Signs of Spring

Leaf buds on my roses!



O jaunty forsythia, send forth thy golden blooms!



Open, daffodil, herald of spring!



Grow strong, mighty iris, my favorite spring bloom!



Come forth, my mums! I await your shower of yellow in my whisky barrel!



Ah, dryland cress! An early salad green, for those brave enough to try it.

Thursday Thirteen

Today, it's a random 13!

1. They really do use golden shovels when they have groundbreakings. I took this picture at the Lewis-Gale Imaging Center ceremonial groundbreaking on Tuesday at Daleville Town Center. (The shovels are just spray painted! They aren't really golden.)

2. Being an INTJ makes me the among the "most independent personalities," according to the Myers Briggs Indicator. Last night I had my husband take an online test and he is an ISTJ, making him the "most responsible" of personalities.

3. A few of the cactus seeds I planted a while back are sprouting!

4. The black swan is still here!









5. This herd of deer was in the front yard on Monday.










6. I am of the opinion that all of the cuts to education funding in Virginia are a red herring. What is really going on is this: the politicians in control of the money are trying to send the tax dollars to private and charter schools. Why else pass all of these bills about creating private and charter schools? It's a privatization effort, another charge by the politicians to take tax dollars and put them in the hands of their cronies. Nice work, fellas.

7. It's Sunshine Week. No, not the sunbeam kind. The Freedom of Information Act kind. Why should you care? Because without it, the politicians would have to be less creative in their crass sneakiness; they could just go behind close doors, smoke a cigar, and rob you blind without blinking an eye. Now they at least have to answer a few questions before they take your money and turn it over to the corporations.

8. I want Virginia to be the best state for people, not the best state for business. The two should not be opposed, actually, but they are. I don't see why the best state for business cannot also be the best state for people. Don't happy people make better workers?

9. This rainbow put in an appearance last Saturday. We were out for a drive and I had husband stop the car and shut it off so I could take a picture.



10. The last book I listened to on tape was Sea Glass, by Anita Shreve.

11. Today I am going to a "tweet up." However, I have not made the first "tweet" and don't know that I ever will. I am having trouble seeing the point of it.

12. I don't have a favorite book or a favorite song. I read a lot of different genre and I listen to different types of music. There are some I prefer over others but I am willing to try almost anything.

13. My husband is my greatest gift ever. He is a special man.

Lots of people play Thursday Thirteen. You can read about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here. This is number 131!

INTJ

According to the testing, I'm an INTJ in Myers Briggs. By one little point.

I wrote yesterday about my anticipation of the test results, suspecting that mine might have changed a letter. I was right. I tested as an INTP 20 years ago. I'm thinking that since I am INTJ by one point, I probably have a lot of the characteristics of an INTP, too.

The facilitator said personalities don't change, but that the test results might change based on what you are doing at the time you take the test. If you're sick or under stress or not thinking clearly for some reason, the test results may not be completely accurate.

Reading through the handout material that came along with my test, I think I may be beginning to realize where some of my questions about my life fall, and why they are there in the first place.

I may be living a little in opposition to my personality type (even if it is an INTP). I think with a few adjustments I can get things back on track.

This information says that an INTJ "must be ever improving. When thwarted in the quest, they can become critical and often depressed over the seeming stagnation."

And "ambitious plans may go unfulfilled if the INTJ falls into the trap of being seduced by the intellectual excitement of the plan without ever getting to the actual hands-on accomplishment. Such a dilemma sets them up for self-criticism, which leads, in turn to frustration and depression."

"The workplace is one more "system" that can be organized and improved. As such, assignments are undertaken with that underlying expectation. When improvements are not forthcoming, the INTJ may be subject to self-criticism."

This page offers up other traits of INTJs and suggests possible career paths (writing is not among them though it is in the materials I received in class). This page , which I am printing out, is probably a better one and it does list "writer" among the career paths.

Famous INTJs include Dwight Eisenhower, Alan Greenspan, Ulysses S. Grant, Stephen Hawking, John Maynard Keynes, Ayn Rand, Isaac Asimov, Lewis Carroll, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Jefferson, and Sir Isaac Newton.

LIfe Planning

Last week I started a six-week non-credit seminar at Hollins University called "Life Planning." The idea is to figure out where you're going.

The seminar will give women (including me) tools to assess current strengths and abilities, develop personal short and long-term goals, and create strategies for change.

The Myers Briggs assessment is a big part of this. This test sorts folks out into 16 different personality types.

Tonight we get the results of the online testing and I am curious to see if it tells me I am still an INTP. That is what I was 20 years ago, when I took the test. That means I am introverted, intuitive, thinking and perceptive. Or at least I was then. Maybe I have changed? Maybe as I have strode into mid-life, I am now more of a judging and feeling type of person.

Here is the official description of an INTP:

INTP
Seek to develop logical explanations for everything that interests them. Theoretical and abstract, interested more in ideas than in social interaction. Quiet, contained, flexible, and adaptable. Have unusual ability to focus in depth to solve problems in their area of interest. Skeptical, sometimes critical, always analytical.

Does that sound like me?

Or does this sound more like me?

INTJ
Have original minds and great drive for implementing their ideas and achieving their goals. Quickly see patterns in external events and develop long-range explanatory perspectives. When committed, organize a job and carry it through. Skeptical and independent, have high standards of competence and performance – for themselves and others.

According to the FREE test on this site, I am now an INTJ.

This is what it says:

Qualitative analysis of your type formula

You are: very expressed introvert
distinctively expressed intuitive personality
moderately expressed thinking personality
moderately expressed judging personality

Or am I something else altogether?

We shall see tonight!

Writing Magic

A few weeks ago I noted that I wanted to do drafts from a book with a lot of writing prompts. The book is called Writing Magic.

The author of that particular writing book actually dropped by that blog entry and left me a word of encouragement in the comments, much to my surprise.

Remember that writing prompts can always be changed to suit the needs of the writer, so if the prompt ends up looking nothing like what I write, that is okay.

At any rate, let's move on and do another writing prompt!

The prompt: Write a story about a main character who finds a diamond necklace on the seat of his school bus.

My draft:

I staggered to my feet after the bus pitched forward as it lurched into gear. I had fallen to one knee as I boarded the Greyhound with a ticket to Washington, D.C. in my hand. As I picked myself up, my little finger brushed against something as my hand slithered down in the pocket of space at the back of the seat.

Impulsively I paused for a moment, knowing that I felt metal. A bracelet, I thought. I flicked it into the palm of my hand, stood up and continued my journey to a seat near the back as the bus roared down Elm Avenue and headed for the interstate.

Once I had settled myself into my chair, I opened my palm. The necklace was a delicate chain with a sparkling gem inlaid in a heart shape. I could not tell if the diamonds were real or good zirconium. Either way, this was no kid's toy. Someone was probably missing this.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching, but there were only two other passengers on the bus and they were near the front. The driver was busy trying not to weave in and out of the heavy traffic as cars and truckers zoomed past.

I shut my green eye and examined the gems with my brown one. They looked real to me, and opening the other eye for a good look, too, only seemed to enforce that idea.

I thought back to the last time I had cast the stones for a reading. This was a habit of mine, a kind of Tarot I had picked up when I was a teenager. Camilla the weirdo, the kids had called me in school. Back then, I thought they were right. I was a loner as I walked the halls and I am a loner still, I thought as I watched the diamonds glitter.

Now I was all grown up and headed to the nation's capital. My last reading had said danger, danger Will Robinson not with a little "d" but with a capital one as big as poster board. It was a danger bigger than a person and bigger than a state. So I was off to warn the president, as if he would listen to me, because my stones said the nation was in terrible danger. Only I didn't know from what or when this bad thing might happen.

That was what I had told myself when I had packed my bags and taken all my money out my savings account. It was a good lie, because it really hid the fact that this grown woman who should know better was really just running away.

Spring Gobblers

This is the reason I really wish I had a long telephoto lens. A 200mm simply doesn't bring me in close enough to capture the wildlife from the front porch!

These were taken today with my Nikon D40 (6.1 mbs) and then cropped in Picasso.

Thursday Thirteen #130

Today, I offer up some local writing stuff:

1. Peggy Shifflett, who is president of the Roanoke Valley Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, will have a book coming out next week. It is called The Living Room Bed and is about Appalachian life and how folks had the bed in the living room and the role it played from birth to death.



2. I edited the book. I am also a member of the Pen Women. It was a pleasure to work on this book with Peggy.

3. My friend Meg Hibbert has an article coming out in a new online magazine called Southern Flourish. The magazine is due to make its premier March 15 at the link. Meg's article includes recipes!



4. Meg is editor of The Salem Times Register and we have worked together and been friends for a long time.

5. My friend Becky Mushko, another fellow Pen Women member, is busy promoting her book, Ferradiddledumday. She blogs at Peevish Pen.


6. Becky knows a great deal about self-publishing and scams and I have a lot of respect for her knowledge. She used to be a teacher and goodness knows you have to be some kind of saint to do that.

7. Dan Smith, publisher of Valley Business Front, has an interesting blog called fromtheeditr that local writers might want to check out.

8. He also has a blog for Roanoke Writers. Dan started the recent incarnation of the Roanoke Writer's Conference, which has been going on for three years now. It has proved to be an interesting day of meeting and networking.

9. Bonnie Cranmer, a fellow Hollins Horizon Program alum, is interested in social media and she writes about it on her website. Apparently this social networking stuff is the wave of the future and seems to be the new busy work for a lot of people. She's really into it.

10. For an interesting reading from an up-and-coming children's book author, try The Virginia Scribe. She's up on agents and other information. I heard her talk at a Pen Women meeting once and she is a lovely person.

11. For good sophisticated information about writing, including marketing information, check out C. Hope Clark's blog. She is not exactly local but I suppose the Carolinas is close enough. She runs the famous Funds for Writers website, which offers two free newsletters that I urge folks to subscribe to. You can subscribe to them right from her blog if you want.

12. Colleen over at Loose Leaf Notes always has interesting writing on her site. She is a thoughtful freelancer and sometimes showcases the articles she is working on.

13. You can see two of my recent articles for The Fincastle Herald here and here.

For the FCC: No one paid me anything to promote their websites or work.

Lots of people play Thursday Thirteen. You can read about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here. This is number 130!

Maslow's Triangle

Where are you on the triangle of life?

Abraham Maslow was a humanist psychologist who in the 1940s hypothesized that humans have a hierarchy of needs.

His ideas are often presented in the form of a triangle, with the basic needs as the triangle base.

The basic needs are grouped into five categories: survival, security and safety, sense of belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

Survival means basic necessities such as water, food, clothing, shelter. These are the things that are required in order for a human to live.

Security and safety means many things. It means having the doors locked. It means financial security, which may mean many things to different people but to me means being able to pay your bills. It means being healthy, and that might include having health care for a lot of people.

Sense of belonging means that you have friends and family. It means society and community. It means people are not singular individuals but instead are part of a larger (and hopefully greater) good. People do not stand alone all the time. Loneliness can be a real killer, so this is very important. People may meet this need through family, clubs, religion, sports, and other ways.

Esteem means that you are valued and feel you have value. People must feel they are contributing and have something to contribute. This is also reversed: people need other people and things (such as ideals) to respect, as well. It might mean a little hero-worship and having someone to look up to, like a sports hero or a saint. Self-respect is important so long as it is not out of control.

Self-actualization means a person is at the very top of the triangle. A self-actualized person will be a learner, someone who seeks self knowledge and worldly knowledge. She will be aware of self and devote time to her own needs. She will know joy. She will accept responsibility for her mistakes and move on. She will not dwell upon weakness but instead will acknowledge it and choose to either keep it or do something about it. She will be committed to helping others and will feel kindly towards others and will want to be of service to humanity.

Given what I see around me, not to many people, including myself, are at the top of the triangle these days. Most seem to fall somewhere near the bottom, fighting over scraps. I see people insecure in their nation, in their families, in their religions, in their lives. Particularly during this recession, security has taken a nose dive as so many people worry about their retirement. Health care remains an unknown and even if Congress makes changes, someone will find a way to rape the system and cause more havoc than good.

Obviously as funding for the arts and education tumbles, the higher courses of life will crumble too. The beauty will be gone and we'll all be wallowing amongst the midden heap as things are not properly cared for.

Our base is not sturdy. As a nation, in families, as individuals, many humans are now looking more like a topless volcano than a triangle.

It's kind of scary, isn't it?

For more information, see here. The Wiki article is here.

Growing Cactus

The other day I bought a "learning" kit at the hardware store so I could grow cactus.

I know, I am weird. But I have always liked cactus. And I really like to watch things grow. And I know stuff will be growing outside soon enough but with my allergies acting up I will have to be careful out there.




I did not know cactus grew from a seed, so this was indeed a learning adventure. I had never really thought about it, to be honest.



The kit came with dehydrated dirt, which took much longer than the five minutes it claimed on the instructions to turn into anything resembling "real" dirt. The dehydrated dirt came in a little patty that you placed in the little flower pot. Supposedly then 2 teaspoons of water and five minutes later, you have dirt, but it took a lot more water and a lot more time, along with some stirring of dirt with a finger, to get that dehydrated dirt to fluff out.



The instructions said 3 seeds to a pot, but it didn't say how deep or anything. Hmm.



Once you plant the seeds, you put the pot in this plastic thing to create a green house effect and sit it in the sun. Unfortunately I don't have a single window in this house that gets good sun, so we'll see how it goes.

I'll let you know if they grow.

The Lord of the Rings

The Fellowship of the Rings
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
By J. R. R. Tolkien



I took the last two weeks or so to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This hardback edition is one that came out sometime when the Peter Jackson movies were playing. My husband gave it to me for Christmas and I had set it aside, though with a place of honor in my bookcase. I confess I was loathe to open the boxed set and it hurt me to break the seal to read the contents.

However, the covers are embossed and it is a really nice set. It has all of the appendices included in the last book.

I believe I read the trilogy long ago, probably well before I should have, as has been my wont sometimes with books. For example, I read Wuthering Heights when I was nine - far too young. But I cannot recall exactly when I read these books and sometimes I am not sure I read them all but instead perhaps read only the first.

I also remember an animated movie from high school; we took a field trip to the theater to see it. It must have been this one but the timing does not seem quite right, because it would have been my senior year (1980-1981) and Wiki says this film came out in 1978. Perhaps it took a while to show up in Roanoke.

At any rate, I have read the books now. While I enjoyed reading them and revisiting the characters, I have a confession to make.

I like the Peter Jackson movies better.

Which is not to say that these are bad books; not by any means. But the film is a marvel at keeping close to the books, right down to exact dialogue. I cannot imagine a better effort that would keep to the books and still bring this world to life.

I read these books as a writer, looking to see what worked and what did not. Someone told me once that until I had analyzed The Lord of the Rings, I could not write fantasy. So I thought I should get to it, since I read a lot of fantasy and wouldn't mind writing one some day.

Foremost on my mind was the author's voice - very noticeable with an omniscient narration. Given that in the Appendices it becomes clear that this is supposed to be a translation of a history of the Third Age of Middle Earth, that makes sense, but from a reader's standpoint it serves to create quite a distance.

The dialogue was also quite stilted and forced. Again this might have been part of the "translation" device Tolkien was using, but I suspect an editor in this age (being the 21st century and all) would have advised him to do something entirely different for today's readers.

Another issue is the lack of female characters. Eowen is the strongest human female character in the book; Galadriel is a strong elfish character, while Arwen (elf) is an after thought in the writing, it seems. Eowen, unfortunately, comes across as moody and rebellious and only happy when she is loving a man. The movie does a much better job of bringing a few females to life. Galadriel in the book is mostly mystic.

To be sure, I did not feel characterization was a strong point in the entire series and I know there are many who might argue that differently. Instead, this was an adventure in world-building and plot. Characters seemed to have a few main characteristics and were not fully fleshed out. Truthfully I ended up liking Merry and Pippin more than Frodo in the end, because they grew as characters while Frodo, at least for me, did not. I really wanted to love Aragorn in the book but I never felt any compulsion in that direction, either. He was already a king when we met him.

This is a full book. One could, (and others have, I suppose), devote an entire life to understanding the characters, looking for religious themes, life meaning themes, etc. etc. I know that is what makes a great book, a piece of work that has so much going for it, which can be read one way by some people and another way by others.

I know that there will be those who quibble with my short analysis, which is their right. I did not dislike these books. But I do not think I love them, as I do the movie.

Tractor Show in Buchanan

Saturday we ventured to the open house at Blue Ridge Farm Center in Buchanan. They had BBQ and hot dogs and a petting zoo.

Mostly we looked at the machinery.



My husband counted off a spreader of some kind to see how long it is. One of his feet equals one foot. He counts that way a lot.



Above is a hay rake. These are my favorite machines because they look so cool when they are brand new. They make a nice splash against the sky.



The seat-to-steering-wheel ratio was too small for my tall husband in this particular tractor.



I am not sure what the above things are. I think they are balers but I wouldn't swear to it.



I think the above (and below) animals are alpacas. They were in a very small cage at the petting zoo and had the most plaintive little bleat I had ever heard. It sounded like a cry. I told my husband I wouldn't be able to raise those animals if they always sounded like that because it would make my heart ache to hear them.

Thursday Thirteen

Things in my to-do box. I do accomplish things, really, I do!

1. Finish my a booklet or small book on Cloverdale. It's practically done, I just need to write a few more little pieces and then decide how I want to publish it.

2. Do the same thing with information I have on Blue Ridge.

3. Go through all of my old poems. Some of them I will then send out or submit to contests. Some I will throw away. Some I will refile.

4. Go through all my old journals. I strongly suspect I will throw away a lot of this. Some of it may be worth keeping, though.

5. Genealogy research on my husband's family and my family. I must purchase software for that, too. Any recommendations?

6. Do something with an "how to write effective emails" presentation that I created but haven't yet figured out how to market.

7. Write some keyword articles for a client.

8. Finish up an assigned article for The Fincastle Herald.

9. Tear down the wallpaper in the kitchen and paint the wall.



This wallpaper has been up for at 15 years. Some of it is peeling from the wall. I am ready for a new look.

10. Put up wallpaper on the back part of the built-in bookshelves in the living room.



These bookshelves are dark and I think they would look better if they were lighter. We don't paint woodwork so I have decided I could cover the back part with something light. I've had the wallpaper here for this project for oh, I dunno, seven years?

11. Paint the spare bathroom. It hasn't been painted since 1987. The paint has held up pretty well, but it's just the two of us so there is no reason for it not to.

12. Read those 56 books that are in my "to read" pile(s).



All of these book are awaiting my attention.


13. Write a novel, which has been on my to-do list ever since I knew what a novel was. I am starting to think it ain't never gonna happen.


Lots of people play Thursday Thirteen. You can read about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here. This is number 129!

Writing Magic

A while back I purchased a book called Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine. This is a how-to-write for younger folks, not old fogies like me, but I liked the title. I also have found young adult how-to books helpful in the past.

The author wrote Ella Enchanted and is a Newberry winner.

At any rate, the book is loaded with writing exercises, several at the end of every short chapter. My intention is to do as many of them as I can.

And you all get to see the first draft.

So here goes. The assignment is to make a story from the first two lines, which I have reprinted here. This is fiction, for those who can't tell.

******

I have one green eye and one brown eye. The green eye sees truth, but the brown eye sees much, much more.

My name is Camilla and I am that girl in the hallways that you ignore and walk by without seeing. But I see you, all of you, in great detail. I know that you are fighting with your mom, that your dad drinks too much, and that your sister is failing all of her classes.

At night I shake the stones and throw them into the circle. I have the high school annual and I recite a name every night. I squint as I work, so the brown eye can read the tales told by the stones. The shapes give me the information, you see. They let me know that you're a spoiled little girl or bad young boy. And all I need is your name and the truth of your image.

Last night as I cast the stones, I felt a peculiar shock run through me as I read the story the bones left behind. I was working on Andy's story, because Andy had been particularly unkind to me the day before. He had bumped into me in front of the principal's office and knocked my books from my hands. Instead of helping me pick them up, he stepped on them and tore my papers loose from the notebook with his foot. Then he wiped his sneakers on my homework. Tears escaped and he laughed at me.

So I cast the stones. I usually only want the story, to see why someone acts like in a certain way. Andy's story? He is a jock, athletic, and his parents are rich. I know he lives in the huge McMansion on the far side of town. His father is a cancer doctor, and that apparently is a lucrative disease to treat.

But Andy also has trouble with his knee, and it likely will cost him a place on the college team of his choice. And his heart stones are black. I am not sure what that means; I've never seen black heart stones before. I scoop up the stones and toss once more, and blink my brown eye.

Heart stones again. I study them, wondering. Is he sick? Simply hard-hearted? Evil? I've cast these stones a thousand times and now twice I come up with this odd formation.

****

Bear Cubs

I am posting this because I daresay none of us seeing this picture will ever see bear cubs this young again.

This is my brother's snapshot. He still lives on the farm where I grew up, and Saturday some of his friends and their dogs went rabbit hunting.

During the course of their hunt, the dogs and men came across a bear. The bear attacked and the men killed it in self-defense.

They found these three small cubs.

The game warden ruled the kill as in self-defense and took the cubs to Virginia Tech.

The mama bear of course was only defending her tiny little babies. My brother said they weighed about four pounds and the game warden said they were maybe two weeks old.

I feel very bad for the bear and for the cubs. People need to be more careful when they are out in the woods. The bear, after all, was there first.

Eagle Rock Library

In mid-April, Botetourt County will open a new library in Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock is in the northern end of the county and is very rural. The county has not built anything new in that area since about 1976, when it constructed the elementary school.

The library is over 9,000 square feet and will offer a meeting room that is accessible from the outside (so it can be used any time and not just when the library is open) with accessible restrooms, a computer lab, a local history/genealogy area, a children's area, an adult reading area, and a smaller meeting room, plus staff offices.

It will open with a collection of 12,000 books.

This afternoon a few members of the Library Board of Trustees, a supervisor, the county administrator and others toured the facility.



The library has a rustic look. It was built with the area in mind. It sits amidst mountains and across from the James River. We (Library Board of Trustee members) wanted it to look like it belonged there.



This is the rear of the building.



The doors on this side open into the meeting room. The meeting room can be used 24/7 and library staff need not be there. This arrangement is similar to what already takes place at the Fincastle Library, so we know it can work.



The front of the building. It has a lot of glass and a clear story, which is a high upper story with windows.



Library Director Steve Vest, in the middle, explains things to County Administrator Jerry Burgess on the right and Library Board of Trustee member Ruth Ann Assaid on the left.



The entrance area is pretty impressive.



This is what everyone was looking at.



The book shelves were installed last week and are waiting on books. Michael Hibben on the left is the new branch librarian. He will work with Steve Vest (right) to catalogue and shelve books and acquire additional staff. "It is not a good time to be staffing and opening a new facility," County Administrator Jerry Burgess said during our tour today. His remark was made in response to a query about hours and staffing.



This is the computer lab room. Pictured from left: Donna Vaughn, the Fincastle District Supervisor, Steve Vest, Library Director, Ruth Ann Assaid, Library Board of Trustee representative for the Valley District, and Michael Hibben, Eagle Rock Branch Librarian. There will be 11 computers in this room and free WiFi for the public. Some of the furniture has not yet arrived, obviously.



Empty shelves! Soon they will be full of books.

For those who may not know, I serve on the Botetourt County Library Board of Trustees, which oversees library operations. I was appointed as the Amsterdam District representative in 2002 to fulfill someone else's term and then appointed to two consecutive four-year terms and I will be serving until 2012. I am the second longest-serving member on the board and have served as chairman, vice chairman and presently am chief trouble-maker and rabble-rouser. All of the library board members worked with the county and the architect to build the finest library we could for the money budgeted.

In fact, the project is well underbudget, thanks to a competitive construction period.

The Black Swan Remains

The black swan, first seen on Thursday, was still here yesterday. He or she was floating serenely on the pond.



Black swan theory subscribes rarity to the notion of black swans. Things unexpected are black swan events. Things that are a surprise, which have a major impact, and which can later be rationalized though not expected, are black swan events.



That's because prior to 1697, when black swans were discovered in Australia by the Europeans, the more civilized folks did not think such birds existed. And the birds are still quite rare, apparently.



Black swans, like all black animals, are thought by some to be devil's pets or witches familiars. Swans, though not necessarily black ones, are found in many aspects of myth, fairy tales and literature, such as the story of Leda and the Swan and Swan Lake.



Swans mate for life, leaving me to wonder if this one has lost its mate. That thought makes me sad.

The Black Swan

This is not something we see often:







The black swan, if that is indeed what it was, spent hours in the hayfield plucking up grasses. My husband spied it from the road and called me. "You need to come and take pictures of this weird-looking goose," he said.

We have flocks of geese. They stop for a visit as they migrate, leaving a mess of goose poop in the hay fields and down by the ponds.

But this was no long-necked goose, I realized when I drove by to see what I could see. I could only think that it must be a black swan.

Neither my husband nor I had ever seen a real living swan and certainly never a black one. Nor had we ever seen a picture of one out of the water. Swans are always in fairy book tales; they are almost an unreal creature, something of myth. They are birds that haul princesses away, carrying them across lakes.

Whatever this bird was, it was not native to our area.

Having a swan land in the hayfield was like being visited by a demigod. Wouldn't it be something if this bird and its mate, if it has one, has decided to call our farm home?

Prayers for a Friend

This morning, I was shocked to read on Facebook that Ginger over at landofmilknhoney had lost her husband last night. Ginger also has a short blog entry up.

Ginger and Philip have been staunch supporters of the farmer's market in the county. They have a farm in Catawba and last year I wrote an article about her trip to India. They have five children ranging in ages from 17 to 6.

Please offer up prayers and kind thoughts as Ginger and her young ones go through this time of great turmoil.

I have long admired Ginger's courage and generosity of spirit as well as her commitment to their farm and family. Her blog is one of my daily reads and as blog readers know, there is a connection and bond that forms through this contact. The fact that I have met her in person only makes this connection stronger.

I am stunned and saddened by this news.

Thursday Thirteen

I have no topic today, so I offer up random thoughts from my brain.

1. A long day with a Library Board meeting stretches before me like Silly Putty in the hands of a child. All I need is a cartoon to go with it.

2. The breeze blows the blue spruce and the sight of it brings "brrrss" to my brain.

3. This morning I opted for hot chocolate instead of tea for my morning hot drink; this means that I have already blown my diet and I haven't even had breakfast yet.

4. The government is after Toyota, but I really don't think it is because of safety issues. It is politics. The U.S. government now owns a car company, how can it be impartial?

5. I found this bit of "verse" in one of my old files the other day:

He lives
in Future Perfect Tense
of world of haves and will dos
where perfection is
the point! and tomorrow
the beginning
of the sentence.

6. From page 46 of the fiction book closest to me: "So I told him that I'd like to go to the bow of the boat so I could see the Dragon's Mouth and the Gulf of Paria and the Northern Range Mountains because this is probably what my father would have seen when he came from panning gold near the Essequibo River in British Guiana, and if he could help me I would be very grateful." - Lime Tree Can't Bear Orange by Amanda Smyth.

7. From page 46 of the nonfiction book closest to me: "All this computer stuff can be acquired and learned gradually, as time and budget permit. Don't feel you have to load up on a complete set of high-tech gear before you start soliciting business." - Secrets of a Freelance Writer by Robert Bly.

8. A small herd of deer brave the chilly wind and cold dawn to move to and fro across the fields. I saw nine of them pass not 50 feet from my window, trudging along the other side of the fence. They follow the path my husband plowed out for the cow with a calf; there is no snow there. I don't know if that is all of them or if I simply did not see that there were more.

9. I have 56 books on my "unread books" shelf and I wonder how I will find time to read them all.

10. I have a globe on the shelf to my right. If I look up, I see it. Sometimes I study it. It is over 20 years old and so the names of countries on it are not correct; it still shows a Soviet Union. But while my globe has not changed, the world has. It is meaner and crueler than it was when this map was made. People are less civil and more filled with hate. It is as if some nameless enemy from space has leaked a "mean-ass" gas into our atmosphere and it has poisoned us all. Some of us are only weakened and sickened by it; the rest seem to feed and breed from it. I wait for the aliens to pop out of their chests.

11. Something scared the deer and they all just ran by the window in a clump; I counted 15 of them. They are now huddled up in the small cedar forest in front of my house.

12. In the mornings I watch a TV show and exercise. Right now I am watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. It is time for me to go do that.

13. Becky Mushko at Peevish Pen posted the following video on Facebook. I liked it so much I reposted it there and now I offer it to you here: Go see this.


Thursday Thirteen is a little blog thing that lots of folks do on Thursdays. Check out the list here for other participants and go see what they have to say. This is my 128th week of playing.