World Class Juggler - Twenty years ago

My Type A personality is creeping out. This October has a lot to offer to me. Whether I can fully do it all is another question. I've been reading ghost stories and a tale of witches to prepare me for it all.

Last Saturday, I was sitting in a church activity center and opened my computer to continue reading about ghost hunting. The writer has a ring that was supposed to be haunted by a vampire. I wondered, what could happen in a church with that sort of information. Being a Baptist, I was taught God was stronger but not mess around with the Boogey Man, just let him be. And here I was reading about him in a church hall.

It made me think of a fellow teacher. She managed an In school suspension classroom. The students did their work. I picked up the romance she was reading and read the most lurid sex romp. Looking at the class, I slowly lowered the book to the desk.

I sat in on two speakers at the Chattahoochee Writers Group in Columbus. The first one was a screenwriter named Ty Manns. He was really good. I have a problem with organization and clarity with my writing and he gave some clear guidelines. If only, I could do what he does.

The second speaker was clearly leading a fan club meeting. The speaker is a well known sci-fi novelist from the area. Hanging on every word were his fans. To me, it was a long hour of redundant talk about his work and other sci fi writers. I read a lot of Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and all of Frank Herbert's books in my twenties and enjoyed them. But I was unfamiliar with the writers and this man's work. I sat crammed in the front row corner. There was no way I could have slipped out politely.

Whether I like it or not, I always learn from what does not go as planned. If I ever speak to a public group, I will never assume they have the same familiarity with a finite set of information. If they don't, they can't relate. Putting it into practice is harder than saying it.

I also reached the point where I need to follow the drummer in front of me. I am constantly trying to learn about the craft of writing. The biggest problem is that each person has their own group of books of fabulous writers to explore. So now I will read what I have and just write what I have started. There are just too many directions. I am picking one. Do all roads lead to Rome?

I guess this is where my organizational problem originates. Just picking one item and ignoring the others is very difficult. Add to that all the balls I am juggling. As you get older you start dropping a few balls. Add to that the new balls people are tossing you. It all goes back to priorities.

So my priorities are going to be aligned once again. But this month I got it all written down. I will do what I got to do first. Then I will exercise. Then I will do any of the extra if I have time. I remember when the only thing I had to do was the extra. I went to school or work. But hey, second shift I was good to go. I could even forego third shift and show up for work or school.

Those were the days my friend. I hope they are still yours. Meanwhile, I got to find that ball I just dropped.

You're Invited

It pays to be attractive. I have been twittering on twitter. It has an analytics page. I love numbers.

Meanwhile, I discovered my attitude about not tweeting unless I have something to say can be misconstrued as creepy on twitter. I have a fuzzy profile picture that I use.

I waste some time everyday checking out my new followers. When I see a gal with big boobs or buttocks, porn is somewhere. There are also some profiles with predictable comments. Apparently the world needs to be told the birds and the bees. Not that I click these folks. I report them as spam whether they tweet or not. I assume "come to my snapchat profile" is spam.

Every once in awhile, a woman has a glamour shot but is that is just her profile picture, no porn. I'm always fascinated when someone with a foreign language in a script unlike the English language follows me. I don't follow them back. They may understand English. I don't understand them. We English speakers are certainly lucky that our language is so widespread.

Am I going to get anywhere with this. I so hope so.

Anyhow, I started posting pictures. I did not have anything relevant to say. I think all the encouragers in the world are available on twitter. To think I bought a book of Bartlett's quotations. One day I snapped a picture of Duke and Louise smiling in the car. Louise was a little uncomfortable and only posed well with her face beside mine. Otherwise it was cut that out and drive.

Anyway, here are their pictures. Everyone is clicking for little BoDuke. No one is clicking for Louise. She really is much prettier than that toothsome picture.

Louise

Duke

My mom wanted to go back to the driver's license office and get her picture retaken. It was really bad. I told her I think that is how they train them to take pictures. Fortunately Louise could care less about her twitter picture. She just wants to get in the car.

Meanwhile, I have volunteered for a job I am immensely unqualified for. I am coordinating the newsletter for a writer's group. Yes, you have guessed correctly, no one wanted to do it and I said I could help out. So I am opining, "how to be a good writer" and I am far from arrival myself.

To get people to open the mail chimp newsletter, I used a jazzy title and it worked. The title was You're Invited to a Party, a Twitter Party that is. I may have used the word your instead of you're. I deleted my copy. 

So Thursday night between 7 and 9 PM, September 22nd, the Southeastern Writer's Group will have a twitter party. The questions are what are the best and/or worst vacation, meal and/or place you've lived. Use the hashtag #SWA.

I borrowed the idea of the question from Betty at Benches with a View. Thanks Betty, it is nice to know a trendsetter.

I'm inviting everyone to come. It may just be me. I've deleted Candy Crush so unless there is a good television show on, it could be a long two hours. I guess I could write my next blog post. I threw a twitter party and no one came. I ate all the party treats anyway.

Next week, I'll go to Paradise or a Play. It all depends.

We have finished a quick tour of hell. It involves walking in circles in a massive grocery store searching for my mother. You have to follow that motorized scooter or it disappears. Mom and I have a joke that we have papers that disappear into thin air.

I have a feeling my mother may be part Harry Potter and disappears in the grocery store. Last week it was an old man with two bottles of wine that I kept seeing. This time it was another woman older than myself. She really was not dressed as well as my mom. But finally I saw mom beside the organic food milk case carefully looking over discounted yogurt. I felt like saying, "Since when do you eat yogurt?".

But I kept my mouth shut. No matter how old you are and how old your mom is,

"YOU DON'T TALK BACK OR YOU WILL BE SORRY". 

In about an hour I will unload the cabinets and reload them with canned vegetables. It is the only way to slow my mom from stocking up. I get her to straw boss my putting the cans back in.

The dirty thirties is never far from my mom's memories. She can remember the past in striking details.

I am currently packing up perfectly good clothes while they are perfectly good to give to the thrift shop that operates at the workshop my brother attends. I'll gift them with some canned food.

How did I get so many clothes?

1. I retired. You just don't wear clothes like you did when working. I have three pairs of jeans I alternate. One is very important. It is tight at the waist and reminds me to cut back on my eating. I let a professional outfit go every month or so.

2. Apparently, the fear of going without is a hereditary trait. It didn't show up on my sister's DNA test of our ancestry but it is there.

3. Also hereditary is the ability to find a good deal. I have two sisters. One can spend money faster than me and the other can find a good deal faster. You stop at a yard sale. The first one will get in the car with a piece of junk and the other one will have found a gold chain for a dime. I'm not exaggerating. I of course get in the car with another book or two or ten.

4. I like to dress well. I just don't understand why I forget a pair of pants have a rip in them until someone taps me on the shoulder to tell me.

5. At one time I worked so much, I really did not know I had amassed a monopoly on black and navy pants at below wholesale prices. Let's not talk about shoes. I am taking a few of them to the thrift shop.

Anyway, the only way to get my mother to slow down stocking the canned food is to let her help me reorganize the cabinet. I would call that hell too. But mama did not raise a fool. The fact that our cupboards are full is something I feel blessed to have on Earth. The real reason I get my mother to tell me how I should put it back in the cabinet is that I did not inherit the organization gene.

Now purgatory is lunchroom duty in a middle school. Whatever you do, never agree to play music. The kids only talk louder than the music. Believe me.

This is where I learned that time slowed and there was a different vibration in the air before a child threw a carrot.

I exaggerate.

But did you know there are kids who will throw small pieces of candy instead of eating them. They are usually male. Although I did keep a girl after school for throwing peas at the table.

One of the reasons I used to decide to teach at an alternative school was no lunch duty. And the fact that the children were really pretty good children. They just had tough lives. This time I'm not exaggerating.

This is before. 

Just a little troll watching

Every cloud has a silver lining or There is no use crying over spilled milk. These two quotes are my response to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" we all face. There is a lot of wisdom in Shakespeare.

I searched for the origins of the first two phrases. John Milton's Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 was probably the first reference in literature of the silver lining of clouds.

I see ye visibly, and now believe
That he, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill
Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistering guardian, if need were
To keep my life and honour unassailed.
Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err; there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-Every-Cloud-Has-a-Silver-Lining-and-what-does-it-mean

I did a cursory search for "crying over spilt milk" and came up with blithering. Blithering in the sense that the answers were obviously made up. One attributed the phrase to spilt milk being a favorite food of the fairies. So although you spilt the milk, you pleased the fairies.

Knowing how precious food was so long ago, I imagine everyone missed a goodly portion of their food that day when the milk was spilt. What comes to mind are my great-grandfather getting upset that my mother threw her piece of cornbread in the fire to watch it burn or my grandfather's declaration that his favorite pieces of chicken were the neck, back and gizzard. And of course, the more chicken feet a girl eats, the prettier she will be.

An infamous clickfarm (I had to click about four times to get the lousy origin they offered) wrote that somebody was probably crying over spilled milk and the others told them not to cry. Gee, what research.

But there is so much unrehearsed research on the internet. I keep a list of troll comments to use in my writing. I'm not in the habit of saying something hateful. It has been a long time since I was 14 years old arguing with my older brother. I will confess. I was hateful. But that is another post.

Some trolls write great zingers. So many don't understand the internet is forever. I take screenshots just to save a few nasty beauts. A high school chum who is a bona fide genius and programmer states anyone can make a quick copy of any screenshot. So good luck using it as proof.

I have heard of the power of trolls. Trolls are not always that frustrated male living in their parent's basement. It is not unusual for them to be women, nurses, doctors, teachers, mechanics. They come from all walks of life. For many it is obviously an anger outlet. For others, it is idleness and something to do. I'm sure future research will reveal several threads of psychology that motivate trolling. Immaturity comes to mind.

When there were anonymous comments and everything was new; I was as guilty as everyone else making comments. Then when a girl name Justine was pilloried with mass indignation; a book was written, articles were written about the tendency of social media attacking people without the facts. It is that fairplay thing. Does the crime fit the punishment?

There is that acknowledgement that they were so stupid not thinking about how what they said could be taken or interpreted. There is that greater humility in knowing I have done some pretty dumb things intentionally and accidentally.

So I matured. As so many others did. My big beef with folks arguing over the internet is calling someone a Nazi, Fascist, Hitler or Commie. I've read about Godwin's Law which is an excellent summation of using those epithets.

I do not think Donald Trump would be a good President.

I do not think Donald Trump deserves to be called a Fascist. He is not. He is a salesman selling himself to an electorate that will turn out and vote. The fact that the tax cut he is proposing only benefits the more affluent passes over their head. Because, heck don't we all aspire to that in the United States. Isn't that why the lottery is so popular. If you don't earn it and you aren't going to inherit it, you might win that great windfall.

Godwin also brings up a point that calling someone a Nazi because you disagree does not acknowledge the enormity of the crime against humanity Hitler's Third Reich committed.

Anonymity allows trolls to flourish. Some are just as obnoxious with their names in print. When trolls commit actions that can put an individual in harm's way or incredible bullying, there should be real world consequences like monetary fines. The KKK was broken financially. I have heard of it's resurgence which is unfortunate.

Sitting in the car putting on lipstick, It's Wednesday and I should create a post for my blog. A little whimsy got pretty serious quick, eh.

I took this on an Alaskan cruise.

The itchiness of women

Itchiness in women is a sore point. Just the acknowledgement is a put down. I read a study of itchiness in women in the Atlantic magazine.

Mama itch with two of her female children. Little itches.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/the-evolution-of-bitchiness/281657/?utm_source=atlfb

What bothered me was the experiment. They basically proved that women could not contain their cattiness when the woman giving instructions wore a low cut blouse with their boobs hanging out, hot pants and boots versus when the same woman wore a more conservative outfit of a blue knit top with khaki pants.

Well duh, what happened to you dress for the job you aspire to. If you dress like a call girl, why would you invoke respect from women or men.

The inverse of this would be men would be more likely to make a sexual advance to a woman presenter dressed sexy. I think this is why I went home from teaching school, changed clothes, put on make-up and fluffed my hair up to go nightclubbing on Friday nights. I don't think men would have asked that haggard teacher that left work to dance.

As a teacher, I have been called an "itch". I've been white itch, fat itch, big tittied itch. I've been friends with black "itches" and fellow white itches, fat itches, you get the picture. These ladies were terribly nice in my opinion. I did know a teacher who bragged the students thought she was an "itch". Frankly, if the shoe fits . . .

I worked at a school that was supposedly filled with "itches". We worked for a woman who had a lot of guts. At the time I thought she was so courageous because she came from a very wealthy family. I learned that woman had a strong spirit and a keen sense of justice. She paid for every time she stood up for you, herself or someone else.

The study in the Atlantic made me think of a study by Margaret Mead. She went to fancy eastern colleges and tried to persuade the young ladies to eat turnip greens, etc during World War II. The gals did not eat more of the vegetables in response to Margaret Mead's august praise of the food. The commentator stated a flaw was Margaret Mead should have gotten a movie star, et al to do the touting of the food. Accomplished as Margaret Mead was, she was not glamorous. I don't have a source for this anecdote. It is from memory.

Which leads me to another item? Why are we raising kids to think someone giving them an honest opinion is their enemy. As a teacher, I sugar coated criticism. I also told kids I was paid to correct them.

I follow a blog of an incredibly intelligent and talented writer. She will be a force in literature if she does not implode first. She was chastised and released on twitter for taking another person's work and appropriating it as hers. Being 16, she was indignant that the scholar she had borrowed so heavily from told her to take it down and dropped it since she was a minor. If you read the blog post, it is child's indignation.

 This is the post.

In the comments, her friends agreed with her. Real friends would tell her there is a time to listen to the criticism. I thought of commenting. But, she was told by these women.

This was my beef with some gifted students when I taught school. They were bright and used to being told how good they were. They were that bright. But somehow, some thought they were perfect. This was usually combined with parents who had no tolerance of someone doing their child wrong whether the child was right or wrong.

I had a great deal of admiration for the father who called my young self and told me not to change a grade until his child brought it to my attention. I had taken high 90 something average and put like 85 in the computer. I just made a mistake. Some parents would have gone nuclear on me. It took about two days for the child to discuss it with me. I deserved an academy award for saying, "Oh you are right, let me fix it."

Do I like criticism? No. I like my life as easy as it can be. It just don't work that way. But I have benefited from some pretty mean spirited criticism. There is always something there to use. I have to remind myself when I get rejection for what I write. It has made me a better writer. It is also giving me the confidence to know whether I agree or not. But no I don't like criticism. I had someone read my first screenplay and he tore it apart. I laid in bed looking at the ceiling after reading his review. And you know, everything he said was right.

The argument in the Atlantic discusses that women don't like their loose counterparts because it makes it harder for men to commit to long term relationships with them. I get the logic. I just think that the argument demeans men and women. It is like all men only want a succession of one night stands. I agree with the pun that women have sex to have men say I love you and men say I love you to have sex.

I don't know, I don't know. But I do know men live longer with a spouse than being single. I also know I am not an "itch" when I speak my mind while being female. I'm old enough to know that nursing a grievance is not a sign of deep thought. Which is another thought and this post is long enough.

To An Athlete Dying Young

Everyday, teenagers are killed in car accidents. It always stings whether you know them or not. I've had a friend to have her only child to die from losing control of his automobile this past weekend. Two others in the car were unharmed. Another one may be paralyzed. On the other side of the county, another high schooler is in intensive care from an accident at about the same time.

I did not know the child well. But I do know he was a good boy. I am very fond of his mother and family. I have always loved children and especially teenagers.

What moves me the most about this is the big question of Why?

I can appreciate someone being agnostic. I was for most of my life. Even now that thought permeates me. One day when it came the hardest, I dreamed about my dad and woke up in the middle of the night. I feel like my dad visited me. I had one other dream where I was working outside. Trying to finish my work before stopping. My dad was telling me to stop and spend time with my mother and brother.

When my dad passed, my grandmother was in the process of a dying. There were snow flurries and snow was almost a definite for the next day. Georgia is not equipped to deal with snow, and everyone stays home. At the evening school I worked at we had the option to give the kids their final exam that day versus the next day when they were due. I gave my students the option with the opportunity to study.

Most were ready to take the test within ten minutes. I had one student who took her time. I had decided to raise her grade by five points for every extra five minutes she studied. During that time, it was like someone really happy came into my room and said, "So this is where you work." It was brief but I took note of the time.  My dad unexpectedly passed at about the time when I had the visit.

When my grandmother's mother passed, a bowl she had given my mother cracked in half at the moment she died. My mother was baking apples in the bowl like she had baked so many other batches of apples.

I have read where other people had a similar experience and it is called the "final goodbye". My grandmother passed away shortly after my dad's funeral.

What tore me up the most after my dad died was talk about people having heart attacks. I had a friend who found out she had had a mild heart attack during a physical before a cosmetic procedure. Sitting at dinner, it was difficult to listen to the story and not betray how I felt. The person who asked my dad and grandmother's age and said, "Well they were old." was more of a shock and what a story to repeat item in my mind.

I've led a fairly enchanted life in that I have never had that many people around me die. The only thing I know is to say I'm sorry, pray for the survivors and never avoid someone because I don't know what to say.

A young history teacher was surprised to know I was a Christian. He thought I was an atheist. That was a shock of information. Where I live, if you are an unbeliever, it is best to keep it to yourself. So this admission was disturbing. I never brought religion into the classroom. It is really the domain of parents and I always respected that. What I did share with him is that I don't think people have to have religion to be good. But religion does help you through the difficult parts of your life.

What I think about when someone so young with so much promise dies young is the bible verse and old saying that our deaths are an appointment with our maker. The other thought is the poem in high school called "To An Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman. It was written in 1896. I remember studying it in high school and thought it was such a yawner at the time. Funny how that yawner has stayed with me.

Any way, you can grieve and rage but it does not change what has happened. The memorial will be Saturday. The shock of it being a child I knew has torn me up. I can't imagine how the family is doing. They are clearly in shock. They appear to be taking it well. God bless them. I know they have a painful journey ahead..


To An Athlete Dying Young

The time you won your town the race,
We chaired you through the marketplace;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
As home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

Writer's Police Academy

I attended the writer's police academy sponsored by Sister's in Crime in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  You wouldn't think it would be so much fun spending a few days exploring murder and mayhem. But it was.

I came a day early to rest up. Delta Air Lines is still in the throes of their power outage. My first flight left late. It was scheduled for 8 PM. The flight had been delayed until 10 PM. However, I am glad I got to the airport early. We left around 9:30. The best part was I got to go through the TSA prechek. I got to wear my shoes, they scanned my bags, I walked through a metal detector.

Long story short, I was exhausted when I got to Green Bay. The next day, I rested up and blew about $160 in the slot machines of the Casino. I have a fascination with folks who deliberately go to a casino and blow money. Then I go and blow money with the Chinese Zodiac slot machine. I also played the 1950's movie "The Blob" machine.

Tami Hoag and Les Goldberg

Special guests at the conference was Les Goldberg and Tami Hoag. Les Goldberg was a scream. He was so funny. He wrote his first book at 19. He was hilarious describing his experience writing sex scenes and he had never had sex. Actually, his jokes could be bland but it was his delivery that cracked you up. He introduced himself as a free lance sexual surrogate, screenwriter. What impressed me the most is his sincerity with putting you at ease and talking to you as a person. He was very positive and supporting.

Tami Hoag's presentation spiel was not rib cracking funny and not exactly serious. It was just an honest talk about her writing life. What I liked most was her response to a question in the follow-up panel on the last day. She described her response to a reporter who asked her opinion about a criminal case. She told them she was a writer, not law enforcement or a lawyer. She was not in the category of an expert. I liked that response. I've seen celebrities answer questions or offer opinions in areas outside their area of expertise. A few have done so out politeness to the questioner in the audience.

Once again, the street cops were the most informative. Their presentations are more grounded, less guarded. You get specifics not generalities. I was surprised and had my mind changed about concealed carry. I am not too fond of people carrying guns. I would not go anywhere I thought I needed one. However, the law enforcement officer said that most LEO have no problem with licensed, trained concealed carry.

I also learned that open carry is not a good idea from another participant. It makes them a target when there is an open shooter. Law enforcement does not know if they are the good guy or the bad guy.

This is my third time going. I felt somewhat foolish in that I don't write mysteries or crime dramas nor have I finished a novel. The ones I am working on can be best described as literary fiction, science fiction and children's stories. I've come close to quitting this year.

But I enjoyed the event. I liked so many people I met there. The information is incredible in comparison to just reading about the topic. I noticed many of the big name writers went to classes like the rest of us. Les Goldberg shared how a little reality and authenticity makes the less believable part of your story believable. He wrote the television series Monk. He described how in real life, no detective wore shirts to show their cleavage, chased down bad guys in high heels and traveled back to the station in their silver plated Escalades. These are not his exact words but close to it.

What I liked about the Oneida casino and Radisson next to the airport were these topiaries. The sleep number beds were like sleeping on a semi-inflated inner tube. How firm the mattress was depended on how full the mattress was filled with air. I don't recommend them.