Tax Cuts

I truly wonder what world the politicians live in.

It isn't one recognizable to any of my friends.

When I ask them, "Will this tax rebate help you?" the answer is a resounding no.

Offering a tax rebate implies that paying taxes are the reason we're in a recession.

It is not the reason.

This article (a version was in The Roanoke Times today; this one is from MSNBC) notes that:

Rising food and fuel prices, falling interest rates and screeching declines in
worldwide stock markets have ... thousands of other retirees paring spending to
levels some haven't seen in decades, forgoing dinners out, cutting back on
groceries and canceling plans to visit grandchildren.

It isn't just retirees who are driving less, eating out less, and staying in more. It's practically everyone who makes less than $100,000 a year. And that is most people I know.

It is the economy, stupid. And the economy is in distress because of the focus on "letting the market rule," i.e., capitalism, and because of deregulation. Because we focus on businesses and money, not people.

It is uncapped rising costs of electricity, gasoline, milk, bread, hamburger, etc. that is the problem, combined with no increase in wages for the majority of people. And those wages that are adjusted are not keeping up with the rate of the rising costs.

It is the lack of unity among the workers and the inability of people to do anything more than think for themselves because they are so scared that they will lose what little bit they have.

When you start messing with the basics, you hurt people. People are hurting.

Our elected rulers are over their heads, every last one of them, from the federal government down. They are so out of touch with the America I live in, anyway, that they may as well live on Mars.

Locally, the General Assembly had a fracas and Salem's lead elected ruler made this comment:

Democrats "are leading us to unionization, strikes of public employees, abolishment of the right-to-work law and, ultimately, the demise of Virginia as one of the best states in the union in which to do business."

Having a great state "in which to do business" is all well and good, but frankly I would rather live in a great state - and a great nation - that is a good place for people to live.

Thursday Thirteen

The 13 things I want to do before I am 50:

1. Hike to McAfee's Knob. This isn't as easy as it sounds; I am out of shape in spite of my hour-long exercise in the morning. Plus I have a problem with my balance and can get motion sickness when I am in high places, like atop mountains. And mountains make my ears hurt. Another problem is I don't have anyone to walk with me and I will not go alone.

2. Take a two or three week vacation and drive to California and back. I did this with my parents when I was 12. My husband has never seen the Grand Canyon and I would like for us to make this trip one day.

3. Visit Canada. Just because I've never been. That requires a passport now, doesn't it?

4. Write (and hopefully publish) a novel. This means applying bottom to seat and getting to work.

5. Write (and hopefully publish) a nonfiction book. See #4.

6. Self-publish a book of poetry. I have poems and could probably do this now, except I am afraid to.

7. Create a photo book about my county.

8. Learn how to eat properly.

9. Lose weight and be the healthiest I've ever been. I'd like to do that *this* year.

10. Build an addition on to the house. We could use just one more room. Maybe a nice sun room where I could put the treadmill and the exercise bike and get them out of the living room.

11. Buy a hybrid car. This one may have to wait longer but I think it will depend on what happens with the gas prices and if the government ever smartens up and offers financial incentives for people to really "go green." Right now I can't afford a new car. I suppose if I write and sell those books...

12. Move my office from home to ... someplace else. Working from home is not a bad thing, and I don't want to work for someone else, but I think an office away from home has the potential to make me more productive in some ways. Plus I wouldn't have a refrigerator there. Or washing machines. Or any of the other million things that can distract me while I work from home. Of course, I have to be making enough money to warrant paying rent someplace.

13. Write my 2,000th blog entry. Which may or may not be a Thursday Thirteen.

Roanoke Writer's Conference

There is a writer's conference this Saturday at the Jefferson Center.

I am going. Will I see any of my fellow bloggers there?

It actually begins Friday night with a speech by Sharon McCrumb, but I do not plan to attend that at present.

Saturday is when the lectures and classes and things are happening.

The schedule has a line up of local writers besides Sharon McCrumb - Dan Smith, Kurt Rheinheimer, Ralph Barrier, Sarah Cox and others. Many are affiliated with the Blue Ridge Business Journal, I note.

The classes are:

The Short Essay, Writing Local Histories, Blogging, Short Fiction, Writing for the Theater, What Magazine Editors Want, Using Children’s Stories to Make Your Point, Writing What You Know, The Radio Essay, Writing About Country People, [as opposed to what? People are people... aren't they? I'm just sayin'... this will probably be one of the classes I attend].

Also, Writing About Your Family, Freelance Writing in This Region, The Memoir, Writing Persuasively and Getting Feedback, Emphasizing Your Point with Stories, Writing for Children, Finding Stories in Your Back Yard, Writing About Sports and Selling It,How a Book Store Works, Tell it Slant; Using Historical Events in Fictional Works, The Basics of Poetry, Writing Opinion, and Using the Internet for Research.

I am a little sorry to see that none of the courses will be repeated. If you miss it the first go-round, you're out of luck. Obviously you can't be everywhere at once.

I am a excited about going and I am hoping to see some people I haven't in a while. I also hope to meet new people. Who knows, maybe I will make a good connection for my freelancing. Or renew a connection I've lost or forgotten.

If you're going and want to meet up or at least say hello in the hallway, drop me a note. I'd sure like to shake your hand.

Wishes

Some days when I am having trouble thinking, I take a break by playing Mahjong at shockwave.com. I find the rhythm of seeking out the matching tiles soothing enough to give my mind a chance to refocus.

When I return to my work, I usually resolve whatever the problem was, whether that was a lead to a story, some way to end it, or whether or not it needed a sidebar.

The game has a fortune aspect to it. When you open it up, it gives you a little rhyme.

This is what it said to me on December 30, 2007:


Daily Fortune

If you would use the talent
Fate has given you to write
You'd win success in prose or verse
in serious themes or light.

A long delayed package of value will shortly come to you.

You'll get your wish, sure.

I kept it because it was so close to the end of the year and I was doing much soul-searching about my life and particularly my writing career. And because I knew at some point I would write this particular blog entry.

Today it says:

Appearances to you seem good
and fortune more than kind
but you could win both wealth and fame
if you were not so blind.

You will receive unjust treatment from a near relative.

You may get your wish later on.

I do not pay particular attention to things like this. It is like reading your horoscope - it is what it is and it's what you make of it. But I sometimes fear such ditties can become subconscious self-fulfilling prophesies.

Take today's comment about the relative thing. I have been busy and haven't even thought about my relatives, aside from my husband. But I read that and thought, I should call my brother.

And of course if I were to do so, which I am not, I could end up feeling slighted or hurt because he tends to have that effect on me.

So I would have made that come true.

The last line always has something about a wish. You might get it, you won't get it, you will get it.

The trouble is, I never know what it is I have wished for. There are days when I look at those lines and I think, what DO I wish for?

Apparently the answer is nothing concrete. I do not wish for specifics. Instead I have vague notions of things I'd like to correct.

So I am wondering, what is it people wish for? What do you wish for? Are your wishes specific? Do they ever come true?

If I make a wish, can I make it come true?

Books: The Schwarzbein Principle

The Schwarzbein Principle
By Diana Schwarzbein, MD & Nancy Deville
Copyright 1999
350 pages

I read this book on a recommendation from Colleen at Loose Leaf Notes in one of my comments and on a recommendation from a non-blogging friend.

I received a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble for Christmas and used it to buy this book and a follow-up to it called The Program. I have not yet read that book.

This book makes a lot of sense, more than most I have read, and I actually understood it. I generally cannot comprehend diet books - some brain defect or something has them leaving me going huh? every time I read one.

But I understood this one. The diet involved is very similar to Atkins ... but not. The focus is on fewer carbs and more protein. Women should have 60 grams of protein, which I thought was a lot.

I don't eat a lot of meat so I suspect this is part of my problem. I went on a low-fat diet this summer at the behest of my doctor and gained 10 pounds. It was like an all-carb diet. The weight gain halted when I stopped dieting and just started eating whatever I wanted, but now I need to lose that weight plus the rest I was trying to lose to begin with.

I will continue to read The Program and in the meantime I will make changes to my diet and see what happens. I am pretty sure if I'd just stop drinking soda it would make a difference, and many days I don't drink soda, but some days I drink as a many as three. Those are not often, though, and generally indicative of a *really* bad day. And they're caffeine free sodas, at that. Just not sugar free.

I have already recommended this book to several people. Even if I don't follow the diet, and I hope to, this is a good book to read if you're interested in your health.

4.5 stars

In the Spotlight

I thought I'd mention some of the bloggers I enjoy reading.

Check them out!

Ms. Eleneaous has returned after nearly a month's absence. Today she writes about her experience with a new computer that only had a two-month life span. A few days ago she had a brilliant entry about freelance writing.

Becky at Peevish Pen writes often about writing, poetry, farm life, etc. She and Ms. E. are two of four bloggers I have met in person.

The other two are Tom at Creativity blog, who also recently started posting again, and Fleitz at the Roanoke Firefighters blog. Tom writes about life, spirituality and takes good pictures and poetry; Firefleitz writes about the fire department. I met Tom at a council meeting; he may not even remember. I met Firefleitz when I picked up a copy of his book, Firefighting in Roanoke, as a present for my husband. He probably doesn't remember that either.

Jeff at Jefferson Street Realist posts about life in Roanoke. Today it looks like he's burning up the airwaves (blogwaves?) with words about music.

When I started seeking out the work of other area bloggers, one of the first I found was Colleen's wit and poetry over at Loose Leaf Notes. She has such enthusiasm about life that I always leave her site with a smile on my face.

Some newcomers to my must-read list (well, in the last six months or so, so they're not that new) are June at Spatter, and Beth at Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl.

June, as best I can tell, lives in both Floyd County and in Florida. She writes great entries about a myriad of things - check our her January 19 entry about Huckabee for intriguing thoughts on that political candidate. She also does something she calls a Friday Fact. They are always interesting reading. Beth has been absent for a while but her January 14 entry explains that she is in the process of moving/buying/selling, etc., and all that entails.

If I had an award thingy I would offer it to each of these bloggers, but I don't. I hope you enjoy them all as much as I.

The others on my list on the right are also worthy of a mention - unfortunately, I've run out of time! Do take a look at their work sometime.

Face to Face

Yesterday my nephew, who is 16, had major surgery.

The family waited in the waiting room. Parents bit their nails, grandparents paced, the aunt and uncle (that's me and my husband) did our best to fetch waters and ease tension.

About an hour before the boy was expected to awaken in the recovery room, the waiting room suddenly swelled with an influx of teenagers. School was out Friday for teacher's workday and these youth were my nephew's friends.

There were seven of them. The boys were lanky and tall; my nephew's best friend towered over me as he stood there fresh-faced with a curly mop of red hair. Two gum-smacking girls, each looking pretty much like they had recently woke up, trailed along. Another boy had a buzz cut and proclaimed the loss of his long hair the best thing he'd ever had happen as he tousled the hair of the youngest nephew (that one sat with the earphones to his iPod firmly in place).

The young people greeted the family with perfunctory nods, except for the best friend who very politely made conversation and even shook hands. The aunt and uncle, whom they did not know, and the grandparents, were basically ignored after every one nodded and said hello. At least they spoke.

The noise level in the waiting room rose exponentially with their entrance, and it wasn't long before the grandparents retreated to the safety and relative quiet of a restaurant. (They had their cellphones; we could call them when they could see the boy.)

And so it was that I, a woman with no children who does not spend a lot of time around youth in gaggles or large numbers, found out that young people do not talk to one another anymore.

To my amazement, these youth carried on conversations with one another ... through their cellphones. Even though they were sitting together, side by side, thighs practically touching. They were talking and chattering like birds awaiting dinner, and the entire time their thumbs were flying across the face of their phones. Occasionally the verbiage was interrupted by a song as someone received a call.

But they were not speaking to one another in person. Or so it seemed. They were talking into their phones and texting and occasionally slapping their neighbor on the shoulder, but I witnessed no real conversation between any of the young people who were actually standing in the same room.

For the entire hour, this was the way it was. They communicated through devices. Sometimes they took pictures of one another, showed them around, and laughed.

Finally my sister-in-law went back to check on her son, having been told he was awake. Shortly thereafter, his best friend answered a little "tweedle dee dee" noise on his phone. "E. says for us to go to lunch; he can't have us all in there yet because he is not in his room," the boy announced.

My husband and I looked at each other, astonished.

My sister-in-law returned. "E. wants his cell phone," she said, reaching into her bag. "He grabbed mine as soon as I entered the room."

I am pretty sure his cell phone has not left his hands since.

I am wondering what these young people do when they actually have to speak to a person... in person. Do they put their hands in their pockets and have their fingers moving the entire time as they talk, as if using those phones?

Cellphones, it seems, have turned into mini-computers, allowing the young people to communicate in this rather different way. Is this bad? Is this good?

Beats me. I just use my cellphone to call home to see if I need to buy bread. I still use it... as a phone.

The Past in Pictures

If you're interested in history, check out shots of life in the early 1900s at http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

A friend pointed those out to me. Thanks!

If you look, there are over 170 pages of pictures; be prepared to spend some time looking at them. They are fascinating.

Thursday Thirteen: Snow

1.

2. We have several inches of snow. Not the first snow of this winter, which spans the man-made calendar, and not really the first snow of 2008 (because a squall earlier in the week actually covered the ground), but definitely the nicest snow so far.

3.

4. The best thing about snow is it's like a free day. It means staying home from work (for some folks, anyway), and drinking hot chocolate while you read a book or play with the kids

5.

6. It could mean snuggling with your sugar pie, too, if you're lucky enough to have one!

7.

8. Snow has lots of nutrients in it; it is very good for the grass and fields. My husband says it is like getting a free load of nitrogen for the soil.

9. Snow always makes me feel like the world has changed, and for the better.

10. We could get four or more inches of snow before it ends.

11. I keep looking out the window instead of working; I love to watch snow fall.

12. The snow will help a lot with the drought.

13. My favorite poem about snow is Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.

A Good Day for Color

Just a reminder of things to come.

Miscellaneous Media

My husband likes to laugh. He loves Comedy Central and he enjoys watching comedians and funny movies. When we first started dating, he was constantly quoting lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I had to watch the movie to see what he was talking about.

These days, he is fascinated with Jeff Dunham. Jeff is a ventriloquist and comic. You can view some of his skits on his website here.

I just wanted to point the ventriloquist out in case someone hasn't seen him. Some of his work is a little irreverent. I like his character Peanut the best. You can find more of his stuff on youtube.com if you care to look.

Moving on.

I have seen two movies in the past two months. While not a record, it is close. We don't get to the theater often. We both have a thing about paying $7.75 for a small soft drink and a bottle of water. We can stay at home and drink out of the tap for free.

Anyway, I saw The Golden Compass in December. I was disappointed in the movie because it could have been so much more. It had the potential to have the scope and depth of Lord of the Rings, but it did not. I think it failed the book. Philip Pullman's vision was not realized. I found the lead character unappealing and I never felt I knew her or her motivations. Others have said otherwise, of course.

Sunday we saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets. I enjoyed this film, probably because I took no expectations into the theater with me. I enjoyed the first movie, too. I love history and I love mystery so these movies work well for me.

For Christmas, I received all but one of the remaining seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I was missing. Buffy was a show I enjoyed but until this year I did not see the seasons beyond Season 4. I thought overall the series ended better than Xena: Warrior Princess, which is the only other set of DVDs for which I have the entire show.

After the New Year I ordered the last missing Buffy season, and while I was at it, I ordered the first season of Cagney and Lacey.

If you're seeing a pattern as to the kinds of TV I watch, well, then you know why I don't watch TV much anymore. You rarely see well-produced and written shows these days about strong women who overcome the odds and move forward with their lives. Apparently those women have turned into ... well, I watch so little TV these days I don't even have anything to compare them to.

The only show I make any effort to watch now is Ghost Whisperer and while Melinda is an interesting character she is not in the same league as Buffy, that's for sure. I attempted the new Bionic Woman and it didn't do it for me - she was just a puppet, not a thinking woman.

Other shows that I used to watch include La Femme Nikita, Murphy Brown, and Designing Women. I even liked Charlie's Angels, the (real) Bionic Woman, and Wonder Woman when I was (much) younger.

I am always up to checking out a show, so you if know of something that might fit the "strong woman" bill, let me know. I rather miss knowing that on X night of the week, there will be good TV.

In the meantime, I have this big pile of books... and I will continue to read.

Days Like These

I have in my house stacks of things I have written. Hidden in the closet are journals that I am pretty sure I need to throw away. They are epistles of ire and wrath and sorrow. They will do no one any good if they are read.

Yet I cannot bring myself to toss them without looking at them, in case there is some jewel of a line stuck in amongst the tirades. And since I haven't that kind of time, they don't get tossed.

I thought today to post a poem, so I looked through my "poetry" folder on my computer. Is this all there is? I wondered as I glanced at the files. It is all that is on the computer, anyway. But there is a file labeled "poetry" full of words - words I know I will never publish and which will never see the light of day unless I look at them - in the filing cabinet. A hard copy of my amateur efforts to write like the masters, these poems are bittersweet and pretty terrible. The better poems are on the computer, and there are not many of those.

The folder needs to be thrown away; all of those words, once agonized over, will never lead to anything meaningful. And yet I cannot bring myself to toss it away.

What is this need, this desire to hang on to these little scraps of soul? I don't need them, for sure. I am no longer that person. That person has grown up, and turned into ... well, me. I could no more write the words I wrote in 1988 as the person in 1988 could write these words today. Time has bent forward, and I have gone with it, growing, changing, creating and moving deeper in and then out again. Ebbing, flowing, like a tide trapped by the beams of the moon, I move on.

It's like a dance with myself - a step forward, a half-step back. I gain ground, sometimes in large strides, only to look backwards at where I have been. I cannot retrace my steps. I cannot go backwards. I could end up in the same place but the journey would change me.

The pond water lies calm, but toss in a pebble, and it churns. The water may grow smooth again, but it is changed forever.* A journal may hold words that were true at the time, but are they true today, or has change made them lies?




*I swiped that bit about the pond from the last scene of a Xena: Warrior Princess episode, Dreamworker.

When You Grow Up

Thirty-five years ago, when adults asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up," my answers were as varied as the days of the week.

I like rocks, so I wanted to be a geologist. I had a collection of shiny stones, culled from various rocks around my parents' farm.

I like history and digging in the dirt, so I wanted to be an archaeologist. I envisioned myself discovering long-forgotten cultures. Maybe even a spaceship to prove we were seeded.

On other days I wanted to be a forester, a teacher, an astronaut, and an adventurer. At one point I wanted to travel back and forth across the Bermuda Triangle until I disappeared, so I could solve the mystery.

Mostly I wanted to be a writer. I remember, distinctly, telling my mother that I would one day grow up to write for the local weekly newspaper. I also wanted to write a series of books like Carolyn Keene. I wanted to create my own Nancy Drew, a hip girl character who would save the world. I wanted to write beautiful poetry that would move the world.

I did not want to be a secretary, which was my mother's job, nor did I want to be a business person, which was my father's job. My mother made being a secretary sound like the most miserable thing a human being could accomplish, and my father made being a business person sound so unscrupulous that it wasn't for me.

However, I tried both; I was a purchasing agent for a business in Roanoke for about two years before I gave that up. I couldn't deal with the business climate - too much cheating, too much sexual harassment, too much not-being-paid-the-same-as-the-men. I couldn't abide it.

Then I was a legal secretary, and I worked in that for about 10 years (off and on). Like the corporate world, there was too much cheating, too much sexual harassment, too much not-being-paid-the-same-as-the men. I could only abide it for a decade.

I started writing as a stringer for the local newspaper in 1984. My first published article was about making apple butter. A year later, I was on staff part-time. Eventually I returned to secretarial work, but remained a stringer.

It is writing that I love. Writing has allowed me, vicariously, to be all the things I wanted to be growing up.

A forester? I can't tell you how many articles I've written about the National Forest.

An archaeologist? How many articles about the history of my county and its towns have I written? More than I can count.

A geologist? There are quarry proposals, mining businesses ... it's not quite the same as gathering shiny rocks, but I'm there.

An astronaut? I've been up in a hot air balloon - that was about as high as I really wanted to go.

A teacher? What are my articles, but ways to teach the public about what is going on in their government? I see it first and foremost as teaching and explaining. It is much more than reporting to me.

So maybe I didn't travel the Bermuda Triangle, but I have solved some of the riddles of county government for fellow citizens. I'm not so sure it's not the same thing.

This is my 500th post on this blog. When I began it in August 2006, I didn't know what it would be or why I was writing it. I still don't, but I am okay with that. My blog has turned into a depository for my creativity, someplace to try out new things, to think different thoughts. It is a work in progress; it is growing, and it will continue to grow. Do we ever really grow up, after all?

Mostly my blog has been a place to meet people who think similarly, who love life and nature and one another, who find grace in the world around them and see through eyes that somehow veil some of the harshness of the world. Making friends has been an unexpected gift.

I am grateful and humbled to be read by anyone. I hope that this journey has been and will continue to be, if not an inspiration, at least something that makes you, my gentle reader, think every now and again.

Whoever you are, I wish upon you many blessings, today and every day. I wish for peace for us all, for kindness for man and animal alike, for good times and laughter. May joy find you, and may you hold it close for many days to come.

Alice Tells Time

When I was five or six, my parents gave me a watch for my birthday. It was an Alice in Wonderland watch, and it came with this little statue.

The watch had a blue wrist band. I recall it as being self-winding and decorated only with the word "Alice" delicately written on the face, but I could be wrong. I can't find another like it on the Internet, although I did find this:



My watch, I am sure, did not have Alice on the face of it. This photo claims to be from a 1950s set, but I received mine in 1968 or 1969. If you look closely you can see a difference in the statues - the flowers, for instance. Although there is not a lot of difference.

I remember the watch with great fondness. I think it wore it until I was in high school. Then I started wearing Waltham watches, always with a stretch band, always in silver and gold. I scratched my best watch and replaced it with another Waltham that I really liked, one with moons and stars. That was a present to myself when I graduated from college.

I lost that watch when the jeweler went to replace the battery and broke the back of it. He gave me another Waltham, but it was unlike the one I had, and he kept the old one. I later learned Waltham no longer made that design.

These days I wear a Timex, but I would like to go back to a Waltham, I think, just for nostalgia's sake. Only they don't make anything now I really want to wear.

I have a thing for clocks and am never without a watch. I have clocks in every room of the house - some rooms have more than one. I like cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks - most any kind of clock.

It is important to me to know what time it is, although I don't know why. I am always early or on time, and if I am late you'd better believe something came up.

My Alice statue has a place of honor in my curio cabinet. She is one of the first items you see when you look in there. She has little value, but she means a lot to me.

For the Birds

Thursday as the rains moved in, my house was suddenly inundated with birds. They were everywhere.

Robins bathed in a puddle and listened for worms in the front yard.



These yellow bellied birds with heads like Blue Jays (there were Blue Jays, too, only they did not pose for a photo) joined the robins for a bath. I don't know what these birds are; I couldn't find them in my Audubon guide.




The trees came to life with starlings; their raucous noise filled the air as they twittered and preened.


Their ranks filled the field across the driveway.

Books: Sights Unseen

Sights Unseen
By Kaye Gibbons
Copyright 1995
Abridged Audiobook
Read by the author

Mother is manic depressive. Daughter grows up in the 1960s with ill mother. Mother goes on a wild spree with vehicle, crashes into a woman. Mother is sent to Duke for electric shock treatments. Mother returns a changed woman. Daughter finally has a mother.

That pretty much sums up this book, which is a quiet and thoughtful reminiscence about how difficult it is to be a child when your parents can't be parents because of their own issues. Maggie Barnes is a mother suffering terribly, but the family suffers too, also terribly. As with most families, there are other players - Pearl, a helpful and loving maid who looks after the two children, Mr. Barnes, the father-in-law who is overbearing and plain mean, the father, who is madly in love with his wife despite her illness.

It was rather sad listening but the book moved me, in part because I identified with some of it.

3 stars

Thursday Thirteen

Thursday Thirteen

Good things about the New Year (in no particular order)

1. It's a new year! A clean slate. You get to start all over.

2. Spring is around the corner (although with the weather this week you'd think it here already).

3. It could snow! And that will help with the drought.

4. It's a time for reflection on the past. Think about the good things.

5. It's a time for looking forward to the future. What do you expect? How will you make it happen?

6. You get to put a new date on your checks. No, not 1998...

7. Everything old is new again. What will be the fashion this year - retro 1968 ... or?

8. I have new clothes from Christmas to wear.

9. I have non-alcoholic cider in the refrigerator to drink still (left over from New Year's celebrating).

10 Hope for change in the political scene. A new face in the White House. New legislators.

11 I celebrate 25 years of marriage. A quarter century of being married to a wonderful man whom I love with everything I have.

12 I turn 45 this year! Almost a half-century of living. The things I have seen! The places I've been!

13 And the good things about this year for you????

Sleepwalking

I have slept like it's spring for the last several days. Here we are in early January, delighting in days of 65 and 70 degree weather. The plants and trees must be wondering what is going on.

My nights have been filled with much tossing and turning. The bed clothes, still heavy for fear of winter, have been burdensome and warm. The air has been full of something akin to wonder and desperation; too humid for this time of year. I feel the wrongness of the season in my chest.

Last night I fell asleep early as I tried to rid myself of a raging headache. My dreams were vivid and grandiose - a friend murdered someone, and then covered up the crime as if it happened 500 years ago. She left clues in mortar and behind walls which I somehow tore down in a search for the truth. There was a foot race going on at the same time and I recall flashes of bright colors, neon green and orange and so on. I remember blinding distractions.

When I woke, I was not in my tangled bed, but in another room of the house. My feet were shod with Crocs, which I now use for house shoes because of my heel spur. How did I get here? I wondered. You've been sleepwalking, came the inner reply.

I have not moved about the house in my sleep for many years (or at least, not that I am aware of). This morning I wondered if it was the headache, or the lack of supper, or the wrong combination of vitamins on an empty stomach.

But I think it was none of that. I think instead it was the weather, this too-warm air that is making the forsythia bud two months ahead of its time. I think it was the force of a front moving in, this balance between hot and cold that brings the winds and forces clouds to race across the sky like the breath of God is chasing after them. I walked without awareness because the earth, so good and true and strong, trembled with change. I felt the pull, the itch, the urge, to reach up and move in anticipation of the difference, and in my sleep, with my conscience quieted, I simply got up to dance.

Son of the Shadows

Son of the Shadows
by Juliet Marillier
Copyright 2001
590 pages

This is the second book in the Sevenwaters Trilogy; the first I wrote about here.

In this second book we meet the daughter of Sorcha, the heroine of book one. Her name is Liadan and she is very much like her mother. However, she is a bit more selfish and passionate than Sorcha.

She lives at Sevenwaters with her parents, a twin brother, a sister, and an uncle. Her sister commits a mortal sin and is sent away to wed in a strategic alliance. Liadan is kidnapped and asked to heal a brigand. During her captivity she falls in love with the leader. When he learns who she is, he is repulsed because of some history. She returns home and is with child.

Unlike her sister, she is not ostracized and her demands, which are to remain unwed, are met. The Fairy Folk visit her and tell her to raise the child in the forest to fulfill a prophecy.

Bran, the child's father, learns he is a daddy. He is in love with Liadan but not ready to live a law-abiding life.

Eventually he is captured and Liadan saves him. They figure out their destiny.

Of course the book is much more complicated than that and the climax is very intriguing. The book probably stands on its own but I think is more poignant for the reader if the first book has also been read.

3.5 stars

Books: Her Father's House

Her Father's House
by Belva Plain
Read by Karen White
10 1 1/2 hour tapes
Copyright 2002

I enjoy Belva Plain's work and have for many years. This book holds up to her high standards, although it took it a very long time to get to the heart of the story. There was more back story than anything, I suppose, so much so that what happened before became the real story.

Donald Wolfe, a hotshot lawyer, meets Lillian, a beauty. She is also a philander and shallow. Eventually they divorce, but not before Lillian is pregnant. She remarries almost immediately (always moving up the financial and fame ladder). Their child, Bettina (aka Tina, Cookie, and later, Laura), is cared for by a nurse, Maria, who reports to Donald that his ex is having affairs and neglecting their daughter. When she decides to leave her husband and join another man in France, Donald decides he doesn't want his daughter to go that far from him.

So he kidnaps her and flees. He changes his name to Jim Fuller and Bettina becomes Laura. He meets a family in Georgia and becomes a farm overseer. The farmer dies and he marries the wife and takes over the farm. This is all done in love and compassion, etc., it's not for money. Laura is raised with love and care and it's a good life.

She grows up alongside her stepbrother, Rick. After she goes to college, she meets Gil, a law student who later becomes a lawyer. He is acquainted with the story of Donald Wolfe - apparently not many great lawyers just run off and leave a career. Eventually he figures out who Jim/Donald is and spills the secret.

Laura then must deal with the truth and the aftermath, which could have dire consequences for her father and their relationship.

4 stars