The Set of the Super Moon

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

Books: The Walk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Day I Saw Faeries

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

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

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

All were barefoot.

And they were dancing.

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

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

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

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

Thursday Thirteen

March is National Women's History Month.

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

These are not in any particular order.

Mom

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


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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

Yippee! Almost Spring!

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

My big ol' forsythia bush dominates the landscape.

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

Come on, Spring!

I Can See Clearly Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I Am Old (or Apocolypse: Now)

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

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

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

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

Or maybe

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

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

The Writer's Notebook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So let's please write them down.

Women Writers: Annie Marion MacLean

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

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


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

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

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

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

Books: Wicked Appetite

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday Thirteen

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

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


2. 82.8 million women are mothers.

3.  55% of college students are women.

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

5. 14% of armed forces members are women.

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

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

Signs of Spring in 2011

Forsythia will soon be in full bloom!

Lilies and irises rising from the earth.

Daffodils will soon be in bloom.

Not so Pleasant

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank goodness I did not get stuck!

This is All There Is

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

A little more time? For I am growing old.

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

All we had to do was open a book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books: War on the Middle Class

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday Thirteen #180

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Thinking Too Much

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

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

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

So many questions! So much unanswered.

And so many questions that I will never answer.

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

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

Why why why?

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

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

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

In 20 Years

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

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

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

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

Except in books.

Ah, yes, books.

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

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

It is not a book.

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

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

There. I said it.

Finally.

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

Procrastination out the door.

Addicted

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, a girl has to have some fun.

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

On the Warpath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I was on the warpath.

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

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

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

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

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

Warpath gone.

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

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