Sunday, January 31, 2016

Sunday Stealing: Laundry

From Sunday Stealing

Laundry Day Meme

1. Do you know any couples that have been married for a very long time? A. I'm working on 33 years. Is that long enough?

2. What are you tired of people telling you? A. That the pain in my stomach is all in my head.

3. Which type of ice cream do you prefer? A. I don't eat ice cream.

4. Do you have a little sister? What’s her name? A. I don't have a sister.

5. What was the last movie you watched on TV? The Two Towers (from The Lord of the Rings) on DVD.

6. If the internet was not available right now, what would you do instead? A. Read.

7. Do you complain a lot? A. I reckon so. I don't mean to, though.

8. Name a movie that your favorite actor is in. A. The Fellowship of the Rings (you knew that was coming, didn't you?)

9. Do you like your toes? A. I haven't really thought about it.

10. Would you rather go to an authentic haunted house or an ancient temple? A. Wouldn't an ancient temple most likely also be haunted? I'll choose the haunted temple.

11. Have you ever had champagne? Did you like it? A. A long time ago, and I don't remember.

12. Are there any seashells in your room? A. No. I have some outside in my rose garden, though.

13. What was the reason for the last time you went outside? A. To go to the eye doctor.

14. Do you like fruity or minty gum? A. I don't chew gum.

15. Are you looking forward to any day of this month? A. This month is about over, and February is just February, so not really.

16. What was the last graduation you attended? A. My nephew's.

17. Do you rummage through the $5 movie bin at Walmart every time? A. No.

18. What day of the week do you usually do laundry? A. Every day.

19. Do you like using air fresheners? A. No.

20. Are your nails ever painted red? A. No.

21. When you were a baby, did you have a favorite blanket? A. I had a favorite stuffed animal. I don't recall a blanky.

22. Ever been on a cruise? A. No.

23. Would you rather go to Alaska or Russia? A. Well, according to a former governor you can see Russia out the window from Alaska, so I suppose I could do both if I went to Alaska.

24. Strawberries or bananas? A. Strawberries.

25. Are you wearing socks? A. Yes.

26. When’s the last time you went to the mall? A. About January 15. I bought jeans.


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I encourage you to visit other participants in
Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Saturday 9: Don't You Care?

Saturday 9: Don't You Care? (1967)

If you're not familiar with today's song, you can hear it here.

1) What's something that seems to fascinate everyone else, but you just don't care about?

A. Celebrity gossip. 

2) The lyrics refer to "the times we cried and laughed." Which did you do more recently, cry or laugh?

A. Laugh, I suppose, though my husband told me I was crying in my sleep last night. I am not sure if that counts.

3) In the song, our hero seems surprised that his girlfriend doesn't believe him. Are you more believing and trusting, or suspicious and skeptical?

A. I think I am more skeptical now. I used to be quite trusting but life has taught me there is little to trust. 

4) This song is just over two minutes long, which seems short for a song but awful long when Sam is waiting for her chicken soup to heat in the microwave. What's the last thing you heated in a microwave?

A. Bob's Mill Gluten Free Hot Cereal.

5) This week's band, The Buckinghams, was one of the first acts to perform at Chicago's premiere summer festival, The Taste of Chicago.* Let's think ahead: Have you made any plans for Summer 2016?

A. I haven't even made plans for next week.

6) In 1967, when this song was popular, Rolling Stone magazine published its first issue. What magazines do you subscribe to? Do they arrive in the mail, or do you read them online?

A. I receive Reader's Digest, Taste of Home, and Oprah, at the moment, in the mail. I have been letting my subscriptions lapse because I wasn't reading them.

7) Country star/American Idol judge Keith Urban was born in 1967. Are you watching the final season of American Idol?

A. I have never seen a single episode of American Idol.

8) In 1967, the average cost of a movie ticket was $1.25. By 2015, it had risen $8.60. What's the last movie you saw in a theater?

A. Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

9) Random question: Sam's taking everyone out to dinner and she's buying. Would you prefer the steak or the lobster?

A. I'd prefer the lobster but I've developed an allergy to shellfish in the last few years. I don't eat much read meat, either. Could I have a piece of chicken?

*Though back in 1970, it was called ChicagoFest. 

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us next week for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!
_____________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Thursday Thirteen

Today, January 28, is the anniversary of the explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. A school teacher was on board as part of the crew, and millions of children were watching when the shuttle burst apart in the air.

I was on my way to work after attending a morning class at the local community college, listening to the launch on the radio, so I learned about it while driving down the interstate. I had to pull over so I could cry.

The space program has always fascinated me. I never really wanted to be an astronaut, but those stars! And the idea of life on other planets. And Star Trek! So my idea of space was a bit on the fantastic side, and probably still is. I like to look up at the night sky and wonder who is looking back, thinking the same thing about our sun.

So here are a few facts about space stuff.

1. Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, but she was not the first female. That title belongs to Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. This Russian cosmonaut made it into orbit 20 years before the first American woman. Tereshkova was also the first civilian in space. She made her historic flight in 1963 as part of the Vostok 6 mission. A former textile worker and amateur parachutist, Ms. Tereshkova performed experiments on herself to test the effects of space travel on the female body.

Moon Set, March 2015

2. Rovers Opportunity & Spirit were sent to Mars in a twin mission in 2004. Landing a day apart, both rovers were to operate for about four months, then cease to work. Instead, the two robot craft kept moving about and sending back information to Earth.

3. Spirit's last communication was in 2010, was after it hung up on something and couldn't extricate itself.  Opportunity continued communicating with Earth into 2013.

4. Curiosity was a rover that landed on Mars in 2011.

5.  The Voyager program began in 1977, when the U.S. launched Voyagers 1 and 2. The two craft were sent on a multi-faceted mission into deep space. Mainly they were to serve as messengers to anybody else out there, but NASA used the two Voyagers to study planets and moons along the way.
Moon Set January 2016

6. Voyager 2 is expected to enter interstellar space early this year (20160). (I always think of the Star Trek movie where V-Ger has taken over and is trying to get back to earth; it turns out to be one of the Voyager probes). But isn't it totally amazing that these machines are still running and sending data back to Earth? They've been flying around for 27 years.

7. Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has said that if aliens exist, they most likely will be something far beyond anything we could have imagined. He had theorized that even if they take a form that we can relate to, the difference between our intelligence might be as great as that between a human and an ape.

8.  Artists' concepts of other possible "alien" races include whale-like beings that "swim" through the atmosphere of a gas giant. The possibilities are endless. The only thing that most theorists agree upon is that they will not resemble humans.
Moon 2011

9. We may have a new planet! Science magazine recently reported recently that scientists believe there is another planet out there, moving in an orbit beyond Neptune. The researchers haven't observed Planet X itself, but believe it exists because of the unique configuration of six objects when they come closest to the sun.

10.  On January 19, 2006, the space probe New Horizons left Earth for Pluto. In 2007, it made close contact with Jupiter. On January 15, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto. On July 14, 2015, it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet.

11. Our efforts to go into space came about because of the Cold War, the political divisions between the United States and the Soviet Union. After the Russians launched Sputnik, the race really began. The U.S. formed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The space program became a metaphor for the success and failure. The Russians placed the first craft into orbit, the first man in space, the first woman in space, and achieved  the first spacewalk. The U.S. made the first manned spaceflight and the first man on the moon. Later, however, the two superpowers would meet each other in orbit during 1975's Apollo-Soyuz Mission, part of an attempt to reconcile.

12. Pluto is no longer a planet. It's a "plutoid." That change happened in August 2006, leaving those of us who grew up learning it was a planet scratching our heads.

13. The Nasa website (http://www.nasa.gov/) is full of wonderful information about the heavens and the things we know. At the sight you can see eclipses, space launches, and learn all about the world that is outside of our reach.

_____________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 432nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Pretty Maids in the Snow

Three turkey hens search for food in the snow.
 

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

The Men on the Chessboard

My local daily paper today is full of anger. It usually is. Americans are angry people these days. Fearful people tend to become angry people, because they feel they've lost control.

There is not usually so much local anger, though. But today we have Montgomery County angry over a Circuit Court Clerk's decision to fire half of her staff, Rockbridge County is upset over Botetourt's near-certain approval of 25 wind turbines on North Mountain, and people in Botetourt are upset because the supervisors want to tear down historic structures to build a big shell building.

The state of Virginia is upset because somebody rooked the Commerce and Trade Department out of $1.4 million.

Nationally, people are angry over polluted water in Michigan and Planned Parenthood (pro and con). Online, people are still talking about those men in Oregon who took over a federal facility and for some reason are still there, and I see as I write this there are reports of yet another mass shooting. Sad that those have become so commonplace one barely blinks at the headline anymore.

And this is all caused by those in power. Yes, we have class in America. We have people in power who don't know what they are doing, and we have people behind the people in power who probably know what they are doing, but what they are doing is not in the best interest of the rest of us. Power only serves power, and it most certainly does not share it with the likes of the little people, of which I am one.

I learned to play chess when I was about nine years old. I never was very good at it. But chess is an interesting way of looking things going on in the world.

You have the king, who can only move one square at time and who, in my opinion, is weaker even than a pawn, though the rules say otherwise.

The queen is the most powerful piece. She can whiz about the checkered board with impunity. She can knock off bishops and knights, destroy castles (rooks), and eat pawns for lunch.

The queen is the power behind the throne. I firmly believe that in the U.S. the power behind the throne is something - or a group of someones - that Americans are not even aware of. Maybe it is simply rich folk like the Koch brothers, using their lobbyists and money to bend our elected representatives to their collective will. Perhaps it is something more sinister, like in the movies, an evil coalition set about to destroy all that was once good in this world in a grab for more power.

Which means I believe our government is broken, and is more like the chess board tossed about by a two-year old than any sort of conventional play. No, we have a president who was unable to bring forth his vision for the country because of the can't do Congress and Senate, and they can't do because of that invisible power - the Queen - who really runs around the board and takes care of the business of the rich and the powerful.

This even plays out on the local level. I will use my own county as an example. We have five elected representatives, a few of whom appear to believe they must answer to the people who elected them. They have collectively assumed the role of queen, and tossed the pawns completely off the table. The king - I'm not sure who that might be - will step around his single square waiting for the Queen to offer permission.

As for the rest - the bishops, the rooks, the knights - they are all loyal subjects. Lower level administrators, maybe, and other county employees. They have a place on the local little chessboard (and no place on the bigger, state-sized one, and not a prayer of ever being on the national chessboard) but some, I suspect, aren't sure whether they are rooks or knights. They may even really be pawns and not realize it.

Every locality plays its own game of chess, even the tiny towns that lie within the boundaries of our county. We have three little towns and they have their own versions of king, queen, and supporting players. It happens everywhere, not just here.

The problem is always the queen, though. Who gets to be that power player? That's where the fighting and anger comes in. The public, who does the electing, thinks it is the queen - and rightly so. This is supposed to be a democracy, after all, so those who vote should be the ones to move around the board, overseeing this, looking at that, whispering in the ear of the king so he will move from front to side and back again.

But instead we have reversed power - we've given it all to those we elect, because we are now not even on the board. We're not pawns, we're watchers. We do not participate in the game at all. We're content to go to work, watch TV, eat a Milky Way, and go to bed.

About half of us aren't even aware that there is a game being played, and that whatever these kings, queens, and bishops do, it affects us in some fashion or another. The only time we look up to see the board is if the word "taxes" appears, blinking like a magic neon sign over the bar in which the chess game is played. Then, maybe, we speak up. But most of the time we simply go back to watching Netflix.

I wish citizens would be more active in their government, whether at the local level or at higher levels. Many times we have offices up for election and no one has opposition. This is wrong. People should always have a choice. I understand that it is a time commitment and the financial rewards can be limited, especially in local politics, but there is more to life than money.

My actions have been to vote in every election (I don't think I've missed a single one), to write letters to representatives and newspapers, and, when I was a working journalist, to report on topics as objectively as I could so that the citizenry could make an objective opinion on issues. I also served on an appointed board as a representative for my district (the local library board, which is not a major determiner of destiny, but I still served). I continue to write letters and monitor things and work on issues I care about. Others do too, of course, but so many do not.

If you have never written a representative about an issue, I encourage you to read up on something you have an interest in, and then express your opinion in a letter to the editor, or a letter to your representative. Email makes this easy (though a "real" letter tends to be held in higher esteem by some officials).

We can't "Make America Great Again" unless we all participate. If we're sitting back waiting on a sugar daddy to save us, we're going to slide right off that sucker and into a drainage ditch full of sewage. Is that really what we want for our selves and our children?

Take action today. It really is important.

Monday, January 25, 2016

It Snowed.

The snow began in the wee hours of Friday morning (January 15) and continued into Saturday. We ended up with 14 inches. It could have been a lot worse - West Virginia received 40" in some places.

Anyway, here photos of the event.


Not quite 14" when I measured, but we had a bit more snow later.

 
It did not stay on the trees long: wind.


It makes for high snow banks when you shovel.


Some of these I took out the window.


Whatever the weather, my front view is a beauty.


Side shot out window.




Out the back door.


Deer needed to find something to eat.


Clean up crew. (Thanks husband.)


This one used its nose to borrow down for grass.
Sunday, things started clearing up.


Big piles of snow.


Still beautiful.


Love my Blue Ridge Mountains.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Sunday Stealing: Feisty

From Sunday Stealing

1. Do you like to see it snowing outside? A. Not anymore. Too old and it makes my bones hurt.

2. Do you tell your family you love them enough? A. I reckon.

3. Do you like getting jewelry or do you not wear any? A. I have a few pieces I wear regularly.

4. Do you watch a lot of NFL football? A. Nada.

5. Have you ever used the word ‘lame’? A. As in, "This is a lame question?" Sure.

6. Are you/Were you in a band? If so, what was your band name? A. Yes. It was called Almost Famous. If you want to count the high school band, too, we were the Cavaliers.

7. When is the last time you went to the doctor? A. I saw the chiropractor Wednesday.

8. Do you own any shirts with a peace symbol on it? A. Yes.

9. Would you ever go to Japan? A. Yes.

10. What was the last thing you went to Walmart for? A. Lotion.

11. Ever gotten in a car accident? A. Many times.

12. Have you ever been in a choir? A. Yes.

13. Do you like the color of your eyes? If not, what color would you want them? A. I like my eyes.

14. When was the last time you went ice skating? A. When I was about 10.

15. Do you like to brush your teeth? A. Yes.

16. Have you ever had a surgery? A. Multiple times.

17. Do you look older or younger than you actually are? A. Maybe a little younger, but not much.

18. When is the next time you’ll be up on stage? A. No clue.

19. Where did you spend your last birthday? A. At home.

20. What is the last show that you watched a full episode of? A. Supergirl.

21. Do you know anyone who lives in Utah? A. Not anymore.

22. Is there anything you need to work on doing soon? A. Taxes.

23. Do your feelings get hurt easily? A. Yes.

24. Do you, or do you know someone who has taken karate lessons? A. Yes.

25. Were you ever a boy or girl scout? A. No.


__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in
Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Saturday 9: The One You Love

Saturday 9: The One You Love (1982)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

In memory of Glenn Frey (1948-2016). (We lost a great one there.)

 

1) In this song, Glenn explores one of the great romantic conundrums. This week, Saturday 9 is confronting it, too. If you had to choose, would you prefer to be loved, or to be in love?

 

A. To be loved. Although both are preferable.

 

2) The song describes an awkward moment: an old boyfriend calls when a woman is on a date with someone new. To whom did you last say, "I can't talk now?"

 

A. I can't remember.

 

3) The lyrics talk about heart vs head. When you find yourself in that predicament, which usually wins -- heart or head?

 

A. Head.

 

4) This song was from Glenn Frey's solo album, No Fun Aloud. What fun stuff are you looking forward to this weekend?

 

A. We are having feets of snow, so I'm just watching the white stuff fall and working on my taxes. Isn't that like the most fun ever?

 

5) Glenn Frey was born in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit. The Motor City is known for car manufacturing. Is your car domestic or foreign?

 

A. It's a Toyota but it was made in the U.S.A. Or some of it was, or something. I'm not a car girl. I just drive 'em.

 

6) The popular 1990s sitcom Home Improvement was set in Royal Oak. Are you handy around the house?

 

A. I have my own tool kit. My husband is always "borrowing" things and then I must fuss to have them returned. I think he owes me a screwdriver.

 

7) Glenn Frey co-founded The Eagles in 1970. What's your favorite Eagles song?

 

A. There are so many. I loved the Eagles. Hotel California is great fun to play on the guitar; lots of minor chords.  Desperado is one of the songs I sing when I'm really blue. I play Best of My Love when my hubby and I have a spat. Peaceful Easy Feeling is great in the key of E on the guitar. I love the harmony on Seven Bridges Road. I cannot choose just one.

 

8) The Eagles helped define "California Rock," but in recent years Glenn and his wife lived in Tribeca. Have you ever been to New York? If so, did you like it?

 

A. I went to New York when I was a teenager. My parents took me one year. I think I was about 15; we went to Chinatown and had the best sweet and sour shrimp ever. But I have not been as an adult.

 

9) Glenn wrote "Smuggler's Blues" and "You Belong to the City" for the iconic 1980s TV show, Miami Vice. What else comes to mind when you think of the 80s?

 

A. Cyndi Lauper, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and Oliver North.

 

Thanks for the tribute to Glenn Frey.

Thanks so much for joining in Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us next week for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!
_____________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.


Thursday, January 21, 2016

Thursday Thirteen

Here in my locality, we are having a big issue with historic preservation. Greenfield is a former plantation owned by William Preston, a Revolutionary War hero and Virginia statesman. His first land ownership was here, and then he moved a few miles away, leaving this property to his son. He was also a slave owner.

The county purchased this land in the mid 1990s to create an industrial park. The industrial park more or less fizzled, and the plan of 20 years ago, which included moving historic structures to a historic area to create a park, lay gathering dust. In 2012, the county fathers made no vote but indicated that the historic structures, which are slave cabins and an old kitchen building, would remain where they were. The new batch of supervisors, however, revealed in October that they were moving these structures as the plan called for 20 years ago and building a shell building (a big metal building with no tenant) in hopes of attracting industry.

The outcry from the historic community was fast and furious once they learned of the plans. The county moved swiftly to out-maneuver opposition, and efforts to move the historic structures are underway and close to completion. This has taken up a great deal of my time and thought processes in recent weeks, so I thought I'd list 13 reasons why historic structures should be saved and not destroyed.

Slave cabins at Greenfield

1. People in communities that have historic resources are becoming more aware of the value of the structures. Restoring older structures attaches people to their community, provides a sense of place, connects them to their neighbors, and encourages public participation

2. People who have long lived in an area derive comfort from being among familiar surroundings and from continued association with their "roots."

3. Preservation helps foster an appreciation of varied architectural diversity and recognition of ethnically significant building styles and décor.

4.  Preservation has economic value. That value may be as practical as the tax assessment on the structure because the building has been preserved, or it could be something as romantic as attracting a Hollywood movie production to an authentic setting.

5. Interest in area history, its historic, archeological and architectural properties and preservation of those properties have created support for recognition of heritage tourism as an economic tools.

Removal of items at Greenfield.


6. Preservation of historic structures is good for the neighborhood. Preserving a structure promotes respect for those that came before us, and those that will come after. Preservation encourages citizen activity to become active in their own government and fulfill their right and responsibility to create their community’s future.

7. Restoration of old structures is good for the environment. Preserving a building is the ultimate in recycling. It keeps construction materials out of the landfill. 20% of the solid waste stream is construction waste.

8. Preservation saves the embodied energy of the materials used to construct the building. Much energy was required to excavate, manufacture, transport, and assemble the bricks, glass, steel, wood, and so on used in that building. Additionally, many traditional building practices in historic buildings are “green," such as covered porches that reduce heat gain during the summer, thick walls, attics, and cellars to help keep interior temperatures.

Work on the slave cabins.

9. Restoration brings more jobs and dollars to the local economy. Restoration of a building is more labor intensive than is new construction, and also demands more skilled labor, thus resulting in higher wages. More materials and services are purchased locally, further increasing the economic impact.

10. Property values remain stable or rise in historic districts.

11. Old buildings have intrinsic value. Buildings of a certain era, namely pre-World War II, tend to be built with higher-quality materials such as rare hardwoods (especially heart pine) and wood from old-growth forests that no longer exist. Prewar buildings were also built by different standards. A century-old building might be a better long-term bet than its brand-new counterparts.

12. When you tear down an old building, you never know what’s being destroyed.

13. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

_____________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 431st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

A Hookah Smoking Caterpillar

“'What do you fear my lady?' (said Aragorn)
'A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.'” (said Eowyn)  -- J. R. R. Tolkien


I am not afraid of spiders, snakes, lizards, mice, caterpillars, and other critters. I dislike them and find some of them repellant, but I am not afraid of them.

My husband thinks otherwise, because if he is home and one of those big wood spiders jumps out of nowhere, I will ask him to remove it. But who does he think gets rid of them when he isn't home? I do. I pick them up with a tissue and toss them outside.

In my time I have beaten off attacks by snakes, removed mice from traps, and taken on the creepy things of the natural world that make me shudder. These creatures are yucky, but they do not frighten me.

I grow nervous if I must speak in public, but it is not fear, it is too much self-awareness. I do not like the idea of growing old, but it does not frighten me. It is what it is. I certainly cannot stop it. Unlike Eowyn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think I shall always rattle the cage bars, and never accept them. As for valor, well, I don't think valor is something we can all experience. I am not sure I would recognize it if I did experience it.

The things that frighten me are taller, walk on two legs, and generally do not use the brain they have between their ears. People and their actions scare me more than anything Mother Nature can toss at me (even three feet of snow).

My fellow countrymen appeared to be afraid of many things these days. Fear is palatable in the grocery store, on TV, in the high voices of media moderators who seem to constantly be screaming that the end is nigh. We fear our own government. We fear the police. We fear terrorism. We fear . . . everything.

I am most afraid of something happening to my husband, leaving me alone and lonely, and perhaps in a bad spot financially. Since I am not well, I would have to rely upon the proceeds from the sale of our home (which could take a while), and whatever insurance I receive.

My biggest fear in that event is losing my food and shelter, and then being alone, living under some bridge, wrapped up in newspapers to keep warm. Perhaps dying a painfully slow death on a freezing, moonless night, with snow covering me. I do fear that.

I also fear being mugged, beaten, and raped. I fear being shot with a gun and I am afraid of people with guns, unless I know them well. I fear people who need something to make them feel stronger, tougher, and safer, because they obviously are in need of some kind of help.

I would not like to die by drowning, and sometimes when my asthma is bad and I can't breathe, I worry about dying from lack of air. But I don't fear it, because I am more afraid of being hurt and/or incapacitated than I am of dying. One might argue that I am afraid of pain. I certainly don't like it.

My dreams generally are nightmares - frequently, night terrors. I dream of demons, evil people, dark and demented statues coming to life, aliens coming to steal the life from the planet, and maniacs running around with blood dripping from their fingers. I wake up screaming or crying. Are these secret fears? My way of dealing with the world around me? I have never known. These horrible dreams have been with me for as long as I can recall.

We should all examine our fears every now and again. Sometimes I take mine out and ponder them. Occasionally I discard one or two, sometimes new ones appear and then I must chase after them.

The best way I have found to deal with fears is to stay in the present. Stop and examine my surroundings, check my body for what it is feeling, probe my overworked brain and see what I find. This calms me and allows me to make decisions from a rational and logical position.

Fear is very strong. It stops us in our tracks. Fight it if you can.

Monday, January 18, 2016

You Know You're Going to Fall

Why do we "fall" in love? Why do we not "jump" into love? Or "run" into love? Or "dance" into love?

Falling has a negative connotation, don't you think? If you fall, you hurt yourself. At the least, you're greatly embarrassed. But sometimes you break your hip or your nose. Falling hurts.

Risk also applies to falling. If you step out onto the ice, you risk a slip.

The freedictionary.com defines fall as "passing suddenly and passively into a state of body or mind," as in, falling ill. Or falling off a truck and knocking yourself unconscious.

Falling in love implies we have no control over it - it's something that just happens. You aren't expecting it or anticipating it, or even hoping for it, maybe. It's like a meteor out of the sky, clunking you on your noggin.

But is that really true? Did I "fall" in love with my husband? I met him, I liked him, I grew to love him. It happened very quickly - I was ready to marry him two months after we met, and a year later there we were walking down the aisle - but I am not sure I fell in love with him.

Isn't falling in love really more infatuation? Does that last? My husband and I became friends first, enjoying each other's company and sense of humor, discussing things that interested us, talking about movies and songs. Chemistry played a role, for sure. Is it pheromones that make you "fall" in love?

Last year about this time, The New York Times published a list of 36 questions that, if answered honestly, would make you fall in love with someone (after you then stare into their eyes for four minutes). The questions rapidly move from impersonal to very personal.

The Big Bang Theory took this on in an episode where Penny and Sheldon asked one another the questions. In the end, they felt closer to one another, but they did not fall in love. However, they were already friends to begin with.

On the other hand, the most recent Reader's Digest has an article in it wherein a couple who barely knew one another tried these questions, and they ended up married.

Did they "fall" in love? Or did they grow to love another?

Language is tricky, especially English, which is incredibly nuanced, not to mention insane sometimes when you have something like "I'm going through a place where I threw away something important even though I thought it was irrelevant." Wouldn't that sentence trip up someone learning the language? Through, threw, though, thought. So close in meaning or pronunciation, yet so far.

Every day I fall. Most of us do, if we take any risk at all. We fall on our face trying to make something out of nothing. We fall trying to impress our boss, our spouse, our kids, our friends. We fall off our diets. We fall when we turn our backs on important community endeavors. We fall when we look at our phones instead of one another.

Is it an accident of language that "fall" and "fail" are so much alike as words?

Even though we fall constantly, in some way, generally we stand back up. We brush the dust off our butts and go one about our day. Sometimes we haven't even realized we've fallen - we continue to scoot along on the floor, still going, just not in the way we thought we were.

And then there is the notion that mankind is "fallen" - as in full of sin. Born of sin. This is not a concept I adhere to, but many people do. We are not of God or angels, but fallen beings, lowly and unworthy, this theory goes. Humanity is not perfect; therefore, the species has fallen.

I see us falling backwards as a society, spiraling towards some kind of fascist dark age where those who love learning and wisdom are treated with disdain, and the foolish and unwise are lauded and loved. A curious sort of tumble down the rabbit hole, where the majority drank out of the wrong bottle and can't figure out how to reach the other one, the one filled with common sense.

We are going to fall. Each nation eventually falls; each society will sometime crumble and fall into a dismal state. We climb high and fall, maybe not so far down. Maybe each day really is one step forward, two steps backwards, or vice versa. If it's the latter then eventually we will get to where we are headed, one tiny little step at time. We will move forward individually and collectively, falling down and rising up again.

We all fall. Even if that tiny little step is to fall in love while we sit and watch the moon.