Thursday Thirteen

Songs from my favorites on Alexa:

1. Wichita Lineman, by Glenn Campbell

2. Best of My Love, by The Eagles

3. Black Velvet, by Alannah Myles

4. Miss You, by The Rolling Stones

5. Uptown Funk, by Mark Ronson with Bruno Mars

6. Southern Cross, by Crosby, Stills

7. Landslide, by Fleetwood Mac

8. Sultans of Swing, by Dire Straits

9. Classical Gas, by Mason Williams

10. Sailing, by Christopher Cross

11. Renegade, by Styx

12. Sail On, by Lionel Richie/Commodores

13. More Than a Feeling, by Boston

_____________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 742nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

My Morbid Mind

Thinking about dying is not something I sit around do. It does, however, cross my mind more frequently than I would like. This has been particularly true as I've seen the obituaries of people my age, and especially when my close friend of 20 years passed away in early December. That one still hurts.

I don't think about it so much in terms of when I may die - that could happen anytime - or even how (though I really don't want to die from Covid). It's more along the line of what will be lost when I leave.

No one will care that my grandfather gave me the Yamaha guitar. Or that my father gave me the old electric one I have in the closet. Nor will they know the thrill I experienced when I bought my first guitar, my very own choice, not one given to me or handed down. They will only be guitars.

Nor will my books mean anything to anyone, except perhaps by then books will be illegal while guns are the collectible item of the day. The books maybe will be burned, Fahrenheit 451 style, and no one will know that I think Phyllis Whitney wrote one of the best writing guides ever and it was totally underrated and dismissed by the "establishment" writers, or that I consulted the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition and out of date somewhat now) hundreds of times.

The story of how we came by the bedroom furniture, which is a lovely, sweet memory for me, will vanish. Will anyone even know it's by Virginia House (which no longer exists), and one of the last sets of handmade furniture from the company before another larger furniture conglomerate gobbled it up and turned its products to a parody of the great items it used to produce? Will there be anyone to remember that we bought it at Da Longs, a furniture store in Roanoke that is now long gone?

No one will know that the scrap on the molding in the corner of hall came from the day we brought in a large piece of furniture. They won't know that my husband and I held hands every night while we watched TV, or that we built this house ourselves, for real, each of us nailing in boards, staining woodwork, working jobs and then spending long hours in the summer evenings to build ourselves a home. A small house by any standard, but big enough for us. And it's a home, not a house.

After we are gone, it will be just a house. Someone else will have to make it a home.

My material goods will be simply what they are, things that someone else may use, or rubbish that will end up in the trash.

My friend who passed away spent much time trying to rid her home of her stuff before she passed away. She had keepsakes from her family - a brother who died young. What to do with them? she asked me. Her son, she knew, had no connection to her sibling as he died long before her son was born. I wonder what happened to some of the things I gave her, things that meant something to the two of us, but would mean nothing to anyone else. I don't know.

I have similar items. Nothing much of value, junk jewelry that belonged to my mother and my great aunt, things my friends have given me that I treasure because I love that friend. A wise old owl sits atop my bookcase - my friend Leslie gave me that. In the end, it will be just another dust collector. A board with a collection of sayings also sits up there - my friend who passed away gave me that when I received my master's degree. She also gave me two of the clocks I have in my office.

No one will know I love clocks.

These are the things I think about sometimes in the quiet, when I walk through my house. I notice a nick in the wall, a scrape on the door. I know (mostly) how it got there, what happened to make it so. When I am gone - when we are gone, my husband and I - they will only be nicks and scratches, things to be repaired.

We are not our stuff, and we can't take it with us, but sometimes we are bound and connected to our stuff. The letting go can be cathartic, but it can also be sad.

This also reminds me that I am connected and somewhat in love with democracy, with the ideals of a world of equality, with the knowledge that the world is mean and cruel because it wants to be, not because it had to be. Those ideals mean as much to me - more to me - than the stuff I have around me. But just like my material things, these ideals simply sit and become nothing without someone to make them function. Where are those people?

The sun is shining and the icy snow from several weeks ago hopefully will disappear soon. In its place, we will have mud, but also growth. The daffodils will begin making their way from the bulbs to the top of the earth, their little leaves sticking out, specks of green among the brown grass. The forsythia will bloom.

Life will go on, regardless of the state of the nation, the state of my home, or the morass of my soul.

Signs of Spring?

My grandmother always said when the robins appear, spring is not far behind. Now I wonder what the groundhog will say on the morrow?

When I stepped outside to take these shots, the trees were wild with bird chatter. They were chirping like there may be no tomorrow. I stood and soaked it in, listening to the sounds of nature doing her thing. The birds were heralding a new day, a new season.

Today is also known as imbolc in the pagan tradition. It is celebrated on February 1 through sundown of February 2.

The day is symbolic of the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It comes to us from the Celtic traditions in Ireland and Scotland.

The day dates back to pre-Christian era in the British Isles (which means, of course, it wasn't always called February 1, it was whatever calendar they used then). 

Imbolc celebrations took the form of a festival in honor of the pagan goddess Brigid, who was evoked in fertility rites and oversaw poetry, crafts and prophecy. Brigid was worshipped by the Filid, a class of poets and historians among the Celts of ancient Ireland and Britain.

As with most pagan rites, this celebration was absorbed by the Catholic Church. St. Bridget took the place of the pagan goddess.

For more information about imbolc, check out the information on history.com here.

Help Wanted

A very long time ago, back in the dark ages of the 1980s and 1990s, I knew how to find a job.

I opened the newspaper and I read the "help wanted" advertisements. There would be three or four pages of job listings. I'd circle the ones I was interested in. They were usually "blind box" advertisements, which meant I was sending in a resume without knowing what the company was. The newspaper rerouted the resumes through some service.

When it was time for me to change jobs, I'd perform this ritual, dropping the resumes in the mail. In about a week, the phone would start ringing. I'd go on a few interviews, and then I'd have a job.

Now the newspaper has very few advertisements for jobs (although I've noticed more lately). And I don't know how to find a job. I'm not really looking for one, especially not with Covid running rampant, but even if I was, I wouldn't know how to find one.

As best I can tell, today one goes to the place where one would like to work and fills out a job application. So, if I wanted to work for say, Bank of America, then I'd go their site and fill out the application and hope for the best. I'm guessing at this, since I've not done it.

The other way to find a job is to look at places like Indeed.com or jobs.roanoke.com.

I've thought about some kind of online work. I have DSL for my internet connection. This works for most things. Uploads are bad, though. It takes me over two hours to upload a three-minute music video to my youtube channel. I also don't know how to find online work that is legitimate. I've read so many stories about scammers using work ploys that I simply dread trying to figure out what is real and what isn't.

Freelancing remains an option, but the local markets don't pay that well, and to be perfectly honest, after doing it for so long, I'm tired of it. I don't want to have to listen to multiple editors or try to write words in a fake voice that suits some suit, something that isn't my own. I don't want to write about topics in which I have little interest. I also don't want to write 300 words for $5. My time is worth more than that.

So, while I don't know what I want to do, I would like to know how to find it when the time comes to go do something.

I miss the help wanted advertisements. That seemed much easier than the flux of today.

Sunday Stealing: Blabbermouth

Sunday Stealing

1. January usually has ample amounts of snowfall in parts of the world. Did you ever make snow cream as a kid?

A. I think we did a few times, but not often. My mother would never let us eat the snow from the first snowfall; she said it was full of pollution. So, we had to have a very deep snow and catch it at just the right moment.

2. January is one of the months with 31 days. What are you going to do with that extra day?

A. I don't consider it an extra day. Just another day. I'll probably try to finish up my tax records so I can hand things in the accountant, if I ever get the things I need from the bank.

3. In medieval times superstition dictated that the 1st day of January was significant for prosperity, or lack of it, in a person's life. Farmers put a flat cake on the horns of a cow and they danced and sang songs around the cow until the cake was thrown to the ground. If it fell in front of the cow that meant good luck; it if fell behind the cow that meant bad luck for the rest of the year. Do you have strange New Year customs in your household?

A. No. We simply go to bed like any other night, and we don't do anything different than we do on other days, except maybe take down the Christmas tree if we hadn't done that already.

4. On January 14, 1986, motorists were required for the first time to wear seat belts. Do you always buckle up? Why or why not?

A. I buckle up and I don't move the car until my passengers buckle up. This is because of safety concerns. People flung from vehicles don't often survive. Of the 22,215 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2019, 47% were not wearing seat belts. Seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts, in 2017 alone. So, I wear my seat belt.

5. Have you ever blabbermouthed something to a significant other that in hindsight you really should have kept to yourself?

A. Probably, although I can't think of anything specific at the moment. I can think of something I said to my brother that I shouldn't have said, but not to my significant other.

6. Have you ever written anything on your blog that you wish you could take back?

A. Since there are posts I sometimes go back and edit, yes. In fact, I edited one of my answers to Saturday 9 before it went live.

7. Are you the blabber or the blabbee? Tell us your most embarrassing blabbermouth moment.

A. I can't really think of one. I think my most embarrassing moment occurred at a funeral home, when I introduced my mother-in-law to XYZ and then XYZ said, "I am ABC!" and sashayed off. Oops.

8. Who is the biggest blabbermouth tattletale in your household?

A. It's just my husband and me. I shall assume it's 50-50.

9. You are the Blog Paparazzi! Which blogger's real photograph are you most interested in getting?

A. No one's, really. If someone is hiding their identity in a blog, it's not for me to try to figure out who they are in real life. I actually admire anyone who can do that.

10. If you could hire the loudest and most skilled blabbermouth in the universe to do your talking for you and advertise it well, what message would you like to spread to humanity?

A. That we are all brothers and sisters and should treat one another with respect, kindness, and dignity.

11. Are you always on time or just a tad late?

A. I am usually a little early.

12. Is there someone in your life that irritates you regularly about not being on time?

A. No.

13. Can you think of a time when you were late for something, and it was REALLY a big deal?

A. When I was a teenager and playing in a rock band, I overslept and missed band rehearsal. The others were angry with me, and it wasn't long after that that the band began to fall apart. I always thought it might have been my fault.

14. If you were on your way to work and had five minutes to get there, would you stop in the road to rescue a crossing turtle?

A. I have stopped in the road to rescue turtles, but I haven't seen any in the roads in ages. But yes, I would stop.

15. Have you ever had to actually punch a time clock?

A. I did a long time ago, in the job I had from the fall of 1981 to winter of 1983. At least I think I did. I could be misremembering. I've tried hard to forget that job.

 __________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: All of Me

Saturday 9: All of Me (1932)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this song, Louis Armstrong calls his girl "baby." What's the last endearment someone used when speaking to you?

A. My husband calls me "sweetie pie" a lot. Or "baby." Sometimes I think he doesn't know my name.

 

2) He sings that losing his love made him cry. Do you cry easily?

A. Not really, no.

 

3) Louis was born in New Orleans, a city famous for music and cuisine. What's something you love about your hometown?

A. My county has a deep history, of which my family played a role . . . all the way back to the American Revolution. We're surrounded by the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, and I love their rolling majesty.

 

4) At age 11, Louis unwisely fired a pistol during a New Year's Eve celebration and was sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile detention facility. It was there that he met music teacher Peter Davis, who believed in Louis and taught him to play cornet and bugle. Tell us about someone who believed in you and made your life better.

A. The editor of The Fincastle Herald believed I could be a good writer one day and hired me to be a stringer way back in 1984. If he hadn't done that, I'd probably have stayed in the legal profession, though I hated that work.

 

5) Louis would say that arrest changed his life for the better because it was at the detention center that "me and music got married." After his release, he began playing on street corners, or in honkytonks . . . any place he could hone his skills. What is something you have worked hard to be better at?

A. Crocheting, for one thing. Playing the guitar, for another. And writing.

6) In the late 1920s, Louis led a jazz band called The Hot Five. His wife, Lil, believed he was too talented not to receive star billing. He just didn't feel ready. She went behind his back and convinced the management at Chicago's Dreamland Cafe to advertise: "The Hot Five, featuring Louis Armstrong: The World's Greatest Trumpet Player." It worked! At the end of the gig, Okeh Records signed him to a recording contract. Can you think of a time when, like Lil, you were glad you asked for forgiveness rather than permission?

A. I took guitar lessons when I was a teenager without telling my parents.

7) In 1932, the year this record was popular, the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and killed. This famous case inspired Agatha Christie to write Murder on the Orient Express. Have you read the book? Seen the movie, the remake or the miniseries?

A. I have not read the book or seen any kind of movie or television show about it. I've heard of it, of course.

8) Another aviator was in the news in 1932. Amelia Earhart flew 14 hours from Newfoundland to Londonderry. What is the longest flight you've ever taken?

A. I flew to Spain when I was a teenager.

9) Random question: You have the opportunity to travel safely in a time machine. Would you go back to the past, into the future, or say, "no thanks, I'll stay in 2022?"

A. I would go into the future. I want to see how we turn out. Of course, it would be my luck I'd land in the spot where they're dropping the final bomb of the world. But maybe all would be well, and I'd only be eaten by a zombie.

_______________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.  

 

Space . . . the Final Frontier

Challenger explosion. Photo from Nasa.gov

Today is the anniversary of the destruction of Space Shuttle Challenger. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle was taking off with a teacher, taking a civilian into space.

The shuttle blew up 74 seconds into flight, sending plumes of smoke all over the sky, and killing the seven people on board.

Thousands of students watched the shuttle blow up, as this was supposed to be a lesson in the great technological feats of the US. I remember all the media coverage of the first teacher in space.

This was supposed to be a great victory.

I was traveling in my vehicle on Interstate 581 when I heard on the radio that the shuttle had blown up. I burst into tears and had to pull over. I was late getting to work. They'd heard the news, but it was no big deal.

It was a big deal to me. As a lifelong space and NASA fan, I felt it was a national tragedy - and it was. I think that was the day I learned how indifferent people can be to the things that bring about change and growth.

 

I felt the horror once more when on February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia began its return to earth, only to break up over Texas about 22 minutes before its scheduled landing. Again, seven people died.

And now we have Bozos and William Shatner flying up into lower earth space, playing with balls and flapping around like toddlers in a McDonald's bouncy room. It's hard to take space flight seriously when it's become a playground for the wealthy.

It's not as if you or I will ever go into space. We don't have the money. Our grandchildren, however, may be ferried to the moon as our beautiful orbiting satellite is conquered by the billionaires who will then claim its resources, whatever they are, and send the poor and uneducated, of which there are unfortunately many in the USA, on shuttle ships to bring those resources back.

It is only a matter of time.

We've made a mockery of science and of something that should have been a source of national pride and great joy for all of the world. Stepping out of the earth's atmosphere is a feat performed only in the last 60 or so years. It is beyond extraordinary. It is science at its finest. It is mankind's greatest achievement.

And today we treat it like a toy.

What a shame. What a crying, damn, shame.

I still watch space flights. We have them a lot, SpaceX flights taking food to the men and women manning the International Space Station. I watch those. I don't watch Bozos or Musk. I don't watch the rich men's toys.

Space, to me, belongs to everyone. All of us can look up at the vastness of the night sky and look at the moon. We can reach out and try to touch a star. This delight, this divine and not-yet-understood realm of reality, should not be owned by anyone.

We all own it, each of us, who can look up in the sky and dream.

Thursday Thirteen

Things I see around me in my office:

1. A calendar

2. Three guitars

3. A harmonica

4. My computer

5. Benadryl

6. A light lamp for SAD

7. Hand weights

8. Cameras

9. Binoculars

10. Books

11. 3 x 5 index cards

12. Pictures of Gandolf, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, and a copy of a painting by Van Gogh

13. Yarn for crocheting

What does that tell you about me, I wonder? What do you see from where you are sitting? What does it say about you?

_____________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 740th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

About Firefighters

My husband was lucky. We were lucky.

During his 38 years on the job as a firefighter, he only experienced two deaths related to his job. That was in 1985, two years after he'd become a firefighter. Captain Robert G. Cassell and Firefighter Harvey H. Helm died on November 1, 1985, from injuries received from a hit-and-run driver while responding to an automobile fire on Shenandoah Avenue.

Yesterday, three firefighters died in a vacant apartment fire in Baltimore, MD. I mourn for them and their families. Firefighters are not all honorable people, but they perform an honorable job. It's a job not everyone can do.

That could have been my husband, lost in a fire before he retired. It could have been any of his friends, the people he worked with, who fell while working their job. I remember how upset my husband was over the deaths of Cassell and Helm. Senseless and tragic deaths.

I have often wondered about priorities in this country (and others). We pay someone millions to carry a ball 100 yards down a field, or bat a ball beyond three bases, or put a big round orange ball in a basket.

We expect a firefighter to race into a burning building to save a person or a cat, and work for hours in bone-chilling cold or 110-degree heat to put out a fire and then we pay them $40,000 a year (my husband's starting salary in 1983 was $13,000 annually). That has always seemed to me to be strange priorities. A straw man argument, perhaps? Entertainment, after all, is not the equivalence of saving a life.

Entertainment is apparently worth much more than saving a life in a capitalistic society. Or losing a life, as sometimes happens in these dangerous and terribly underpaid jobs.

The same can be said for many of our day-to-day jobs. Entertainment is worth more than teaching our children, or helping us with our groceries, or making sure we are served without spit in our food in a restaurant.

We must be entertained above all else.

My husband and I knew he had a dangerous job. We tried hard never to have him leave for work with us fighting, having said upsetting things to one another. I simply didn't know from day to day if he would come home to me, and I didn't want the last thing I said to him to have been something negative. I worried about him, but I pretended he was at the fire station performing cleaning chores, or playing cards with the guys after hours, while they waited on the bell to ring. I worried more on those evenings when we were on the phone saying goodnight to one another and the bell went off and I knew he was on a run than I did when I didn't know. When that happened, he always called me back when he returned, even if it was hours later.

He knew I would still be awake, waiting on the phone call.

Being a firefighter's wife is hard work, too. It is a life of endless worry, of missed holidays, Christmases held on off days instead of the "right" day, delayed family get-togethers. It meant fixing the broken water heater myself, or at least knowing how to cut the thing off, because things nearly always went bad while he was at work on a 24-hour shift and would not be home until the next morning. It meant sleeping alone in my bed, even if I was sick or recently released from the hospital and probably should have had someone with me. It meant ironing his uniforms (until they went to some material that wouldn't iron) and keeping the house going even though I also worked and went to college at the same time, all while fighting constant illness.

Being a firefighter is a tough and valuable job. We seem to have forgotten how we came to have professional fire departments in the first place. It's because we had entire blocks go up in flames because volunteers could not put out the flames. It's because of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in 1911, where 146 young women perished in a fire. It's because even Rome some 2000 years ago realized that fire was dangerous, and things burned, and people died. And it's because saving other people's lives from a deadly flame is the moral and proper thing to do in a civilized society.

Mourn the firefighters in Baltimore. Remember the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11. Think about the greatness they do for very little reward. Would you do it?

They are the quiet heroes, living quiet lives.

Bless them. And maybe wonder why saving lives is worth so much less than tossing around a ball or appearing on a TV show, mouth open, hatred spewing out.

Tyranny

If someone had told me 20 years ago that I'd be having a conversation with a friend in early days of 2022 about what to do when the government breaks down, I'd have dismissed them as ludicrous.

But the government has been collapsing most of my lifetime. I didn't see it because I was living it. I wasn't planning for it because I don't think like that. 

The collapse, though, has been in the works since FDR undertook his policies to give US citizens a social safety net, since he denied big business and the very wealthy, and instead acknowledged that every soul deserves, at the least, a little something near the end of life. He called it Social Security, and the government itself has always called it an "entitlement."

Bill Maher, whom I have mostly stopped watching because he (a) makes fun of obese people and (b) is terribly misogynistic, occasionally has a guest I want to see.

Friday night, he interviewed Timothy Snyder, whose book On Tyranny is not one I've read, but one I've read much about.

It was an interview that should have been highly noted. But even Maher himself apparently barely registered it, because I never saw it cross my twitter feed, while another guest's comments about being "over" Covid and the protocols in place for public safety, did.

Here is the interview. It's worth listening to all 10 minutes of it.

They discuss a "business crash" in 2024-2025 (long about 2:53 in the interview). That's concerning. We're already having supply shortages and inflation. What will a "business crash" look like?

"If we stay in this cocoon of The Big Lie," says Snyder, "we're not going to have a country in a few years down the line." (He's talking about the former guy's continual pounding away that Biden is an illegitimate president, and that the former guy had the election stolen from him. The former guy lost. It went through the court system. That should have been the end of it. He attempted a coup.)

This stuff scares me. Why doesn't it scare everyone? There are, apparently, a minority of very loud and powerful people who want the United States of America to fail as a nation. They apparently believe they will have all the power - they will have the guns; they will be able to live like the assholes in that show Yellowstone (which I've only seen a few episodes of, and I don't plan to watch more). They will be able to make their own reality and if my reality interferes with theirs, they will, quite plainly, kill me and get me out of the way.

Snyder goes on to say that he thinks in the weeks between the election of 2024 and the inauguration of 2025, if the former guy runs for office and loses yet still wins because of the changes Republican states have made to election laws, then we will have a major crisis. "The country can break down," he says in the interview above. "I imagine Americans in blue states going to red states and American in red states going to blue states, worrying about what's going to come next."

Americans may have to run to places where they feel safer. "The majority of Americans think we're heading for some kind of collapse," Snyder says.

Other countries have noticed. Canada is preparing for our collapse. "By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence," [political scientist Thomas] Homer-Dixon writes. "By 2030, if not sooner," he adds, "the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship."

A 2014 study [note the date - 8 years ago] by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page concluded, in essence, that the United States is now an oligarchy. Specifically, the authors found that “A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (one-out-of-five in favour) is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four-out-of-five in favour) is adopted about 45 percent of the time.” They also found that “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose.”

Persistent, dramatic and growing disparities between voter preferences and government policy are radically unsustainable. Sooner or later, a social explosion is liable to occur. In a nation drowning in guns, a mass rebellion against a government beholden to the billionaire class could prove particularly violent and destructive. (Here's the link for this article.)

If other countries are seeing this, what are we seeing from the inside? We're seeing neighbor pitted against neighbor - over masks, for one thing. But is it really masks? No, some consider it control. (It's not control that people have to wear pants or otherwise cover their butt, I note, and I suspect if we'd grown up wearing masks during flu season, no one would be complaining. It's the newness of this that some object to. Change.)

Then there are mass shootings, supply chain issues, climate change, lack of health care, low wages, etc. etc. We may be number one in arms, but when compared to other countries, we are low on the stats when it comes to taking care of one another.

I don't have any answers to what I see as the demise of this nation. I'm just one useless old woman with a little bitty blog that few people read.

I'm probably one of the first people that some people around me would kill off. Useless old women don't stand a chance in the coming days, whether those days are in 2025 or 2030. Nor would it matter what "side" I might be on. There are already so many sides that we're all the enemy of someone, whether we know it or not.

Scary things to think about. Sobering things to think about. And it's not hyperbole to think like this. The signs are everywhere. The stories are no longer confined to fictional books about government overreach, espionage, and overthrowing those in power. We're living these stories now, daily.

And there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. Would you rather be the guest or the host?

A. The guest. That way I can leave. I'm not very big on large gatherings.

 

2. What do you like to wear when you feel fancy?

A. I seldom want to feel fancy. But if I have to dress up, then it's usually in something black.

 

3. How often do you try something completely new?

A. Most days. I try new guitar arrangements, or a new skill game, a new book, maybe something different with my camera, or a new source of information. Of course, none of that is completely new; I have some skill in all of those areas. I suppose completely new eludes me. I'm not going to learn skiing or anything like that. In the last few years, I've tried knitting (not so good at that) and crocheting (better at that, sort of). 

 

4. Do you enjoy weddings?

A. Not particularly.

 

5. Have you ever had something customized?

A. I've had people's initials put on things for presents. But nothing big, like a car.

 

6. Do you cook spontaneously or meal plan?

A. It's a spontaneous "what is in the cupboard" meal plan.

 

7. Name some books you like to read over and over.

A. I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy frequently. Otherwise, I generally do not reread books, although of late I have gone back and picked up some classics I read when I was young. I have a better appreciation for them now.

 

8. What are you really good at?

A. Writing. Loving. Listening. Feeling. Imagining.

 

9. Do you sleep with windows open or a fan on?

A. We sleep with the windows closed and an air purifier running to drown out noise. I am a light sleeper, and even the sound of the refrigerator turning off and on in the kitchen will awaken me without some kind of white noise.

       

10. What is the easiest recipe you know?

A. Boiling an egg. Or maybe making toast. My cheeseball recipe is pretty easy and it's tasty: 2 bars of cream cheese, 2 1/2 cups of grated sharp cheddar cheese, a Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing Mix, and a bag of bacon bits. Mix it all up together, then roll in pecans.

 

11. Are you comfortable starting conversation with strangers?

A. It depends on my mood, but generally I can manage it.

 

12. Do you prefer quiet, or ambient noise when you relax?

A. Quiet, or a little music.

 

13. Who is your most adventurous or exciting friend?

A. My most adventurous friend recently passed away. She had been to all 50 states in the USA before she died.

 

14. What do you eat when you can’t decide what to eat?

A. Peanut butter crackers.

 

15. Do you have any funny pet stories?

A. Not really, no.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: I'm the Only One

Saturday 9: I'm the Only One (1993)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

Wow, a MLE song! Yay! One of my favorites!

1) Melissa Etheridge sings this song as though her heart is breaking. What's your favorite love song? Is it about falling in love, being in love, or losing love?

A. I don't have a favorite love song. But I like I Only Have Eyes for You. I think that's a lovely old song. Or Longer, by Dan Fogelberg. We had that one played at our wedding. Or We've Only Just Begun, by the Carpenters. Or Angie, by the Rolling Stones. Or I Will Always Love You, by Whitney Houston (Dolly Parton wrote it, you know).

2) "I'm the Only One" is a favorite song of American Idol contestants, having been performed four different times. If we were to have a Saturday 9 karaoke night, what song would you do?

A. Well, it wouldn't be I'm the Only One. I can't sing it. I could do You Can Sleep While I Drive if I wanted to do a Melissa Etheridge song. But I'd probably go back to the 70s and do Best of My Love or Take It Easy by the Eagles.

3) A rocker at heart, Melissa Etheridge began her career in her teen years, playing with local country groups. Which do you enjoy more: country or rock?

A. Rock. I grew up listening to country but as soon as I was old enough to find the American Top 40, that was the end of my listening to country music days.

4) In 1985, Melissa sent a demo to Olivia Records, hoping for a record deal. She was rejected. Her debut CD was released in 1988 on the Island label and went gold. Tell us about a time you bounced back from professional adversity.

A. I was fired from a job at a law firm for reasons that had nothing to do with my performance and everything to do with the lawyer and the paralegal worrying that I had realized they were having an affair. I decided not to continue in the legal field and started working as a freelance writer. While I did not make big bucks doing that, I made enough, and I was much happier.

5) In her personal life, Melissa has faced major challenges, including breast cancer and the death of her son. She credits music with helping her heal emotionally. What gives you strength?

A. My husband, family, and friends, writing in my journal, and music.

6) Melissa is a vegetarian, so her diet emphasizes plant-based foods like fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables. What was your most recent meal? Would it qualify as vegetarian?

A. My most recent meal was a Boost drink. I'm not sure what that qualifies as.

7) In 1993, the year this song was popular, a massive storm dropped a record 56" of snow in Mount Le Conte, TN. Have you done much shoveling this winter?

A. We have done a good bit of shoveling. We've had two snows. The last one dropped about 8 inches of snow and a layer of sleet/ice. It's still hanging around, but we had a warmer day today and some of it has melted off the driveway.

8) One of the most popular movies of 1993 was A Few Good Men, starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, who famously said, "You can't handle the truth!" What's the most recent movie you watched?

A. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I'm watching it when I walk on the treadmill. I can't hear the TV over the treadmill, and I can make the closed captioning work on the movie on the DVD player. I can't make it work on the TV without practically doing handstands to figure it out. Frankly, I'd rather watch something else even though I love these movies, but this will have to do.

9) Random question: Dessert is on us! Describe your perfect ice cream sundae.

A. A hot fudge sundae. Vanilla ice cream, thick gooey hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. I haven't had one since I was 12 and learned I couldn't drink milk. It is on my bucket list to find a really good one and eat it.

_______________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.  

A Snowy Sunset

Sunset, January 20, 2022

 

Thursday Thirteen #740

1. The world is full of broken dreams, lies, deceit, greed, and lust.

2. It's also full of fulfilled dreams, truths, honesty, compassion, and kindness.

3. How can it be full of bad things and good things at the same time? And are they half and half, or does one outweigh the other?

4. The bad things seem stronger, harder, meaner - and more. But surely, goodness and mercy should follow us all through our days, right?

5. What seems bad to me may seem good to others. We do not all share the same world view. Some people are fine with children starving; I am not. Some are fine with some people being treated as "less than;" I am not.

6. Are caring, compassion, and kindness lessons that must be taught, or do they come in the person automatically, a part of the DNA?

7. I wonder for how long money and material things have been more important than a person. Hundreds of years? Thousands of years? Since Cain slew Abel? Always?

8. I have walked off a job to take care of someone I loved. I hope I would throw myself in front of someone else to save them, though I also hope I'm never tested like that.

9. Everywhere I go, I see a microcosm of the world. In the grocery store, I see good people whose eyes crinkle up behind their mask so I know they're smiling. I see people who gesture for me to go first or I do the same for them. I also see angry, mean people who don't care if they hit your cart or bump into you so long as they get what they want.

10. Mean people are on TV. They are the talking heads who yell and scream and talk over other people. Television used to kind of bring people together; we all watched the same shows and could talk about the same things and have actual conversations. But now there are so many channels and so many varying points of view, no one communicates. 

11. Most people appear to be working to form a response that validates their own opinion when I speak with them, not actually listening to what I am saying. I try to listen to others - it was my job as a news reporter, after all. However, I suspect I'm guilty too of trying to form my response before I totally hear another's point of view. I shall try this year to listen harder.

12. Silence is not a bad thing.

13. We're a dying society. We are doomed, really. Don't say I didn't warn you. I feel bad for the children who will have to live with our mess.

_____________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 740th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Turkeys in the Snow

It Snowed

This was not a pretty snow. A pretty snow has lovely large flakes that dress the trees in dainty white outfits, and then it quickly melts and one can go on about the afternoon without worry.

This was a mean snow, the front that moved through yesterday and last night. This snow came in slick and small, but with great speed. At times the snow turned into a freezing mix, then a cold rain, and then back to snow. It brought wind with it, and the trees did not dress up but instead burrowed their roots into the cold ground to hang on.

Morning brought an intriguing sunrise. I caught the reflection on the mountain tops, the snow already gone from the pines and cedars.

Around lunchtime, after listening to the winds howl and occasionally watching the snow ghosts dance like monsters in the front yard, I realized that at some point the wind had become a carver.

It left a roundish circle in the front yard, where I'd earlier seen it acting like a snow tornado, the wind whirling around as it pulled the snow up from the ground to spread it elsewhere, into drifts in the fields and along the roads and driveways.

I was sorry I did not catch it as it was making its art, that I'd instead been tending laundry or answering email, or simply staring out the wrong window.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. Do you buy things when you want them or wait for sales?

A. Depends on what it is and how badly I need it.

2. Do you think time moves slowly or quickly?

A. It certainly seems to move much more quickly now than it did when I was younger.

3. How often do you spend time alone?

A. Every day.

4. What’s something that has changed in the last month?

A. We started wearing N95 masks.

5. What’s the best part of your job, profession?

A. I'm not working at the moment. But the best part of being a freelance writer is the ability to say, "I'm not working at the moment."

6. How many pens do you have?

A. Gobs. I see six on my desk and that's not counting what is in the pen holder cup.

7. What are your healthiest habits?

A. I exercise my brain a lot. And I eat Cheerios.

8. Do you have a favorite postage stamp?

A. No. I did have a thing of Janis Joplin stamps here, but I seem to have misplaced them.

9. Who did you talk to the most this week?

A. My husband and my friend T.

10. What’s on your bedside table?

A. A box of tissues, medications I have to take in the night, nasal spray, a small bottle of water, and my watch.

11. How often do you try something new?

A. Frequently.

12. What are some of your grocery list staples?

A. Bread, cheese, lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, pork, chicken, eggs, distilled water, spring water, etc.

13. Do you have a favorite poet?

A. Sharon Olds is my favorite poet. Here is one of her poems.

14. What interesting fact do you know?

A. The Appalachian Mountain chain is a continuation of the same mountains that are in the UK.

15. Do you fold laundry right away or do it later?

A. If the clothes are outside clothes, like shirts or pants, I hang them up straight out of the dryer. Everything else I take care of when I feel like it.

__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.