05 Jan 2015 6 Comments
2015 looks fine so far, relatively speaking, but there is much to do as the year rolls by. Each of the eight points delineated by Neil is a rant aimed specifically at me — a kick in the shorts toward a more focused writing experience. So on January 5, 2016, remember to ask me how I feel!
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Good Writing Practices:
02 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
“Μaybe old people were never children, like we claim with Mrs. Bentley, but, big or little, some of them were standing around at Appomattox the summer of 1865. They got Indian vision and can sight back further than you and me will ever sight ahead.”
“That sounds swell, Doug; what does it mean?”
Douglas went on writing. “It means you and me ain’t got half the chance to be far-travelers they have. If we’re lucky we’ll hit forty, forty-five, fifty. That’s just a jog around the block to them. It’s when you hit ninety, ninety-five, a hundred, that you’re far-traveling like heck.”
The flashlight went out.
They lay there in the moonlight.
“Tom,” whispered Douglas, “I got to travel all those ways. See what I can see. But most of all I got to visit Colonel Freeghleigh once, twice, three times a week. He’s better than all the other machines. He talks, you listen. And the more he talks he gets you to peering around and noticing things. He tells you you’re riding on a very special train, by gosh, and sure enough it’s true. He’s been down the track, and knows. And now here we come, you and me, along the same track, but further on, and so much looking and snuffling and handling things to do, you need old Colonel Freeleigh to shove and say look alive so you remember every second! Every darn thing there is to remember! So when kids come around when you’re real old, you can do for them what the colonel once did for you. That’s the way it is, Tom, I got to spend a lot of time visiting him and listening so I can go far-traveling with him as often as he can.”
Tom was silent a moment. Then he looked over at Douglas there in the dark.
“Far-traveling, you make that up?”
“Maybe yes and maybe no.”
“Far-traveling,” whispered Tom.
“Only one thing I’m sure of,” said Douglas, closing his eyes, “it sure sounds lonely.”
(Ray Bradbury, “Dandelion Wine”, 1946)
… grateful to my friend Angela Petraline for sharing
31 Dec 2014 4 Comments
Didn’t feel like losing it over anything on Monday, so you got a break. Love it while you can because that’s over in 4 … 3 … 2 …
So Monday was okay, as I recall. Tuesday afternoon we’re tootling along Hwy 10 when the tootle goes away.
Kim sits, hands on wheel, just long enough to assess how and why and mutter “F*ckin’ embarrassing” before he starts walking. Li’l Truck inhaled the last of the fumes about a quarter of a mile short of an exit, beyond which there is rumored (according to the sign) to be a service station, but just before Kim gets to the exit ramp somebody in a big black truck pulls over, picks him up, and drives away.
Which, after the shortest, most obscure Monday Rant you are likely ever to hear from me, brings us to Thankfulness Tuesday. Because yes, there was a service station just beyond the exit ramp. WAS. Extinct and crusty. Enter Ric, driving back to KC after the cold burial of a much-loved friend. Spots my husband strolling along the highway, hunkered against the chill, a heavy coat, stocking cap pulled over most of his face, imposing enough man that you’d notice, and of course pulls right over. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ric. Ric isn’t a big guy, but he sticks in your mind that way. He repairs heavy equipment and does pipeline work, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t afraid of much, but his kind heart is a lot bigger than all that. He insists on driving back down the 4-lane to get the Madster and me, carts us all back the other way to where the service station really IS, then west one more time where he uses his new truck to shield Kim from Highway Harm while he pours gas in the tank. And yeah, then follows us back to the same service station so he knows for sure we made it, and tells Kim to give that piece of green to somebody who’s looking for it.
But wait, there’s more. Kim’s a good mechanic, knows a lot about a lot. For instance, he’s known since he bought the truck that it needs a new sending unit for the gas gauge, and probably a new fuel pump while you have the tank dropped, but since he doesn’t have a place to do his own work anymore and hasn’t loved the estimates he’s gotten, he’s just gradually developed a little system. The system failed yesterday. But only so we could start getting acquainted with Ric, and so he could offer to replace the unit for parts at his cost, plus labor. Helps him, lets my husband win. Think it’s gonna happen.
Also it’s HumpDay AND New Year’s Eve. Do with that what you will, kids.
26 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
My blog just texted me that it was lonely. (And it spelled out each word because it’s, you know, my blog.) I feel awful — less than 24 hours after the kindest, splooshiest day of the year I wander off and forget the ones who mean the most.
But I’m back with a vengeance, launching bizarrely-benign torpedo-thoughts … configured sort of like my old paper airplanes … into what’s shaping up to be 2015. For my Faithful Facebook Friends, today’s post will be an instant rerun. Whatevs — can’t get there today, hope you didn’t have to work either!! (And sorry, because I know some who did.)
22 Dec 2014 6 Comments
My tolerance for whining is minimal, so I try not to do it.
Just the facts then.
If you’ve never experienced an auto-immune disorder there’s no way to explain it to you, but I’m willing to try because at least a dozen people on my Facebook feed, including me, deal with fibromyalgia and/or other auto-immune malfunctions on a daily basis. If you’ve somehow formed the opinion that we’re lazy, unmotivated, hopeless weenies, at least scan the information below. Most of us, like you, have dreams and plans, if only our bodies would get in the game.
Part of the frustration that comes with fibro is its unpredictability — one day you’re flying high, the next you can’t get out of bed. More often, the transition takes place between one hour and the next. A second frustration is that, plan as you might, there will be social opportunities missed and projects that never really get off the ground. A third, if you can call it a frustration, is that when flares hit they’re fairly relentless and the prolonged pain and hypersensitivity in bones, joints, muscles, tendons and other soft tissues let you know that everything is on hold for a while. A fourth is that while researchers are on the brink of several breakthroughs, the root causes of fibromyalgia remain elusive, ergo no effective treatment yet.
I’m blessed that my husband gets it and doesn’t see me as dead weight to haul around, but not all are so fortunate. It can be a lonely walk, so for friends and family who have to carry the burden of all we DON’T know about the auto-immune spectrum in general and fibromyalgia in particular, here are the fruits of my highly-personal, mostly-unscientific research into the disorder known among the ranks as “the invisible beating.” (Click pics to enlarge.)
Omigosh, you’re still here? You are either a really caring soul or you have a vested interest in the subject, or both. We can all help make things better for each other — that’s the truth. I’m glad you’re a part of that …
18 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Say hello to two of my great-grandmothers. Of the four I was blessed to have, the lady on the right is the only one I remember. Great-Grandma Cummings was the mother of my WWI soldier grandpa, and she was as sweet and wonderful as they make them. Great-Grandma Somerville on the left was a midwife and ran a boarding house and she too was amazing. The grandbabies they’re holding may be my Uncle Bob and Aunt Bette — waiting for Baby-Aunt Barbara to weigh in on that.
Great-Grandma Somerville used to tell her new mothers, when she helped them bathe, “I’ll wash down as far as possible and up as far as possible, and you can wash Possible.” She makes me think of Rose Kennedy without all the money.
16 Dec 2014 3 Comments
So I noticed a weird little goober on my lower eyelid, oh, months and months ago and when it started to resemble an expanding snot bubble I made an appointment with a specialist — I’m not one to rush into things unless it’s something I really want. Anyway, today was as much fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp needle — biopsy done and now we have the inevitable wait. But even if it’s basal cell, as Dr. Specialist surmises, it won’t be a biggie — Dr. Specialist #2 will biopsy the whole thing in layers and if I end up with a divot in my eyelid Dr. Specialist #1 will Bondo it for me and my eye will be good as new. Also basal cell carcinoma doesn’t metastasize or send out runners. Yay!
Hey, it’s Tuesday, the day we dahnce, dahlings, and I say we get on with it. Choose your libation — I’m having NZ Starborough Sauv Blanc — and distract me while the anesthetic wears off and reality hits. That’s what friends do.
15 Dec 2014 2 Comments
Someone I used to respect told me several months ago that he’s an Ayn Rand devotee, which is entirely his business. For years, though, and maybe still, he was an evangelical Christian minister, so, the two philosophies being mutually exclusive, I hardly knew what to do with that information other than dismiss it out of hand. Dude, pick a hero — if it’s the biblical Jesus your life will look a certain way. If it’s Ms. Rand, good luck, you’re already morphing into the polar opposite of a Christ-follower. Please don’t think I necessarily care one way or the other — I don’t have a horse in the race, beyond knowing that truth still matters and it never disavows itself. At the end of this post there’s a link to a Salon article, brief-ish and succinct, that illustrates the disconnect required to be both a Christian and a disciple of Randian Philosophy aka Objectivism. Not enough Xanax in the world, lollipop.
Key quote from the article:
“Rand … stated on national television, ‘I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.’ Actually … Rand did have a God. It was herself. She said: ‘I am done with the monster of *we,* the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: *I.*‘” So, yeah, that happened.
Having been stalked by tragedy and pain over the past three decades, both physical and existential, the road forward was in trying to make sense of the human experience in time to survive it, as a result of which I’m no longer an authority on the subject of a God like the one the evangelicals paint for us. IF, however, just say, there WERE to be such a God who cared, loved, nurtured, was intimately engaged in the human sojourn on this planet and took a personal hand in events great and small … then it should be excruciatingly, ostentatiously, nakedly clear, despite Ms. Rand’s deistic stance, that *I* would not be that god, ergo neither would you, and — I know this like I know the universe is ginormous — nor would Ayn Rand. What in hell would be more terrifying, overwhelming, and totally ludicrous than to think that I am/we are/she was in charge, amirite?
You get where I’m coming from, you can’t have it both ways! Either there’s no god, as a true atheist asserts, or there’s an Infinite God who actually gives a flip about every molecule. Or maybe somebody something somewhere between — a Force. A Power. A Powerful Life Force. Or … as Ms. Rand apparently believed … god is/was her, therefore you and me. But probably just her. So that’s more than two ways, yeah — just … really not an expert anymore, but pretty sure the *I* thing can’t be right.
Here’s another quote from the Salon article:
“Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it ‘moral’ for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she ‘liberated’ millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children. The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing?”
I don’t know, see, because the generally-accepted rallying cry is that we’re a Christian nation, which clearly gives us a leg up on the rest of the world because we’re right. We can torture choke shoot tase beat and otherwise dispatch fellow persons including animals and it doesn’t make us any less Christian or right because WE’RE CHRISTIAN AND WE’RE RIGHT, dammit!! We’re Christian, man, serious, but you know, things have changed and we’re supposed to just care about ourselves now anyway.
And so she did — cared foremost, apparently, about herself and what she wanted, and anointed herself her own god. A god that stood appropriately god-like against Social Security and Medicare and other government spoils until said god was in need of same. A god that some of my Christian acquaintances seem to co-worship now in a strange brew of sudden jarring philosophical ninety-degree right turns. Whatevs. I don’t even know what the “C” word is currently supposed to mean, I just don’t want my name associated with whatever it is. That’s me talking, not Salon.
Article in the link:
14 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
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