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.

 __________

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.

Saturday 9: Bobby's Girl

Saturday 9: Bobby's Girl (1962)

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

1) In this song, Marcie Blane confesses she sits at home, hoping Bobby will call her. Do you owe anyone a phone call or email?

A. No. I'm caught up on all of my correspondence.

2) We know Marcie wants to be Bobby's Girl. Let's play the Google Game and find out what you want. Go to your favorite search engine, keystroke your name and "wants," and then search. (For example: "Samantha wants" led us to a math problem that begins: "Samantha wants to purchase a new dress ... " Crazy Sam was tempted to read on because her wardrobe could use sprucing up.) What does Google tell us you want?

A. In Bing, I want "more than an apology" and in Google, I want "to follow a healthy lifestyle."

3) This hit record was an accident. Marcie Blaine had just graduated from high school and had a few days before she had to take off for her summer job as a camp counselor. A friend asked her to record a couple songs he'd written, just so he could play them for record labels and song publishers. Her friend was hoping somehow an established star would hear the songs, record them and make one of them a hit. Instead, a producer at Seville Records said he wanted not just the songs but especially the unknown girl who was singing them, and Marcie became a recording artist. Tell us about a favor you're very glad you did for a friend.

A. I am always happy to help folks. At the moment, I can't think of anything specific I've done lately since we've all been holed up in our houses because of the pandemic. Although I suppose taking over the fellowship in my multi-player video game because the former leader was having some personal issues might count as a favor. Hopefully he will be back soon, and I can give the game leadership back.

4) By the time summer was over, and Marcie's gig as a counselor was done, she was #3 on the charts. Her record stayed in the "Hot 100" for 19 weeks and, for the second half of 1962, she was the top-selling female singer in the US. What female singer do you listen to most often?

A. I listen to Sheryl Crow and Melissa Etheridge most often. I also like Heart, The Pretenders, Jewel, Alanis Morrisette, Linda Ronstadt, and I'm sure I'm leaving others out.

5) After "Bobby's Girl" took off, she recorded it in German for the European market. Only she didn't speak German, so she sang it phonetically. Can you sing any songs in a language other than English?

A. O Sola Mia!  That's about it. Maybe also bits of "Fere Jaques" which I'm probably not even spelling correctly (Are You Sleeping, Brother John?).

6) Seville rushed Marcie into the studio to make more records. None of them charted higher than #68, and Marcie wasn't having fun. After a year of being a rock 'n roller, she enrolled at Queens College in New York City. What's the most recent class you took?

A. I took a Great Course in abnormal psychology a while back.

7) In 1962, when this song was popular, the most popular baby names were Michael and Lisa. Are there any Michaels or Lisas in your life?

A. Yes, but they are on the periphery of my life, and not actually in it.

8) Also in 1962, Marlene White, the first African American flight attendant for a major US airline, appeared on the cover of Jet magazine. What's the last magazine you flipped through? Was it in print or online?

A. I read Blue Ridge Country magazine and am currently looking at the most recent AARP magazine. Both were in print. I don't really like looking at magazines online.

9) Random Question: After enjoying a long, relaxing weekend, do you find yourself more or less productive on Monday morning?

A. My days all run together; it really doesn't matter what day it is anymore, since my husband retired.

_______________

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.  

Preparing for Snow

With the forecast calling for "plowable snow," my husband in particular has begun his snow preparations.

I went to the grocery store Wednesday, fueled up my car, and made a meatloaf yesterday. That's about the extent of my preparations, except for keeping the laundry completely caught up in case the power goes out.

However, husband has to fuel up the tractors, make sure the plow is on one of the tractors, double check the generators, fuel up his truck, and make sure he has plenty of chewing tobacco on hand. He also decided to go the landfill today.

We do not have a whole house generator. I wish we did, but we do have a portable one that will run the freezer, the fridge, the well pump, and a space heater. We have a grill we can put outside of the garage and cook on, if it comes to that.

So long as the lights stay on, we'll be fine. Even if they don't, we'll be fine.

Maybe if everyone has to stay home for a few days because of snow, the covid germs will give it a rest and the hospitals can catch up.

Thursday Thirteen

1. According to a song, some days are diamond, and some days are gold. Some days are more like coal dust and pyrite. I think today is one of those days.

2. In trying to do the right thing, I find that I frequently do the thing that ultimately isn't right for me. It might please the rest of the world, but it doesn't please me. Do you ever do that?

3. The world right now is a scary place. Politically, it's falling apart everywhere, not just here. And then of course, there's Covid. Covid makes is scary to go outside of my house. It would help if other people would stay out of my personal space, at the least, but they don't. They do what they want and get in your face if that is what they want to do. What's up with that?

4. Eating Cheerios without milk tastes a lot like I would imagine eating sawdust would taste. So, I eat Honey Nut Cheerios dry because that at least has a little flavor. It seems to have helped a little with my cholesterol numbers.

5. The next three days are the deep breath before a major weather front moves in and dumps snow. Although it looks a little like snow this morning, I am not expecting any bad weather.

6. Why do I eat my cereal dry? Because I can't drink milk. And who wants to put water on cereal? I have tried almond milk or soy milk in the past. Neither really did it for me.

7. After you've crinkled up a sheet of aluminum foil, no matter how hard you try, you can't make it look like it did when you pulled it out of the box.

8. The long version of Inagodadivida (sp) is over 15 minutes of play time. I put it on when I want to do a fast house cleaning.

9. It is always easier to do the wrong thing than the right thing, at least when it comes to food. For some people, they are angels and choose the grains, the fruit, etc., but for some of us, if the choice is an apple or a candy bar, the candy bar wins.

10. Actually, in my case, neither of those would win. I haven't been able to eat apples since I had my gallbladder removed in 2013, and I still am (mostly) off chocolate. I have discovered I can handle an occasional small piece of dark chocolate, but milk chocolate sets of my tummy troubles terribly.

11. The grocery stores will be packed today, tomorrow, and Saturday as folks go for bread and milk for the big snow. We went yesterday to avoid the crowds.

12. We did not start feeding the birds until late, like after Thanksgiving. For some reason, the birds are not flocking to the feeder. I don't know if it is the weather or the fact that we kept it empty too long. I am disappointed, though, that I am not seeing my feathered friends this year like I did last year, when we first put the feeder up.

13. Guitar picks are all over the place in my office. I carry them with me and they're on my desk, on book case shelves, in guitars. I used to never use guitar picks and played finger style, but lately I've been relearning to use the guitar pick. I've been trying to become a better guitar player. Mediocre is ok, but I'd like to do better. Besides, I have to keep the ol' noggin thinking and working, right?

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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 739th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Nonfiction: Stories To Tell

Stories To Tell

By Richard Marx

Copyright 2021

Audio Version

(320 pages print version)

I listened to Richard Marx read his memoir last week. I haven't been reviewing books for a while, but I am going for more nonfiction this year so I hope to write those up. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, Marx read the book with nice inflection, and sometimes he even sang when he was talking about his song writing work.

For those who don't know, Richard Marx has sold more than 30 million albums. "He is the only male artist whose first seven singles reached the Top 5 on the Billboard charts, and he has written on a number one single in each of the last four decades—an accolade previously only reached by Michael Jackson. He won a 2004 Song of the Year Grammy and has scored fourteen number-one singles, both as a performer and as a songwriter/producer. He is also a committed philanthropist, supporting charitable causes such as the American Cancer Society and the Ronald McDonald House Charities, Mercy For Animals, ASPCA, Humane Society, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the charity closest to his heart, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He lives in Malibu, California, with his wife, Daisy Fuentes."

That paragraph comes from Amazon. Marx did not mention his philanthropy efforts, or if he did it went right by me, so that part actually comes as a surprise. Considering I just finished his memoir, I don't think it should have.

At any rate, if you're into name dropping, this is the book for you. Marx mentions ever star he ever met and worked with, from Elton John to Barbra Streisand to Whitney Houston, etc. He wrote a lot of songs and he has a strong work ethic.

He also came from a home of great privilege, and this seems to have eluded him for the most part. He seems to think everyone grew up with a grand piano in the basement and went to a private school. His father was an advertising business jingle writer as well as a renown jazz pianist in Chicago. He had advantages that most of us only dream of. I doubt he ever wanted for a thing in his life. He writes about love and loss because that's universal.

Marx is the same age as I am. He's had both hips replaced (he said that was from jumping from piano during concerts). He also has been experiencing some kind of fever thing that is not Covid but sounds like something that he picked up in South America (which was where he said he'd last been before he became ill). He said he'd been tested for everything, but I wondered if it was a parasite.

The book could have used a better editor. It was published by Simon & Schuster and I would have thought they'd have had someone tell Marx that he repeated himself in various places and used certain phrases ("to this day") too much. As an editor and writer myself, I found those types of things aggravating. I'm surprised he didn't hear it himself as he read his memoir out loud.

Marx hit it big during a period when I wasn't really paying attention to new music. I was too busy having multiple surgeries and trying to finish college and work a part-time job all at the same time to give music much thought from about 1987 to 1993. So that's on me.

If anyone had asked me who Richard Marx was before I read this memoir, I'd have said he was a singer in the late 1980s. I couldn't have named one song.

I can now name one song: Hazard. I remember hearing that one on the radio and liking it. As for the others, they went in and out of my head quickly. Good pop songs, but not memorable. Should've Known Better might be his top song. I went to look for a list of his song and that was the only one I recognized. So, I am afraid my answer to the question of who Richard Marx is would be about the same.

Trashing Richard Marx is not the point of this post. Obviously, he's a multimillionaire with talent and I'm just a tiny little blogger living in the backwoods of Appalachia. It was interesting to listen to his writing process - he hears the music first and then the words - and he seemed puzzled by those who did in other ways (words first, for example). 

I have written songs usually by doing words and music in tandem.

However, I do feel like Marx missed a growth opportunity with his memoir. I'd have liked a little more soul searching and a little less name dropping.

Oh, and maybe a little acknowledgement that women are more than simply pretty legs or 2-D walking automatons that get his motor running.

Chatting With Cows

I think that I shall not know how

one might have a chat with cows.

To hear them moo in sad disdain

a cattle call with no refrain

To see them eat, or chew their cud

their hooved feet covered in Virginia mud

That's the farm life that I see

when cows are all that surround me!

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing

1. What was the warmest welcome you’ve ever received?

A. I have no idea. I'm not a public speaker or anything. Most people were not happy to see a news reporter.

2. What was the best thing about your youth?

A. That I grew out of it.

3. Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever met?

A. Over the course of my work as a news reporter, I met many interesting people. It would be difficult to pinpoint who was the most interesting. Everyone is interesting to me as we all have a story that is all our own.

4. What is the least you’ve ever worn in public?

A. That would be a two-piece bathing suit when I was a teenager.

5. What was the worst vacation you ever took?

A. We've had several bad vacations. We went to Virginia Beach in 1989, immediately after the Greekfest riots. When we arrived, we found that the power was out on our side of the street, and the hotel was running off a generator. There was no air conditioning and little light. I think we were nearly the only people in the place. We changed hotels to one with electricity. Most of the shops were closed and boarded up. The destruction was much worse than we had anticipated and certainly much worse than the hotel people had led us to believe when we called. We didn't go back to Virginia Beach until a few years ago, and we had a nice time then. We've also had to leave Myrtle Beach early several times, once because I was sick, once because my husband was sick, and maybe four times because of hurricane evacuations.

6. What room in your home do you spend the most time?

A. My office, where my computer and my guitars are.

7. Who made the strongest first impression on you?

A. I hate to say this, but Bob McDonnell, the disgraced former Republican governor of Virginia. When I met him, he was campaigning for a lower office, but I knew then he would be governor. He was very charismatic.

8. What was the most surprising action you’ve ever taken?

A. I suspect my husband would say it was when I went on an impromptu airplane ride with one of the county's wealthiest patrons (a known drunk). He still tells me that wasn't smart. 

9. When was your life most out of control?

A. Probably from about 1987 to 1992, while we were trying to have a child, I was sick all the time with endometriosis and multiple surgeries, and trying to work and go to college at the same time.

10. What would you be best at, were you to change careers?

A. I would like to work in video games. I don't know if I'd be any good at it, but it would be fun to try. Otherwise, if I changed careers, I'd probably try to go from article writing to advertising. The money is better in advertising.

11.  What is the cruelest thing a person has ever said to you?

A. I think I don't want to go there this morning. But, people don't need to tell me I'm overweight. I already know that. It is a cruel thing to say. Not the cruelest thing anyone has said to me, but it is not something I need to hear.

12. What is the best thing you ever won as a prize?

A. My Virginia Press Association awards for writing.

13. What is your strongest argument against capital punishment?

A. I think killing someone who killed someone else lets them off too easily. Life in prison, to be forever at the mercy at others, to have to live in a jail, seems to me a far worse punishment than death, where the suffering is no more. Plus, it's just wrong to take another life.

14. What have you been most ignorant about in life?

A. Other people. I had rose-colored eyeballs for a long time even though I knew there were some people who could be mean and ornery. I just didn't realize how many people are not nice as a default.

15. Where would you most hate to be pierced?

A. My tongue.

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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.