimately really like or wish to strangle. You will wonder at times who is villain and who is king, and who is really doing what to whom and who (or what) is ultimately in control. You will wonder and still not know.

Magic will be found throughout the pages of the book, but it is a dull sort of magic, such as building sturdy walls. There aren't fireballs and wands and meteors whizzing about. This is magic as magic might be if indeed it did really exist. It is exciting magic all the same.

But deeper - a good book is always deeper - there are commentaries on madness and the ability of the masses to create or cause a new method or mode of doing things. Maybe there is even a commentary here on the power of prayer or the supernatural ability of all of mankind, if we put our minds to it, to do the unthinkable, for good or ill.

The first 100 pages are slow and you will want to not finish this book. That would be a mistake, I think. So keep reading, or skip a few pages if you must. And there are footnotes, too, which, I confess, I either skimmed or read entirely. The great thing about reading a book is it is your do with what you wish, after all. The footnotes make the fiction read like a scholarly tome, but there are many gems amongst the footnotes (which are smaller than the regular type and just a little hard on tired ol' eyes, I fear).

Go forth, be Strange. Read a book.

Character

Last week I went to a lecture on "Character". Actually, it was titled "Presidential Character and Leadership: Sex, Drugs, and Lies in the White House."

Peter Coogan, associate professor of History at Hollins University, gave the talk at The Glebe, a local retirement community.

I went because I wanted to. I really miss school sometime. I loved college.

Anyway, the gist of this lecture was that in the 20th century, the presidents have been either good or bad for the country, and in looking at their character and integrity, it seems the bad presidents have been good guys who didn't cheat on their wives, but were lousy at leading. The good presidents slept with every woman they met, but were able to solve problems so that the country could move forward.

Our current president fell among the "bad" presidents. I imagine that suprises no one who looks at poll ratings these days.

The professor did not define character except to look at the 20th century presidents in terms of marital fidelity, substance abuse use, military service, integrity (did the president lie to the public), and health (did the president lie about his health).

Character (and integrity) are nebulous words, I think. We call someone a "character" when they stand out. But we say a person has "character" when they are morally intact. We expect a church leader, for instance, to have character, not necessarily be a character.
With elections, character often comes into play. This person has more character than the other. Generally they mean something like, "he inhaled and I didn't," or something along those lines.

The 2008 presidential election seemsto have a slate full of characters. The professor indicated we've boiled our elections down to voting for someone with similiar values (someone with good moral character) or a problem solver (someone who will fix the economy, or end a war). The problem solvers apparently have no qualms about doing, well, whatever.

We will have local elections this year and will be choosing new Botetourt supervisors. This question of "character" versus "problem solver" probably has local ramifications as well. As far as I know, our supervisors are generally folks of character and integrity who live morally and socially proper lives. They work hard to raise their families and to direct the county in a manner they believe proper.

Three of those seats will be up for election. Word on the street is at least one, if not two, of those seats will have no incumbent running for office.

That means a massive turnover for a board that has, for the most part, been steady and quiet at the helm of the county for at least a decade.

We will be having a change. Will it be a change of character? Will we have candidates running who are of fine moral fiber but unable to solve our problems? Can they identify the county's problems? Will they see growth as a problem, or will they see the county's efforts to rein in growth as the problem? Do they want a Walmart in Buchanan? Will they allow a methadone clinic at the corner of Country Club and U.S. 220?

This will be a big year for this county. Our character will change. I hope the citizenry pays attention. I hope, at least, they vote.

Friday Thinker

My life has become very busy of late. I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, it means I have lots of work (for it is article-writing that is taking up my time). On the other hand, it means . . . I have lots of work.

It seems to me every time I commit myself to my personal projects, like trying to finish my novel or a similar endeavor, the newspaper writing picks up with a bang. And I'm overwhelmed to the point where I am too pooped to think straight when afternoon comes. Realistically speaking, I generally only have about four hours of good working time when I am at my best. The rest of the day I am either tired, perplexed, or preoccupied.

There's little to do but take it all in stride and move forward, one meeting and one article at a time, day by day.

***

Yesterday I had acupuncture. I do this for multiple reasons. My balance and ear issues seem to respond to this sort of treatment and it has helped with my depression, too. I also take Chinese herbs. My TCM doctor keeps playing with my herb formulas, though. I tried the latest version out this morning.

About two hours later, while in a meeting, I developed a really bad headache. I don't know if it was the medicine or the meeting. Or neither.

***

My meeting this morning was with my editor and a staff reporter to determine what aticles should go in a special edition. I will have about 20 articles to write for this in the next 10 weeks, so life will continue to be interesting.

Maybe I just need better time management.

The Truck

My husband drives a Ford F250 pick up truck. He bought it in January 2001, so it is six years old. It has less than 50,000 miles on it because he uses it mostly around the farm.

[There is supposed to be a picture of his truck here, but Blogger seems to be having issues this morning.]

Last summer, a hay bale, one of those large round rolls, fell off a wagon into the side of his truck. So we had to get that fixed.

Then just before Christmas, he hit a deer and messed up the front end.

He took the truck in to have that repaired last week. He brought the truck home and discovered that during the repair, the mechanics messed up the fender on the other side of the truck while trying to put the bumper back on.

So this morning he dropped his truck off on the way home from the fire station and I met him there. It meant I had to get up early, exercise, dress, etc., all before 8 a.m.

I am so not a morning person.

Anyway, this truck is like my husband's second skin, and I fear that since this one has now been officially "wrecked" twice, he is going to want another. A new truck to replace his would cost about $35,000.

We only paid $55,000 for this house.

Just a Monday

This is the Peaks of Otter as seen from my house. Well, you have to move a little bit below the tree line to see it, but not far. I shot this yesterday using the zoom. The sky was a little hazy. I haven't been to the top of the Peaks in years.

I spent the morning writing articles, then I went to the grocery. I ran into someone there I had not seen in at least 20 years. We were once very good friends and shared some strange and interesting times. Some of those times bordered on illegal but included things like going to see a particular style of movie together to celebrate one of us turning 18 (which was the age at which you were supposed to be able to legally watch this kind of movie). This was at a drive-in movie theater (so it was a long time ago) and I still remember a couple of guys walking by the car and then stopping to stare at us. One of them called out, "Hey, there's a couple of chicks here watching this!" as if it was okay for a truckload of guys to be there but not two girls. Oy vey.

We also went to concerts together at Lakeside Amusement Park. This was during 1981, I think it was. I can't remember who we went to see but they were "B" listers, not top draws, generally speaking. But we did that the entire summer, going nearly every Saturday night.

So anyway, we stood in the aisle in the grocery store talking for a very long time. She lives only about three miles from me and has for years. I can't believe we've lived so close and never once ran into one another. On top of that, she works at the same bank as my sister-in-law and never made the connection. We parted with absolutely no plans to see one another again. Which is probably just as well.

Spring in January

We had a little flurry of snow last week. It was cold enough for that then. But now it is gardening weather again. I think it hit 70 degrees here today.

Last night I spied some deer sneaking through the yard. It was 5:15 p.m. in January with overcast skies. I had not tried out my new Canon camera in low-level light. Any other camera would have given me only black that I maybe could have contrasted an image out of in photo software. Aside from cropping this, it is untouched.

I was much further away when I took this shot, and still, aside from a little graininess, the images captured nicely. I am very pleased as the only other camera I've ever had that would do this well at dusk or low light was my 35 mm Nikon FG 50, a very old camera. This is only cropped also.

This is blooming in the garden. A whole bunch of this came up in the mulched soil where we left the ground fallow over winter. I am guessing it is what I have heard the elders call a "dry land cress." Actually, it looks like the "True Watercress" in my field guild but that is only supposed to bloom from April on and should be near or in springs and streams, not in the compost in the garden.

We buried Uncle C.

Yesterday, my husband's aunt came in with his cousins. Uncle C. died on Sunday, in Georgia, where they lived. But he was from Fincastle originally and wanted to be buried in Godwin Cemetery (which is where the above picture was taken).

I only met Uncle C. a few times. He was a pilot for a major airline and the family did not come home to Botetourt often. I like my husband's cousins and his aunts; they all welcomed me most graciously into the family.

Uncle C. was cremated in Georgia, and they held a memorial service there. Then they all came north to us.

Aunt N. had a graveside service for her husband of 52 years. The day was partly cloudy and quite cold. It is always windy and cold up on the hill in Godwin Cemetery, even in July. I bundled up and had on ear muffs, thankfully, or I could not have withstood it. As it was, several of the older folks were visibly shivering and many of us huddled together for warmth.

The preacher came from Georgia with Aunt N. and gave a nice eulogy and the prerequisite sermon to save our souls. Unfortunately, considering the cold of the day, it seemed rather long-winded. But as I told my husband later, we all deserve our last words, however cold it may be when they're said.

Uncle C. had served in the Air Force, so an honor guard attended. A buglar played taps while two other servicemen unfolded a flag and then refolded it. We could not figure out the symbolism of this, but my husband finally decided that because there was no casket and no place to drap the flag, they unfolded and refolded. Perhaps some serviceman reading this knows?

Afterwards, with feet so cold we cold scarcely walk from the hilltop, we trooped down to the meeting room in the church for a luncheon and get-together. There were about 65 of us, a nice number, I thought, considering how long it's been since Uncle C. lived in the area. Many of the folks in town remembered him and came to pay their respects.

Funerals are sad times, but they are also about the only times families get together anymore. The days of cousins twice-removed who know one another are about gone. These days you could be marrying your cousin and not even know it, we're so scattered about.

Farewell, Uncle C. Rest peacefully.

My guitars

This is a Gibson Les Paul. I think it was made in the early 1970s. My parents gave it to me as a Christmas present in the late 1980s. It is an electric guitar, for those who might not know.

This is a Yamaha acoustic guitar. My paternal grandfather gave it to me in 1980. It is rather beat up but is my favorite.

I also have a Takamani classical guitar, an Epiphone electric guitar, and an Alvarez acoustic guitar. I bought the Takamani in the late 1980s, when I was taking lessons. I received the Epiphone as a Christmas present from my parents when I was 14. My mother gave me the Alvarez in June of 2000, just before she died in August.

The Alvarez is a nice guitar but a little big for me.

I actually can play the guitar, and I used to play it very well. I don't play as much as I once did. Actually I play about twice a year and that means, really, that I don't play at all.

Sometimes I really miss playing, but I've no one to make music with, no one to spur me on to move forward with it. When I feel mellow, I pick it up and maybe eek out a few sounds. But of course I am rusty and it doesn't take long for my fingers to start hurting.

Once I thought of going professional, and I used to play in a rock band when I was in high school. At 18 I headed off for a college in Tennessee to major in music at my parents' insistence, but I lasted only two days there before I packed everything up and came back home. I did not want to major in music, I wanted to major in English at Hollins, which is what I eventually did.

The guitars take up a lot of space in the closet. When I am cleaning, I sometimes think I should get rid of three of them. Who needs five guitars?

But I never get beyond thinking about it. It is hard to let go.

Hodge Podge

I'm having a difficult time finishing a story, a phenomenon that generally happens when I really care about the substance of the article and want it to read like the best thing ever written.

Generally I do better when I don't feel like I must write a prize-winner. That's way too much pressure. So I'm taking a little break to regroup before I venture back to the story.

***
Yesterday, I had a gusher of a nose bleed, the worst I believe I've ever had. Having spent the last week sniffling and clearing my throat, I can't say I am surprised. This morning I had extremely dark circles under my eyes. I looked like I'd been hit, which I had not.

My ear is bothering me, too. I am not experiencing vertigo but I am a little out of balance.

***
My evening will be long as I must attend a meeting. I am already cooking dinner and it's only 2:30 p.m., because I will be leaving at 5:30 p.m. I don't expect to get back before midnight, to be honest. The meeting officials told me to bring my pajamas to the meeting, if that says anything. It was a joke, of course.

***
My husband's uncle died Saturday after a bought with lung cancer. Uncle C. generally refused treatment, I have been told (he lives out of state) but he lasted much longer than anyone expected even if he had had conventional therapies. Since my mother died of cancer, I am quite afraid of that Big C word, but I try not to worry about it. My dream is to die in my sleep when I'm very old, but I also know few people really go out that way. My mother was only 56 when she died. But my grandmothers are both still alive, and in their mid-80s. I hope I am more like them than my mother, at any rate.

***
I have not purchased a new video game since this time last year. That was FABLE on XBox, which I never finished. That's because I developed vertigo and found playing the game made me dizzy. I like RPG games where I get to be the first-person character, and I prefer a first person game like MORROWIND to something in third person, like FABLE. (It has to do with how you see the game - in Fable, you see the character running around, in Morrowind, you just see the ground in front of you, as if you were seeing it with your own eyes.)

I really like video games and have lost many hours playing them. At present I am just playing with The Sims 2, because I don't have anything new. I also have told myself I cannot put anything on my computer.

I desperately want to play Morrowind: Oblivion, but I don't have an XBOX 360 and I suspect it would crash my computer. Plus I have told myself I cannot buy a new video game until I've written a book.

So it might be a really long time before I get a new video game.

My first game system was an Atari, and the game on it was Pong, I think, if that tells you how long I've been playing. I was a very weird girl. I can't think of how much money I've spent over the years on video games. Probably as much as on books.

Am I a Stump?

Years ago, I attended a lecture by Sharon McCrumb, a local author who's "made it." This was when she writing her ballad novels, and at the time I had not read a single one (I've since listened to a couple as books on tape). In fact, I had attempted to read her first book and found it so difficult to stay with that I had abandoned it.

But she was published and winning awards, so she must have been doing something right. She once was a columnist for one of the newspapers I was writing for at the time. She went on to bigger and better things. I wanted to see how she did it.

So I went to the lecture at the Blue Ridge Library. She evidently made quite an impression, as I recall much about her talk. For one thing, she believed the Blue Ridge Mountains were part of a larger chain of the mountains of Scotland, separated by the Atlantic by seismic activity or something. Since I'd long heard from my Irish and Scottish ancestors that the area reminded them of home, I had no trouble believing this.

Then the talk turned to writing. She said it takes great dedication to write a novel (I should think so). If I'm remembering this correctly, (and I may not be) she said she sent out a book synopsis and received a positive response. But she had to turn in some number of pages or her first draft, perhaps, and so she had to do all of this writing. I presume she had a deadline to meet.

She said she sat crying and writing one Halloween because she could not be with her child during the trick-or-treat part. She had to work while her family was enjoying themselves. The idea was, then, that if you're not ready to completely deny everything else to meet the deadlines, then you're not ready to write a novel.

Or at least, that is what I took away from that talk.

Over the years, I've wondered if this is why I am very good at shorter things, like news articles (or blog entries) but not so good at sticking with something longer. I don't put the longer works first. I put my husband first, actually. And that means keeping up the house and the laundry and fixing dinner, and trying to have an income to contribute to the household. The income part means writing short little articles, because I know I can pay the bills with those.

So maybe I am not a novelist.

But there is also a part of me that thinks that an hour spent with your child during trick-or-treating would have stopped the flow of tears and wouldn't have made that much difference in any piece of work. How many words can you write in an hour, after all, particularly if you're that upset? Isn't there some line between sacrifice and living?

I have written a novel. I have two completed in the drawer; neither will probably ever see the light of day. And I've started several and not finished them, for whatever reason. Sometimes I lose interest, and if I've lost interest, I suspect my reader will too, so I boot that one out.

I write a lot. I write about 250 articles a year. My blog entries, if you put them in MS Word, run into hundreds of pages. I have journals piled in closets, bits of poetry stashed about. It is not that I don't write.

It is what I am writing. I am searching for something here, some answers, maybe even the questions.

I think I am searching for what it is I really want. I am searching, maybe, for the way to find out how to even begin that search.

My new Canon Camera

At noon today, I ventured outside and found a dandelion growing in my garden. On January 6, 2007. When it should be snowing.

I took this at 7:45 a.m. this morning. I have a thing about light and sky and clouds. . . .

Took this at noon, too. The silo is visible from my office window and I look at it all the time.

This is the cabin, or what's left of it, beside the house. I took this shot with the Canon on automatic.

I took this shot of the same thing with the no-more Kodak in early December, I think. Which do you like best?

Best of all, this morning, I pointed the Canon at the moon, and clicked. And what do you know. I shot the moon.

Bye Bye, Pretty Boy

I came home around 5:15 p.m. to find the pick up truck of one of my husband's friends in the driveway. He was hunting.

Just before dark, there was a shot.

My husband called to alert me that his friend had shot our crippled deer. Pretty Boy was dead.

Don't go outside, he advised.

Unfortunately, I was on my way to town to run an errand that could not wait. As I went out to the car, I could see the truck headlights, next to the fence. Pretty Boy had been close by, near the house (though not too near). I felt a pang as I wondered if he'd been up here where he thought he was safe. The night was heavy with the coming darkness and the hint of rain, and I was sure I could smell the foul metallic scent of blood on the air. I scurried into my car and headed out.

Later, my husband said his friend told him the deer had been shot, "by some dumbass hunter" who went after a young buck. None of our hunters shoot young small antlered deer and we don't allow it, anyway. Bucks have to be a certain size to qualify for a shot, and Pretty Boy wasn't big enough.

Pretty Boy gave me much joy. I loved seeing him in the backyard, nose to the ground as he snarfed up acorns. I enjoyed our "talks" during warm summer nights. He was not a pet, but he was as close to having a pet as I have had in many years.

Farewell Pretty Boy. It'll be a long time before I name another deer.

An update on Pretty Boy

Pretty Boy is a little buck that was running around our house for most of the summer. I named him after seeing him so often and because I would stop the car, roll down the window, and talk to him. He seemed unafraid and curious. I took this photo in late August.

I hadn't seen Pretty Boy much since hunting season in November. It's not unusual, though, for the deer to roam far and wide during the mating season. Plus, well, it was hunting season. And while I knew no one who was hunting our farm had killed Pretty Boy, that didn't mean some of the neighbors had not.

Pretty Boy still lives, but he has been wounded. My husband saw him Wednesday morning for the first time, and he was limping badly. His right front leg is dangling uselessly from his body.

Muzzle-loading season is in until this Saturday. I think if my husband sees Pretty Boy again, he will shoot him to put him out of his misery. The entire shoulder looked swollen when I happened across him in the driveway and saw him by the car lights last night. It was all I could do to keep from crying as I watched him limp away. It broke both our hearts to see this little buck looking so pitiful as he tried to manuever the fields.

We don't know if he was hit by a car or hit with a bullet. Maybe he just misstepped and broke his leg in a hole. But most likely, from the looks of his leg and shoulder, he is full of infection and will die anyway. Mother Nature just generally is not kind to her charges when they've fallen prey to misfortune.

This is just "one of those things" and part of life, but it still tugs at my heart. I should never have named him and singled him out. Doing so just makes it feel very personal.

The old and the new

I met this morning with a former client, who is, for a little while, a client again. He called before the holidays, saying he needed some assistance.

I'd helped him for several years with his project, which officially ended last spring. He has written a book, which he calls a textbook. It's filled with facts and stats and I know a lot more about a particular war than I ever dreamed I would know.

The book is not exactly dreadful but neither does it offer up much new information, which I suppose is primary for a nonfiction book. Of course there is little new information because my client used mostly secondary sources. I think he has about four footnotes in the entire 550+ page tome that are primary sources.

The kicker is my client is in his 80s. He is a kindly old gentleman, very much the southerner with polite manners and a pleasing drawl. Without giving too much away, not because he knows anything about the Internet but his children or grandchildren might, he was once a leader of grand proportion in this area of the country. And I suppose in some circles he still is a leader. He has a commanding presence and an indomitable spirit, and I imagine in his younger days he was a very handsome man. I am truly honored to have been a helper to him and I have learned a great deal from my time with him.

However, the work was downright painful for me. For years - yes, really, years - our twice-weekly work sessions went like this: he sat on the sofa while I sat, pen poised over a legal pad, in a wing-backed chair that killed my back. He would not use a tape recorder, nor could I use a laptop or anything else because it created a barrier between us that he did not like. He wanted my full attention.

He sat, thinking, for long interminable minutes, sometimes as much as a quarter hour. Many times I dozed, waking with a start as my head lolled. Sometimes I wrote scraps of poetry, but I could not get too far off in my thoughts because at any moment he would erupt into dictation. Occasionally it would be such a long time that I would fear he had stopped breathing, and I would begin peering at him. I would be greatly relieved when I could see his nose hairs twitching, a sure sign that he had inhaled.

I was not his first "secretary," but when I picked up this task (thinking it would be more editorial work than personal secretary, I assure you) I think he had about 250 pages of words. He added (he very seldom subtracts) much more information. Every time he found a new book, he would find new facts to place in his story. Over the years, he sent the thing off to one publisher, who turned him down, and then another, who also turned him down, and yet another, who did the same.

In our last year of working, that is to say, 2005, my patience lapsed, not in the least because I was bored out of my skull. I also had many other things on my mind, as I was working on my Master's (which I have not completed) and freelancing, and when he called me back in early 2006 for some wrap-up work (like we're doing now) I was ill. I was - and still am - certain that his house, which is musty and moldy because it is an older home, under the trees, was a contributing factor to the allergies that flared up so badly last year that I thought I might die from them.

I never told him I was miserable but I suppose he could sense it and our time together petered out, because I lost interest totally and the book was, as best I could tell, as finished as it was going to be. Having decided that the book was never going to sell, and that he would never turn his attention to another more exciting project (I do wish he'd write his memoirs), I found the work even more difficult, and I did not feel it ended well. I was, however, glad it ended.

Of course, a large part of what he was paying me for was my company, because I can carry on a decent conversation, and could match him with observations about the political climate in the valley, or most anything else, for that matter. But that eventually became a chore too, because I wasn't feeling well.

I kept in touch with him last year, calling him twice just to see how he was getting along. I don't dislike him, after all, and he has been kind to me. His call asking me for assistance wasn't completely unexpected, as he'd hinted at it the last time we spoke, in September.

I thought he had given up, with the submission last spring, but he now has yet another publisher's name. He told me this morning that he wants to make minor corrections and send it out yet again. About 12 hours work, all told, perhaps.

I can do this.

Things were a little different this morning. He was prepared for me, with notes in hand, and we sat at the kitchen table (thank goodness) instead of on the sofa and the wing back chair. The house still smells musty and old, but hopefully my (very expensive) allergy medication will keep whatever that might stir up at bay. And while I had some moments of utter silence whilst I stared out the window and watched two squirrels go at it on a branch while he thought about something, it was, for the most part, work.

And I much prefer to work, but honestly, I'd probably help the old guy out just because.

Year of Wonders

Last night I finished reading Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks. This is a book about the bubonic plague in 1666 and the residents of one town who chose, for the most part, to cut itself off the rest of the world.

My book club is reading this book. I would never have chosen it on my own, thinking the subject matter too dreary and depressing. That would have been a mistake, for this is a great book.

The narrator is Anna Frith. She's a servant to the rector and his wife. She comes into her own during this time of crisis and learns a great deal about herself and humanity. Brooks brings us the best and worst of people.

Even though this is set in 1666, I had no trouble seeing the characterizations. During any time of severe strain and trauma, there are heroes, and there are those who would take advantage of the situation. Brooks minces no words, yet there is always hope.

Great writing. Good story. Highly recommended reading.

2007

HAPPY NEW YEAR!