Natural Writing

I enjoy writing my blogs.

Of course, I like writing. It's as natural to me as breathing, and as necessary.

That's not a bad comparison. Over time, we sometimes have to train our breathing back to its easy, natural state. We begin to breathe more shallowly as soon as we begin to talk. We star gulping air into our stomachs instead of our lungs as soon as we begin to eat -- and that starts pretty soon. We hold our breath to get into clothes, we remodel our insides, squashing our lungs, cramping our diaphragm, to conform in our appearance.

Soon, we are no longer breathing naturally, although it is adequately for our survival. We go to doctors, we take exercise classes, we learn yoga. We do these things to get back to the natural and easy way of breathing.

Learning to breathe correctly is not easy, after years of doing it wrong and years of lazy breathing. It feels unnatural, to push out our stomachs as we breathe in. It's painful to fully expand the ribcage. It takes training, work, and lots of practice.
Aching muscles and sore abs and later on, we are improved by the improved oxygenation in our blood. We look better, we feel better, we are better.

It's not enough to breathe. We need to breathe correctly to be at our best.

This helps explain why a natural talent for writing isn't always enough. We may have the words flood and flow through our brains, tremble off our fingertips, but it just isn't enough. The words have to come out in proper order, in proper form, to be what they should be.

We need to write correctly to be at our best.

There are people who think that writing cannot be taught, that there is no need for training or practice.
There are people who think that the only good writing is easy writing.

Writing, they think, should be as natural as breathing.

Food

A discussion last night on Facebook about food got me thinking about -- you guessed it, food. The discussion started with an innocent (I assume) question: Do you have any family food stories?
The answers came slowly at first, and were about a word here a misunderstanding there, and then one person's memory sparked something that happened in another family, and the conversation was up and running.

I think everyone has food memories. That's why there is such a thing as comfort food. Every family has food memories, and possibly even food fights. Somebody changed a recipe. To an aunt this change is a delightful discovery; to a sibling it's an act of sacrilege; to an in-law it's a who-cares issue.

Food mobilizes us in a way other things don't. The only other thing as stirring (hee hee) is, in fact, family. Oh, we can get upset over our love life -- or someone else's. We can worry about a roof overhead and room mate issues, even money matters can make us crazy. But not even money has the emotional impact of food and family.

Our first urge is to find food. After the ordeal of being born, we start sucking. We want fed.
And so we go through life. We want our bodies fed, we want our minds fed, we want our sould fed, we want our spirit fed.

While we are feeding our minds we ate milk and cookies, or thought about them. Most churches have communion service on a regular basis. While this is admittedly no great feast for the body, it shows the importance of food. Primitive rituals like breaking bread or sharing salt are important.

As important now, in the land of too much and the time of too many, as when they meant friend or foe.

Nowadays our emphasis is on not eating too much, or too much of the wrong things. It's important to keep in mind, though, that eating is an imperative we are born with. We can't change that.

Why not "Go Gently"?

More and more people are mindlessly chanting"Do not go gently" as if there is some special virtue in fighting on endlessly and senselessly, and futilely, as the end is, at some time, inevitable. It seems as if the only thing that matters is to fight, never mind quality of life or even if there's any reason to fight on.

Now, I am not advocating a 'not fight' attitude, either, although there are some who will read only that message in what I say. In fighting the good fight, who decides what is good? And does the 'good fight' refer to weapons, or attitude, or intelligence, or exactly what? What makes the fight good?

I'm not saying that anyone should just quit. No one should go without trying. But I am in no one's head or heart or soul -- I don't know what their struggles have been. I don't know that they didn't fight. There are reasons to lay down the weapons.

Is no one allowed to become fatigued? If someone chooses to go to sleep, are they chickening out by going gently? If one has struggled all life long, is it a requirement to continue fighting, even though the only fight is to keep fighting?

What of terminal illnesses? What if it's all been done, but the disease remains?

No one knows what anyone else's fight has been. They may think they do, they may have seen this or that part of the fight, but they don't know. They can't know. There's truth in the saying that we all die alone.

The "Do not go gently" has become so ingrained in our culture, that hospice workers and other death attendants have to advise people to tell their loved ones "It's okay. You can go." Without this permission from their loved ones, people will stay beyond their need. They will suffer. They will endure. They will fight on, although the time of succeeding has passed.

When I go, I hope that I do indeed go gently. I would not want my family, my children to have to watch my death throes, maybe for years and years. Maybe even my body living on long after my Presence has gone from it.

When that happens, this will be my prayer.

Now I lay me Down to Sleep.
A Peaceful Passing let me keep.
I will 'go gently into that good night'
I have finished with the fight.

Should RDA be RYA?

The experts are quick to blame our expanding waistlines and backsides on a lot of things, including sedentary lifetimes and overprocessed foods.

It never seems to occur to them that it may be their advice that's stuffing us.

Some commercials once came close to addressing this problem, showing people pulling and tugging overloaded groceries carts of broccoli commenting about how much of this you have to get to get the RDA (Recommended Daily Allotment) of a specific nutrient.

The truth is, no one can get ALL the RDA nutrients, even if they eat all day every day and eat only 'good' food.

The RDA is something created by statisticians. In some laboratory somewhere, after months and years of study, it was discovered that if people eat nutritionum monthly, they won't fall ill fron nutritionum deficiency. However, a medium sized person has to ingest a medium sized portion. One applies math and realizes that this amounts to 30portion sizes per pound (pspp). If you extend the math out, that means that in a month, the person needs 1 pspp per day. Then the body won't have to store anything, if you just eat your 1 pspp per day.

They are forgetting that the human body was made to store nutrients. That's what's making us all fat. Our bodies just keep on doing their job no matter how hard we make them work to do so.

Let's forget RDA. If we can't do it right away, maybe we can try for RWA -- a weekly dose of what we don't need every day.

Humans are adapted -- or were -- to live in a seasonal world. Fruits in the summer, veggies whenever they can be found, meat when it is available. Many a person living some form of vegetarianism will tell you -- you don't need all that 'stuff'\.' You don't need vitamins if you eat right.

If you do eat by the charts, even cutting out fats and processed foods, you will still get fat and your body will still take early retirement because of overwork.

Don't eat well -- eat REAL.
And heal.

Another Good-Bye

Dick Clark died today.
Davy Jones died a few weeks ago.
Mike Wallace.
Whitney Houston.
Thomas Kinkade.
Before that, someone else.

Of course, people die every day, just as people are born every day. Deaths of celebrities really have small meaning in the real lives of real people, except that they give us pause. A pause to remember a time in our lives when they were that important, perhaps, or just a pause to acknowledge that, hey, they did something with their lives. They made multiple lives better, somehow.

Of course their contributions are no greater than the lives of a grandfather succumbing to age -- Alzheimer has already stolen his mind and heart. The loss of a celebrity has less meaning than the loss of a young bald woman leaving behind children and one more clue in the fight against cancer. No celebrity death touches that of a  death in utero.

2012 has already had more than its share of celebrity deaths, or so it seems.

2012 is supposed to be the end of the world, according to ancient Mayans. They even predicted an exact date, in spite of our completely incompatible calendars and the many changes we've made to ours over the years.

There's a theory that the end of the world could be the end of the world as we know it.

As our artists and entertainers and informers die off, one by one, we know there may be something to that. The leaders of one of the greatest eras of entertainment are dying off, and We Who Made Them Great must mourn, and know that it will be our turn, one turn sooner than we'd thought.

Bygone Books

Just last week, I found an original publishment of Mystery Ranch, a "Boxcar Children" book. It was dated 1958 and it has a plain hardcover. It's just a beautiful book to have.

I used the word publishment, because I don't want to call it a 'first edition' or 'original run' or anything like that. Those are all official categories, and I don't know if it really qualifies under the formal definitions of those terms.

I have other older books, some equally as original, but mostly not in as good a condition. They are almost all children's books, and children's books are notorious for being either pristine or well-loved (which can mean mangled.)

I used to call these books "My Legacy", but then came tv shows like Pawn Stars to let me know that my legacy isn't really worth much in terms of cash. What a disappointment.

 I'd like to leave my children something of value.

Then my granddaughter sees me reading, goes and gets a book and seats herself beside me in my chair, showing me pictures and asking me questions and turning a page whenever I do, sometimes peeping into my book to see if there are any pictures or Ts or Hs.
She'll snuggle in and the book may drop from her hands.

 My Legacy has plenty of value.

Calling All Offices

Another excursion into the telephoning of the doctors' offices. This time to renew one of my husband's prescriptions. Who knew that it could be such an adventure?

First of all, the advisory that if this is an emergency to hang up and call 911. Think I'm safe there. He still has medicine. I'm calling so he won't run out, not because he has.

A few 'push 1's, and I am at the pharmacy line. Found that confusing at first, since I have a pharmacy. I don't need theirs. It's really too far from home for me. But I guess it was the pharmacy call-out number.

I was advised that if I needed to have a prescription refilled, I was to leave 1) Name 2) birthdate 3) name of medicine 4) dosage 5) name of pharmacy 6) pharmacy phone number 7)my phone number. And a partridge in a pear tree. With its shoe size.

The pesky thing about this is that if I had been talking to a REAL PERSON it wouldn't have taken half the time. They have all that information already, because I had a problem before with the pharmacy and the doctor's office had to call and straighten out the matter.

Name: Operator keys into computer.
Birthdate: Operator ascertains the correct patient of that name.
Meds needed: she reads off list and asks
Pharmacy: Still at ???, # on file,
My #: on file.

Instead, a patient has to read unpronounceable pharmaceutical names, a mish mash of numbers, and hope that they are comprehensible.

Is it really asking too much to have a person handling drug orders? If it is too busy to speak when the call comes in, can't someone just do callbacks to the patient later? Isn't someone going to check the records anyway?

How many people have been put at risk because of this system with its laundry list of things to be left as a message? What if the patient misreads the dosage? What if the name of the drug sounds like the name of another drug?

It worked for me, and it works for most people, I suppose. They probably wouldn't do it if it wasn't effective. But it's cumbersome and time-consuming, and there is a risk of misunderstanding. That worries me.

It should worry them.

What's a Season? TV

What is a season on tv these days? It used to be 26 weeks, with a holiday break and a summer of reruns. Then they went to "summer replacement" shows. Then one of the new networks -- Fox or UPN or WB -- invented first run summer series with, I think, one of the teen soaps.

Since then the definition of a season has become looser to the point that it is no longer a definition.

I blame reality TV. Cable channels have flooded the market with what I call snippet shows. Operation Repo, Deputy Butterbean, Bad Girls Club. They are about something and have engaging characters (sometimes) but there are no storylines and no plots or plot development. The producers film and snip together a whole bunch of bits of this and pieces of that to fit the tome format, then release all the edited material to whatever network is airing them.

The network then begins their hype. "New Season" "Season Premiere" "New (title)"
They will show two or three or four  episodes at a time, and so three months of programming may be used up within four weeks.

Then the new season is all of a month old before it is over and back to reruns.

That's a month, not a season.

Sadly, the over-the-airwaves networks have picked up on this trend. We are currently getting a half and half mixture of old and new shows on our regular series. The networks don't seem to have recovered from the holiday break this year. I never know (until I read the Guide) whether the show I am following will be new programming, or something old and tired that has probably been on twice since Christmas.
Not an impressive build-up to season finale/cliffhangers.

Now, I don't mind that they do this. It's their programming, and their business which they can run however they want. That is their business.

But they shouldn't advertise the "all new season" as starting, show two new programs and three weeks of reruns, then two new and three old again. Even three new and one old doesn't merit being touted as an "all new season" because, you see. it isn't ALL new.

I'll just watch the shows on cable, where I already know they are ALL reruns, and no one is lying about seasons.

Accidents in the News

Local stations are all streaming "Breaking News" of an accident in our area -- an accident that has had the coroner called to the scene. That's not something that happens much out this way, in the rural areas east of Cincinnati.

This news always makes me sit up and pay attention. It's unlikely to be anyone close to me. It could be someone I know. In all likelihood, the victims are known to someone I know, and I ache for their bad news, for their loss.

Even when it is not someone known, I hold my breath and wait to know the names. While I wait, I pray, I pray for the families of the victim -- and I pray that I am not a member of that family. I pray for survivors, and I pray that no one's recovery is impeded by guilt. I pray for those in traffic, and hope they do not have children waiting and wondering at home and alone for them. I pray for those who react and respond, and have to deal with the crumpled cars and flattened bodies and the mixtures of blood and oil and fuel.

When I hear of these accidents, I pray.
I pray hard.

This time, it may not affect me. I pray thanks for that, but I can't forget how the waiting for news feels. I know someone is getting that call, and I know they are hurting. I know someone close who got that call. I know others who have got that call.


I cannot help the unknown sufferers, and probably can't help even if I know them.
But I can pray for them, light a candle, send out comfort and loving.

When I hear of an accident, I pray.
Hard.

The Summer Sunday Parade

Wrote this a couple years ago; it's a personal favorite. And while it is Easter weekend this year, not Memorial Day, the brrooomms and bzzzes of the neighborhood, raised voices and banging doors makes this selection seem appropriate for Now. I hope you enjoy reading this.

The Summer Sunday Parade

It's quiet in my part of the world today. A peaceful, storybook Sunday morning. So far. But this weekend is the unofficial first weekend of summer, and the 'parade' has already begun,
Not the parades that will be tomorrow -- those are official things, but along with the unofficial meaning of Memorial Day, comes the unofficial parades.
Every town has not only its own traditions, but also its own little habits. Winchester Ohio has one that I've not seen before.

Like most small Ohio towns, Winchester has one gas station and a half- dozen or so churches. The Sunday morning peacefulness is due in large part to these churches. Parking lots overflow, the curbs are 'fully loaded' yet there are no people anywhere, not even annoying loud-mouths on (or off) their skateboards, standing in the middle of the streets blocking traffic.

On Sunday, even the lawn mowers have a peaceful hum. And everyone knows that, because Sunday afternoon in Winchester is the time to take your lawn mower to the gas station. Not take. Sunday afternoons are when we drive our lawn mowers to the gas station.

Yes, the Summer Sunday parade has begun. Church is out, dinner has been eaten, and it's time to fill up the lawn mower for the week ahead. All afternoon, I can sit on my porch and watch as they trickle by. Even with gas over $4 a gallon, it's easier to take out the lawn mower than take out the gas can, put it in car, drive the car, take gas can out of trunk, fuill it up, put back in trunk, drive home, take can out and empty into mower. Besides, it's much more fun to meander slowly down the road, wave to neighbors, enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.

Impractical, yes.
Energy-concious, not so much.
But, sometimes, life should just be savored, and a Sunday drive on a lawn mower fits that definition just fine.

Serpent's Tooth

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!

That's the proverb, originating, much to my surprise, from Shakespeare. Like many of his quotes, it's become muddled in my head with Biblical shibboleths, probably because both employ the same language.

A serpent's tooth? Really? Is that the worst most piercing pain Shakespeare could think of, or his contemporaries imagine? I've never been snake bit, so I really shouldn't comment, but I really think there are or were worse pains.

And a thankless child? Does one expect gratitude from one's children? Is that the epitome of parenting? That your child be thankful?

Truly, that's a good start. A gratitude attitude is usually a good thing, and something a parent wants to instill in the psyche of the little mind and heart entrusted to them.

There are things more important than gratitude. A selflessness. Consideration of others. Work ethic, or perhaps any ethics at all. Cleanliness. Independence.

Thankfulness is nice, and if the other things fall into place, it will be there. But Gratitude is not high on my list of priorities.


Many a parent would be glad to forgo the thanks to have their child returned whole and healthy.

Many a parent would forgo the thanks to have their child free and functioning.

Many a parent would forgo the thanks to have their child not shame and embarrass them in front of friends, family, and the world in general.

How did it ever get started that ingratitude is the hallmark of a dysfunctional parent/child symbiosis?