Moving On

(Note: This was written 4/23/07 and appeared in a local publication several days later.)

The soil was cool in my hands as I sifted it. Saturday morning the air was still, crisp and clean, a relief from the ill winds that blew in earlier in the week.

The sky overhead seemed an endless blue ceiling leading to heaven.
My garden had waited long enough for me to bring some green to it. I mapped out my rows, then I struck at the dirt with my favorite hoe, the one that says “Real Tools for Kids” on the side.

As my tool thwacked against the ground, the songbirds heralded the day with a Hallelujah chorus. The dove cooed, a blue jay squawked, the robin with a nest in the spruce next to the garden fussed eloquently at me as I perspired.

The earth smelled sweet and the fragrance buoyed my spirits better than any man-made perfume.

The ancient garden rake let me down as its metal part separated from wood. I stared at it a while before trudging inside for duct tape.

Not the best fix, but it worked.

The raking and hoeing done, I dropped to my knees with cabbage and lettuce plants in hand. The tiny shoots pulled easily from their container, and I talked to each as I patted soil around the roots.
“You’ll like it out here, there’s a lot more sunshine,” I promised.

The lettuce, which had been in the garage since the cold snap, was looking especially peaked and in need of light.

Next I made rows of radishes, green beans, kale and cucumbers, then piled up the dirt for a couple of hills of squash. I pushed my luck with some of the vegetables, the ones with “plant after no chance of frost” on them. But I am gambling that the cold weather has passed and we’re on our way to summer.

Garden planted, I turned to the flower beds. My roses were growing heartily a few weeks ago, but now leaves, deadened by frost bite, dangled from branches. Snip. Snip. Some well-placed cuts and the plants looked perky again.

The sun blazed and a cool breeze dried my face, red with heat and effort, while I took a rest with a glass of water. Soil dotted my T-shirt and the knees of my jeans were caked with mud.

I said a quiet prayer as I thought about the long week. What a time of loss and sorrow, of bad omens and brave heroics those days had been. At the time it did not seem the week could end with a beautiful Saturday.

But it did. Mother Nature brought a day of comfort and renewal.

It was a moving on.

Thursday Thirteen

1. I picked up a copy today of the Consumer Information Catalog from my local library.

2. You can order useful phamplets from this. The information is created by goverment entities.

3. In the past I have ordered information on topics such as oral cancer in an effort to get my husband to stop chewing tobacco.

4. My efforts went unheeded.

5. The publications range from free to $15.00.

6. Topics range from cars (buying a new car) to computer to education to employment to food.

7. Something like "Your Right to Federal Records" on the Freedom of Information Act costs $1.

8. A phamplet on Restaurant and Take-Out Safety costs you nothing.

9. I plan to order several phamplets on allergies. They are free.

10. I might order one on cholesterol. It is free, too.

11. I think some of the documents that they charge for should be free and some of the free ones maybe should have a charge.

12. For example, it costs $2.75 for a copy of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence.

13. Now I know the price of knowledge of democracy: $2.75.

The Cold Snap

The April cold snap has done a lot of damage to the vegetation. I was at Ikenberry's Monday and G. told me they'd lost about half of their fruit crop.

Apples and peaches will be scarce and expensive this summer, I fear.

This is the view out my window now:



This is what it looked like before the cold snap:



Isn't the first picture scary? I am hoping the trees will recover, but when I was walking Sunday and examining the oaks, I saw little sign of new leaves.

Now we have this odd juxtaposition of dead growth and new growth. It is weird.

I think global warming is misnamed. It should be called global environmental change, because I think that more adequately describes what is happening. The environment is changing.

I wonder if the trees will adapt.

Save Chocolate!

Like OMG.

The FDA wants to change the rules for chocolate making. They want to let "real chocolate" be made not with cocoa butter but with fat substitutes. Vegetable fat.

You can read about it here in the L.A. Times. In part, it says:

The FDA is entertaining a "citizen's petition" to allow manufacturers to substitute vegetable fats and oils for cocoa butter.

The "citizens" who created this petition represent groups that would benefit most from this degradation of the current standards. They are the Chocolate Manufacturers Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers Assn., the Snack Food Assn. and the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn. (OK, I'm not sure what's in it for them), along with seven other food producing associations.

This is what they think of us chocolate eaters, according to their petition on file at the FDA:

"Consumer expectations still define the basic nature of a food. There are, however, no generally held consumer expectations today concerning the precise technical elements by which commonly recognized, standardized foods are produced. Consumers, therefore, are not likely to have formed expectations as to production methods, aging time or specific ingredients used for technical improvements, including manufacturing efficiencies."

Let me translate:
"Consumers won't know the difference."

I don't know about you, but I will notice the difference. Cocoa butter chocolate melts in your mouth; its the texture that gives good chocolate its nearly orgasmic sensations. We already have "imitation" chocolate - and I don't eat it. It's the stuff you try to pawn off on kids when you accidentally purchase it at the store.

They don't eat it either.

The scarier thing about this is that essentially this "citizen petition" is asking for a complete relaxation of food standards by the FDA on the basis that we have labels now and if we don't read them to see that things in the food will kill us that's our problem.

This is a request to relaxe food standards.

The lack of government oversight during recent years has brought us the peanut butter scare, the dog food scare, the spinach scare, etc., etc. ad naseum .... need I say more about what we're in for if food standards are lessened? It's not just about the taste.

Read the FDA thing for yourself here. If you want to comment, go here.

Thanks to redsneakz over at Separation Anxiety for pointing this out.

The Gaffe

Thursday I had reason to be at the funeral home to offer condolences.

My in-laws and husband came too, as our dear departed was a family friend. Most of the neighborhood and town turned out to say farewell to the elderly woman.

After we had all paid our respects, we stood around as people do, looking over the room, making sure we hadn't missed any family members. A lady spotted me and flung up a hand, "Hey A.," she said.

"Oh, hi! Have you met my mother-in-law? E. F., this is Lynn B.," I said, as politely and helpfully as one could be.

They shook hands. "Nice to meet you, I'm Jane J.," said the erroneously labeled newcomer.

Properly mortified, what could I say? "I'm sorry, I mistook you for Lynn B., I never realized before how much you look alike," I stammered.

In hindsight, they look nothing alike, but at the funeral parlor, and particularly with Lynn B.'s name on my mind because my mother-in-law had mentioned her to me just a few moments before, I could have sworn they were twins.

I can only imagine how Jane J. relayed that conversation to her husband, who is actually someone I do know on sight. In my defense, I think I've actually met Jane J. twice in my lifetime, but still, I should know her on sight.

Unfortunately I deal with a lot of people in my work, and folks whom I spent an hour interviewing (occasionally years and years before) sometimes thinks that means I know who they are. It's not unusual for me to be accosted in the grocery store by strangers who read my work in the paper and think they know me. In fact I rarely get through the store without somebody stopping me for a chat. Generally speaking I don't mind; I like to chat. And who knows when another story for the paper will come out of a greeting.

But I do get greatly embarrassed when I can't remember names. Sometimes I just pretend I know who these people are, and they walk away apparently without realizing I am clueless. (And usually remain clueless, never to know who the heck I was talking to.) Other times I say, "I'm so sorry, I know I should know who you are, but I can't seem to recall."

People don't like it if you don't remember who they are. I understand that; your name is an important part of your identity. This is a real problem for me; I can recall faces but if someone is "out of place" I have a very difficult time remembering them. I do name association things, like "Karen works at the Kourthouse" or "Annie at APCO" to try to remember, but it does not always work. And when you deal with hundreds of different people throughout the year, well, it gets confusing.

Since I have such difficulty recalling names, I usually introduce myself right away to people when I call or greet them. One of the most memorable times I did that was when I called a lawyer I had worked for seven years prior to ask for a referral. "Hi Walt, this is A., remember? I worked for you at . . . ."

His somewhat incredulous response was along the lines of, "Of course I remember, I'd have to be a complete idiot to forget." And what do you say to that?

And then there are people I recognize but haven't seen in a while, and I sometimes say something like, "Hey! It's A., remember, we met at thus and so ..." and they usually look annoyed and say "Of course I remember."

I fear they take it as an insult when I re-introduce myself to them.

So having made this terrible gaffe most recently, I scratch my head and wonder how to overcome this obvious deficit in my brain functioning. It is a problem I suspect will only worsen as I age.

"Remember me? Good, 'cause I've forgotten you." Yikes. I haven't, not really. I know who you are.

I just don't know your name.

Give Peace a Chance

After the rather rough week we've had here in Virginia, it seems fitting to remind fellow bloggers of the Peace Globe. On June 6, 2007, bloggers will once again show the world that they're intent on stopping violence.

The Peace Globe promotion is the brainchild of Mimi over at MimiWrites. You can get your own peace globe there, if you like.

I hope anyone interested in peace will participate. Maybe it's a good time to remember the events of April 16, too, and wonder how we can stop such a thing from ever happening again.

I pray for peace on each and every day, and I hope that peace finds you and holds you close. Remember to tell the folks you care about that you love them.

Book: Full Bloom

Audio book
Full Bloom, by Janet Evanovich & Charlotte Hughes
Read by Lorelei King

This book doesn't have the laughs that Stephanie Plum brings in Evanovich's other books, but it was interesting enough.

Annie has lots of problems. She has a ghost, a wedding to plan that will be held in her bed and breakfast, a drunken hired hand, and a missing husband.

Enter Wes, a private eye who poses as a photographer. He was hired by Annie's mother-in-law, who suspects Annie killed her husband. Along the way to resolution there is a rolling pin, a body, an arrest, a drunken binge, a pair of underwear with hearts on them ... it's not a madcap but it is fun.

3.75 stars

Books: Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series.
Audio books (mostly read by Lorelei King)

Vols. 1-12

Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books are a hoot. Stephanie Plum is bounty hunter, a rather inept one, at that.

She has two boyfriends and a grandmother who constantly crack me up.

That said, I confess I haven't "read" a one of the books; I have listened to every one of them as an audiobook. Sometimes they are so funny I have to stop the car and laugh. Sometimes I sit in the car in the driveway just to keep listening.

They are that good.

4.5 stars (all Stephanie Plum books)

Book: Trickster's Choice

Trickster's Choice, by Tamora Pierce
Copyright 2003
425 pages

Tamora Pierce writes fantasy that ends up in the teen genre, though I don't know why. I read it and thoroughly enjoy her work.

Trickster's Choice brings us young Aly, daughter of Alanna, the King's Champion. Aly needs a direction. She wants to be a spy like her father, George, but her parents frown on that. She decides to take a little adventure and gets herself kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Enter a trickster god and you have the makings of an intriguing fanciful plot to bring a new ruler to the throne. Along the way Aly realizes her skills, makes friends, and earns her freedom.

Great book.

4.5 stars (I'd give it 5 but it starts out a little slow.)

Thursday Thirteen: Being Green

Things I do in the name of being environmentally friendly:

1. Recycle old newspapers.

2. Take my magazines and old books to the library, where they are either added to the shelves or sold to fund Friends of the Library initiatives.

3. Use the energy-saver light bulbs in all my ceiling lights.

4. Have the water-saver toilets and shower heads.

5. Recycle plastics, including grocery bags (I really need to find some good canvas totes).

6. Buy veggies from the local farmers.

7. Grow my own food in a garden every year.

8. Turned down the temperature in the hot water heater.

9. Completely unplug appliances I don't use.

10. Use the library a lot instead of buying new books.

11. Put as many stops as I can into my trips, so that I am not making multiple trips in the car to run errands.

12. I drive a car that gets good gas mileage (30+ mpg).

13. I write about conservation issues in order to make people think about what they're doing.

The wind still blows

The wind took the top out of this cedar tree, which is beside my house:

Said tree top ended up in the fence, tearing out a post completely. Husband replaced it right away because otherwise the cows would be in the yard.

The winds have been tremendous for the last two days. I have had to stay indoors because the wind makes my ear hurt terribly. When I went out to take those photos, I put on earmuffs and a scarf to keep the wind from causing me pain.

As far as I'm concerned, we've come through the windstorm unscathed. A broken tree top and fence line is pretty much nothing. I know we have schools out because of power outages, and we've been quite lucky in that regard. It's blinked, but that is all.

I am hoping for warmer and calmer days.

Books: Queen of Broken Hearts, Summer Reading, the Great Far Away

Queen of Broken Hearts, by Cassandra King.

Southern women. Romance. Mystery. Good read, but long and slow.

4 stars


Summer Reading, by Hilma Wolitzer (Publication date: June 1, 2007)

(I read the galley proof). One intriguing and interesting character of three main characters.

3.5 stars


The Great Far Away, by Joan Frank.

Don't bother.

1 star

Windy Day

The wind has been blowing about 50 mph today. We've lost the top of a cedar tree and some fence.

Apparently the near-hurricane winds blew craziness across the mountains, for there has been a mass shooting at V.T. I have been watching the coverage, stunned. Everyone I know who attends or teaches there has been accounted for. Right now the numbers are 31 killed and 29 wounded, for a total of 60. The story is unfolding and more details will come.

It makes for a bad Monday, that's for sure. It's stunning news. I feel for the families.

The photo is a tom turkey that was in the backyard on Friday.

Project 99% Complete

At long last, after four months of solid work by my husband, the rental property I inherited from my mother in 2001 is ready to rent. Not only that, we think we have found someone who wants it, a process which took less time than I imagined. A lot of people are looking for a place to live.

I never imagined myself a landlord and this is not a coveted title, but four words in my mother's will has me pretty much unable to do anything with this property other than rent it. Kind of amazing, the power of four words, isn't it?

Here are some before and after photos: This is a bedroom (or just a room).
Before:

After:


This is what the kitchen looked like before:


This is what it looks like now. We still have to put in a stove, which will happen this week:



This is the hallway/furnace room before:
This is what it looks like now:


And so on and so forth. This is the work we did: new floors all over, new paint or new paneling everywhere, new toilets in both bathrooms, new shower heads, new plumbing, new vanities in the bathrooms, new light fixtures, new ceiling fans, new shelving in the kitchen cabinets, new hardware on the kitchen cabinets, one new window, part of a new wall, new ceiling tile in the kitchen/great room, new propane furnace, and an enormous amount of cleaning.

We had to take out a loan to do all of this work and spent thousands, not counting my husband's labor. It was an enormous effort by my husband to get the place clean and remodeled - he worked on it until 9:30 at night for many nights (because of course he also had to work his THREE other jobs).

Because I have bad allergies and asthma, I could not help much (I am allergic to dust and cats, and the previous tenants (who I also inherited along with the house) had cats and apparently had no idea what a vacuum cleaner was, plus I'm allergic to paint, so I am pretty much useless in a renovation project).

Anyway, the house is three bedrooms, a great room/kitchen, two baths, and an attic loft room. It is 1,500+ square feet. On the exterior it's aluminum siding, with a front porch. It is an old farmhouse that has been reworked, is what it is. It was built in the very early 1900s and the structural craftsmanship in the older part of the house is about 100 times better than what was added on in the 1970s.

This is what it looks like on the exterior (this is an old shot but we didn't make many changes outside):



When we have someone settled in the place, it will be a real load off our minds and quite a relief. I know some people would like this kind of thing, but it has been a trial for us, probably in part because it was thrust upon us. But that is another really long story.

Writer Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6547399.stm

One of the outstanding figures of modern US literature, Kurt Vonnegut, has died aged 84 in New York.

He became a cult figure among students in the 1960s and 1970s with his classics of US counterculture. He wrote plays, essays and short fiction.

The defining moment of his life was the firebombing of Dresden, in Germany, by allied forces in 1945 - an event he witnessed as a young prisoner of war.

His experience was the basis of his best-known work, Slaughterhouse Five.

It was published in 1969 against the backdrop of the war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval in the United States.

****

Thursday Thirteen

1. Today
2. I
3. Can't
4. Think
5. Of
6. Anything
7. To
8. Write
9. That
10. Has
11. Any
12. Real
13. Meaning

Mid-Week

Spring.

Photoshopped in MS Picture-It

It is raining very hard. I just got in from a budget hearing. No one spoke, well, except for school board members. The public? Eh. They could care less how their tax dollars get spent, so long as their tax rate doesn't go up much.

The rain should help with the pollen; actually, the freeze might have helped with the pollen a little. I like spring and fall the best of the seasons and I suffer through them both with my horrid allergies. I certainly don't like it when the fruit trees freeze and lose their fruit. I'll suffer through sneezes in spring for peaches in August, sure enough.

Happy Easter

I have no memory of a "first Easter" in my childhood, but I do know it was around Easter time when I learned the truth of the childhood myths perpetuated by parents.

My chores at the tender age of five (I know my because of where we lived when this happened, and we moved when I was five), consisted of washing the dishes while standing on a chair, vacuuming (which I recall finding difficult), and dusting everything within reach. My mother dusted the upper shelves.

Apparently I had graduated to dusting everything via climbing upon chairs, because on this day I was dusting upper shelving. I had recently lost a tooth, and my tongue played constantly with the new hole in my mouth. I broke the baby tooth out by falling upon the stoop on my grandmother's carport while I was shaking out a baby blanket for my doll. I stepped on a corner of the blanket and proceeded to pull it out from under myself, falling face forward. My tooth took the brunt of the fall.

(As a consequence of this, I stopped playing with dolls.)

After a trip to the dentist, the tooth fairy visited me at night and left me an entire Kennedy half dollar (which I still have). This was a small fortune for me in 1968 and also an unusual coin for our household, or so I thought.

So it was that near Easter, maybe even Easter weekend, I was dusting a new place I had not dusted before, for whatever reason. As I dusted, I came across a dish filled with a treasure of Kennedy half dollars. I remember standing on the chair and pushing the coins around with my chubby little finger, looking at the great number of them.

I am given to incremental leaps of logic and thought, so much so that I can get from A to Z without a clue how I got there and nevertheless be right (and sometimes quite wrong, too). In one of those leaps, I immediately connected the coin to the tooth fairy.

I remember my mother coming into the room as I stood holding the dish. I asked her if the coin beneath my pillow came from this dish. She hesitated, and I knew the truth. There was no tooth fairy, and I said as much. "You're the tooth fairy," I remember saying. Not accusingly, just knowingly.

Then in another great leap of thought, I made the connection that if there was no tooth fairy, there was no Easter bunny. And also no Santa.

I told this to my mother also, who did not deny that I had discovered the secrets of these mythical benefactors. So from the age of five onward, I did not believe in things I could not see, knowing there were generally explanations to which I was not privy.

I did, however, assist my parents in perpetuating the secret with my younger brother, so much so that I think he was nearly in his teens before he realized there was no Peter Rabbit. I remember his tears as he accused me, somewhat angrily, of lying to him. It seemed my hiding the truth from him bothered him more than the fact that our parents did the same.

This is not a holiday I celebrate anymore with chocolate or mythical bunnies. I celebrate it with thoughtfulness and prayer and dinner with family. I remember the reason for the celebration - those being, for me, Christ is risen and the rebirth of the earth as spring begins the renewal process anew.

Somewhere inside of me, I think, a child longs for that magic, that time of wonder and belief. I hope that this year I can renew that childish spirit, and make her soar.

Books: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Caedmon Audio
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Audio Collection
Performed by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Features selections from: Slaughterhouse Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle.

A friend mentioned something to me about Vonnegut and I thought I had not read anything by him, having somehow skipped him, but I was wrong.

After checking out this audio tape from the library, I realized I was indeed familiar with his work. I just hadn't read it in about 25 years and had forgotten.

Hearing the words in the author's voice is quite interesting. In these selections, Vonnegut even sings tunes fo the listener.

I liked Welcome to the Monkey House best, I think.

I enjoy these commentaries disguised as SF. They are as true today as when written, if a little dated. Very Ray Bradbury-ish, too.

4.5 stars

Books: Rococo by Adriana Trigiani

Audio Book: Read by Mario Cantone

Adriana Trigiani gives an entertaining read in this book, which is NOT a Big Stone Gap book.

This story is set in New Jersy and tells the story of Bartolomeo di Crespi (aka "B"). B is a bachelor and interior designer who desperately wants to renovate the Catholic Church, Our Lady of Fatima, in his community. He comes from a large Italian family (lots of cousins and nephews) and has an older sister named "Toots" who cares for him. Their role eventually swaps during the novel and B. comes into his own, mostly because Toots has an affair with her ex!

B. also has a platonic fiance' who eventually marries someone else. He meets up with an international designer named Eddie who sparks him, but B. is ultimately in love with his work, not women.

This novel is more character-driven than plot-driven, and certainly nothing greatly eventful happens, but this is an entertaining glimpse into families and relationships and humanity overall.

Not quite as intriguing to me as the Big Stone Gap novels, but that could be simply because those books remind me so much of home.

3.5 stars

Thursday Thirteen

1. The moon last night was nearly blood red when I looked out the kitchen window about 8:45 p.m. I could see it through the trees and it looked quite ghostly.

2. I have an Audubon society book for the southeastern states that I refer to quite frequently. Every year I have to look up the wildflowers because I can never remember what they are.

3. I also have a book on wildflowers by Leonard Atkins called "Wildflowers of the Appalachian Trail." Atkins lives in my county and I have met him. Of course I did an article on him.

4. My mother loved wildflowers and she and a friend would walk the woods every spring and into the summer in search of unique or unusual wildflowers.

5. She could identify jack-in-the-pulpit, chicory, and floating bladderwort on site.

6. I never have been able to do that but I've also never applied myself to learning the names of the wildflowers.

7. One year in April I called Mom and asked her to come and walk with me to the back of the farm to see a patch of wildflowers.

8. The woods were full of trillium, which apparently is native to the area but not common. My mother was ecstatic at the find and I remember she was quite childlike in her delight of the flower.

9. The following year Mom was too ill to visit the trillium patch, so I walked there with my friend B., who's mother had just passed away.

10. We stood in silence a long time looking at the wildflowers, each thinking, I suppose, different thoughts of our mothers, hers having just passed away and mine not far from following.

11. I cannot visit the trillium now without thinking of my mother, who died a few months later, and my friend.

12. We are forever bound by the deaths of our mothers in the same year.

13. We're also bound by the wildflowers, my mother and B. and me.

Reposed Thoughts

Yesterday I interviewed a couple who ditched their lives in northern/eastern VA and moved here. They bought an old (very large) house and are embarking upon a restaurant/B&B adventure.

They are 43 years old. They called this their "retirement".

He has retired from a police force; she used to be in marketing. They travel to Europe two or three times a year and also across the US.

I always wonder how people can manage to do these things. Where do they get their money? Did their old house sell for millions?

Police officers do not make that kind of money, unless other cities do better than Roanoke. Roanoke's retirement packages might keep you afloat but you're not going to move forward with it.

Maybe marketing pays better than freelancing for newspapers?

When we take vacation, my husband farms and uses the time to plow or rake hay or do whatever needs doing; I just keep working on writing work. I might take a day for spring cleaning, but I don't think that really counts as recreation.

We do not go to Europe. We're lucky if we make it to Myrtle Beach for a weekend.

Is this envy? No, more like curiousity. I just want to know how it's done.

Spring

The trees are turning green.

The hyacinths are blooming

The turkeys are enjoying the greening grass.

The redbuds are in full color.

The dogwoods are showing off their white petticoats.