Truth, Love, Biology, Stones

"I wasn’t born in a barn, but I got there as fast as I could.” A kindred spirit wrote that. Actually, barns aren’t my forte. I like the wild open green fields where the animals frolic, and the air smells fresh.

But I loved my run-in barn, 24 x 12 feet, open on one side where my two horses could be dry and out of the rain. And I kept the rubber-matted floor clean. They used one side for their hay, and the other side for a bathroom. It worked perfectly. I cleaned it every morning.

My love of horses must have begun when I was six years old, before I ever touched one. My father took me to the carnival when he came home from the war. I lusted after one of their prizes: a small horse statue. He bribed the hawker to sell it to him—I’m sure that was meant to be a surprise when he won it, but I knew the truth, and it forever endeared him to me. He disappeared from my life after that…for 38 years.

When I was nine years old, my mom and step-dad moved from a small town in Oregon to a house on one acre of land outside the city next door to a farm with a number of acres, two horses, a cow, chickens, and rabbits. There, one of their two daughters, a high school student, would pull me up behind her on their big horse, King, and we would take off roaming the countryside.

The other daughter rode their old mare, King’s mother. Sometimes we would go to the store to buy Grape Nehi, or to the creek to swim, or to an old racetrack grown up in weeds but still fun to encircle. During hay season, in the cool of the evenings, we tried to get the horses to jump the small piles of hay the boys raked up from windrows into small stacks. Only the horses plowed through instead of jumping them, and we had to rake the hay into a pile again.

Why Lois spent time with a nine-year-old is beyond me, but I will be forever grateful. She was my mentor, and she sent me on a journey of wishing, dreaming, and praying for a horse of my own.  

Three years later, we moved away from Lois and King, but I got Boots. My horse. A super horse. My step-dad chose well. I totally loved that horse.

And now I am in love again.

With baby goats.

It happened yesterday when I drank my morning coffee sitting in clean, sweet-smelling straw, holding a baby goat. He was quivering, and I held him until he was warm and snuggly. The other goat was a bit standoffish, but by afternoon all of us were sitting in the sunshine, happy as three otters on a creek bank, with the babies nibbling grass and crawling on my lap.

Daughter dear, grandson and I picked up the goats on Sunday afternoon. It’s Tuesday now, and we’re settled in, happy. This morning, I, again, drank my morning coffee sitting in the straw and holding a baby goat. They greeted me with “baas.” I thought they were crying yesterday, but I think they were happy to see a person.

How am I going to get anything done?

These are boy goats, but will not be Billy goats. They are called wethers; that is, a neutered goat. They haven't had surgery, but they have rubber bands—you figure it out—it’s your biology lesson for the day.

And now I am here with you. It’s Tuesday, blog day.

Last Tuesday I was a mess. I had already written the blog the night before. I would clean it and publish it in the morning, I thought. The trouble was, when morning came, I fiddled with it. I didn’t like it. I changed it. I lost it.

Lost it? What the heck? Where did it go? I searched. I thought I could get my history back. I couldn’t.

After hours of trying, I rewrote the blog, but it didn’t have the enthusiasm of the first. I thought I had it together.  I wanted to get my blog out. I hit publish. Then refused to look at it for two days. But when I did, I screamed bloody murder.

What a mess.

I’m embarrassed.  

I cleaned up my mess, and I’m off again. It will not stop me.

And this brings me to the question I began for this post a few days ago: “Why is it that when someone from the opposite end of the political spectrum from me will say I’ve been lied to, when apparently they've been given the truth?”

We used to expect people to tell us the truth. A liar was soon ignored.

Ignoring or shaming tended to weed out liars. Honest Abe, remember him? Nixon probably would have gotten away with his break-in, but he was caught lying. This administration can lie right to our faces, even with fact-finders right behind him, and half the country doesn’t care.

But half the country does care—you know how a lie will travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. And the people who care are walking the hard road, against constant opposition.

It used to be that we expected reporters to have integrity. Do you know what integrity means? I thought it meant telling the truth, but it actually means speaking within one’s own moral system. Can you believe it? A person with no morals can tell you lies and be within their own integrity.

This shocked the heck out of me.

But this morning, I looked up the word integrity. I found it described basically as I originally thought—to be honest.

Integrity:

• Honesty: A steady refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any situation. [1, 2]
• Consistency: Acting in the exact same ethical manner whether people are watching or not. [1, 2]
• Wholeness: Deriving from the Latin word integer, meaning a state of being whole, complete, and undivided in character. [1, 2]
• Soundness: Maintaining an unimpaired, solid condition, often applied to moral character or physical structures. [1]

 

Do definitions vary? And if it’s from AI, AI knows only what we tell it.

How can it get smarter without the data in the first place? It’s like history. His Story. Written by a man. Recycled by a man. Run through the biases and the thought processes of a man.

 

What if the data is wrong? Whoops.

 

Yesterday an ad caught me. I was curious –a honey cure for Alzheimer's? Only one dollar a day? It can be found in your kitchen? Numerous celebrities, their voices and faces online, claimed that their fuzzyheadedness disappeared within a week. They could remember words again. I looked closely; has this been AI-generated?

The faces didn’t look exactly right. But wouldn’t the media need permission to use people’s faces and voices to sell something? Would celebrities allow that?

Honey is a hot topic these days. It’s good for you; it’s not good for you. Alzheimers is a hot topic; everyone fears it. The fear of losing our memory—now that’s a good distraction.

It isn’t plaque buildup in the brain that causes Alzheimer's, so said this ad, it was something else. Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?

I watched for at least one half hour—it felt like an eternity. That’s one reason I blog—you can read me in two minutes. And if this has any AI content I will jump up and down and scream.

I hate those long commercials that give their credentials, their life story, their research, their conclusions, and then I find that, of course, they had made a world-shaking discovery, something they would sell to you.

Whoops, I told you my horsey life story.  

This particular ad I’m talking about came from substances found on a tiny island with fresh, unspoiled soil, water, and nutrients not found in the US. They believed two minerals found there could soak up the toxic metals we accumulate over time that cause Alzheimer’s. One was found in their wild honey. The other was in their water.

The people raised on the island rarely got Alzheimer’s.  

A picture on the ad showed someone stirring honey.

I saw no kitchen, and no menu.

But I did see a bottle of capsules available for purchase.

How much did they cost?

You had to wait a while until they disclosed that.  

The special price was reduced to about one dollar a day.

They did not mention that confiscating that rare and precious commodity would use it up. I don’t think there is an endless supply of wild honey on a small island.

I wasn’t born yesterday.

But I don’t want to doubt everything either.

This is like the touchstone, said to bring one’s heart’s desire. Legend said you would recognize it by touch, for it was always warm. A person learned it was on a rocky beach, and so he searched, picking up stones to feel their heat. And so, to eliminate the stones he had checked, one by one he threw them into the ocean.

One day he found the stone; it radiated an uncommon heat. It was the touchstone. His arm, however, had become so used to throwing stones that before he could stop himself, he slung it into the ocean.

Sleepy time.

P.S. The ad I mentioned is considered a fraud.  Bill Gates does not have a cure for Alzheimer’s. How can whoever controls our information get away with this?

The Archer

Don’t laugh, but the day before yesterday, for fun, I decided to draw a Moon Card from the online Moon Card site. I got “The Archer.”

That tickled me, for in high school PE I was good at archery. I wasn’t great at sports—I didn’t like them, really—my forte was riding my horse, and in P.E. I liked the trampoline—I guess with both I felt I was flying.

That high school archery excel was a surprise, and it came with a lesson in human behavior.  A student asked, “Why is she so good at archery?” The teacher responded: “Because she has good posture.” A fluke, I guess. I stand straight. I noticed that if you are poor at sports, you are somewhat outside the group. If you are good, you are envied—but then, maybe that’s teenage stuff. 

I don’t think so.

I think it goes into adulthood.

If you are rich, you immediately go up the Awe ladder, but are envied by many.

Here's what the Archery card said:

“She's prepared to face any condition in pursuit of her target, emphasizing resilience and determination. The hillside behind her signifies the long journey she has taken to reach this vantage point, illustrating your own journey to this moment. This card represents your readiness to build the future you want and the motivation to chase your dreams, no matter what challenges arise.”

 

So, put on a leather arm protector, left arm if you’re right-handed, other arm if you’re left-hand dominate. Protect your arm against that whap of a bowstring. That stings. Load your arrow on the bowstring; one finger holds the arrow, the other fingers pull the string.  Pull back until you feel you have reached a strong draw of the bowstring and a bend of the bow. Take aim. Look straight down the arrow. Stand up straight. Release the string.

Twang. Thud.

You hit the straw target, close, but not the bullseye. So, try again.

If you have read any of my other posts, you know that sometimes I shoot wild. Sometimes I rant.  Other times I emphasize the positive. My best shot doesn’t always hit the bullseye.

But today I am revitalized.

Zig Ziglar says: “Some say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we do it daily.”

Yes, I’m motivated to read the book I have owned and loved for more than 30 years.

It had rough treatment. Sorry about that.  It has circled the Pacific Rim with us many times. (for our moves.) It looks ragged, but is much loved, as was the Velveteen Rabbit and thus was made real.  One might think I used that book for target practice; however, if I had used it in place of a bull’s-eye, it would have a hole in its center.

It doesn’t.

Yesterday on Kindle Unlimited, I discovered a book titled The Magic Secret. Narrated and introduced by Mitch Horowitz. Horowitz writes about Clyde Bristol, the author of “The Magic of Believing,” The Science of Setting Your Goal …and then Reaching It.

I knew the pianist Liberace had used something akin to Bristol’s teachings, but I didn't know he praised him wildly for getting his career on track. Liberace, a flaming gay man at a time when that was wildly unpopular, had dreams of playing at the Hollywood Bowl, so to give himself the feeling of doing it, the courage to play his piano there, he found a night when there were no performances, and played his piano—to an audience of one, himself.

He wanted to put himself in that place where he was aiming for his dream, to feel it, to embrace it, to make himself believe his heart’s desire was possible. You know how athletes look at the result, the ball in the pocket, in the hoop, over the wall.

Eventually he played there to an audience of thousands. And you know that his flamboyant self was eventually covered with diamonds.

Phyllis Diller, another of Bristol’s aficionados,was not a beautiful, or a starlet, and she had a voice that could scratch records, but through her own mindset. effort and talent, she became wildly popular, including sitting in for Johnny Carson.

They had it, they used it, they got it.

Clyde Bistrol earned his writing chops—clear, succinct, on-target writing—as a Police reporter; think fast, get the facts straight, move on. He wrote not as an occultist, a spiritual teacher, or a scientist, but as a reporter. He was in the First World War and sent to France. He was a Grunt, carrying ammunition for the soldiers. Because of a mix-up, he wasn’t getting his salary. The military fed him, clothed him, and gave him a bed on the ground, but he had no money to spend. He began to envy the other soldiers who could light up a cigarette or throw away a gum wrapper. He vowed never to be in that situation again. Spurred to action, he studied and found The Magic of Believing, and has been praised for sharing what he found when others would have kept it a secret.

And so, dear ones, I shall open my poor yellowed pages of Bristol’s book The Magic of Believing, and begin to read it all over again, a book I have owned and loved for more than 30 years.

Five-thirty this morning: I'm reading Bristol's book, with love sleeping at the foot of my bed. 

Bristol writes,

“I am cognizant of the fact that there are powerful forces at work in this country that would dominate us, substituting a kind of regimentation for the competitive system which has made America great among nations. The world attempts to destroy individual thinking and initiative, cherished ever since our Pilgrim Fathers established this country in defiance of the world's tyranny. I believe that we must continue to retain the wealth of spirit of our forefathers, for if we did not, we shall find ourselves dominated in everything we do by a mighty few and shall become serfs in fact if not in name. Thus, this work is written also to help develop individual thinking and doing.”

“Since the beginning of man there have been two great subtle forces in the world—good and evil. Both are terrifically powerful in their respective scopes and cycles. The basic principle operating both is mind power. Massed mind power.

“Sometimes evil appears to have the upper hand. And at other times good is in control. It is power that builds empires, and now we have seen how it can be used to destroy them—history is recording the facts.” –[Written in 1967]

“THEREFORE TAKE GOOD CARE THAT YOU DO NOT MISUSE THE SCIENCE OF “MIND STUFF.” I cannot emphasize this too strongly. For if you employ it for harmful or evil purposes, it will boomerang and destroy you just as it has others down through the centuries. These are not idle words, but solemn words of warning.”

I have long believed that our Present President has been using mind stuff to get where he is, perhaps not intentionally, but through his belief system. He grew up feeling entitled. He never knew what it was to struggle or be poor. He got what he wanted, when he wanted, because he wanted it.

He set up the system to support himself. He gave himself almost complete power—never has a president had that, nor should they. He stacked the cabinet with cohorts who backed him. He has tried to silence all opposition: the media, the comedians who, since George Washington’s time, have used humor to make political comments, and Politicians were fair game; it was part of the deal. Not anymore. He gave us a preview of what was to come, but few noticed or cared.

He seems to believe without doubt. He runs roughshod over his people.

Thinking people doubt and question themselves; that’s the reason strong evil intent is so dangerous. They do not question their motives.

But notice, the great commander-in-chief is crumbling. To stop him, attack his belief system. He behaves as though he is above the law. He acts without restraint. If he is restrained, he throws a tantrum like a two-year-old. His yes-people run to his defense.

Don’t tolerate such behavior.

Stop tolerating his behavior--tearing down the white house to build a ballroom. Try getting a building permit, folks.

Stop tolerating that he can bomb another country without permission from Congress, clearly against the Constitution that he vowed to uphold. Vows? Apparently they mean nothing to him. We the people have been lied to, given false information, and had information withheld for so long that our brains are scrambled. That’s intentional, folks. Keep the masses confused, then swoop in and steal them blind.

He thinks, apparently, that he can do whatever he wants.

We say, “No, you can’t. Remember, you work for us.”

All other presidents had checks and balances. He wants none. Replace his belief system with another one.

It is up to us.

Notice he wants adoration, so don’t give it to him.

He wants loyalty above all else. Don’t do it.

If he doesn’t get his way, he throws a tantrum. Ignore it.

And keep the insults coming. He wants to be adored. Opposition will break down his resolve.

We can do it.

Take aim, folks.

I love you guys,

Jo

Yea! Look What Happened at the Kennedy Center

 

 People showed up by the thousands after the US President threw a hissy fit because a judge wouldn’t let him put his name on it and threatened to tear it down. 

You fabulous people, you joined hands and formed a ring around the center. You cheered; a choir sang. You are the ones to make a brighter day.

You guys rock. Someone planned that event. Thank you.

I found this on God's Substack post this morning.

Praise be to God.

  

https://www.thegodshow.com/

Want to Hang Out?

 

I’m coming. Really, I am.

What are you guys up to?

I am eternally grateful for you hanging with me. I see page views. I'm almost up to two million views, so you guys are out there. Thank you, thank you.  

When you come, I will write.

I have confessed this before, but it comes up for me every once in a while. You know how a comment, even an off-hand one, especially from someone of authority, can get stuck in your craw? You push it aside. You try to ignore it, even counter it with logic and reasonableness, but it keeps raising its ugly head.

(Well crap, why do we give people power over us?)

This comment came from a psychiatrist; remember when we thought they were so smart and had insight into our behaviors, as if they could see into our soul? Well, that’s plain dumb. They are people.

That psychiatrist commented after I quoted someone I had read and liked, “Writing is self-aggrandizement.”

I couldn’t believe it. Obviously, he disagreed with the author, but I was too young, too immature, too intimidated to take him on, so I let it fester.  He had besmirched all of literature, novels, research papers, etc. How in the world did he get through school anyway? Even if our history is wrong, an opinion of it is there in books. We can question it. We can revise it. We can wonder about it. Theology is there. Archaeology is there, Geology, how our Earth was formed.  And medicine, oh, I could go on and on. Books are our stepping stones.

(Oh, that book was written by a peer. That explains it.)

However, I let that comment get to me. And this was before I decided to be a writer—my second child hadn’t even been born yet. And I decided to write when she was six years old, in the first grade. I had time then, for I drove my two girls 45 minutes to school and picked them up in the afternoon. (They are still mad at me for the many times I was late picking them up.)  

After dropping my kids off, I would stop at McDonald’s, have a coffee and an orange juice, and write. Hey, there was a bathroom in McDonald's. Many days I stayed in town instead of making the drive home and back.

That jab of self-aggrandizement came up for me again this week, spurred to the front of my brain by one of those books I mentioned in the last blog, Julia Cameron’s book, "The Right to Write."

Two things are going on, more probably, but let’s go with two:

One is, I think many of us writers feel we are indulging ourselves- maybe not Hemingway, who felt writing was opening a vein, but then he shot himself, so maybe he wasn’t too healthy.

You must have some ego to put yourself out there.

Second, I’m mad at myself for being intimidated by that psychiatrist. I felt he knew more than I did. Yeah, like in his little corner of the world. I’ve learned a lot since then.

See, here I am l writing out my feelings on the page. Natalie Goldberg is right; writing is therapeutic. That’s the reason some of us write. And it is our self-expression, and our creativity. (Maybe that’s one reason I am mad at the psychiatrist; he was shutting us down with shame.)  

I am living with my novel, which took a right turn this week. I decided one of the characters was boring; SLASH, off with the old, on with a new. I’m the God of the page. I’m having fun. I hope a reader will too.

 That’s the idea. There is too much doom and gloom these days. God almighty, it’s enough to drive a person to drink.

Okay, back to writing: Are you a writer? I have read many books on writing: Ray Bradbury, Steven King, Ernest Hemingway, oh, and Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon; that man is a genius, a breath of fresh air. (Sorry, folks, nothing is original. Kleon emphasized it. However, your expression, your take on it is.) My all-time favorite writers on writing are these three: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

I began painting the Tiny House this week. It’s sunny today. I will go out and do a bit more after this. I nudged my painter person, but got no response, so I began painting it myself. I want to sell this house and get it out of our driveway. My doctor ordered me not to work over my head, like painting. I thought, that’s the one thing I’m likely to do.

I will have to jack myself up or leave only the bottom painted.

See ya later,

Love and write to me.

Jo

P.S. You know about the slogan, "Write drunk, edit sober." Don't take that literally. It means write with wild abandon, edit it with sanity.

These Are the Champions

 

As I watched Opi, sweet Obi, our cat, old and frail and growing thinner by the day, lick the light stream of water from the kitchen faucet—he likes his water fresh and flowing—I knew he would soon leave us and join Zoom Zoom, the cat who traveled to and from Hawaii with us. Zoom Zoom spent the better part of a year on my desk, getting off only to use the litter box—thank heavens for that. He even ate on the desk. (I had a long, wrap-around-the-corner one.) Those wild pigs that marauded in the night were more than he could handle. A mouse that big? No way.

Zoom Zoom and Opi--a desk can get really crowded.

In Eugene, Oregon, a group of five women, a like-minded group, who had similar spiritual understandings, studied ancient mysteries, went to lunch together, celebrated birthdays, and parties where we dressed up. Someone sang or recited a poem they had written.

Now there is only one—me.

Those women walked the earth; they lived their lives—some lost spouses, some divorced, one remarried—they raised their kids, and developed their place on the Spiritual platform of life. One taught us how to die; she knew it was time, she stopped eating and died.

Joy dropped from them like diamonds.

I will be forever grateful to have known them.

You’ve heard of the butterfly effect.  Ray Bradbury wrote of it in a short story. Arrogant time travelers went back to the dawn of life on this planet to see dinosaurs.  One person slipped from the wooden pathway that kept curious onlookers from disturbing the ecological system and accidentally crushed a butterfly. That small step altered history forever.

We don’t know how we affect the people around us—the air, the water, the plants, the animals, the planet.

What did John F Kennedy say?

"Our problems are man-made; therefore, they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings."

See why there was such hope then? See why the young people rushed from their college studies to join the Peace Corps? See why we believed we could send a man to the moon?

We had excitement. We had hope.

 

Well, it’s been a wet week in Junction City. And I had been putting off painting the Tiny House because it was too hot to paint outside. You could call it Resistance, procrastination, or "I don’t want to do that," but I committed to doing it.  We debated about the color. I couldn’t find one I liked. Okay, we agreed on a color.  I bought the paint, brushes, roller, long handle, and the following day it rained. For three days it rained.

I negotiated with someone to paint it for me, for it has a high peak, and I’m not so steady on a ladder anymore. I’m not ready to join my friends on the other side.

It isn’t painted yet.

And then yesterday, old friends came in the form of BOOKS. Daughter Dear came into my office carrying a box, and asked, “Do you want a box of your old books?

“Sure,” I said, not knowing that they had been buried with my husband’s old research materials and shop supplies.

Wow! What a find!  There's that Orchid lei book my son-in-law gave me for Christmas in Hawaii. I had looked all over for that book, but not in the right place, obviously. There was the Kumulipo, A Hawaiian Creation Chant, translated and edited with commentary by Martha Warren Beckwith.  I excitedly found that book in a bookshop in Hawaii years before we moved there. I knew it existed and never thought I would have one. Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg, one of the all-time great writers on writing, and Seabisquit by Laura Hittenbrand. What a writer! The first paragraph in the Preface of Seabisquit has my vote for being the best written:

“In 1938. Near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini. It wasn’t the Pope Pius XI, nor was it Lou Gehrig, Howard Hughes, or Clark Gable. The subject of the most newspaper column inches in 1938 wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse named Seabiscuit.”

“In the latter half of the Depression, Seabiscuit was nothing short of a cultural icon in America, enjoying adulation so intense and broad-based that it transcended sport. When he raced, his fans choked local roads, poured out of special cross-country “Seabiscuit Limited” trains, packed hotels, and cleaned out restaurants.”—Laura Hiittenbrand.

And you know I love horses.

Diamonds appear all around us while we feel hamstrung by a man who wants to rename New Mexico for heaven’s sake. He’s like a bird who steals other birds’ eggs or an old dog who pees on everything and says, “Mine, mine, mine.”

 

"Our problems are man-made; therefore, they may be solved by man.”

We need a champion like Seabiscuit, who helped people out of the depression.

Any volunteers?

I love you guys. 💗Thank you for the honor of your attention.

 

P.S. Why are the cats champions? Because they brought us joy.

How About the Price of Those Eggs?

 

Or...

The good, the bad, and well, what I’m doing.

You know how we have had a long record of wrongs the President and his cohorts have done to harm this country and alienate our allies. Now you know he is changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America; how insulting is that?!

Well, that isn’t what I want to write about.

Notice that we don’t see much about the Epstein files anymore—he has done a good job turning our attention away from those.

I didn’t want to write about those either.

After committing absurdity after absurdity that would take pages to enumerate, and you guys know them already anyway, he is now setting the stage as he did before the last two Presidential elections, making us doubt the legitimacy of any election where he is not the winner. And look what he is doing with AI, portraying himself pumped up, then insulting his opponents. They are as fake as his qualifications for being the Chief of this country.

And the Republican Party is holding on by the skin of its teeth. Don’t you wonder why?

Ha ha. “Money makes the world go round.”

 

Sometimes we need to shut up and let a picture tell the story.

This is from Robert Reich’s Substack post:

$594 million in 2017 from his own endeavors.

$ 2.24 billion after he became president.

How do you like the price of those eggs?

Holy Schmoley!

A Reprieve:

Saturday: My daughter, grandson, and I visited a farm where she chose two baby goats to be Daughter Dear’s in the middle of September. 

I sat on a pile of pallets, and one little female goat climbed onto my lap and slept while Daughter Dear talked with the owner. She will be getting neutered males, gently neutered, using rubber bands. All the females were already reserved.

Neutered males are called wethers, and they are gentle and lovable; we know because we had two when we lived in the forest of Oregon. 

Here are two little females we bottle-fed in Hawaii:

All our goats kept the brush around the house cleared. All were free-range because we had the room. The goats we will get this time will need to be penned. Too bad, but necessary.

We hear goats love to eat blackberry vines, and blackberry vines are taking over the back portion of the property. Husband dear had cut them a few months ago, but the vines loved their hair cutting so much they broke out in song and grew new stalks.

I won’t use poison on them—and they know it.

Goats to the rescue. We have an extra wild area behind the outbuilding behind our backyard we call the Wayback, where I have my office and where I am writing to you right now.

My Saturday lap baby wasn’t for sale. The young man who ran the farm adopted her. She was the third of triplets to be born. Two larger, stronger males were born before her, and the mother said, “That’s enough,” and focused on the strong ones. Her adopted dad takes her into the house at night, and she sleeps on his lap.

I was recharged on the farm. I felt its peacefulness the moment I stepped out of the car.

Back to Writing:

For the last couple of weeks, I had been rewriting old stories, editing, and submitting some to agents with no responses, but I had a brilliant idea.

“You need to write a new book.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, write about things working instead of things not working.”

You know that people loved Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield—it sold a kazillion copies.

You know that people loved Robert Fulghum’s “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?” It was on the New York Times List for almost two Years.  

So, see, people do like uplifting stories. Yes, yes, I know, those were non-fiction. I am talking about fiction.

It doesn’t matter; it tells me people want to believe in good, to see the world as a safe place, to realize life has its struggles, yet to hold an idea such as W. Clement Stone had when he said, “I believe God is a reverse pessimist; He conspires to do me good.” With fiction, you need conflict, or you have no story—so say the writing gurus. Okay, we’ll see what transpires.  

Then, to give me cause for pause, this week I read a post by an author saying he gave up writing and it almost killed him. He had written a book; it was published and got good reviews, but it didn’t sell.

He was devastated.

He languished in misery. Stopped writing. Took up tennis, and became fanatical with it: lessons, practicing daily,

He didn’t miss writing.

And then it slammed in on him. He did miss it.

So, why am I writing when there are authors far better than me out there?

Because I want to.

So, I began, and for the first 24,000 words it flowed. It felt like the universe was throwing helpers at me.  Amazing people (fictitious) appeared on the road to somewhere.

 

Elevator pitch for “No Working Title:”

“Fifteen-year-old Josie is on the run—no folks, her 92-year-old grandmother has died, so with a GED, a driver’s learner’s permit, and being an emancipated teenager, she and her dog, Zeus, climb into Grandmother’s pickup and aim for parts unknown.”

 

P.S. Josie grows up.

Listen. What'a Ya Think?

 

“There’s something happening here / But what it is ain’t exactly clear...”

 “I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound? / Everybody look what’s going down”

These are the lyrics to this 1966 protest song by Buffalo Springfield, written by Stephen Stills. It describes the tension and paranoia of the Sunset Strip riots. It is titled For What’s It’s Worth, but identified as ‘There’s something happening here.”

“There’s battle lines being drawn / Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong...”

“We better stop, hey, what’s that sound? / Everybody look what’s going down.”

*I give praise to Leigh Horne’s brilliance as a writer on Substack. She posted the lyrics to that song. Thanks, Horne, you gave me hope that things are a changing.

Yesterday I started to write this blog—I was griping about apps. Apps here, apps there, everywhere an app app.  Even coffee kiosks want you to order using an app. I was complaining because I called a company by phone—hey, the number was listed on their ad, but they asked me if I had an app. I think I did because I use their phone service, but I had never used it and didn’t know my 15-word code. They offered to guide me through it. Sometimes we want guidance. I just wanted to ask a question.

I graciously excused myself, but didn’t feel gracious.

I think I’m becoming a Curmudgeon. I’m fried like half the country.

You know how events, like technology, come along and we are so excited with them, take cell phones. What a wonderful invention. And then we have to limit their use because young people become so addicted it takes over their life.

Once, when I was a teenager, my boyfriend and I took a drive into a forest in Oregon. We had taken a logging load. I had used my folks’ car, and I got it stuck. Try as we might, we couldn’t dislodge that vehicle. So, we walked home—half the night, all the while thinking that any strange sound, a snap or a crunch, was a cougar stalking us.

We made it to a pay phone and called my folks, who still had a phone attached to the wall by a cord. (Everybody did.) My dad drove out with us the following day and got the car out easily. It’s a good thing we remembered where we had left it.

My point?

Sometimes technology is really handy. Except we are left wondering if it will save us or swallow us.

One of my favorite quotes is by the poet William Cowper. “To find the medium takes some share of wit, so tis a mark fools seldom hit.”

We’re impatient, fed up, irritated, and probably intentionally driven crazy. Of course, I am speaking for myself, but it feels right for about half the country. And I see how some people hold so tenaciously to their beliefs that wild horses couldn’t drag it out of them. But then why would wild horses want to drag anything? They want to be free. Human or critter, no one wants to be a slave.

Another take from Horne is her comment on Angie Nixon, whom she didn’t know about, nor did I, until she won the Democratic Primary for the US Senate in Florida.

“Just wow,” said Horne after she listened to Nixon being interviewed. “This young working mother and public-spirited volunteer for social justice just blew me away.”  

“Nixon is a single working mother and is now a stepmother. She is down to earth, smart, informed, and above all unafraid to listen to and otherwise engage with the people she wants to represent in Congress. The fact that she’s black is another plus.” Horne, a certifiably white person, says, "Black people, of necessity and through no choice of their own, have always understood the nature of oppression and their oppressors. And it’s about time we fully recognized that they have a whole lot to teach us about not only how to resist them, but how to take care of themselves and each other on the long, long road to freedom and dignity.”

P.S. William Cowper wrote, among many other poems and songs, “Amazing Grace,” and “The Negro’s Complaint,” 1788.