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  My blog was filled up. I'm too lazy to clean it out. So I started a new one. |
| Today I attended a discussion panel for female ex-offenders and community members to discuss acclimating back into society. At times it was tearful. At times you felt surrounded by anger. But mostly, I felt there was genuine concern for rehabilitation and allowing these women who don't want to return to their old ways, but make a living for themselves and their families. A number of these women are struggling to finish college or to go to seminary to become ministers. They are very different from each other, some with close families, some alone in the world. One woman told about her alcoholic mother putting her in the foster care program at age 11; she said she felt like she had been incarcerated her whole life. Most had been in for 3 to 20 years. Can you imagine coming out of a protected, severely regulated environment for a decade or more and seeing how much the world has changed? Even job hunting has changed. You can't pound the pavement any longer. In person applications are not taken. Styles of clothing and hair change. They haven't kept up. Their closets, if they still have access to them, aren't adequate. Their computer skills aren't up to date. The world kept moving on, but they were on hold, suspended in time. I know we hear about the computer access and the white collar prisons. Those are for men. And not in my state. My state emphasizes punishment, not rehabilitation. Recidivism is high. Fortunately, the women meeting with us today are determined to turn their lives around. A few admitted they couldn't stay around their old friends or even family any longer. They had to get away from the toxic environment. One woman had worked for almost two years, getting good reviews and a promotion, until a new boss ran police checks on all employees. She was fired on the spot, no severance pay, on the day she was to leave on her first vacation. So there are two main issues: preparing these women for the real world before they get out (budgeting, job hunting, keyboarding, interviewing, availability of resources like counseling) and after they get out (finding a safe place to live, transportation to get started, a job, finding a support group). Parole officers only check for drugs and violations and traveling. Another issue is the fact that all chain stores and big places like hospitals do not hire felons. Period. How do you get smaller or local employers to get beyond the fear of felons? How can they be taught to discern between hardened criminals and those who are reformed? How can the community help felons set up their own businesses, whether painting (they have to be bonded) or copy writing or selling cosmetics? We sort of left off with a lot of unanswered questions. There are thousands of people in any state in the prison system. Most will be released (all but death row) and they will be back in our communities. What will we do with them? |
| I finally saw this movie. In broad daylight. I'd heard a lot about it. I once read it was a spoof of The Living Dead. That word should have stuck with me. I was expecting to be scared. I expected gore. I didn't expect to burst out laughing early in the movie. It did have the expected nasty scenes, eyeballs, melting flesh, but not very realistic. There were two moments that caught me off guard: the "dead" jump up and bite someone's head to eat the brains. Each of those two times make me start and got a big "ew". Most of the time I just shook my head at the incredible stupidity of the story and some of the bad acting. (That doesn't mean they were bad actors. It does mean they had to act according to the script which called for acting badly.) The stupid decision that started the saga was done by a middle aged man trying to entertain the new teenage employee. Generally, stupid decisions are done by the teenagers in horror films, but dumbness comes at all ages. Very soon into the story a beat-up convertible packed with teenagers did show up. They were stereotyped punkers with appropriate garb, piercings, and language. They were to be the first victims of the "dead". Of course, a funeral home and a cemetery were part of the setting. There was lots of mud, also a frequent component of many horror films. I suppose when people are hysterical, they might act like these characters did. The redeeming quality for me was the presence of Clu Gulager, who played the owner of the medical supply place. Even some of his lines had me wondering if he ever acted in comedy. He didn't have that many lines, so there was no opportunity for character development. In fact, none of the actors got to develop their characters. unless you call instantly turning from a rebellious, acting-out teen into a scared to death, hiding teen development. Horror movies generally, with a few exceptions, contain some nudity or gratuitous sex. I have a feeling this one did have a half naked girl, because of one particular scene in the crowded car where the painted up girl had bare shoulders which had previously been covered and were again moments later. On the ground in the cemetery earlier, she was getting turned on thinking about the ways people die. So predictable. I was watching on AMC which would have had to censor such scenes. They bleeped a lot of words, bad language being an element of the run-of-the-mill horror movie, too. If you're looking to be frightened, this is not your movie. If you like being grossed out, this might do it for you. (All vomiting is done off camera.) If you want to laugh, this probably is not your first choice. I guess I laughed because it caught me off guard. If you're a Clu Gulager fan, you have to see this just out of loyalty. He doesn't disappoint. I hope I haven't ruined it for you. |
| I really don't like being scared. I don't care for practical jokes. I don't like horror movies. I don't like violence. I'm scared of heights. Life has enough hard moments without seeing them onscreen. But this time of year, it's really hard to find some TV time without scary movie options. At times you just need to read a book with no distractions! Horror movies usually follow a formula. Most run of the mill horror movies depend on teenagers or young adults making really stupid decisions. There's usually some gratuitous nudity or sex. For instance, Piranha 3DD, we all know the DD refers to the naked Playboy Bunnies in the pool. There is a tendency to focus on some inanimate object, like an empty rocking chair or a toy. Suspenseful music is essential. I have to tell myself, when I'm stuck in this situation, it's all fake. I have some health and focal issues that have affected my balance, In non-horror movies, I get dizzy when the camera pans a room or spins around. I discovered that virtual reality situations make me nauseous. In fact, when I'm sitting at a red light at an intersection, I can't watch cars turning left going by me. I have to focus on the light or something in the distance to avoid nausea and dizziness. Strobe lights pose a threat to me, and I don't want to take risks. So I'm squeamish about horror movies. I'm steeling myself up to watch a zombie movie because I met one of the non-zombie actors a few years ago. This movie turned him away from drama and western films to specialize in horror movies, so I am going to make myself watch it. Maybe knowing one of the people pretending will help make it tolerable. I know a lot of men and women love horror movies. There is a lot of money to be made in them. I just don't get it. Why? Who needs to be scared or thrilled that way? Yech. Happy fright month to you, if you like it. Every channel features horror this month. Booo. |
Well, that magazine misled me! Imagine that. It seemed like such a simple process. I spent a fortune in supplies, made cupcakes, and had everything ready. Whew. That process was a challenge to adults, much less young children. A few things were left out of the article. The first thing we discovered was that the cupcake, standard size, was too flimsy to serve as the base for the Frankenstein heads. When you press on your sculpture, absolutely necessary, it topples over. The paper pops free from the cake which is too tender to stand up to the weight or the handling. Certainly, in their extensive test kitchens, they could have tested and recommended a sturdy cupcake, since they obviously pulled it off. Either a recipe to do from scratch or a particular brand of mix. The most popular brands focus on taste and moistness and just don't work for a project like this.Mrs. Frankenstein took one chocolate donut, but Mr. took two. I went to several stores and bought the only chocolate dipped donuts that either store had-the same brand, and same sale. They were too big for the cupcakes. I needed a smaller donut, like the ones I remember; the ones in my memory were not very good, but maintained their shape and didn't crumble. The only ones available were like a gourmet version, quite tasty, but easily crumbled despite the waxy coating. So the very essential parts for the body and head didn't go together. Toothpicks didn't work well, either, holding them together.  A standard buttercream frosting didn't look like the picture either, no matter how green we made it. The chocolate didn't frost the upside down wafer cones for Mrs.' hair like they showed. The sprinkles for hair worked perfectly. The faces didn't look like theirs, but they turned out pretty cute. The Twizzler black bolts for Mr.'s neck worked perfectly. Our finished products were monstrous for sure, but nothing like the photo. I had to find egg cartons to hold up their cakes to take home, one carton for each child's set. I did expect a big clean up job afterwards. I got it. I did expect the adults would have to help the little hands. we did. I didn't expect the adults to face so many problems. The kids were good about not eating the materials, but they dipped their fingers into the frosting quite a bit. I hoped what we accomplished was to feed the children's desire to be creative, to try new things. Maybe we won't repeat this particular project, but there will be others. And they had fun. You don't have to have a perfect result to be successful.  |
  I subscribe to several of those women's and home magazines. One had an item on some great prizes, and it told me to enter online. I did. Now they have me set up for a second subscription! It didn't say in the article that the only way to enter the contest was to buy another subscription. I'll have to send that back with a "Cancel" on it. I got a confirmation email which told me what had happened, but there's no way to respond to it. The same magazine told me how to make these cute Halloween cupcakes. I thought it would be a nice craft for the kids to do themselves when they come to visit tomorrow. I have to have everything ready in advance because most of them are still at the impatient age. The ingredients cost me a fortune! The cake mix was cheap enough on sale. I had to add eggs and oil, of course. I have to make two kinds of frosting, one requiring cream of tartar which I haven't used in years. That was almost $5. Powdered sugar, gel food coloring. Chocolate sprinkles in a large quantity. Ice cream cones (to be frosted and inverted on half the cupcakes). Tiny tubes of frosting to make faces. M & M's for eyes. Licorice to make bolts for Frankenstein's neck. I'll have to use wax paper for work sheets for each of six kids, paper towels, and hope they don't eat all the supplies. Oh, I forgot the chocolate dipped donuts that go on top. True, that's too much sweet for kids to eat, but these are just décor. The cupcake is just the base or body. The donuts get decorated as the heads. I'll have to scrub the house down afterward, and I hadn't foreseen how expensive these ingredients would be. Another magazine is telling me how to make butternut squash soup. Whew. Sounds good. I don't know if I'm up to it. |
| Yes, I'm sitting here waiting for the police to come and arrest me. I just a got an emergency phone call from the IRS about my back taxes. They are going to seize all my property and bank accounts because I refused to give my credit card number to the woman on the phone. So I made sure the back door was locked and the furnace won't come on while I'm gone. The floors are swept and the dishes are done. So they can come and take me to jail now. (I wonder if H & R Block will post my bail?) My computer is going to be shut down and all my account info compromised, because I refused to give my passwords over the phone. Windows was kind enough to call me even though my Internet connection was off, and the computer was unplugged. How thoughtful of them. But I just don't cooperate, so I'm going to lose that. Another phone warning yesterday advised me that my credit cards were in arrears and I would be assessed huge fees, if I didn't pay a nominal fee right then. I hung up. I don't like scary calls. I'm not confrontational. I'm so careless with my cards. I pay them all in full upon receipt. And I only use them for convenience and speed of service. Still it's so nice that these companies warn me that I'm overdue. I'm just so stubborn about phone transactions though. So, if I don't show up for a while, the IRS and the police have me. And Windows has shut me down. And all my bank cards are frozen. I guess that makes me a criminal according to my prolific incoming phone calls. |
| I once knew a mom who wouldn't let her teenage daughter die her hair orange. She told her she might have a prestigious job someday or want to run for public office. It wouldn't look good if people brought up her orange hair, too many other associations to wild hair color. I thought that was insightful of the mother at that time, but didn't see the great offense in hair color. Since then, men and women of all ages have put unnatural colors in their hair. It's become more acceptable, although not many politicians have had that issue come up. Or college presidents and so forth. Now, however, it is becoming evident that what you do when you are 15 or beyond, may seem annoying or innocuous now, but at some later date, say 30 or 40 years later, may come back to haunt you. Those unchaperoned parties and drinking will have a damaging affect on your life, no matter how many degrees you get, or how much money you make. Something you do in high school or college can make your whole character questionable decades later. Forget making up for it later on. Won't happen. I do hope that parents and teachers everywhere are telling their teens to follow the golden rule and live a sober, upright life now while they are young. Don't put it off. If a mistake is made, don't believe that it is in the past and forgotten. It can resurface. When it does, face up to it immediately. The only hope of survival is to admit the mistake and beg forgiveness. You won't come out unscarred, but it may stop the destruction of your life and family future. Denial of youthful behavior will not help you. Once you've been in denial mode, it is too late to confess and redeem yourself. Any teenager who hopes to have a good job in the future or who plans to pursue a good education needs to live an old-fashioned puritanical life. Alcohol, gambling, and promiscuity still do the same damage they always have. They are only for adults who have no ambition and know they have no possible elevation in life. |
| I'd never heard of her before, but Ruth Woodman became an important author and historian in the 20th century. I discovered her when researching the TV series, Death Valley Days. She was a respected self-taught historian and wrote over 1000 half-hour episodes of one of TV's most highly acclaimed shows. Ruth was a copywriter for a New York ad agency, a wife and mother. Both her parents had been born in the West, but her mother hated it. She coerced her husband to sell his Colorado ranch and move his young wife to the East. Ruth purportedly was raised in England. She was educated at Vassar. One of her ad clients was Pacific Coast Borax, a mining company located in Death Valley, California. (The office was in Kanab, Utah, where some filming took place.) She began writing radio shows for this client. She had gotten many of her western tales from her father, but she had an employee of Borax help her with research, Mr. Washington Cahill. Cahill had an uncle and a step-father who were teamsters (mule handlers and drivers) who had lots of first hand experience with events, people and legends of the Death Valley area. Borax insisted she have some first hand experience with the area and live there briefly every year. So she summered there when school was out. With Cahill's help, she met many people, miners, prospectors, lawmen, farmers, ranchers, and teachers. She amassed a lot of notes, letters, interviews, copies of records, photographs from people willing to share what they knew. The radio show began September 30, 1930 and ran until Sept. 4, 1951. The TV broadcast began in 1952 and ran until 1975, ending about the same time as Gunsmoke, marking the end of an era in TV. They were all true stories, portrayed as accurately as possible. For the first five years of TV, she wrote all the episodes herself. She became the respected, leading historian of that area in her time, an inspiration to all people not just women. If you want to become an expert in something, you can from her example. Her brain child became the "longest running of all scripted syndicated series". There is a set of restored films of the TV series in The Library of Congress, which has determined "the anthology is historically significant to the nation." Some of the stories are low key, limited action, but tell the stories of inventors, women sheriffs, and local ghost stories. Today there is a renewed interest in westerns in general, and her TV series if getting lots of play time. Her papers and most of the scripts are on file at The University of Oregon Libraries. They do tell the building of the nation in little day by day ways, and give us a glance at what life was like from about 1850 to the early 1900's. One copy writer with a dream is educating and entertaining people long after her death. She lived from 1894 to 1970. |
What is it about autumn that makes us think of crafts and homemade things? Craft fairs, magazines, store displays all tell us to be creative and make things for ourselves. I usually succumb to the allure of arts and crafts and home baking, too. At least the fake leaves and cattails and autumn plants don't irritate my hay fever. I've been to several stores for sundry craft supplies, including fall color flowers. I have never had a skill for flower arranging, but that never stopped me. Now I have some fall purple things (they look like fall, not spring or summer) in a new planter on the bookcase. I have leaf garlands around the fireplace and gall figurines on the mantle. It's too early for goblins or turkeys, so fake "natural" things will do. We had a large basket filled with cookbooks. The children and adults here have mishandled the overburdened basket so that the handle and edges are broken. I had hoped to twist the long pieces back together and glue them in place, but they can't be matched properly. So I pressed them together and wrapped with tape for thickness and strength. Then I took some wide olive green webbed ribbon and coiled it tightly around the patched up handle. It looks okay, but it's going to be used for some other purpose with less weight. I need more ribbon to hot glue over the edges. I hate to throw the basket away. It will be used in autumn only from now on. I have some Christmas crafts to make with the kids. I need to get rid of craft tools and kits I know I won't use. Like candle making molds. Latch hook rugs (I tried, it hurts your hands too much). I spent the evening looking at new magazines at crafts I know I won't do, like giant spiders to put on the outside of the house, or weirdly carved pumpkins. I just want to drop everything and get out the sewing machine and the fabric scraps and make useless things. While I'm being creative, I have this urge to make pumpkin bread, zucchini bread, and cinnamon cookies, and soup. If it weren't so late at night, I'd go grab some apple cider and spice it up. Yes, fall is in the air. |
| I didn't know that such a museum existed. Some friends wanted to go, so I agreed to join them. I found out it's been open less than a year on 4th Street, next to Virginia Avenue in Washington, DC, From the sixth floor you get a great view of the capitol dome. The building is an old business building 12 stories high. In the early 1900's, it was a frefrigerated building with railroad tracks beside it and space inside for rail cars to roll inside the main hall for lading and unloading. The building has been recycled, but was purchased for the museum in 2012. At that point engineers oversaw knocking out six stories, every other floor, to allow fro greater exhibits and special media installation. The first items for exhibit were purchased two years earlier in 2010. The goal is to engage more people with the Bible, to understand its influence in the world, its history, its story and how it has impacted mankind. It does not attempt to preach or proselytize, but welcomes people from all backgrounds to enjoy the exhibits, be entertained, and maybe learn something new. There was a special exhibit just for kids, and it looked wonderful. They can climb, shake, and handle all the colorful displays inside the giant playroom with themes. There are bathrooms on every floor, large walkways, beautiful walls and stairs, and plenty of elevators. Gift shop, restaurant, "Biblical garden" (outdoor eating area with water falls on the 6th floor), and a café, of course. All the paid tours have ear phones that are cleaned after use. The virtual reality tours include goggles cleaned after every use. You don't have to take any guided tours, but I suggest the Orientation tour for $8. It gives you an overall view in an hour and helps you plan what you want to visit more leisurely on your own. There is a major theme to each floor with mini themes for each exhibit or show. One floor is the story floor. There you can visit The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament World. The multi-media is fantastic and keeps you moving from one room to another as the general outline of the Old Testament unfolds all around you. The burning bush you will swear is real. There's thunder and lightning and fog. It's so creative and astounding and exciting to be in the middle of it. Then there's the world of Jesus, a Nazarene village, filled with people going about the daily lives of a poor town in the early first century of Israel. You can talk to the mother working in her kitchen, or the rabbi in the synagogue, visit the winemaker, the carpenter's shop and see his tools, or see the sheep shearer shed. One stone carved room has short films of Jesus telling the parables. I found this actor to be very interesting and sincere. One was titled The Parable of The Lost Son and His Brother (so much better than The Prodigal Son-it ignores the brother, a key player), Also on that floor is The New Testament Exhibit. This one has only one auditorium, so you stay in one place, more people at once. It starts out with the nativity star. You don't even think about the curtain being open only about 8 feet in front of you. But after Jesus ascends, the news starts to spread, and the curtains open the full semi-circle. The screen grows with the curtain opening and the story gets larger. It's also loud and provocative and features key players like Stephen and Paul and John. As John recalls that he was the youngest one in the group around Jesus, and now he's the only one left, he wonders if it will all end with him. Then his face looks like he had an idea and he starts to write, "In the beginning...". Now he wasn't the first one to write, but the point is made, because those witnesses wrote, the story does live on. One floor has special exhibits. One long term temporary exhibit is The Billy Graham exhibit. I could have spent hours there. It was wonderful! Full of more contemporary history. Another floor is devoted to the book itself and its history. This includes many translations, a Gutenberg press with demonstrations (it took 3 years to make 180 copies of the Bible). The Bible is now in over 600 languages, many never written down until someone tried to translate the Bible into that spoken word. The Bible was in Latin only, and most people didn't speak Latin, or read anything. The first man to translate it into English was deemed guilty of heresy after his death. His bones were dug up and incinerated 30 years after his death. King James approved an English translation 100 years later. That was the first universal Bible of any language. There are pieces of Dead Sea Scrolls, jars where scrolls were installed, and copies of manuscripts. No original manuscripts still exist, but enough evidence exists from sacred and secular sources to suggest the copies were very accurate. Elvis' Bible is there, and so is a rare copy of "The Wicked Bible", one of the few Bibles to have an error. Another floor is dedicated to the impact of the Bible. It points to its influence on medicine, science, civil rights, slavery, politics, immigration, liberty and democracy. It fairly shows how the Bible was used to prove or disprove both sides of issues. The guide told us they had a guest speaker in January, a professor from Harvard, who claimed that history cannot be understood if the Bible is not known. It's a beautiful building. The staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. They make the exhibits fun and creative. I haven't mentioned all the ones I saw. Someone suggested a thorough visit would require about 7 8-hour days or more. There is a parking garage nearby. If you're in DC, spend an extra day and take it in. |
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