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  My blog was filled up. I'm too lazy to clean it out. So I started a new one. |
| I've been on vacation from blogging and writing in general. Not a guilt-free vacation. I have lots of excuses of preoccupations, illnesses, holidays, grieving, obligations, and so forth. I tried to get back on track, but failed. I took an online course in an effort to concentrate again. The course was great, but it didn't get me motivated in the direction I wanted. I've had some firsts during that long time off. I tried my first frog leg. I haven't been missing anything. I made my first guacamole. I'm sold on that-an Alton Brown recipe. Love making and eating that particular version. I had my first professional massage. I made the mistake of telling her I had headaches and neck pain. I was sore for a week from my shoulder joints to my ear lobes. The headaches did not go away, either. Although I don't have anything in particular of grave concern going on right now (I have in the past and got through it), I am obsessing perhaps with my own mortality. I've lost the second of two younger brothers, so the fragility of life has really parked itself in front of my face. I take care of my father who is in his 90's. He takes short steps and is a bit fragile, hard of hearing and forgetful. But his doctor says he is hale and hearty and all his major functions are A-OK. So I worry about who will take care of him if something happens to me. It is very conceivable that I will go first. I need to up my game clearing out my belongings. I will never have my own home again. Even if I did, I would probably take the stuff in Dad's house where I now reside. He'd either come with me, or I would end up outlasting him after all. So stored away dining chairs, kitchen utensils, and lawn furniture need to go bye-bye. I need to do the same with a lot of my parents' things, too. He's not going camping again or fish in the ocean. I've been trying to get my third brother and my nieces, who lived here briefly when Mom was alive, to take their junk out--the ski boots, books, sports trophies. Why wait until someone dies and have a tone of stuff to clear out? What I'm considering is that if I go before my father, my room should be completely emptied and all my belongings donated somewhere. My widowed niece could move in here. Her two sons would occupy my room. Her daughter would be in the smaller guest room where I am now typing (it doubles as my office). She could take the guest room downstairs where her father stayed after his divorce. She'd have more privacy there. The kids would be upstairs with Big Pop. He would be revived by their presence. They'd be closer to town and her work. It is a different county, so a different school system is involved. And it would be temporary. How much longer will a man in his 90's live after I pass away or go into a nursing home? She could rent out her farmhouse outside of town and have it for a return in a few years. The old man wouldn't be alone all day and would have an RN under his roof. My brother could come from 70 miles away, as he does now, to help her with maintenance and yard work. So I want to be more organized, a very popular word, and live "leaner", a big word in business, at least a few years back. I want to be prepared to have my physical presence swept aside and have the others in my life carry on efficiently and conveniently, taking care of each other. I guess you could accuse me of wanting to control things from beyond the grave. Ok. While I'm cleaning up and making space, I want to keep trying "firsts". I still want to experience the world and taste its joys I'm going to plant a big box of cilantro and re-read Shakespeare plays. I'm going to take a vacation if I can figure out a way to get away from home. I may never write the great American novel, but I can dabble at will. |
| Haven't you always heard about fish on Friday if you're Catholic? I just always assumed that it was an arbitrary rule for reasons of piety. This year, however, it's the buzz on the media. They tell us the rule is to stay away from any warm-blooded animal. So snake or other reptiles will do just as well. That reminds me, I had my first frog leg recently. Not my fave. There's a myth about a pope who started the tradition of fish on Friday to help out a commercial fisherman for a very large donation to the church. Researchers have found no substance in this allegedly widespread story. The Vatican has no record hinting of such a donation or an edict. I never heard of it before, but I'm not Catholic. The rumor about the self-serving pope was just a fishy story. The tradition doesn't apply only to Fridays. There are many holy days, especially during Lent and Advent, requiring this "sacrifice". It refers to the sacrifice and the blood shed by Jesus. Avoiding sacrificial animals, like beef, lamb, and pork, remind the believer to turn his thoughts to more pious endeavors. Cold-blooded meat only is not just a rule to check off. It was intended to be a meaningful and thought-filled activity. It has affected the food business, however. I have always noticed restaurants and college dining rooms offer fish on Fridays, but I thought it was out of consideration for their patron's beliefs. In reality, it was because those places wanted to do business without hurting profits. McDonald realized he couldn't sell as many hamburgers on Fridays way back, so the Fillet O' Fish was born. Now with Lent upon us, everyone else has come up with a new and improved fish sandwich. I support people who want to do symbolic things for their own faith, like avoiding red meat and poultry. It's a personal thing, and they don't force anyone else to join them. I don't support people who say no one can eat bacon because they don't eat bacon. I'm also glad there is no commercial snake meat industry, or squirrel brains, or groundhog, etc. I'd hate to see some of those things in fast food places. |
| The media frequently refers to it as "Black History Month", and some may prefer that. However, when Gerald Ford declared February to be set aside for this purpose, it was officially referred to as African American History, and it has not been changed. Some people argue that black history should not be set aside as a separate subject. Morgan Freeman is one famous opposing spokesperson who claims "Black history is American history". Others feel that it has to be addressed on its own to maintain tradition and a sense of continuance. The example is that the American Indian had no written history, only oral tradition, and has almost been eradicated. By contrast the Jews had a well documented history, and now, though much persecuted and dispersed around the world, there is a keen sense of identity and continuity. The special observance first began in 1926 as a week called "Negro History Week" to encourage inclusion in public schools. The second week of February was chosen to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas. In 1970 it became a month. In 1976, the year of our Bicentennial, it was renamed and drew a new wave of attention. It is good for us to remind ourselves of many aspects of our history, including all races and genders. Dr. Jim Denison writes "African American inventors gave us America’s first clock, automatic elevator doors, the clothes dryer, the electric lamp, the gas heating furnace, traffic lights, fiber optic cable, the touch-tone telephone, the home thermostat and temperature control, the pacemaker, and a host of other discoveries." A different type of inventor, Dr. Charles Drew taught us more about plasma and made blood transfusions possible. (I learned this on an episode of M*A*S*H*.) George Washington Carver was a scientist and inventor who helped revolutionize American agriculture, mostly through his work in soil conservation. He also made advances in cotton and found many new uses of the peanut. Booker T. Washington was a great educator, writer, and orator who was a primary black leader at the turn of the last century and a big influence for about 25 years. I thought his book was inspiring and helpful for people of all races. Catherine Johnson was an outstanding mathematician who aided the space program. African Americans have been innovative and pioneering in the fields of education, science, technology, banking, medicine, engineering, and all other areas of our daily lives. Although originally intended for schools, African American History Month is a good encouragement for all of us to learn something more. We need to appreciate all of American history. Most adults have a very poor understanding of history to start. A little learning won't hurt us. We may learn to appreciate our heritage and have a little more sensitivity to others. |
| There's all kinds of waiting. Waiting for school to start, for the phone to ring, to find a job. Waiting for a baby to be born or the bride to walk down the aisle, Waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right. Waiting for retirement. Then there's waiting to die. My younger brother has cancer. We've known sometime, but kept hoping for a miracle. He's been well for a while. Then Stage Four was diagnosed in September. Clinical trials were started. He even drove himself out of town for it once. After the first set, he went in for a check up. Tumors were discovered in his arm, and X-ray therapy began. He was too sick to go back for the immuno-therapy, so he started Chemo. It was just too late. A few rounds of that and he quit. We don't know for sure if it was the Chemo or the cancer that wore him down. He's been in steady decline since Thanksgiving. He drove himself to my house for Christmas, but couldn't walk to the dining room table. We fed him from the coffee table in the living room. Today, he is a skeleton with skin tightly stretched over it. He can hardly speak and uses his hands to signal us. His mind is still working. He still listens and worries about his lawn mower. He was still attempting conversation just a week ago, but not today. He has no appetite. He is slowly starving. He wanted no heroic attempts to save his life. He can't be force fed. He was in the hospital for ten days, where they gave him platelets to stop the incessant nose bleeds. They also took care of the fluid problem that kept him from breathing. But you can't stay forever in that final stage. In our whole area, there was no available bed in hospice. So he was sent home. It is quieter there, but lonely. His friends and family are watching this fiercely independent man, who was self-reliant and never took help from anyone become totally dependent on someone else to go to the bathroom or drink water. Beyond the crying stage, we watch with heavy hearts as he teeters between life and death. We have learned there are no grudges worth holding, nothing that can't be forgiven or overlooked. There is a bond between family members that nothing in this life can break, not even death. So we wait, as long as it takes. We take turns staying with him. We feed him, pray with him, take care of his home, his vehicles, his outdoor equipment. One daughter cleaned out his refrigerator. Both daughters do laundry and dress him while tending to their own small children. Our father, who is 90, sits by his bedside as often as possible. His grandchildren have their home life and routines disrupted by the absence of their mothers. I've had children staying with me, one at a time. An uncle has pitched in with some out of town vacations for two of the little boys. One friend has driven from 70 miles away at least 3 times a week to stay almost all day. Four generations of our family are involved in this arduous waiting. Waiting is not easy, especially when you don't want the ending. But death is inevitable. We don't all have time to prepare ourselves and to say our good-byes the way my brother did. It's a prolonged sadness. We will stand by him. We will wait. |
| Oh, Dear! I just discovered another time waster. Online jigsaw puzzles. They're quick and easy. I tried the "hard" level and started getting them down to just over 3 minutes. I went through about 12. Something else to keep me distracted from my goals. But lots of fun. Very compulsive. |
| Today I watched the birds on the porch while I ate my old fashioned oatmeal. There was the usual assortment. When four squirrels took over, I ran off to scare them off. Once I was back inside, the birds returned, whether they knew instinctively that we'd never hurt them, or they knew they could make a quick getaway, or were just too ignorant to assess the risk. The squirrels wait a lot longer; they know I hate them and will go after them. (It's a long story for another day.) The wood thrush, red-headed woodpecker, cardinals, and other unidentified birds came back to feast on the plentiful supply my father puts out each morning as part of his daily ritual. I looked up from my coffee and realized I had a congregation of cardinals. They didn't sit still long enough for me to inventory. I know there were at least four females, possibly more, but I didn't want to count any twice. The females aren't as pretty and striking. They blend in more with their surroundings of tree bark and nests to protect their young. But the silhouette is unmistakable. The woodpecker was still there confusing things. There seemed to be a lot of red. In a few minutes, there was one male cardinal. The males are the dandies, all dressed up in bright red. They get all the attention. They are photographed and painted. They appear on sports logos, calendars, and sweatshirts. Male cardinals are turned into Christmas tree ornaments and show up on Christmas cards. They are the symbol of beautiful, peaceful winter. They get all the credit, while their wives stay humbly behind the cameras. Cardinals are monogamous and mate for life, unlike many birds. We always have at least one cardinal family, nesting in various locations, and they stay year round. One year, they nested by the front door in a big tree. Every time we went outside, a bird would swoop down at us, scaring us in the early morning or early night. They never let up in their guard duty. It never sank in that those tall walking animals, the humans, weren't going to attack their nest. Fortunately, they built somewhere else the following year. As I watched this male on the back porch, I wondered if maybe he was an old school Mormon. Chances are there were other males in the vicinity, and these extra females were only visiting relatives. The word probably got out that the seed bonanza was on my deck. |
| January 6 is the day we honor the Epiphany, or the arrival of the Wise Men. We actually do not know when they arrived, or how many there were, but this day is set aside to remember them. We do know they were not there on the night baby Jesus came into the world, they were not surrounded by angels or shepherds, and that they probably found him in Egypt before he was two years old. Traditionally, we put them all there at the same time and position the figures together in our nativity scenes for convenience. Legends, apart from the Bible story, say there were four men; some say twelve. We usually picture and sing of three because three gifts were mentioned. Some historians think they may have come from Iraq or Iran. Some stories give them names. In one version, one of them may have been of African descent. All the stories agree that they were wealthy and well-educated and spent their lives studying mysteries and science. We can conclude that they saw something that astounded them. They believed in the phenomenon so much that they left their families and homeland to travel for a very long time. They were determined; nothing would stop them. They traveled at their own expense with no support or backing from any source. They knew when they had arrived at their desired destination and that their mission was complete. They took pleasure and were satisfied with their mission. They adapted and went home by a different route. They deliberately chose not to cooperate with a foreign government, King Herod, but reasoned out the appropriate action for themselves. The church calendar has advent for about five weeks before Christmas. The celebration of Christmas actually begins Christmas Day and goes on for twelve days--without the drummers, pipers, swans, etc. It ends with Epiphany. The Wise Men have a few things to teach us. If we have a goal or a calling, we should devote ourselves to it and go full steam ahead. We may not have the luxury of servants to help, or money to spend on travel, but to the best of our abilities and resources, we can pursue our dreams, follow our convictions. When we accomplish our goals, we don't go back to where we started. We will have changed and been enlightened. We don't go back to the same road. We act with discernment and discretion along the way. The holiday observances are over for another eleven months. But we can preserve the meaning and the lessons all year long. |
| I am living the good life! I saw the New Year in with James Arness and Dennis Weaver. These days Milburn Stone is more my speed. 1960's, 70's version, of course. Today I am cooking the traditional Southern black-eyed peas. I had to buy the canned peas, since there was a run on dried and frozen peas. The store only had 3 cans left, so I bought two. So my traditional meal will be easier than the usual slow cooking beans. I like their smoky flavor. It's supposed to be good luck to cook black eyed peas today. The rest of the menu I got from my mother, but that doesn't involve luck. We'll have cornbread, stewed tomatoes, and greens. You can add any kind of meat or go vegetarian. Some groups believe you have to have hog's head or boar's head or hog jowls, but I don't go there. It's an old English custom to serve boar's head and have a feast before forks. In other words, you only use your fingers, but it is a huge meal. Sharp knives are okay. So you don't want mashed potatoes. Some black neighborhoods like the hog's head with their peas and cornbread. I worked in a grocery store that sold the hog's head, only after Christmas. The customer base was evenly black and white. Some of the cashiers couldn't handle the animal head; it was like a horror movie. I can do almost anything, so I would ring it up and bag it so that she wouldn't see it, then go back to where I was working. We sold a lot of them. The customers couldn't understand employees who couldn't handle it. This was a treat and time honored tradition for them. There are other superstitions I have heard about New Year's Day, things you should and shouldn't do. I am not superstitious, but I am a creature of habit and tradition. Another superstition (I don't believe in) is that whatever you do New Year's Day is indicative of how you'll spend your year. I really can't tell you what I was doing last year, so I don't know if it works. But I usually try to make sure I do something fun. I'm not visiting anyone today, and I'm not expecting company, which is unusual. It looks like it will be a quiet day. To be on the safe side, I'm not just cooking and cleaning all day, but doing a jigsaw puzzle, reading, texting friends, surfing the Web, and writing. Gotta squeeze some exercise in. Not that I'm superstitious, just cautious. |
| Many people are off from work today. Some things never close, like hospitals, transportation, retail, food industry, hotels, entertainment, nursing homes. Well, okay, maybe half the working people are off today: trash collection, schools, office workers, church employees, construction, most doctors offices. If New Year's Eve fell on a later day in the week, they might be open, but one productive day in between a weekend and a holiday will not be very productive. Of course, the unemployed and the retired are unaffected by it. But, for school kids, its the dwindling of their vacation as they dread the return to school. As the old year ends, we evaluate what happened in 2018. How did we handle it? Did we make any headway emotionally, financially, career wise, spiritually, or in our relationships? Did we gain weight or lose weight? (Isn't that on everyone's mind in January?) Did our health get better or worse? How is our family? We can even get more global and look at our neighborhoods, our state, our world. How have the last 12 months affected us and our own immediate surroundings? For me a look back seems gloomy. My brother's cancer took a nose dive, Our hearts are heavy as we go through these holidays. Some friends and acquaintances died. One good friend made a great comeback from last year's cancer, but another one is gravely ill with a new diagnosis. We have had so much rain that our downstairs flooded 4 times; it only seeped in twice in the previous ten years, without so much damage. So that's getting to be a bigger expensive problem. The air conditioner died and had to be replaced along with all the duct work, costing over $10,000. Dad destroyed the garbage disposal by putting drain cleaner in it (you can't tell a man he is doing something wrong), so that had to be removed and new pipe put in. A huge tree fell after one of the rains, smashing both our cars in the driveway. Actually, reviewing 2018 is making me feel bad. On the other hand, we had a new baby born into the family. I joined a gym. Despite gaining five pounds in the last six weeks, I have muscles in my arms and shoulders, and some in my legs, that had almost evaporated before. My endurance has improved. It's an uphill battle, but worth continuing. I participated in NaNoWriMo. I cleaned out some closets, making lots of donations, and putting a lot in the trash. That's an ongoing project, too, since it's hard to part with things you've collected over the decades or that belonged to a departed family member. My last day as church clerk is today, although I still have to make some changes in the October minutes to satisfy the county supervisors on some legal issues. I've been a co-teacher of some older ladies at church (one is younger than I, some are older than my father), and that has been very satisfying. The choir I sing in has gotten much smaller, but the voices blend nicely; we don't have any loud show-offs. It's been my first year as a retiree, and like many before me, I don't know how I used to get everything done and work a full-time job. I am tending to an elderly father who gets a little needier all the time. This has been a year of figuring out how to spend my time and adjust to changing pressures and demands. It's been a year of trying wrinkle creams and going to the hairdresser more often. I've cooked more, using fewer convenience foods. So I'm not going to look forward to 2019 until tomorrow. I'm just relishing today and where I've been. Hopefully, I've learned some helpful things and we didn't lose too much in the stock market. I don't want to repeat my mistakes, but I don't want to dwell on the past, only to learn from it. |
| Many people are depressed this time of year. It has one of the highest suicide rates all year. Some people have mistakenly thought it was due to loneliness or absence of family during the holidays. Some times that may be true. But studies have shown it has more to do with the lack of light. The days are shorter. After the winter solstice suicides go up, while the time of darkness increases. The lesson learned from this is that we all need more natural light. If you have an invalid or elderly person in your home, get them to a window or out of doors every day, weather permitting. Nursing homes and senior communities need large windows with open drapes or blinds. Don't let your teenager hang out in his room all day or in front of the TV. He needs outdoor light. You need light. When you carry the trash outside, stop and stretch and take a deep breath before you go back inside. Don't bury yourself in the sub-basement at the library doing research. Walk outside occasionally. If you work in an inner office, go to a window and look out every hour or two, or go outside with the smokers on your break. Do whatever you need to do to prevent getting into a funky mood. You might not be suicidal, but you might be prone to cabin fever or depression. Just get some light, sunlight if possible. Be aware of the people around you and the moods they are in. Apparently, our chemistry feeds on natural light. If they seem a little down, you don't even have to discuss it with them. Just find an excuse to get them outside or in front of a big window. Adjusting a sleep schedule to get the most out of the day time may help people who are stressed or taking medicines. The outdoors may help fight the side effects this time of year. So let the light in. |
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