Snark that Springeth Green [PG-13]

On Saturday, July 17th, 2010, we got a morning phone call from NY, that my 85-year-old mom-in-law had been taken to the hospital with congestive heart failure. All day we waited for the next phone call.

But when the phone rang it was my father next door, saying that my mom was going into the hospital with congestive heart failure.

I didn't know what CHF was, really. I would never have believed that my dear mom-in-law would see her 86th birthday (2 months later) much less be back to driving and active life, which she now is. At the time we thought we might lose them both that very day, and Larry and I were basket cases.

We sat in our (South Carolina) ER waiting room with my parents, and we tried to talk normal things like the garden. The Brussels sprouts were doing well.

Mom summoned a smile and said, "Well, your mom will be very happy to help you eat them."

Days later her doctor discovered the MAC infection that was too much for her, and she died on the 28th.

We ignored the Brussels sprouts and most everything else. Every time I looked at those pretty plants, I'd think, "We should think about how she'd enjoy them, she'd want us to enjoy them." It didn't work. Everything went to seed and the gardens dried up into rectangles of dry brown stalks. As I felt a little better it seemed a shame, but at the time, the very thought just reopened the loss. We debated whether we'd even do gardens this year.

So flash forward to mid-February in South Carolina and a couple warm days. And the dry brown stalks have re-greened and are producing little sprouts. Photo taken Feb. 17th.


This seems like some kind of Spiritual Symbolism. You can't say no to The Giver of Life, for Lo! the .... something something [INSERT BIBLE QUOTE HERE].

I'm coming back to life too. And we will hope it's only a phase of my fuller emotional engagement, but i am grouchy as holy hell.

I'm sure no one has noticed. Shut up.

But it does not resemble Biblical doves with olive leaves, and rainbows of promise and renewal. I yell at everything.

Stupid kitchen knives that won't slice an onion evenly.

Stupid [bleeping] gigantic water tank in our bedroom closet taking up a desperately-needed quarter of its space so I have to stand on something to reach teetering piles on high shelves, which fall off when I try to pull something out. Really hate that water tank.

Stupid Facebook's "New Photo Viewer, created because we Luv our members so-o-o much! Or maybe because if it ain't broke, we fix it!" that CROPS THE BOTTOM OFF MY PHOTOS. And claims it doesn't, when I go to the charmingly spelt "help centre."

[Bleeping] giftwrap industry. The giftwrap industry is phasing out flat sheets and the choices are gift bags, which don't pack well when you have to immobilize a breakable, or big rolls, which are holiday-specific, to force you to buy more instead of using the leftovers. And then store them. It's a whole Temperamental post in itself.

Getting angry about spam email is the most pointless of the pointless, but spammers have destroyed what started out as a great way to message, and the more copies I receive of Hookup2nite! and money scams and TARA! wanting to read my palm, the angrier I get. I find myself wanting something very ugly to happen to "Tara." Then I convince myself that since this is a spambot and not a human being, it doesn't harm my soul to wish it. But my Higher Power probably wants me to remember that it's the thought that counts.

Oh, and there's a whole rant I wrote but haven't posted, about a video that subtly mocks and humiliates older women. I want to take the little bastard CameraPerson and ... never mind.

My Craving To Criticize threatens to take me over. I read other blogs (no, none of this refers to you guys who are on my blogroll) and want to write whole long responses full of phrases like "What planet is she on?!" and "mentally deficient puling," and "Praise Jesus! feeling good about ourselves is the cruise-ship to Hell, you tell 'em, honey!"

I know my readers kinda like my snark posts and I'm happy to do them at times, but a constant stream of it doesn't wear well. I'm indulging myself with this post, but believe me, the 10 separate posts it could have been would be overkill. Yet it's all I seem able to write or think lately. I'm really not in the mood for The Examined Life, I have no desire to examine my life right now, I just want to eat chocolate and say swear words, but I kind of need to look beneath it all at the cause.

The real me is a grouch, but I'm also well aware that none of these relatively trivial things is what I'm really angry about.

What am I really angry about? The last half of 2009 I went to 5 funerals in 6 months, including my uncle, Dad's only brother. And I begged off of attending a 6th funeral. The summer of 2010, you know about. The illnesses and deaths of people dear to us have kept slamming us since. Larry's uncle, who meant a whole lot to him, died a few weeks ago. We are wrung out and feeling brittle and I really want to slash God's tires, but I get sent to Celestial Voicemail instead. Your fury is important to us, please hold.

So I blow up about matters either trivial or outside my sphere of influence. That Serenity Prayer again. What can I change and what can't I?

According to grieving literature anger is part of the grieving process, and there's no exact formula as to when you hit that patch. I've hit it. So, at the moment the voice of the turtle is heard in our land and it's saying, "%$*#!"

Introducing Seattle Smallhold

Please allow me to introduce yall to my college roommate, Rebecca, who has just started
a blog about her urban homesteading experience in her Seattle neighborhood!

I have few pictures that we're both in but here's one pair in which we passed the camera back and forth and took each other's picture, there on the Stephens College campus. Warm spring day 1974.

Rebecca:


...and me:


She's extroverted, positive, and generally kickass, while I'm introverted and a pessimist. Just imagine us rooming together.... 8~) She's one of my favorite people and I think you'll find her blog an interesting read.

Me, Gandhi, and hell

I've got a bunch of half-written posts, but instead of wrapping up any of them, I run into an attention-getter online and veer off on the Vitally Important Subject of ...

Is Gandhi in heaven or hell?

It's strange to be a nomad who ambles between the secular world and the fundamentalist Christian world. I often feel like an illegal alien in both places, but I read writers and bloggers in both. Those who don't keep up with the fundamentalist blogosphere just don't know what you're missing! .... Yeah, you probably do know, and that's why you choose to miss it, and here I come, ruining everything.

I bet that the, and i'm not being sarcastic, the absolute storm that blew up over the weekend about an upcoming book, was something many of my readers didn't hear a whisper about.

It starts with this video :


...and major writers in the Christian blogosphere, who have books out and big followings, are having this massive discussion about the theology of heaven and hell. Commenters are writing hundreds of comments, some as long as a blog entry themselves, most fairly respectful if adamant, a few quite vicious. A friend's blog sent me here.

I ended up in a wonderland of links. I learned that there is such a thing as evangelical universalism, that arguments as to whether hell exists and whether God would send anyone there aren't all -- there's the question of whether consignment to hell must be eternal, or whether it can be a place that still carries hope.

I learned who Brian McLaren is, and that traditional evangelicals think he's theologically loose and dangerous. One blogger worries that Rob Bell's theology

"not only dishonors God, his Word and his Christ, but could also be directly responsible for some passive church-going people ending up in hell."

You gotta understand, I'm not here to tell anybody which side they should be on in these issues, or even to say that there shouldn't be conflicts over them. Historically, people have been tortured or killed by the thousands over doctrinal points, so to live in an era in which people blog 20 paragraphs, and opponents blog 25 paragraphs, is a great blessing - and a huge leap forward.

It's the claim that these are salvation making-or-breaking issues that gets to me. It's the way they contradict their own belief system.

You either believe you need salvation through Christ's redemptive act, or you don't believe it. If not, then the whole issue is like one of bridge players discussing a rule. You don't play bridge, so you don't care.

The problem is that even those who do believe it seem to think that these other doctrinal points can negate that salvation. In doing that they deny their own theology. They holler "The Bible is THE Word of God!" but over pulpits or keyboards they reveal a bait-and-switch. Well, sure, Jesus said that "Whoever believes in Me" thing, but he was just giving the executive summary. You can't expect it to be that simple.

In other words, they -- not pagans and atheists, but the Bible-believers themselves -- are saying that the Born Again experience isn't the answer after all. They're giving the doctrinal point about the nature of hell unwarranted importance. Does anybody who believes Christ is The One Way also think that someone who accepts Jesus as his personal savior will get burned anyway for claiming those in hell have hope? Such a doctrine is THAT evil, and causes a full-cache dump?

John 3:16 - For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
[TERMS AND CONDITIONS: This offer is null and void in case of doctrinal incorrectness on matters of transubstantiation, free will, predestination, wifely submission, pre-tribulation versus post-tribulation rapture, the eternity of damnation, whether praying to a saint equals worship, the male gender of God, or other clauses which may be added without notice.
[ ]yes [ ]no -I have read and agree to these terms and conditions]

Opinions on theological matters are fine. It’s the claim that this stuff is a critical salvation dealbreaker that gives me a migraine.

Either hell really exists or it doesn’t. If it does, then it’s either a changeable hopeful state, or it’s eternal. My conduct of my life has...what, exactly, to do with the answer? It falls into that “Can God make a rock so heavy he can’t move it?” category. Does it matter if i take a stand and it turns out to be the wrong one? Does it say anywhere that failing a quiz on points of doctrine would actually open the trap door and dump me in the incinerator? Why does anyone think it rises to that level of importance?

My daily battle is to live the Serenity Prayer. To try to figure out what I can’t change and what I can and should, and then to find the courage for it. Not only the courage to take risks, but to not get dis-couraged when it seems like my effort is too small to matter.

Which is why I loved this Gandhi quotation (No, I have no idea what quotation the art show incident was about) when I spied this sticker at a booth at the Burlington County NJ Farm Fair in 1999, and have kept it in sight ever since.



So I have to come out of the closet and say, I like this video. I'm interested in the book. Once I read it, I may or may not agree with it, but I've never thought humanity understood what love really was.

Our concept comes from desire and couples frolicking in the daisies and mothers refusing to believe their kid committed mass murder. We don't comprehend the fierce uncompromising cleansing love, that's fully compatible with an equally uncompromising justice. Our concept of wrath, as in God's wrath, has got to be just as corrupted by our experience of human rage and violence.

To require anybody to comprehend God - to comprehend God's love, God's wrath, or eternity itself -- is an absurd thing to ask. To say that incomplete understanding of the incomprehensible is hell-worthy would qualify as downright abusive, if such a pronouncement actually had the power to decide who burns and who doesn't.

But it doesn't, so debate away. I'm going to take some Excedrin and go look at the garden.

Dear Borders - Here's why you're bankrupt.

Dear Borders Marketers Who Made D's in Biz School:

I love Borders bookstores but there isn't one anywhere NEAR me.

However, when I was visiting North Carolina a few years ago, I shopped in a Waldenbooks, and the clerk suggested I get the Borders Rewards card and I figured, Hey, why not? Once in awhile I'm in a town that has one. You get other deals too! he, smiling, said.

So via email, I have been getting "offers" for years. Great stuff. Jewelry (don't care), discounts on cruises! (do not care), wine (who the bleep cares?!), ski equipment (oh please), clothes, but never what I needed when I needed it.

Till today!

My dear light jacket bit the dust this week. I love it. In fact, I still fancy paying to replace the zipper and keeping it, but it's a little worn after about 7-8 years of 3-season wear, so I thought, OK, need a jacket.

All of my mother's clothes are still next door and Dad said recently that it's getting to be time to find them good homes. I would love to just adopt one of her jackets. Only, I went through everything, and she never wore light jackets. Sweatshirt jackets in the yard, and blazers when she went out, but nothing similar to my late lamented jacket.

Next : the shopping dread. I've been wearing a parka and putting off the shopping. Funny how I used to love clothes shopping and now it's a chore. And I have a LOT of things I both need to do and prefer to do these days.

Today, my Borders Rewards email popped up with -- at last! -- 25% off at L. L. Bean!

You complete and utter jerks.

When I went to the offer, I got a message that the offer was "locked" and that a complex set of interlocking rules and requirements sets the rules for actually using these great offers.

People: There is nothing more deeply stupid than complex sets of interlocking rules and requirements. Give a coupon, don't give a coupon, give a smaller coupon, I give not a damn, but when you play manipulative little games with me, I guarantee you I don't play.

In this case, you wanted me to earn 50,000 (yes, I typed that correctly) points in order to have this offer "unlocked" and I needed to spend the last several years accumulating those points by clicking "offers" similar to this one, hundreds of times. Spiked-heel boots, cruises, wine, nose rings, whatever crap has no relevance to my life, just to get (50? or so?) points each time, as I waited like Rapunzel for the point-accumulation to grow like hair, long enough for your stupid Reward to crawl up and reach me.

"Rewards" is an odd term for this.

Motivating buyers by helping them feel like they're working for an actual reward isn't a bad business strategy in itself. I just got two cool Cuisinart cookware thingies by saving stamps at my local Piggly Wiggly, and I did feel like I was doing something smart and thrifty and getting a payoff for the effort.

But the amount of "kiss our ass one more time for a few more crumbs of points" you require....

Let's just say that I kinda know why you just filed Chapter 11.

Meanwhile, a couple years after I got that Borders card, my friend Catherine (Hi, Cath!) forwarded me a better sale-stuff source.

Shop-It-To-Me is quick, it's easy, you tailor to your own detailed preferences the email offers you'll receive, and the frequency with which you receive them.

Via today's email, they had a nice little Eddie Bauer jacket, not only a third off, but with a free shipping offer.

And they didn't make me do anything more than put it in my basket, type the free shipping coupon code in and pay 'em.

So Borders Folks, I hope you keep going, but I really hope you do better, and fire that section of your marketing department.

Thanks awfully (because it was awful),
RGS

It's good to hear modern rockers sing a traditional song the traditional way.

I do understand the frustration some people feel when singers put some kind of new interpretation on a standard. This is one of my personal favorites, and I was so glad to run into this version by 2 rock singers who do right by it.

I mean, it has a melody. It has lyrics.

Especially lyrics.

Original lyrics. They were probably never completely impossible to find, but the vast majority of popular singers did a version with the lyrics altered. One commenter on this video actually thinks the nice versions she's always heard were the real thing.

Here it is, original lyrics (mostly) restored by those Great Traditionalists, Rod Stewart and Cher!




And Happy Valentines Day.

I expected worse

I'm going to go against the tide here. Admittedly, I'm not a football person, and I'm not an any-sport person when the game becomes like an Oscar ceremony that has to be dragged out for a gazillion hours of sponsor time.

But I kept hearing about this performance and so I finally pulled up the video. And thought, "Um, OK, bungled the words." That's both a not-uncommon problem, and, yes, you bet, something to strongly criticize. She's a professional singer and it's not too much to ask for her to learn the words.

Stage brain-failure can happen to anyone. I'll never forget Alan Sherman forgetting the words to his own song ("Return to Camp Granada") on live TV (Yes, that's how old I am.) Anyway, i'm skeptical as to whether Aguilera's flub was stage fright rather than laziness, so, yes, flubbing the words is criticism-worthy.

But the performance? I liked it. If she had not bungled that line, I can't help but wonder if anyone would care.

She did literally perform it, with some vocal calisthenics and emotion.

But I was expecting outright disrespectful histrionics, and all I saw was typical singer-acting to convey the strong emotion of spotting the flag after a hellacious battle. It seemed in keeping with the song.

The idea that the National Anthem has to be sung like a hymn and never "performed" bothers me. It is not a hymn.

I love my country, I live with a combat veteran who knows and feels what the flag means, but in my opinion, patriotism is not on the level with worship of God. And an anthem that grew out of a dramatic event can be, not just sung reverentially, but performed with drama.

That's just me. Her styling and her voice quality came within my parameters for dignity. Close to the edge but not over it.

I'll add that it would suit me fine if the whole celebrity National Anthem thing ended. What a fabulous opportunity it would be for some talented unknown to get this job every year. Half-time has plenty of celebrities. Enough with the celebrities.

Expectations have a lot to do with perception. Something can seem "better" when you were expecting "worse," Everything I've read had me ready for "Let's Do the Time-Warp Again," so that could affect my feeling.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that viewer perception that the anthem was being treated disrespectfully was also affected by cutaways to players, some of whom were mugging, looking like it was wasting their time, and generally being disrespectful during it.

Anyway, for those who missed it, here it is :

Faces to go with the names

Back in December I posted "One Hundred Christmases," about books given as Christmas gifts among my family members, starting way back. So now that i've found some photos of the earliest gift givers, I thought I'd blog them. Here are the three sisters; Bell, Iola, and Jessamine.

I never knew Bell, and I don't think I've ever seen this picture before. My mother, bless her! sorted and labeled gazillions of old photos and I'm slowly going through them. Nice to meet you, Bell! Probably a photo from, maybe, 20 years after the one of her little sisters, which follows. She was older but not this much older!



I did know both of these ladies; Jessamine was my great great aunt, and lived to age 92, when I was 18! And next to her, the middle sister, my great grandmother, Iola. She did live to a ripe old age, but died when I was 5 :



Iola a bit later; my great grandparents as newlyweds. Pretty happy, despite her rather glum expression.

Book therapy

No, this book is not therapeutic. Interesting, yes, but uplifting ... no.


This absolutely charmed me in the bookstore. Then I read it.

It's categorized as a graphic novel, though it has pages of straight-out text. Makes it look like a kids' book which it absolutely, emphatically IS NOT. Graphic novels is the best category for it.

It has a totally cool concept. A discontented young woman roams the streets at night and, one night, encounters a mysterious bookmobile that runs only at night.

It's her own personal magic bookmobile, run by her own personal otherworldly librarian. It contains every book she's ever read. Actually, it has everything she's ever read, including letters, cereal boxes, etc. Only what she's already read, nothing she should, or wants to, or would want to read. Just her past.

Is this an awesome idea? What a great way to get in touch with her lost self.

So I think it's going to be a charming story about...what? the healing power of books? revisiting your past and reconnecting with your old dreams and fantasies, and how that can help you get your life unstuck?

No. It's about how avoiding Real Life relationships and achievements by book obsession, like any retreat from reality, can be sick and destructive.

And though charming, it's not, it is food for thought, which is what a book should be. But, while getting the message, one of my thoughts was, Boy would I write a different story if I came up with this idea.

If it were up to me, the heroine, when told she really cannot just leave the regular world and live in the bookmobile, would buy an old RV and start her own, everyday-life Bookmobile.

And if she didn't go that route, still, I'd have the otherworldly librarian suggest it when she expressed her discontent with her life and asked to stay.

She couldn't supernaturally amass the books of someone's life, but she could stock her 'mobile with all the books that she loved, books that helped her and fed her soul through hard times, and she could set out to help unhappy night-wanderers by finding just the right book for them.

This, of course, is my concept, not the author's. Freedom of speech, right to say what she wants to say, yadda yadda, but I like my concept vastly better.

What I would put in such a bookmobile could be a whole post, but here's where I'd start:

The Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse.

I often say that writing a novel doesn't mean I know diddly about literature. It's not modesty, it's the truth, and when I have an impression of some genre or period in literature, I'm likely to be simpleminded in the extreme and to embarrass myself by voicing it, but I'll go out on a limb and say this :

18th century poetry is, like, the Intermission in literary history, where you can take a break between the religious poets and their Journey to Death, and the Romantics and their "My Love is in The Grave" and Life's Fragility, and just go have a Coke and candy bar in the warm light of the lobby.

Sure, some poets of other eras get happy and some get serious here too, but so much of the book is loaded with humor --often deliciously biting humor-- joy, and hope. There's a whole, admittedly "the Titanic is unsinkable," kind of feeling that the amazing discoveries we're making about the cosmos are the beginning of our mastery over pain, wear and decay, injustice and conflict, everything. Life still hurts but there's light ahead; Reason will banish it all.

So far, all that optimism is quite unfulfilled, but mostly, reading this poetry is a joyful interlude.

So I'd certainly have a bunch of copies of this in stock. "Feeling low? Dip into this."

Winter thoughts

I'm breaking one of my rules for blogging and commenting. I don't post stuff I write when I'm beat from one of my periodic insomnia cycles, and I don't post stuff I write when I have a headache.

But today I have a nasty pounding sinus headache and I'm posting anyway, not because there's anything terribly Deep to say but because this year is weird and so are my winter thoughts.

As a kid I'd say it could not get hot enough for me. That changed a couple decades ago, probably by means of my aging metabolism, but I still was not a Winter Person.

That may be changing. As years of attempts to get the kids attracted to the idea of moving to even a liberal, artsy southern area, have failed, our focus is changing. We're thinking on establishing ourselves back in NJ again, not at all soon, but in time.

When we lived there for 4 years I could NOT WAIT to be back in the south. This past summer seems to have dealt a death blow to my love of summer.

Obviously this past summer was emotionally hard, but the heat was so brutal that I'm not sure I wouldn't have turned against summer anyway after that one. Blazing heat, all day, every day, every errand and outing bracketed by having the life force sucked out of me by a searing hot car, a trek across broiling asphalt, and back again.

Winter has set in and has been as weirdly extreme as summer was. Ordinarily we get snow flurries maybe once every couple years. Snows like last February's are once-in-20-year things. This year we've had flurries with minor dusting three frikkin' times, including my birthday. The picture above is from the first one when it was still a novelty. I haven't bothered taking pictures since.

And in between - true set-in cold, cold that kept the little bit of snow accumulation around in crevices and shady patches for days. Winter Lite for a lot of climes, but nothing that life here is designed for. Cold barn of a house. Lots of static electric shocks, one of my least favorite things.

And I don't care. I like the winter. I think I could get rather into living somewhat farther north. Not way up, not to get buried for weeks and deal with snow in May. But someplace where a nice stretch of winter can stop my feeling that I should be accomplishing this or that. Weather that makes itself the dominant force of the day so that I forget the past and ignore the future and think only about layering, getting supplies in, and hunkering in my reading chair till dinner. I've never lost nostalgia for our wonderful Victorian NJ house, and feel like, if we could have the right house, comfortable, away from traffic noise, set up just the right way for our life, I could love the seasons.

There's a very good, but painful, novel called Deerskin, by Robin McKinley, about a woman cruelly abused and her hibernation-like healing through a long protective winter that cocoons her until she's ready to come back to life and kick some ass. There I am.

It's more of a current thought than a decision, and I know that processing this past year is a part of that and will keep moving forward. But as our future family life shifts north, it would certainly be useful if my feeling that winter can be a friend hung on. This year, it's my friend.

No, actually I loathe the open floorplan.

Awhile back, Larry and I started watching HGTV at lunchtime, when there wasn't anything cool on the History/Discovery/Nat Geo channels -- or at least, when those had reruns of reruns.

It was a nice escape and it sort of fed my home-voyeurism. I love glimpsing other peoples' houses. Another show on Discovery called It Takes a Thief -- where real former thieves broke into real peoples' homes, with the owners' consent, to show their security weaknesses -- was a lot of fun for the same reason.

So we'd chill with our sandwiches in front of Househunters. On this show, they take real people who are househunting and show us 3 of the places they consider, then follow them through on their final choice.

I figured from the start that home product-purveyors are heavily invested in the network and have an agenda : "Make the viewer want to remodel, redecorate, buy stuff!" That's above-board enough to be OK by me.

But I, really, innocently, thought that this message would be subtly imbedded in a wide variety of home styles. You know, the something-for-everyone thing.

At some point, the dreary sameness of the houses, of the hunters, and of the whole blasted thing began to show. Not long after that, it became distressingly obvious that the show exists not to push products, but to push standardized styles and samey products.

There's alleged variety -- lofts, condos, houses, older and newer developments. But the same sentiments are voiced the same way repeatedly.

The buyers are so coached that watching it is kind of like being one of those Rocky Horror Picture Show nuts who's seen it 4000 times and can recite the scripted lines right along with them. If one more dimwit says the precise phrase "I love the high ceilings and the open floorplan!" my brain will melt.

I won't say that real people never want open floorplans, Like anything else, some like them, some don't. But if you judged by this show, you'd think that caves were all anybody wanted, ever.

Because builders love open floorplans. They can sell you a lot more square footage without forking out to build "outdated" things like full second floors, when a partial second floor "open to below" will let you display Michelangelo's David or the Buckingham Palace Christmas tree, and says trés elégante to potential buyers who've turned their brains off. Or interior walls, with all those tedious things you have to put into a wall, like framework and drywall and paint and outlets and wires and wage-hours and stuff.

Hunters seem unconcerned about the Grand Central cacophony of noise as every downstairs activity -- laundry machines, TV, kitchen clangs and clatters, phone calls -- resonates together. And we mustn't even think about watching our heating dollars waft up into the 18-foot ceiling of our massive Great Room.

HGTV is paid well to try to convince you that this is what you want. When househunters see older houses that still have those terribly outmoded features, like rooms, or, God Forbid, white kitchen appliances, they wrinkle their noses.

And if they see the ubiquitous high ceilings, guhrayuhnit countertops (that's "granite" countertops; they all worship granite and they all pronounce it like that), and stainless steel appliances, they brightly approve these things not as mere preferences, but as necessities.

HGTV has got it down, man, but honestly, when they get a 30-ish-year-old guy to walk into a nice, well-planned, color-coordinated kitchen, look at synthetic countertops, and say, "Those countertops will need updating," it takes implausibility to new heights.

The word, trained into the potential buyers with painful obviousness, is "need." They clearly are told to say, not that they want to update the kitchen, but that they will "need" to. Like a white stove won't cook and a fridge that's not steel won't keep the milk from spoiling.

And we must love open floorplans. Living, kitchen, dining rooms all have to flow into each other like one big Dark Ages Great Hall.

Not.

Give me walls. No matter how much building material and effort you have to grudgingly expend to do it. Got that?

Sweet memories of profiteering

Every year on this day, I hope to recreate an exciting event of the past. When it fails to materialize, I accept that and move on, but Hope springs eternal. Every year on this day....


I go to the Barnes and Noble site and beeline for the end-of-the-year clearance sale. But every year, I'm disappointed. Because The Big Bible Blowout happened only once and will never happen again.

I'm surprised that it happened at all, and I strongly suspect that somebody got way fired for it. But 4 years ago, an enormous load of super-expensive Bibles got listed in the sale books for five dollars each.

I mean, expensive editions. Not just King James, not just those cheapie "gift" Bibles with stiff paper and cramped print. Big ones, leather ones, study Bibles, modern translations. 50, 60, 80-dollar Bibles. Very very resellable.

I'm a bookseller. I have a Pavlovian drool-response to great book deals.

4 years later I can still feel the adrenaline rush. Copies of the choicest items were selling as fast as I could click "add to cart" but despite a few "sorry- sold out!" notices, I managed to score two shipping boxes of assorted editions.

Then I proceeded to sell them for tidy profits. Every one of them.

This is the kind of crass, Scrooge-like person I am. I felt just a little bad about it, but, as even some of my most Christian friends pointed out, I paid what the seller asked, I stocked what our customers wanted, and I sold it to our buyers at a price that was nice for them as well as for our book business.


Ever since, I check B&N late in the day on Dec 26th or early the 27th. The instant I see the lovely "end of year clearance" banner, I'm on that "Shop now!" button like a duck on a junebug, but never again have they made such an error.

I kind of feel sorry for whoever put premium Bibles in the clearance sale back in aught-six. Not easy to get a job reference after that debacle.

But in my declining years, as I reminisce over the good times, I'll remember the sweet profit I made on Bibles when Opportunity knocked.

I keep telling yall, I am not a nice person.

Blessed Christmas!

May wonderful things come your way now and through the coming year.

One hundred Christmases

My great grandmother, Iola, age 8, got this from her oldest sister, Bell, who was 17.

There were 3 sisters. Bell, Iola (the giver and recipient of the first book, above), and Jessamine, who as a small child got nicknamed "Precious" and was called Precious all her life. Iola named her own firstborn -- my grandmother -- Jessamine, and she, aged 7, got this from her namesake aunt.

Again to my grandmother, now age 10, from her own mother.


And another to my grandmother, now age 12, from her mother.


And now we come to my mother, age 1, receiving a gift from Iola who's now a grandmother. Someone in each generation gets the Jessamine nomer. My niece is the 5th generation to have it.


Again to my mom from her grandmother, Iola, whose name has now become "Granny," and is the name I knew her by as well. She's holding a newborn me in this photo, and I do remember her.


To me when I was 9, from my dear godmother.

To me from my mom. Signed by her, on behalf of my beloved stuffed animal menagerie. You'll notice that I was 29 years old. I never outgrew my love for the stuffies, though Hurricane Hugo took most of them.

Books. Best Christmas gift there is.

Quit being so subtle

I think we're all supposed to get with the program and hop on board with....with some kind of name for today. What was that again?

Wait! I'll think of it. Just give me a minute.....

Bread and Peace

Universal Prayer
Alexander Pope, 1738

Father of All! In every Age,
In every Clime adored,
By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou Great First Cause, least understood:
Who all my Sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art Good,
And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me, in this dark Estate,
To see the Good from Ill;
And binding Nature fast in Fate,
Left free the Human Will.

What Conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than Hell to shun,
That, more than Heaven pursue.

What Blessings thy free Bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when Man receives,
T'enjoy is to obey.

Yet not to Earth's contracted Span
Thy Goodness let me bound,
Or think Thee Lord alone of Man,
When thousand Worlds are round:

Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy Foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way.

Save me alike from foolish Pride,
Or impious Discontent,
At aught thy Wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy Goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's Woe,
To hide the Fault I see;
That Mercy I to others show,
That Mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy Breath;
Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's Life or Death.

This day, be Bread and Peace my Lot;
All else beneath the Sun,
Thou knowst if best bestowed or not,
And let Thy Will be done.

To thee whose Temple is all Space,
Whose Altar Earth, Sea, Skies!
One Chorus let all Being raise!
All Nature's Incense rise!

Please excuse ... a Spatula Gross-Out

This is sort of a public service announcement, because I never, ever, thought to pop the head of a kitchen spatula off its stem -- I mean, it's tightly on, so I never thought it was supposed to be dismantled for cleaning.

So I tend to assume everybody is like me, and needs to know about this. If, however, you regularly think to clean the post and head of your spatula(s?) (spatulae?), then disregard this notice.

Larry and I were making Thanksgiving pumpkin pie for the family bash tomorrow and thankfully (no pun intended) he did think to pull off the top.

Gross. Me. Out.


This has led to :
(a) using a different one that is all formed in one piece, and
(b) dismantling and cleaning several spatula(s?) (spatulae?).

Hoping that I have not ruined your Thanksgiving,
I remain,
grateful for so many things,
including my interesting and delightful online friends,

Ruth

As video rental stores sink slowly in the west...

There's kind of a downside to having a home-based business.

Not that I'm real big on social conversing -- it's low on my list of enjoyable activities, below washing dishes. Honest. But when you work at home, you really don't want to use the 'net for everything. It's nice to see a human being on occasion, in, you know, actual stores. It's nice to know our shopkeepers and have them know us, and it's nice to have a town of active businesses, instead of a town of empty storefronts and jobless locals.

So we make our weekly rounds. We've become friends with the people who work at the post office. They know us at the grocery store, and do nice things like honoring my discount coupon, good only on an order of $75 or more, even though my total came up $1.73 short of eligibility. And they know us at the diner and bring me a diet cola as soon as they see me come through the door. Yes, at breakfast.

And we rent videos the prehistoric way. We've been regulars at the nearest walk-in stores.

That's "stores," plural, because they keep folding. We make video rentals part of our regular errand run, and the store closes. I mean, with no notice; we show up and it's an empty room with several dvds lying under the return slot on carpeting imprinted with vanished fixtures, a Chik-Fil-A cup abandoned on an empty shelf, and a Dear John letter on the door.

So we feed our dvds into the return slot to join the forlorn pile on the floor, drive to the next nearest place and become regulars there. Then that one tanks. We're on our third one.

It's weird to get nostalgic about a company like Blockbuster, but we've enjoyed it. I like the staff, and get some good ideas and suggestions from them, and yak with them about our cats and their car trouble and so on.

Blockbuster used to give us one-week rentals. That was nice. Then they cut it to 5 days. That's a pain, but basically still means a once-a-week trip, so we adjusted.

Today, we got there to discover that they've switched to 3-day rentals.

Not that 8 miles is an arduous drive, or that much of a fuel economy burden. But we NEVER go that route for any other reason, and there are a bunch of [%$@#!]ing traffic lights to wait at, and that just tore it. The new 99-cent rentals are swell for somebody, but little in that category appealed to us, and engineering our own 5-day rental period by incurring dollar-a-day "late fees" means a [%$@#!]ing automated "reminder" phone call each day, and adds up too fast if you take home more than one.

So. It looks like I'll be following the rest of the human herd to Netflix. I wrote BB to tell them so. Their stores are "competing" with the convenience of the internet/mail order providers by making store use as INconvenient as possible, which makes no sense. I told them that, too. Likely, they want to stop serving through stores and ferry us all into their own net service, but why keep spending money to make the stores less competitive??

Anyway, I guess my BB card will now join my collection of defunct cards.

Link by link, and yard by yard

There are 9 ribbon-chains, so far. One is sort of displayed along the back of the couch, the others are in heaps. Each is about 12 feet long. That's a guess. I'm about 5 foot 2, so a doubled-over length my height would be around 10 feet. But I keep adding links until I hold it up with my arm extended ceiling-ward and the doubled-over chain touches the floor.

It's very pleasant work, in anticipation of a Christmas that I'm pretty sure will not go down as being the Best Ever.

Bookmending - repair that repair!

Another book-repair post, largely information that my regular readers have run into here before, or knew anyway. It may be new to passers-by.

This is a case where I took a book apart because the bad repair job someone did on it was driving me nuts.

I try not to let people who repair books badly annoy me so much, but years as a librarian, facing well-meaning ladies who would put stripes of Scotch™ tape across the pages on each side of a binding break, and hand it to me with a beatific smile and an "I helped you by fixing this poor book" -- while I tried not to dive across the desk and conk them with it -- depleted my stock of patience. Which was never high.

Tape on pages doesn't hold a book together, it only pulls on the pages it's attached to, crumples and rips them, it makes a mess, why do they think it will help??

But anyway, this is different, and I ought to have a little more tolerance for people who glue the text block into the spine. It's wrong, but I grudgingly admit that it seems logical to them.

To any readers who don't know this :

The actual spine of a hardbound book is, 99% of the time, not supposed to adhere to anything.

This seems counterintuitive but it's true. The text block has a backing that extends onto the book cover, and attaches there only. Then the attached part gets covered up by the endpages.

Yes, really, trust me. Pull down any hardcover book and peer down inside its spine. You can. You can even hide notes and paper money in there if you want to. That's because it's unattached, OK?

Allow me to illustrate with a 2174-page 1935 Lincoln Library, which is huge enough for its structure to show clearly in a photo :



Back to the problem book I worked on: someone, many years ago, glued it back together by gluing the text block to the spine, and not only that, but didn't even place the text block correctly inside the cover. He/she slud (past tense of slide - implies sloppiness, as opposed the too-neat word "slid") it down to the bottom edge.

URGH.

Here, I'm gently separating the spine from the text-block (the text-block is the complete bundle of actual pages). It's worth a very careful try, though in most cases, they won't separate and you need to leave it as is. In this case, the repair job was so old that the glue had become nice and brittle, and released the spine intact :





Fixed now. As well as I can fix it. The spine is now free from the pages, shown by the inserted dollar. It's more obvious in the Lincoln Library photo, further above. I can only make the book so neat after what it's been through, but handling it doesn't drive me nuts anymore.

Sigh of relief

OK! So. I might be tempting fate by saying this, but it looks like another hurricane season has let us off the hook. The season isn't over until November ends, but it's quite a bit past its peak now, and we're -- knock wood -- starting to relax.

The worst part of hurricane season for me has always been worrying about my mom. The idea of her home getting swept away was particularly awful for her, and she was the first to admit it. It dated back to 1937, when her own mother was seriously ill and my mom, age 10, was sent out of state to live with relatives for a year.

Mom was an only child in a very close and loving 3-person family and the brief loss of her home, without knowing whether her mother would recover, was traumatic. The possible loss of "home" was a hard prospect for her ever after. (My grandmother, by the way, recovered nicely and lived to 86. Wish the doctors and her family could have known it then!)

In 1989 Hurricane Hugo took everything in their downstairs storage, but the house and most contents came through fine. But as we prepped in 2008 for what looked like 3 serious storm threats, when she was older and very sick with (alleged) pneumonia, I was very worried about what the loss of her home, if that happened, would do to her.

And I'm not worried about it anymore. She never had to face that and I am more grateful for such a mercy than I can express.

We're getting good at storm prep. I know where everything I want to save is, and won't forget some of the most important things -- quilts, blankets, afghans, all with special associations and all of which would make recovery from a major home loss easier. Things that connect me with loved ones are great to hold, but even better when I can wrap them around me :


The beautiful afghans my mother-in-law crocheted for Larry and for me;

Another lovely afghan made by my great-grandmother in the 1940s or '50s;

A quilt my mom bought for me, here in Myrtle Beach on a trip 30 or so years ago;

My blue plaid blanket that went to camp and to college with me;

Sheets and Pooh blanket from the kids' childhood;

A throw, gift from the kids to their dad.

Lots more. Some of which will go with us, and some of which we'll seal into plastic bins (in plastic bags, bins taped shut; make them as impermeable as we can) and wedge into a closet that we think will come through intact enough for the boxes to remain. Rained on or not.

And if we can get enough of this stuff out, or protected ---- some part of me is weary and fed up and thinks, "Who cares what we come back to!"

Only a part of me. If it really happened, I'd care a whole lot, I know. It's the weariness speaking. I don't really need a great cleansing flood. I do need a vacation though.

If you get a hairdo, you can be Episcopalian too!

Our church directory photos, around 1970. Both taken at the same time, so why we're not all in one photo, I don't know. I thought there was one of the 3 of us (my father's work schedule not allowing him to make the assigned appointment. Yeah, right.), but I can't find it.


Really makes you wanna rush to your nearest Episcopal Church and sign right up, doesn't it?

Marsh shadows

Shadows lengthen over the Murrells Inlet marsh, as the sun nears day's end. Tide's coming in, too.

Series of photos taken between 4:00 PM and 6:30 PM EDT,
on October 8th, 2010.

This is the view from my folks' yard, looking over toward Huntington Beach State Park.

To see it bigger, here's the link to the flickr file!

Squirrel, interrupted

My unillustrated "I LOVE The History Channel" post

Wish I could provide a picture for you. You'll have to settle for my description.

So, at lunchtime, a few minutes before noon, we turn on the TV and surf around till we stumble on The History Channel.

HC's morning program was almost over, so we watched its last few minutes. According to HC's online schedule, the show was "Countdown to Armageddon," about the end of the world, including the Book of Revelation and all the weird symbolism in it. As most of these channels do, History Channel ran promos at the screen bottom for other shows.

One interviewee -- we tuned in too late to catch his name -- described the Antichrist and the infamous "666" mark: "He will require that everyone have The Mark of The Beast on either his right hand or his forehead. Without this mark, no one will be able to buy or sell."

As he spoke, a promo for "Pawn Stars Marathon" appeared at screen bottom.

I just love The History Channel.

Books and ribbons

We went to Books-A-Million the other day, like we need more than the umpteen thousand books we already have, but sometimes a little retail therapy is nice. I usually have no interest in the self-help section, but this time I wandered over to it. After lots of scowling at the offerings, I found a book on grieving that looked fairly helpful and intelligent.

Then I put it back. I've found or been given 2 books and a website already. Is there really any reason to get another book? I think that in some way I pictured grief as kind of an assembly-line process, where 4 workers could build a car 4 times as fast as, say, one doing it alone, so 4 sources would make me feel better much faster! Nah, probably not.

I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, instead. I'm impressed! It's good.


Last year I discovered the mental health benefit of making chains out of shiny, colorful Christmas ribbon. It started as a way to use up tangled messes of old ribbon, but became so much fun that when I ran out, I began scouring gift-wrap displays to buy more. By January, the good colors were gone from local stores, and I began searching online for metallic ribbon dealers. That's where I finally happened on Mystic Alley. I bookmarked the site, but the year was going in other directions and I didn't get around to picking my colors and ordering.

Last week, I realized it would be a happy activity to get back into, so I ordered a box of ribbon. A very big box. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Mystic Alley is great to deal with, by the way, fast, accurate, and service-oriented.


That's a standard 12-inch LP album, which I put in the box only for size-reference. It was not obvious how big the box and the contents are, so I used the album to show the size of the ribbon reels. Only then did a cat come helpfully along to pose with the box and make it unnecessary. She couldn't do that before I went to the trouble to hunt through our albums and find it. Certainly not.

It takes as long as it takes, but we're all doing OK.

Grief, briefly observed

It's not going to become a grieving blog. Grieving is a major part of my life right now, and if I've learned anything at all, I've learned that "the only way out is through." I wouldn't try to bury the feelings and Soldier On like everything's swell, but I haven't got much in the way of words or insights so this is a one-timer.

One thing is that my feelings change so often. I could write about Sad, or Lethargic, or Life is a Joyful Gift, or Irritability, or the peaceful feeling that Mom's life was complete and fulfilled, or the frustrated, angry feeling that she got cheated out of some years. Pick any one, and by the time I get it written up and reviewed and spellchecked, it isn't even the way I feel anymore and I've shifted into one of the others.

Maybe the one unusual thing about my experience is that I got such a long, long, deferment from grieving. I've never really experienced this before. They say that all major losses -- job loss, divorce, etc -- are types of grieving, accepting a loss and remaking your life. I did that during my life-implosion in 1994 when my job and my brief marriage tanked all at once. But this is different. That earlier sorrow was one of grieving my own illusions, facing the reality that people I'd trusted were not who I thought they were. But this is the loss of one of the best people I'll ever know. There's no "something better" out there.

And it's odd that grieving feels so new, because I dearly loved my grandparents. We were close. They were my advocates and supporters. My grandmother sent me to graduate school. Funded the whole thing. I could do so little for her in return except visit her in the nursing home, write them funny letters, give her university souvenirs and, when I was done, my diploma.

But the era of great trips to see them on their farm, of all the good times, was so long over by then. By the time I lost them, they'd had years of illness and it felt more that the "real life" of having them had been gradually going away for awhile.


Mom was born in 1927. This cherished little girl made it through a decade before antibiotics were available. I remember my grandmother telling me how parents worried about getting their babies to live through their "second summer." The second summer was a precarious time, I guess because when breastfeeding ended, its immunity benefit ended too, and they seemed to have a somewhat higher death rate.

This baby lived to be over 80, flew in jets, owned a computer, had children and grandchildren, yet I feel like she was entitled to more years, and I guess I'm still at the grief-stage of looking back, thinking, Why didn't TWO doctors find the infection years ago? She'd be here. She still seems so close. 6 weeks ago, she stood in their kitchen scrambling an egg, and I feel like she's barely moved out of reach.

Most of my readers, unlike me, have been through grieving long before this, through deaths timely and untimely. I feel guilty about finding Mom's death a few weeks short of her 83rd birthday "untimely," but there I am.

But on her last day in the hospital, my Mom said to me, with a smile, "Don't worry about all this. It's just ridiculous." I didn't know what she meant, but she either knew, or had decided, that life was ending, and wanted us all to feel that this was right. I guess she deserves to be taken at her word on that, so I will get there. Eventually.

Meanwhile, here's a flickr photo set of my beautiful, dear, funny mom. One of the smartest people I ever knew, and what stands out about her to me was her complete lack of bullshit. She could see through, and cut through bullshit in a heartbeat. I think that's what I treasure most about her, but there's plenty more.

Two oddities

If i have any literary ability or culture at all, it's due to my mom. She took me to plays and musicals, locally, and in New York and London. We rifled old bookstores and junk shops together. She introduced me to Brookgreen Gardens when I was 11 years old. I haven't been able to go to Brookgreen in the last couple weeks, though it's usually my favorite de-stress place, but things are progressing and I'll get back there soon.

She also took me to The Big Library: the downtown Charlotte Main Branch library. Going "downtown" was an expedition and a special treat. One subject among many that I got into while browsing the Big Library was English history. I was the usual romantic teenaged girl -- I read all the library's books about the abdication of Edward VIII, which fascinated me even as it became quickly clear that romance was the least important part of that story.

One book that they had on the subject was this rather vitriolic thing called Gone with the Windsors. The author, who had spent his journalistic career writing food and hospitality books until then, was so outraged by the Duke of Windsor's sentimental and sometimes self-contradictory autobiography, A King's Story, that he felt compelled to write his own book about the events of 1936, in which he took the couple apart piece by piece. Some justified criticism and some serious over-the-top snark.

Awhile back, someone offered the book, now a library discard, on eBay. She's a Charlotte seller who gets a lot of the library's discards, and I'm pretty sure it's the same copy I checked out when I was about 14, since it came from the main library, not a branch, and they only had one copy.

It's one of the thousand things I've thought about in the last two weeks. "Mom would get a kick out of knowing that I now own the same copy! I never thought to tell her! Now I can't."

I can't tell her things anymore. This will keep happening a lot for awhile, and on occasion for the rest of my life.

Meanwhile, last week Dad asked Larry and me to walk around the yard and make notes of things that needed to be done to the landscaping. I pulled a pad of paper out of my mass of junk on my desk shelf, and this photo fell out.


Mom and my dear dog Sparky, around (?) 1971.

They both live on in my heart, but that doesn't cut it for me. Whatever comes next, we apparently are on a Need To Know basis about, and the Higher Power doesn't seem to think that we Need to Know, so all I can do is hope that the photo tumbling out for me was a little message that she's there with loved ones, and with all her favorite animals, and that she's as delighted and joyful as she looks in this picture.

Purpose

They say that everything happens for a reason and it could be true or it could be bull that we use to comfort us in loss, I'm not equipped to determine that, at least not right now. I do think some things can be turned to a purpose. I also think I have a need to do that right now, whether it matters or not, so put up with it while I share a little, possibly useless, wisdom I've gained just in the past couple weeks.

If you're diagnosed with pneumonia, and it's not the first time, make sure it really is pneumonia. Whatever your age, though the elderly usually are less strong for the fight.

There are some bad bacteria out there. Tuberculosis is one but it's not the only one. Another, biologically related to TB, is called MAC and acts much the same, and needs pretty much the same treatment.

MAC is different from TB in that we all get exposed to it all the time -- it's a common bacterium in the environment, we get little bouts of it and our systems knock it out quickly.

But if you've got a vulnerable zone, as my mom had in her left lung since a bad bout with pneumonia in 1965, MAC can settle in and become chronic. Ordinary courses of antibiotics, for secondary bronchitis/pneumonia things, won't kill it.

Several chest X-rays, which revealed the colony of bacteria over the past 2-3 years, all were diagnosed as individual bouts with pneumonia. The same shadow appeared, over years' time, in the same place on the x-ray. And I guess it wasn't totally illogical to mistakenly think that she'd repeatedly get pneumonia in the same vulnerable location. But it was a pouch of MAC, and settled in over, the doc guesses, 5 years or so.

If .... if. The "if onlys" may be a very natural reaction, and I'm not inclined to either diss myself for having it, or to dwell on it and let it fester. My mom's doctors tried. We got her to better ones, but it needed to happen years ago.

She was ready, even happy, to stop the fight. It had been a harder, longer fight than any of us realized, circa 5 years of it sapping her. She'd had enough. None of us feel that, things being what they were, there was another outcome.

So maybe things have a purpose and maybe some that don't can, still, be turned to a purpose. Don't live with an infection like this for years. It's not necessary.