Superheroes versus Villains

During the dance recital Saturday night, my niece played Wonder Woman in a long clogging routine that involved superheroes and villains.

The cast of many included Supergirl, Storm, the Joker, and a bunch of other characters I probably should have recognized but did not. It has been a long time since I really paid much attention to the world of superheroes and villains, aside from occasionally catching a movie (though I am now a big fan of Supergirl on the CW).

The routine basically consisted of the bad guys coming out and taking on what I presumed to be regular citizens - cute young girls dancing around - and then the superheroes showed up to save the day.

Zoe' as Wonder Woman before her routine.

Wonder Woman dancing with Storm (right) in preparation for battle.

Wonder Woman on the move.



Wonder Woman and Supergirl prepare to take on the baddies.

More dancing before the final bad-guy take-down.

Saving a civilian (I think).

I have to say, this was a heck of a make-up job on the Joker.

Wonder Woman and Supergirl finally take down the Joker near the end.

Grease is the Word, Eh Brother?

Today is my brother's birthday. He's off celebrating somewhere. But over the weekend, he spent two days doing the dance recital for Floyd Ward. My niece, Zoe', has been doing this dancing stuff for years now, and for the last six years or so my brother has taken part in the father-daughter dance routine.

This year, they did Grease. Here are photos from that particular dance routine.

Happy birthday, Bro!

The Thunderbirds came out groovin'.

A little ballet move, maybe?

My niece and the other girls came out jivin'.

A little sock hop, perhaps?

My brother and his best girl.

Puttin' on the dance moves.

A big dip for the finale.

Sunday Stealing: Random

Sunday Stealing: The Random Questions, Part 683

1. How old do you look?

A. Older than the sea and younger than the moon; somewhere around a 'coon's age, maybe.

2. Where do you live?

A. On a big blue marble in the midst of a black ocean of stars.

3. Are you waiting for something?

A. The ability to move between parallel universes.

4. What’s one pet peeve of yours that is not common?

A. I don't like it when people tell me they are going to do things (call me, visit, bake me a cake, send me a video, whatever) and then don't. But I don't know if that is common or not. Apparently it is common for people to do that to other people - say they are going to do something but then not, so it must not bother others -  but if I say I'm going to do something, I do it, unless I've been in a car wreck, fallen down the stairs, or lost my mind. I am frequently disappointed because I expect others to live by my internal standards, which apparently are quite high. I'm trying to stop that and not have expectations.

5. Do you want/have kids?

A. My husband and I wanted children but were unable to have them. I had a condition called endometriosis that led to infertility. It would be a preexisting condition under the proposed AHCA (Republican/Trump healthcare) and a woman without insurance who needed surgery for it, as I did six times due to massive hemorrhaging and cystic growths that caused sepsis, would die or become bankrupt. Had the proposed "you don't have to offer birth control for religious reasons" issues been in place at that time, I likely would have died because the doctors used birth control to help curtail the illness while we attempted infertility treatments. I would have died for sure had we not had insurance. Fortunately we obtained the insurance before we learned I had the problem. We did not adopt because at the time we couldn't afford it and my husband wasn't sold on the idea. Had he been more interested we might have pursued it in spite of the cost, but I wasn't going to bring a child into our world if he wasn't 100 percent on board.

6. Have you ever thought about converting your religion?

A. Life is bigger. It's bigger than you and you are not me. . . . That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight - losing my religion. - REM. 

I have changed my thoughts on religion numerous times and they continue to evolve. I tend to lean toward the nature and pagan religions these days; Christianity as currently practiced and preached I find abhorrent and totally adverse to the words of Christ. How did it get so twisted? I do my own thinking and reading on the subject and I believe I answer to a much larger and kinder god than that angry militant being which others learn about from pulpits.

7. Last shocking news you heard?

A. Very little shocks me anymore. However, the last thing that really concerned me was when my brother showed me his hernia at his naval and I saw how purple it was. I think he needs to have that looked at. I don't think they are supposed to be purple.

8. What was the last thing you drank?

A. Water. Cool, clear water.

9. Who do you most look like in your family?

A. It depends on which side of the mirror I am on. If I am in the looking glass I look like my mother but outside of it I look like my father.

10. If you could have something right now, anything, what would it be?

A. A time machine or a parallel universe jumping machine (I don't know what that would be called.).

11. Where does most of your family live?

A. Most of my immediate family lives within 10 miles of me.

12. Where did you grow up?

A. I grew up on a farm, thinking we raised unicorns and butterflies that eventually turned into dreams and wishes, but it turned out we were raising cows and chickens. That's a reality check if I ever saw one.

13. Where do you want to go on vacation?

A. We're still contemplating that, but we are thinking somewhere to the west. Since I'm on the east coast of the U.S. that pretty much leaves an entire continent.

14. Have you ever had a panic attack?

A. Yes, I have. Visits to Walmart tend to bring those on.

15. What can’t you wait for?

A. I am a patient woman, and there isn't much I can't wait for, but it would be nice if I could learn sooner rather than later how to take better care of myself and my health, which would include eating properly and learning to cook healthy meals. It really is too bad that cooking is not something I enjoy.

16. When’s the last time you told someone you loved him or her and meant it?

A. I tell my husband that all the time and always mean it.

17. Have your parents ever smoked pot?

A. I have no idea. My mother is dead so I can't ask her. Hey Dad, did you do weed?

18. Want someone back in your life?

A. No. If they are gone they are gone for a reason.

19. What do you order at the bar?

A. Bartender, bring me a grape NeHi followed by a second round of root beer.

20. When was the last time you cried really, really hard?

A. Oh gosh, I don't know. It's been a while. My eyes watered up during the Wonder Woman movie on Friday, but I did not cry.

21. What are your nicknames?

A. Sweetie Pie (my husband calls me that) and a few other things that I do not write out but answer to anyway. If I wrote them out I would have to kill you, and since I'm a pacifist and don't believe in killing that would put me in a real philosophical bind.

22. What is your favorite thing to eat with peanut butter?

A. A saltine cracker.

23. Where were you on July 4th, 2008?

A. I was either at home all day and we went to the fireworks in Fincastle later that evening, or my husband was at work and I stayed home and went to bed.

24. If you could go foward in time, how far forward would you go?

A. I would like to see how humanity ultimately destroys itself - or not. So maybe 10,000 years. Maybe we'd be the Planet of the Apes by then. Or maybe there would be nothing here, and I would come out of the time machine into space, and die in the vacuum. Or maybe there would be dinosaurs again because things had to start over. Or maybe humanity would have turned into something else, little brains with large thumbs, maybe, while machines did the thinking. Who knows?

25. If you could go back in time, how far back would you go?

A. Oh, let's go all the way back to the very beginning, and resolve that issue of the Big Bang once and for all, shall we?


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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: Lazy Bones

Saturday 9: Lazy Bones (1975)

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

1) This song is about a guy who'd rather nap than do his chores. Are there things you should be doing right now, instead of hanging around the blogosphere, answering these questions?

A. Of course. I live in a house on a farm and there is always something that needs to be done - laundry to fold, drawers to clean, floors to sweep. But all work and no play makes CountryDew a dull girl.

2) This song mentions a lazy afternoon of fishing. When did you last go fishing?

A. About 20 years ago.

3) The lyrics catch our hero sleeping in both the sun and the shade. Do you have a nice, shady place to nap on your front lawn? Or would we catch you lying in the sun?

A. You wouldn't catch me doing either. I'm allergic to everything out there. But the front yard is sunny and you're welcome to come and get a tan if you like.

4) This week's featured artist, Leon Redbone, is a difficult man to nail down. Over the years he's claimed to be born in Ontario, and Philadelphia, and even Cyprus. Tell us about a time you got caught in a fib.

A. There was that time I chopped down a cherry tree and said, "I cannot tell a lie, I did it." No. Wait. That was George Washington.

5) Mr. Redbone has said that taking himself too seriously would be "the gentle kiss of death." What's something that you always take seriously and just can't joke about?

A. Life.

6) He has retired from public life, and that includes his Facebook page, which is no longer available. What did you last post to your Facebook page?

A. A story from Reuters about the bombing in Kabul.

7) Leon always wore dark glasses when he performed. Do your sunglasses have gray, green, brown or rose colored lenses?

A. They are kind of purple, actually. So I suppose close to rose.

8) Recently Dick Van Dyke performed this song at a charity benefit, aided by his a capella quartet, The Vantastix. Last year, at age 90, he campaigned for Bernie Sanders. So Mr. Van Dyke is certainly not a "lazy bones." Who's the most active, energetic person in your life?

A. My husband. He never sits down.

9) Random question: You're at dinner with friends and someone begins a very long joke with, "Stop me if you've heard this before." You have heard it, many times before. Do you stop him? Or do you just sit through it again?

A. I probably would sit through it again, unless I thought everyone else had heard it as well.

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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.

 

Seeing Wonder Woman and the Meaning of Superhero

I do not go to the movies often. The last movie my husband and I saw at the theater was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which showed in 2015. The last movie I saw alone was Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 which showed in 2004.

But I really wanted to see Wonder Woman. Like I said yesterday in my Thursday Thirteen post, I have always had a thing for strong female heroines. And by "strong" I mean a female character that embodies womanly strength (which I consider to be more pacifistic, circular, and loving instincts) and who is still able to take care of herself without needing intervention from the patriarchy.

In my little band of friends, I seem to be the only fantasy aficionado. If there are others, they haven't spoken up. My brother shares my proclivity for the genre, but we can barely get together for a phone call, much less a movie. My husband watches these movies with me and I think he enjoys them but he doesn't watch them on his own. For example, he can repeat lines from Lord of the Rings because he's walked in to find me watching it 100 times, but it is not a movie he seeks out himself.

Going out by myself has become difficult for me, as a few  of my close friends (and my physical therapist) know. Other people may not realize it, but trying to climb stairs and walk up hills or go any distance on the slightest bit of uneven ground is painful and trying. The movie theater has stairs and no elevator if you want to sit in the middle or up high and not right on top of the screen.

Despite this, I gathered my courage and went alone to the theater. My husband had to work at the fire station today. He has hay down that he will need to work on tomorrow, and another large field that needs to be cut. We are weaning calves. He has a septic tank to install. I have no idea when he might have a free hour, much less time to go to a movie. 

Anyway, I made it to the theater early so I would have plenty of time to settle in. I slowly and carefully walked up 30 stairs to get to where I wanted to sit, which was just above the midpoint of the theater seats. I am paying for it now with a lot of pain but that is okay.

Truly, the stairs were difficult and I ended up asking someone at the theater to help me because I couldn't carry popcorn, a drink, a back support I need because the chairs at the theater are absolutely terrible if you have back problems, and use a cane. I was grateful a theater person helped me. Thumbs up to the theater for having someone available to do that.

After I settled in, I found myself cringing a bit because at the early matinee there were more men there than I anticipated. Just men, in singles and in pairs, and more of them than women. I saw a few fathers with daughters, a few couples, and one or two other people there by themselves. The theater was by no means full; it was maybe one-third filled which apparently is typical for that time of day. Anyway, the abundance of men unsettled me. I wasn't expecting that.

I forgot some of my anxiety when the movie started. It was an amazing film. The picture was better than Star Wars: The Force Awakens by the length of a Death Star ray and then some.

Wonder Woman was full of fun, mischief, and heart. It was cinematic in scope with beautiful scenery and an attention to detail I haven't seen in a movie in a while. Gal Gadot is a good actress and she made a beautiful, enthralling, adorable, and entirely believable character come to life. Chris Pine portrayed a credible Steve Trevor, and I liked the little cadre of assistance Trevor put together to help Diana Prince and himself infiltrate the place where the queen of poison and Ares in the guise of someone else was hiding. I won't spoil anything else; all of that information is available in the movie trailers.

I do urge you to see this movie if you have any interest in coming of age stories, in stories about overcoming the dearth of bad in the hearts of mankind, and in seeing something that offers lessons about humanity, goodness overcoming darkness, and love (not romantic love, but love of humanity).

But truly the most amazing thing, for me personally, happened after the movie. I sat while most everyone left, because I knew it was going to take me a while to get back down the stairs. I tried to catch the eye of the clean-up guy so he could carry my trash for me, but to no avail. So finally I stood and then eased myself carefully down the steps, one at a time - slowly, slowly. I reached the bottom, where a trash can had been placed, and tossed my trash.

I turned toward the door and there, with the light behind him creating a silhouette as he strode down the dark hallway towards me, was my husband in his firefighter's uniform, looking for all the world like a slightly portly superhero in a movie, heading toward a damsel in distress to rescue her.

He had come in with no ticket near the end, to be sure I was okay and able to get out to the car. My hero.

It was extra-special to have him make that small effort because today was his birthday and he was at work. I had thought I might drive to the firehouse to surprise him but instead he surprised me. He helped me to the restroom (the movie is 2.5 hours so don't drink during it), and then out to the car.

We had a long kiss goodbye and he sent me on my way. I shall have to find a superhero name for him, my man with the special power of love.

Happy Birthday to My Hubby

A young firefighter.



Now a Battalion Chief

Unmasked at home.



Always working hard.



Enjoying his motorcycle.



Working the tractor.



Red hat, scraggly face, must be hunting season.



All dressed up.



A bit of down time.



With me when the new fire station opened.



Last year getting ready to ride in a race car.



The day we married.

My favorite shot of him - with his hay and on the farm.

Thursday Thirteen

Tonight the new Wonder Woman movie opens. I am hoping to see it tomorrow. I have not been this excited about a film since Lord of the Rings.

I have always had a thing for strong female heroines. And by "strong" I don't necessarily mean able to lift locomotive and leap tall buildings in a single bound, although that is fun. By strong I mean characters that embody womanly strength (which I consider to be more pacifistic, circular, and loving instincts) and still able to take care of herself without needing intervention from the patriarchy.

It's not that I don't like men. I don't like the idea that women need men in order to be whole. I don't and other women don't. This movie is coming at a great time when men in particular need to be reminded that they are not the end-all of everything. After all, without a strong woman bearing down to give them birth, they wouldn't even be here.

I began reading comics when I was very young, so Wonder Woman is familiar to me. She was not my favorite heroine in the 1970s because her male writers turned her into a more romantic character, all google-eyed over Steve Trevor, than she should have been. The Wonder Woman TV show with Lynda Carter took some of her power back, though she was still a little google-eyed over Trevor.

Comics lost their allure for me when I became a teenager, and I have not read them since. I know, however, that many of my favorite characters have changed over the years, some not for the better, and that the comics worlds have introduced parallel universe and somewhat stupid plot lines since I stopped reading. So some of my idolization is based not on current characters but on my recollection of them from the 1970s.

Anyway, here is a list of 13 strong female fictional characters, many from my childhood, some not. Some are superheroes. Some are not. The list is in no particular order.

1. Wonder Woman. Born of Zeus and Queen Hippolyta, Wonder Woman, aka Diana (the other name of the goddess Artemis), has her roots in Amazon feminine mythology. She is strong and able to fight, but she is also a pacifist at heart. She fights not certain wars, but war itself. She loves and is caring, and yet she can bounce a bullet off her magic bracelets. Wonder Woman as she should be - and by all accounts in this new movie she is as she should be - is the epitome of a female heroine. (I just wish the writers were female.)

2. Xena, Warrior Princess. Xena came around in the mid-1990s and was one of the few female heroines at that time. She was a flawed character with a charred past, and her desire was redemption and forgiveness. She hoped to do that one bandit at a time though her writers sometimes lost sight of that theme. Her pal Gabrielle was also a strong female heroine, with a more subtle strength of wisdom and words in the earlier years of the show. She later learned to fight with a staff, which, one hoped, knocked people unconscious rather than gutted them with swords, because she also tended toward pacifist qualities. As Xena's sidekick, Gabrielle was not destined to simply battle with words, though.

3. Batgirl, for me, was Barbara Gordon, daughter of the police commissioner in the Batman comics I read growing up. I understand there have been several incarnations of Batgirl (and several females who have carried that title) and that in later years Barbara Gordon, paralyzed, became the Oracle, but I never read that so fortunately for me Batgirl remains in my brain a regular woman who wanted to stop the evils of Gotham City and protect those who otherwise could not protect themselves.

4. The Black Widow was making appearances in Daredevil comics in the 1970s by the time I became familiar with her. Natasha Romanova was originally a Russian spy and antagonist of Iron Man, but she defected to the United States (comic superheroes tend to be very U.S. oriented) and when I was her fan, she was teamed with Daredevil (1971 - 1975). Apparently she goes on to become part of Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers universes, but I ever read those comics. I enjoyed this character because she fought alongside Daredevil and I remember feeling frustrated because I never felt like the character received her due.

5. The Invisible Girl, Sue Richards (apparently now known as the Invisible Woman), was part of the Fantastic Four, another Marvel comic team. She was part of a team of astronauts caught in a cosmic storm which transformed their bodies, giving them different powers. She was able to become invisible and throw protective force fields over herself and others to keep them from harm. While she was a strong super heroine, she also tended to be more of a damsel in distress and not a leader. She followed her husband's lead more so than her own. Still, she had an impact on me as a young comic reader. Aside from the rather bad Fantastic Four movies, I have lost track of her storyline.

6. Supergirl is currently a TV series on the CW. It is heading into Season 3 this fall. The character as portrayed on TV by Melissa Benoist is psychologically vulnerable, still trying to figure out her mission and role as a someone with superpowers. In her TV world, she lives in an era of aliens who have a variety of powers against which humanity has no resources, so she does battle with them. The show has a liberal tone to it and Supergirl's adopted sister last season came out as gay. In this universe, women run major enterprises and the former Woman Woman, Lynda Carter (though not in that character), is the United States President. This is Do Not Miss TV for me and one of the few shows I watch.

7. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a TV show heroine from 1997 to 2003. She was a young high school student who was "chosen" to be the only person who could kill vampires and keep the evil at bay. This gave her super strength but in order to become a true superhero, Buffy had to learn the martial arts, train to keep her strength up, and manage the menagerie of emotions experienced by teenagers in general. The show tilted a bit after its first four seasons but ended on a positive note, with all girls becoming the chosen ones who would go on to fight for good. The character continued on in a comic book but I never read that.

8. Captain Katheryn Janeway was one of the few female leads in the Star Trek world, and the only female lead to date to have a major role in that world. Janeway was the captain of the Starship Voyager, and the show, Star Trek: Voyager, ran for 172 episodes (1995 - 2001). The show was not a runaway hit (fanboys hated it, I have heard, but what do they know? They're just mouths.) but it was notable because of Janeway's persistence in getting her crew, lost in the Delta Quadrant, back to Earth. Janeway was human with no super powers but she was incredibly smart and intelligent, forthright and determined, and I admired the character's ability to withstand the loneliness of command while interacting with a crew that she was destined to spend many years with. The show also featured strong female characters in B'elenna Torres, who was the ship's engineer, and Seven of Nine, a former Borg drone who was liberated and then re-humanized by the Voyager crew.

9. Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey, from the TV show Cagney & Lacey, qualify for this list. They had no super powers and their tool of choice was their brain and heart, followed by a gun if necessary. The show was human but showed the strength of women, which is really what this post is all about, in that they prevailed against a system that is set up to make females fail due to patriarchal chronic push back towards the past female roles of housewife and mother. Cagney battled multiple internal demons, including alcoholism and self-esteem issues, while Lacey epitomized multiple female virtues of heart and love, fighting her own battle against cancer and bad guys.

10.  Charlie's Angels, all three from the original show, also qualify for this list. While I found the idea of Charlie, the voice from the phone who directed their investigations, somewhat repulsive, the women generally saved themselves with occasional help from a bungling Bosley, who with his somewhat clownish manner made the manly save less intrusive into this girl-power detective show. The three heroines were able to get out of trouble either by using womanly guile (never a strong point, but hey, I suppose one must use what one has) and brains, along with an occasional gun and a karate chop. The point was, these ladies could handle themselves if they had to, and they took care of one another with a sisterly bond that I enjoyed watching. I stopped watching after Kate Jackson left, as the Sabrina Duncan character (the one with the brains) was the one I most identified with. The film remake that starred Drew Barrymore gave the Angels more superhero status, as they were able to climb fences and battle machine guns with martial arts kicks that defied commonsense (I loved the movie anyway). In researching this, I just learned there will be another Charlie's Angels movie coming out in 2019. There was a short-lived reboot of the series on TV a few years ago but it was pretty bad.

11. Princess Leia was the heroine of the Star Wars films. Played by Carrie Fisher, Leia was a combination of haughty woman, needy woman, and tough as nails heroine. She didn't have the Force (I strongly suspect the Force was not, in 1977, open to women) and like other super women, she tended to be set apart from others (mostly because she was a princess).  Fisher in 2014 said this: "the only reason to go into acting is if you can kill a giant monster." Great quote, eh?

12. Eowyn, daughter of King Theodan in Lord of the Rings, is the only woman in that entire series who appears to count, but without her, Middle Earth would have been enveloped in darkness. Eowyn is not happy being a lady of the court; she wants to use her blade for the good of the people, doing battle against the forces of Mordor that are trying to take over the lands of Rohan. She sneaks into battle and goes into the fight at Gondor, and ultimately she is the one who kills the Witch King of Angmar, who believes that no man can kill him. Fortunately for Middle Earth, Eowyn is not a man. She's a shieldmaiden of Rohan who knows how to stuff a blade into the face of evil.

13. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. She is a witch who uses her brains as well as her magical powers to keep evil at bay. She is at first insecure and unsure of herself, but as the books (and movie series) progressed, she grew more sure of herself and her powers. Watching her grow up and blossom from insecure child to woman was one of the joys of the Harry Potter world.

There are of course many more action heroes, superheroes, and just plain great women in literature who deserve to be on this list, but it is called Thursday 13 for a reason, and thus I end here (although I will say if I were to add a fourteenth it would probably be Jo from Little Women.)

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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 502nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Is It the End (of the) Times?

I do not remember how I began stringing for The Roanoke Times back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I don't know if I responded to an ad, sent in a story suggestion, or oozed my way into what was then the Neighbors section (a weekly insert) by sleight-of-hand or deft design.

Somehow, though, my byline found its way into the area's largest newspaper, not only in the Neighbors and special projects sections, but also in the main paper. That happened mostly at graduation time when extra bodies were needed to turn in hurried stories about caps and gown.

This was the time of no cellphones. I called in stories from phone booths, crouched down with my notebook on my knees, reading the copy into the mouthpiece so the words could go into the morning edition. There was a technique to that, lost now, I suppose, where you spelled out names and said "end graph" to denote a new paragraph, and even said "period" at the end of a sentence. I did so much of it that I took the folks who had to take my calls a few boxes of chocolates, because I knew they had a tough time of it, trying to make sure what I sent made sense before it hit the press.

Newspapers were peaking then, but we didn't know it yet. The Internet was not a common item; there were, I think, bulletin boards where nerdy guys hung out to talk about computer building and atomic death rays, but pre-1990 things were different and the world would not recognizable to today's youth. The Internet then wasn't something everyone plugged into. We were still autonomous individuals working within a society, not individuals plugged into our own little devices and lost in alternative fact worlds.

Folks read the news back then, in those dark ages before the Internet. They read things on paper, not on some electronic reader. They talked about the same stories and made note of the same news, and they did not pick and chose their facts because back then people knew what was a fact and what was opinion. I don't think that is the case anymore.

The newspaper business changed over my lifetime. I began reading the newspaper in 1967, when I was four years old. Yes, truly. I would sit at my grandmother's kitchen table and read the newspaper, front to back. I barely comprehended it, but I read it. I remember distinctly how my grandmother would fix dinner and I would spell out a word to her, asking her how to pronounce it and what it meant. Even though she had only a fourth grade education, she knew what I needed to be told. She read the paper front to back, too.

I knew when I was 10 years old that I want to write for newspapers.

When I was young, there were two edition of the paper, a morning edition and the evening edition. After my husband and I married in 1983, we took the evening edition. According to Wikipedia, The Roanoke Times & World News paper ceased its evening edition in 1991 (I thought it was earlier than that, but we'll go with Wikipedia).  I remember having difficulty adjusting to reading at breakfast instead of dinner, as did my husband.

Around 1995, The Roanoke Times & World News became The Roanoke Times. In 2013, it became the property of Berkshire Hathaway (owned by Warren Buffet et al). I am not sure it mattered then who owned the thing. The paper had changed so much by 2013 that it was (and is) only a shadow of the journalistic endeavors I recall from my younger years.

I think I knew the death bell was tolling when they eliminated Prince Valiant from the funny papers, (not sure exactly when that happened and it's an odd thing to mark decline by), but I also found it painful to watch the quality of reporting diminish as the historical knowledge of the community left with older journalists who either moved on to other things or were let go in favor of youngsters who would work more cheaply. I'm sure other people have their own markers in time as to when they think the paper really began to falter.

It didn't help that I was married to a firefighter who came home and told me of things going on in the city that never made it into the newspaper. What, I wondered, was the paper for if it wasn't going to report on the reality of the world that makes up the City of Roanoke and its surrounding areas?

Yesterday the newspaper announced that it was moving its presses to Lynchburg (where the News & Advance is now a sister paper thanks to the Buffett purchases) and relieving 53 people of their jobs. The press release promises no change in delivery (we will see) and better reliability of printing.

I don't think the paper is dead. I expect it will last another decade, at least. Maybe it will last much, much longer. I am no fortune teller. But I must say, I have never seen a profession shoot itself in the foot like the newspaper business has.

It is as if the paper at its finest was a Ben & Jerry's, offering up 51 flavors of ice cream. Then it slowly cut back to 45 flavors, and it lost a few customers and advertisers, so it laid off a reporter or two. Then it cut back to 30 flavors, and lost more advertisers and customers. Instead of adding back the flavors, the bean counters cut the flavors back to 15, then to 10, and now they only serve Neapolitan ice cream and expect to remain in business.

When a product falters, good business demands you make the product better, not worse, but the newspaper business has not done that. They have made the product worse. They can blame the Internet all they want - and I am sure it has some culpability - but the decline started when money, not news, became all that mattered.

I shall hope this is not a bad sign for The Roanoke Times. I want to keep reading it until my eyes close and the casket covers me. But I fear for not only this paper, but others, including the little local paper for which I wrote for 30+ years.

Some things have value that is not monetary. The news is one of them. One cannot put a value on insight and truth, but we have tried.

And look where it has taken us - into the bogs of a no-mans land, where only devils dare to play.

Bilbo & Frodo

Medium: colored pencil



Medium: colored pencil

The Lakeside Room

Continuing my mini-tour of the Salem Museum in Salem, VA, I present to you an entire room dedicated to Lakeside Amusement Park.

The park began in 1920 with a segregated swimming pool. Within a few years, the land owners added rides. The swimming pool use ended in 1967 but the rides remained. The pool was filled in so that the new roller coaster, The Shooting Star, could be constructed.

Lakeside was a summer destination for many families in our area until it closed in 1986. The park was flooded in 1985, and while it reopened briefly after repairs, it was not able to survive the flood and then a lawsuit that resulted from the death of a grounds worker after the reopening.

I visited Lakeside numerous times as a child, with my parents and also without them, and as a teenager I ventured to the park to listen to entertainers who played at the Pavilion there. I seem to recall hearing Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn ( maybe?) and a few other country singers there, including Juice Newton who was popular at the time. 

I remember bumper cars, cotton candy, throwing up from the Tilt-a-Whirl (I wasn't the only one), the Sky Lift, which went over the parking lot and gave an intriguing view of the area, a miniature train, a super slide (which would burn your legs if you wore shorts and slide down it in the summer), the Ferris wheel, a carousel, and an arcade area of some type.

The Lakeside Room at the museum has a huge miniature of the roller coaster along with lots of photos and other memorabilia.

The model of The Shooting Star roller coaster.

Not only did this bring back memories, I was also fascinated by the detail and design of this model.

A horse from the carousel.

Pennants, postcards, photos and other items about Lakeside Amusement Park. 

A close of the Sky Lift (my favorite ride) and the Shooting Star.

This link takes you to a video from WDBJ7 showing the construction of The Shooting Star. It is five minutes long and includes footage of the flooding of the facility and the aftermath.