Even here!

Snow. We had about an hour of driving flurries this morning. It was sunny by noon and nothing accumulated, and despite 22° nights coming up, I don't think precipitation is expected.

I'm slowly figuring out how to photograph falling snow. It helps to find a pocket out of the wind, which slows the speed of the stuff so that the camera can catch it. Facing into it helps too, so it's like looking into a starfield simulation.

But you''ll need to zoom these photos to make the flurries visible! It was pretty impressive in real life but doesn't show up well.





(1) The bike path across the marsh, and (2) a shot of Murrells Inlet's Highway 17.

After my stroll out there to the highway, I walked back around the house, where Scooter heard me and left his warm basement to grudgingly accompany me. He feels that it's his duty.

What is this $#!t,
and why are you forcing me out in it?!

The yard.

Please note that I've endured snowflakes on my back for this.

Extra treats will be expected.

Remembrance of snows past

Well, as long as we're coping with and reminiscing about great freezes and snows, past and present, here's a memory of mine that one of the people in the picture might get a kick out of :

There's no snow in this picture. It's outside, cancelling our flights.

Thousands of us were camped out inside the St. Louis airport starting on December 20th (I think?), 1973, a few hours into what would be our three-day....um....Great Adventure, brought to us by The Christmas Blizzard of '73. There being very little to do, I took some photos with my trusty Instamatic.

The college's chartered bus got us there around darkfall, and we quickly learned that every flight had been cancelled.

Most of us were there for at least 2 days and nights. I got out at about 2 o'clock in the morning of December 23rd. I was so numb i'm not sure of dates but I am sure it was my third night. I slept for about 18 hours when I got home, without missing Christmas, so I'm pretty sure the dates were 20th-23rd, but I could be off by a day.

The young woman in the background wearing a red sweater (not the one in red lying down in the foreground), fighting a migraine, is my roommate, Ellen -- who is reading this post! Hi, Ellen! A memorable freshman year, eh?

I don't miss it. Nope. Don't miss it at all.

She calls it a rant

I call it an excellent post.

Yes, I'm nuts

So there I am in December, starting the 4th draft of my novel and thinking, Hoo-boy, this is truly bad in so many ways, and the chance to enter it in a contest comes up.

Suddenly I decide that I can not only make it a not-stupid book, but that I can do it in time for an early February (!) contest deadline, despite Christmas, houseguests and everyday life. I'm now thinking I belong in lock-up. Reformatting it for the rules turned into a whole, practically line-by-line, job by itself. Finished that yesterday, and only now can I even start entering substantive changes, from typos to genuine plot repairs. Oh and did I mention that I never completed the 4th draft edit before I started the reformat work?

All for something I haven't a prayer of winning, though that's not really a self-putdown. It has as much to do with my breaking a bunch of rules about what's commercially viable, as it does with writing problems. (Oh, well, yeah and with the fact that there might be 10,000 entries!) I'm pretty much doing what I want to do, not what "the market" prefers, But I don't mean to make it sound like I'm protecting My Terribly Important Artistic Vision from being commercialized. The story is pop fiction, meant to be fun, and even then, mainly to readers who give a hoot about the issues and angst of teenaged girls. All I care about is that I get to run my fictional world my own way. If I run it somebody else's way, the book becomes just a product and I fail to have fun.

Entering this contest sort of puts the book into fitness training. I see things in my writing, when I put it into public access, that I don't see when I'm still keeping it private. Posting an excerpt awhile ago showed me a major flaw that I'd missed when I was re-reading it only for myself. This contest is another chance to make me refine the thing.

Also - I'll be able to say I gave the commercial-publication route at least one fair shot.

Anyway, that's what I'm mired in these days. I and 9,999 other people who also cherish their novels. Yeah, mine could be one of 10,000 entries in this one contest. It doesn't do to take life too seriously!

The evangelism thing

In her comment on my bozo-bus post, my friend Catherine brought up some Big Questions : "How then can a Christian follow the Great Commission [Matthew 28:19] and still respect the beliefs of others? Can it be done? Should it be done?"

I think it's quite possible to respect others, but I have to say that I do not think it's possible to respect their beliefs, if I try to persuade them of another belief, no matter how lovingly or sincerely I do it. If it's a call to persuade others, that Commission, by its very nature, demotes their beliefs and places ours above.

To explain, I have to spout some AA 12-step philosophy because it's taught me the best way I've found to honor other peoples' views and still maintain my own integrity.

Here's what happens in a 12-Step meeting : I can be in tears over my boss, my love life, my money problems, whatever, but no one in the room will say, "Here's what you could do," or "Have you tried...?"

What I will hear is : "When I faced [ ]
what helped me was [ ]."

The difference becomes a LOT more obvious when it's about touchy subjects that are inclined to cause exchanges in which people judge or feel judged. I'm highly likely to slam down the mental receiver if someone issues a finger-pointy "you," much less the intrusive "should," but I can listen to some one say "It was like this for me," and not bristle, not close my mind. It's not something I need to rebel against.

The 12-Step way, that of telling how I see things, not how anyone else "should" see them, lets me be genuinely respectful of others, and still honest. About faith, or politics, or my friend's marital problems, or whether my brother should eat Ding Dongs [TM] , or anything else.

Carrying the message and persuading are not the same thing, and when I read the Matthew passage, I see an instruction to inform those who haven't heard the Christian tenets, not a responsibility to persuade people who have heard and rejected them.

I'm fully capable of saying, "This is my experience," but wholly incapable of making any experience, much less a particular one, happen for somebody else. People have certainly questioned my beliefs and had no impact at all. I've been told that the faith in which I was raised probably planted images in my mind that I clung to in time of trouble.

I'm actually fine with others thinking that. If it's supposed to either burst my alleged bubble or tee me off, I'm afraid it's done neither. Spiritual belief doesn't enter us through the mind, even if it does come to rest there. It's a watershed, heart(?) soul(?)...OK, OK, irrational! 8~) moment that is strictly one-on-one between that great Source and each of us, and if we -- yeah, I include myself -- need more enlightenment it too will come from the source.

It doesn't mean that I hide what I believe. It does not even mean that I tell about it only when asked. Nobody asked for my thoughts about anything, but I've been jumping into online conversations for years and I, um, did start a blog. I just decided to start yammering away, and about faith as well as any other thing I feel like pontificating about. This might even meet some people's criteria for "evangelism," but it's just being who I am.

I also can't ignore times past when I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, and later realized i had not one clue.

There's yet another Twelve-Step tenet, which is that we don't know everything, and that "more will be revealed." That is, when I think about it, literally the most comforting phrase I've ever encountered.

Probably no butterflies today

Marsh ice.
9:00 AM, January 17, 2009
28° f.

Somewhat different from the way
things were 12 days ago.

Contrast

We get winter, too. Not like some of my friends get it, but today's high made it up to freezing: 32° f. Tonight's low will be 15°.




Taken about 20 minutes ago: hose-shaped ice shards, which spurted out when Larry turned the water on to fill the birdbath.

We're all bozos on this bus.

Atheists, True Believers, everybody.

Yall are gonna have to forgive me for treating with dreary seriousness something started by a comedian.

I'm talking about the pro-atheism ad campaign, in which a lot of people apparently had nothing better to do with thousands of euros than fund atheist messages on public bus flanks, which kind of tells you where I'm at.

I actually see the intended pointed-but-gentle humor in the bus campaign, but what I fear some of the contributors do NOT see is that they've escalated this culture war. If they do see it and it's what they meant to do, fine, freedom of speech and all that. They have a right to annoy me, despite the fact that I have not attempted to annoy them by proselytizing. It's understandable that those who are fed the bleep up with the evangelical version of Christianity...

(God, I get so tired of trying to remind people that it's only one version)

...anyway, it's understandable that they'd take off the gloves and say "Two can play this game."

But despite the amiable tone of the ads, and the careful insertion of the word "probably," i can't help but think it's a deeply stupid mistake. The people who built the bandwagon may be pretty lighthearted about it, but the jumpers-on are less so. Their outpouring of contributions sure looks like it has struck a nerve. An angry, "Let's take this outside!" nerve.

Ad-proponents could certainly point out that Christians dish out the proselytizing, so it's bloody well their turn to take it.

But evangelicals aren't the only ones who'll take it. Just as atheists who've never tried to inflict their views on others have been plagued for years by buttinski Believers who want them to change, so will we believers who've never supported proselytizing get our beliefs ridiculed. Wars always inflict collateral damage. Always.

What, exactly, makes the message telling us Believers that we're misguided and that belief impairs enjoyment of life (huh?) less condescending than the Christian message telling atheists that they're misguided? How does this atheist proselytizing help end the intrusiveness of proselytizing?

It perpetuates it. It rebels against an evangelical attitude problem --"The Smart Enlightened People Must Educate the Silly Dimwitted People!" -- by doing the exact same thing.

Did the Christian evangelicals start it? Did those who opposed the Christian Right's public intrusions fail to speak up? Is the atheism campaign a gentle one compared to the Christian Right noisemaking?

I won't attempt to answer those questions ("us" and "them" is as old as human consciousness) because even if every one of them merits a resounding "Yes!" payback takes things in the wrong direction. By saying, "If you do it then we'll do it," they have just acknowledged that proselytizing is a swell idea.

It means we've all retreated to the defeated position that my right to freedom and respect for my belief depends on the society around me thinking like I do. It follows that we each therefore need to try to remake society into one in which our beliefs are the default setting. May the best Force win. It's innocuous and vaguely amusing in its early stage, and that remaking of society into "correct" thinking isn't real obvious, but the sides are lining up.

Think about it. If you really do believe that it's not, and cannot be, a personal matter, that the community must establish a position on the God question, and that you must fight to make sure it matches yours, OK, your delight in this ad campaign is right on the money.

Make no mistake about it : it is your war, not ours. That term "you" will now embrace atheists and fundies. You've both decided to fight for converts. Me, I'm not ready to give up on freedom of thought. Real freedom, you know, freedom in which we all quit smirking or sneering at each others' beliefs.

But if you don't believe the game must be played and won...?

If you realize that recruiting, whether for Jesus or for physics-is-God, is by definition intrusive....?

If you still want humankind to outgrow evangelism...?

IMO this ain't the way to do it. It's a Three Stooges sketch. It's starting with a funny nose-tweek, but the stakes will inch higher, bones will crack. It feels like it's bringing balance but it's really bringing escalation.

Personally I think it's a monumental waste. That 200,000 bucks is globally tiny, and might not have changed the world. It won't rebuild a bombed-out city. It would feed X-number of hungry children for X-amount of time, then the problem would remain.

But it won't stop with that 200,000. And the evangelical effort will rise to meet it.

This is one battle that really really ought to have heeded the old poster:

What if they gave a war and nobody came??

Help out teh animals!

Downyflake, Graymatter and Scooter -- who rarely agree about anything -- do agree that ....




freekibble.com is one cool site!

Answer the trivia question of the day, correctly or incorrectly, and you contribute to the donation of pet food to animal shelters.

The People magazine article about sooperhero kid Mimi Ausland, who started it, can be found here! (PDF)

There's a dog page and a cat page, and you can donate at either or both, once a day.

Every day~!

Gaza

A voice from Israel:

Yes, I know, war is war. After all, they brought this on themselves. They are a terrorist organization and we are not. They want to destroy us and we seek peace. Still, is there nothing here that will stop this blood pipeline? Even those whose hearts are hardened by "moral righteousness" will have to momentarily halt the bombing machine and ask: Which Israel do we have before us? What will become of its standing in the world, which is now watching the events in Gaza? What are we inflicting on the moderate Arab regimes? And what of the simmering popular hatred we are sowing throughout the world? What good will emerge from this killing and destruction?

It is doubtful whether Hamas will be cut down to size as a result of this wretched war. Yet, the face of the state has been cut down to size, as have civilian elites who are apathetic and scared. The "peace camp," if it ever existed, has been cut down to size. Attorney General Menachem Mazuz authorized the Ghayan killing, regardless of the cost. Haim Oron, the leader of the "new left-wing movement," supported the launch of this foolish war.

The full text of the piece can be found here

OK, it's getting weird now

The Christmas photos have been piling up in my camera, unexamined until last night. I didn't think I'd succeeded at catching the yellow butterfly (December 26th) with the camera, but wow, there he is.



And then, there's today. January 5th. I have seen four butterflies today(!), though I only caught these two lookalikes "on chip."

The 2 that I did not get in photos were another yellow sulphur and an orange one.

And this is getting weird. They should all have disappeared a month ago. Today, it's 70°f, and that's strange in itself -- sure, 70° days pop up all year, but as exceptions, not as such regular events -- but where did the butterflies go on those 30° nights?!

The warm weather is lovely. It's cheering. It keeps our power bill down and that's extremely nice right now, but it is not normal.

I'll be home with a book, but....

Have a fun New Year's Eve, yall .... and a great new year!

8~)

Waiting [Update]

I've written before about my friend in Israel.

A few days ago, she and a group trying to get humanitarian aid into Gaza were stuck waiting for a way in. They had supplies, including things like medicines that needed refrigeration, things that could not wait.

The blockade was lifted on Friday. Last we heard from her in email, she said: "I will be at the border here, on one side or the other, for another few days, and then I am going home. I have a couple articles to write, and a sick cat to take care of."

Then the airstrikes started.

It's not unusual for us to hear nothing from her for weeks at a time. No idea if she was actually inside Gaza, or where she was, when the rockets started falling, but if any readers are inclined toward prayers, positive energy, or anything like that, I'm sure hoping she and her group are OK. The internet is a weird, weird thing. You find yourself caring about people you never met.

--

UPDATE:

In my inbox this morning (Tuesday, 12/30):

"Hello to all,

I am still at the border as things have gotten rather complicated. The humanitarian aid is being allowed in sporadically and there are complex and often confrontational negotiations involved, and that is one thing I am fairly good at."

--

So her group isn't in yet. I had pictured the aid groups as swarming in immediately when the ban was lifted, but it seems that it doesn't work that way. Still keeping my fingers crossed, for her work's success and for safety.

You guys are very very cool. And wow, so is she.

A Christmas Wish

May the people with whom you are spending your holiday be less annoying than the people with whom I am spending my holiday.

Sincerely,
Scooter

A conversation

Me: What's your favorite color?

Larry: Right here (points to a lovely shade of blue in a CT scan of the skull of Tutankhamen, in the current issue of Science Illustrated).

Me: Oh yeah, cobalt blue!

L: Why do you want to know?

Me: Catherine posted this husband quiz on her blog.

L: Oh. Well, let me know how I do.

Me: How you do...?

L: On the test.

Me: Oh, it's not a test of you, it's a test of me, to see how well I know you. And other general stuff, like how we met and things like that. Most of which I already answered in my post about our anniversary.

L: Like the fact that I proposed in a swamp.

Me: Hmm. It didn't ask where you proposed. I'll tell her she should add that.

--

I did know his love for cobalt blue. Really I did. See, he has a lot of favorite colors, depending on the item in question. Orange for cats. Crimson for the BMW Z-4 he wants. In clothing choices, he's been in a charcoal-gray phase for awhile.

The "swamp" is the wetland/tidal marsh we now live next to, though he first mentioned marriage over on the state park side of it, on the marsh walk. I like to call it proposing in a swamp.

Thing I love most about him: His compassion for any person or creature who's hurting.

His favorite music: Depending on the occasion: modern rock; '40's standards; classical trumpet; classical violin; Tchaikovsky.

His favorite food: most soups. Cream of mushroom especially.

A nickname for me? He wouldn't dare!

His age? Yes he will read this, so I wouldn't dare! 8~)

God laughs when you make a plan

I didn't dress for tree planting, and i obviously didn't provide myself with a hat or a hairband. We weren't going to do any yard work. All we were gonna do was sit out on a warm, though cloudy, afternoon and take a short teatime break.

Then, since the weather was amenable, Larry set out to do something he really had to do, something he'd warned me had to be done; cut down this tree.

It's the natural child of the local Live Oaks, and decided to plant itself right by the wall, where, as it grew, it would break the wall down. Two others did the same thing, but they were small and easy to move to better locations. This one had grown too big to transplant.

Well, I mean, no tree is too big to transplant if you have the digging and transporting ability.... OK, I have this tree problem. I'm no gardener, but I can't resist a tree. Three Charlie-Brown-type evergreens are planted at various spots around the house.

So another Christmas gift from Larry to me is to help me try to save this one. It was one Big Dig, to extract and to plant. While I started to dig it a new home, Larry managed the amazing feat of getting it out of the ground with 80-90% of its roots. We resettled it several yards away, both of us at work at the new site now, digging trenches going out 3-4 feet in several directions to accomodate the roots.



We'll keep an eye on it and help it through the transition.

I guess this favorite pair of jeans will be yard-work clothes from now on.

Christmas nostalgia

When I was in grade school, we made red and green construction paper chains at Christmastime, only a few feet long, to take home and hang on the tree.

Meanwhile Larry's family did a bigger version. His mom would set the kids to work making long chains to hang from the ceiling, corner-to-corner, with a red paper bell at the center. They'd add more rooms, and more chains over the years, till the house was festooned with them. They quit doing it in the '60's as the kids hit their teens.

This year, he came up with the idea to revive the tradition. He made a set for his parents and mailed it to them, a delightful box of nostalgia which made a big hit. Then we made our own. It's a good de-stressor activity for little patches of time between items on the to-do list. Throughout the day we'd each stop by the kitchen table periodically and add some links.

Finding those fold-out tissue paper bells was a real challenge. It seems like they used to show up everywhere ... until we wanted some! Consider this a plug for PartyCheap.com, where they carry every color, in every size, have nice prices, and fast, accurate delivery!

Total cost, with construction paper and bell - under $15.

December in SC

I wish I could prove that I took these pictures about an hour ago. But I did! I'm about as surprised as anyone. This is strange, even for coastal SC. We've had several frosts, and I had not seen a butterfly in 3-4 days. And today, there he/she was, meandering around and posing for a series of photos. How this marvel of a critter has lived through these freezing nights, I can't imagine, but I hope he (she?) made many many babies.



The sun directly on him makes him look white here,




but backlit by sunlight, he's a thing of great beauty. These yellow sulphur butterflies are common in fall -- I've always thought of them as the "September butterflies," though they're around much earlier ... and later!

A Christmas Season Saturday

Home Depot - I love you.

Our Christmas present to ourselves is a water filtration system. I remain unapologetic about drinking bottled water but it gets expensive, so we can cut down on that -- and on hauling the heavy flats of bottles, and on Recycle bulk -- by having a working system. That's meant several trips to The Depot.

I've tolerated Larry's love for the place in the past. I have to occupy myself while he examines boxes of nails or valves or doomaflahchies, but he endures my examining every book on bookstore sale tables, and every purse in the Kohl's accessories department, so it's the least I can do.

But the Depot has won me over. Because they are not (at the moment) playing Christmas music! Yesterday we were there and, while Christmas decor is all over the place, the muzak was everyday pop. OK, I thought, I need to check it out on Saturday. But nope, they weren't playing holiday yuck today either!

My gratitude is boundless.

Next: a gripe. You will have a very very hard time convincing me that Chinese imports do a [BLEEPBLASTED] THING for the consumer. Why is a little girl's Made in China coat priced like this, and how exactly is the potential consumer benefitting? Speak not of shareholders nor of management - tell me why this quickly outgrown coat should cost working mom or dad, even if their jobs are intact, 80 dollars? And this, though it was the higher priced item (and no, not highest), was only $10 above the lower. Except for much lighter windbreakers, no truly warm girl's coat had a tag of less than $70.

Another note on the economy is the state of our shopping mall. A major tear-out of old walls and ceilings took place in 2007. Stores closed to make way for renovation work. A lovely mural of the future new and improved Inlet Square Mall was posted. Then the money ran out. The work stopped. Exposed wires and ductwork have hung there for a year. Old decorative tile was jackhammered up and has left raw concrete patches everywhere. And that was before the current financial meltdown.

I don't want our mall to expire, but it's happening to others, and with so much empty space, its financial viability is precarious. If it goes, all of us Inlet-ers have a longer drive in awful traffic to Myrtle Beach, for JC Penney, or for K-mart, both Inlet Square anchors. Our K-mart is a lifeline for local necessity shopping. Even Wal-Mart, though closer, is an unpleasant drive, plus I really hate shopping there.
On to happier thoughts - the filtration system is running! This took major plumbing work on Larry's part -- this is only the upstairs part; he had to work on basement water lines, too -- but he's built a car and a house from scratch at various times in his life, and....


...it's installed! It has to flush through a couple times, but we may have filtered water by tomorrow afternoon.

Domestic tranquility

So while Larry was helping me mop up the kitchen counter and floor

(Note to self: To add water to the stock pot on the stove, carry the water across the kitchen in a heavy glass measuring cup with a handle. Do not use a Dark Knight plastic cup from the convenience store)

we had the following conversation:

ME: I wish somebody would invent cooking for total incompetents.

L: You're not at all incompetent. You're a great cook. You make wonderful things.

ME: Yeah, I know that, but I can never do it without some big infuriating event happening, and going ballistic.

L: You're not incompetent. You just say you are because you hate it and that means you don't have to do it.

ME: That's a very insightful statement.

--

Understand, the whole "I have to do it" thing is not imposed on me by Larry or anybody else. I impose it on myself. My share of the cooking -- and he does a major amount of the domestic work around here -- could be accomplished with the small but reliable repertoire I've assembled over the years precisely to fit my abilities, with very little opportunity for disaster. One-dish meals, slow cooker stuff.

But I feel the need sometimes to push my limits and do the things I'm no good at. Why? Bleep knows. Boredom with the same 5 dishes. Bursts of Pioneer Woman Who Wastes Nothing fervor. Lingering Donna Reed Show-era damage. Or just that I hate to admit defeat. I like to think that I can do anything I put my mind to.

I'm an intelligent person. I can make a multilevel meal with a variety of tasks and timing.

Or: I can quit buying overpriced, prepared [cookies, piecrusts, whatever] and make them myself!

Or: I can make soup on the real stovetop -- all i have to do is remember to turn the heat down to "simmer" after it boils.

Yep. That's all.

Monitoring something drives me up a wall. (This also applies to recipes that cheerfully instruct me to "stir constantly until thickening occurs, 20-30 minutes." I. will. go. slowly. mad.) The boredom will either make me completely crack up, or drive me to pick up a magazine or, God forbid, a book, go online, even do laundry, just to keep my brain from shorting out and then, yep, it's time for the Brillo [TM] to get the blackened crud off the pot.

There are such things as kitchen timers. We have the technology. I have a real problem with being beeped and buzzed at. I hate being beeped or buzzed at. I hate ruining the product of all my chopping and measuring labor even more than I hate the beeper that prevents it, so my failure to set the timer is pure denial.

I don't need to subject myself to that frikkin' thing! I'll just check back in a few minutes..... Famous last words, and a guarantee that I'll have to make a mad dash to add water before it boils away.

But a timer isn't much help for for things that need to be watched constantly or frequently, not just checked on.

This invariably leads to an event that, in turn, causes the whole "warm cozy home with delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen" scenario to collapse. Larry is instead subjected to:

~BANG!~ *CRASH*
"I HATE &$%#ing COOKING!"

...and has to decide whether to come closer and see if I need help, or whether this would be a good time to go downstairs and find an hour-or-longer task to do.

The whole mess is now in the slow cooker where it shoulda been all along.

Poor Larry. He didn't get Donna Reed. He didn't even get Lily Munster.