More Than a Feeling

Yesterday, I was visiting with the woman who has cut my hair for a very long time. Regular readers may remember she retired pre-pandemic, and I wandered around aimlessly in the wilderness of hair stylists for years trying to find someone to cut my hair. I settled on someone for about a year, but she simply had no idea what I wanted my hair to look like, even with pictures.

In desperation, I contacted my old hair stylist and asked, "What am I supposed to tell people who cut my hair as to the style I want? No one understands what I am trying to tell them."

She told me I needed a certain cut that apparently no one teaches anymore. She offered to cut my hair for me, and I agreed. She's retired but she's kept up her license.

That was just over a year ago, and yesterday, which was I think the 12th cut, she said I finally look like myself, after going for years looking like somebody else.

I wonder who I was?

I felt like me, but I knew I didn't look like I used to. It is difficult going out when you are not happy with the way you look. Add to that my unfortunate allergy to apparently every bit of makeup on the planet now, which means I mostly go out sans facial fixing, and the fact that I am overweight, and you have the perfect picture of a woman who feels more at home, alone, than someone who races all over town doing this and that.

So, I have mostly stayed home since the pandemic. I go out to the grocery store, occasionally I hit Walmart, and I see my doctors, but that's about it. We went to Belk (a southern department store) at Valley View Mall last week and it was like going into a strange world. I hadn't been to the mall in years. Literally.

I am feeling more like going out now. Even sans makeup. I've lost another 10 pounds, which is not much when you are already overweight, but my clothes fit a little better and are looser and not as restricting. I have been walking on the treadmill and trying to eat better so I have more energy. Not a lot more energy, but some.

The weather keeps me inside - I am not a winter fan. But I am feeling like maybe come spring, if I can keep the weight down, and my hair cut well, I will start venturing out more. Maybe once a week I will drive to the mall and walk it instead of the treadmill, just to see what is out there.

And to feel more like I belong in this world, because regardless of what others say and think, I do.

When Newspapers Were Newspapers

About 20 years ago, maybe a little less, when the Thanksgiving Day newspaper showed up in the paper box, it was as thick as two encyclopedias, at least. It was full of advertisements for Black Friday sales.

It also had real news in it.

Now the daily newspaper doesn't even print a paper on Thanksgiving Day. Or any other holiday, for that matter.

And there are no advertisements.

In those long-gone days, it was a delicious treat to sit down with that fat Thanksgiving Day paper and look through the ads. It was reminiscent of the old Sears catalog. How else did you know what was out there to buy if you couldn't look through ads to see?

Today, the ads kind of come to you through whatever website you visit, but that means there are hundreds of items out there that I might like that I will never see.

Not only have we lost the news in newspapers, but also the lack of advertisements means many of us have lost the way to find new toys or products that we might use.

The other thing we have lost with the decline of newspapers is the way I used to find work. There are no longer "help wanted" ads in the newspaper. When I needed a job, long ago, I would take the Sunday paper (which would be very fat, by the way, and full of all kinds of real news and interesting feature stories), and using a red pen, I'd circle any job I thought I might be interested in and/or qualified for.

Generally, the ads were blind box ads, so you had no idea what company you were applying to. I almost always found a job that way. My resume was decent, and I had legal experience from working for lawyers, so I could find secretarial work almost anywhere.

Those days are gone, too. To be honest, I wouldn't know how to find a job if I was physically capable of holding one. All I know to do now is go to Indeed and have a look around. Or go to individual businesses and check out their "jobs" section, if it is a large company.

Newspapers were part of the fabric that held this nation together. It was known as the Fourth Estate for a reason - it was supposed to act independently of the government, not as its puppet or mouthpiece. That's not to say there wasn't bias or slant to the articles - of course there was, even long ago - but generally speaking, most reporters that I have known were there to simply tell the truth of the story they were writing about, whether that was a county meeting or a heroic adventure some youth had while paddling down the James River. It's the editors, owners, and bean counters who have turned the media into an entertainment industry instead of the news as it once was.

I think the decline of the nation is echoed by the decline of the news media. Talking heads who argue with one another is not news. Someone spewing out his opinion of what is going on is not news. I used to write news. I had no agenda other than to report what went on at a meeting. Of course, I had to curry out what was most important - do I lead with the budget or the new construction of a fire station? - that sort of thing. But in my articles, at least, nearly everything that went on at the meeting was reported.

Now, it's not. I watch the meetings online and when I read about them, the most important item is singled out, and that's about all that is given. If the public speaks, the newspapers no longer print their names like they once did. Once you were in the public halls, and put yourself up there to speak, you were in the public domain and whatever was said was fair game for the newspapers. Try that now and the public will pounce on you like a hound after a fox, and that's the end of you.

I would love to see a good newspaper again. I'd like to see advertisements again. I'd like to sit down with a Sears catalog and turn the pages, licking the ink off of my fingers, just to see what all is out there.

We have lost so much with all of these gains in technology. There is no going back, I know. We must thrust our way forward and hope that whatever sword finds us, it's not the one with the powerful pointy end.

Remembering 9/11

In the days after September 11, 2001, I remember seeing blue skies unmarred by the trails of aircraft, because the planes were grounded. It was eerie to look up and see the sky so blue without the chem trails of planes, the crisscross patterns that indicated people were going on about their day, flying hither and yon without a care.

People were quiet, at first, and helpful, at first. But after a few days, the air changed. I felt anger, hatred, and evil seething in the store when I went after groceries. It has ebbed and flowed over the last 23 years, that feeling that I have when I am in a crowd, but it has never gone away, not since September 12, 2001. For a day - maybe two - we were one nation, pulled together by the horror of what we'd witnessed.

But after that? We were an angry, scared bunch of people, and we've stayed that way. We frayed. We pulled apart. And the distance and the turmoil grew, and in the end, the terrorists won after all, for all that they've been dead for a long time.

In the end, they destroyed us - because we have destroyed ourselves.

We've raised an entire generation in that atmosphere of fear and hate. They don't know anything except fear and hate. That's all they know.

What has it been like for them, growing up in this new world that we allowed to happen, the one where everyone is afraid, and big men must carry guns with little, deadly bullets to compensate for their fears?

I know what it has been like for me to live in this time - it's been basically an ulcer-creating atmosphere. But what must it be like for those young folks, the ones who are now turning 21?

What do they think and feel, having grown up every moment with this disease of the soul, this dark pall that has fallen over this nation?

I remember the blue skies on September 12. I looked up at the blue, blue skies, those brilliant September skies.

And the memories of what we were before, knowing what we could have been, and the thought of those clear blue skies, are what pulls me through.

Today I remember the 343 firefighters who lost their lives on that fateful day, and the numerous others who have died over the years from cancers and demons that day brought on.

Writers I'm Supposed to Love

When I was taking Advanced Placement English in high school (it was, in theory, college level English), I remember a little argument I had with Dr. Shots (she had a Ph.D. and insisted on the title) about the deconstruction of a piece of work.

Apparently, I had had enough of the "they used yellow here for sickness, green for jealousy, why do you think this lamp is placed here," because I told her I didn't think authors meant for their work to be analyzed in such depth and detail.

"Sometimes a lamp is just a lamp," I said. Or something to that effect.

You'd have thought I'd blasphemed the chin of God the way she came after me. Of course, every word was carefully chosen, every sofa, every lamp, every blade of grass, had a deeper meaning than just being a blade of grass. What was I doing in her class, telling her (with her Ph.D) that writers didn't always mean something else with what they wrote?

"Because I write, and I don't do that," I responded. "Not consciously."

"Then you're not a writer," she snapped, putting an end to the discussion.

She was the only teacher to ever say that to me.

After that, I kept my mouth shut and dutifully turned in my papers or spoke up in class saying that of course the lamp meant that the character had an idea or had seen the light about some issue. It wasn't put there simply so she could read the book in her hand.

Then I went to Hollins College, now Hollins University, which is a women's undergraduate degree school that is well-known for the writers it puts out. Think Margaret Wise Brown and Anne Dillard, just to name two. Or Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle.

There the poetry in particular was analyzed in great detail, even that which was written in the 17th century. I went on to read Virginia Woolf and numerous other writers while taking eight long years to get my bachelors.

And I always found the examination of works tedious, and I stubbornly (and secretly) held on to my conviction that sometimes a lamp is just a lamp. But I wrote the essays about the books secret meanings and dissected the poems as required.

Of course, sometimes imagery has double meaning, and of course sometimes the more literary authors put cute language in their works to add to the character. The book I'm currently listening to has a daughter of a woman who was dying of cancer eat a chicken pot pie with her mother and the hospice worker. What does the chicken pot pie symbolize?

Damn if I know. Dinner table scenes are great for conversation; they had to eat something. Maybe it symbolizes the daughter's fears about her mother's upcoming death (she's chicken, get it?). Maybe it was just there.

Barbara Kingsolver, Ann Patchett, Anne Tyler, Elizabeth Gilbert, and now Ann Beattie (whom I am listening to - maybe it's something to do with the name "Ann"), are among the literary writers that I am supposed to like. They use great turns of phrases and create deep characters. Every word has been carefully chosen. I imagine these writers spend days pouring over one sentence until they are utterly sick of it, trying to make sure they've chosen chicken pot pie instead of Thai food for the correct reason.

And I listen or read their books and find they do not move me. Occasionally they write one that I find intriguing and enjoy, but overall, they are not my favorite authors. They may have a good sentence or two that makes its way into my little "writer's notebook," but the stories seldom stick with me.

Who do I like to read? I like Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Susan Wiggs, Kate DiCamillo, Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, Louise Penny, Kristin Hannah, etc. These are not literary giants, but they write well and have interesting stories that move along just fine. Sometimes they make me laugh and sometimes they make me think. I liked The Hunger Games and Harry Potter. I like a lot of fantasy writers, like Neil Gaiman, Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Phillip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin, etc.

I wrote for newspapers. I wrote to educate and inform, not to puzzle people and have them wonder about the significance of someone eating chicken pot pie. I like my fiction to be straight up and to the point, anymore. I read Overstory and while it received rave reviews, I found it incredibly boring. Great concept, but my goodness, couldn't that have been put out into the world in some way that wasn't so long and drawn out?

It is good for me to listen to authors I do not like, to stories I don't always enjoy. I never know what I may find in such tales. I do it now as a part of my life's growth cycle, so I don't get stale. I listen to or read everything from memoir to nonfiction self-help to the aforesaid authors to Catch-22. I seldom listen to or read something a second time (Tolkien being the exception). 

Life is a learning experience. This is part of how I live it. But sometimes it frustrates me, because I still think I'm right. A lamp sometimes is just a lamp.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I feel voiceless.

Silenced.

Quieted.

Not just because some football player told a graduating class that the women should have no thoughts and look forward to being mommies and wives. Not just because, all of my life, no one has listened to me, male or female. I have always been silenced, first by my parents, my grandparents, my uncles, my aunts, my brother. Then teachers, friends. Bosses. 

No one wants to hear my side of the story.

They don't care about anything I have to say.

Society cares nothing about what women have to say.

This culture teaches young girls to shrink themselves, to stay quiet, to be small. That translates into someone like me, an old woman who is still small, even if she is fat, and still unheard, even when she talks. 

Culture says to young women, go forth and be whomever you want to be, but don't expect too much, because you cannot have much, or we will judge you for it. You can be successful, but you will never be president. You will never be a CEO or a millionaire on your own terms.

Be a secretary, my mother told me, when I said I wanted to be a writer. Learn to do what the men say, just as she had done. She worked, but she had no ambition because she was not taught to have such. And when times came for promotions at her job, she told us at home she wanted those promotions, was qualified for those promotions, but she never, ever asked for them.

She was still labeled a file clerk after 30 years on the job when she retired. A file clerk from her first day to her last.

When I was 13, my father began planting peach trees. They would grow, he said, and the crop would put my brother through college. What about my college? I asked. You are just going to get married, he said. There will be no college for you.

My brother did not go to college. The peach trees did not grow.

I have three college degrees that I earned while I was also working a job. I also have a husband, but he was not my aspiration at the time. He was someone I fell in love with and wanted in my life. I did not seek him out.

But like other men, he does not listen. Men do not listen to women, not their wives, their daughters, their fiancés, their female friends, their female classmates, or their female coworkers. They simply do not hear.

And women do not listen to other women. Words may be heard, but they are not often understood. Other women come closest to listening to me, but even then, I do not often feel heard.

When I was listening recently to Liz Cheney read her book, Oath and Honor, and heard her warnings about the former president and the danger he presents to our country, I felt helpless yet again. Because I was listening to her, and I heard her.

That orange idiot has stated, multiple times, that he will trash the U.S. Constitution. He will surround himself with sycophants. He will not have elections again - all that talk about serving for 3 or 4 terms, does anyone think he will risk an election? He will undo the civil rights legislations of the 1960s, he will force suffering upon millions, remove Social Security for the old folks, and put women on a list so someone can keep track of their periods and possible pregnancies.

And Cheney warns of all of this, not in those words, but in better words, in good strong intelligent words, in her book. 

And the people who need to read it are not reading it. They are not listening.

I watched the January 6 select committee hearings. I watched what happened on January 6. I reached my own conclusions about that day, and they mirror Liz Cheney's. 

I know there are nearly 200 people in the House of Representatives who supported what happened on that day and are still in office. We've been in the midst of a slow-moving coup for eight years. It is not over.

But a woman wrote that book, that brilliant warning of what will be. And she is being, will be, and will continue to be, ignored.

There is no cure for what ails society when it has made half of its citizens voiceless. What are we to do, we who want to speak out, cry out, and scream into the night about all of the bad, not just political but personal, all of the very bad and evil things we have seen and suffered?

The State of Things

One of the changes I've noticed since the onset of Covid is the decline of quality of products.

This is not something one can blame a president for, or Congress, or anyone in politics, really. This is a corporate problem. A business issue. A capitalism thing. A people thing.

Shrinkflation is real; I've watched everything get smaller from my Dove soap to my box of Cheerios. Batteries don't work as well as they once did and I am finding that newer ones corrode much more quickly than the old batteries used to, as well. Nothing purchased now seems to be properly made. It's more like it's tossed together by people who don't know what they are doing.

I have thought about this a lot. Is this because the corporations have fallen into using poor materials? Do the people who are working there now not know what they are doing? Is it a combination of both?

I suspect it is a combination of many things: greed, the need to pay stockholders in big companies, the higher cost of materials thanks to tariffs put in place by the former president and now also by the current one, as well as changes in personnel.

It's important to remember that over 1 million people in this country died during Covid. They weren't all 88 years old languishing away in a nursing home, either.

Also, Covid hit just as baby boomers were retiring, and Covid sent some 2.6 million more people than expected into early retirement, according to PBS. (My husband was one of those early retirees.)

So theoretically, that's over 3.6 million people no longer in the workforce. I know some of the older people who died weren't working, but for numbers sake, there you go. Millions of people no longer working.

Imagine the scenario. I don't know how batteries are made, or if they are even made in the United States but let's assume they are made here. There is a lot of automation in most manufacturing now. So a battery plant might employ something like 400 people. About 150 of those would be salespeople and upper management, because companies these days are a bit top heavy.

That leaves 50 more for support staff to upper management, so now I have 200 people doing the actual work of making batteries.

Then 2020 came, and Covid struck. On the floor with 200 people, the head floor manager dies of Covid. Fourteen of the oldest employees retire. Over the next two years, five more people die from Covid or something else, and three more leave. That's 11.5% of the floor workforce knocked out.

Maybe upper management decides not to replace them. So now there are only 177 people doing what was a 200-person job. Of course, some of those who died or left took expert knowledge with them. Maybe only the head floor manager knew that if you didn't flick this particular machine in just the right way, you would get too much alkaline or too little alkaline in the battery. Maybe nobody has figured this out yet.

Or maybe management hires new people. They have to be trained, but the person who usually trained new employees is one of the retirees. Someone else steps up to do it but leaves out a few crucial steps that the person who had been there for 20 years knew.

So, you end up with a poorer battery. Serviceable, maybe. Acceptable by whatever quality assurances the company has in place (if any), but still not as good a battery as one purchased in 2019. And now it costs more, too.

And people who don't stop to think things through blame the government.

The problems in this country go way deeper than just who is president or who is in Congress, although many of the issues start there. The problems start with us. With who we are and who we want to be. Do we want to be the best darned battery checker in the world, or just draw a paycheck? Do we take pride in our communities anymore? Do we volunteer for civic work, help the town council put out flower arrangements to make the entry way a pretty spot? Do we donate to the library, check on a neighbor, or just sit around and bitch, moan, and whine on Facebook (or a blog) about all the things we see wrong around us?

I am older now. I'm in chronic pain. I don't get out as much as I used to. But in my younger days, I volunteered for the ladies auxiliary in the volunteer fire department. I peeled potatoes to help them raise money at various events. I volunteered for the library. I volunteered for a historic preservation organization.

I did stuff. Some of it was important stuff. Maybe some of it wasn't, I don't know, but I gave it my best shot.

During all of this, I worked a job, kept a house, stayed sick a lot, and put myself through college not only for an undergraduate degree but also my masters. I never once did a job just for a paycheck. Sure, some of the places I worked I worked for the money, but I also did the very best I could at the job. Maybe my best wasn't good enough for some particular work, but it was my best.

Ok, I'm losing my train of thought, but I think the problems in this country can be boiled down to two things: you, and me. 

We need to learn to get along and how to work together to bring about a better world. It can be done.

Let's get off of Facebook and get to the real world.

The solutions begin with us.

AITA?

Generally, I do not post much on Facebook. I don't interact with many people even though I have hundreds of friends. I "like" things sometimes, and sometimes I put up a photo (usually one that also ends up on my blog), but I seldom comment.

This morning, an author I follow asked a question that went something like this: If you don't buy my book, would you mind telling me why?

A few people had answered, most having to do with money.

This author writes self-help books about a particularly traumatizing topic. I have never bought her book, but I have read articles she's written. I have followed her page for a long time (years), and never commented.

I thought about her question and decided to give an honest answer, and I admit this was hard for me to write, but it was the truth. "I haven't bought your book because I don't want to relive the things I have gone through."

The rest of this is paraphrased; you'll see why at the end.

A little later, I saw that she had responded thusly: "That's a false assessment."

This irritated me and I felt it was, well, cruel and certainly not empathetic. Who is she to tell me what may or may not trigger me when I'm dealing with something traumatic? I noted that one person had given my comment the little "cares" thing on Facebook and on the author's response, someone had put the little "wow" emoji.

I wrote back. "That's a really crappy answer to give to someone who is trying to be helpful to you. And don't bother blocking me because I'm unfollowing you."

I immediately unfollowed her, but because she responded back with my name, it popped up as something I could see if I clicked on the notice. I didn't realize that would happen. I don't have confrontations like this enough to know.

Anyway, I clicked to see what she'd written.

She wrote back: "A little touchy, aren't we? My book would teach you something. It's still a false assessment."

I wrote back: "You shouldn't ask questions if you don't want to know the answer."

She wrote back: "You sound just like the mean people I write about."

I wrote back: "Oh wow, good job! Insult and name calling all at the same time. Nice of you to let your readers see what you're really like. I'm done here. Peace to you."

And then I blocked her, so I wouldn't see if she responded anymore, and later I went back into my archives and deleted everything I'd commented, because I couldn't go to her page since I'd blocked her.

Which is why I had to paraphrase this entire conversation, because I blocked her and then deleted my comments.

Was I in the wrong here, to take offense at her lack of sensitivity, when she's a self-help author writing about a sensitive topic?

Where Are the Eagles?

In The Lord of the Rings, one of the biggest plot contrivances that some folks get confused about is the introduction of the Eagles.

We'll use the movies as examples here, because I don't have the books right in front of me. But in the movie, first we see an Eagle when Gandalf, trapped high in the sky in Saruman's white tower, sends a moth to call for one. A lone Eagle soars by and Gandalf takes a leap from a great height and lands on the Eagle's back to fly safely away from his captor.

The Eagles do not appear again until the end, when in the third film, as the Men of the West are fighting off orcs and Sauron seems to be winning, Pippin stops amidst the fighting and cries, "The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!"

And the Eagles come and fight off the dark riders, and later, when Frodo (well, actually Gollum) has destroyed the One Ring and ended Sauron for good, the Eagles carry Gandalf to the top of Mt. Doom to rescue Frodo and Sam from the volcanic mountain.

The big question many folks ask is, why didn't the Eagles carry Frodo to Mt. Doom in the first place, instead of having him wander all over Middle Earth to try to take the One Ring to Mt. Doom?

It's a good question, and it is a bit of a plot hole. There are many answers, but answer I like best is that the Eagles are another race, sentient beings like humans, and have agency. They therefore cannot be subjugated into doing the will of others. Although it does seem like performing a task that would stop evil would be a good thing.

Many of the non-human characters in The Lord of the Rings have agency: the Ents, who are tree shepherds, orcs, who are used and abused, goblins, who are wild things, for the most part, and wizards, who look like men but are not men. And we must not forget the elves, who also look human but are not, or the dwarves, who look human too, only shorter, as well as the hobbits, who look like humans but are shorter still.

In many interviews I've read about Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings books, he claims that the books are not about war. However, the author served in World War I and his sons in World War II.

I think The Lord of the Rings is about war.

Lately, I've been watching the eagles in California as they attempt to hatch a trio of eggs. The time for viability for the eggs has long passed, but the eagles continue to try to hatch eggs that aren't going to hatch. It has been an interesting couple of months watching these birds as they built their nest and laid the eggs. Now it's sad to look in on them, sitting diligently on eggs that, at least according to scientists, are simply rotting and not hatching. It reminds me of all the time I spent trying to have a child even though it was a fruitless exercise.

I have had eagles on my mind.

However, another question keeps running through my mind, and getting all confused with The Lord of the Rings, the eagles on the nest, and this country. The question is this: where are the Eagles? Not the eagles on the nest. Not the Eagles of Tolkien's world, not exactly.

I think Tolkien was using the Eagles as a metaphor for the U.S., who was late entering both World Wars. We entered World War I three years after it started, and World War II began in 1939 and we didn't enter it until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. How many lives were lost, how much devastation was rendered, because the United States didn't step up when we should have?

The Eagles were late and came in near the end. They were, however, crucial to winning the wars, World War I, World War II - and the war in The Lord of the Rings.

So that question keeps crossing my mind these days: where are the Eagles? Not the Eagles of The Lord of the Rings, but the Eagles who are true patriots, the ones who will see through the conspiracy theories and the crackpot craziness and stand up and set the United States back upon a better path. Because technically, the US is now at war with itself. We are close to taking that old Constitution and ripping it to shreds, no matter who wins, although one side is more distasteful to me than the other.

Right now, I see no Eagles, not on the right, and not on the left. I caught a glimpse of a lone Eagle in Liz Cheney, which is something I never thought I 'd ever say, but if we have an Eagle guiding us, at the moment that's who it is (and I'm not sure of that). If she is like the lone Eagle swooping in to save Gandalf, where and when will the other Eagles come from? Who will rise up to make this nation over and bring back our better angels? It won't be the Republicans, who are bent on turning back the clock, taking away rights, and creating an American version of Hungary. 

The Democrats are no angels. I'm not sure they are Eagles, either, having turned away from the philosophies of Franklin Roosevelt as they have in the last 40 or so years. Roosevelt had his flaws, as all men do, but he did seem to have the welfare of this nation, and of the world, on his heart when he made decisions. (Truman decided to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, not Roosevelt. We don't know what Roosevelt would have done with those bombs, although he didn't stop their construction.)

We aren't in a novel at the moment. This is real life. But we have lots of fighting going on all over the world, and we have lots of in-fighting going on in this nation. We have climate change creating monumental catastrophes. However, we have no wise wizards at our sides, no guidance that comes from anything beyond the beaks of those who crave great power, even if that power is only to be the loudest mouth in a thread on a Facebook page. Given the wealthy crows who own the social media companies, what else should we expect?

So, I ask again, where are the Eagles? Where are those who would stand up against the powerful, and be the beacons that we need to lead us to a stronger, brighter, fairer and better world?

Now Comes the Thaw

After shivering in temperatures in the teens all weekend, this week the weather is going to offer us above-freezing temperatures both night and day.

And rain.

While for those of us who dislike the intense cold this is great news, I worry about the plants. Last year we had a warm spell, then a hard freeze, and the local growers lost most of their peaches. I don't think it hurt the apple crops so much, but it was certainly hard on the peach growers.

We no longer are considered to be in a drought area, although I do not think we've yet had enough rain to warrant that designation. We've had some rain and the snow over the weekend has been hanging around, which means it should melt into the ground as the weather warms. That will be helpful, and snow adds nutrients to the ground. Goodness knows the pastures need it. But by our count, we're still a bit short in the water table department.

We have not had extra had to sell for a couple of years now as the weather cycles have been dramatic and frustrating. We are only growing hay, not fruit trees, and I can't imagine what those folks are thinking as they watch the weather forecast. A week of a too-high temperatures is enough to have the trees and bushes start an early growth period that could be detrimental with another hard freeze.

When your business is weather dependent, like farming, then things aren't easy. People can deny climate change all they want, but all I have to do is look outside and listen to the winds howling to know that it's different from 40 years ago. I have never understood the objection to having cleaner air to breathe. How is that a bad thing?

No one mentions that this upcoming warm weather may hurt the crops. But if you wonder why some of your fruits and vegetables are high, remember that the weather may have something to do with what you're paying.

A low yield means higher prices.

No Common Sense

Many people consider me to be a fairly smart person, but sometimes I feel so stupid about the things I don't know how to do that I don't think "smart" is possible.

Today, I discovered for a second time that I can't figure out how to make the lottery vending machine at the grocery store work.

This should be easy and apparently is, as I watched people go to the lottery machine, hit a few numbers, swipe a card, get their ticket, and leave.

I had a play slip in my pocketbook. The Powerball is up over $1 billion - who doesn't want to win that?

So, I went to the machine. I figured out where to put in the play slip. I put it in. The machine sucked it up. Then it said I needed to give it money. I gave it a $10 bill, which it didn't take at first, but then swooop - it sucked it up. (I always play with cash, using the credit card is too easy, I feel more responsible playing with cash.)

And I stood there going, where is my ticket? Finally, I found it, a little slip of paper lost in this big hole at the bottom of the lottery vending machine.

I looked at it and saw unfamiliar numbers. It did not play my numbers. They were all easy play numbers. I hate easy play numbers, although as numbers go, these look pretty good.

Still, they weren't our numbers. So, I went to the customer service desk like I normally do and meekly handed over my play slip and $10. I had not intended to play $20 on the lottery, but I did. 

If the vending machine numbers win, I will go kiss the thing, but honestly, why couldn't I figure that out? This is at least the second time I've tried and I've failed both times.

This kind of thing is second nature to most people, I guess, but I need an instruction booklet.

***

Now, do I really want a billion dollars? No. I suspect that would be more headache than I'd care to handle, though hopefully I would do good with it, and not built penis rocket ships to honor my manhood like Bose and Musk. Hopefully I would set up charities to help people with medical bills, build libraries and fire stations, help people go to college, offer up money to family and friends, stuff like that.

I'd be happy if I won $1,000,000. That's five numbers but not the power ball. I could live with that. That money I could put in the bank for my retirement and breathe a sigh of relief with the hope that a heart attack wouldn't wipe out our meager savings. And maybe still set up a little charity on a small scale. I'd like to help older women go back to college.

I don't want to be greedy. I have never wanted more money than I needed. Just enough. Unfortunately, as I age and see jobs going further and further out of my reach, I am no longer sure what "enough" actually means.

I wonder if not wanting all the money in the world is another symptom of having no common sense. Wouldn't it be sensible to want more money all the time?

We Have a News Vacuum

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum left by the loss of good media coverage is rapidly showing itself locally as well as nationally.

One side of the vacuum is attempting to be filled by what I shall gracefully call "misinformation monsters" who whine, moan, complain, ad nauseum, about every little thing the local government does. There is about as much truth in what they whine and complain about as is in the tiny little tip of my little finger, and the rest is conjecture, conspiracy crap, and fascist bigotry.

The other side is filled with, well, next to nothing, unfortunately. The local newspapers - the daily and the weekly - are not covering the county government in depth and detail. I know because that's what I used to do. I still do it with an online news outlet that I write for, but those stories do not have puppy dogs on them and aren't widely read. The online news outlet gets better hits from stories about kitty cats, trucks that get stuck in town trying to make turns on narrow streets, and other things that in the long term don't matter.

The county, in an effort to fill this vacuum, has created a "facts4u" page. They see the misinformation monsters on social media doing what they do best and try to correct the record. This is admirable, but it's not working well. The misinformation monsters are like the people the former guy could shoot on 5th Avenue. They'd go out bleeding to death and admiring his aim with their last gasp. They'd never believe he actually shot them.

This is a national problem. People are getting their "news" from opinions, from their friends, from, well, anything but an actual news source, apparently. And the news sources tend to grab a headline and beat it until something else catches their attention. (The recent unfortunate sinking of the Titan as it went to view the Titanic being a case in point. I am sorry those folks died, but I was sick of hearing about it. There are other things going on in the world. I mean, about 500 other people died in a Greek shipping incident at the same time, but they were immigrants, so I suppose they weren't worth as much coverage as the lives of billionaires.)

The local papers can't do what they need to do because they're understaffed. But even if they weren't, I have to wonder, now that we have all become social media junkies and everyone's a scientist, an expert on book banning, or an experienced pilot even if they've never been behind the controls of a plane, if it would make any difference. If the local media printed stories that covered topics in depth and explained what is going on with growth, economic development, the school system, book banning, etc., would the stories reach the people they need to reach?

I think not. Those people are no longer reachable by anything that does not echo in their brains as a compliant agreement with what they are already thinking. They seem unable to synthesize new information unless it agrees with their worldview.

Battling social media misinformation is an ongoing problem that needs to be addressed. The main way I deal with it is (a) I go slow and do not share information unless I have fact checked it myself. (The way I know most of the local misinformation is misinformation is because I have listened to and/or attended meetings, or talked to a primary source, not a secondary one.) and (b) I am skeptical of everything I read unless or until I have verified it. Many things do not interest me, so I ignore those. I certainly don't share them. If I have interest in something, I fact check it before I share.

I think before I post. I wish others would.

  Yale offers up these six ways to deal with misinformation:

 1. Trust the source, not the sharer.  A recent study found that in deciding what to trust and share on social media, individuals were more attentive to the sharer than to the original source of an article.  This is a mistake.  Reputable news sources have fact checkers and strong incentives to report facts accurately; they also have editorial practices that allow them to correct their own errors.  They are, for the most part, trustworthy.  Confused about a current event?  See what the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Washington Post says.

2. Remember that your reaction to an event isn’t the only one.  In response to a political or social event, you might find yourself surrounded by a storm of outrage, or a warm glow of approval on social media.  Researchers have found that networks of retweets and interaction about moral content on Twitter are highly segregated by political affiliation.  These researchers also found that people are generally more likely to share emotional content.  For this reason, social media is inadvertently selecting for the content that most drives polarization.  Be wary when friends share highly emotional moral content, and remember that elsewhere in the social network, other perspectives are likely being shared and you are not seeing them. 

3. Fight confirmation bias.  People tend to trust evidence that confirms beliefs they already hold and ignore evidence that pushes against these beliefs.  If you find yourself only trusting and sharing things that you already believed, you may be falling into the confirmation bias trap.  Along these lines, be wary of articles that report on a controversial topic, but where it is entirely unclear why anyone would hold the other position in the controversy.  Such articles are designed to get clicks and shares by appealing to confirmation biases.

4. Watch out for surprising scientific findings.  In general, people have a bias towards novelty.  We are fascinated by things that are surprising or new.  This translates into likes, click-throughs, and shares on social media.  And this means that journalists are incentivized to cover the surprising and novel, including in coverage about science. But in science, surprising findings are also often wrong or misleading.  Not every study reflects a true effect, and some studies fail to replicate. Studies that fail to replicate, though, are more likely to be reported on, and more like to be shared on social media, presumably because they are more surprising.  This unfortunately means that if you’ve heard about a scientific finding on social media, it is more likely to be false than one you haven’t heard of.

5. Read and share science journalism that covers a whole literature, not a single study.  One solution is to read, trust, and share scientific articles that report results from an entire literature, rather than focusing on a single study. Because scientific evidence is probabilistic, any individual study can be misleading. But an entire body of evidence, gathered by many scientists, replicated, and critiqued within a scientific community is less likely to mislead. Ignore sensationalizing articles about one study.  (And no, wine isn’t better than exercise for your health.)

6. Remember, the agents of unfriendly nations are out there. We are unfortunately in a media environment where we are regularly brought into contact with content created and spread by foreign actors trying to manipulate public beliefs. These agents are extremely savvy about what will be shared and liked. One major goal seems to be to polarize and divide the US electorate and to erode trust in the US democracy. For this reason, it is not safe to assume content created by sources you have never heard of is safe or reliable—even (or especially) if it tends to support beliefs or positions you already accept. Cultivate a skeptical attitude towards social media content, and use verified sources to check scientific and political facts before trusting, liking, and sharing.

I don't know what one does about people who pay no attention to this because it comes from a higher education source, or those who mistrust trustworthy sources.

*Bing images.

When Fairy Lands Become Dumps

When I was young and had an hour's bus ride each way to school, there were certain places that I used as markers to let me know where we were on the route. Mostly, I did my homework on the bus, occasionally looking up to see how much longer we would be riding around.

Along the route was a lovely little cottage home; it was one of my markers. I called it a fairy cottage. It was well-kept, with lilac bushes and flowers everywhere. It was always a beauty of a place and I liked to imagine living there with such a well-tended yard. A small girl could be a princess wandering around that yard. 

Fast forward and I don't know what happened, but one day I drove by the fairy cottage, and it was a dump. The house was unkept, the yard unmowed, piles of metal stuff sat everywhere, the garage door constantly stood open. The flowers were dead, the lovely trees were either cut down or dying. I don't know what happened to the people who lived there, but they obviously are not there now.

I don't like to judge; I don't like it when people judge me. Today, though, I'm feeling judge-like. What has happened to having pride in the places we live, in our jobs, in our personal grooming? Many homes that were once pristine fairy cottages now look like dumps, with yards piled with junk, shingles off of the roof, the siding falling off or the paint peeling.

Is this what we aspire to now? Living in dumps full of junk? Half-ass doing our jobs, just to get a paycheck? Dressing for less than success? (I am guilty of that last one, I'm a jeans and t-shirt gal. But at least they're clean clothes.)

A drive around the area shows that the moniker of "white trash" is alive and well - and deserved. I don't know when having crap piled around your house became the "in" thing, but it's a horrible look. I know that in some instances folks don't have funds to fix up a place, or they're elderly and can't do it. I get that, I do. But so many? So many places around here look like something out of "Deliverance" that it's a wonder I don't hear Dueling Banjos ring out every time I get out of my car. 

As for jobs - everywhere I go, I see people half-assing it. They're just there, and if you bother them, because you know, it's their job to deal with you, they let you know you've bothered them. How about a little professionalism? A little pride in what you're doing? So what if it's a minimum wage job? The person who gets ahead is the person who treats it like it's more than that. And they treat the customers like they matter.

Heck, even I still dress up a little to go to the dentist.

Even the state does things half-way now. They used to mow frequently when I was young. Now they mow maybe twice a growing season, if that. The weeds stay in the way, you can't see to pull out, the road out near the interstate (where what used to be a truck stop is now a "bee pollinator" area that the state seldom touches) looks like a wasteland.

This is what 40 years of "trickle down" economics has wrought, I think. It trickled, all right. Only it wasn't money or economic certainty that trickled down. What trickled down was disrespect, laziness, and attitude. 

Society without manners, without politeness, without a bit of nice, without pride in itself, is not society at all. It's not a community, either. It just is.

Maybe that's what's wrong with us now. We just are. And that ain't no way to be.

It Takes Just a Little While

Change does not happen overnight.

Not generally, anyway.

I've heard of folks who go to bed and wake up in the morning with white hair. Canities subita is the medical term for hair turning white overnight. The phenomenon is almost universally acknowledged as myth—but not entirely. There have been 84 verified instances of it happening since 1800.

My hair often looks much grayer (soft white is the term I prefer) after a cut. I accuse the beautician of using her scissors to ferret out the color and leave the gray, but the gray was already there. With each cut, my hair grows whiter. (I have a friend whose hair was totally white by the time she was 45, if not younger, so I consider myself lucky to still have my natural brownish color at all.)

Weight does not fall off in 10-pound increments. No, it comes off a half-pound at a time. Some days one may wake up and find the scale indicates one weighs two or three pounds less, but it is a change that happened over a period of days, unless one is quite ill. Even so, the most weight I've ever lost at one time is 8 pounds in a week, and that was a week of barely eating because my gallbladder was giving me a fit.

So, I could starve myself and lose 8 pounds a week. Maybe.

And then there's the world. How much has the world changed in my lifetime? And how much has it stayed the same?

The truth is the change has been minimal. Oh sure, there are advances in technology, changes in the way we raise children, a loss of morals and civility. But this has happened before, maybe just clothed in different colors.

In the past, I have spent much time reading old local newspapers. What struck me the most was the similarity of stories from the past to today. The concerns were the same: how to spend tax dollars. How to train children. How to make the most of agriculture products. How to keep private what should be public, and vice versa. Racism, sexism, money.

The only difference between then and now were the sums and the civility. The chairperson yelling in 1922 about money going toward public schools did so with decorum and manners. We've lost that, but it's taken my entire lifetime for the moral character of society to degrade itself as it does now. That's 60 years before that kind of corrupt change became more apparent. Personally, I think it's as it always has been, only now it has a megaphone in the form of social media and 24/7 television news. When we have things blaring at us constantly, we tend to feel it more, or feel that it is a more immediate change than it truly is.

That's not to say we haven't made strides of change - we have. But they have been imposed upon the external elements of society. Government edicts in the form of the Civil Rights Law, for example, or Title IX, or other legislation.

Legislation doesn't change the hearts of people. Legislation doesn't make a racist any less a racist, or a misogynist any less a woman-hater. It may make some hearts more accepting or may force the hatred to turn - as today it turns toward those who profess a difference in gender pronouns, for example. And legislation can't make attitudes such as fascism go away, nor make hearts any more open.

That takes a change that occurs over centuries. Maybe a millennium, maybe longer. It's certainly not going to change in my lifetime into anything good, particularly now when we see a return of a bent toward authoritarianism, when antisemitism is again on the rise, when dislike and disloyalty are applauded, and loyalty dismissed, unless it's loyalty to a personality.

Change takes a while. Sometimes it takes a long while, and sometimes it feels like we are changing for the worse or going backwards. In those moments, what we're really seeing is the rise of the realness of the human heart, which for better or worse, does not often lend itself to love of our fellow human beings and all of their diversity and uniqueness.

If I could snap my fingers, and like a snowy day turn the darkness of winter into something glittering and lovely, I would. If I could eat something bitter and turn my hair back to brown or make myself stop aging, I would. But none of us can do that. We cannot legislate away the calamities of the human heart.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

If You Wake Up

One of the leftovers from last year (and previous years) was the use of the word "woke" as some kind of belligerent belittling of people, particularly people who are "on the left," if one must use such terms to describe a group. It seems we must do that these days.

For the longest time, I did not know what the word "woke" meant. Did it mean I had my eyes open? Did it mean I understood things? Did it mean I had been to college?

Merriam-Webster defines it thusly: "Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that same decade, it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning."

The origin of the word goes back decades, with no one quite sure where it originated with this use.

Given that it means to be aware of facts and issues, the word "woke" could have been used to describe me for my entire life. I've always been aware of social issues, racial injustice, the ineptitudes of capitalism, and the difference in classes, culture, and religion. I may not understand them all in great depth, but I have been aware of them.

I see nothing wrong with being able to acknowledge sexism, racism, misogyny, the dire restraints of the patriarchal system, and the crushing weight of religions of all shapes and sizes upon society. These are things we all live with. Most people, I have found, do not spend time thinking about them. They don't care, for example, if women make 30 cents less than men. They were raised to think that this was normal, and they see it as normal.

For me, it's an injustice that needs to be corrected.

Things become weird when people get stuff mixed up with their emotions - or with their pocketbook. For whatever reason, gender issues trigger many people. I strongly suspect this is because almost everyone is bisexual to some degree, and people are raised via their religions to beat this aspect of themselves into submission. Allowing gender issues to become open and part of society mixes up them up because the things they were taught are being challenged.

If it hits the pocketbook, as in, "my taxes shouldn't pay for the welfare queen's kid," then it triggers a different kind of angry emotion. To this I say, let your taxes pay for the military jets that I abhor; my taxes can pay for the child and mother to have something to eat.

Why being "woke" is an insult is beyond me, but the insult comes from people I tend to perceive as not very smart in the first place, and here is where the trouble comes in.

When we start lumping folks into categories, we begin to have problems. If thinking I'm woke also means I think the "unwoke" are idiots, or vice versa, well, of course dialogue breaks down. Nobody wants to talk to an idiot, whether they're awake or not.

I can't cancel people who don't want to accept my acceptance (which is what being "woke" is - a form of acceptance), simply because they disagree with it. I can, however, object to individuals who may want to argue with me or make my life miserable because they find me disagreeable. I don't have to allow myself to be harmed.

Being "woke" is a non-starter for me. I don't see it as insult. I see it as an acknowledgement that I understand that societal problems are many, and some of them can and should be changed, corrected, fixed, or improved. The world is not stagnant, and neither is society. Change is the one constant we can always count on.

Being "woke" means I know that things are wrong in the world, and they need to be changed. 

I don't know what's so bad about that.

Who Has This Job?

Recently, we've been seeing a commercial for, um, body deodorant.

The advertisement specifically mentions it as a deodorant for your butt.

If you google this, you will find some people call this a scam, and perhaps it is. I've not made a purchase to find out and have no plans to do so.

What intrigued me were the statistics in the ad.

After a shower, butt odor is 0/10. But it's 6/10 by the end of the day. Unless, of course, you're using the deodorant. Then it's still 0/10 for odor.

Who determined this?

How did they determine this?

Is there a chief butt sniffer? A team of butt sniffers?

Whose butts are they sniffing? 

Are they paid by the hour or by the sniff?

Are there people who walk the streets with a sign offering payment for butt sniffing?

Do they offer couples free trials of the deodorant for morning and evening sniffs, along with a questionnaire for ratings?

Have they invented a smelling robot, or is there someone sticking their nose up people's butts to smell them at certain times of the day?

Inquiring minds want to know how this statistic is achieved.

(And then I ran across this . . .)

https://youtu.be/OnrICy3Bc2U

Nice Doesn't Pay

I am, generally speaking, a nice person.

In my doctor's notes, her interns (who see me first) almost all start out their notes with, "a pleasant woman who comes in today about . . . . "

Nice. Pleasant.

Not mean, not ornery.

Maybe a bit contrary sometimes.

But nice kills me. Nice brings me nothing but heartache and confusion. Try to be nice and see if you don't get crapped on, because when I am nice, I get crapped on.

It doesn't make a difference what kind of nice I am, or who I am being nice to.

I am crapped on.

Like I'm some kind of catch-all beneath the bird feeder, maybe. 

Oh, that's nice. A good place to take a poop. 

Plop.

Dystopian Now

I was in a sophomore in high school when I really got into dystopian literature.

My favorite was a book called Alas, Babylon, by Pat Frank, given to me by my geometry teacher. We'd had some discussions about life and literature, I guess, and she told me I would like the book.

I did. It wasn't just dystopian, it was apocalyptical, taking place after a full-blown nuclear war. I read it again a few years ago, and it was as relevant as it was in 1959. A little technological backwards, perhaps, but otherwise still on course.

People were mean, inhumane, ornery, and unable to think of anyone other than themselves, for the most part.

Kind of like today.

The hero was a man who thought not only of himself but of others, working to rebuild community. In the end, the US and the Soviet Union (which no longer exists, of course), had blasted one another to smithereens, and three larger, unnamed powers (probably China, India, and maybe Japan or Venezuela, if I had to guess), were now the major powers of the world.

Another dystopian book that left a big mark on me was A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller, also published in 1959. (Must've been a big year for apocalyptic fiction.) A librarian at the Fincastle Library gave me this book (they were going to rid it from the collection as few people had checked it out), saying I would like it as I was always asking for science fiction and fantasy books.

In this book, the nations have already fallen. People have burned all the books, eschewed all learning, and returned to tribal ways. But religion survives, and a monastery has kept some books and other information. The story runs through several thousand years as civilization rebuilds itself to the point where once again mankind has nuclear weapons, space colonies, and technological advantages - and then destroys itself once more.

Today I prefer fantasy to science fiction. I read Dune before the movie came out and found it disturbing. Like Liebowitz, Dune had religious inclusions - religion always seems to be not the salvation of nations or worlds, but their downfall. The world in Alas, Babylon had its downfall over religious rancor in the Middle East. I believe this problem with religion is a truism that the devout overlook, as religion as currently practiced by many is destructive and not uplifting (which is why I left organized religion).

Sword and sorcery fantasy books are basically the world of today without technology - without guns, too - and most good fantasy has political overtones, some king or other attempting to take what is not his or hers. Even Lord of the Rings has this as its practical premise; Sauron wants the One Ring, sure, but what he wants is power to wield over all of Middle Earth. 

What would someone do for power? Lie? Cheat? Steal? Kill? Release a pathogen upon a population? Determine that over 1 million dead from a virus is an acceptable loss in order to bring more people around to his/her way of thinking? Malign particular groups as "others" so that in essence, the power-hungry is saying, "Look, Squirrel!" to the starving masses, who all turn to look at the squirrel while the powerful take the fish from their dinner plates? 

What would people do to maintain power? Enslave? Devalue? Create the inhumane and try to make it the natural course of things?

I once thought - and I suppose some part of me still believes - that humanity could right itself. People could, if they only would, create a world where we are all equal, each of us, and our differences are exalted and glorified as the god-parts they are. I once thought that if we only tried, humans could stop wars, not fight, not argue. Just lay down the weapons and walk away. Why didn't they lay down their weapons, each side, and walk away? I always wondered this. If no one picked up their gun, then there would be no killing. No fighting.

Just say no to murdering one another. Why is that hard?

But we are humans, and humanity is not kind, or good, or willing to create a world of consistency and love. Humans, on the whole, do not want that. Perhaps a wee babe, newly born, could be raised up to think such things might exist, and maybe entire communes of children could be raised to think the world could live in perfect harmony.

But I think not. 

That's because hate is taught. Otherness is taught. Evil is taught. Lust for and appeals to pain, thirsts for power, the need for more, more, more - all taught. Our society is dystopian by design, its creators from thousands of years ago have set it up so that it is patriarchal by design, that it demeans by design, and it separates and creates otherness - by design.

We cannot undo thousands of years of conditioning. Maybe it is now in our DNA, and maybe children today are born with this burning desire for power, to want more, to lie, cheat, steal or do whatever to achieve their goals. Maybe that's what personality disorders are, really. F*cked up DNA, warped by the thousands of years of toxicity that humanity has spewed upon itself.

Maybe we are no longer salvageable as a species.

As we destroy ourselves by ignoring the signs all around us of a world in decline, I hope this - like in Leibowitz, humanity will one day rise again.

Even a nuclear war won't destroy all of us, though it may come close.

I hope the next round manages to do a better job than we have.