Toodling Around a Town

After we left The Old Brick Hotel in New Castle, we decided to walk the block of Main Street to see what there was to see.

This used to be a bank building when I was writing over there.

The Craig County Courthouse from the front.

Main Street. It looked like someone had spruced up the buildings with fresh paint.

They have a brand-new farmers market.

It looks really nice and should be a great addition to the community.

We walked back toward the car, and I said, "Let's go in here." The shop was called The Emporium, and it was set up kind of as an old-fashioned grocery and had a small bookstore in the rear.

I saw a man enter just after us and I thought he looked familiar, but I had written over there for a long time and many people would look familiar. I was looking around up at the front when I heard someone say my last name out loud.

My husband responded, "Well, how are you!"

I went back to discover, to my surprise, a former firefighter who used to work with my husband. He is also my aunt's ex-husband's brother, making him my cousin's uncle. So family. Sort of.

We did not go to New Castle expecting to run into anyone we knew. To run into someone we considered extended family was incredibly unexpected. We hadn't seen this long-distance relative since 2017 and hadn't had much of a chance to speak then as we were at a concert.

We spent a pleasant 15 minutes or so catching up on family news.

Definitely a nice surprise. Given the earlier surprise of finding paperwork that dealt with my father's family in a county that was not known for that family, (plus seeing a camel), we felt like this afternoon drive had a bit of cosmic coincidence going on with it.

Then we drove around the town some more and saw a cemetery that I couldn't recall seeing before:

I really liked the angel on top. I love old cemeteries anyway; they give off such a cool vibe. They don't make statues like that in new cemeteries.

And that was the end of our adventure. We really should get out of the house more often.

Thursday Thirteen

Spoiler Alert: This discusses some of Amazon Prime's Fallout, in case you haven't seen all 8 episodes. I don't discuss it in great detail, but if you want to miss any talk of it all, there's your warning.

1. We finished watching Amazon Prime's series, Fallout, on Tuesday night. Fallout is based on a Bethesda video game and is set in the future, where the people who "mattered" in 2070 moved underground to live in vaults while whatever was left the world fended for itself. The story takes place 219 years later, so in the 2300 century.

2. The Wasteland, as the world above the vaults is called, is sandy, without much grass or trees, and lots of remnants of the former civilization still showing. Like many other pieces of dystopian literature and movies, Fallout shows the world after some sort of catastrophic war or bombing as being sandy, dry, covered in radiation, and full of strange animals (and humans) who have adapted to this manmade hellhole.

3. The basics of dystopian literature, movies, and video games make certain assumptions about things like:

• Economic challenges: There’s widespread poverty that the citizens must endure, or there are massive gaps in wealth that create a ruling class of elites and relegate everyone else to a life of scarcity and hardship.
• Environmental damage: Environmental devastation wreaks havoc on the lives and fates of the characters. This destruction might take the form of major weather events, like earthquakes or floods; climate change and its disastrous effects; or the ramifications of pollution, overpopulation, or disregard for the planet and its finite resources.
• Government influence: Typically, there’s either no government overseeing law, order, and civilization, or there’s a domineering government that operates a police state and controls and monitors the lives of all citizens.
• Loss of freedom or individual identity: A dystopian society often robs its citizens of their basic freedoms and/or individualism. It reduces them to sheep who must blindly follow the dictates of a tyrannical and unjust system.
• Propaganda: The existing power structure in a dystopia produces propaganda to keep the citizenry in line. Such propaganda might present a deceptive “everything is fine“ picture of life in order to control the population, or it might incite fear and terror and, thus, generate an excuse to engage in further domination and subjugation.
• Survival: The characters in a dystopian setting are in a fight to survive the oppressive conditions in which they find themselves. They must resort to extreme measures to protect themselves and those around them, which usually means rebelling against the powers that be.
• Technology: Advancements in technology tend to play a key role in controlling or tracking the citizens of a dystopia. Rather than solving problems, technology creates them—damaging relationships, reinforcing hierarchies and power structures, and reducing quality of life.

(If you're paying attention, you might see signs of dystopian society in some of today's events, particularly where it concerns environment, government, propaganda, and technology. I suspect it is why there is more dystopian literature than utopian literature. It's not hard to look around and despair; it is much harder to look around and find hope and love.)

4. I have never played the Fallout video game series all the way through; I have Fallout 4, but I didn't like it. My glasses are too rose-colored, I suppose, to spend the hours required to play that video game. It was not visually pleasing, in other words. 

I have, however, read many dystopian books.

5. One of the first pieces of dystopian literature that I remember reading was Alas Babylon, by Pat Frank. Written in 1959, this book lays out how someone would survive a nuclear crisis in the US after the bombs fell. Of course, this book is older and so it doesn't have many of the technology components a similar book today might have, such as computers and cell phones, but it explored basic survival and outlined the loss of the US government, the devaluation of money (something like sugar and/or salt becomes a more valuable commodity), and tribalism as communities either came together or tore themselves asunder. The book still holds up as it is based on incidents in the Middle East as the ignition for the nuclear war.

6. Another book that had a big impact on me was A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., also written in 1959. (That must've been a big year for concerns about the future of mankind, as things are now.) The book tracks not one person but technological advances (at a monastery, of all places) through thousands of years, until we blow ourselves up again. In other words, the book takes place after we've blown ourselves up the first time, and the monks have dedicated themselves to saving books and other knowledge because the people who survived the apocalyptic carnage were anti-knowledge, anti-books, and anti-society for a very long time. But human progresses, as it seems to do, and apparently we cannot overcome our demons in favor of our better selves.

7. Margaret Atwood has given us two popular pieces of dystopian literature: A Handmaid's Tale, which is frequently referenced at this time as women lose their reproductive and other basic freedoms, and the Oryx & Crake books, also known as the MaddAddam trilolgy which is not referenced but which, like Fallout, presupposes that the wealthy will make out much better than the rest of us poor sots when something happens. In the trilogy, it is not nuclear war that takes out much of humanity, and creates a different sort of world, but a virus.

8. One of the scariest pieces of dystopian literature I have ever read is A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. I read it in college, and we watched the movie, too, and it gave me nightmares for months. This book is about a gang of teenagers who terrorize their communities. This book and subsequent movie were full of sexual assault scenes and graphic violence. Like Alas Babylon, it was written before I was born, in 1962, and reflects the Cold War hype and propaganda people were living under at that time.

9. We've moved past the year 1984, but the book of the same name by George Orwell is still relevant and quite dystopian. In this book, humanity has moved onward technologically, and people lose their agency to Big Brother, who oversees their every move and even their thoughts. The government in 1984 is a totalitarian one, which means no individual freedom, the authority of the state/government is absolute, there are no political parties (or elections, or democracy, or any of the things some Americans and other people cherish) and that authority/government controls everything a person does. At least it's not all sand and there is grass and trees.

10. The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is another dystopian book, albeit one that offers nicer surroundings than Fallout. In The Giver, people live in an authoritarian-type of society. The authorities determine who will work in what job, and how the people will live. The book centers around a young boy who takes exception to this lifestyle. However, for the most part, people are portrayed as content in their surroundings and with their work, which is tailored to their skill and intelligence levels. Perhaps this is more a meritocracy run by authoritarian types. This book won the Newberry Award in 1994. It was made into a movie in 2014.

11. Another version of a post-apocalyptic world can be found in The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Published in 2008, the book trilogy follows the tale of Katniss as she first works in one of the poorer lands left over after war, and then participates in the "death games" put on to entertain the more entitled masses in the capital city. She eventually leads an insurrection against the tyrannical government that supports the death games. Bad government seems to lead to all sorts of problems, doesn't it?

12.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written in 1953, follows a fireman whose job is to burn books, not put out fires. Because of the censorship of books, this future society has increased interest in technology and entertainment—and an inability to think freely and creatively. Once again, government control is the problem in this dystopian future.

13. And finally, I'll mention some dystopian movies: the Mad Max movies in the 1980s (more sand), Blade Runner, The Matrix movies at the turn of the century (technology issues), Logan's Run (1976), Wall-E in 2008 (climate issues), and the Planet of the Apes movies (1970s and remakes). There are many, many more that I haven't seen.

As oppressive regimes across the globe work to control their populations—and we see our own government in the U.S. putting kids in cages and eroding privacies and rights we’ve taken for granted—we glimpse where we may be headed. It's no wonder dystopian fiction far outweighs utopian stories, because in reality, most of us never have our happy ever-after.

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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 858th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

New Castle

Our destination on our Friday drive, wherein we saw a camel unexpectedly en route, was to New Castle, Virginia.

This is where I wrote for a newspaper for a number of years - almost a decade, from about 1995 to 2004. I recently filled in and did some freelancing for the paper again while they looked for a new writer who lives over that way (it's a 40-minute drive from my house). 

I discovered during my little return to writing there that the bound copies of the newspaper - the morgue, as it were - were missing, and the current editor had no idea where they were. I vaguely remembered that the owners had wanted the old bound books tossed, and I also remember my alarm at this loss of history. I recall suggesting to someone that they should give the books to the historical society.

So, it was the historical society and its museum that was our true destination. I wanted to look for myself to see if the bound books where there.

The museum is located in what is known as "The Old Brick Hotel," although it's had numerous names over the years.

Inside, there are the usual museum things:

The Civil War display, found mostly in the southern U.S.

Other military display.

The dining area of the hotel/bar.

A kitchen replica.

Some plates I liked showcasing various things about the community.

The museum office/welcoming section. We saw this last because we went in the back door.

We took a tour of the museum, and I picked up a few history books to purchase. I found the old newspapers I was seeking, and also learned they were moldy and probably not something I really wanted to look through. I have moldy and dusty papers tucked away in a tub in the shed that I could get to just as easily.

One odd thing happened. I mentioned that my father had lived in New Castle for a few short years when he was a young lad, and one of the older ladies asked me his last name. I told her, and she jumped up and started looking for a piece of paper. "There are no members of that family here," she said, "but I have this."

And she handed me a piece of paper that showed where my ancestors, who were doctors in the Civil War, had kept records of their treatment of local residents. She was as surprised as I was to have this weird coincidence with my father's name turn up.

But we still had yet one more surprise to come.

First, We Saw a Camel

We took a little drive Friday afternoon, and along the way, we saw a camel.

It was quite unexpected.

Camels aren't native to Virginia, after all.

I took these shots from the car, through the windshield, with my husband yelling at me, "Hurry up, I'm in a blind curve."

Sunday Stealing

1. What's the best thing to inherit other than money?

A. Jewelry.

2. What one thing would you most like to happen tomorrow?

A. I'd like to wake up and feel healthy.

3. Who is the person with whom you've been most infatuated?

A. My husband. Still infatuated after all of these years, even on the days I want to throttle him.

4. In what part of the day does time go slowest and fastest?

A. The mornings go by quickly; about 2:00 p.m. I start to run out of juice myself and things start to drag.

5. Whose thoughts would you most like to read?

A. Isn't that what a memoir or autobiography is? I know Queen Victoria left a lot of journals; let's go with her.

6. Who is the person you'd least like to touch?

A. I think anyone who knows me through this blog can answer that question. But on the whole, I am not a touchy-feely kind of gal.

7. What is the best quality you inherited from your parents?

A. Work ethic.

8. Who is the friend you most often disagree with?

A. I don't have too many friends that I disagree with. Disagreeable people are not people with whom I make an effort to socialize.

9. What's the best ritual of your daily life?

A. A shower.

10. What is the most useful job you've ever had?

A. I thought being a freelance news reporter was useful.

11. In which year of your life did you change the most?

A. When I was 37.

12. What's the best thing you've ever gotten for free?

A. Advice.

13, What is the thing you are best at?

A. Being me. Nobody else can do that.

14. What was the luckiest moment in your life?

A. When I met my husband.

15. What is the single most important thing you have ever learned?

A. Most people do the best they can.  

__________

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: Stay

Saturday 9: Stay (I Missed You) 1994

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

1) In this week's song, a woman is accused of only hearing what she wants to. "Selective listening" is when you choose to focus on what's important to you and ignore what isn't. Are you often, sometimes, or never guilty of selective listening?

A. I think we are all guilty of this sometimes. I learned to listen better when I was a news reporter; I hope it's a skill that I have kept up in conversations with friends and family. But there are times when you simply have something nagging at your brain and you only hear the important parts.

2) She turns the radio up when she hears her favorite song. What song have you recently sung along to?

A. Guitarzan by Ray Stevens. My husband was playing it on Alexa. I have no idea why.

3) This week's featured artist, Lisa Loeb, has always been a big reader. Her band was called Nine Stories as a tribute to her favorite author, JD Salinger. If you were to name a band to honor your favorite author, what would you call it, and why?

A. The Rivendell Ryders. Rivendell is the elven city in The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. Ryders would refer to the nine ring wraiths, also known as the Nazgul or the Black Riders, who rode fell beasts that flew them around Middle Earth, as well as to the horse masters in Rohan who helped defeat Sauron in the battle at Gondor.  I think if I were going to do a heavy metal band, I'd call them the Nazguls.

4) This week's song is her first and biggest hit. "Stay" was on the soundtrack of Reality Bites, a movie starring her friend and one-time neighbor Ethan Hawke. Ethan gave this song to the film's director, Ben Stiller, who agreed it was perfect for the film's closing credits. When you watch a movie, do you stick around for the closing credits?

A. I do. I always have. I remember going to a drive-in movie with my parents and getting angry at my father because he left before the closing credits ended. I hate to start a movie any place but the beginning, and I watch through to the very end and the screen goes dark.

5) In the 1990s, Lisa was popular for her style and appeared on many magazine covers, causing People magazine to comment, "Though she rose to fame as a singer, she's probably just as well known for her glasses." Do you wear glasses? If yes, do you consider your eyewear purely functional, there to improve your sight, or are your glasses an extension of your personal style?

A. I wear glasses. I consider my glasses to be both functional and an extension of my style, although I've never really thought about it like that. I always get titanium frames because they are so lightweight. I've had the pair I have on for 8 years, and they look almost exactly like the new ones that are out, so I haven't needed to replace them. 

6) Today Lisa does a show on Sirius Radio, and she enjoys broadcasting while her favorite collaborator, her cat, sits on her shoulder. Is there a pet in the room with you as you answer these questions?

A. No pets indoors. Barns are for animals, houses are for people, or so says my husband. If I wasn't allergic, I suspect we'd have a little dog, though.

7) Lisa raises funds for SCOPE, a charity that helps children from low-income families attend summer camp. When you were a kid, did you go to camp?

A. No. I went to Grandma's. She kept my brother and me over the summer. I guess camp was a thing in the late 60s and early 1970s but I don't remember ever hearing of anyone going to one.

8) In 1994, when this song was popular, the nation's attention was riveted to a white Bronco driven by a man named Al Cowlings. Without looking it up, can you recall why this was newsworthy?

A. I assume this is a reference to the O.J. Simpson chase, where the cops followed a white vehicle for miles because of Simpson's alleged involvement in the death of his ex-wife.

9) Random question: Can you do a cartwheel?

A. I couldn't do a cartwheel when I was young and agile. I'd probably break my neck if I tried one now.

_______________

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

Thursday Thirteen

1. We've been having very warm weather for April - a few days it has been 80 degrees! It's not supposed to be that warm until the end of June.

2. We have a lovely sky this morning; baby blue with fluffy marshmallow clouds. The clouds have a hint of pink to them as the sun is still rising as I write this. A line of clouds cover the top of the mountains in the distance.

3. We've been having trouble with vultures again. This time they apparently killed a six-week old calf. We don't expect them to attack a calf that old, just the newborns, so this was a surprise. Or maybe something else killed the calf? My husband thinks not, though.

4. I feel bad for the momma cows when they lose their babies that young. By the time we haul the calves off to the market, the mommas have weaned them so they don't miss them too much. But they do miss their new babies when they don't make it. Their milk hasn't dried up like it has with the older ones.

5. I like to watch the calves when the mamma cows leave them all with one cow. She is the babysitter of the day; she generally lays down and has 4 or 5 calves around her. The other mammas wander off to eat or drink water while she looks after all the young ones. I find it amazing what nature can do.

6. I've seen deer do the same thing; one mamma will have 3 young ones with her, but if you look you'll see the other mothers not so far away. I think at a certain age the little ones can't be trusted to be left alone because they'll roam. Kids are kids, no matter what kind of mammal.

7. I am certain the raccoon I saw on Monday was a mom with new babies. She acted like she was starving and I'm sure if she had a full litter of kits, she probably is quite hungry. I understand raccoon babies eat a lot.

8. We did not have much of a spring. We went straight from winter to summer. The redbuds came out briefly and the dogwoods barely bloomed around here. The trees grew leaves instead of blossom. I fear for the fruit crops. If they did like the dogwoods and didn't bloom, apple and peach prices will be out of reach this summer.

9. I don't care if climate change is a political hot button; anyone can see that the weather is different. We have more wind than we used to, for one thing. Earlier and hotter springs. What difference does it make whether it's created by man or not? Shouldn't eradicating pollution be a good thing regardless? Who wants to breathe in all of that bad air? After all, it's not good for children. Or their mothers and fathers.

10. We have a little birdseed left so we are still filling the feeders. The cowbirds have been hitting it recently. I saw a pair of cardinals out there yesterday. The female was much bigger than the male. He's pretty, with his red feathers, but she could take him out in a fight, I think.

11. When I was watching the eagles in California, I noted that the female eagle was bigger than the male. I wonder if that's a given in most bird species, that the female is larger than the male. A search says it varies by species.

12. My irises are not blooming; other people's are, though. Mine are quite old. I planted them over 30 years ago and have not done anything to them since then. They may need to be separated. I brought them over from my parents' farm. My mother was fond of irises. Some of hers came from my great aunt, so I am sitting on generations of irises here. Sometimes mine bloom later than other people's and I look for that to happen this year. Maybe because they are older stock?

13. And thus endeth the foray into nature for the Thursday Thirteen. Enjoy the sunshine!

______________

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 857th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Raccoon

This raccoon popped up in the field in front of the house yesterday. I took loads of photos of her (I'd bet the house that this is a mother raccoon looking for food because her kits are making her thin) but these two were the best.

I don't generally see these animals in the daytime so this was a treat. She wasn't acting like anything other than a hungry animal, digging up grubs in the ground, so I felt sure she was ok.

She even hung out with the deer for a bit.

Deer at the top, raccoon at the bottom.

Closed Eye Hallucinations

Image by Copilot/Bing

This weekend I learned that other people do not continue to see images behind their eyelids when they close their eyes.

I always have. Generally, it's an outline of whatever I was looking at before I shut my eyes, with the white or lighter color showing up and giving me sort of a negative of the object.

No eye doctor or regular doctor, or anyone else for that matter, has ever mentioned this to me. And before this weekend, I'd never mentioned it to anyone else, either. Like my tinnitus in my ears, I thought it was something everyone experienced because I've experienced for as long as I can remember. (Then I began reading about tinnitus and realized it wasn't normal.)

Saturday night I shut my eyes to a particularly vivid negative image of the dresser because my husband had had the overhead light on instead of the bedside lamps, and I asked him how it looked to him.

"When I shut my eyes, all I see is dark," he said.

"All the time?" I asked. "You don't see outlines or white streaks?"

"No."

I rolled over and asked Alexa what it was called if you saw things behind your eyelids when your eyes were closed.

She came back with "closed eye hallucinations."

Also called "CEVs," this is apparently not something everyone experiences. It is not a dream, either. Unlike dreams, CEVs occur when individuals are fully awake and conscious. These hallucinations, therefore, can range from simple geometric shapes to complex, lifelike scenarios. (Fortunately, I don't have the lifelike scenarios, although I do daydream quite a lot. But not with my eyes shut.)

Common triggers include using psychedelic drugs (which I do not use, although I am on a lot of medication for blood pressure and chronic pain) or sleep deprivation and fatigue. I don't know what the trigger for me would be, since it happens all the time. 

I suppose it could be something else. I found these possibilities:

• Image Burn-In (Afterimage): Not to be confused with CEVs, image burn-in occurs due to bright light and fades away as the retina heals. (Maybe I looked at the sun when I was a kid and my retina never healed? But wouldn't an eye doctor have noticed?)
• Entoptic Phenomena: CEVs exclude phenomena like floaters, wiper ridges, and vitreous movement, highlighting the distinction between controlled hallucinations and involuntary visual experiences. (I have floaters. What I see when I close my eyes is not a floater. It's an image.)
• Blue-Sky Sprites: CEVs are unrelated to bluefield entoptia, which involves leukocytes migrating through retinal blood vessels. (Perhaps this is a reference to that white line I see in the sky when I look up with my eyes open?)
• Physical Retinal Stimulation: CEVs are independent of visual noise caused by physical retinal stimulation, such as pressure phosphenes, which result from mechanical stimuli. (I think that refers to the weird things you see if you push on your eyeballs.)

I am not sure what this is, honestly, except that apparently not everyone has it and I'm 60 years old and just figuring that out. I place it up there with my photographic memory, which was something else I thought everyone had only to learn they didn't, and auditory hallucinations I sometimes have. (I hear people calling to me, like when I'm in the car and there is no way anyone is actually calling to me. It's weird. It doesn't happen often. Usually, I am highly stressed when it does happen.)

I have something screwy in my brain, I guess. Maybe I should leave my brain to science. As busy as it is up there, there must be something interesting going on.

At any rate, next time I see my eye doctor, I will mention it to him and see what he says, now that I know it's not normal.

Sunday Stealing

1. What was the best toy you ever owned?

A. I'll go with the set of Johnny West dolls and accessories that I had before my tweens. I lost it all in a flood at my grandmother's, but they were fun to play with.

2. When in your life have you felt the loneliest?

A. Usually in a crowd.

3. What is your strongest emotion?

A. Sadness.

4. When were you the most disappointed in yourself?

A. I was most disappointed in myself when I was unable to have children, even though that was no fault of mine. It certainly felt like a fault or a failure on my part.

5. Which law would you most like to change?

A. The Second Amendment could use a rewrite.

6. Who is the person you have hated the most in your lifetime?

A. I try really hard not to hate people. 

7. What has disappointed you the most?

A. My mother's lack of empathy and love.

8. What's the best possible attitude toward death?

A. It's going to happen to everybody sooner or later. Make the best preparations you can for your stuff. I mean, basically your body rots and other people take your stuff. That's what happens on the barest of levels. The only thing you may be able to control is what happens to your stuff.

9. What's been the longest day in your life?

A. The day my husband had his hand caught in the hay baler was a very long day.

10. What is the biggest coincidence in your life?

A. 

11. What's the oldest you'd like to live?

A. I don't know. It depends on my health. I have chronic pain and I'm not sure I want to put up with that for another 40 years to make it to 100.

12. Who is the most amazing woman you know personally?

A. I know a lot of amazing women. My friend Teresa amazes me constantly. She does all this household stuff to perfection and takes care of herself, volunteers for things. She's terrific.

13. What was your best experience in school?

A. Having Tina F. for my math teacher was by far the best experience I had in high school. She made everything better, even the math.

14. What's the most meaningful compliment you've ever received?

A. We just had this question a while back; my former editor told me I was fearless when I went after a story in my younger days. I still think about that.

15. What is the most you've spent on something really stupid?

A. I am not sure. I'll go with a guitar; I can't play but one of them at a time, I don't know why I have several. I surely do not need another.

__________

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: Only Love

Saturday 9: Only Love Can Hurt Like This (2014)

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

1) In this week's song, Paloma Faith sings that she thought she wouldn't care if her lover left but now she's begging him to stay. Can you think of something you were surprised you missed when it was gone or over?

A. I have been surprised at how much I miss newspaper work. It's been 10 years and I still miss it. I rather thought I would be over it by now.

2) Paloma obviously has a powerful, versatile voice. She's also a trained dancer. Tell us about two things you do well.

A. I can write well, and I play the guitar decently. I would never claim proficiency on the guitar, but I do it well enough.

3) She was a judge on two British TV shows: The Voice and The Voice Kids. Do you watch competition shows (The Voice, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, etc.)? If so, are you any good at picking the winners?

A. I watch The Voice and I don't think I've ever picked the person to win. 

4) This week's song was written by Diane Warren. She's one of America's most successful song writers, having written more than thirty Top 10 hits. Think of your favorite song. Do you know who wrote it?

A. Yes, Landslide, written and performed by Stevie Nicks.

5) She's made a fortune writing love songs, mostly from her Hollywood Hills office. Diane spends up to 10 hours a day in a room she describes as "cluttered," and admits it's an unlikely setting to write about romance, yet it works for her. Describe a setting you consider romantic.

A. Beaches at sunset are romantic. A cabin by a lake in the mountains is romantic. Bedrooms can be romantic, as can candle-lit dinners.

6) In 2014, when "Only Love Can Hurt Like This" was popular, Joan Rivers died. Best known as a comedienne, she was also a successful businesswoman, promoting her jewelry line on QVC. Do you ever watch shopping networks?

A. No, I do not watch those.

7) The Apple Watch was introduced in 2014. Are you wearing a watch as you answer these 9 questions?

A. Yes, but it is a Timex. I always wear a watch and have for as long as I've been able to tell time.

8) One of the best-selling books of 2014 was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It won awards for best YA (young adult) fiction. Is YA a genre you often read?

A. I read several YA books a year. I read a lot of different genres and have an eclectic reading list most years.

9) Random question: What's something on your to-do list that you just can't get around to doing?

A. Decluttering. Mostly I don't know what to do with the stuff I'd like to remove. We're too rural for a yard sale.

_______________

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

Thursday Thirteen

1. Some weeks Thursday creeps up on me and here I am, with nothing to write. Then I have to do what I'm doing today - just fly off the cuff and hope something comes to me.

2. A book I listened to recently split a character in two and gave her two parallel lives. This was a nod to the theory of the multiverse. Listening to a book that utilizes this was a bit difficult, but not impossible. (The book was Maybe In Another Life, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, if you're interested.)

3. As I understand multiverse theory, and this may be incorrect, I am not looking it up, what happens is that with every decision you make, because there's a choice, the "you" in another multiverse makes a different choice. That splits into a new universe where that person continues on. 

4. While this seems like it may be possible, if you follow it through, that means every micro-nano-second of your life, you're splitting into pieces and creating new universes, because don't we make decisions practically every second?

5. Much of what we do is habit - but it's a still choice as to whether you wash your hair the same way, or not. So, theoretically every little second there would be a split, ad infinitum, on and on, because each one of those splits would go on to make decisions and create new universes, too, while you're still creating new universes.

6. As Sheldon said in The Big Bang Theory, in one of those universes I am probably a clown. As in the kind that dresses up in a suit with a big nose, not the snarky somewhat sarcastic person I actually am sometimes.

7. I have often wondered where my life would have gone had I made different choices along the way. What if I had not decided to go to the high school football game where I met my husband? Most likely he would have met someone else and he would be married to another woman.

8. And me? Maybe I would have gone on to become a college professor, or a lawyer, or maybe none of those things. Maybe I would have met some other man and married him. Maybe I'd be a bag woman living under a bridge. I have no way of knowing.

9. Isn't this what fiction is, sort of? We fall into a different world when we read fiction, a whole other universe, so to speak, even if the fiction is not fantasy or science fiction. It's still a fictional world with fictional characters. 

10. Or is the writer subconsciously channeling a life being led by some alternative person created by some decision made when he or she was five years old? Are we aware on some level that we're creating different worlds - or are we losing parts of ourselves in this process? Shouldn't there be a gain and a loss to even things out?

11. Fortunately for me, I am no quantum theorist, I just know about this because I read a lot and I've seen it come up in various things. They talked about it some in The Big Bang Theory, too. I wonder how many people know more science from watching that show. I know I do. I just hope it's good science.

12.  Maybe ghosts are actually other universes that somehow bisect with our own, some place where there's a thin veil and the worlds cross over. 

13. And then there's the concept of time. I doubt it would be the same in each universe, so in some universes maybe it would be pre-industrial times, and in others maybe it would simply be hunter-gather land. Some would have to be in the future, wouldn't they? Or not. I don't know.

Weird things to think about. I should read a book about it sometime when I have time.

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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 856th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Red Alert

Since the beginning of the year, we've been notified of security breaches with our bank, our insurance agent, a doctor's office I hadn't been to since 2015, and now ATT.

Some of these companies offered free monitoring through one source or another. We signed up for them.

Last night, my husband received a notice that his Social Security number was on the dark web (whatever that is), and along with this information was a list of other information available with his number.

The problem was the other information wasn't his information. It was someone else entirely.

After a 50-minute wait on the phone, my husband got an agent with the monitoring company, who told him that the criminals on the dark web create names and addresses to go with the Social Security number, and then sell that information for who-knows-what nefarious purposes.

And there was nothing they could do, the agent said. We could only take some precautions that were already outlined in the email that alerted him to this potential problem.

This morning, I spent several hours first reviewing our credit reports and then implementing credit freezes and fraud alerts on our information. I keep up with this stuff fairly well anyway, but this was an engrossing detailed look at everything. It was a pain in the butt, but I am happy to report that I didn't find anything amiss.

But that doesn't mean something couldn't be amiss a little further down the road.

There is no escaping this kind of thing in this country, because we have politicians who do not believe in regulating companies so that they would have to say, actually implement good hacker protection on their accounts. It is beyond comprehension to me to know that my bank was hacked, for example. The bank should have better protection. Plus, they didn't even offer any monitoring. They just sent a letter that said too bad, so sad, your tough luck. 

My insurance company and ATT should have had better protection, too. However, I guess they saved money so that 73 million of us could now worry about whether or not our credit or our good name was being stolen.

Sometimes, your name is all you have. You shouldn't have to defend it, yet here we are.

In any event, we must all be diligent. Things are falling apart, and we must take care. Watch our backs, so to speak. Maybe watch your friends' backs, too.

Here are steps you can take to protect yourself:

1. Create a mySocial Security account with the Social Security Administration to claim your SSN and prevent others from doing so.

2. Review your earnings on your Social Security Statement to ensure accuracy.

3. Obtain free credit reports from annualcreditreport.com and check for unrecognized accounts or charges.

4. Monitor your bank and credit card accounts regularly for any unauthorized transactions.

5. Set up a fraud alert by contacting one of the major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion.

6. Consider a credit freeze with the three credit bureaus, which makes it harder for someone to open new accounts in your name.

7. Additionally, it’s important to update your passwords and enable two-factor authentication (2FA) for an added layer of security. If you suspect any fraudulent activity, report it to the authorities immediately.

For more detailed guidance, you may want to consult with a professional who specializes in identity theft protection and recovery. However, I don't have any idea how to find one of those professionals and neither does anyone else, I suspect. If you know, let me in on the secret, please!