Godwin Cemetery

Yesterday I was in Fincastle and I decided to stop by Godwin Cemetery and take photos.

The cemetery sits on a hill above the Fincastle Presbyterian Church. It is one of the older cemeteries in the county.

I thought cemetery photos on a Friday the 13th seemed appropriate.

Thursday Thirteen #310 - Making Friends

My friend Di over at her blog posted yesterday about how difficult it is to make friends. Since I still needed to do my Thursday Thirteen, her post made me think perhaps I could come up with 13 ways to make friends.

1. Join a club. This could be a photography club, book club, a writing group, a philosophy team, or whatever. Not that I am aware of any local philosophy groups, but maybe you could start one.

2. Go to church. Where I live, here in the Bible Belt, this seems to be the number one way folks make friends.

3. Take a class. I'm not talking about an online class although I suppose one might make online friends in those sorts of classes. But if you are looking for face time instead of Facebook time, you might actually venture into a classroom.

4. Play a sport or go watch ballgames. If you have an interest in a sport you could meet others who are also interested.

5. Volunteer. There are lots of places to give your time - libraries, animal shelters, old folks' homes, hospitals, homeless shelters.

6. Go to bars, coffee shops, or similar places. I actually don't suggest you do this because I don't think it is safe, but I know people do. I think the first five suggestions are safer and better ways to go about making friends.

7. Get to know your coworkers better. If you have a job and work with others, getting to know the people you work with can have multiple benefits.

***Unfortunately, those seven ways are the only ways I know to go about meeting people. So I'll finish out Thursday Thirteen with ways to be a good friend:***

VA Senator Tim Kaine listens
to Hollins University President
Nancy Gray.

8. Listen. This is probably the number one requirement in a friendship, the ability to listen. A little empathy helps, too.

9. Be loyal. Don't gossip about your new friend, stab them in the back, or take advantage of them. Stand beside them, not in front or behind them.

10. Be trustworthy. This is rather like being loyal, but it also includes things like showing up on time for a lunch date, leaving your cell phone off while you're visiting with your new friend, and keeping any confidences shared.

Making friends at a "local bloggers" meet-up!

11. Stay in contact. This can be via email, Facebook, phone calls, or actual face time, but this is vital if you want to maintain a relationship. Blog comments count, too!

12. Make plans. Don't wait for your new friend to invite you somewhere, take the initiative and ask them to lunch or an event. All they can do is say no, right?

13. Accept invitations when they are offered to you. If you say no every time someone invites you along, eventually they will stop asking. So go have a good time!



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 310th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Remembering the 343 on 9/11

Twelve years ago today, over 1,000 men and women, all of them dressed in 50 to 75 pounds of firefighting gear, faced the worst event of their careers.

An attack on the Twin Towers in New York City had the structures damaged and burning.

The first plane hit at 8:45 a.m., and the New York City Fire Department had its incident command center established by 8:50 a.m.

The fire department was on the scene within five minutes.

As business people hurried outside, firefighters raced inside to help.

They wanted to save lives, these firefighters. That is what they were trained to do.

What they loved to do.

What they would die doing.

As firefighters valiantly tried to reach people believed to be trapped on the upper floors, above the point of impact, the unthinkable happened. At 9:59 a.m. the first of the tallest towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.

As we all know, the tower fell without warning. The building was rubble and ash in a matter of seconds.

And 343 firefighters - heroes all - died, along with over 2,000 other people.


I am the wife of a firefighter. Every day could be the day that something goes wrong on the fire scene. This could be the day that a building explodes, a roof caves in, a car crashes into firefighters standing on the side of the road putting out a burning vehicle (something that happened in Roanoke in 1985, killing several firefighters).

Firefighters do a job that most people wouldn't dream of doing. They risk their lives every single time they go to work. When you are running away in fear, they are putting on their hats and heading off to face down whatever it is you are afraid of. Tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, flood, derecho winds, downed power lines or a terrorist attack do not halt these dedicated people. They go forward when the rest of us would hang back.

In 2011, there were 2,450 deaths in the United States as a result of 364,500 fires. There were 13,900 injuries in those fires, and the resulting damage from fires cost $6.6 billion. That same year, there were 80 deaths as a result of 85,400 fires in businesses. There were 1,100 injuries in those fires, and the resulting damage from the fires cost $2.4 billion.

Firefighters responded to over 30 million calls in 2011.

Like other public servants, emergency service workers have been attacked by various political sectors in recent years. How anyone can deny these brave men and women a livelihood in exchange for running into a burning structure is beyond me.

On this 12th anniversary of the attack on New York City, please remember the sacrifices of firefighters and other emergency services workers. They go where no one else dares to go.

You might want to say thank you to them, too. You never know when the life they save might be yours.

Books: Nora Roberts

All I Want for Christmas
By Nora Roberts
Copyright 1994
Read by Patrick Lawlor
3 Hours

The Villa
By Nora Roberts
Copyright 2002
Read by Laural Merlington
6 Hours

Nora Roberts is a prolific author who has written over 200 books since 1981. Many of them fall in the romance category, but she has also delved into mainstream fiction and fantasy.

Here is where I confess that I seldom read romances, so I have generally avoided Roberts. But an interview with her that I saw on CBS's Sunday Morning show piqued my interest.

In All I want for Christmas, Roberts gives us a single-parent family with two twin boys who want THE MOM for Christmas. Not just any mom, but the mom that fits the bill - she likes dogs and little boys and chocolate chip cookies. Of course the newest lady in the small town just happens to fit that description.

In The Villa, Roberts brings us a bit of a mystery. The story is set in the Napa Valley in California, as well as in Italy, and gives us the adventures of a wine-making family with a crazed enemy who will stop at nothing to ruin their century-old business.

Roberts is a good writer; she has a great command of metaphor and similes and does a fine job with her stories. I imagine I will be listening to more of her work from the audiobooks at the library.

Spinning Out of Control

There is something fascinating about a spider's intricate web.

It looks like a lot of work with precision detail.

Sometimes spider webs look like they have overdone it, with web wrapped everywhere. For weeks now I have been unable to leave the house without walking into thin strands of webbing.

According to the Farmer's Almanac, this is what spiders spinning webs means:

"Spiders can be predictors of winter weather. Spiders spinning larger than usual cobwebs and/ or entering the house in great numbers may mean a rough winter ahead. Time will tell."

I Don't Really Have a Favorite Day

From Sunday Stealing

The More Meme, Part II

Q. What would you choose to be famous for?

A. Writing.

Q. If you have a webcam, are you ever paranoid people can see you?

A. I don't have a webcam.

Q. Do you find it difficult to sleep at night? Any reason(s) why?

A. Sometimes. Pain lately has been a problem. Old bones.

Q. If you had to go on a game show, which would you choose?

A. Jeopardy.

Q. What about if you had to go on a reality show? Which would you choose then?

A. I'd go on Survivor, and probably be the first one voted off.

Q. Tell me about your favorite TV show.

A. At the moment my favorite is The Newsroom, now showing on HBO for its second season. It's about people who do the news at a fictional TV station. It examines the issues of the day and has compelling characters.

Q. Why were you last irritated?

A. Because I couldn't get checked out of the doctor's office in a timely manner.

Q. What time did you get up this morning?

A. I got out of bed around 6:15 a.m. but I was awake at 5:00 a.m.

Q. The last city you were in: Where was it and do you like it there?

A. That would be Roanoke. It's a small city and as cities go it is not bad, I suppose. I understand the shopping doesn't measure up to bigger cities.

Q. Do you like the countryside?

A. I live there so I hope so.

Q. If you see someone yawn, do you often yawn as well?

A. Don't we all?

Q. Recommend a good movie:

A. Lord of the Rings - all three movies, i.e., The Fellowship of the Ring, the Two Towers, and The Return of the King.

Q. Do you think you’d make a good model? Would you ever want to be one?

A. No and no.

Q. How often do you change your hairstyle? What does it look like now?

A. I haven't changed my hairstyle in years. Right now it needs a cut and it has a lot of gray in it.

Q. Do you have a favorite day of the week? Which is it?

A. I least like Monday but I don't really have a favorite day.

Q. Are you alone?

A. At the moment I am writing this, yes.

Q. When is the last time you were on the phone after 2 am?

A. I have no idea. The last really early morning call I received that I remember came on the day my mother died 13 years ago, so maybe then.

The Shoe Solution

So clutter is everywhere at my house; we have a space and junk issue here. I take comfort in the knowledge that at least we're not hoarders. Not yet, anyway. There is probably some cut-off line we are close to that makes one fall under that definition, but I don't think we are there yet.

In the last several weeks I've been looking at various components of a room and trying to figure out a solution to whatever is bothering me. Maybe the shelf is too full of stuff and some of it needs to go the attic, or the drawers need to be cleaned out, or whatever.

Shoes bothered me because I kept them in a basket on my side of the bed. Oh, I tried keeping them in the closet, but our closet is long and narrow, and there just isn't a lot of floor space in there for shoes. I bought things that hang from the clothes racks, and things with bars that you put your shoes on, and nothing worked to my satisfaction.

Years ago I started tossing shoes into clothes baskets, and that worked best to keep them from being something to trip over. It's probably hard on the shoes, though.

And because there is so little walking room in the closet, and there is already a basket of my husband's shoes in there, the basket of my shoes eventually ended up under the window on my side of the bed. Two tubs full, actually.

I hated how it looked, and last week decided this was one of those things I needed to do something about.

I found the solution at Target:

A nice faux-leather storage trunk. This was right around $80 and it holds all of my shoes. It also makes a seat under the window, so I can sit there and put on those shoes, or hang out and watch the deer.

I put some activated charcoal inside the trunk, too, so it would absorb any odor that the shoes might bring in with them. Generally I don't have smelly feet but you never know.




*I received no compensation for anything in this post.*

Li'l Darlin'

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen photos of my roses in 2013

 

 

 

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 310th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

The Eagle

About 10 days ago, my husband called me and told me there was an eagle in the hayfield. By the time I arrived with a camera, the bird had flown from the field to a locust tree at the edge of the woods.

We had never seen an eagle on the farm before.

I had to use the zoom on the camera to see it.

I was this far away. The bird was in the tree in the middle of the photo, about where the light turns blue. The sun was also not in a good position for shooting photos.

I took lots of pictures, but these were the best. I wish I could have gotten closer for better photos.

We have not seen the eagle since; according to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries webpage on bald eagles, they migrate from August to January, so I suspect this one was just passing through.

The bald eagle was removed from Virginia list of endangered species as of January 1, 2013. They were taken from the federal list of endangered species in 2007.

It's Only a Glass

I become attached to the strangest things.

I was saddened recently when I went to drink out of our one-and-only Welch's Looney Tunes glass and discovered it had a big chip in the lip. The glass, which holds about 6 ozs., says Copyright 1994 on it, and I imagine that is how long we've had it.

The glass initially served a dual purpose as a jar of concord grape jelly. Glasses like this sell on ebay as collectibles for about $5.00.

Looney Tunes, in case you don't remember, were cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, the Foghorn Leghorn, Daffy Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, Elmer Fudd, Tweety and Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, and other characters. I grew up watching them, as did millions of other folks who were born in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

I think we had several of these glasses at one time. The remaining one features a sleeping Foghorn Leghorn.


Initially I was going to toss the glass into the recycling, but decided instead to bring it into my office and put it into use as a pen holder. The memories will live on!

*These are my photos.*

Welcome Labor Day

Labor Day is more than just the unofficial end of summer and an extra day for grilling hot dogs.

The day has been set aside to honor the sacrifices and social and economic gains of the American worker. It has been an official holiday since 1887, which was actually before many important gains for workers were implemented by law. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act was not implemented until 1938. This Act put minimum wage in place and gave workers the right to be paid for overtime. All states must adhere to the minimum protections provided by this law; some states have better protections for workers. (Virginia isn't one of them.)

Unions played a big part in these gains for employees. Thanks to unions, workers have a 40-hour work week, children aren't slaves, and women (supposedly) have equal opportunity. Some workers also have retirement pensions. Many of the good things in life are the results of unionized labor.

My husband has long been a member of Local 1132, which is the Roanoke chapter of the IAFF (International Association of Fire Fighters). For a short while I was a member of the National Writers Union.

Business owners may not agree, but I think a happy and contented workforce is much more productive than a stressed-out, underpaid and overworked one. When you take a horse out and beat it and work it into a lather, eventually the thing either falls down dead or rears up and kicks the daylights out of you, and that is where we are in the workforce these days. Some business owners are so busy gulping up profits that they are ignoring the health, happiness, and humanity of their workers.

We need more unions and better worker protections. This is not a popular stance in my wildly Republican community, but anyone who reviews their history and thinks about what is going on must realize that without union organizing we would not be the country we are today. We would not have had the strong workforce and middle-class standards we have enjoyed for the last 70 years. It is these gains that business and corporate owners are attempting to undermine, and doing so successfully. It will not lead to good things for all but instead has lead to great things for a few and lesser things for the rest. Life isn't fair, I'm told, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be.

Many people died so that we could have better lives. For example, in 1886, the Haymarket Riot broke out, a conflict in Chicago between workers and business owners. The workers wanted an 8-hour work day; business owners wanted to keep beating that horse. Forty thousand workers walked off their jobs. At the McCormick Reaper factory, violence lead police to kill six workers. The next day at a demonstration, police advanced on a crowd and three civilians and seven police officers died (some from friendly fire). Later, four of the leaders of the strike movement were hanged, the result of a trail later found to be illegal.

In 1894, during the Pullman strike, the US government sent out federal Marshalls and more than 12,000 Army soldiers to force striking workers off the tracks so that the railroads would resume running. The strike was the result of a severe cut in wages for workers at Pullman. The workers organized under the American Railway Union. The Union members refused to run trains that pulled Pullman cars. During the strike, 30 workers were killed.

In 1911, more than 146 people - mostly women and immigrants - died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City. After this tragedy, many changes in Labor Laws took place to ensure that doors were chained shut and that sprinklers and other fire-safety measures were in place.

There are reasons for the rules and regulations that have been implemented. Yes, some of them may be out of date or ill-conceived, but that doesn't mean you throw out all the rules simply because one or two doesn't work anymore. It means you update and you make positive, healthy changes.

Let's all work to move workers forward, not backwards, shall we?

From Sunday Stealing

Q. Have you ever said you would never love again?

A. No. But I have said I would never marry again.

Q. Have you heard a song today that reminds you of somebody?

A. Yes. The song was The Wayward Wind as sung by Anne Murray. The song always reminds me of my father. You can hear the song on youtube here at this link.

Q. Do you apologize first?

A. I'm sorry, what? Yes.

Q. Has someone made a promise to you and broke it?

A. Yes. Dirty rotten rat.

Q. Have you ever won a lot of money in a slot machine? How much?

A. I have never won a lot of money at anything. And I have never played slots.

Q. Do you watch sport on TV even though you aren’t a sporty person yourself?

A. Sometimes. I have been known to watch NASCAR racing, ice skating, and occasionally women's tennis.

Q. Do you eat / drink at your computer?

A. Yes. I always have a glass of water at the computer. I have, on occasion, spilled it all over the keyboard. Candy bars, potato chips, and other items also somehow sometimes find their way into my office. They apparently grow legs and walk right in here and jump into my desk drawer.

Q. How much do you overeat at special occasions? (Birthdays, Christmas, etc.).

A. A lot. I have no will power when it comes to dark chocolate covered cherries.

Q. Do you require glasses / contacts to see properly? If so, which do you use?

A. Glasses.

Q. When you hear your voice back on a recording, do you think it sounds awful?

A. Yes. I sound like a witch trapped in a hollow ol' stump.

Q. When was the last time you got the hiccups?

A. I don't recall.

Q. If you had to, which record would you go into Guinness World Records for?

A. Writing the world's longest sentence.

Q. The last sweet thing you ate: What was it?

A. A banana.

Q. Do you have a middle name?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you find it embarrassing?

A. I assuming you are referring to the middle name. No, I do not find it embarrassing.

Doe in Shadow

Fincastle Frolic

Last Friday, August 23, the Town of Fincastle hosted something they called the "Fincastle Frolic." It was basically an open house of about 15 businesses, some historic sites, and the county courthouse.

 

I estimate about 200 people or so turned out.

 

 

This is my friend Rena, who works at the library. The library stayed open and she was enjoying the guitar player.

 

They served refreshments. I'm a big library supporter and I baked and supplied some of those cookies.

 

 

Mr. Hearn played his guitar and sang songs.

 

 

 

Fincastle is a very lovely little town.

 

 

It was a beautiful evening and folks seemed to enjoy strolling the streets.

 

 

Musicians played at various locations, adding to the fun.

 

 

My friend Mary Beth, who is an acupuncturist, and her daughter.

 

The Sunshine House had children's activities.

 

 

My friend Lee, who runs the Sunshine House.

 

 

 

The Fincastle Herald office. The fellow on the right is the editor, Ed. Yes, that is really his name. Ed the editor.

 

 

 

My friend Peggy, one of the town's elegant ladies.

 

 

Young street musicians. The girl in the black hair is the daughter of my friend Cathy.

 

 

A shot of the street. That's Cathy on the right, in black and with a camera.

 

 

Balloons marked the entrance to the courthouse, where documents signed by illustrious national founders such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were on display.

 

 

I thought it was a nice little event, and it was good to see folks wandering about the town. Generally Fincastle rolls up the sidewalks at 6 p.m. and the town stands empty.

Thursday Thirteen

1. Having finally had the major portion of the bathroom project completed, I now must move on to things like painting the walls, buying new rugs and towels, etc., in order to make it all lovely.

2. I plan to repaint the walls some kind of white; the bedroom is painted in a white called "moonshine" and I think I am going to use the same thing in the bathroom. Right now the walls are a faded pink.

3. The color will come from towels and rugs; I am in search of rose-colored accents now. Hot pink is in, though, so a delicate rose color is difficult to find in my local stores. However, I might change my mind and go with deep red or something ... one never knows.

4. While we had this big project going on indoors, we also are continuing our big project outdoors. The water and fence project has now moved to the other half of the farm. This project involves digging 1.5 miles of water line and installing more than three miles of fencing. To be honest, I am not involved in this at all, except for writing checks to pay for things like fence posts and wire. I'm the supervisor.

5. My other indoor project is to rid the house of clutter. After living here for 27 years, there is stuff in every crook and cranny.

6. Over the years I have tried all sorts of methods to organize and declutter. Few of them work.

7. One of my favorite declutter hints involves using dishwashing tubs, the kind that cost about $1.50. You fill them with stuff and use them in places like the cabinet under the bathroom sink. That way you have all the extra shampoo in one tub, medical supplies in one place, etc. etc. It works well until somebody starts tossing stuff willie-nillie into the cabinet.

8. I bet I have tried every shoe holder known to man. The kind that are just two bars never work; the shoes fall off. My solution has been clothes baskets - I pile shoes in clothes baskets in the floor of the closet. Someone asked me if that wasn't hard on my shoes, but honestly they don't seem to mind.

9. I took six grocery bags full of books to the library as part of my decluttering efforts. They will sell them at their book sale or maybe add them to the stacks. They were mostly novels as I have a harder time getting rid of nonfiction.

10. I cleaned out my plastic containers, too, and sent a 30-gallon trash bag full out to the garage for my husband to go through. He said he needed some small containers to put nuts and bolts and things in. What he doesn't use will be recycled.

11. I understand that people who move around a lot tend to have less stuff. It's probably a good idea to have less stuff. It sure does accumulate. Two years ago I read a book that suggested tossing 50 things; I think I made it up to 22 or so before I gave up.

12. Between doing stuff and having stuff, sometimes I think there isn't enough time to just be. You know. Just be a human being, not a human doing. Or maybe a human having.

13. I will never be one of those people who keep a constantly neat desk. But I sure would like to be.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 309th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.