Thursday Thirteen



Forsythia

 It is spring. So here are quotes about this particular season, stolen from this site and this site:


1. O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?  - Percy Bysshe Shelley

2. Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems. - Rainer Maria Rilke

3. The year's at the spring/ And day's at the morn;/ Morning's at seven;/ The hillside's dew-pearled;/ The lark's on the wing;/ The snail's on the thorn;/ God's in His heaven/ - All's right with the world! - Robert Browning

4. It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! - Mark Twain

5. April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. - William Shakespeare


From Spring 2007

6. Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire. - Virgil

7. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. - Nadine Stair

8. In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. - Margaret Atwood

Daffodils

9. He that is in a towne in May loseth his spring. - George Herbert

10. Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

11. Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. -Elizabeth Bowen

12. Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. - Ellis Peters

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 183rd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Ode to the Stinkbug

O little critter, from I know not where
why are you smelling up my air?

When the sun shines and temps grow warm
you gather on windows as if in a swarm.

You're creepy, you're crawly, you make me cry
And I can't find a pesticide to make you die.

You're in my kitchen, the bedroom, the den,
The only way to kill you is to make you swim.

If I squash you, your odor means wrinkling of noses
You smell worse than my shoes and my toesies!

I wrap you in tissues and drown you and then,
I find I must do it again and again!

Go away, stinkbug! You smell, you're a fright
I fear I will eat you, a mistake in the night!


No kiddin', these things are atrocious. I am hearing stories from everyone about how they are waking up to find them in bed. They are slapping them and then dealing with their horrid smell on hands and other body parts, and otherwise finding these things difficult to deal with. We haven't found any pesticides that will take care of them or keep them away.

The cold weather didn't even kill them. Anytime the temps rose above 67 degrees, there they were. I kept the house at 66 degrees all winter long just to keep them away. Better to freeze than to deal with these bugs.

Just so you know, this is called a brown marmorated stink bug. It was first found in the US in 1998 in Pennsylvania and now it has spread through the Mid-Atlantic states. The bug is causing widespread problems with crops, including fruits. It is thought to be native to China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

As the weather warms up, I am afraid these things are going to take over my life.

Spring at Hollins

My alma mater and current university as I pursue my master's degree is one of the prettiest campuses. I love the blend of nature and older buildings. Even newer structures have class. My favorite times on campus are spring and fall - both are absolutely lovely.

The willow trees along the campus drive near Eastnor.

 

The Wyndham Robertson Library

 

The chapel.

The Quad, showing the backside of East and the front of West.

I took this shot from the third floor of Pleasants.

A group of visiting young women took delight in the writings on the chalk kiosk outside of Pleasants.

The creek that runs between the Theater building and the library.

The Set of the Super Moon

I had to be different, of course, and shoot video of the super moon setting this morning instead of taking pictures of it rising last night.

Books: The Walk

The Walk
By Richard Paul Evans
Read by the Author
Unabridged
Copyright 2010

This was a short read - only four disks, so about four hours or so - and I surmise it is a short book. Alan Christofferson is 28 years old and has it all. Then his cherished wife has a horse riding accident and things quickly fall apart.

Funny how one little incident changes an entire path of a life.

Alan decides to talk a long walk, all the way from Seattle, Washington to Key West, Florida, in a journey that will traverse most of the United States and cover about 3,000 miles. This book is the first installment of his adventure, covering about the first two weeks of his journey once we are past the introduction of his wife's accident and other ill fortunes.

Along the way he meets many people, not all good. Life isn't all good, though, now is it?

The book felt complete in itself to me and it wasn't until I looked it up in order to obtain the Amazon picture that I realized it is the first in a series. Apparently this walk will cover many pages of multiple volumes.

Evans writes "inspirational" books, a genre placement which means "not entirely Christian but heading there," I guess. His characters generally are searching for meaning, in the midst of change, that type of thing, and Alan Christofferson is no different. I am fairly sure that the character's last name is not a happenstance, after all.

Apparently the second book, called Miles to Go, comes out in April. When it is available in the library, I will probably look for it.

The Day I Saw Faeries

It was  a recent warmish day in early March. A breeze tossed the branches on the trees that were still bare from winter. The grass was trying to green up but still held a brownish tinge.

As I drove across Country Club Road, I spied movement to my left.

They stood in the field. Three girl faeries, in stair-step height. They wore shin-length dresses, and their long hair flowed.

All were barefoot.

And they were dancing.

The smallest held a scarf and it blew about her in the wind. The other two held hands as they rejoiced in the warmth and the breeze.

I could scarcely believe what I was seeing, for the sight was so beautiful - so wonderful and carefree - that I thought I must have imagined it. And then I thought how fantastic that those three could step out and enjoy the day, let themselves go with such joy and delight.

They must have been faeries. I have not seen them since.

Early March faeries, dancing to celebrate a queer, fey day.

Thursday Thirteen

March is National Women's History Month.

Last week I offered up some facts about women. This week, in honor of the many women who have influenced my life in one way or another, I thought I'd list 13 of those wonderful ladies. Some I knew or have known, others not so much.

These are not in any particular order.

Mom

1. My mother. I suppose this would be on many women's list. Your mom teaches you how to do your hair, put on make up, walk, talk, flirt, cook, make the bed, and so many other things. Many of these things you learn simply because she has modeled the actions for you. My mother taught me to never go out in public looking "unmade" regardless of what was going on in your life.


2. My grandmother. She gave me unconditional love and all the hugs I needed. Everyone needs that kind of support in her life.





3. My teachers - all of them. I could list 13 teachers, I think, and might have to do that for another Thursday. My teachers and professors have all impacted me one way or another. They have taught me how to think, how to meet deadlines, how to write, how to communicate, and how to play well with others. Very important lessons, don't you think?

4. Mary Johnston. This author lived from 1870 - 1936, so obviously I did not know her. But she was a Botetourt County author and a suffragist. Because of her, I have a role model to follow and the right to vote. How cool is that?

5. Carolyn Keene aka Mildred Wirt. Keene is the pen name of the author of the Nancy Drew mystery series, and Mildred Wirt was the author who wrote the first books under that name. I loved the Nancy Drew books and I feel sure they are one of the reasons I wanted to become a writer. I have never wanted to write the Great American Novel. No. I would be quite happy if I could write something akin to Nancy Drew.

6. My BFFs. Over the years I have had a number of friends. Some have passed away. Many have moved on to other places and we aren't in touch. Some I have recently reconnected with on Facebook. At least one friend has stood by me for almost 30 years. Another has held my hand for about 15 years. Still another has been my daily "email pal" for over 10 years. I am so very thankful for these wonderful women.

7. Kate Jackson. Yeah, the actress. When I was growing up, I thought she was the bomb, man. I became a fan early in her career, even before she starred in Charlie's Angels. I actually watched her in a Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which I wasn't supposed to be watching but did. That was in the early 1970s, so I have been a fan for a very long time. Jackson went on to battle breast cancer and to have open heart surgery later in life. She's now a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.

8. Chrissie Hynde. As a young woman, I picked up the guitar not to play classical music, but to play rock and roll. Chrissie Hynde, lead singer and guitarist for The Pretenders, was a female rock and roller long before anyone else thought about it. Though at the time I really didn't pay much attention to her, as I grew older I became an admirer of her work in all of its stages.

9. Ellen Goodman. This Pulitzer Prize winning columnist writes well and puts it out there. She has chronicled changes in society for years, and has been a strong advocate for women for as long as I could read her column. She writes with courage and with dedication and I have long admired that.

10. Leslie Stahl. Her work on 60 Minutes has always been impressive. She was a White House correspondent for a number of years. I have always admired her ability to ask hard questions and move an interview along.

11. Laura Ingalls Wilder. I believe Ms. Wilder was writing creative nonfiction before anyone even knew what that was. Her Little House books enchanted me as a youth and as an adult I appreciate the details in her work.

12. Mary Queen of Scots. I am not sure why this historic figure has always fascinated me. Perhaps it is my Scots-Irish blood. Mary lived in the 1500s and must have been quite a character. She led armies, married royalty, and pissed off an English queen to the point of being beheaded. England's Elizabeth 1, who was also Mary's cousin, had her arrested and jailed for 19 years and then lopped off her head. I have read a number of historic accounts about this imposing woman and have found them all amazing.

13. Joan of Arc. This historic woman lived in the 1400s. She led the French army to a number of victories before being burned at the stake at the tender of age of 19. Known as the Maid of Orleans, Joan had visions which led the peasant girl to her ruin at the hands of the English.


There you have it. Women to admire. Take a moment to be grateful for the women in your life, won't you? Where would you be without them?



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 182nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Yippee! Almost Spring!

Yellow, apparently, is the color of spring in my yard.

My big ol' forsythia bush dominates the landscape.

This is the only daffodil in my yard. I wonder if it is lonesome?

Come on, Spring!

I Can See Clearly Now

I'm very glad to say that after spending a year fighting with my eye glasses and my prescription, I have resolved this problem.

I went a few weeks ago for an eye exam with a different doctor and received a different prescription - my fifth eye glass prescription in a year. I purchased a new pair of progressive lenses with a different optical shop, and lo, I could see.

Lesson? Be persistent. If you have a problem and you're sure there is a solution, chase after it until you find it. Had I given up, I'd still be struggling to see and still finding it hard to use my camera and do other things that are no longer a problem. I might even get brave and try to thread a needle.

Kudos to my new doctor, who has sorted out the problem.

And though I am not mentioning names, I must commend the optical shops, both of them. The folks at the first shop went out of their way to accommodate me. They even replaced my sunglasses and reading glasses free of charge with this new prescription after I spoke with them again. They did not have to do it, as the year warranty on those specs had just ended, but they chose to help me out. I am grateful to them for that.

The folks at the second optical shop, after hearing my story and my concerns, took their time with me and gave me their very best lenses. And I can see! I can even see through the viewfinder on the camera again, and I cannot tell you what a relief that is.

Hopefully I will soon be taking more pictures for my blog!

When I Am Old (or Apocolypse: Now)

The sides of my house will say Frigidaire
my cathedral ceiling, the color of cement and pigeon poo,
will run across four lanes.
My TV set will be the ever-changing sides of delivery trucks
whizzing past at light speed
their tires mere inches from my uncovered toes.
I will peer at the colors, unable to read.
My broken glasses, slapped from my face by a crazy man
over an ice cream cone, will rest useless against my breast.
I slip them on when I remember.

Each afternoon I will totter on swollen legs
to the dumpster behind the Micky D's.
I will carefully peel away the hamburger
and eat the buns. No e-coli for me from
old meat, dontcha know?

On Tuesdays the young women from the mission
will pass among me and my friends
(old women, all, toothless and gray)
offer up toothpaste (but no brush),
and the peppermint taste will bring smiles
to gummy mouths. But we only taste when
we hear The Word, a babble of Psalms that
eases their hearts, not mine.

On Saturday nights we will leave the exit,
moving in twos against the wind from the tractor trailers,
our coughs from the unfiltered exhausts
slowing us. Holding hands, me and my old friend
will find our way to the parking lot of Pizza Hut,
where we will feast on crusts.

Or maybe

Pizza Hut will be shuttered and Micky D's demolished,
because no one can buy fast food anymore.
The masses huddled at the exit will sit in silence
and no one will come.

Either way, we will die
one by one by one.

The Writer's Notebook

Many of my stories never see paper. An unfortunate habit of mine is to think about a story, write it in my head, and then commit it to memory. I think that one day I will actually write it down.

I do not know if this is laziness, procrastination, or stupidity, but at any rate, it is what I sometimes do. And they are seldom written down. Now that I am aging, and probably having memory loss even if I don't remember having memory loss, I figure if I don't start writing them down soon, they will never be more than flights of fancy.

Every writing class I have ever been in advocates the use of a writer's notebook or journal. Write down those ideas, I'm told. Make notes of bits of conversation, signs, images - anything that captures your attention.

Over the years I have headed this advice but in various formats. Up until about 1995 I wrote in a spiral bound journal almost every day. My writing thoughts went in there too, and those are all now hidden amidst a rather large stack of words that I might one day sift through.

Long about 1995, I started journaling at the keyboard. It too was an almost daily record and included some writing ideas.

In 2001, my journaling took a turn and became more, shall we say, politically focused. I opposed the war in Iraq from the start, but living as I do in the midst of a Republican stronghold there wasn't much of a place to say that. So my journal turned into a place of refuge as I tried to understand what my country was doing. The words were less introspective and more of a query of what was going on around me.

In 2004 I began a blog on AOL, which has long since disappeared. I moved to this blog in August 2006, and this has been one of my main places to write stuff down. I do not do major "introspection" on this blog, because I know you, dear gentle reader, are out there. And you don't need to read about my inner boogie men. It's a different style of writing.

Sometimes my ideas have also been written down on scraps of paper and tossed into files, or written down in the task list on MS Outlook (only to be lost in computer crashes, of course).  I've also had notebooks dedicated solely to writing ideas. They're around here somewhere.

In January I had an idea for a story that I liked. I mulled it over in my head and named my characters and moved through the plot line, finding holes and making changes. In a spiral bound journal that I sometimes keep (no longer do I write in such a thing daily, mostly because my handwriting, to be frank, is nearly illegible even to me), I wrote a few lines about the character.

Then I returned to college. And promptly forgot the story and gave it no thought whatsoever.

The other day I remembered that I had been thinking about  a story. A good story. And I couldn't remember a thing about it, not even the character's name. I tried to remember the story for two days and could not. I had forgotten I had written it down in my journal.

Thankfully I picked up my notebook and found a few little sentences. I read them and the whole story came rushing back like a cloud caught in a huge wind. There it was ... whoosh! there it goes. But I had the memory again and while I'd lost a lot of the construction, I could begin anew if I chose. (And I had to wonder, was it such a good story, if I'd forgotten it so readily? Hmm.)

I am a staunch supporter of journaling, blogging, writing down things on scraps of paper - whatever it takes to free up your brain. I have tried many different types of planners and notebooks and journal processes. I have pretty journals that I won't write in because they are too nice to mess up (give me a $1.99 Mead notebook and I'm fine), and I have tried journaling software such as Livejournal. I have awakened in the mornings and stumbled to pencil and paper (or to the computer) to try doing Morning Pages as advocated in the Artist's Way.

This is not only for writers. I think everyone should keep a journal or diary. Not only will they help you collect your thoughts, they are important footnotes in the annals of history. How else will the domestic life of the little people be acknowledged 200 years from now?

So today I hope that you will find your outlet. Maybe it's a blog, a notebook, a sketchpad, or a journal. Maybe it's a diary with a tiny little key, or a daily planner, or a clean new page in MS Word with the cursor blinking at you before you start.  Whatever it is, and no matter how good or bad you think it is, please cherish it as something that is uniquely you. No one else has your thoughts or your ideas.

So let's please write them down.

Women Writers: Annie Marion MacLean

Annie Marion MacLean (ca. 1870 - 1934) was a sociologist and writer who lived at the turn of the century.

She was the first woman to ever earn a master's degree in sociology and the second woman to earn her Ph.D. in sociology.


MacLean was employed by the University of Chicago, where she worked in the Home Study Department as a professor of correspondence courses. Her subjects included Rural Life, Introduction to Social Problems of Industry, Social Technology, Modern Immigration, and History of the Social Reform Movement.

Her work was hampered by her gender, as the universities did not support her work as they might have had she been male. She favored suffrage, was active in philanthropic undertakings, and was a member of numerous committees working for social and civic betterment. She also gave public lectures on sociological subjects.

She believed that democracy was failing because it did not reign in capitalism.

Her work, most of which is available for free reading on google books, are highly accessible. She was a participant observer in that she actually took jobs in department stores and factories in order to experience exactly what workers were undergoing. Her work significantly contributed to many of the safety laws that are in place for workers today.
 
Some of her publications:
Women Workers and Society (1916)
Wage Earning Women (1910)
Our Neighbors (122)
 
There are many others if you google her name.
 
This type of social research is not done today, though I contend that it is necessary. We are so busy sweeping issues under the rug and not dealing with them that things are going unchallenged and unnoticed.
 
The closest thing I have seen in my lifetime to compare to MacLean's work would be Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich. I recall when this book came out several years ago that there was a massive outcry of "foul" from the right, simply because the book pointed out that no one can live on minimum wage (or less). 
 
Truth is truth. I am sorry it hurts. But we have a massive underclass of impoverished people in this country, and many of them are female. And there is a small group of wealthy who want to keep it this way, or even make it worse.
 
We need more writers like MacLean and Ehrenreich to point out the inequities and to offer solutions that work.
 
 
 
 

Books: Wicked Appetite

Wicked Appetite
By Janet Evanovich
Read by Loreli King
Abridged 4 hours
Copyright 2010

This is Stephanie Plum with a little magic. This is apparently a new series line for Evanovich, featuring Diesel. Diesel has been in the Stephanie Plum books a time or two.

He's an unmentionable, which is to say, he has some sort of extraordinary power. He teams up with cupcake queen Lizzie, a displaced Virginian who lives in Salem, MA. She's also an unmentionable, only she didn't know it.

This book offers up a few spells, a crazy monkey, a one-eyed cat, and a villain named Wulf. The heroine is not Stephanie Plum, exactly, but she is not far off. After all, why stray from the formula?

If you like Evanovich, then for sure pick this book up. If you are a little tired of her, move on. I suggest this book for a fast rainy day read.

A note on the reader, since this is an audio book. I enjoy Loreli King's readings of the Stephanie Plum books. She has a great reading voice and does nice characterizations. However, I was unimpressed with her attempts at a Virginia accent. Maybe that is because I have a solid and noticeable Virginia accent. At any rate, I think a different reader, one who did not bring to mind the Stephanie Plum series, would have better served the book.

Thursday Thirteen

March is Women's History Month. Here are some facts:

1. 157.2 million women and 153.2 million men reside in the United States. At age 85 and older, there are more than twice as many women as men.


2. 82.8 million women are mothers.

3.  55% of college students are women.

4. 66% of women and 62% of men reported voting in the 2008 presidential election.

5. 14% of armed forces members are women.

6. 88% was the ratio of women’s-to-men’s earnings in the District of Columbia in 2009, which was among the highest of any location in the nation.

Here are a few websites:
 
 7. http://womenshistorymonth.gov/
 
8. http://www.internationalwomensday.com/
 
9. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff04.html
 
10. National Women's History Museum
 
11. National Women's History Project
 
12. http://www.biography.com/womens-history/index.jsp
 
13. Women's International Center
 
American Association of University Women
 
Women still have a long way to go before they are equal. The United States is ranked 90th IN THE WORLD in the terms of number of women in elected positions. We are behind Cuba and Afghanistan, just to name two. Where, I wonder, is the outrage?
 
Additionally, women still do not receive the same amount of pay for the same work. Women generally receive about 80 cents for every $1 paid a man for the same job. This is true even in jobs that are traditionally considered "female." This pay gap costs a woman working the same job as a man anywhere from $700,000 to $2 million over her lifetime. This is just because she doesn't have a penis.
 
Here is another interesting statistic: Homicide is the second-leading cause of fatal occupational injuries for women, after traffic accidents. Thirty-one percent of women who die at work are killed as a result of an assault or violent act. That's about 1/3 of all workplace deaths.
 
Women's rights remains a cause in need of champions worldwide.
 
Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 181st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Signs of Spring in 2011

Forsythia will soon be in full bloom!

Lilies and irises rising from the earth.

Daffodils will soon be in bloom.

Not so Pleasant

Last week I went early to my class in Pleasants at Hollins. It was one of those lovely days we'd been having, cool enough for a jacket but warm for the time of year.

I thought I would go into the classroom early and read ahead in the text. I was also looking forward to seeing my classmates and the professor. I am a nerd, yes. I like school.

When I attended Hollins as an undergrad, there was no elevator in Pleasants. I had many classes in this building and trudged those stairs numerous times. Sometime in the 1990s, they installed an elevator and restrooms for the disabled. Frankly, it was a welcome addition.

This is particularly true now, as my class meets on the third floor. Being the aging and overweight woman that I am, I take the elevator.


To be sure, this requires a deep inhalation of breath and a bit of bravery on my part. I do not have an elevator phobia per se, as I will get on them, but I don't like them much. On at least one occasion, I have emerged from an elevator and passed out. Fortunately that was at Roanoke Memorial.

The campus appeared fairly deserted at the hour of my arrival. Few cars graced the parking lot and I saw absolutely no one as I walked to Pleasants. I clenched my bookbag, entered the elevator, and pushed the button for the third floor.

I was thinking about the class ahead and our topic of conversation, Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800s, when the elevator suddenly jerked. It came to an abrupt and startling stop. It felt sickeningly free, as if were swaying. I gripped the railing on my right, trying hard not to panic. The doors did not open.

What should I do now, I wondered. The panel in front of me had a panic alarm. I felt the elevator jerk again. Should I jump and down and hope I was in the air when the thing crashed? Or should I be perfectly still to keep the thing from swaying? I couldn't remember. I thought of my husband as I saw the little emblem of a firefighter's hat on the button panel. What would he tell me to do?

After a few seconds, I realized I wasn't going to hit bottom. Certainly I would have already done so in those few seconds; it couldn't take long to crash three floors. I bit my lip, moved forward, and pushed the button for the third floor. The elevator jerked and swayed once more. Then the doors opened. I am sure I was solid white as I stepped out.

The entire building felt to me as if it were moving - I suppose my equilibrium had been disturbed - and I could barely walk into the classroom. I put my books down and sagged into my chair. A classmate entered and I asked if she'd tried the elevator. She said she had pushed the button but it never came. I told her what had happened to me.

When I saw the professor enter her office, I told her about the incident so she could alert maintenance and have them check the elevator. She said she had been trying to find a working phone as she had been talking to someone and the lines went dead. She had tried to call out again but she had no dial tone. A subsequent call from my cell phone to security indicated the phone lines were all out.

I surmised that there had been either an outage or a power surge while I was in the elevator. Solar flare activity? Car careening into a power pole? No one knew.

Out of order signs went up on the elevator until someone could check it out.

Thank goodness I did not get stuck!

This is All There Is

I wondered today about changing careers. What if I became a sociologist? Or moved into women's studies? What would I need to do that, I wondered, besides even more education?

A little more time? For I am growing old.

So very long ago, I stared off into the sky, watching the clouds and daydreaming of the day I would be a "writer." I didn't even know what that meant, really, except that somehow I would produce those magical things full of words that created visions in my head and gave me ideas. Books shared entire worlds with me and with those who read the same as words as I. It created a connectedness, didn't it? We all read See Jane Run and we envisioned the same things, a girl running, and perhaps there were differences - a red shirt or brown hair - but it was basically the same. The imagery ran deep and long and the tales were bold and striking. We could reach out for new life and new civilizations and run barefoot amongst the clover or visit the mad woman in the tower.

All we had to do was open a book.

And there were other jobs in writing, I soon learned. Newspapers offered a daily attraction, what with their stark black and white words and photos. Images and words scattered across a large page to inform the public, educate the masses, and preserve history. I loved newspaper stories. They held adventure, promise, and change. They held my future, and I knew it, deep down.

Advertisement and copywriting never really appealed to me - loads of information slammed at you in a few sentences and carefully crafted images. Advertising was meant to persuade, not educate, not evoke the imagination, or bring out nuances. It was all about selling.

I am not a saleswoman. I never have been. I am, I think, a teacher in some ways. An educator of the population. Writing newspaper stories is ultimately about education. If the story is done well.

My sociology class appeals to me because it educates and reminds me of dramatic changes in society. Studying women who have made an impact on the world has moved me. Through sheer force of will, women forced themselves upon the world. Through women we have suffrage, we have the ability to work in any job (well, sort of), the right to move freely about the world with our head uncovered and our shoulders back. And yet the work is nowhere near done and in fact has fallen behind, for women still cower in the corners beneath the fists of their loved ones, they make pennies on the dollar compared to their male counterparts, they are sexually abused and emotionally demeaned, and most don't even realize they have choices. The world is unfair and it is suffocating in the hands of those who have the power to open up their grasp and make things more equal but they do not do this. They only close the fist tighter.

And I think to myself, what am I doing, sitting here writing claptrap and thinking about so dramatically changing my life that I might need to find a low residency program for a Ph.D.? And I wonder too about the lies sold to me as promises so long ago - those lies that if I went to a reputable school and received my B.A. in English and I worked hard and long and wrote my heart out that somehow I would one day be able to call myself writer?

What of those promises? Those made to me, and those I made to myself? And what about these schools now offering up these MFA degrees in creative writing, the ones that advertise all over the magazines on writing that I still read even though I stopped finding them helpful years ago? What are they selling, really, but pipe dreams and promises that will be kept only for the select few? What are they doing, teaching these hope-filled dreamers to write fancy sentences and how to find metaphors, create plot, and construct a character? What do they think they are preparing these people for? It is all to the good to learn how to write cute and pretty, but in the end, what good is pretty, hmmm?

What good is it all, really? Do I want to be a writing teacher and perpetuate that cruelty?

There are less than 5,000 sociologists in the country. The field doesn't even have real standing, except in academia. There's no room in that field for me, I see. For one thing, I have trouble with statistics. Figuring percentages has never been a strong suit.

Women's studies? Another uphill battle. I can't even figure out what the prerequisites are for that. Apparently I don't have them. As best I can tell, you take the courses as an undergrad, get the MA, and then find a job at a state college. Good luck with that.

Everything I have ever thought about doing has been totally marginalized in the current society. Every field of study I have ever contemplated has been outsourced and is gone. Regardless of where I went with my life, I would still be where I am now. Apparently that is the type of person I am - the one who doesn't fit in. Looking back, all I see are roads that lead to exactly where I am. Questing, searching, wondering. The round peg in the square hole.

Maybe this is what it is to live today when you're not a corporate clone. Does it mean one must constantly explore, dream, wail, writhe in frustration out of the sheer idiocy of it all? There are better tomorrows, surely. There are new dreams. But what if there are not? What if the journey is all there is?

But wait. Wait! What am I saying? What am I dismissing? Why wouldn't I want to be a writing teacher? Why wouldn't I want to see the joy on a student's face as she learned to communicate? What greater gift could there be than to teach someone how to make herself be understood? And what is wrong with pretty, anyway? Isn't the world bleak enough, dreary enough, crazy enough, that pretty might be what we need?

Ideas are what makes creativity so vital to the world. Without them, nothing moves forward. Where would we be without Newton's notion of gravity? Without the zero? I may not know what E=mc2 actually means but I know it has great importance in the vastness of change and creativity.

And how do we share these ideas, this creativity? We write it down, of course. We can use the oral tradition and talk it out, but things are lost and easily forgotten. It is in the act of writing that we achieve longevity and capture creation.

Stories give us pause. They offer up insight. They give us a way to move forward without breaking a sweat. If nothing else, stories entertain. And Lord knows we need entertaining, if only to forget for a few hours.

Round. Around. Circle about, pull up the wagons, let the snake eat its tail. I wander about for 40 years, and I end up back where I was in first grade.

Books: War on the Middle Class

War on the Middle Class
By Lou Dobbs
Read by the Author
Abridged
Copyright 2006

I grabbed this audiobook in desperation the other day when I was in the local library and couldn't find anything I wanted to listen to in the car. Now that I am in school, I have an additional two hours of driving time every week that requires something in the audiobook line.

Lou Dobbs, at the time of this writing, had a show on CNN. He is now on FOX, or will be soon, with a show debuting at March 14. That is not an endorsement or even a suggestion to watch: I don't watch anything at all if it appears on FOX as I refuse to support the network and its corporate heads. It's just information.

In the War on the Middle Class, Dobbs calls himself a liberal conservative. I strongly suspect he is now tea partier but since I don't listen to his radio show or read his other books or have anything else to do with him, I cannot say for certain. This book sounds like early tea party idealogy, however, in many respects. Late in the book Dobbs declares himself an Independent and suggests everyone should change their voting affiliation to Independent in order to get the attention of the politicians. So maybe he's just a right-leaning moderate, much as I consider myself to be a left-leaning moderate.

In this book, which is admittedly old now though it maintains some relevance, Dobbs advocates for the middle class. He explains how trade imbalances have sent jobs overseas, how the corporate sector has taken over the government, how public education is failing (he does, however, believe in public education, not private school vouchers, or did at the time he wrote this book), and how illegal immigration is over taxing the public sector and is the result of corporate greed. He also advocates for a universal health care system, one which would cover everyone and include catastrophic health care to keep people from going bankrupt simply because they are ill. I have no idea what he thinks now that we actually are headed in that direction.

These opinions and information, of course, are all from 2006, before we had a change of presidency and the political climate grew even nastier than it already was. I can't say where he stands on any of these issues now.

I do believe there is a war on the middle class, and I believe it is being waged by corporations and the politicians, on both sides, who only believe in capitalism and not in democracy. DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM ARE NOT THE SAME THING, and one day maybe people will realize that. I doubt it happens in my lifetime, though. (Go to the links at Merriam-Webster above and read the definitions. Neither one refers back to the other.)

This book offers an interesting historic perspective and I really could see the beginnings of some of the tea party ideas in these writings, thanks to hindsight. That and a quarter will buy me next to nothing.

I don't see that he has anything out that is current. That's too bad, because even if he is now on FOX, he seems to have a grasp of some of the issues and is good at explaining.

Thursday Thirteen #180

Today it's the positive 13! During the first Thursday of the month I am looking back at the previous month to recount 13 good things that happened the month before. I tend to be a negative Nelly and so I am trying to take the time to remember that all is not bleak and bad!


1. I started back to college! I am taking two classes, one on writing and another about Women in Sociology.

2. I reconnected with a former professor and am making a few new friends at school. All to the good, eh?

3. I didn't have a sore throat for most of February! This was a relief after having one for almost all of January. I still have some tiredness from whatever I had but it seems to be relenting. Yay!

4. I walked on the treadmill 16 out of 28 days of the month. (I keep a record.) That's a little better than every other day. I would like to get up to 20 out of 30 days; I'll keep working on that.

5. My husband went out of town for a week. I missed him very much but it was really nice not to have to do his laundry for a while!

6. I had a massage in early February. Massage is great. I highly recommend it for stress reduction and overall good health. If you're in the Roanoke area, I'll be glad to give you the name of the person I use. She's great.

7. The Roanoke Valley Pen Women group had a Laughing Yoga practitioner (who also happens to be my massage therapist), come in and demonstrate this interesting and unique way to exercise and feel good. Laughing Yoga employs "self-triggered" humor and is done with games, chants, clapping, rhythms, and breathing. It was great fun - let's all laugh more!

8. I've had several new folks visit my blog and comment of late. Thank you all, dear readers, for taking some of your time to share with me. I try to visit back and generally do, even if I don't comment.

9. I had lunch with friends several times. I am so grateful for my friends. What would I do without them?

10. My husband and I spent a couple of afternoons together (apart from the time we normally see one another). It is always nice to reconnect in different ways.

11. I read these books: Learning to Swim, by Sara J. Henry, Brava, Valentine, by Adriana Trigiani, and How to Observe Morals and Manners, by Harriet Martineau. The latter, written in 1838, was for my sociology class, but it turned out to be a good book for world-building if you're a writer. I'm a little behind on my book reading but I have a lot of reading for one of my classes.

12. My father had a health scare but thankfully he is fine now.

13. The fire that burned out of control near some property I own was contained within a day and did not reach my land.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 180th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Thinking Too Much

Yesterday I was quite antsy. I had many pages of Sociology text to read but also laundry to do. For some reason I was also fretting over my master's thesis. I haven't even registered for that but do need to be considering it. However, it was not a priority but I was making it so.

Two different people told me I think too much. I over think everything. Think think think think. Consider this angle, look at that angle, what happens if it goes this way? Round or square? Peg or knob? Screw or nut?

Constantly thinking, constantly pondering. Much of it tends to run toward worry. What happens if I fail my class? What happens if I don't go to the grocery store today? What happens if I don't fold the towels? What happens if I don't do my homework? What happens if the world ends in the next five minutes?

So many questions! So much unanswered.

And so many questions that I will never answer.

I have always been like this. Why why why why? Yes, I was one of those children. Why is the sky blue? Why do the clouds move? Where does the wind come from? How come the grass is green? Why do birds fly? Why, Mom, why?

These days my questions are somewhat darker. Why do some people want other people to fail? Why is it okay with some people that others suffer? Why do some people crave dominion over others? Why is there no peace? Why is money so important to so many people?  Why is there illness? Why do some people have mental health issues? Why is there sadness? What happens when we die? Why are some people mean?

Why why why?

Some days my poor brain churns and washes around like a floating cork in the midst of a typhoon. Spinning, bobbing, going under, coming back up to be whipped around again.

You need to settle down, said one friend. You think too much.

And don't they know I'd settle down if I could? Why don't I know how to do that? Why?!?

In 20 Years

Earlier today I was looking in the mirror doing the hair fixing thing and the make-up applying thing, and I thought, I probably have a good 20 years left in me.

In 20 years I would not yet be 70. With luck (and a good diet) my health could be satisfactory. Hopefully, I would still have all of my marbles. Of course, one never knows about these things - I could go in the next five minutes. But barring that, 20 years seems reasonable.

And then I thought, what do I want to have accomplished in that time? Do I want to climb a mountain? Run a foot race? Be an astronaut?

Well, no, nothing so dramatic as that. I don't believe I have ever wanted to seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly go where no one has ever gone before.

Except in books.

Ah, yes, books.

In 20 years I could, conceivably, write 20 books. That's one a year. However, in the last 47 years, I have only written a single book, and it was never published. It has turned to dust in a drawer.

I have written parts of books in that time. And I have written (and published) about 2,000 articles. It's not a bad body of work, but it's not bound up nice and neatly.

It is not a book.

Heck, even my blog, which now has over 1,400 entries, counts as a somewhat significant body of work, wouldn't you say? I mean, that is a lot of words. As you know, I do not write short. That's probably something like two or three books. Maybe more.

In the next 20 years, I want to write books. Not just one book. A lot of books.

There. I said it.

Finally.

Now to overcome my fears, and make it happen. Time to kick my butt in gear.

Procrastination out the door.

Addicted

I am fairly certain I am a video game addict. I play something, even if it is only a card game or a puzzle game or a word game, every day.

I have played 2,777 games of Scramble, which is a word game, since 2008. Each game lasts three minutes. So I've spent 8,331 minutes, or 138.85 hours, or 5.78 days (24 hour days at that), playing a word search game.

I have played 845 games of Spider Solitaire since August 2009. I am a fast player and probably can get through a game in five to seven minutes. So that's approximately 5,915 minutes of this card game. That's 98.58 hours, or just over 4 days (24 hour days).

That doesn't count something like a role-playing game (RPG) such as Oblivion. These games are immersive and I can spend many hours lost in these fantasy worlds. I once lost an entire weekend playing Morrowind, another RPG by the same company.

Before I am judged, though, I wonder how much time people spend in front of the TV? I don't watch television that much, a fact made painfully obvious to me in my Sociology class the other night. During discussion, classmates tossed out the names of programs they watched as if they were tossing about pieces of popped corn. I was lost because I had no idea what they were talking about.

I don't watch American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, or something called the Duggers (not sure what that is), or any of the other shows they discussed.

However, I daresay many of them don't know a thing about role playing games, or puzzle games such as Bejeweled 2, or the many games available at shockwave.com, or whatever.

I have been playing video games since the late 1970s. My parents bought my brother one of the first Ataris. I remember playing Pong with great concentration and fascination. I spent many quarters at the arcade when that was the only place one could find good video game and pinball excitement. I was a Centipede whiz, but never really a fan of Ms. Pacman. (Oh my, what a mistake, to find Centipede available online at the Atari site just now!)

I cannot begin to name all of the video games I have played. Donkey Kong. Might & Magic many times over (there were 9 games in the series, plus Heroes of Might & Magic, 1-5). Rise of the Triad. Commander Keen. Duke Nukem. Wolfenstein. I played them all.

Over the years I have spent a great deal of money and time in this hobby. It is terribly unproductive, unless it has kept my brains functioning and improved eye-hand coordination. I suppose puzzles and card games are better than shoot-em games, but only marginally so.

My other hobby is reading. I read 60 or so books a year. I could up that number considerably if I read instead of playing video games, I expect.

Still, a girl has to have some fun.

However, this addiction, however minor, troubles me occasionally. I know there are better ways to spend my time.

On the Warpath

Saturdays were clean-the-house days when I was growing up.

My mother worked a 40-hour job and her evenings were filled with fixing dinner, helping my brother and me with homework, and doing laundry or other activities. So the weekend meant time to clean.

Mom liked a clean house but she did not care much for cleaning (a sentiment I inherited, I fear). My brother and I had chores - cleaning our room, dusting, etc., which increased as we aged. But some weeks things seemed to get out of hand - maybe we had too much homework to help out, or we were just especially sloppy for some reason.

You know, those moments when it seems the dirt has taken over even though you know you just cleaned up a week ago.

On those days, my father would find me in my room or in front of the TV. "Your mother is on the warpath," he would warn. "I'm going out." And he would vanish to cut wood or ride the tractor - anything but stay around the house.

Because Mom could get a little crazy. She'd start yelling at us to clean our rooms, or clear the table, or whatever. Sometimes she threw things. I think she woke in a mood and it just spilled out. "You're nothing but pigs! Living in slop!" she'd yell. "I work all week and you're the most ungrateful bunch! I have to clean up after you all the time!"

This was unfair and not true - I did my share, for sure - but when Mom was on the warpath there was nothing to do but hunker down and find something to do that involved cleaning. You surely did not want to talk to back.

Fortunately this did not happen every Saturday. Generally we all rose and performed our chores. But sometimes, that warpath came along. Then everybody had better watch out! I was well into adulthood before I realized she wasn't angry at me; she was just having a really bad day because she was tired and didn't want to be cleaning. It is tough to be grown up and have to deal with all of those responsibilities sometimes.

Last night I told my husband I wanted to sleep late. I did not set the alarm.

At 6:30 a.m. this morning he woke me to kiss me goodbye as he headed for the cattle lot. "Go back to sleep," he said.

Um. Yeah. Of course, I could not go back to sleep and when I sat up, my head throbbed. I had a day of housework ahead of me, and I needed to study, too. I did not need a headache. But I had a doozy.

Then the toilet stopped up. With my husband safely out of earshot, he could not hear my curses while I hunted up the plunger and proceeded to unstop the commode. Nothing kills my morning like dealing with poo, I must say.

Then the handle fell off the closet door. I put that back on. Grumble. Grumble.

He had left the coffee on the kitchen counter and when I went to put it in the cabinet, it slipped from my hand. The lid wasn't secure and coffee went everywhere.

"Nothing but a pig," I said aloud. "Living in slop!"

I opened the refrigerator to find an empty mayonnaise jar. "Can't he at least put this in the trash?" I huffed. I hurled the jar into the trash can with a satisfying thump. "I have to clean up after him all the time!"

And then I was on the warpath.

The next thing I knew, I had tossed practically everything in the refrigerator in the trash. Old apples and grapes, leftovers from earlier in the week - it all went. Thump. Whap. Clank.

My ire not yet sated, I proceeded to clean the oven. Then I opened the cabinet where the coffee was stowed and threw everything in there in the garbage - packs of Jello gelatin, spices, pudding, fudge brownie mix, soup mixes - it all hit the trash can. Thump. Whap. Thump. Thump.

When I finished, I wiped my brow. The aspirin was kicking in; my headache was lessening. That cabinet had needed cleaning out for sometime and it felt good to have that little chore off my back. There was more to do, but now I could do it with a little less force.

Still, when my husband came in, I scowled at him for dirtying up dishes for lunch. I informed him the toilet had troubled me yet again. I didn't stop to eat with him but proceeded to run the vacuum. My warpaint had faded but I still needed to scrub some of it off, I think.

He said little, but went back out to the barn. And then around 4:15 p.m., he called to tell me he was in Daleville. He'd stopped at the grocery and bought a pre-cooked chicken and some potato salad so I wouldn't have to cook.

Warpath gone.

I try very hard not to channel my mother, but I think every woman must have days when she feels like she is the only one who cares if the house is clean and she is tired of cleaning the bathtub. Housework is never ending. No wonder it drove my mother crazy.

I guess if I'd had kids, they would have those times when they would say, "Mom is on the warpath." I'll have to ask my brother if that happens at his house.

Thursday Thirteen

The other day I was looking through someone else's photo album. It made me recall that I did a few things when I was a youngster and I thought I'd see if I could remember 13 things about K-12. Here goes!

1. I was a classroom spelling bee champion in the 6th grade. When it came time to be the school champion, I missed the word "haunted." You can bet I have never misspelled that word again.

2. The library and I were fast friends, and in elementary school, I brought home certificates every year for being a good library helper.

3. I played flute in band beginning in the 6th grade. One time the music teacher asked me to accompany her to Eagle Rock Elementary School, where we put on a performance together for the lower grades.

4. I sang in the school chorus in middle school (at that time middle school was 7th & 8th grade). The songs I remember singing are Black and White, by Three Dog Night, and Morning Has Broken, by Cat Stevens.

5. I battled for first chair in flute every year. The contest was always between me and Angie, and it seemed we'd alternate semesters as to who was the best. It was quite an honor to be named first chair flute, as that meant you were the best of the flute players. It also meant you were the one who played the piccolo sometimes. Everyone wanted to play the piccolo because it was cute.

6. I was an A student but always received a B in gym. If I hadn't had gym, I'd have been a straight A student every year. However, I was sickly and I missed 30-40 days of school annually. Apparently participation counted the most in gym class. I could make up other homework but I couldn't make up for missing out on climbing the rope.

7. I played guitar in a Top 40 band. We started the band when I was a sophomore in high school and stuck together until I was a senior. The band was called Almost Famous. We played cover songs, mostly. We earned some spending money doing this, if nothing else.

8. When I was in the 7th grade, the bus driver went off and left my brother stranded at the elementary school. I cried all the way home, and when we arrived at my stop, I laid into the driver and told her what I thought of her. The next morning I marched myself down to the principal's office to turn in the bus driver (who had, in the meantime, turned me in for telling her off). The principal did not punish me, but did suggest I not do that again.

9. When I was in the second grade, the teacher would sometimes leave early. When she did, she left me in charge of the entire class. I had to read a book about dinosaurs to everyone. Of course the teacher next door had her door open and was looking in on us, but I felt very special to have been chosen. It meant, of course, I was the teacher's pet and the other kids hated me but at the time I didn't realize that. Ignorance can indeed be bliss.

10. I was an honor student in high school. Mostly, that meant I had a gold tassel at graduation.

11. I was on the debate team for a year. I was not very good at it.

12. My Spanish teacher took several us to Madrid, Spain, and Paris, France, in 1980. It is the only time I've been overseas. It was a fantastic life lesson.

13. I had string puppets from Mexico and wrote a play for them in Spanish. My Spanish class put on the play and somehow we ended up on TV. We put the play on twice, once in Spanish and once in English, and it ran on a local show.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 179th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Do It In Style

Colleen over at Loose Leaf Notes very kindly awarded me the Stylish Blogger Award. She writes from Floyd County and has one of the best blogs in the area.

I am always very honored when people think enough of my blog to link to it or mention it on their own blogs in some fashion or another. It is the highest compliment.

Apparently I am to list seven things that contribute to my personal style. So here we go.

1. I'm eclectic reader and if it's written down, I likely will look at.

2. I've been up in a hot air balloon and buzzed Botetourt from a small airplane. I will sometimes try something even if it scares the beejesus out of me.

3. When I was about 10 years old, I looked up from the local newspaper I was reading and informed my mother that one day I would write for said newspaper. And do it better. And I did.

4. Jack of all trades, master of none. That seems to be my lifestyle. I know a lot about a great many things, and have done a good deal, but, aside from writing, I've mastered very little.

5. When I was in elementary school, I thought I'd go for my Ph.D. I'm still working on that. Even when I am not back at college, I am a student of learning.

6. Blue jeans with a t-shirt has always been my favorite outfit. It still is.

7. Sometimes I still bite my fingernails. I will go for months and not touch them, and then wham, there they are. Back in my mouth.

****************************************************************************************

If you would like this award, please feel free to take it. If you're reading my blog, obviously you're stylish, too!

In the meantime, I will pass this along to a few of my favorites. Colleen's blog would be on this list if she hadn't sent me the award!

The Blue Ridge Gal is another local blogger whose work I enjoy. I don't think she accepts awards, but go check her out if you haven't. She puts up photos and video and changes her blog look about as often I change my clothes!

Lenora over at Journal of Days offers up a unique way to look at your world: a daily diary in three sentences. I love it!

Writers might want to check out Peevish Pen; Becky takes on writing spammers and reminds us of the simpler life on the farm.

If you haven't seen Shenandoah Gateway Farm, check it out for an interesting look at farming and working in a library.

Another Eye Exam

I can hardly see to write this, what with my eyes dilated and all.

This was my fourth eye exam in a year, though only the second one that included a full comprehensive examination.

Yet another new prescription for eye glass lenses. This will be the fifth one since January 2010. I can only pray that this time I will be able to see.

And all of this because my eye doctor retired! Didn't he know he was supposed to keep working?

It's tough being half blind, I tell you. Expensive too. The cost of these lenses runs in the hundreds.

It'll be worth it if I can only see well again.

Not seeing well has affected me in many ways. Have you noticed I haven't been posting as many pictures? This is why. I can't see well enough to use the camera.

I'm not reading as much because my eyes tire easily. I had wanted to return to creating counted cross stitch pieces but found I simply can't see well enough to do it (this is with my glasses on).  I can't thread the needle.

Hopefully this new doctor and new lenses prescription will do the trick.

Books: Brava, Valentine

Brava, Valentine
By Adriana Trigiani
Copyright 2010
Audiobook read by Cassandra Campbell
11.5 hours unabridged

I've read (or listened to) almost every one of Trigiani's books, and she has it figured out. This is an author who can produce and put it out without losing her integrity in the process.

I fell in love with her Big Stone Gap books a very long time ago, and her books about Valentine Roncalli are just as good.

Val is a cobbler who must take over the family custom shoe-making business after her grandmother marries and retires. She is also in love with Jean Luca, the son of the Italian leather tanner her grandmother recently married.

While on the face of it on might dismiss this as a romance, this is a book with integrity. It explores family relationships, race relations, business, and life in general. This is a book about character, not a stereotype racing around the world for love and sex.

The author brings the world of New York to life, something a poor little hick like myself really appreciates. I haven't been to New York in 30 years. Additionally, I enjoyed learning about other cultures - particularly the Italian ones that seem foreign to this Appalachian Irish girl.

Strong writing and good characters. What more could one ask for in a book?

Thursday Thirteen

This picture shows not quite 13 deer but trust me, there were 13 deer there when I ran for the camera.

Today,  a completely random Thursday Thirteen.

1. Adjectives and adverbs are considered "bad" in the realms of good writing, but I rather like them (and am more partial to adjectives). Of course, saying "She raced to the phone" reads better but sometimes people really do just "go quickly." And colors are important.

2. For anyone who might not remember, an adjective modifies a noun; an adverb modifies a verb. In this sentence, "The clouds moved slowly across the pale, blue sky," slowly is an adverb, pale and blue are adjectives. English 101. Actually, I don't use a lot of either modifier in my writing, but when I do, they're there for a reason.

3. Harriet Martineau, born in 1802, is considered the mother of sociology. She was also a feminist and radical thinker for the times. Though she was from England, she studied American society and wrote a text called Society in America. According to my textbook, "she believes that Americans will eventually renounce their consuming pursuit of wealth and that equalization of property will occur. But she insists it will not happen by revolution: it will happen, rather, "[w]hen the people become tired of their universal servitude to worldly anxiety, -when they have fully meditated and discussed the fact" that this pursuit of wealth is a source of pain rather than joy." I wonder if 150 years is too long to give her for her prophesy to come true? Because it obviously hasn't. We're consumed by our fetish for the dollar.

4. Often I see things online and wish to comment, but I don't, even if I might be able to comment anonymously. I know that what I might say will bring down lots of comments from snarling, vindictive "Christians" or righteous others who would just as soon eat me for breakfast and leave me prostrate on the floor or huddled in a quivering lump, so I simply keep my mouth shut. I find these to be very scary times, and people who do not acknowledge that the atmosphere is cruel and evil are simply not paying attention, or are part of that misogynistic segment and not its victims.

5. I like chocolate. Is there a diet that allows chocolate? Because that is the one I need.

6. Warm weather in February is like a gift of chocolate covered cherries. I've spied my first robin, always a sure sign of spring, and daffodils are rising from the ground to reach for the sky. Surely the forsythia will soon bloom and the grass will turn green, and all will be fair and frolicking.

7. I bought a primrose at the grocery store yesterday. It was marked down to next to nothing, but it was green and had dirt around it and so I brought it home and stored it in the garage. I have no idea what I will do with it, but for a while, anyway, I will consider it a good $1 spent.

8. Going back to college has been an eye-opening experience. For one thing, I can't focus like I used to and am not retaining what I read as well as I once did. For another, I find I am old when compared to these young women who are in class with me. They are just babies with no idea of how the world really works, and how mean and vicious it can be. These girls, of course, think they are old and mature and know everything. I used to be like that, once. Now I know better.

9. Yesterday I discovered I am missed in the nearby town where I once prowled the streets searching stories and news. I stopped into an office yesterday and was greeted cheerily and with fondness. It was nice, if a bit sad. Will I ever stop missing my work as a newspaper reporter?

10. My husband's hands are calloused and ingrained with permanent stains from dirt and grease. He has a working man's hands. His small finger is as long as my middle finger; one of his hands can hold both of mine. His touch is gentle when he is with me, though he could crush me in an instant.

11. I don't care what the glittery and rich idiots are doing, but the media must think it important that I know that Lindsy Lohan is not appearing on David Letterman and Paris Hilton turns 30 today and received a $375,000 car from her boyfriend. These people do not matter, except for use as symbols of much that is wrong with this country. So I point to them here and say, "See? These people are shallow and self-centered. They are wealthy but they are miserable. Do you not understand that money does not buy happiness, that as a country we are going backwards? Do we really want to be breeding this kind of thing?" Read #3.

12. The economy is supposedly improving but I haven't seen it yet. Our area was slow to be hit with the recession, so perhaps we'll be slow to come out of it. Some times I wonder if we should come out of it, though, especially since things remain unregulated. If the economy improves now, it'll just happen again in a few years until someone in charge finally realizes that deregulation is the problem, not the solution. Might as well get used to being poor; unless you're charmed and privileged (and apparently most people believe that they are even if they aren't), that's your permanent status.

13. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up and I am firmly middle-aged. I bet I still won't know when I'm 90, if I live that long. Maybe I need to meditate on it. How about you? Do you know what you want out of life?


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here.  I've been playing for a while and this is my 178th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Burning, Already Burning

I grabbed the phone, recognizing my brother's cell number as I picked up.'

"What's up, bro?"

"Look out the window toward my house and tell me if you see any smoke!" My brother's voice crackled with anxiety.

"Oh no. Yes I do. What's on fire?"

Turns out one of my brother's neighbors had a brush fire on his place. A brush fire on a dry day with a high wind advisory is never good news.

As my brother sped home from his Roanoke office, I watched from my window as the smoke plume grew larger. I found the Botetourt dispatch on the Internet and listened as volunteer firefighters responded to the blaze.

"10-4, it's jumped the road down here."

"We need the tanker from Station 4."

I own property over there, too, and called the people I rent to in order to be sure they were aware of the fire and were safe.

That fire is out now, thank goodness, but another burns in nearby Craig County. Over 200 acres are burning there; the smoke rises high above the mountains.

We're about 5 inches short on rain this year . . . are we headed toward another year of drought? Let's all be careful when we're playing with fire, shall we?

Here's a story about the fire near my brother's place from The Botetourt View.

I Heart My Readers

Dear Gentle Reader,

Whoever you are, you are dear to my heart. I see you there on my statistics page and it is nice to know that I'm not writing in a vacuum.

So Happy Valentine's Day to you, sweet reader. Thank you for taking your precious time to look at my work, to read my thoughts, and to visit for a moment. I am humbled and most grateful.

If you are a regular reader and you have a blog and you're not on my list of blogs and would like to be, do leave your URL. Eventually I'll add you to the list (but be patient with me as my college courses are taking up my time).

Go eat a piece of chocolate, kind reader. You deserve it!

Thanks again,

Anita aka CountryDew

I'm Not Carrie Bradshaw

Recently I have been watching reruns of Sex and the City on E! because I missed the show when it originally appeared. I had never seen an episode when I caught the first movie on HBO one evening. I greatly enjoyed that (though the second one deserved the thumbs down it received) and after the viewing I was sorry I had missed the series.

Carrie Bradshaw, as most of you know, is a freelance writer who pens a sex column. Apparently she is paid well for this, well enough that said column is all the work she does.

In an episode last night, she discovered that she had a total of $1,600 to her name and needed to step up her freelance efforts (apparently the column did not pay all that well after all). At the end of the show, she said Vogue had agreed to pay her $4.50 a word.

I've never made $4.50 a word at anything I've ever published. The best I've ever done is $1.00 a word. Locally the going rate is about $0.05 cents a word. Yes, that's right. A nickel. A nickel a word. A few places may pay double that but they are few and far between and hard-sought  as well. Those gigs are hard to come by.

At $4.50 a word, Carrie Bradshaw is making $4,500 for 1,000 words. That's just a few paragraphs longer than the average op-ed column in The Roanoke Times, which, I assure you, pays nothing close to that.

One thousand words is about four double-spaced 8 1/2 x 11 pages in MS Word.

With 1,000 words, you can describe almost anything. In four pages you can bring a character to life. You can write a really long blog entry. You can talk about politics, religion, your mother, and your dog, or all of them at one time (wouldn't that be an interesting read?).

And you can get paid $4,500 for those words, if you are good, lucky, connected, and Carrie Bradshaw.

Which I am not.

Lately I have been mulling over how to become a more prolific freelance writer. I don't write about sex so I am not going there. I write about more mundane things - history, local government, features on the lady dentist or the female airplane pilot or some such. I don't live in New York where things are happening, so I have no idea about best restaurants. Food is out as I am a mashed potato and baked chicken kind of girl who doesn't even know what creme brulee is, much less how to write about it.

I also am not a fan of writing about health, though I think that's a hot topic to pursue if you like it. However, writing about it makes me nervous as I am afraid I will write something like, "experts advise taking Vitamin D-3 every day now because as a society we receive too little sun," and someone will read that and swallow too much D-3 and then sue me for it. People do that, you know. Also, when I have written about health in the past I have found doctors to be real assholes when it comes to interviews or offering up information. Maybe I should have interviewed proctologists.

This little blog entry should come to a point here, wrap itself up neatly, and refer back to the first paragraph, maybe. However, it's a musing, it's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and I'm still wiping sleep from my eyes even though I've been up for two hours because that's what farm wives do. They rise and shine, though I don't shine all that much at the crack of dawn. It's more like I glimmer. Or maybe go off and on like a broken switch.

Anyway, to make a long piece even longer, I have practically stopped freelancing and am focusing on school. My masters level courses are a lot of work, rather like tearing apart a water pump and trying to put it back together when you don't know how. It takes a lot of grease.

I still miss writing for the local newspaper - so much that it's like a little mini heart attack sometimes when I stop and think about it - but that's getting easier. However, I had to stop writing for newspapers completely to ease the pain.

To become Carrie Bradshaw, I need to do a lot of things (besides lose weight and about 20 years). Mostly, I need to come up with ideas and send out query letters to magazine editors, if that is the way I want to go.  And this I do not do. And do you know why, dear reader?

Because I'm terrified they'll say no. And I'm terrified they'll say yes and I won't be able to produce. So isn't it better then, to do nothing at all, says the little timid mouse as it hunkers down in its little house?

So to become Carrie Bradshaw I must overcome this fear, even though I am highly published, with my byline under several thousand articles (really!) and move on, yes?

Maybe.

I'm Not Like You - or Am I?

Earlier in the week, my husband and I attended a lecture by Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, at Hollins University.  (He also runs a news site called The Daily Yonder, about rural living.)
While much of the information wasn't new, a few things surprised me. For one, the author pointed out a significant drop in higher education in this country and changes in where those folks live. Thirty years ago, people with higher education degrees were spread all over the country. Now, people with higher education degrees are congregating in areas, sorting themselves into neighborhoods and communities of folks who are "like minded." There are also fewer of them.

Meanwhile, folks who have particular religious or other types of lifestyles (the example he used was those who use lawn fertilizer and those who do not) have done the same, sorting themselves into areas where everyone else is most like them.


I kept comparing my own locality, which has changed dramatically over the last 30 years, to the nationwide information as it was being presented. My community is now a place I hardly recognize. Oh, it's still rural, and I have lot of friends here and people and places I love, but there is also a different brand of people, folks who don't care about many of the same things I do. History is a good example. I have a seven-generation connection to the area; my family's blood and sweat has watered the land. But many folks don't have that connection and look at me oddly when I try to explain it, and don't understand why a building shouldn't be torn down.

So anyway, according to the author, people are moving themselves into little groups not according to race so much (though of course that still goes on) but by lifestyle. The author showed pictures of different neighborhoods and how right away you could tell what sort of people lived there.

Some neighborhoods sport flags and well-trimmed lawns, while other neighborhoods had book stores and yard art. People, maybe subconsciously, move into neighborhoods that fit their lifestyle. In turn, it's created a schism; no one tries to understand the other side.

Additionally, the author claimed that more than half the population believes their opinions and thoughts are the correct ones and that there is no need to listen to anyone else. I find that rather scary, because I know for sure I don't know everything. And then again, most of these same folks want someone just like them to run the country. Not me. I want someone who's a heck of lot smarter than I am up there making the calls.

There is so much information out there now with the 24/7 TV and Internet, that people just tune it all out and only listen to what they're comfortable with, excluding everything else. So new ideas and thoughts on subjects never reach their ears. This adds to the schism.
The author, unfortunately, had no solution to the problem and doesn't see one until there is some exterior crisis that forces people to pull together. If 9/11 didn't do it - and it didn't - I am not sure what it will take.

I wonder how we might end the radical, loud, brutal meanness that permeates a lot of life these days. I used to think everyone wanted to be kind, gentle, and nice, but I have decided that this is not the case: many people like being angry, they enjoy being mean, and they want to be vicious. I find that sad.


Apparently the last time the US was this divided, with neighbors so estranged from one another, was before the Civil War.

Are we headed toward a Civil War? If so, how may we avert this? Any ideas? Or are we too far gone?


Articles about this book may be found at the following links if you want to read more:

Are Evangelicals Too Republican?

Here's an Audacious Idea: Let's Reason Together

Communities of Exclusion: The Costs and Benefits of Diversity