An Unhinged Biography

CountryDew was last seen emerging from a foggy hayfield at dawn with a bottle of water in a holster at her hip, one hand holding a half-finished blog post in a composition book, and the other holding a laptop with approximately seventeen tabs open about data centers, county politics, vintage guitars, medieval fantasy audiobooks, and whether deer can recognize individual humans.

Neighbors describe her as “very nice,” immediately followed by, “but also intense in a way that suggests she could absolutely dismantle a zoning proposal at a public hearing with nothing but a legal pad and disappointment.”

A former newspaper reporter with the soul of a poet and the investigative instincts of a bloodhound who once got into the courthouse records room and never fully came back out, CountryDew spent decades chronicling the quiet machinery of rural Virginia life. Births. Deaths. Farm disputes. School board drama. Government over-reach. Somebody’s goat escaping during Founders Day. The kind of stories that actually matter.

Now retired from formal journalism, she roams the countryside like a semi-feral Appalachian intellectual, blogging at odd hours on “Blue Country Magic,” playing guitar despite orthopedic betrayal, and staring meaningfully out windows while thinking things like:

“What if the entire emotional structure of my childhood explains why I’m angry about this easement?”

Her natural habitat includes:

• stacks of books,
• unfinished projects,
• protein shakes she does not particularly enjoy,
• notebooks filled with devastatingly accurate observations,
• and at least one deer standing motionless at the edge of the yard like a cryptid intern.

She has the emotional range of a 1970s singer-songwriter album:

Track 1: wistful childhood memory about fireflies.

Track 2: rage about property law.

Track 3: grief.

Track 4: suspiciously detailed discussion of hay cutting.

Track 5: cozy fantasy romance.

Track 6: existential collapse in the Kroger parking lot.

Track 7: recovery via Fleetwood Mac and stubbornness.

Her enemies include:

• vague legal language,
• shoulder impingement,
• emotionally unavailable men,
• poorly researched local reporting,
• custom orthotics,
• and anyone who says “nobody wants to read long articles anymore.”

Her allies include:

• her husband, who wanders through life like a cheerful farm druid somehow immune to stress,
• old guitars,
• county history,
• A&W Root Beer,
• and cherished friends, who have now heard enough family lore to qualify as relatives.

Despite everything, CountryDew remains deeply, almost irrationally hopeful about people. She notices beauty constantly. Wildflowers beside gravel roads. Old songs. Strangers trying their best. The way memory lives in ordinary objects. She believes stories matter because they are evidence that someone was here and that their life counted for something.

Also she absolutely will spend three hours researching a single sentence because a date “didn’t feel right.”

Local legend claims that if you drive the back roads of Botetourt County at twilight, you may glimpse her on a porch with a guitar, muttering about county infrastructure, writing emotionally devastating prose in a Word document titled something like FINAL_FINAL_REALFINAL2.docx while a deer watches from the tree line like a silent witness to the entire American experiment.

*ChatGPT wrote this using the prompt: "Write an unhinged biography of me."

Eating Alone

I ran across an old op-ed column I wrote about eating alone, dated sometime around 2003. This is how that went back then:

Everyone looks at you funny, right down the guy behind the cash register and the cook who slaps the burgers on the buns.  When did eating alone become a crime?

I can ask this because I spent the past week skulking around the fast-food joints.  I hid behind books and newspapers as I ate.  Sometimes I scowled at the twosomes who cast pitiful looks my way.  Mostly I just tried to appear inconspicuous.

There are rules to follow when you eat alone.  The number one rule is to have reading material with you so you look like you're having a good time.  Laugh at the jokes on the horoscope page.  Something.  Anything to keep from having to look at other people, which brings us to the second rule: never make eye contact.  And the third rule is to sit as far away from other people as you can.

I ate in the mall one day, and there were six other people eating at the food court - all sitting alone.  We sat like this - lone person, empty table, lone person, empty table . . . you get the picture.  At least no one cast pitiful glances that day.  Everyone was in the same predicament.

I've often wondered what would happen if you went up to a solitary diner and asked to sit down with them.  Great love stories occur in that fashion.  The restaurant is full and solitary lady is forced to sit with solitary man, and true love blossoms over the shrimp dip.  Sigh.

But I never impose, just as no one imposes on me.  Why risk bodily harm or verbal abuse?  Why trouble yourself with certain rejection?

Therein lies the answer to my question of the crime of solitary dining - rejection.  Eating alone signifies rejection.  Everyone sees you and knows no one wants to eat with you.  Never mind that it's your choice and you don't like your coworkers.  You dine alone, so something is wrong with you.

Maybe the lone diners should form a club and throw some weight around.  We could get the restaurants to have tables with one chair.  And supply newspapers and magazines.  This would have an added benefit for the rest of the population, because you never know when a twosome will become a solitary diner, and someone will have to eat alone. 

When that happens, you can bet they will be unprepared for the experience and won't know what to do with their hands and minds while they eat.  They will need a little mercy, and a newspaper to hide behind.

But that was then. Now? Now I think eating alone isn't that big a deal. The reason? Cell phones. Now it isn’t the lone diner who looks out of place, it’s the person who isn’t staring at a phone. 

Solitude didn’t change. The etiquette did.

The Other Side of the Path

 

The Final Prompt: What is one thing you’ve started noticing more because of this challenge?

I don't know that I noticed things *more* so much as realized that I have all I need, really. There are many things wrong in my life, don't get me wrong, but there are also many more things that are right, whether that's the blue sky out my window or the ringtone on my phone, which is, appropriately enough for me, from the Lord of the Rings movies. 

Life can be harrowing. It can be painful. It can be sad. It can be lonely. And yet it can also be full of wonder. It can hold joy. It can be filled to the brim with sunshine and pansies. 

It's easy to fall into a frame of mind that sees only one way and not the other. If this challenge reminded me of anything, it's to always try to find the other side of the path if I don't like the one I'm on.

_____________________

Kwizgiver started a gratitude challenge for April. This is the last day. 

And that's her picture from her blog. I swiped it.

Thanks, KG!

Perspective

Just the smallest shift can change your perspective.

Recently I decided to move my computer a little. My computer, once squarely in front of the window, is now off to the side.

I have a different view from the same window.

Before the move, I looked straight into a small glen, a part of the cattle pasture. Brush and pine trees frame the space, and daily I’d watch the deer pass back and forth, from brush to pine, their noses to the ground eating grass as they went.

I don’t see that anymore. Now I see a grove of oak trees, and the fields stretching out towards the two-lane road that runs by my house. I see the cedar trees growing tall, majestic and larger every year. And I see a rose bush, presently leafless and dead-looking, though with this warm weather it’s liable to bud just any time.

Each day I watch the view out my window.

Some mornings loom gray and ugly, the clouds and dark sky proclaiming a rainy, windy day. Other mornings, the dustiness of night is suddenly brushed away by pink as the sun rises behind me. 

Time passes, the shadows change, the daylight flicks over the house, the eaves of the roof afford shade or not. In evening the sun shines golden over the mountains I love so much. The rays reflect the browns of the tree branches, the yellows of the hibernating grasses.

I see squirrels, groundhogs, an occasional fox, the deer I may as well call my pets. The cattle, too, meander past. Sometimes I stop working to watch the calves kick up their heels, running delightedly up and down the hillside.

I envy those calves (until I remember their ultimate future).

If I raise my window, I also change my perspective. Suddenly, instead of the quiet of my house, I hear traffic. Momma cows call to little ones. Crows caw. A horn blasts in the distance, maybe a siren.  Things are happening all around me, even if I can’t see them.

In the mornings, I sometimes drink my hot tea over the kitchen sink so I can watch the sun rise. Today it was brilliant pink, splashed in between clouds. The dark skyline of nude trees seemed to reach up to grab the light, so breathtaking was the magnificence of the day.

It's just March. There is still time to think of this as a new year, time to seek out new perspectives, new windows, new light.  Do we bask in the sunrise, or rejoice in the sunset? Should we keep the same viewpoint and never bother to change our minds? Do we stick with the tried and true and never see the critters roaming just a stone’s throw away?

I opt to look. Even the fat, lumbering groundhog is too cute to miss.

Maybe it's time for a new perspective. Not the grand, resolution-style overhaul we promise ourselves every January and abandon by February. Maybe we need just a small shift, the way moving a computer a few inches can open up an entirely different world outside the same window. Listen a little longer before you speak. Let someone finish their sentence before you're already forming your reply.

Sometimes the most important thing a person says comes at the very end, quiet and almost offhand, and you'd have missed it entirely if you'd stopped listening too soon.

The new view doesn't have to be dramatic. It might be a different road home, an unfamiliar store, a hand held when you'd normally just walk side by side. It might be three small words said out loud to someone who already knows you mean them.

Look out the window every once in a while. You never know what's passing by.

*A version of this ran in The Fincastle Herald in 2005. It's been revised.*

Tracks on Mars

I was watching video this morning of Perseverance roaming around on Mars - it went 1,350 feet yesterday; its longest run in a single time period - and I could see the previous tracks the rover made as it moved around.

And I was thinking, as I watch our society decay, decline, and destroy itself, that mankind might not make it to Mars for a very long time.

When humanity does make it there, say in 3535, this period of history may well be forgotten. We're depending so much on technology that is actually rather fluid and erratic that I don't think the past 40 years will fare well in historical context. Things that live in the cloud are on somebody else's hard drive, and who is going to ensure that can be read for the next hundred years? Not to mention a couple thousand years. Just as an example, the 3.5-inch floppy disks I still have hold articles I wrote 35 years ago, and I have no way to read them.

Looking at all that is going on today, the state of the entire world feels to me perilously close to becoming that bleak world of Mars up there - like humanity itself may be close to extinction. After all, one world war of nuclear bursts would pretty much destroy all that we cherish and hold dear.

Whatever brand of humanity rose from those ashes might eventually make it to Mars, and without records - because of course they will destroy all the records, eventually - no one will remember that we've sent things there.

They'll think they've found evidence of an alien civilization that once lived on Mars. The tracks may even still be visible, depending on the weather, kind of like we still find dinosaur footprints in marshy weird places.

That would be fascinating, wouldn't it, if humanity thought its own efforts were those of aliens. It's the kind of thing we do now. We propose that aliens built the pyramids, or drew those massive characters and pictures in deserts, or destroyed the Mayan society. Whatever.

A very long time ago in Reader's Digest I read an article about archeologists uncovering a big structure. Inside they found a skeleton on a bed, staring at a big screen thing. They surmised the big screen thing was some kind of god that the humans worshipped, because so many of them were staring at it.

It was amusing in a scary sort of way.

Anyway, I like space stuff, so go Perseverance! Make more tracks. And hats off to Voyagers I and II, also. Keep moving away from here. You may one day be the last remnant that says humanity existed, and wouldn't that be something.

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.

Imagine

We are coming up on the anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963. I was five months old.

My mother always told me she had me in a car seat and she was outside hanging clothes when one of the neighbors told her, and she went inside to listen to the radio, forgetting I was there because she was so upset about it.

Sometimes I wonder what life might have looked like if JFK had lived. What if that motorcade in Dallas had rolled on without gunfire? Maybe the country would have kept its faith a little longer.

In that world, perhaps I would have grown up under a different kind of light. The 1960s would have been the decade of moonshots and peace corps banners instead of assassinations and riots on the evening news. 

Maybe there never would have been a Vietnam War, and the adults around me would have seemed a little less weary.

By the 1970s, the headlines might have been about science and education instead of oil and scandal. The space program would have kept that glow of possibility, and the word government wouldn’t have curdled into something said with a sneer.

My first votes might have felt like joining something noble, not choosing the lesser of two evils. (My first vote for president was in 1984.)

Out here in the Blue Ridge, life would still have been slow. The cows would have still been in the pasture, neighbors would still wave, but perhaps the undercurrent of mistrust that seeps into small towns might not have taken root. 

The post office would still be the post office, not a symbol of inefficiency. Roads would get fixed because that’s what government does, not because someone fought for a grant.

Perhaps I’d have started writing sooner, believing my words could find an audience that still listened. The newspaper business might have stayed strong, respected, instead of having to justify its existence to people convinced every reporter was out to get them.

And now, in 2025, I expect this same farm would still look much as it does today, with fields and fences, deer running through the land only to vanish in mist - but with a steadier hum underneath.

Perhaps broadband would’ve arrived years earlier, powered by public investment in rural areas. Health care would be universal, not a negotiation. Schools would teach civics with pride, not apology.

Maybe there wouldn't have been so many school shootings. So many young lives cut down before life even began for them.

It’s a fantasy, sure. As a former news reporter and an amateur historian, I have read enough back issues of newspapers to know that the U.S. has always had issues. We were awful on civil rights, women's rights, and there was a Cold War going on that maybe wouldn't have ended without Ronald Reagan and which would still be ongoing.

Still, I like to think sometimes of an America that never lost its balance, where intelligence is admired and compromise isn’t considered weakness. Maybe that sounds like a The West Wing rerun, I don't know. 

But what I envision is not this world. Sometimes it feels close enough to touch, but it is always out of my grasp, even if I close my eyes and imagine the news breaking in with a headline that feels like progress instead of warning.

Regardless, I can go back to work or go outside to the fields that are still real. I can take a walk and think that, like Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, maybe the smallest acts of kindness are what changes the world. Things like listening, telling the truth, keeping faith with the land are what hold the line between the world we have and the one we lost.

Killing US with Lawsuits

A very long time ago, back before 9/11 and George W. Bush, before I was really paying attention to national politics and instead spending my time dealing with serious healthcare issues, keeping my home and husband going, and working full and/or part-time jobs while also attending college, I played a city-building game. 

I think it was one of the versions of Civilization, but I am not certain, so I won't claim that to be so. The game started you out as a nomadic human and eventually you built up your civilization to the current time period and beyond.

The one thing that stood out to me in that game was that at a certain point, it wasn't wars or terrorists or people being people that stopped my game to the point I walked away from it.

It was lawsuits.

Thousands upon thousands of lawsuits. Every move I made, the game threw a lawsuit at me. Every construction, every attempt to move forward, brought a lawsuit.

I remember watching helplessly as the "lawyers" represented by the game flung lawsuit after lawsuit at me. It was a game stopper, for sure. 

However, now I see this same notion playing out in real time. We live in the new world of lawsuits. There are lawsuits being filed by the government against states, against corporations, against real people who are just going about living their lives, and lawsuits filed by people against their neighbors, cities against counties, states against communities.

Every time I look around, there's another lawsuit.

Locally, this happens a lot. I looked up the lawsuits filed in Circuit Court against various departments in my county and stopped counting at 100.

According to Microsoft CoPilot, over 328 lawsuits have been filed against the current administration this year alone, with dozens more filed on its behalf. Everything from executive orders to regulatory actions ends up in court.

I don't know about you, but I miss the days of people sitting down and talking over their issues before immediately heading to court. I don't know that a lawsuit would stop a war - if that were the case, there would be no wars - but it sure adds up costs for one party and great funding for someone else.

Long ago, people resolved things over a beer and a handshake. Will we ever get back to those more mannerly times? Because right now, even a good bar fight looks like a better way to resolve an issue than what I am seeing on C-Span these days.

Blog Blast 4 Peace

 

Speak Love is the theme for this year's Blog Blast 4 Peace.

Love. It's the thing we all desire, the emotion that many believe will save the world. But what is it, exactly?

When I ask my husband of almost 42 years how he knows he loves me, his answer is, "I feel it in my heart." But he shows me he loves me in a myriad of ways, from small kisses to helping me change the bed linens on Saturdays. Sometimes he even washes my car! 

I show him I love him by taking care of him, making sure he's fed, washing his clothes, and keeping the house. These are acts of love, not chores.

Many people confuse love with control, though. A parent might say 'I'm doing this because I love you' while restricting their adult child's choices or demanding obedience. But love that seeks to control isn't really love at all - it's about power. True love empowers and trusts; it doesn't manipulate or dominate.

Other examples of control disguised as love include someone saying 'I love you' while monitoring their partner's phone, isolating them from friends, or making all the decisions. But that's not love - that's possession. Real love gives freedom and respects boundaries. 

Throughout history, people in power have claimed to act out of love for 'their people' while restricting freedoms and silencing dissent. But love that demands submission isn't love at all. It's dominance disguised as love.

And love is love, and it's what many of us hope will save the world. It's what Jesus preached:

John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

John 15:9: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

Mark 12:30–31: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Luke 6:35: “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.”

John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

These verses reveal the radical and inclusive nature of Jesus’ love. It is a love that reaches across boundaries, forgives deeply, and calls us to mirror divine compassion in our own lives.

It is the love that many of us have hoped would save the world. We've hoped for this for over 2000 years, feeling that in the end love will win. But those words have been twisted until they are no longer recognizable in many places.

Love is many things, and I believe each person defines it for himself or herself. What I see as love may be completely different from what others see as love. Perhaps love for someone is about control, and someone who does not submit is someone that person cannot love or believes cannot love him or her. 

Sometimes people talk about love and show love in many different ways. Dr. Gary Chapman has identified five "love languages" that people use to demonstrate love. Sometimes if people use one type of "love language" it may not be recognizable to someone who uses another type of "love language."

The five love languages are:

Words of Affirmation: Expressing love through spoken words, praise, or appreciation.

Acts of Service: Showing love by doing things for your partner, such as chores or tasks.

Receiving Gifts: Giving thoughtful gifts as a symbol of love and affection.

Quality Time: Spending meaningful time together, focusing on each other without distractions.

Physical Touch: Expressing love through physical contact, such as hugs, kisses, or holding hands.

Maybe love is all of these things and many more. Maybe love is whatever we want to call it, but I do not believe anything that causes pain, whether physical or mental, can be love. It isn't love to cut off food to starving children. It isn't "love" to destroy. Love creates or nurtures.

There are lines we must draw between love and hate, between genuine compassion and empty words, between actions that build up and actions that tear down.

So, what does it look like to speak love for peace? It might be checking on a neighbor who lives alone. It could be listening - truly listening - to someone whose views differ from ours, seeking to understand rather than to win. It might be volunteering at a food bank, writing a letter to someone who's struggling, or simply choosing kindness when we're tempted toward anger. 

Speaking love means acting with compassion, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard.

I try hard to love in all things, but of course I am only human, and I fail. I cannot always show love in the way someone needs, perhaps because I don't understand what they need. But that doesn't mean we can't try.

Let's all put a little love in our hearts. 

When a Man Is a Witch

He walks the edge of ruin and revelation

Some men don’t need spells to be witches. Their presence alone reshapes the emotional landscape. They speak, and the air thickens. They withdraw, and silence becomes a reckoning. They don’t call themselves mystic, prophet, or healer, but those around them feel the ripple of their power.

Folklore remembers these men. Literature gives them names. In real life, they often go unnamed—figures whose emotional gravity distorts time, memory, and meaning, men whose witchcraft is carried in their very being.

Some people carry power they never asked for. Not the kind granted by ritual or rank, but the kind born of grief, exile, and inheritance. A bitter word, a wounded silence, a moment of rage can act like spells when spoken by someone whose spirit is charged.

Heathcliff never needed incantations. His love and fury haunted the moors, reshaping generations with the force of his longing. Sirius Black didn’t cast curses, but his loyalty and pain echoed through every room he entered, a storm barely contained. Odysseus, clever and cursed, bent the will of gods and men alike, not through brute force, but through mythic cunning and emotional precision. These are men whose magic lies in presence and emotion.

These men didn’t always know what they carried. But the story did.

The man whose voice changes the weather may not believe in magic. He may scoff at the idea. But his words linger. His moods ripple. His absence becomes a presence. He is shaped by what came before, family fracture, unspoken grief, the ache of being misunderstood.

He may be estranged, scapegoated, or simply silent. But silence, too, can be a spell, especially when it is heavy with history.

To name someone as powerful, especially when that power is witchcraft that has caused harm, is a delicate act. It risks rupture. To remain silent is its own kind of erasure. So we speak in metaphor. We write in myth. We trace the outline without filling it in.

He may never know what he carries. He may never claim it. But the story remembers. Perhaps we all carry such weather in our voices, whether we know it or not, and perhaps we all hold a little witchcraft within us.

The Parade, the Protests, and a Moment of Empathy

I was sorry to see that the military parade marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Armed Forces wasn’t exactly a proud or inspiring spectacle. Or at least it wasn't from what I saw on Facebook and in the media.

My sorrow was for the participants, who may or may not have been there willingly. I also felt a little sorry for the president, who I suspect was not a happy person when it was all said and done.

I didn’t watch the parade. Nor did I watch any of the No Kings protests. I posted a small No Kings protest on my blog and felt like that was all I could manage right now. I’m not much into marching.

According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, whom I trust on such matters, June 14 really was the birthday of the Armed Forces. She wrote:

…on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates… [and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”

And thus Congress established the Continental Army.

Unfortunately, the original justification for the parade was the president’s birthday. That announcement raised eyebrows even among his most devoted followers, especially with a $50 million price tag. After public outcry, which also happened when he floated the idea during his first term, the event pivoted to commemorate the Army’s formation instead.

But by then, it was too late.

No Kings Day had taken hold. And depending on which estimate you believe, anywhere from five to thirteen million people marched in opposition to the practices, projects, and prejudices of the current administration.

I was surprised to find that I felt anything at all about the military parade. I consider myself a pacifist. Intellectually, I know that if everyone simply put down their weapons and walked away, there’d be no need to kill. I also know human beings don’t work that way. I took enough sociology courses in college to understand that the forces behind many of our emotions and actions don’t always make sense. They just are.

Empathy is part of who I am, even for people I disagree with—or actively dislike. Hopefully that speaks well of my character.

I see it as layers. The military folks were just doing their jobs. Some probably weren’t thrilled to be part of a PR stunt. Many may have had mixed feelings or were simply ordered to participate without a say. And even the president, behind all the spectacle, looked like a lonely, grasping human. I admit I felt a flicker of pity for him. Where was his family? He seems to have no support. I don’t like to see anyone flailing in public, even if they are powerful, abrasive, and dangerous.

Empathy doesn’t mean approval. It just means I’m still able to feel. I guess that makes me very “woke,” to have empathy for a man I despise.

But I’m human, and I think a lot.

Sometimes, that leads me down strange paths. And in this world full of noise and division, I wonder if empathy might be the last quiet act of rebellion.

Beater or Bird Flu?

AI Image

When I was very young, my grandmother kept me a lot because my mother worked a full-time job.

One of the things my grandmother did was bake.

She made cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. She had two grandchildren and two young children of her own at home to spoil, so the oven was often in service.

I loved it when she cooked. Not that I helped - I hate to cook - but when she finished with the mixing, I was on it.

I wanted a mixer beater to lick. I loved the taste of cookie dough, cake dough, or brownie dough.

No one cared then if the eggs were uncooked. The four of us sometimes fought over who received what - the bowl generally was fairly clean as my grandmother took care not to waste the batter. But the beaters? They were the prize.

With four of us, the split was a beater, a beater, a spoon, or the bowl.

After I finished mixing the batter for my husband's birthday cake, I licked the beaters, just like I did when I was a kid. Just as I have done for as long as I can remember.

But this time, I wondered if it was safe.

That notice on mixes about "do not eat raw dough" was one of those dictums that I studiously have avoided.

But now we have bird flu. As I ate the raw dough, I wondered how bird flu is transmitted.

A quick internet search indicates that bird flu, or avian influenza, can be present in eggs laid by infected birds. However, the risk of transmission to humans through consumption is extremely low if the eggs are cooked. But it's generally low anyway, as the virus is rarely found inside eggs. So maybe raw is still okay.

That got me thinking about what the government is doing or not doing about bird flu under the current administration. Turns out, they've canceled funding for a vaccine for bird flu. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) terminated a $766 million contract with Moderna, which was working on an mRNA-based vaccine for the H5 avian influenza virus.

The decision to cancel the vaccine was made under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who I dislike and consider to be ill equipped for the position he is holding, and who has expressed skepticism about mRNA vaccines. 

He's a tinfoil hat guy and should not be in charge of anything to do with health.

I will still eat raw dough. I've come this far doing it. Too late to change that now.

Besides, it tastes so good!

Sources:
enviroliteracy.org
www.fda.gov
www.usatoday.com
MedCity News
Food Safety News
Biospace
www.cbsnews.com

*This blog post was written by a human, but the research went through an AI tool because it seems they all do that now.*

Is Anybody Listening?

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A reflection on AI, loneliness, and the lost art of conversation

The other day, I was talking with a friend who mentioned she’d been having issues with her boyfriend. I remembered their brief breakup over the holidays. She hadn’t taken it well.

“I got through it with an AI therapist,” she told me.

Really? There are AI therapists?

Apparently so. A quick Google search brought up a list of the top-rated ones for 2025. Most offer a 7-day free trial, after which there’s a fee to continue. Some still provide access to basic advice even without a subscription.

It made me wonder if AI will eventually become everyone’s therapist. There’s something to be said for in-person talking. A chatbot might express concern or outrage on your behalf, but how would you know if it says that to everyone? It’s certainly not your friend.

Then again, therapists aren’t supposed to be your friends either, although over time it can feel that way. Still, we’re paying to be heard.

And maybe that’s what gets to me. That we’ve reached a point where so many people need to be heard, and not enough people are listening. So here come the AI therapists, who will now step in where actual humans no longer tread. We don’t take time anymore to hear each other’s stories, to ask why someone feels the way they do, or to understand the long path behind someone’s point of view.

We live in a 140-character world with short bursts of thought, shouted into the void. Background and context get left behind. Everyone’s yelling, typing whatever comes to mind, and in the end, we’re drowning in half-told tales. Most of them signify nothing, because stories told in fury rarely carry truth.

Or maybe they do mean something, but only to certain people. Bullies love a short format. It’s hard to argue with a tweet. Or an “X.” Whatever they call it now.

I’ve read that loneliness is becoming a major public health threat in the U.S. The kind that affects your body as well as your heart.

Can AI step in as someone’s best friend? I’m not sure. I’ve played with it, but I don’t have a mic on my desktop, so I don’t use the voice feature. My laptop has one and the one time I used it, it sounded robotic.

I’ve had Alexa for years. She’s chipper enough, but she can’t carry on a conversation. Maybe newer versions can, but mine are older and I've no plans to replace them. Frankly, between Alexa and Siri, I already feel like I’m under constant surveillance.

And Siri? She’s not much of a talker, either.

Once upon a time, people actually talked about deep things. They discussed the stars, big ideas, good books, the best way to diaper a baby, work struggles, or the price of hamburger. They shared stories and passed a beer between friends.

I still have a few people I can talk with like that, and I cherish them. Those rare relationships are the ones where we go deep and take time with each other. Most people skim the surface of every problem. Some made up their minds years ago and haven’t listened since. Maybe they never did. Maybe they were kids when they stopped, convinced they were always right.

No one is right about everything.

Not even AI. I’ve seen it get confused. Sometimes it spits out something funny, but other times it can be alarming. And if a computer bot can get that turned around, imagine what goes on inside the human mind.

I Think It Just Means I’m Human

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We almost all have feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, sadness, bewilderment, and low self-esteem, unless we’re suffering from a personality disorder like narcissism. And most of us want to be a good person.

Being a good person isn’t about being perfect. It’s about the choices we make every day, how we treat others, and how we handle challenges. If a person is kind, honest, and strives to do what’s right, that’s a strong sign of a decent human.

What other ways might we be good humans? How about these questions: Do you listen to others and show empathy? Do you take responsibility for your actions? Do you try to make the world around you a little better?

Hopefully, we all do that. But sometimes, we can be too hard on ourselves. Our perspectives might get skewed, or maybe they’ve been skewed by someone else. But one person’s viewpoint, including your own on a bad day, doesn’t define who you are.

For me, one of the biggest things is feeling heard. As a woman, it’s easy to feel voiceless in a patriarchal world, where male voices, especially white male voices, are often the ones that count. It’s painful when people don’t really hear us. It can make you feel invisible, like your feelings and experiences don’t matter.

But my perspective, everyone's really, is valid. All voices deserve to be heard.

Sometimes, people get so caught up in their own version of events that they don’t realize they’re shutting others out. That’s someone who may not be ready or willing to truly listen.

Feeling unheard can be isolating and exhausting. You can do your best and still feel like a ghost in the conversation. But that reflects more on the listener’s inability to see or acknowledge what’s being said than on the speaker.

All of our experiences, our emotions, our truths matter. Whether or not someone else chooses to recognize them doesn’t make them any less real.

When someone feels unheard, it’s natural to build walls to protect the self and try to control how one is perceived. When your perspective is constantly dismissed, it can make you second-guess yourself. That can lead to habits like over-apologizing and striving for perfection. But perfection? It's an impossible standard, and no one needs to earn their worth that way.

Sometimes, all we can do is strive to create a connection. Maybe we share knowledge, experiences, and interests in a meaningful way that feels safe. It’s like extending a hand without exposing the deepest parts of yourself. We offer something valuable without the weight of vulnerability.

We all need to build a life, a voice, and a community that is ours. We get to choose who is a part of that. We get to shape our own story. Maybe the most important family is the one we create: the people who support us, who hear us, who make life feel lighter instead of heavier.

There’s resilience in that. It takes strength to move forward, even if it’s in tiny increments, every day.

Sometimes the goal isn’t to fix everything. Sometimes we just need to create a moment of relief, a way to breathe a little easier. Even if the weight doesn’t fully lift, having something that helps, even just a little, is important.

Someone told me recently that when they look at me, they see someone who is thoughtful, who has endured difficult things without becoming cruel, who strives to understand herself and the world around her.

That, they said, is goodness.

I think it just means I’m human.

Missing Jamie

Last week I learned that my elementary school boyfriend passed away. He was the same age as I am. He had a SO, a grown child, and a grandson.

To my knowledge, I haven't seen him since we graduated high school. Actually, I don't remember seeing him in high school. Aside from our little affair in elementary school, I barely remember him at all. 

His name was James, just like my husband. Jamie and I "went together," as I think we called way back when, in the third grade. I was 8 years old.

He rode my school bus, and we sat together, sometimes. At least we did for the period of time that we "went together." I only vaguely remember this, that he was my "boyfriend" in elementary school. I remember he had nice eyes and a sweet smile. He wasn't mean to me. I remember that much about him. I don't know why we stopped "going together" except probably summer happened and by the time we returned to school, our "going together" was a past thing. I was shy and stayed by myself a great deal, plus I was on the college tract, and I don't think he was, which meant I was taking completely different classes than he would have been taking, except for the third grade.

According to my brother, he has a memory of me at my grandmother's house, crying. My grandmother scooped me up, as grandmothers are wont to do, and held me in the rocking chair while I cried. I wouldn't tell her what was wrong and then finally cried out, "I miss Jamie!"

Now, I have no memory of this, but my brother says he recalls it clearly. I must have thought quite a lot of this young boy who was "going with me" at such a tender age.

It is sad to lose your old elementary school boyfriend, even if you barely remember that he held your hand. He was the second of my classmates to have died in a month. I guess the class of '81 is growing old.

Musings of a Doom-Scrolled Mind

I am taking a break from working on my tax records and trying to come up with something to write about.

My brain is shoved full of information from doom scrolling, and I don't want to touch the idiocy coming out of the house of white.

It is not, of course, actual idiocy. It's really quite clever and incredibly devious (and very divisive). I do not admire devious people, however. In fact, in my Elder Scrolls: Castles game, when I have a little person doing work who has devious characteristics in personality, I frequently end up banishing that little person because they are close to stabbing someone in the back.

That's what devious people with devious personalities do.

Speaking of personality, I have noticed of late that my Microsoft feed is suddenly offering me up all of these pop psychology things like "11 Things Smart People Say" or "Characteristics That Indicate You're a Genius."

I haven't been searching for things like this, so I have no idea why it's suddenly popping up. Well, actually, I do. I think it's a push toward that particular and peculiar train of thought that some people are smarter than others and therefore they get to make all the rules and should have the best jobs. You know that stuff that Adolf Hitler proposed. The kind of thinking that makes someone say inferior people were hired to be aircraft controllers. That sort of thing.

We went to war over that, and I don't like that my computer is trying to subconsciously reinforce that message. 

I have learned that there are differing levels of intelligence, and there are also different kinds of intelligence. Emotional intelligence, for example. Logical intelligence. Literary/language intelligence. Mathematics/engineering type intelligence. I am not sure of categories; I am making them up as I go along here. Some people have a social intelligence that I admire greatly. I lack that, although I generally get along with most people. But not everyone.

We have snow on the ground. I predicated 8 inches, but it hasn't stopped falling yet. Last time I measured we had about 5 inches, but then it started sleeting and icing, and that tends to make the snow totals drop because of the weight of the ice. We may not end up with 8 inches. Regardless, this is probably enough to keep my car in the garage for the rest of the week, even if my husband plows the driveway. The hill up to my house is very, very steep.

It has been a dismal day, and working on the 2024 taxes hasn't helped. I hate doing that. It is a horrid task because we are involved in multiple enterprises: my little bit of writing, my husband's septic tank installation, a farm, a piece of rental property. Nothing that will make us rich or wealthy, but enough to keep us going.

Still, it's a lot of paperwork when you have multiple jobs. And I do all the paperwork and then hand it over to an accountant who plugs in the numbers - boop boop boop - and then tells us what we owe and asks for a check.

Somehow that doesn't seem quite fair.

I Got Something to Say

For a while now, I've been trying to decide if I am "real" enough in this blog.

I read other people's writing, and it seems to flow and energy drips from it. My writing, to me, feels constructed, constrained, and a little constipated.

Perhaps this is because I know it's in the public domain. But then, so is the work of the folks I read. Other bloggers, other writers. 

People who can dip into their emotional well and come out of it and leave you in tears.

I'm not sure I can do that. I'm not sure I am capable of that. I don't know that anything I've written since I began blogging 20 years ago has ever done that.

There is so much that I don't write about because this is a public space and because I am - or was - a public persona - that I am pretty sure my filters are constantly on high alert.

Even if I don't want them to be.

So if I wanted to rip my heart apart on this blog, and dump all of my grief, my angst, my heartache, I seriously doubt I could. I might want to, but I don't think I could.

I ache to feel like a real woman, a real person, a real human being with emotions and everything, but sometimes I feel more like some androgynous Vulcan, living a life of logic, with my emotions shut off and shut down.

Only then they come flying out at odd times. In strange words with my husband, for example. Perhaps a short snap at a friend. Maybe a huge sigh with another family member.

But I so badly want to write with freedom, with abandonment, to let it all fly out. Even now, I'm trying to do that, sitting here writing, trying to find an emotion to cast outward, and all I find is a lot of broken.

I find the broken in the way I feel physically, while I am still - still - trying to get over this virus or allergy or whatever it is I have. My voice is raspy, my eyes water constantly, my sinuses are all over the place.

There's broken in my soul at the thought of my country falling to pieces right before my eyes. I keep wanting to say, "Not on my watch," but it is my watch and I have failed, as have the multitudes and the many, and yet we all, except those of us who die tonight, will get up tomorrow and it will be just another cold, frigid day in Southwest Virginia, and my beautiful mountains will still pitch up towards the blue sky, and the snow will still be spotty on the grounds, and the deer will slip from the cedar trees and into the glen to munch on frozen grass and the cardinals will fluff themselves up in the tree in the front yard, their bodies enlarged to keep warm as the polar vortex bears down upon us.

There's broken in my heart when I think of all I have not done and will not do, and all that I wanted to do but could not bring myself to do, and then there is regret because I cannot remember what I have done, and I have done a lot, it has been a life well-lived, or as well as I could live it, at any rate, and so what if I don't ever see the pyramids or travel to Ireland? Those are just marks on a map, after all, and life has no roadmap, no life does.

There are those who can bulldoze their way through their life and take and take and get what they want or think they need and many of those people are happy, but most are not, or so it seems to me. And there are people like me who shrink and grow small in order to simply stay safe because safe is security and yet safe is boring and not really secure at all, because it's a nothingness sort of existence to stay safe and secure and holed up, aloof and alone.

I want to find that part of me, that part that I know is in there, that would allow me to write with the freedom of a flag flapping in the breeze - any flag, anywhere - flapping in a wind until it tears into shreds, and no one is even sure what kind of flag it was, in the end. Isn't that the way to get out of this place, to fly straight into the wind, unfettered and free?