Sunday Stealing

Stolen from Tom

1) What was the scariest thing in the world to you when you were a kid? Does it still scare you now?

A. This is a difficult question to answer. The scariest thing "in the world" to me as a child was not something like spiders and snakes, but the adults in my life. They do not scare me now.

 

2) Imagine your 12-year-old daughter (or granddaughter) is hosting a sleepover at your home. A sudden storm knocks out cellphone service, wifi and cable. How would you keep these suddenly unplugged pre-teens entertained?

A. A game of Scrabble, or card games. Maybe I would teach them how to play poker. We could also do sing-a-longs because I can't imagine any child of mine (or grandchild of mine) not knowing how to play a little guitar. We could play "truth or dare" or "never have I ever." Whether or not they'd go along with those suggestions would be another story, but maybe they'd enjoy it.

 

3) What piece of movie or TV memorabilia would you love to own?

A. I would love to own the One Ring from the original Lord of the Rings movie (I have a facsimile of it, but I want the one that Frodo carried). Failing that, someone could get me a signed photo from Lindsay Wagner from the Bionic Woman at her Bionic50 page. She's got things up for sale to celebrate because it's been 50 years since the show aired (damn, I am old). I thought about buying myself one of those Facetime-for-an-hour experiences, but I have no idea what I would say to Lindsay Wagner for an hour. "Gee, I liked your show when I was 12, but I rewatched it recently and thought the writing was inane in the third season" probably is not a good conversation starter.

4) You are gifted with the services of a personal assistant for four hours. What would you ask your assistant to do?

A. Clean up my office or do the bookkeeping. There's not enough time for both, and in four hours she'd just make a little headway.

 

5) If literary characters were real, which one would you like to interview, and what would you ask?

A. I recently reread The Scarlett Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, so let's interview Hester Prynne and find out why she went back to live out her sentence instead of staying in England with her daughter.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

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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 9: Ja-Da

Saturday 9: Ja-Da (1918)

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

 

1) The lyrics tell us the melody is soothing. What calms you when you're upset or anxious?

A. Valium.

 

2) There was a lot going on in 1918 – like WWI and the Spanish flu pandemic – that left people upset and anxious. In those days, radio wasn't yet a staple in American homes, so people received their news through newspapers. Today with podcasts and 24-hour cable news and social media and other news outlets available, do you ever feel like taking a break from current events?

A. I have not read a full edition of the local daily newspaper for several months now. We switched to digital and I don't like it. I read stories from there that relate to my county, but I do not read it cover to cover like I used to. Current events are more like throwing up in a trash can these days than actually learning something helpful, so I think a break occasionally is good for your health. You can't vomit news all of the time.

3) In addition to newspapers, magazines were a big deal in 1918. Women turned to publications like Ladies Home Journal and McCall's for trends and tips about fashion and housekeeping. Do you have any printed magazines in your home now?

A. I have The Atlantic, Reader's Digest, Farm Journal, Drovers Magazine, and Consumer Reports.

 

4) Today schoolchildren often learn "Ja-Da" because it's easy to sing and play. Was music part of your grade school curriculum?

A. We had a lovely music teacher named Mrs. Tingler who came once a week to give us music lessons. She taught us several songs that I still remember, like Senor Don Gato the Cat and Goodbye Ol' Paint. She also brought along different types of instruments, like tambourines, triangles, harmonicas, etc., for kids to try out. Once she received permission to take Ann and I to other schools so I could play flute while Ann sang. Ann and I ended up the Top 40 cover band that I was in during high school. She was the singer and I played guitar. Not all the long ago, I came across Mrs. Tingler on Facebook, and she seemed to remember me. And not long after that, I saw her obituary in the newspaper. God bless the Mrs. Tinglers of the world.

 

5) Composer Bob Carleton published more than 500 songs in his career. He had no songwriting partner, handling the words and lyrics himself. What's your favorite song? Was it written by a single composer or a songwriting team?

A. I don't know that I have a favorite song, but I will say that I am a big fan of Fleetwood Mac and I generally lean towards the songs that Stevie Nicks wrote, especially the strange ones like Rhiannon and Sara. 

 

6) Bob got his start in his hometown of St. Louis, playing piano in his parents' saloon. When you think of St. Louis, what comes to mind?

A. Missouri. The big golden arch thing.

 

7) In 1918, Americans were buying more cars and Studebakers were a familiar sight on the streets and highways. Today that name is mostly forgotten. Can you think of a brand that used to popular but has disappeared?

A. Pearl Drops Toothpaste. Clearasil. Rainbow Bread (that might've been a local thing). Valley Dale meats. 

 

8) During WWI, Americans were familiar with "Meatless Days." Back then we were encouraged to cut back on the consumption of meat as a patriotic gesture to help the American and Allied troops. Today "Meatless Monday" highlights health and the environment. Think about your diet. Do you try to eat more grains, fruits and vegetables?

A. At the moment, I am supposed to be eating more protein. Apparently, I do not eat enough of that, especially in the mornings.

 

9) Random question: Where did you get the shirt you are wearing right now?

A. I have on a pink Fire-EMS shirt that was a special edition T-shirt put out for women's breast cancer. It says "Fired up for a cure" on the back. My husband purchased several of them when that went around the firehouse, and I wear them a lot.

 

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

Thursday Thirteen

1. A spider built an entire town inside my sneakers that I use for my "outside shoes." When I went to put them on, there was spider web everywhere, inside and out. The spider was still in the shoe. I handed it to my husband. "Eww," I said. He cleaned it out with a paper towel.

2. The spider in my shoe reminded me of that nursery rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe and had so many children she didn't know what to do. I think she whipped them all soundly and put them to bed, but it's been a long time since I looked at nursery rhymes.

3. I used to have a book of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes. It was large with a black and white checked pattern on it, and goose in a bonnet on the front. At one point, I knew all the nursery rhymes, but that was a very long time ago.

4. Was there a nursery rhyme about a spider? I don't recall one, but I remember the song, "Itsy Bitsy Spider." That spider had a Sisyphus complex, always climbing up the water drain only to be washed out and having to start all over again.

5.  Once, I opened a game camera in the kitchen and tiny little yellow spiders went everywhere. It looked like there were hundreds of them in the innards of the game camera. The next fall, we had big spiders - we call them wolf spiders although I don't think that's the right name - were all over the house. I was constantly hauling out the vacuum to suck them up off the floor. They appeared every fall for years after, and I even saw one this year. But hopefully they've about done their due in the house.

6. Now I only open game cameras outside when I want to get the cards out to see what the pictures are. Yes, I buy only cheap game cameras, not the ones with apps that allow you to see in real time that there's a raccoon in the backyard.

7. Speaking of raccoons, I saw a story Wednesday about a raccoon in Hanover County, VA, that invaded an ABC store. It destroyed bottles on the lower shelves, got very drunk, and passed out in the bathroom. The animal was fine after it sobered up.

8. I once had a squirrel find its way into the garage. Its ending was not as good as the raccoon's. This was when my husband had ankle surgery in 2019, and I was caring for him and not going out much. I don't know how the squirrel got in the garage. I heard something once when I was in the laundry room but I thought it was the dryer bumping against the wall. After several days, I had to make a grocery store run. While I was gone, the mail carrier brought something up to the house, and my husband, on his little knee scooter, asked the woman if she could just put the delivery inside the garage door for me to get when I returned. "Do you know there's a dead squirrel in your garage?" the woman asked him after she put the parcel inside. He did not. Being the hero that he is, he wheeled himself outside in the cold, down the patio sidewalk, and into the garage, found a shovel, picked up the dead squirrel, and flung it as far as he could out into the yard so I wouldn't drive home to find a dead squirrel in my path. "I didn't want to freak you out," he said. He later had a friend remove the carcass away from the house. He was probably right that a dead squirrel would have had me in tears. It upset me anyway because I knew the poor thing died of dehydration and lack of food.

9. Completely changing the subject now, I gave ChatGPT all of my health issues, food allergies, food preferences, and what I normally eat, and said, "fix me." We are working on a few things, and I have lost three pounds, even over Thanksgiving. I'll let you know if this continues to prove helpful. So far it seems to be working. I don't know why I thought to do that, but I guess dietitian could be another job that AI takes over.

10. My friend told me she read that the owner of Open AI thinks that one day an AI will be president. I'm not sure I want to live in that world. That's just too weird even for me. Although I think AI is better than believing that all the powerful folks at the top are secretly lizard people.

11. We had a lizard called a skink in the back and it kept trying to get in the house. I didn't want to kill it, I just wanted it to move along, so I sprinkled black pepper all over the patio door and the patio area where I kept seeing it. Black pepper is supposed to be something skinks don't like. The skink moved to the front porch, which is Ok because I don't go out that door as much and there aren't little door guides for it to hide under.

12. I tried using cayenne pepper to keep the deer away from my roses when I grew them, but it didn't stop them. Nothing keeps those things from eating the flowers, although they don't like marigolds much. I even had them eat my mums this year, which was a first.

13. And now we have come to the end of this wayward little wandering Thursday Thirteen. I don't often do these like this but sometimes it's good to just see what comes out of the air when I simply want to write.

Thank you for reading!

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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 936th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway. 

Prancer

Not the animal discussed in this post.

The other morning, after 35 years of watching deer, I saw something I'd never seen before.

A cold front was heading in; the deer were all over the yard. Every time I looked out the window, there was a doe. On one side of the house, two young bucks butted heads, then stopped and stared at me as I raced outside with the camera.

A little later, I heard my husband coming up the driveway, but he didn't come all the way up. I went to the garage to make sure he was ok.

Through the window, I saw that he had the binoculars out and was looking at the woods. I looked too and saw a doe come running out of the trees. She slipped under the fence and dashed through the front yard, moving fast.

Right after she slipped under the fence, a buck jumped it, taking it like a grown man would step over a child's alphabet block, and then, it happened.

The buck pranced.

He pranced across my front yard as if he were the prince of the land, which I suppose he was at that particular time. His feet lifted much like a horse in a parade might do. He wasn't running after the doe; he was sure he was going to get her.

His stately look made me gasp and wish I had my camera, because of course I did not. He pranced on out of sight, while I stood there, entranced.

And the amazing thing was he pranced right in front of my husband, who watched him, too. And while it was a buck big enough to shoot, my husband let him go, so he could find his lady love.

I'm not sure which was the best to see, the buck prancing so, or my husband's wisdom in letting that buck live another day.

The Hidden Value of an Education

The chapel at Hollins University

This NBC News article says that in these strange times, most Americans don't believe college is worth it. The question asked is all about money:

"Is a four-year college degree "worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime," or "not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off?"

Just thirty-three percent of U.S. citizens now think a four-year degree is worth the cost, according to the article.

What the article doesn't ask is this: are there are other values to having an education? Hidden values that aren't countable by an abacus, reasons to go to school that have nothing at all to do with money?

My answer to that is: Hell Yes. Maybe Double Hell Yes.

My college experience is vastly different from most people's, and I realize that. I took a long, strange winding road to obtain my three degrees. I know this question applies mostly to young people who are coming out of high school and heading toward four years of college and possibly $100,000 or more in debt. And that can seem daunting, especially in our rapidly changing world where a profession today may be extinct by tomorrow.

I can see the concerns about the high cost of a college degree, given all that is going on today.

But even accounting for that, I think a college degree has so much value beyond what one earns in the workplace that the question itself seriously undervalues what one actually gains with an education.

I took five years to obtain my two-year degree at the local community college. I transferred credits around and took eight years to obtain my four-year degree at a private college. I started my master's degree at the same college in 1994 and finally finished it in 2012. 

It was all paid for when I was done. Aside from my final year of working on my four-year degree, I did not take out any loans. And that loan was not a regular government "student loan," it was a personal loan from my bank that I quickly paid off. 

I worked the entire time I was taking classes. Sometimes I worked full time. Sometimes I worked part-time. I was also ill and had multiple surgeries that forced me to drop out of semesters or skip them altogether. That's why it took so long.

But the knowledge I gained from being at Hollins College? The place opened up the whole world to me. Yes, I took a liberal arts route, not a focused STEM route. And I learned, oh how much I learned! I learned about art, dance, music, philosophy. I learned about English and writing. I learned about the Middle East. I learned about film. I learned about children's literature and mysteries. I learned how to get along with people I didn't like. I learned how to deal with professors who were difficult. I learned how to see people for who they really were, and what they could offer, and I learned how to see things with a wide-open mind.

College opened my brain and expanded my horizons in so many intangible ways that I could spend the rest of my life trying to sum them up and never reach the end of the list.

This is what an education does. This is what learning is all about. It's not about how much money you make. That's just . . . what we focus on here and it's a devastating way to measure worth. I know many people who are not worth a lot of money but who are far better people than the richest person I know.

My work as a news reporter for the local paper didn't require a degree. I could have done that without the education. But college opened up my brain so I could ask more intelligent questions, peer into different sectors of the world, write about practically anything. Once you get to know me, I can talk to you about anything from NASCAR to books to poetry to how to fix a fence and what to look for in a bull when you need one for a cattle herd.

I consider myself a fairly well-rounded person. I am, by definition, a Jill of all trades, someone with many skills, not just one solitary mindset.

And I have my education to thank for that. College is worth it for reasons that have no price tag.

Five Things

 

Last week, I:

1. celebrated Thanksgiving with my family.

2. saw the chiropractor.

3. attempted to watch the Board of Supervisors meeting, but they were having technical difficulties.

4. started watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

5. finished up my shopping for the holidays.

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In solidarity with federal workers, who were tasked in late February 2025 with listing 5 things they did the prior week in order to keep their jobs, I started listing 5 things I did last week every Monday. On August 5, 2025, the federal government decided this was a waste of employees' time (as if we all didn't know that already). I have decided to keep it up, at least for now.