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 |  I've maxed out. Closed this blog. |
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This is a way of making myself write something coherent and grammatically correct almost every day. I'm opinionated and need an outlet. I'm also prone to flights of fancy. Thanks for stopping by. |
| I understand that you hate the ugly news stories, the attacks on TV and on Facebook. You want a more positive outlook, so you fill up your f\Facebook page with cute animals. You send out an email every day with cute babies or cute animals or rainbows. Gotcha. Now here's the thing. Who's got the time to read the captions or watch the videos that stream in all day? I have to delete like Spam or skip. Brag about your kids or grandkids. That's fine. Tell me about your awards or promotions or activities at your church or club. Tell me about your garden. Those are things that keep me connected to you. I love cute animals, but I can't look through them all due to shortage of time. I skip through the negative things and choose what I'll read. The media like to cover the same thing over and over. I agree, let's move on, but to weightier things. I'm also tired of pictures of abused animals. I think it's deplorable, and the people who do it, or who let dogs get hurt fighting, should be punished under the law. But I don't need to see the pictures. I'd like to see less hate, less whining, and more constructive suggestions. Let's see some community service being done instead of just spreading rumors or ugly photos. And those with the positive vibes could participate to make the world a little less ugly. |
| We've started buying from a local farm to supplement our home grown vegetables. Our neighbor gets the delivery, so we just pay her. Organic vegetables--their selection. Last week included tomatoes, corn, peaches, potatoes, one onion, peppers, cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini. We grow peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and summer squash ourselves. But we can use the extra. I think my dad uses non-organic pesticide. So these will at least be chemical free. The cucumbers look great. I don't eat them, but I fix them for Dad and our guests. He loves his corn, which I get sick of week after week. So he won't need to get so much from the store. Range free eggs are available for a steep price. I passed on those. I read today that basil keeps mosquitoes away. I tend to the basil daily out back, but I'm scratching huge mosquito whelps tonight. I bought some cilantro and made salsa from the tomatoes and onion, with garlic, EVO, and lemon juice. (I was out of lime juice.) We had our own zucchini for supper. I want to go meatless for a few weeks to test the theories I've read. You have to substitute in a lot of vegetables, not fruit. Fish and shellfish are okay, so are eggs. The idea is to reset your digestion and your blood sugar metabolism. So I went shopping for salmon today. Every cold water or wild caught fish that store had in the seafood department and meat department came from China. Consumers Digest warns against all fish from Asia. North Pacific salmon only. So I didn't buy any. I might go back to bacon before the three weeks are up. |
| It must be tougher than ever to raise kids in an ideologically screwed up world. If you are actively engaged with your own children, you want to influence their beliefs and mindsets. But there are all those other influences bombarding them daily. First, there is TV, cartoons, movies, and books, telling your child about families, religion, love, and interactions. You have some control over the books in your home, a little over the media, if you actively screen it first. But you can't control what's done in preschool or the babysitter or their friends' homes. There is a lot of doctrine in the media; some of it is at odds with your own beliefs. If they are old enough to go to school, you can't control what the teacher tells them. Maybe the teacher can leave his or her political beliefs at home, but frequently they cannot. They bring their ideas into the classroom, don't present them as options, but as the truth. You may not want to have your 8 year old being a little Democrat or Republican, but they are going to get some indoctrination you may not want them to have, and may not be aware of it. Some teachers feel they have to teach right and wrong, and moral values, which is the parents' duty. Unless you send them to a religious school, doctrine for Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion should not come up. Period. It is the duty of the mosque, temple, synagogue or church to support the family in religious education, not the school. Other examples include family preferences and gender identity, which is a hot topic right now. Tax payer money is being slated for these subjects, but who is qualified to lead those discussions? I wouldn't want my kids to go through those. TV, movies, the Internet all give impressionable kids wrong ideas about lifestyle. Parents have to be on guard to weed out the values they don't want their kids to have. They have to be fiercer than ever to protect their kids' minds until they are old enough to think for themselves. And that varies according to the individual. At the same time, they need to let their kids grow up and be independent as they are able to handle it. Being a good parent has to be a really tough job. |
| There are so many things to do in a day. I'm home every day this summer. You'd think without going to work, my house would be sparkling, and many stories would be written by now. I've turned to yard work, house cleaning, and surfing the Internet. I'm becoming an expert at trivia nobody cares about. I'm afraid to spend money while I'm not bringing in new income. But I am still maintaining my bills, and doing the medical stuff. Meanwhile my closets are clean. Good Will has a lot of clothes and accessories. Some old pictures have been framed. My house probably is a little neater on a regular basis than before. I still wonder how did I get by when I was dressing up to leave, waiting for buses, and whiling my days away in an office where I was unappreciated and unfulfilled. I have more time, but don't see much more accomplishment. I do feel good, though. I don't get up with an alarm. I stay up until I'm tired. I sit outdoors occasionally. I play with my flower pots. I meditate. I exercise more. We should all reach the point where we can take some time off, catch up, and enjoy life without pressure. You have to work at keeping your self esteem intact, since so many of us are caught up in our working lives and find validation there. I have to keep telling myself, it's okay to take time off. I've worked two jobs at once most of my life. It's time to slow down and smell the roses. |
| A friend had strawberry plants spilling out of his garden and onto the pathways. He dug them up from the path, and separated them into bags for giveaways. I took one with 3 plants. Dad had some spilling out of porch pots, so he took those off and planted them all in a newly turned over flower bed in the back. I'm hoping he won't forget and dig them up this fall. We're picking green peppers, yellow squash and zucchini from the garden. I have basil, dill, and chives ready for picking as needed. The eggplants are sill growing. We've gotten one tomato, which is like a lot of home grown tomatoes, oddly shaped. We grow irises from my grandmother's garden. She passed in 1989. My dad rented her house out for a few years, then put it on the market. Before it was sold, my brother dug up her irises, as many as he could. She grew them almost the full length of her driveway, plus a few beds in her back yard. People would stop their cars on her busy street, to come tell her how beautiful they were. So sometime in the 90's these irises came to the house my dad now owns, where I live, and my brother's house in another town. They have sentimental value for us. They have multiplied and are now crowded together. Dad wants to dig them all up this fall and replant them, in rows, neat and orderly. We don't have all the colors my grandmother had. But we enjoy them a lot. So that will be a project for us after the hot weather. |
| I must have seen it as a child, but don't remember anything about it. How The West Was Won is 3 hours on TV with all the commercials. It is star studded. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. Released in 1962, it is in color, and the scenery is pretty good. It starts in the East and moves West. The voiceover parts, read by Spencer Tracy, who is heard and never seen, tie it all together, giving it some historical accuracy and making sense of it all. It puts some perspective on history and ties various events together. It is a tale of 3 generations of one family in their journey to settle new land. Carl Malden is the father, but dies early on. The 2 sisters are played by Debbie Reynolds and Carroll Baker. Only Debbie is in the movie from beginning to end. The next generation is two brothers, only one that the move follows, played by George Peppard. He's the only one I couldn't recognize without help. Others who appear off and on, and only briefly, include Walter Brennan, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Robert Preston, Eli Wallach, and J Lee Cobb. If this was based on a book, I'm sure the book was better. It's too broad a scope for one little movie and attempts to cover too much history. It would be better suited for a mini-series over a 3 or 4 night spread. (Maybe it's time for a remake, but political correctness and the rewriting of history would force the changing of facts and story line.) Another issue that may have caused some disjointedness is that there were so many directors. John Ford did a few scenes, another did certain scenes, etc. A fifth one did the linking of the stories. As for the star power, it must have been an unsatisfying experience for them. Their parts were so minor and so brief, there was no character development. Jimmy Stewart did his best with Carroll Baker and in the few moments they had together delivered a powerful and believable romance. Then it was over. His character was killed off. I had the most empathy for Robert Preston whose character just faded away. In the story, there would be years between scenes and people aged dramatically. George Peppard got the opportunity to do more acting than most. Eli Wallach was the bad guy, as usual, and got in a long fight scene with George and Cobb. So you never got to see much of any one star. Debbie's character wasn't all that likable, but they did let her do some singing and dancing, which prolonged her exposure. I enjoyed the voiceovers the most. In the part about the Civil War, he read about North being torn from South, but at the same time East was being tied to the West with telegraph lines, the Pony Express, and the railroads. At the end, the views of the desert and the prairies turned into small towns and farmland, then bigger towns, bridges, traffic, then cities and highways. It kept getting more modern and grander in scope, so you realized the West is still evolving, still being "won". |
| I can't believe there is so much melodrama going on these days. Extremists and haters seem to be everywhere. The Confederate flag has drawn out a lot of crazies, for one example. First, neither "side" understands what it means to the other. I agree it should not fly over any government building. It represents an entity that doesn't exist any longer. But it did at one time, so it can't and shouldn't disappear from museums, gift shops, or personal collections, just like any other flag of a bygone era. It can't be erased from history. At the time it was flown legally, it did not represent slavery, but in the century and a half since then, it has come to mean that in the minds of some people, both black and white. It wouldn't hurt to be sensitive to that. To others it just symbolizes the Southern locations and has nothing to do with war or racism. It's just a nostalgic thing, a genealogical thing without negative connotations. Most people who fought in the Civil War were not slave holders. Poor farmers fought on both sides, and they couldn't afford slaves. The generals and statesmen who did not fight probably owned slaves. And slavery was not an issue when that war began and the Confederacy was formed. It became an issue much later, when something was needed to unify the North, which was losing interest in the war. Unfortunately, that flag has become more of a decoration than a symbol. Groups over the last week have rallied to defend their flag, which has now evolved into a symbol of freedom of personal expression. But have you looked at pictures of those groups? Forgive me for saying so, but they look like shoppers from Wal-Mart were rounded up. On the one hand, you kind of admire their spunk, regardless of what you think about that flag. But, on the other hand, you wouldn't want to be seen with them. It's not the crowd you hang out with in your spare time. There have been numerous anti-Christian demonstrations, involving wiping the butt with pages from the Bible. Anti-American flag demonstrations, gay demonstrations, transgender episodes, etc. And the Trump issues just won't stop. Mind you, I'm not a Trump fan. But I like that he's not backing down. He could cave in and recant to recoup all the lost dollars, but no. He's standing firm. I don't like the challenge to freedom of speech. Macy's and NBC were wrong, and a half dozen others. But the recoil from the negative reaction has actually helped him more than ever. Had they ignored him,he would still be spinning his wheels. But the polls have rated him higher than before. He's getting more backing, and could surge way ahead. Wouldn't that be a kick in the head if NBC and Macy's actually helped boost his nomination? I've never flown a Confederate flag and don't intend to. But I defend the right of people who want to do so as long as they are lawful and respectful of others. I don't support Trump, but I support his right to speak his mind. |
| Remember when standing up came without sound effects? If you're still young and healthy, you won't get that. Aging is not for sissies. If I sit for more than 20 minutes at my computer, staightening out my knees to stand is painful. My first step comes with some peculiar sound that I finally figured was coming from me. I've started getting down on the floor just so I can practice getting back up again without assistance. I can remember after my college days walking for 15 miles for a project, going home to wash and change, then going out dancing for the evening! Those days are long gone. If I walked up and down hills for 15 miles today, I wouldn't be able to get out of bed for 2 or 3 days without limping. 3 or 4 miles and I'm all washed up. I thought weeding the yard and pushing the mower would help get me back in shape after years of commuting and office work. But it's slow going. Even getting out of bed in the morning is a slow process. I have to stretch and twist a lot before throwing my feet over the side. Then I just sit there, feeling the blood flow to my dangling toes. I stand up, then I have to wait to make sure I have my balance before walking. I decided tonight I can count a yawn as exercise. It stretches my jaw muscles. |
| I made old fashioned potato salad the way my mother used to make it. I put extra onion in it because my dad likes extra onion. He liked the salad. I talked to my uncle tonight, so I mentioned I made the potato salad his sister used to make. He asked, "Did you mix the potatoes hot?" Yes, I did. I forgot I shouldn't, because it makes the potatoes mushier. He told me, "Good. That's the way my mama used to make it. Mix it while the potatoes are hot for a creamier salad." Actually, my mom did it that way, too, but I prefer the lumps of potatoes. Oh, well. I didn't have quite enough strawberries to make strawberry pie and leave some strawberries for Dad's breakfast and mid-morning fruit. So I added a sliced banana and blueberries with the strawberry glaze and sliced strawberries instead of whole berries. I'll check it out eventually. I tried the homemade weed killer of white vinegar and Epsom's salts today. It's supposed to be cheaper and safer than the chemicals, even though you have to repeat it every two weeks. Alas, an afternoon thunderstorm snuck up (that's how we say "sneaked up" around here) and washed it all away. So I won't know if it works or not. It's supposed to be safer for the environment, too. I've been having lunch every day out on the back porch. It gives me a few minutes of quite time out in the sun. Not exactly quiet: the neighbors on the back side with the big fence and lots of trees have a pool. The grand-kids and friends come over day. They don't believe in mixed bathing, so men and boys one day, girls and women another. You have to have your swimsuit pre-approved. So there is the noise of kids in the background, which I can tune out since I can't see them. Our bird sanctuary has songs all day. And there's usually some construction or work going on in the neighborhood. But no radios, no one talking to me. I hate dealing with insurance companies. You can do everything they tell you. The medical provider can do everything they need to. Still they won't pay, or they find a reason for a penalty. They get worse every year, but cost more. You almost need a special secretary to help you decipher what's going on and meet the deadlines. God forbid that the provider make a mistake in coding or authorizations. The patient has to pay for human error made by someone else! The mail comes late in the day. So this is a terrible way to end the day. |
| It's Sci Fi night on TCM. I just watched a 1953 production of Ray Bradbury's They Came From Outer Space. It's black and white. The only actor name I recognized was Barbara Rush, but I don't really know anything about her. It kind of surprised me. It wasn't as corny as I expected. It wasn't scary. The characters' reaction to scary things brought more fright than the aliens. We're accustomed to grander special effects, I guess. These aliens were more ethereal, or misty. They were not touchable like today's movie creatures. The story was a good one--aliens who came in peace and by accident. Apparently, it had an influence on Steven Spielberg, who made Close Encounters of the Third Kind and ET. It's not my usual cup of tea to watch Sci Fi, but I kept thinking my late brother would have watched it. So that made it better for me. And it is interesting to find how these earlier films helped shape today's artists. |
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