Religion

This is just a mini rant. I seem to be on a tear today and I might as well get it all out!

There are a lot of people who wear their religion or lack thereof on their sleeves. That is, I know proseletyzing Christians and proseletyzing atheists, but not usually other faiths or non-faiths. I know preseletyzing Oprah fans, too, as well as Republicans who are constantly sending me their Ronald Reagan idolizing junk in emails. So I just want to say here that it isn't any of my business how you believe or don't believe. Since it isn't my business, please don't try to make it my business, and don't ask me about my faith or lack thereof. Because that isn't your business, regardless of whether your god tells you to preach the word.

Musings

I am on the verge of offending some people whom I consider friends. I don't mean to offend or hurt them. I am just fed up.
Fed up? Really? Why? I am fed up with Oprah. I find her narcissistic. There seems to be a cult of Oprah. It crosses the whole political, religious, sexual orientation spectrum, since I have friends of every stripe who find her fascinating, entertaining, educational, inspirational. I don't get it. I've seen her show, or rather, bits of it, and while I enjoyed the guests I was watching I didn't find her to be an incredible interviewer. I don't find her personally appealing. I have been switching back and forth since last night to check out her personal tv network and haven't seen anything yet that I couldn't see on A&E, TLC, Bravo, Lifetime, MSNBC Lockup or any other network I don't watch. Here's the deal for me: I don't talk about my religious beliefs, because they're mine, and I don't really care about yours, because they're personal to you. I don't want to know about other people's sex lives; if I wanted one, I'd have one, and if I wanted a partner, I'd look for one, but I don't care about other peoples' issues (unless it's my friend, that's a whole different thing). If I want to see hoarding, I'll just look at my spare room or garage or attic, and rather than sit and watch other people deal with their issues with hoarding I need to tackle my own cleaning (which I am). Maybe I am overly hostile about this, but I am inclined to think that if people spent the same amount of time living their own lives as they spend watching shows about other peoples' problems, their lives would be so much better. I watch a lot of television, I admit it. My preferences are, however, for fictional shows-cop shows, romantic comedies, old movies, science fiction. Not horror. Not personal non-fiction train-wreck shows. And to me, that is what Oprah's new network, much like her current talk show, is all about. A combination of celebrities (whose work appeals to me but not their personal lives) and non-celebrity train wrecks. I do like celebrities on talk shows when they are talking about their current projects or when they are just funny people, but I don't care about their lives too much.
Well, for what it's worth I've gotten that off my chest. Maybe at some point I'll find something on Oprah's new network that will appeal to me. But in the years she's had her magazine, nothing in it has compelled me to buy it or even read it, and I do buy women's magazines.

I don't really know why this stuff bugs me so much. Maybe because the whole idea of people turning to celebrities for their opinions and advice is so crazy to me. I will just use this one example, Glenn Beck. If you, for example, are a Baptist, then you wouldn't turn to a Mormon for religious guidance. In fact, you would slam the door on Mormon missionaries who came to your house. Yet millions of listeners think Glenn Beck, a Mormon convert, is brilliant. If he is that brilliant, those millions should be immediately searching out their nearest LDS church and signing up for conversion classes. Are they? If he is brilliant about politics then obviously his brilliance extends to his religious beliefs. So if you follow him politically because he is so brilliant, you should follow him in all things. But if he so disastrously wrong in his religious beliefs as you might assume, given that you aren't changing your religion to follow him, then why isn't he wrong politically? It is this cognitive dissonance that is so infuriating to me.

This example came to me because I just switched over to OWN and saw a bit with John Travolta. Scientology is a very odd religious belief system to most people, and most people don't follow John Travolta or Tom Cruise or any other celebrity into it, so that didn't fit into my analogy, but it triggered the whole thing. I don't watch Travolta's movies because I like his politics or his religious beliefs but because I enjoy his movies. So I don't have a huge desire to see him anywhere except in a movie. If he appears on a talk show I'm not tuning to the talk show to see him. On the other hand, I will watch George Clooney on some talk shows because he is very involved in some fine work in Africa, most especially the Sudan, and he has been working there for many years trying to improve those peoples' lives. That is important, and interesting to me. It doesn't hurt that he is easy to look at, but if he were just there talking about his current love life or his religion or his personal life at all, I wouldn't be watching. It is his work that draws and holds my interest. And he does a lot of that work quietly, only drawing attention to it in order to engage other people. I admire people who quietly do good works, donate money or otherwise try to help people who have not been as fortunate. What I find so unappealing about Oprah is that when she does good work it seems to be as much about promoting Oprah as it is about doing the good work.

New Year, New Plan

So for the new year I am planning to write more regularly here, on whatever topic comes to mind, and to craft my way out of my household clutter. I have so many unfinished (and unbegun!) projects that haunt me, and I really want to de-clutter so I am going to only give gifts this year that are either crafted or rescued. I'll post pictures as I go along, here on my blog, so I can track my progress.

I also hope to be kinder. And more organized. And work on my breathing.

Happy New Year!

Post-election thoughts

I had a brief conversation today with my mother about the election. She told me about going to hear a preacher last night who told the congregation that the health care bill would require us all to have black disks (think microchips) implanted that would enable the government to know all about us. I am not surprised. This crowd that seems to be the loudest and most likely to vote in our state only listen to Fox, only read emails with crazy shit like this, and believe what they're told as long as it gives them an excuse to hate the Democrats and fear the President. This is insane.
Anyone could have seen this sort of thing coming. Years ago the "Christian" Coalition determined that for the religious right in this country to gain the power they felt they deserved, they needed to start at the bottom. That meant that school boards, town and county councils, any local office, would become ground zero in their fight to take control. Gradually, at least in South Carolina, these people got elected. Often by using issues like abortion and gay rights, and subtly injecting racism, they became the ones who set school budgets, policy and curriculum standards. Rupurt Murdoch happily jumped into this by establishing Fox News, which has over the years descended into the right wing pool further and further, until this year his News Corp actually contributed money outright to the Republican party. One million dollars, at least. That is so unabashedly biased, and so inappropriate for a news organization, that it boggles the mind. But it wasn't a surprise that he did it, just a surprise that he did it so blatantly. This gradual takeover by the far-right has been the real reason our education system has been failing our students. Not the lack of prayer, as the more vocal would have us think, not the lack of bible reading, none of that. But the lack of critical thought. Many teachers have bought into this idea of "bad liberal, good conservative", and I honestly can't tell you why.
And another thing before I forget again-this idea of "American exceptionalism". I find it arrogant beyond belief that we look to our leaders to talk about our country as if it is the only "good" country on earth. If someone said to you, USC is the only university in the country where a person can get a good education, you would laugh him out of the room, even if you weren't a Clemson person. That is just a ridiculous thing to say. So to say, America is the only country on the planet where a person can have a good life-isn't that just as absurd? Everyone loves his/her country. Even those who are forced to leave their countries because of the political or economical climate love their home. So while people may come here for economic opportunities or asylum, they go to other countries besides the good old USA for those same reasons. People move. I love South Carolina, but I am not about to tell you that it is inherently better than North Carolina or Virginia or New York. It is better for me (although sometimes I wonder), but that doesn't make it the best for everyone. Same for our country. We have a great system, but other countries have emulated that system, some may have even improved upon it, and we have flaws just like everywhere. So I am fed up with the criticism of anyone just because they don't think America is "the greatest strongest country in the world" (thanks for that, Jon and Stephen!).
Okay, more later. Just a little vent for the day after elections that I think have taken our state-and maybe our country-in a totally wrong direction.

Changes

So, the snake has moved out. His stuff is still here, because even though he had notice nearly two months ago that he would have to move at the end of summer, he still made no effort to find employment. I finally had all I could take and let him know in mid-July that summer ended at the end of July (he of course wanted to argue that no, it ended mid-September). He still made very little effort to find work or shelter, so I don't know exactly where he is sleeping (although he emailed his sister that he slept on a park bench the first night). I hope to think I am a compassionate woman, but as to him, I really do not care. He had time (five months!) to find work and try to prepare for life on his own, and he chose instead to live like a hermit. I finally decided he wasn't really drinking (at least not so I could tell after a couple of times) but just holing up in his room, lying on the gradually flattening air mattress I had bought for him (because I couldn't afford a mattress for the bed he was using) and being too lazy or shiftless or whatever to even blow up the mattress-with an electric pump! By the time he left that mattress was nearly flat (and it doesn't leak, it was brand new).
Okay, now I can resume posts that are good for me, and quit obsessing about him. I look forward to my writing again.

Attitude

I am, at the moment, furious and trying not to be. I made the mistake of kindness. It is a mistake I often make. Remember the Al Wilson song about the woman bringing in the snake? I feel like the woman. Although he hasn't bitten me, he is disrupting my moods, and I hate it.

What happened is this. I had a friend, from many years ago, with whom I had been corresponding for a year or so. He got in a bad place (he was living in California). I had more or less casually commented before this that if he couldn't find a job there and should want to come back to South Carolina he could stay with me. He became unemployed in California, and didn't have success finding another job (based on his behavior since arriving here, I doubt he tried very hard). He asked if he could come here. I emailed his sister and told her I had concerns because he had been a heavy drinker in the past; she assured me that he didn't drink anymore. He assured me he would look for a job right away, that he had no intention of acting, as he put it, "as if he were on vacation". May I say, HA!! SNAKE!!

Since he came he has primarily stayed in his room. He sells plasma for money. He hasn't ONCE filled out a job application anywhere, and he doesn't even have his birth certificate with him (which is a requirement for a South Carolina ID card or a job)! I think he uses the plasma money for wine because I haven't seen but $50 in over two months.

I can't even stand to look at him at this point, because over the weekend I talked to him about all this and since then he is, if possible, worse. Years ago I swore I would never take anyone else in, and I should have stuck to it. I hate being lied to and used.

Civilization and Westerns

I have watched Westerns all my life. My father really liked them, and so I watched a lot of TV shows and movies about the settling of the western part of the US. Something that strikes me about these old shows is that usually one of the first things the new marshall or new sherrif does when they take office in a "wild" town involves guns. They don't give all the upstanding citizens guns and tell them to defend themselves. They don't go on a "war against crime". They make a law that no one in the town can be carrying a gun. They check the guns at the door, so to speak. The people who don't choose to cooperate are locked up, and their guns taken from them. The lack of guns is what establishes the beginnings of a town where people can walk the streets in peace.

So as our population moved westward, the towns began, and as decent, civilized people moved into them, the guns disappeared. Gunfights were discouraged, the rule of law established, and those who wanted to take the law into their own hands were arrested. I am not talking about having a gun in your own home for self-defense, foolish as I think that may be. I am not talking about England, where the police don't generally carry guns. I am talking about walking around with a six-shooter strapped to your leg or an AK-47 slung across your back. Those are things I expect to see in countries where there is constant warfare, or in the uncivilized west, or in the movies. To see it at Presidential events, at Town Hall Meetings held by Congressmen for their constituents, gives me the impression that there are those in this country who want to return not to the ideals of our founding fathers, but to the reckless behavior of the men who thought to take the west for themselves, with no thought for the civilized settlers who had just as much right to live on those lands. It gives me the impression that there are those in our country who want to return to those wild west days, with no civilization or law enforcement. And that is truly frightening.

New car

Wow, I have been slack. There have been a lot of stressful moments since I last wrote. On August 8, my truck transmission conked out on me (or it may be the clutch, either way it's stuck in fourth gear). I got home okay, but it won't be traveling under its own steam for a while. So I resumed driving my Sunbird, but it kept running hot, and I kept having to add water every time I drove. Finally it was nearly pouring water out as I poured it in, so I took it to the mechanic. In the meantime, of course, I had been looking at cars. But I didn't think I could get financing and I didn't have enough cash to buy anything even semi-decent, so I was hoping to fix the little car. My mechanic changed a hose, but discovered the water pump was leaking, so I was to bring it back the next day for that (he didn't have time to get to it that day). Well, the next day it ran hot on the way to work, even though it had plenty of water, and I had it towed to the mechanic after I got to my job. He called me, way too soon for the water pump to be replaced, and gave me the bad news. Head gasket at least, but most likely a cracked head. Well, that did it. I love that little car, but I couldn't justify $1200-$1500 when it had other problems, such as a leaky manifold and a mysterious oil leak. So I bit the bullet and started serious car shopping.

After trying to buy a 2001 Taurus (too old for financing, great shape, low mileage but overpriced), a 2003 Focus (again, too old for financing, but great shape, low mileage and great price) and a 2005 Taurus (got financing, but dealer sold car before financing was approved, it was at the other dealership owned by same people), here is my result. A deep red, 2006 Mustang (not a GT, though). Since everything fell into place for me to buy this particular car and not the others, I figure it was meant to be my car. And I so love it! The interest rate is ridiculously high (not a long credit history, I haven't bought anything big on credit besides my house for 30 years), but hopefully I can get it refinanced after a year or so, and hopefully can sell some trees from the farm to help pay it off. It gets about 20 miles to the gallon just driving to work and around, don't know yet on the highway. It's clean, one owner, 36000 or so miles, great shape, with a 100,000 mile warranty on the engine and drive train. I am thrilled.

It's been a while

It's been a long while since I made any entries here. I have been computer-challenged, and even though I have had a lot to say it hasn't made it's way to the keyboard.
I have been re-connecting with people from high school and college on facebook quite a bit. It's been fun. Memories and regrets, all mingle to make the reconnections important. We all choose paths when we are young that we can't retrace, and which take us places we might never have wanted to see. My life seems to have been more convoluted than some. Many of my friends have married (and stayed married), had children, stayed close to home with lifelong careers. Others have traveled far away. Some are divorced, some never married and some married more than once. The people from my past exhibit the entire spectrum of the lives of everyone else in the world.

We don't carry the same memories of each other, not surprisingly. Some things that I had forgotten have been recalled to me by friends. People I didn't think noticed me that much remember me with fondness, and saw things I about me that I didn't realize were there, and for that I am grateful. It is a wonderful thing, this reconnection, and I hope to continue doing it! I hope I can do as much for these friends as they have done for me.

Rambling thoughts

The weather is warm, which is nice. It was so very cold last week, amazing how quickly it got warm. Steven and I washed the car and truck yesterday, and my car is so clean, it looks wonderful (well, the outside, the inside needs some work!) It is usually hard to get him to help with things, but he enjoyed washing the car, so that was a plus.

I am being encouraged by an old friend to write a book. Not the first time it's been suggested, but now I am seriously considering it. I write mainly essay type stuff, like this blog, so I am thinking of something like David Sedaris, although I am nowhere near as funny as he. I have to ponder this bit longer.

I have resolved, or at least postponed, the current issue with the neighbor who hates me. The house needs work and he is a complainer, so he calls the city, which has the power to write tickets and charge me fines. The solution for now was to get a building permit for repairs, and now I can proceed to buy material and paint and start work. But the building permit is good for six months (actually, I have six months to get started, nothing about how long I have to finish) so I have time to do it as I can afford it, I hope.

Last week was my brother's birthday. He would be 50 this year, if he hadn't died at 15. One of his old girlfriends is now a friend on Facebook, and I was very touched that she remembered him. He has been gone such a long time now, but I miss him still. And Daddy. And Tracey, every day.

I don't have enough to do at work, and it is frustrating. I have some things on my desk to deal with tomorrow, which is good. I am not sure what I would do without my work, probably go home to my mother. She has more than one house, so we wouldn't have to live together (we might scream at each other a lot). I am nearly always at peace there, so that might be nice. But that's because I don't have to deal with cranky neighbors and it is basically vacation. If I were there all the time I might not like it at all!

I love watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. He is actually a good interviewer, and will invite anyone on the show. He is funny and serious at the same time, which is very useful in diffusing any potential acrimony, and also disarms his more conservative guests. Colbert is great, too, but in a different way, because no matter who he interviews he maintains his faux Bill O'Reilly character, and those who get it are hilarious and the ones who don't are not sure what to say, which is in its own way hilarious too.

I have craft stuff everywhere, and really need to get organized. It's hard to get anything done when you have to spend time looking for things. The PTO at Steven's school is having a yard sale in a couple of weeks so I hope to get some stuff together to give to that, although I don't usually have anything that I don't want to keep!

Back to my mother, she likes to go places, and it is hard to know where she is at any given moment. She has a cell phone but only turns it on when she wants to make a call, so if she isn't at home, forget it. She is going to be spending time in a house with no phone, so I hope she starts keeping it turned on when she's there anyway.

I need to go to bed, I suppose, so enough of this. Good night.

My chair

This is the chair I redid. I painted it and covered the seat and back. I need to redo the seat, it is a little bunchy, but it's a comfortable chair and I didn't want to throw it out just because it had stains on the fabric. I hate to see still-useful stuff thrown away.

Time and musings

Wow, I hadn't realized it had been so long since I wrote here. I write my weekly (well, semi-weekly now) email for Drinking Liberally Charleston and have started administering a group for that on Facebook (where I can also be found). Then there is just life, catching up to me. My grandson Adam is having difficulties. I hate it, because I feel he has not been dealt a very good hand in life. That's trite sounding, but his father committed suicide when Adam was not quite 4, then we found out six months later that he has Type I diabetes, and on top of those things he has ADHD and suffers from depression. He may be bi-polar, too, but I don't know. He has difficulty getting along with his stepfather, and I can see both sides of that. Adam is a challenging child, but full of love and needing a lot of it. He is much like his father, and I have been trying to spend more time with him. I wish-I hope-he gets through all this.



I have been looking for and finding old friends, too. In a way I guess I am trying to make amends, or get things right that I didn't the first time. I feel that I haven't been a good friend to people; I let them go easily when I move forward, and that isn't a good thing. As I get older I miss spending time with other people, although I am the type of person who could become a hermit without much effort. But even though I am confortable going to movies or to eat alone, and reading books without discussions to follow, it would be nice sometimes to share those interests. And since I don't think I get to have a second life, maybe should make more of an effort. Unfortunately these old friends are usually far away. So I guess I should be trying to spend more time with local friends!



I took my first train ride and went to my first college bowl game this year. I loved the train, and want to take more trips, it was so relaxing. I think my son and I should take an actual vacation this year; we haven't done that for years, and he will be grown before I know it. I have to save for some house repairs, and a car, but I hope we can swing at least a long weekend trip somewhere besides my mother's house.



I like to do crafts, and have recently redone a chair. I sew, paint stuff, knit a little, crochet a little, various things. I have some lawn furniture that was my grandmothers' and plan to paint it this week, having finally found the color paint I want for it. I'd probably get more done if I didn't spend time on the computer! I only do a little bit of several things, not a lot of anything, so I don't get expert at anything! Oh, and I love to take pictures; my mom got a digital camera for me for 2007 Christmas and I love it! I take pictures everywhere I go. I love movies, especially old ones, TCM being my favorite all time television network, and new drama series, like Leverage and The Closer and Burn Notice.

Okay, now this is starting to sound like a personal ad, time to knock it off for the night. If you've read this far, sleep well.

President-elect Barack Obama

I am watching C-Span, and President-elect Obama just gave his acceptance speech. Once again, as he has done throughout this campaign, his speech wasn't about him. It was about us, about the United States of America. And as the families of President-elect Obama (I just love writing that!) and Vice-President-elect Biden came out on the stage, and as I watched the faces of the people in the crowd, it wasn't a black and white America I saw. It was every color, every race, every nationality that makes up our country. I saw families who obviously love each other on the stage, two couples who genuinely love each other. And men who love this country, and who will do their very best for all of us. I cried tonight when the results were announced. All the pent up nervousness I had suffered over the last few weeks just released itself, because despite the attacks, despite the vicious emails, the robocalls, the truly despicable campaign run by the Republican campaign machine, Americans had elected a man they had witnessed over the last two years remain unflappable, unstoppable, and dedicated to the belief that in this country, anything is possible.
Even as he began his speech, Obama was more gracious in victory than I could have been toward John McCain. I am not one of those people who used to love McCain, I never even liked him much, but even I had been stunned lately by the way his campaign was run. I even checked the comments on FoxNews.com, and the racism I read there was awful. I am not talking about any kind of code words; I am talking "did they really think a black man could ever become President?" That isn't about Barack Obama's politics, or his positions, or his policies; this is about his skin color. And America is better than that.
Or we will be. Give us four years.

Chores and musings

I have a willow chair, or rattan, or whatever it is. I'm thinking it's willow, but anyway, it needs refurbishing. I got the seat off okay, and it is ready to recover. But the back is giving me fits. It is a padded and upholstered piece of cardboard stapled into the opening, and the staples are really hard to get out. I want to paint the chair, so I need to sand it (my cats were using it for a scratching post), and before I do any of that the staples have to come out, so I can recover it with the fabric I have chosen. I am thinking I will paint it purple, since I already have the paint and it will match my (future) bedroom colors. I have a green fabric for the seat and back, because I love those colors together. The purple I have is a lighter shade, not quite lavender, and the green is a sagey color, so they will go well together. I am using wire cutter pliers at the moment, and they are hurting my hands, but it will be okay. I need to find a staple remover.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, nothing really, but I am avoiding something and that is when I get stuff done. I have written a blog already about what I'm avoiding, but won't publish it at this point. So the chair is a substitute. And it also is about reusing, reordering, getting my house in order. Nesting, in a sense.
More about this later.

Food and mothers and home

Food links us to our past and provides context in our present. Tonight I cooked corn, grown by my mother on land that has belonged to my father's family for over 60 or so years. My uncle plowed the land, my mother planted the seed and hoed the rows and watered the corn (not to mention the other vegetables she grows) and when it was time she picked it, shucked it and cut it off the cob, to be placed in the freezer until I retrieved it, brought it the 200 miles or so from Abbeville to North Charleston and cooked it in a cast iron frying pan, the way she has done for these 50 some odd years. In another pan, a birthday gift from my father thirty some years ago, I browned hamburger for tacos, a food never served in my childhood home. I sliced and diced tomatoes, grown in that same garden and picked by me two days ago. And I ate the tacos, with the tomatoes on top, and the corn in a plate that once held food prepared by my father's mother, my granny, grown on that same land. This was an obvious link to the past.
Just now, I finished squeezing the pulp from a big bowl of muscadines, picked by me, my mother and my aunt from vines in her pasture, two days ago. I put the hulls in freezer bags, ready for pie, and the pulp in another, ready for cooking into juice for jelly. They wait now in my freezer, linking the future to the past and to today. None of this is important, of course. It's just food, after all.
But here's the thing. I know where the corn and the muscadines and the tomatoes grew. I know who tended the plants, who watered and hoed and cared for them. And more than that, those are the foods of my childhood. My grandparents, my mother's parents, had a farm too, although it has passed out of family hands now. There were muscadines and scuppurnongs and figs and pears and apples in late spring and early fall. Green beans, corn, butterbeans, crowder peas, okra, squash, all grew there. In the spring there were strawberries. And in summer, tomatoes, glorious red full-flavored tomatoes, like nothing you buy in the store, and with apologies to all those Johns Islanders, like nothing I ever got from there. My mother still grows those things, and she has introduced fruits to my father's farm that weren't there before, the apples and plums and figs. Her pear tree this year is full of green pears, which are crisp and sweet and juicy in your hand as you take big, crunchy bites of them, fresh from the tree. And the pecan trees are loaded with green hulled pecans, waiting for the colder weather to turn brown and drop from the tree, ready for pies and cakes and toppings for the sweet potatoes she is now digging from the garden. I can eat home grown food every day of my life. I know when certain foods are in season and when their growing time has passed and it is time to eat from the freezer or the jars.
I don't really have a point here, I guess, unless it is that we are too accustomed to food in packages and cans, in neat little bins in the produce section. We forget whether they grow in the ground or on a vine, on a bush or a tree. We don't know what pesticides or herbicides are used to facilitate their growth, and how that leaches into the groundwater. I don't shop at Whole Foods, I shop from my mother's garden, and I am wealthier for it. My father used to talk about how much it cost to grow all this stuff, but he never stopped growing it. My mother keeps doing it. And one day I hope to grow food in that same earth. Meantime, I love that I can eat it.

Celebrity?- My Barack Obama Ad 8/3/08

Just a quick note

This is a quick post, my friend Jason has a new blog, Time to End Poverty (linked to this title). You should check it out. You should also check out http://halfinten.com/, John Edwards new campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years.

I haven't written much lately; time to get back to this!!

Fried Bologna

So tonight for supper I was frying bologna. Mundane, but my son and I both love it. We had it with some canned sweet potatoes and with green beans my mother grew, picked, broke and canned. Good stuff.

And why am I writing about bologna? Because I never eat it without thinking of my father. When I was young, I forget how old, maybe 11 or 12, we went on vacation to Florida. We almost never stayed in motels, and at that point we didn't camp either. We would pull over when Daddy got sleepy and sleep in the car. On this trip we had gone to Isle of Palms for a day, then driven down through Florida. We stopped at Silver Springs, in Ocala, went on the glass bottom boat and the jungle cruise. The picture of us on the jungle cruise boat is still around somewhere. Anyway, we got to Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral and before we got a chance to sightsee at all it started pouring down rain. Daddy parked at a store and went inside, bought bread, cheese and unsliced bologna (first time I had seen that) and we ate sandwiches in the car, watching the rain.

We didn't spend a lot of money on these vacations, because I guess we didn't have a lot of extra money. By not staying in motels, we had money for the glass bottom boat. We had a camp stove, and we would stop at picnic areas and cook our meals, so we didn't spend money eating out.

When Matthew and Tracey were younger, and the grocery money had stretched as far as it would go, I would open a jar of tomatoes (grown by my father and canned by my mother), pour them in a pot and add rice and a little chili powder, and then open a jar of green beans (same source) and heat them, and feed my little family. They enjoyed it and didn't think it had anything to do with the empty cabinets in our house. And I knew, as long as my father and mother were alive and able, my children would never be hungry, no matter what happened to me.

My point with all this, which I really had a grasp on as I was frying that bologna tonight, is that money didn't matter then to the family relationships we had. Another thing--as long as my father was awake and driving the car, I slept peacefully in the back. But when he stopped to sleep, I woke up and couldn't sleep as long as we were still. Maybe I was keeping watch, I don't know. But I miss him every minute of every day, and wish I had him back, driving the car.

A Song For My Brother

I have the album this song is on. After my brother died, in 1974, I listened to it over and over. And tonight it came to me, and I googled the lyrics, and after 34 years I still could sing the tune, remembered it. Life is entirely too short, and we take too much for granted, and I know that is cliche but it is true, true, true. I wish we could understand that truth from our beginnings, and live our lives aware of it.

Random Midnight Thoughts

I made a mulberry pie tonight. For those who don't know, mulberries are kind of like blackberries but they grow on a tree. They aren't as round as blackberries, more of an oval shape. Very sweet, not as seedy as blackberries. Anyway, I have a tree by my front door, and whether because of the cats or their own generosity, the birds are leaving the mulberries for me this year. My son and I have been eating them, but at last there were enough ripe to make a cobbler (the easy way, what I call cuppa cuppa cuppa.) It was sooo good.

Obviously this isn't political. But mulberries are a memory of my youth. When I was a child my mother worked, and we didn't go to daycare but one summer. (I hated it). The rest of the time we had babysitters. One summer the teenage daughter of our babysitter introduced me to solitaire, soap operas and mulberries. It was a great summer.

Later, when I was a divorced mother of two attending Clemson, a friend and I ate mulberries from a tree on campus. The four years I was there, I eagerly awaited the arrival of the sweet fruits, and I introduced friends to the tree.

I never eat them now without thinking of these two most peaceful times in my life. I am so lucky to have this tree in my yard-it met me when I came, but I didn't know what it was until the spring, and some springs I am lucky enough to get a few berries. The pie this year has been an unexpected blessing.