Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Poem in Artemis

I have had a poem published in Artemis, which is a well-known literary journal published in Roanoke.

Artemis has been around for 42 years, although it took a hiatus in 2000 before resuming publication again in 2013. I worked as a copy editor on the magazine one year, a very long time ago - like 1989 or thereabouts. But I never submitted to the journal before.

I entered three poems and they chose the one I did not expect them to choose. The poem, Daughter by the Tomb, is a quiet villanelle, a form poem. While it is a good poem it was not the one I considered the best of my entries, but in reviewing the magazine I see that this poem fits in better with the other items in the magazine.

Artemis uses art to add to its attractiveness. This year the cover was by Sally Mann. The work of famous poets such as Nikki Giovanni is intertwined with unknown poets, such as myself. The mix of art and poetry makes this a unique magazine with great appeal.

The theme for this year was Women Hold Up Half the Sky.

The magazine can be purchased at http://www.artemisjournal.org/store/. It is $20 for a soft cover edition or $30 for a hard bound version.

My poem is on page 72, eloquently set off by the art of Judith Starchild.


Sunday, June 09, 2019

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. Would you rather be able to detect any lie you hear or get away with any lie you tell?

A. Get away with any lie I tell.

2. Would you rather be a hopeless romantic or a hopeless unromantic?

A. Hopeless romantic.

3. Would you rather have too many friends or too few?

A. Too many.

4. Would you rather have no taste buds or be blind?

A. No taste buds.

5. Would you rather never hear music again or lose the ability to read?

A. Never hear music again, I guess. That's a hard one.

6. Would you rather find true love or be rich?

A. True love.

7. Would you rather be the richest person or the smartest?

A. Smartest.

8. Would you rather create history or delete it?

A. Create it.

9. Would you rather create a great piece of art and not get credit or get credit for a piece of art you didn’t create?

A. Create art and not get credit (I already do that anyway).

10. Would you rather age from the neck up, or from the neck down.

A. Neck down.

11. Would you rather see the world but live in poverty or stay in one place and live rich?

A. See the world and live in poverty.

12. Would you rather become famous or powerful?

A. I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive. But powerful.

13. Would you rather be a creative person or a technical person?

A. Creative person.

14. Would you rather get a paper cut whenever you touch paper or bit your tongue whenever you eat something?

A. Paper cut.

15. Would you rather wake up in the morning looking like a giraffe or a kangaroo?

A. Giraffe.

16. Would you rather speak “whale” or read babies’ minds.

A. Whale.

17. Would you rather eat pizza every day or never eat pizza again?

A. I don't eat pizza anyway because of my ulcers.

18. Would you rather stay forever at your current age or be 10 years younger?

A. Do you age when you're 10 years younger? Incomplete question! If you never age, then 10 years younger. Otherwise, forever at my current age.

__________
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, June 08, 2019

Saturday 9: Today is My Birthday!

They say it's my birthday! Happy Birthday to me!


Saturday 9: I'm Moving On (1965)

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

1) In this song, Chyvonne Scott sings that she's sick of her lover's "conniving." Tell us about a time you felt deceived. (It doesn't have to involve romance.)

A. November 7, 2016. Well, moving beyond that, let me think. Lots of times I wrote things and did not get paid for them even though I thought I would be. That's just being cheated, though, and not exactly deception. It happens to freelancers all the time.

2) She realizes it's time to move on to another love. What's your favorite love song? Is it about a relationship that's running smoothly? Or is it like "I'm Moving On," about an unhappy love affair?

A. You Don't Bring Me Flowers, by Neil Diamond & Barbara Streisand, which is not a happy love song. We'll follow that with Nowhere to Go, by Melissa Etheridge, which while not exactly a happy song at least isn't about breaking up.

3) Though Chyvonne Scott enjoyed only limited success as a recording artist, she was very popular in New York clubs. When did you most recently listen to music performed live?

A. It's been a while. I performed music myself the other week over at my dad's house. Does that work?

4) In 2017, this song appeared on a Samsung commercial that poked fun at rival iPhone. Is your cell phone an Apple or Android? How did you choose your phone?

A. I have an Apple. I chose it because my brother said I would like it and find it easier than an Android. I had a learning curve with it but I like it now.

5) Chyvonne is an unusual name. In 1965, when this song was first released, the most popular baby names in the US were Michael and Lisa. Do you have any Michaels or Lisas in your life?

A. Not in my close circle of friends, no. There's a Lisa at the reception desk of the physical therapy place.

6) Also in 1965, Winston Churchill died. In researching this week's Sat. 9, Sam discovered a Churchill quote that's new to her: "I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught." Share something interesting that you recently learned.

A. I learned that I have to accept a new normal and that looking backwards at what you could do and comparing it to what you can do is self-defeating behavior.

7) In 1965, one of the most successful movies ever made, The Sound of Music, was released. Have you ever seen it?

A. Many times. Here's a fun thing: When I was young, I used to think in the song "Do Re Me" where the song goes, "Te, a drink with jam and bread" that it actually said, "Te, a drink with Jane and Fred." I wondered for a long time who Jane and Fred were.

8) Lava lamps were already popular in England and Brussels, but in 1965 they were introduced in the US. Do you think lava lamps are cool?

A. Yes, I think they are cool. I used to have a strobe light but I don't think I ever owned a lava lamp. Maybe I should remedy that.

9) Random question -- You have to buy something very personal that you find embarrassing. Would you rather pay cash for it, so your identity would be unknown but you'd have to face the cashier? Or order it online, where you could avoid looking anyone in the eye, but you have to share your name and address?

A. Women have spent their entire adult lives going into pharmacies and purchasing tampons, pads, KY lubricant and condoms. There is nothing I purchase that is that embarrassing.

___________

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, June 06, 2019

Thursday Thirteen

I have been using this blog for 13 years now. Here are 13 June photos.













 


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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 607th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

The Rowling Effect

There's a tendency among writers today to make a sudden jump at the end of their book. Maybe they take us forward 20 years or all the way to the death of the protagonist.

Unfortunately, these generally ruin the book. The book likely should end before this jump occurs.

I call it the "Rowling effect" because that is what J. K. Rowling did in the last Harry Potter book of the series. Fans will recall that she ends the book and then has a final chapter that explains how Harry and friends grew up, married, had children, etc.

Blah. It was an excruciating chapter that should have been left out of the story.

The last book I read that did this was When the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It wasn't a bad book - until the very end.

Then it jumped ahead about 35 years to the death of the protagonist and a relatively unbelievable revelation that the reader had figured out long before.

I see this more now than I used to, and I think Rowling's the reason. She made it okay to ruin a book's ending. She made it fine for an author not to figure out where the story really should be completed.

But it is not fine. A good ending can make a bad book better, but a bad ending can not help anything. At best, it makes a great book a little less great.

The ending should do no more than wrap up a few loose ends and show the ending of that portion of the protagonist's journey. If the rest of the protagonist's life is one big bore, we don't need to know that.

Wrapping up a book - or a TV series - with a bad ending is like putting a match to a stick. It was a good stick until you lit the match. Now you have a good stick that is burned and not so good anymore.

I could argue that Game of Thrones fits this scenario, too, with it's not-so-great final episode, but it did wrap up loose ends, and it ended the journey of its protagonists. In that show, it was the Stark children who ultimately were the protagonists, but in a show with so many characters it was never clear who the protagonist was. As people died off one by one and the story continued, one had to determine that the protagonist was someone left alive, or else conventional story techniques had been waylaid and perhaps the land itself was the protagonist, in which case anything goes, I suppose. In the end, though, we are left with several protagonists, all beginning new quests. Jon goes to live with the Free Folk, Sansa becomes Queen of the North, Bran the Broken is King of the Six Realms, and Arya sails off to the edge of the map. Their journey's aren't over. So this was, by my standards, a good ending because I didn't see the protagonists years later, dying or old or whatever their ultimate destinies may be. I can still think about them, maybe consider a day when the siblings are reunited - or not.

Big Bang Theory is a TV series that ended well. It wrapped up most loose ends - but not quite all - but still gave the viewer a reason to wonder about the characters. When you have something else to think about - will Raj ever marry, for example - then you have a good ending. These folks will go on with their lives, eating pizza on specific nights and doing their jobs. They may end up destitute or homeless or they may go on to do very great things (which most them already had done anyway). This part of their journey was done, though. The audience didn't need to know more.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that when a book ends, there shouldn't be an absolute end. If the protagonist dies at the end, there's nothing left to think about. The journey is over. I'm not sure books should end in that fashion. I like to think of more journey's ahead, more adventures, more growth of character.

Endings can mess up a book, but that's because the book isn't about the ending. The book is about the story. It's about the getting to the end, much like life is about its journey, not the final breath. If the ending messes up the story, then it's not the right place to end.

And that's the end of all I have to say about that. For now.

Monday, June 03, 2019

Daisies






Sunday, June 02, 2019

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. What was you first movie-going experience without your parents?

A. I'm not sure. However, there was one summer after the Salem Valley 8 theater was built that we spent a lot of time at the theater, my young uncle, my brother and me. We could walk there, so we saw a lot of those "B" movies, and I can't remember the name of a single one of them. This would have been 1975-1977ish. And a friend took my brother and me to see Grease at the theater when it came out (that would have been 1978).



2. Do you still buy DVDs or Blu Rays (or do you just stream them)?

A. I still buy DVDs/Blu Rays. The last one I purchased was Wonder Woman.

3. What is your guilty pleasure movie? What about it works for you?

A. Dirty Dancing. I enjoy that movie because it's fun, and every time I watch it I see a little more depth. Plus part of it was filmed at Mountain Lake, a resort which is about an hour away, so I like to see if I can figure out the scenery.



4. You have compiled a list of your top 10 movies. Which movies do you like, but would not make the list?

A. I don't have a list of top 10 movies. My top movie is all 12+ hours of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as everyone who knows me knows. But let's put Under the Tuscan Sun on there, Grease, Dirty Dancing, Stars Wars (the first three original movies), Wonder Woman, The Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music, Monty Python and the Holy Grail (bet that one took you by surprise, didn't it?), Mama Mia!, The Hobbit trilogy, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark & The Temple of Doom, The Blind Side, Practical Magic, and The Rose.



5. Which movie(s) do you compulsively watch over and over again? What makes it so great?

A. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is great because it is a great story with well-developed characters, wonderful acting, and New Zealand scenery. What more could you ask for?


(This is the part where I always cry.)

6. Classic(s) you’re embarrassed to admit you haven’t seen yet?

A. Most of them.

7. Do you have any movie posters hanging on your wall? If yes, which ones and why?

A. I have a Lord of the Rings calendar on the wall.

For June it has Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn.


8. Tell us about a movie that you are passionate about.

A. I like Wonder Woman because it has a strong female lead, who grows into her "powers" as a woman and as a heroine. I think there's a little Wonder Woman inside of every woman; only she's been so squashed by the patriarchy that she's very hard to find.



9. What is a movie you vow to never watch? Why?

A. Anything with Adam Sandler in it, because he comes across as a big misogynistic jerk.

10. Tell us about a movie that literally left you speechless.

A. It takes a lot to leave me speechless. Movies have left me crying, but not speechless.

11. What’s a movie that you always recommend?

A. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, of course. Outside of that, anything in #4.

12. Who is an actor you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie?

A. Sandra Bullock, maybe.

13. Who is an actor you don’t get the appeal for? Why don’t you like them?

A. Cher. She's a great singer, but I've never seen her act in anything where I didn't forget for a minute that it was Cher playing a role. She never actually became the part, the way someone like Sally Fields might.

14. Who is an actor, living or dead, you’d love to meet? Why do they intrigue you?

A. Lucille Ball. She was beautiful, witty, and smart, and a real leader in her business.

Isn't she beautiful?

15. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen. (Picture requested!)

A. Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn in Lord of the Rings (he isn't so hot in other roles). Sexiest female? Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman.

Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

16. You are casting a movie, pick four or five actors you’d hire to be in it and why we’d love them together.

A. Mr. Ed, George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Sally Field, and Walter Cronkite, who isn't an actor but I don't care, I want him in my picture. You'd love them because I say so.

17. Which are your favorite actor pairings of all time?

A. Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta.



18. Have you ever watched movies from a decade that was before you were born? If so, which decade is your favorite?

A. I used to watch Tarzan movies. I don't have a favorite decade.

19. If you were to be in a movie would you rather play the hero, villain or anti-hero? Why?

A. I want to be the dead body on the floor under the sheet.


My acting ability. My foot sticking out from a sheet.


__________
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, June 01, 2019

Saturday 9: It's Late

Saturday 9: It's Late (1959)

Unfamiliar with this week's song. Hear it here.

1) Ricky Nelson laments that he should have been home hours ago. When is the last time you stayed up later than you should have? What were you doing?

A. I'm an old married woman. We go to bed at 10 p.m. at the latest. I can't remember when I was out late for anything other than a government meeting when I was working.

2) Compounding Ricky's problem is that he's nearly out of gas. How is your gas tank right now? When did you most recently fill 'er up?

A. Friday morning at 5:30 a.m. (The previous question asked me when I stayed out late. It didn't ask me what I was doing up early.)

3) It gets worse! He can't call home because he doesn't have a dime for the pay phone. Have you recently been in a situation where you've been glad you had your cell phone handy?

A. Not really. We had a humdinger of a severe thunderstorm the other day and my husband called me on my cell phone because he was on the other side of the farm and he could see that the lightning was popping around the house. I heard it hit close by several times.

4) The video for this song is from an episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Ozzie Nelson, Ricky's father, was in charge of the show and made the rules. One was that no one was allowed to smoke on the set ... except his wife, Harriet. Do you smoke? Have you ever lived with a smoker?

A. I think when I was quite young my father smoked, but he stopped. My grandfather smoked, though, and I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house. I do not smoke.

5) Life magazine coined the phrase "teen idol" to describe Ricky's popularity. According to Tiger Beat, today's teen idols include Johnny Orlando and Ruby Jay. Johnny was born in 2003, Ruby in 2004. Sam admits that before today, she had no idea who these young people are. How about you?

A. Not a clue. I didn't even know teen magazines were still a thing.

6) While Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan have posthumously praised Ricky Nelson's music, 1950s music critics dismissed him as a lightweight. What's the last review you read? Was it written by a professional critic, or was it contributed by a consumer to a site like Amazon or Yelp?

A. It was a movie review in the newspaper, so a professional critic.

7) At the height of his popularity, Ricky tried his hand at movies, appearing in the western Rio Bravo with John Wayne. He turned 18 during the filming, and Wayne celebrated by playfully throwing Ricky into a sack of horse manure. Do you think pranks and practical jokes are funny?

A. No, I do not.

8) In 1959, when this song was popular, the St. Lawrence Seaway was completed. It connects Canada to our Great Lakes. Without looking it up, can you name all 5 Great Lakes?

A. Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings in the rooms of her ice water mansions. Michigan sings like a young man's dreams, the islands and bays are for sportsmen. And farther below Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Eerie can send her. And the iron boats go as the mariners all know with the gales of November remembered. (That's how I remember the Great Lakes.)

9) Random question – You drive past a local motel and see the car of a very married friend right there in the lot. Would you ask her about it?

A. Only if my husband's truck was also in the parking lot.

___________

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, May 30, 2019

Thursday Thirteen

1. I am too depressed by the state of the country to be into writing a Thursday 13.

2. Because we're not the America I thought we were. I suspect we never were.

3. Propaganda is everywhere, man. It has been all along. Only now it's got a fascist tone.

4. I'm watching my own personhood be destroyed as the rights of women decline and erode.

5. Today I realized that the new "REAL ID" that the state and feds are requiring in order to fly is actually going to cause a lot of women and poor people to be unable to jump on a plane if their mom who lives in Oregon dies.

6. The reason for my outrage are the requirements. A deed, or mortgage payment statement. What if the property is only in one spouse's name? It requires a paycheck stub or a W-2. What if you're a homemaker, and you don't work?

7. That's just one of the many outrages that I find frustrating about living in this country now.

8. Don't tell me to leave, either, if that's what you're thinking. I can trace my family roots back to the Revolutionary War. I belong here.

9. I wonder where we are going to end up. A Christian theocracy, run by the oligarchy, looks like.

10. We'd deserve to be called the American Taliban in that case.

11. I know there are some people out there who would like that. I'm not one of them.

12. Guess it is a good thing I am old enough to die.

13. At the rate things are going, I suspect that will happen sooner rather than the later it would have 10 years ago. I know there are people who prefer that happen quickly, too. They're not the kind of people I associate with.

___________________
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 606th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

A Baby Shower

Sunday I went to a baby shower for my new niece, who is due to have a little girl in June. The shower was at the Salem Red Sox stadium in a sky suite. First time I'd ever been to the stadium or in a sky suite. There was a game going on at the same time so some people elected to go watch the game rather than join the party.

I gave the baby a little outfit and a little pair of pants, along with two books by Margaret Wise Brown, a Hollins alumna. The books were Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny.

Anyway, here are some photos.

Lots of presents.

The happy couple.

Outside of the sky suite at the stadium.

Team mascot stopped by for a visit.

Mom-to-be and mascot.


A calendar for guessing the birth date of the newborn. Oddly no one chose the actual due date.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

An A is an A is an A

Yesterday I visited my father, and we played a little music after dinner.

We do not have similar tastes in music and we don't play together much. Actually I don't play with anyone often, something that shows in my timing. Lately I've taken to playing with the songs as they come over my Alexa so I can get my timing back in sync with the world instead of the beat that rests inside of me.

While my father was trying to let me lead the music, he was having trouble watching my fingers as they changed chords. For one thing, I've always been very quick to change chords on the guitar. I remember him complaining about that when we played together when I was 12 years old. So that is nothing new.

I was playing Peaceful, Easy Feeling by the Eagles - it's a relatively easy song, in the key of E, with chord changes of A, F#m, and B. Nothing too hard.

He couldn't figure out my A, though. I play it in the second fret, first, fifth strings open, 6th string untouched, a finger each on the second, third, and fourth strings. Like this:

But my father makes an A chord by barring the second, third, and fourth strings, and stretching his little finger out to the fifth fret to turn the lower E string into an A. (I actually cannot find an example of that on the Internet. I think it's an old-school A. Still an A, just not the most obvious one.)

There are so many ways to make a single chord on a guitar that there is no "right" way to do it. Dad wanted to tell me that I wasn't making an "A" chord until his own chord chart showed the above.

Here is A in the fifth fret, using a barre chord:


It's basically an "E" chord moved down five frets on the guitar fret board. You can do that with any position. You can use the D position and move it down to the 9th fret and you'd have an A (you wouldn't play the 4th, 5th, and 6th strings, though, unless you barred the chord).

This is all basically guitar theory, and once I grasped it when I first started playing I didn't have much trouble moving over the fretboard. I am not a lead guitar player - I prefer simply strumming and singing, with an occasional lick thrown in but not often. I also like to finger style and not use a pick, which makes the guitar hard to hear sometimes. I don't need to move all over the fretboard but I like to if I can.

Anyway, we had a nice time playing. He had a new guitar, a Guild, which was a smaller body than most of his dreadnought guitars and I could play that better. He uses a heavier gauge string than I do - I prefer light gauge strings -  so my fingers tired a little more quickly than they do when I'm playing on my little Taylor, but it was a good reminder that I need to keep those callouses forming on the ends of my fingers on my left hand.


Sunday, May 26, 2019

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

You'd think that as an avid reader and a writer, I'd love questions about books, but I don't. I don't have favorite books or authors, (aside from Tolkien), and I have a difficult time with questions about books. I keep a list of books I have read, one that I started about 10 years ago with around 600 books on it, so I will refer back to that for some of these answers.

1. Authors you never get tired of reading.

A. Tolkien. Janet Evanovich. Juliet Marillier, J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter books only), Sue Grafton, Nora Roberts, Adriana Trigiani, Fannie Flagg.

2. A book you bought for the cover, and discovered it was better than you thought.

A. The All Girls Filling Station Last Reunion, by Fannie Flagg

3. A book that made you laugh and cry, and made you depressed.

A. In Pieces, by Sally Field

4. A book that was a pleasant surprise.

A. A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness

5. A book everyone loves that you don’t.

A. Most of Barbara Kingsolver's books. The only one of hers I really liked was Flight Behavior. She writes well but something about her style does not make me happy when I'm reading.

6. A book with a great sidekick that you like more than the hero.

A. The Harry Potter books, by J. K. Rowling. I loved Hermione way more than I loved Harry.

7. A book that helped you through a difficult time.

A. The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd

8. A book that taught you something valuable.

A. The Tao of Writing, by Ralph Wahlstrom & The Writing Diet, by Julia Cameron. (I read them both around the same time.)

9. A book or series that it took you awhile to get into.

A. Anything by Stuart Woods. My husband loves his books, especially his Stone Barrington series, but it took me a long time to come around and listen to them with interest. It helps that they are audio books and thus I only hear them in the car. I do not think I could actually read one of these books.

10. A fictional character you’d love to have to dinner.

A. Galadriel, from Lord of the Rings. For those who don't know (I'm looking at you, Gal, non-reader of fantasy),  Galadriel was a royal Elf. She was one of the leaders in the rebellion of the Noldor and their flight from Valinor during the First Age, and she was the only prominent Noldo to survive and eventually return, at the end of the Third Age. Towards the end of her stay in Middle-earth she was co-ruler of Lothlórien with her husband, Lord Celeborn, and was referred to variously as the Lady of Lórien, the Lady of the Galadhrim, the Lady of Light, or the Lady of the Golden Wood. Tolkien describes Galadriel as "the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth" and the "greatest of elven women".

__________
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, May 25, 2019

Saturday 9: God Bless America

Saturday 9: God Bless America

Unfamiliar with Deanna Durbin's rendition of week's tune? Hear it here.

Memorial Day is the federal holiday designated to honor American service people who died in battle.

1) Memorial Day was introduced after the Civil War. Originally called Decoration Day, this is when memorials, as well as the graves of veterans, are to be decorated with flags and flowers on this day to show our appreciation. Is there a war memorial in your neighborhood?

A. Yes. We have an obelisk on the county courthouse lawn. It's a Confederate memorial but I consider it one of the more tasteful ones. This monument to the county’s war effort does not single out any one person, and lauds the efforts of all men and women who survived that harrowing time in our nation’s history. The obelisk is pointing towards the heaven. Similar geometrical shapes grace the graves of many Civil War veterans.

The statue was erected in 1904 to commemorate “the deeds and services of the twelve volunteer companies … that went to the war from Botetourt County,” the statue reads, and “in memory of our brave and loyal officers and enlisted men who were killed in battle and who died from wounds and disease, during the war, and of our faithful comrades who have died since the war.”
It also says, “In honor of those men of Botetourt,- of the period 1861-1865 - who faithfully did duty in the civil and military service of Virginia, and of the Confederate States.  In recognition of those who gave, and of those who worked and served, to support our soldiers, and for the comfort and safety of their families."
The monument has a side dedicated to women, which is unusual. It says, “To the women of Botetourt in remembrance of their constant encouragement, steadfast devotion, tender in ministrations and unfailing providence and care, during the war and in the dark reconstruction years.”


The obelisk outside of the county courthouse.

2) Andrew Johnson, our 17th President, was in office the first time Memorial/Decoration Day  was celebrated. Have you ever met one of our 45 Presidents?

A. No.

3) According to the AAA, more than 30 million Americans will hit the road this weekend and drive more than 50 miles. Will you be traveling far from home this weekend?

A. No.

4) Memorial Day kicks off the summer season. What's your favorite picnic food?

A. Watermelon.

5) As you answer these questions, is there an air conditioner or fan on?

A. Yes.

6) Though she's belting out one of America's best loved patriotic songs, Deanna Durbin was born in Canada. Is there anyone in your family or circle of friends who wasn't born in the USA?

A. I have a pen pal who lives in England. We've been emailing nearly every day for 20 years.

7) No longer a household name, Ms. Durbin was once one of the biggest stars in the country. One of her most popular films was 1937's One Hundred Men and a Girl, which was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Recommend a movie that you really like, but don't think many Saturday 9ers have seen.

A. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

8) Back in 1938, Deanna Durbin had her handprints cemented in front of the TCL Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Have you ever visited that Los Angeles tourist attraction?

A. No.

9) Random question: What food did you hate as a child, but enjoy now?

A. I still eat like I'm seven years old, so I continue to not eat foods I didn't like as a child.

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