The Pains That Are Withheld For Me

When I was a young child, my parents would not allow me to watch the evening news (I saw it sometimes at my grandparents' house, or other places, though, and I listened). At the time, the half-hour with Walter Cronkite was full of images of the Vietnam War - dead bodies, guns, violence.

The things that we used to protect children from.

My concept of war was and always has been somewhat wrong-headed. For one thing, I believe all war is unnecessary and negation is the best way to remedy whatever is wrong. Fighting over land, water, food, ideas - has always seemed a waste of resources. What, I always think, if people who make things go boom would put those thought processes into better use? What if we took the money people are fighting over and did good with it? What if we all shared? Don't they teach us to share in play school?

So in spite of the fact that my father is a rabid Republican as well as a veteran, and my grandfather was a veteran, I don't believe in fighting. I always think, what if nobody volunteered for the shooting? If they all laid down their guns and went home? It can be done, you know.

We just don't do it.

So now I live in this world above the darkness, the one most of us dwell in - or at least, most of us who would be reading this blog. We live in a world where there is ample food, water, clothing. We work hard, sure. We play hard. Maybe we have discussions that could be called arguments over different ideas about ways to run the country.

And it has turned into pain, pain we don't see because it is hidden.

I don't pick up a gun and fight for my grapes or my bread. However, fighting has somehow, someway, contributed to the fact that I can buy those things at my local market. When I go to the market, I am subsidizing things I don't even know about. War money for something. If I traced the pennies back from me to Kroger to their seller to their seller and so on and so forth, eventually it is all blood money, paid for with war, and the blood of someone's son or daughter.

But we don't see that because, like my parents' efforts to keep the images of the Vietnam War from me, media and government work together to keep the idea of democracy and freedom burning in the hearts of those who are slipping from this world above darkness into a more dimly lit area - the one we are all going to end up in as the free market takes more and more and leaves the rest of us with less and less. The free market, you see, is like Pac Man. It eats and eats but it doesn't give anything back to those it eats. Only one person ends up with the high score at the end of the game.

It is easy - oh so easy - to simply turn blind eyes to all that is going on. To not see that the emperor has no clothes. That morality tale has so many lessons for today that it is almost stomach-turning. How easy it is for three little tailors to proclaim they have created the most royal and best clothing, and how quickly everyone agrees, ignoring what their eyes actually see.

Blindness and lack of thought are apparently infectious. My failing eyes look around and see swaths of people covered with clothes but I know in my heart that what lies beneath is unwell. How quickly a suit and tie can turn into something it is not.

We do not see images of war anymore. We don't even see the caskets of returning soldiers. We hear body counts. Even when our journalists were "embedded" with soldiers during the early days of the Iraq war, the footage was manipulated, gauged to ease our minds that we weren't actually shedding blood, just knocking down a few buildings.

War like a video game, that's what we saw. Only it wasn't a game and isn't a game, and people died and are still dying. We don't even hear commentary anymore about the United States' ongoing wars in faraway lands.

We're not even sure who we're fighting. We just fight.

These days our images of war come from mass shootings in churches, theaters, and concerts. Our war has moved from the jungles of faraway lands to right next door, and we close our eyes to it as if to there is nothing to see.

Even that becomes commonplace, we see so much of it. From Columbine to Virginia Tech to Las Vegas, the death tolls climb and all we do is send "thoughts and prayers" and move on to the next item, purchasing our blood-money bread at Walmart because most of us can't afford the higher end stores anymore.

There is a lot going on in society, and many ways to look at things. It is easy to cherry pick facts, like cherry-picking Biblical references to assume a moral ineptitude simply because you can. It is easier now to ignore those who disagree with you, to turn them into "other" and pretend they don't exist - or that they are your enemy.

Someone said to me recently there were two Americas. But there are not just two Americas. There are multitudes of Americas. Not even each state exits in cohesion; they all have cities and rural areas fighting against one another, upper classes and lower classes, rich and poor, working and non-working, abled and disabled, black and white, blue eyes and green eyes. America is 320 million parts now, working like a badly put-together cog clock, with edges lost and others protruding, and nothing telling the actual time though nobody dares admit it.

We stand at the edge of a precipice, but then, we always have. The Doomsday clock moves forward by nanoseconds, but honestly, at any time, the dirt could give away.

What will we see then, I wonder? Sheer cliff? A splash of salty ocean water? A mushroom cloud?

In the end, does it matter?

Visions of the Things To Be

"It is in men that we must place our hope," said Gandalf.

"Men. Men are weak. The race of men is failing. The blood of Numenor is all but spent, its pride and dignity forgotten.," replied Elrond.  - From The Fellowship of the Ring (movie)

****

I have long been enamored of dystopian literature. This began, I think, when my 11th grade teacher gave me her copy of Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank. Written in 1959, the book is considered one of the top 100 science fiction books. The story is about the effects of a full-blown nuclear war on a small town in Florida, widening out to encompass bits about the loss of the U.S. government (the office of president falls to the Secretary of Health, so many of the top officials are wiped out) and the total breakdown of societal mores.

The human race survives, of course, but the banks close, the prisoners break free, small vigilante groups pop up - and only communities that come together, like the one in the book, manage to survive with any semblance of ethics and humanity.
 
The book particularly impacted me with the need for certain dietary items, such as salt. Even today I keep far too many boxes of salt in the pantry. I also tend to hoard toilet paper. Not that I think it will do me any good, mind you. It just brings me some small solace.

In this book, the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, of course, sends the bombs to the U.S., but the war is a result of an incident in the Middle East started by an American fighter pilot who accidentally bombs an ammunitions hold in Syria.

I read this around the time we were negotiating hostages with the Middle East. This was, I think, the first time I'd managed to merge literature and world events and see, with scared eyes, that we have the ability to annihilate ourselves.

Later, when I was around 23, I read A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller. It was written in 1960 (those years were Cold War years), and it was actually a post-nuclear war novel, showing how humanity might fall and then rise again to its peak, only to destroy itself all over again.

Dystopian movies abound. From Batman to Blade Runner to The Hunger Games to Mad Max and The Matrix movies, the destruction of society has been ingrained in our psyche for a very long time, both in word and on screen.

Now we all watch to see if the books are right. Will we plunge ourselves into war, whimpering as psychotic men in power tweet their way into death and destruction? Because they likely will live, those whose hands might pull the trigger or push the button. The rest of us are expendable. Never mind that they stand upon our backs, and once we fall, they eventually will, as well. They are incapable of thinking beyond their next trip to the golf course.

I tried for a very long time to believe the best of people. Nobody really wanted to hurt someone. Men didn't really hate women. Color really didn't matter to most people. Gender wasn't an issue. Ignore, ignore. Reality constantly slapped me in the face and knocked me to the ground, but, even though I can't think of a single utopian novel or movie at the moment that actually ends with a wonderful society for all, I still believed in the best of people.

My visions for tomorrow are not carefree. I do not believe that things will get better - only worse - as time moves forward. I am watching the rise of white supremacy - something that three years ago I would not have considered - and the decline of women's rights. I'm watching an increasingly wealthy upper class turn its backs on those who labor day in and day out simply to feed a family or keep a roof over a head. I see a lot of talk and media ops, but no action that honestly puts work in the hands of the many who want it, desire it, and would like to have it.

I see dystopia. I see, not Waterworld, but The Postman, as the U.S. breaks down as a cohesive society and becomes a divided militant bone-headed giant, one with military clout but third-world living conditions for the majority of its people. We already have many third-world places here, particularly in the southern states, which for reasons that elude me totally, continue to harbor people who vote against their own self-interest at every single election.

The world to come is not a world I will be able to share in. I will be dead - I won't be able to breathe the poisoned air, created by loss of regulations on industry, or I will have a disease that I won't be able to afford to cure because we worship money here. We surely do not abide by the words of the one many call Savior.

Even the Bible is dystopian - it ends with Revelations, a thousand years of evil before becoming some heaven on earth through some mythic magic by our mythical god.

To be honest, I think the total decline of real Christianity in this country is one of the saddest things I've seen. Jesus offered us so much, and it has become so twisted as to be unrecognizable. What I hear and see preached today I do not call Christianity, because it is all about money, greed, and power - the very opposite of the things the New Testament stands for. I fear that when, as in Revelations, the great devil comes, its name will be America. We are an angry, frustrated and scared people, and people with that kind of mind are not able to make good decisions. Nor are they able to offer empathy, or care for others, or, I'm afraid, stop their own inevitable destruction.

The rest of the world fears our downfall, though some are eagerly awaiting it. When we go down, we will take many down with us. Whether that downfall ends in weapons play that annihilates millions, or simply the freefall of society that capitalism and the free market is determined to bring about, remains to be seen.

Either way, we lose.

We have reached our peak, I fear. The fall backwards will not be kind.

Not a Riddle

Last evening, my brother called me. "What does your Thursday 13 mean?" he wanted to know.

For me, it was a very odd Thursday 13. Just words, really.

"I don't know what it means," I told him.

"I have spent an hour trying to figure out what you did!" he exclaimed. "I was sure you had some hidden message in there."

There was a hidden message, I suppose, but not one that anyone picked up on. The message would have been, "I have a bad headache and a lot going on, I have not missed a Thursday 13 in 511 weeks, and I need to stick something up on my blog."

So I put up the first words that came to mind, taking maybe all of a single minute to drop a few lines. I did put a disclaimer at the bottom that said I didn't know what any of it meant. I'm pretty sure that in the 9.8 years I have been doing Thursday 13, yesterday's entry was the worst one I've ever done.

I went for quantity, not quality, and it showed.

Quality always wins over quantity. If you are a rich man but your money came to you in ways that were not quality, then your money ultimately turns you into boorish brazen-faced baggage, and (generally speaking) not a person of quality. A person of quality is of course not quantifiable, since "quality" in and of itself is subjective, but I think there are enough examples of spoiled rich brats roaming around to make the point. They didn't earn it. They are not nice people. They have the quantity, but not the quality.

Monies earned through work, whether that's sweat under the armpits or sweat of the brow from thinking too much, become quality funds. When I was in college, many of my professors enjoyed teaching older students such as myself because we weren't there on somebody else's dime - we were paying for our education. We knew the quality of the education and the value it would bring to our lives.

On Game of Thrones the other week, Greyworm, an eunuch, took off his clothes and made love with the person he called "his weakness," Missandei. Lots of talk on Facebook pooh-poohed that scene, saying an eunuch could not make love. They seemed to think there were no pleasure to be found in touches of another kind. Quality, not quantity, mattered in that particular TV scene, and it showed quality. Love is not quantifiable. Love is about quality.

Facebook pursues quantity over quality. Among the younger generation, especially, the more "friends" you have, the more "likes" your post receives, the better it is. But friendship is not a number and quantity has nothing to do with it. You can know 1,000 people but if none will come to your aid when you need them, you really have nothing. If one person comes to sit with you when you are sick, or bring you chicken soup, then you have quality. You have a friend who matters.

Quantity is absolute. It's math, empirical, and undebatable.

Twelve apples rest on the table. That's quantity.

Ten apples have worms in them. That's quality. Which ones do you want to eat?

I always hated assignments that were word-number oriented. "Write 1,000 word essay on The Grapes of Wrath" ultimately means a teacher ends up with a lot of looping logic or indigestible sentences that say next to nothing. I'd rather read a 300-word quality essay on the book than 1,000-word essay that says nothing. But quality is not quantifiable, and if a grade is the ultimate goal, then you ask for 1,000 words.

As a writer and blogger, I try to offer up posts of quality. Sometimes those posts are simply interesting photos. Occasionally they are posts that maybe shouldn't have been posted - too personal, perhaps - but my writing, in general, is good, readable, occasionally funny, and almost always thoughtful. Hopefully, it has relevance to the human experience. Sometimes, I hope, it makes people think.

Yesterday, I failed in the quality area. For that I am sorry, and I apologize to you, my readers. I know better and generally do better.

I especially apologize to my brother, because I think I let him down the most.

Aprons, Mops and . . . What?

I do not consider myself a prude, although I suppose others might. I mean, I'm 54 years old and married. I don't go into the closet and undress. However, I don't subject myself to movies or books that are rated R, generally, as I do not care for violence. I did not read 50 Shades of Grey and have no desire to. Maybe I am a prude. So what.

Last night I was flipping through a catalog I received in the mail, one of those that has a bit of everything. This one had some old-timey type stuff, like mops, aprons, flowery things. Stuff you don't really need but which may or may not work to make life a little easier. I marked a page because it had a holder for a handicap placard on it and I'd been looking for those. This was the first time I'd seen one. I thought I might end up ordering something if I could find something else I wanted.

I flipped to the middle spread in the catalog and lo, there were two pages full of women's sexual aids plastered there. I did a double take. I went from aprons to "massage toys" in one turn of a page.

The next page went back to mops. I was amused, bemused, and befuddled. Intrigued, I checked out the website, too, to see what was online. Both male and female sexual aids were available under "health and beauty."

I have never bought from this company and I don't know why I received the catalog. It is the kind of thing I would have expected to see in my grandmother's house, actually. Except for that middle page part. I'm pretty sure Grandma's catalogs did not have those kinds of items in their middle pages.

Then I started wondering. What if they did? What if it was all in some secret code, back in the 1950s, when the catalogs came? Maybe dirty things were in plain sight, hidden on page 56 of the old Sears & Robuck, if you knew where to look.

I envision my grandmothers fainting at the sight of the middle page of the catalog I have now tossed into the recycling bin (sans my name, of course), but hey, they probably had their own thing, too. Things we never knew about. Things we still don't know about, information that has died with a generation. I doubt they were prudes. I'm here, aren't I?

Was there a reason besides toilet paper economy that led to big fat catalogs being carried out to the johnny houses of the day? Hmm.

We may never know.
 

Just What is Fake Media?

Everywhere I look these days, I see someone write about the fake media. "I don't trust the media," they say.

"It's all fake," they say.

Just out of curiosity, how long have you not trusted the media?

Was it before our current president started calling it fake news?

Maybe it was when Fox came to town and changed the dialogue to one of opinion instead of facts?

Was it when Dan Rather broke the story about George Bush's lackadaisical service in the Texas Air National Guard,  and was then ran out of broadcasting? (A story that to this day has never been proven true or false, by the way.)

Do you not trust the media because big corporations own most of it?

Maybe it's because Judith Miller at the New York Times reported about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - weapons that the federal government insisted were there?

Is it because Rachel Maddow is one of the smartest person on the planet? Or may you simply think she's overrated?

Do you only mistrust MSNBC and CNN, or do you include ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX in your "fake news" mantra?

Do you mistrust the White House page on Facebook, which as of today has turned into a massive propaganda machine, the likes of which even Edward Louis James Bernays (November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995), an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, who is often called "the father of public relations," would applaud and Hitler would salute? Or do you trust that?

Do you trust newspapers more than TV, or the other way around?

Do you trust Rush Limbaugh over someone else? Why would you trust the opinion of a single person, regardless of who he/she is, over anyone else, anyway?

I used to be in the media, so I am genuinely curious. People tell me all the time they don't trust the media, but I have yet to have anyone explain to me exactly why they don't trust it.

"Because I think it is one-sided/liberal" is not a good answer unless that can be backed up with fact, and so far no one has been able to back it up with facts, at least, not to me. Just because someone doesn't like what the media reports doesn't make it one-side or leaning in one direction. Just because one reporter messes up doesn't make it all wrong.

The media is not liberal, that's simply opinion, an opinion that's been chanted long and loud for far too long, but still not a fact. Determining whether something is liberal or conservative is opinion, not fact, because that's what the political divide is, opinions. Facts count. Opinion doesn't. We live by opinion these days and look where it's getting us. But it facts (and science) bring us the Internet and radio waves and TV. Not opinion.

Opinion doesn't do anything except make people's stomach's hurt and create bad policy. So what are the facts that make you not trust the media?

Even people that I have known a long time, people who have for years handed off stories to me from various news sources they trusted, no longer trust the media. Is this simply because one person says the news is fake?

I trust the media. Maybe I am in a minority here, and I understand that journalists are at the mercy of editors and owners and therefore they are constantly being undermined by big money and that stories are buried and changed based on dollar bills and not facts. I know this.

I also know that if one reads (which, apparently, most Americans do not), then you can read stories from multiple news sources and anyone with an IQ above 90 can figure out that if the story reads the same everywhere, it's a press release and probably not to be trusted, but if it has been researched and told differently from various sources, then the key things that are the same - names, dates, places, for instance - are probably true.

That isn't to say that journalists don't make mistakes, but I think that most journalists, even the highly paid ones, try to bring truth to the newsroom. I do not think journalists themselves set out to deliberately mislead. I think politicians try to use journalists to deliberately mislead, and it sometimes happens. I had it happen once myself and was incredibly unhappy with the politician who used me thusly. I no longer consider him a trustworthy person, though he seems none the wiser.

I know many people will disagree with me, even friends, but I do not think the media is the enemy. I do not think government, as an entity in and of itself, is the enemy. But I do think that certain individuals within the government, and within the media, may be the enemy. Apparently people can no longer tell the difference between an entity and an individual. And therein lies the problem.

Kudzu

On US 220 as one heads into Franklin County, the highway is lined with kudzu. We don't see much of it here where I live; perhaps we're just a little too far north and not exactly the right climate. But two counties away, there it is.

Kudzu covering the side of the road, moving up into the trees, as far as one can see from a car.

Kudzu has always fascinated me. When I was growing up, I heard tales of how it was going to take over everything. It would grow overnight around a vehicle and encompass it, eating it like a giant anaconda engorging a cow. It was poisonous, or so I thought.

It was going to take over the world.

In Margaret Atwood's Oryx & Crake book, and the two that follow, a newly created humanoid, one Crake thought up to take the place of us reckless, angry, thoughtless, immoral and degraded human beings, sits and stares at the landscape, dreamily contemplating apparently nothing at all. These creatures, innocent and unthinking, ate kudzu because it was so plentiful that Crake thought it would be an endless food source for them.

It looks like it would eat everything, doesn't it?

Kudzu, named an invasive species by Congress in 1998, found its way to the United States via the 1876 World’s Fair Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Farmers had little use for the climbing, coiling, and trailing perennial vines native to much of eastern Asia, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific islands. (The name is derived from the Japanese name for the plants, kuzu, which was written "kudzu" in historical romanizations.)

Kudzu was hard to harvest, being a vine, and sustained animal grazing killed it. For almost 60 years, it was largely forgotten.

Then along came the dust bowl of 1935, which left the prairie farms lifeless. Congress in its infinite wisdom decided it should do something about soil erosion, and somebody decided kudzu was the perfect foil. Greenhouses grew more than 70 million kudzu seedlings, and they were taken over by a new government entity, the Soil Conservation Service. In order to get it planted, the SCS offered $8 an acre to farmers to plant the vine.

While farmers remained skeptical, contractors, eager for something to cover the sides of the new roads they were carving into mountains and slopes, planted kudzu seedlings everywhere they went. In 1940, there was even a Kudzu Club of America, which had a membership of 20,000 and a goal of planting eight million acres of kudzu across the South.

However, just five years later, only about 1 million acres had been covered with the "crop." Once federal payments stopped, it was grazed over or plowed under. The government left kudzu to do what it would.

Kudzu climbing toward the sky via the trees.

 



It grew, and legends grew along with it. Today it does not cover millions of acres, but because it does grow well along roadsides, it is highly visible. It has become a symbol of the South, and part of the mythology of an area that other parts of the nation see as run-down, poor, and overtaken by grief and a nostalgia for a past that never really existed.

Kudzu became a symbol of the hopelessness of a land scarred by a Civil War that even now is still fought, with a battle raging just this weekend in Charlottesville as KKK and anti-racist protestors argued over whether a statue of Robert E. Lee belongs in the city park.

In Smithsonian Magazine, I found this paragraph in an article about kudzu:

In a 1973 article about Mississippi, Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, wrote that “racism is like that local creeping kudzu vine that swallows whole forests and abandoned houses; if you don’t keep pulling up the roots it will grow back faster than you can destroy it.” The photographs of kudzu-smothered cars and houses that show up repeatedly in documentaries of Southern life evoke intractable poverty and defeat.

It seems a truth, this notion and thought, this statement about a vine that supposedly eats the land. As I stand back and watch the changing mindscape of humanity, I have to wonder - are we becoming not Atwood's kudzu-eating innocents, but the mythology of the kudzu itself, a vine-like snake that eats everything in sight, and which will eventually kill itself when it turns around and eats its own tail.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/#8HfbETilyKTcpkVJ.99

Toys They Aren't

Lately, I have found myself perusing the toy section at the local Walmart. Since I have no children and all of my nephews and my niece are beyond the toy age, the only reason I am there is for myself.

This started with the Wonder Woman film, which thrilled me and acted as a balm across my weary, battered soul. I am tired of seeing women in roles on TV that leave them helpless, silly, or less-than any human with a penis. It also brought back a lot of fond memories of reading comic books and playing with little action figures. It also reminded me of the 1990s, when I could watch Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Captain Kathryn Janeway on the Starship Voyager kick butt and take names. Those strong fantasy female role models slipped away after 9/11. (There is a good research paper in there for a college-level class.)

This new interest in toys began as I slid past the toy section as I always had, with barely a glance. Then, to my surprise, a display of Wonder Woman dolls stopped me in my tracks. These were the size of Barbie dolls, larger than I like. I always preferred the 6-8" action figures when I was growing up. I was never big on baby dolls (too sissy) but instead I liked GI Joe, the Johnny West series, and the first small action figure I remember, Action Jackson. These were followed by superhero figures, though I think I had outgrown many of those by the time they came around. My brother, I remember, had a pile of the original Star Wars figures.

Back to the toy department. I looked at the dolls. I wanted one. I am 54 years old, I thought to myself. You don't need a doll. Instead of buying the doll, I wandered the aisles. I ran across a series of Metal DieCast DC figures for $4.97. I bought a Wonder Woman and a Supergirl. (I also love the Supergirl TV show.) Ok, I thought. That's $10 for two things. Good enough.

My odd little metal superheroines,
with a spoon for size comparison.

After I saw the movie a second time (something I seldom do - I can't recall the last movie I saw twice at the theater), my husband and I slipped into Walmart to pick up some deodorant. Despite the fact that the toy section was all the way on the other side of the largest Walmart in the area, I limped over there. I stood in front of the Wonder Woman section.

My husband told me to buy the damned doll. I declined.

"You've looked at them three times that I know of," he said. "Which one do you like?"

I wanted one with the sword but all they had was one with the golden lasso, so I pointed at that one. He picked it up, put it in the cart, paid for it, and we came home with it.

My Barbie-sized Wonder Woman doll.

Today I was in Walmart and I looked at the toys even though I was short of time. I ran across a line of tiny little metal toys. They were 94 cents. Not even a dollar! The Wonder Woman looked cool. I tossed her in my shopping cart.

My very tiny Wonder Woman metal collectible.

But this is not really about my purchasing Wonder Woman items, though that is what has led me to this point. This is about the toys I see on the shelves. I am beyond shocked at the merchandising tie-ins with movies. The stock rotates with every new film. Wonder Woman, Spider Man, Beauty and the Beast. It rotates through once and then again with the films hit the DVDs. The toys are also weird looking. A lot of them have these huge heads and tiny little bodies. Many of them are Lego figures, which have no hands and are square and pixilated and incredibly creepy looking. They must also be quite popular.

The smaller action figures are in the boys' section. Larger action figures, the Barbie-sized ones, are in the girl's section. I do not know why. In the action figures, the manufacturers offer wrestling guys, lots of Marvel Comics characters, Superman, Batman, and a few female superheroes, like the Black Widow. No small Wonder Woman, though. I remember when Stars Wars: The Force Awakens came out, there was a little kerfuffle about the lack of a Daisy Ridley character. This was especially surprising since she was essentially the lead in the film.

I found toys that were remarkably familiar - puzzles, a Slinky, PlayDoh, and games like Sorry! Life! and Monopoly. I saw bubble-blowing goo and bicycles. But most of the items being sold to children these days are simply commercial tie-ins, things to make money for movie stars and the movie studies, including Disney, Pixar, and the like.

I saw too that toys are still divided by gender. Without even thinking about it, I knew which aisle was for girls and which for boys (incidentally, in every store, there are more toys for boys. I don't know what that means but it means something.). The Barbies were on one aisle; the trucks on another.

A part of me wanted to redo the entire department, and mix it all up. Who says girls can't play with dump trucks, or boys with Barbies? How did the smaller action figures become relegated to the boys' section? Are girls supposed to only be happy with Bobble Headed Wonder Woman?

I think a visit to Toys R Us is in my future, if only to get a better sense of what the children are playing with these days. I don't understand the weird looking figures, the crazy Lego items, the completely unrealistic nature of some of the things I saw. I like fantasy, but I also like for it to make sense. A weird-looking little doll with a massive head makes no sense.

My Wonder Woman items, and Supergirl, will go up on the top shelf with my Xena action figure and my Charlie's Angel doll (the Drew Barrymore version). I will consider the collectibles.

I missed a lot of trends by not having children. Perhaps had I spent more time in the toy section, some of the things I see there today would not surprise me. But I always bought books for my niece and nephews. I did not buy them toys. I left that to their parents.

The merchandising tie-ins with movies troubles me. Childhood should not be so commercial. It should be a time of freedom, a time to see a movie and enjoy it. I don't recall ever seeing a movie as a child and then clamoring for the toy that tied in with it. However, now that I think about it, I know I received a watch that had Alice on it, for the Disney Alice in Wonderland movie.

I remember receiving a Batgirl doll that tied in with the old Batman show featuring Adam West. Gumbi, I think, was a cartoon character. Obviously by the time Star Wars hit this merchandizing tie-in was well in place, but I was a teenager by then and into books, music, and boys, not dolls.

As part of our capitalistic culture, it never occurred to me to question the merchandizing of everything. But I think it is past time that I did so.

Something about this whole affair troubles me. I can't quite put my finger on why it bothers me so, except that it is terribly exploitive. Expect to see me revisit this issue again.



Yes, I loved the movie. Yes, I will own
the DVD. I will watch it many times.
I will memorize the dialogue.
I am weird.

Poor Baby Bird

I came home the other day and spied a black lump on the patio.

It was a baby bird that had fallen from its nest. The nest, alas, is in my gas BBQ grill.

Incredibly ugly baby bird that pulled at my heart strings anyway.

The bird nest is in the bottom, not in the jar hanging down,
but up in the grill itself, in the burner part.

This is one of the baby bird's parents. I think it's a Carolina Wren.

I took a wide piece of mulch and coaxed the baby bird up on the stick, then, stooping over in a very uncomfortable position, I carried it back to the grill. I even opened the grill, expecting a bird to fly out at me, but the nest was not accessible from there.

I left the little baby as close to the grill as I could. I know next to nothing about song birds and I have no idea if they can somehow lure babies back to nests once they fall out. In my head, I had visions of the parent bird somehow placing the baby on its back and flying it home.

One of the parents showed up after I was inside, and while I ate lunch, I listened to it sing and cry and coax its little one to fly home. The little one attempted to comply, and I could see it lifting its tiny wings and occasionally moving around.

The song bird's trill was excited and anxious, and finally I went into the front of the house where I could not hear it.

When I returned a little later, all was quiet. I could not see the baby bird. I went outside and found that it had somehow flopped itself off the patio and landed upside down. Apparently unable to right itself, it died.

I was sad. The world can always use another songbird.

No sound came from the grill, and I came in and researched the bird to see how many eggs the female would have laid. Apparently, wrens lay about 5-6 eggs. But I'd heard no chirping.

Later, though, I saw the parent bird fly back to the nest with a worm. I opened the back door a crack and I could hear the faintest of little chirps. I felt better knowing the birds had not lost their only little one.

In the meantime, I do not have a BBQ grill to use, but we don't use it that often anyway. This one is 20 years old and I have told my husband that when the birds are through with it, I would prefer he take it to the dump rather than try to clean it out. I am not keen to eat burgers or steak on it after it has been infested with birds and lice and whatever else they may bring with them. The grill is quite old and it looks junky so I don't mind if it goes away.

Nature is cruel because it has no choice. Baby birds die because they fall from nests. That's the way it is.

People have a choice, though. They are not birds. They can pick up a human baby if it falls. Instead, people are just cruel because they want to be.

Human babies die because we choose to withhold care via lack of funding or services. Last year, six out of every 1,000 children under the age of one died in the United States. [CIA World Factbook]

They didn't fall out of a nest. They just didn't receive the care they should have.

Bosnia, Guam, Poland, New Zealand, the European Union, Germany, Ireland, Iceland, and Japan, among others, have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. In fact, 56 countries have lower infant mortality rates than the United States. Monoco, with less than 2 deaths per 1,000 infants under the age of one, has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world.

And we think we have good health care? Just wait until the vile old white guys in the government finish with it, and you'll see how bad it can be.

How many babies will fall out of the nest then?

How many mothers will sing sad, sorrowful songs?

How many of those songs could be prevented, if we only cared about one another, and not about the dollars in our pocket?

Darling, You Are Growing Old

My mother used to sing a line to me at every birthday: Darling, you are growing old. I don't know if was from a song, or simply something she liked to sing, but nearly every year, especially after I married, she would croon that.

And here I am, old. Well, aging, anyway. I'm still in my birthday month. Still celebrating having made it yet another year.

However, this year so far, two of my high school classmates have passed away (class of 1981). They were, of course, my age. Early 50s.

I am not sure how many of my classmates have gone to the great beyond. I believe there were eight that we were aware of when we had our 30th reunion in 2011, which was six years ago. Now I know of 10. I suspect there are more. We were a class of 212 (I think), so about 5 percent of us - maybe even 10 percent or more, since I haven't kept up with most people - have passed on.

We were a generation that grew up eating bologna, TV dinners, and candy bars. We drank Dr. Pepper and scarfed up cookies. Our moms worked, mostly, and if meals were anything like at my house, they were whatever a poor pooped woman could manage at 6 p.m. Frequently, that was Kraft Mac & Cheese or whatever else she could rustle up.

Food companies of course were eager to help. Who cared if the stuff was full of preservatives, sodium, fats, and who-knows-what? It shut the kids up.

Unfortunately for my mother, and for me, I never liked cooking so I wasn't much help. To this day I still don't understand appropriate nutrition and how food is fuel and what the body needs versus what the body craves. They are different things, aren't they? Craving and needing?

Nor does cooking appeal to me, even now. I don't like naked meat. I don't care to see it sitting there unclothed on my counter, with its thighs or gristle or fat waiting to make my hands slippery and yucky. I don't like flouring it only to fry it and watch the grease pop out all over the stove, making a lovely mess. I don't like trimming fat from pork or steak, nor do I know how to marinate meat so that it has a lovely taste. That I leave to restaurants.

Mostly I know how to stuff meat in the oven and let it bake until it is not red and bleeding, and then we eat it. I don't salt it, because my husband and I both have high blood pressure. Sometimes I fix pork or a chuck roast in the crock pot and I put Mrs. Dash in there.

We eat a rather bland diet, for the things I can cook are bland, and thus when the grocery aisles scream out "cookie" or "potato chip" or "something with taste, for God's sake!" then of course the hands reach out and the item finds it way into the basket.

Now, though, I think the reality of aging is finally conking me upside the head. If I don't take care of myself, I'm not going to have a long life. I'll be gone, like some of my classmates. I've already outlived a percentage of them.

I have to figure this out. I know in my head what I need to do. It's the rest of me that needs to be convinced, especially my taste buds and their unquenchable desire for things sweet and chocolatey.

Always a work in progress over something. But better to be a work in progress than a staid old statue made of clay.

Invisible Women

Earlier this morning, I came across an article about middle-aged women and how they become invisible to society. The link is here.

I have read many such articles as I have aged. Once a woman turns 40, it seems the world has little use for her. This is particularly true if you are childless, whether that is by choice or circumstance. A mother always has a role, but the childless middle-aged woman is superfluous.

In the article, I was particularly struck by this paragraph:

In a world where women are almost always defined by their relationships (daughter, sister, lover, wife, mother, grandmother) it strikes me as important to shed a light on the woman herself. What is she without all these shoes she has to fill? Well, she’s an existence and she’s an existence that either disturbs her surroundings—or is in the danger of retreating from them: like mist.

Not only is a woman an "existence," she's a person. A human being with needs, wants, desires and all of the other things that every other person on the planet wants. Men are not defined by relationships, per se - they are defined by who they are, and in today's capitalistic society, by what they do. He is an architect is more likely to come before he is a father.  He is a farmer, a venture capitalist, or a banker, but he is a husband is not the first thing out of anyone's mouth except his wife's.

Women, however, are indeed wives, mothers, daughters, etc. before they are what they do. I am more often introduced as James' wife than I am Anita the writer. I am even acknowledged as my father's daughter sometimes before what I do and who I am, despite the fact that I have been married far longer than I ever lived at home.

My mother struggled with this lack of recognition and a troubled self-perception when she hit her 40s. There she was with a daughter married by then, her child-bearing days over, and she was my mother, my father's wife, and a file clerk still after 25 years at the job she'd had since she was 15. She did not grow old well even though, since she died at the age of 56, she never actually grew old. She had problems with grey hair and wrinkles and the signs that she was no longer a sweet young thing. She needed the male gaze and male adoration to assure herself of her self-worth, as I think most woman do, and for her and for others the loss of that can be devastating. This was in spite of the fact that she was a mother, daughter, career woman, etc.  My mother also was infertile before her 30s, but she had two children before doctors removed her female parts.

Incidentally, tomorrow is my mother's birthday. She would have been 73.

I, on the other hand, hit middle age and invisibility when I was 29 and doctors removed my womanly parts. By that time I was well aware that I had no place in the world, that doctors talked over me to my husband about the fate of my uterus, that the knowledge that I couldn't have children, a subconscious fact known since I was 23, had left me a shell of a person. The hysterectomy only confirmed what society had already imprinted upon me. Being childless made me no one. A girl is no one, as they said of Arya Stark in Game of Thrones. A misogynistic quote if I ever heard one.

My fate having long been accepted, I shrugged and moved on. I moved through my 30s and 40s and into my 50s with the knowledge that I was no one, and invisible to most. Some will argue with me on that - I know you, they will say. We know your byline, others will say. We know you. You are not invisible.

Maybe not always, no. But most times, yes.

I am friends with many childless women; we find one another somehow, I think. Even people who know better - who know I never had children - forget and ask how my children are, assuming that somehow one magically appeared beneath my pillow one night and I went on to raise it to adulthood. The assumption amazes me.

As I move into my mid-50s, and quickly approach the age my mother was when she died, I find myself looking back at the many things I have done and not done. On some fronts I am quite accomplished, with three college degrees, thousands of published articles and photos, a decent if not McMansion-type house, and a loving husband. On other fronts, I think of opportunities I have missed out of fear - fear that I was not good enough, that I was less-than, that I could not cope or manage with whatever it was before me. Fear that I might become visible if I stepped out of my comfortable space. I do not do things like travel alone, for example. I wanted to travel when I was younger but my husband was tied to the farm and we seldom went away. Now I am not healthy and I think I should not travel. But if I don't go now, I will never go.

I suspect I will never go.

My grey hair does not look bad on me. I wear it well; it is a true white, not a gray, and it is soft and it blends fairly well with my lighter brown hair. The wrinkles - I am fortunate there, so far, though I have been dismayed to note that I am going to be one of those people with a downturned mouth if I make it to a ripe old age, and not one with a perpetual smile. So long as it is not a smirk I shall find it agreeable, I suppose, though I really did hope for the upturn of lips.

But back to being invisible. My name is fairly well known locally, thanks to all of those published articles. People who think they know me but do not know me are often surprised to find the face and body behind the name. They see that I am older, grayer, fatter than they thought. Because fat people are invisible, too. Or maybe invisible people become fat in hopes of taking up space and not being invisible. I'm not sure about that. Anyway, people know my name and then I think they try to forget they met me, preferring instead the byline and the invisible to the byline and the reality.

I find being invisible irksome when it comes to health care, trying to get something off the top shelf at the store, or being noticed in a crowd when I need to be noticed. Male doctors are dismissive and they do not bother to find cures (so I see female doctors when I can) and they ignore what I say. It is so bad that I haul my husband to important doctor appointments because they will listen, then. If I am in enough pain that the man is along, then they pay attention. At the supermarket, if I need help, I've taken to blatantly walking up to a tall person and asking for it; otherwise a sales clerk will walk by me without seeing me standing there, perplexed, as I try to figure out how to get the honey from the back of the top shelf. (I have discovered that is a good use for my cane, by the way.) At the theater the other week, I desperately wanted the fellow picking up trash to notice me so I could wave him over and hand him my popcorn and drink so I could use both hands to get down the stairs, but despite my waving and even a furtive "hey, you," I remained invisible.

No one should be invisible. That includes me, other women of a certain age, poor people, mentally ill people, disabled people, old people, fat people, or unattractive people. Everyone deserves eye contact, a smile, and acknowledgement. It takes so little to nod your head and show you've seen someone. It doesn't mean you have to donate money to them, but you have, at least, given them their humanity.

A Philosophical Budget

Last week when the current Republican administration unveiled the presidential wish list for a budget, many of my friends gasped and panicked.

Knowing that the thing has to go through Congress first, I held my tongue. I think, though, that an examination of this budget proposal shows a vision of America that is currently being led by a bunch of black-hearted buzzards who are cruel, at best, and evil and inhumane at worst.

If you like wars, blowing up people, and enriching those who are part of the military industrial complex, it's a great budget. I suppose millions of people think that is good stuff.

However, if you dislike stepping over the body of someone's grandmother while you're walking down Main Street USA, it's not such a good budget. If you like art, learning, museums, libraries and Amtrak, it's not a good budget.

If you're a human being who has a heart, it's not a good budget.

Why Should I Pay for Thus and Such Is Not the Right Question

Recently the Republican administration wanted to know why coal miners should pay for PBS (public television) or why a single mother with two kids should pay for something or another.

For the same reason that I have to pay for a F-15 fighter jet when I am a pacifist who staunchly disbelieves in wars and fighting.

You pay your taxes and your representatives put the money where they want it to go, that's why.

I mean, why should either I or the coal miner have to pay for the president to go to his "south White House" and play golf? Why should the coal miner lose his black lung benefits? Why should I have to worry about my health care so that the CEO of any Wall Street corporation can receive a tax break? Why is the entire country paying for the president's wife and son to live in New York when she should be in the White House?

Questions like these are stupid, and I could ask them all day. Phrasing something like that is just a way to throw off the real question, which is: do these people have any sense of morality and/or a conscience? Do they know what "empathy" is? Do they not care about other people at all? Did they not read that "do unto others" thing (Luke 6:31) in their guidebook, the Bible?

Did somebody take their teddy bear when they were in kindergarten and not give it back, and now they're having some kind of subliminal payback frenzy?

Do they not know what common decency is?

To Hell With Everything Else

So this is the budget proposal that says "government pays only for military and security" (and a wall) and to hell with everything else.

This is the budget that would let grandmas starve, and poor people rot in prisons because they can't afford a lawyer and the government would stop providing them with one.

This is the budget that would allow industries to pollute and people with lung-related illnesses to die because of dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. I have asthma; watch me wheeze. 

This is the budget that would make all of our water look like it came from Flint, Michigan, because of the same reason.

This is the budget that would force rural people to drive 200 miles out of their way to reach an airport (it would no longer subsidize rural airports).

This is the budget that stops Amtrak in its tracks.

This is the budget that takes PBS and NPR out of the very rural areas that voted Republican in the last election. (I suspect those entities will survive in larger cities, like New York and San Francisco, but we will see. I think the rural stations will close.)

This is the budget that would offer you a miniscule voucher to send your kid to a private school, like that is going to actually cover even six weeks of education. You get to pay for the rest.

This is the budget that would allow housing discrimination to creep back into our communities, because funding to keep that at bay would be gone.

This is the budget that would let the wife beaters go on to be murderers, because the money to help domestic violence victims obtain protective orders would be wiped out.

This is a budget that says if you're a senior citizen and you've lost your job and need retraining, too damn bad, because the $434 million for that program would be gone.

This is the budget that would take the nation's national parks and turn them into oil drilling and fracking industrial zones. Say bye-bye to that little fuzzy blooming plant over there that might have been the cure for breast cancer, 'cause we will never know. Science has no place in this Republican administration.

This is the budget that would let people who can't afford heat freeze to death; you know, the one that would give us the headlines that say "Ten people in trailer park in up state New York found frozen." Or maybe it would say, "Two dozen elderly die from heat stroke in Birmingham, Alabama high-rise hotel" because the funding for helping low income folks with their energy bills will be gone. Apparently paying for heating and/or air conditioning assistance for poor people is not in the Bible.

This is the budget that would cut funding for Meals on Wheels (which will survive because thankfully much of its funding is from state and local monies, not federal, but again, the rural areas that voted for this Republican Administration will suffer the most from these cuts), because we can't have a 77-year-old man who lives alone (because his wife died and his Army-loving son was killed in Afghanistan) being visited by a young guy who will give him something healthy to eat and ensure he's not sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor.

That would be humane, to continue to pay for that kind of thing out of federal dollars. And the federal government is no longer in the business of humane (or humanity). It's just in the business of business.

And business, by definition, is heartless.

Eliminating the ARC

This is the budget that would eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, which serves the heart of the president's base of support. This Commission, which I have written about innumerable times over the last 30 years, has helped decrease the number of high poverty counties (295 in 1960) to 107 today. Its programs increased graduation rates, reduced infant mortality, made potable water available to untold numbers of families, and helped create more then 2,000 miles of new highways. In my state alone, the ARC has helped folks increase household income, reduced poverty, and added indoor plumbing to places that otherwise would still be shitting into the creeks and sending their waste into the major waterways of the state. The ARC region, in case you don't know, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including my county). Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.

Here's a map of the region (I circled my county in yellow, for those who may not believe we're part of this loss of funding):

Community Block Grants

This is the budget that would eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which I have also written about multiple times over the last 30 years. I know New Castle in Craig County received one of these grants, because I was writing over there at the time. I think Fincastle's sidewalks were put in place in part with a CDBG, and I suspect but can't remember for sure that much of Buchanan's recovery from the 1985 flood came about because of a CDBG.  These grants are used for a multitude of things, from reinventing "blighted" areas to installing plumbing to revitalizing business districts. If people think this money is handed out willie-nillie, they are wrong. Communities go through extensive processes to receive these funds, and their projects have to be well composed and thought out before requests for funding are considered. It takes communities years to obtain these funds. They're not gifts, and regardless of the FAKE NEWS coming out of the Republican Administration, these grants do have measurable results. I've seen them myself.

Yes, I'm a Liberal

This budget proposal does not reflect what I want to see the United States be or become. I hope it is not who we are, because it is a callous document.

I want museums, libraries, parks, and streets. I don't ride on Amtrak but I want to see it continue. I want poor people to receive the help they need, those who need to work receive the education they require in this new world of technology, and all of the other stuff that apparently the black-hearted buzzards in Washington, D.C. have no respect or regard for.

The other day during a phone conversation I was informed with every other sentence that I am a Democrat. I'm really more of a social liberal, but whatever. The word "democrat" was hurled at me as if it were some kind of taunt or insult. This same person (who is a Republican) was unhappy because someone could go into his establishment and sue him if they touched a hot water heater and there was a sign up that said "don't touch."

Hey, that's the free market, Mr. Republican. If there's a lawyer out there who will take the case to take your money, that's the way it is. If you want regulations to stop that kind of thing, then move on over to my side. Otherwise, pay your insurance premiums, which will go unchecked and keep rising. That's the free market capitalism that you love so much.

He also noted that he didn't have to worry about health care because he was on Medicare. Republicans opposed Medicare (and Medicaid) in the 1960s when it began and are doing their best to defund Medicaid now and Medicare is in their sights. So welcome to my side, Mr. Republican. You're enjoying the fruits of my bleeding heart and that of those who came before me. How sad that you would deny that same security to your own children and grandchildren.

People who deride me for being liberal say that word like it's some kind of curse. It isn't. If I must be labeled, it's a label I embrace.

Jesus was a liberal, and that should say something about how one should act. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. But here you go:

·       In  Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus proclaims that how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and other "least of these," is how you treat Jesus himself.  And if you fail to help the "least of these," Jesus promises, he will send you to Hell.

 ·       The Old Testament is permeated with an overwhelming concern for the poor and for economic justice.

 ·       In the Old Testament Jubilee Year, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners. That's called redistribution of wealth.

·       And last but not least, there are the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:25: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

None of that says throw grandma under the bus and give taxpayer money to the rich guys who own Halliburton while we build nuclear weapons so we can blow up the world.

I favor that part of the U.S. Constitution that says "promote the general welfare." I take that to mean we as a society have been instructed to make sure that everyone has clean water, the roads don't have potholes, people who are sick receive the care they need, and that folks who find themselves in trouble have a safety net underneath them so they don't end up living in the streets. We're a wealthy and rich nation and there is absolutely no reason for the abject poverty that I have seen in my lifetime.

Promoting the general welfare doesn't ignore the other parts of the Preamble - establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. But it is the part that I think is currently being ignored and the part certain people do not recognize or want to recognize. Justice is first, defense is last; domestic tranquility and general welfare are in the middle. But defense -  the one listed last and therefore perhaps the least important to the framers of this revered document  -  is the one that seems to be uppermost in the minds of the current Republican administration.

Most of us want the same things in life, I think. Freedom to move about, live where we want, work at the job we like. We want prosperity, however one defines that. For a select few, apparently, it is vast amounts of money; for others, like me, that means the ability to go the art museum and learn something. It's rather like success - you can define it a million ways and none of them are wrong. You may think I am not successful but I would tell you that as far as I am concerned, you are wrong. And you may think you are successful, and I might disagree. What does it matter if we both are happy?

I would hope that most of us would prefer that our fellow human beings do not suffer; that we want them and their children (as well as our own, of course), to be healthy; we want to live without fear of crime and other boogie men.

The argument is how to achieve these goals. We did the no-regulations-and-work-people-until-they-drop thing already, 100 years ago. We did that back during the beginnings of the Industrial Age and into the early 1900s, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York took the lives of 146 garment workers and showed us the error of allowing industry to go unchecked by regulations and government oversight.

Must we watch hundreds of people die again before we wake up and realize that industries do not police themselves? That churches cannot, or will not, serve and help all who are poor and needy? That $7 an hour doesn't feed, house and clothe a single individual, much less a family? 

It looks like it. I feel like we're moving backwards in time, heading into an era of the plague.

I hope the people of this land find their heart again, or there will be nothing here left to save.

It's a Facebook World

Over on one of the memes I do, Sunday Stealing, the author who asks the questions I answer weekly has noted, on more than one occasion, that blogs are no longer the thing.

People have moved to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Many I have never heard of nor do I particularly care to hear of them.

I am on Facebook, though. I like that I can subscribe to various publications and they offer up links to stories - some of which I can access, others not.

Occasionally it is nice to hear good news from friends, though mostly what I see is, "I have a hang nail, prayers please." For some it is more serious than that but for others it appears that every ache, pain, and negative thought requires acknowledgement from all parties who read their post.

I do not ask for prayers or thoughts on Facebook. I sometimes post something political, but not overtly so, and it is directed at my friends. I have 511 people on FB who have asked to be my friend.

They are not all my friends. Most of them I hardly know. Some are people from high school. Most of them post things I never see because I have put them in categories so I don't see them. I see the posts of people I care about - some family, close friends, a few folks who have interesting thoughts on the state of the world, artists, writers, and other people who are of like mind.

I do sometimes watch the funny video of a cat, child, dog, horse or whatever, and I sometimes take the little tests about what Star Wars character you would be, just for fun, of course.

It is related to Lord of the Rings I probably look at it. If it is related to writing, I probably look at it. If it is related to politics, I may or may not look at it.

I feel no need to post things on my "wall" that say "No one ever reads my page and if you want to stay my friend then post something now." I don't post to acknowledge cancer of any kind, or any other disease, for that matter, and I don't post to "show someone is always watching and you are not alone: here's the suicide hotline."

I do not type "amen" after religious posts. I do not follow links to sign online petitions because I do not believe anyone who can resolve an issue pays much attention to an online petition. I know I wouldn't if I were in a position to do something. I might make note of it. If I were, say, a local elected representative and it came to my attention that people were signing a petition because they oppose something, I might take a look at it. But over all I don't think these things are effective.

Besides, I have no way of knowing if these petitions are real or if they are simply "farms" that are picking up my name and email to use for some other reason. Maybe that high volume of spam I receive comes from something I stupidly did 15 years ago, I don't know. Whatever you do online tends to hang around forever.

I don't post things asking you to post one word about how we met. I know how we met. I don't need the whole world to know how we met.

Really, what does any of the above stuff accomplish? If you believe prayer is supposed to cure your hang nail then I guess that might accomplish that purpose, although a pair of clippers could do the same. If you're on your way to surgery and you're anxious about it and ask for prayers, I wish you well and hope for the best outcome. But really that's up to your surgeon and your overall health, I think

I see a lot of loneliness on the Facebook feed as people cry out for attention for anything, and illnesses and loss apparently are very good topics. It is good to know that someone's father died so I can send a sympathy card, and since fewer people are paying for obituaries sometimes this is the only way I know. So there is that. But I suspect if I'm not on your "call this person if a close relative dies" list, then you're not going to miss my presence or my sympathy card. I daresay I won't even cross your mind.

Yet even with all this stuff that I see and try not to pay attention to, I spend too much time on Facebook. (Pretty much any time on Facebook is too much, but I mean, I am on there far too much.) What am I doing if I am not posting?

I read the articles from the links to various newspapers and magazines. I watch live interviews with Sean Spicer (cough cough). I watch live interviews with various political figures, like my senators, and sometimes with celebrities, like Mayim Bialik. I read the things that Lynda Carter (the first Wonder Woman on TV) posts because we are of the same political persuasion. I read the nasty comments that public people receive on their posts and wonder who these filthy little people are who can't keep their fingers off the keyboards and who think they have the right to belittle someone simply because opinions differ.

I block a lot of people, people I do not know and do not care to know, because they post incredibly vile things on someone else's post. If someone on a TV station Facebook post decides to post terrible things and call people names, I block him or her. That person might be the smartest person in the entire world, but if the only thing the thing behind the keyboard can type is "typical libtard response, they think they know everything and they're stupid and Obama was a monkey, snowflake" (and yes, I have seen many of those types of posts), then I don't care what else the person has to say. So I block. I have a long list of unknown names blocked now.

Social media brings out the worst in people. I stay silent more than not because it easier for me, and less likely to cause me angst.

Instead, I come over here on my blog and write about whatever is on my mind. This isn't thrown in your face. If you're here, you're here because you want to read whatever I have to say, or look at my deer pictures, or whatever the reasons are people read my blog. I much prefer to have my say here, where you have the option to read it or not, your choice. I'm not throwing it in your face. You're reading this because either you like my writing or value my opinion or maybe you're just bored as hell and are hoping I'll write something funny and sarcastic, which I do manage to do from time to time.

I am finding the Facebook World to be a very trying and tiring place. I am especially tired of twitter even though I don't use it.

Twenty-five years ago my life had no internet. I wonder how much better my life - and maybe yours - would be, if that were the case again.