Weather Winter

What a crazy few days it has been with the weather.
Temps were near or at 70 over the weekend.  Today I don't think we got out of the forties.

Terrible storms Sunday night, just terrible.
Not as bad, here, as it was west of us. Here, we had a few doppler-indicated tornadoes, and there were a few hysterics who saw funnel clouds in the pitch dark and through pouring rain.
In Illinois and Indiana, there were real, visible, man-eating home-wrecking horrific tornadoes. The destruction is -- there are no words.
One air view of the path, you can see that there were several lottle twisters from one storm cloud/ base, whatever you call it. Like massaging fingers from a massive hand, reaching, seeking, pinching, squashing.

Here we had lots of strong winds and heavy rain.

And Tammy and her babies live in a trailer in a trailer park. I had taken Hailey home not many hours earlier.
I was worried about them, as always, but it seemed there was even less than usual to do. I turned the tvs on weather channels and local channels, and kept an eye on the approaching storm, by going in and out on the porch.
But I was afraid in the Old Way, of the storms that I can't stop and can't do anything about.
Who knew Rex sitting in his chair telling me to stay inside was such a fear diffuser? I missed him so, when I wasn't being a quaking coward.
And sometimes even when I was.

Now it is cold, and getting colder. True winter temperatures are supposed to arrive over the next few days, with snow on or by the weekend. We've already had one ground covering snowfall, and a brief cold snap.

And in between these winter weather advance-and-retreat maneuvers, my precious rosebush is sporting a bud from a died-back limb. A perfect teardrop of a rosebud, where there was no green or no growth, and where the very weather itself was against anything growing, let alone blooming.

Even as  winter comes, there can be a flowering.
Even then.

Rewriting the Romance

You don't really realize how much the romance genre  has changed unless you read older, beginner volumes. I don't mean classics like "Emma," or "Wuthering Heights." I am talking about Harlequin, Avon, Silhouette, and similar or related publishers.

Sometime in the last 25 or so years, the genre boomed or bloomed. The word you choose depends on your outlook.

Back in the beginning of the popular romance novel, the girls were all innocent virgins, sometimes with mercenary boyfriends/fiances/fathers. The men were hard appearing but poor misunderstood souls. The girls were secretaries, nurses, or helpless daughters, sisters, orphans; the men were company owners, doctors, womanizers. The girls (not women) were victims; the men (not boys) were rescuing heroes.

It was the beginning of the cliches for the public.

In these older stories, the men often kidnapped the girls. The Rape Fantasy was a really popular plotline, although it wasn't called that. In fact, in those days, it wasn't even recognized as any form of rape. The man, usually 'foreigners' would whisk their innocent victim away -- or finagle her into consent -- and the next thing you know, she's madly in love with him, supposedly for the rest of her life.
They had never heard of the Stockholm Syndrome in those days, either.

I'd like to think there have been changes. There have been changes. The girls are allowed to be women now, and even be sexually experienced. The women are allowed to be the professionals, the bosses. The men are allowed to have emotions. They are allowed to discuss their emotions.

They still resort to kidnapping and blackmail to force submission as an expression of true love, but those stories are becoming less frequent and are usually enriched with/by character development. Thank God for that. Stockholm syndrome and rape fantasies aside, I never had much respect for those so-called heroines, and phony heroes.

Now, most romances are written with a modern approach to factors like jobs, family, past, and future. Even romances set in the past are fuller.

But it's a lesson to the writers -- at least to this writer -- to take a peek at the past. To read how we've changed our expectations as readers. To appreciate the simple baby steps that led us into walking, running, driving, and flying away from the one dimensional to the three dimensional. In fact, some romances these days often venture into the fourth dimension. (How exciting is that!?)

I am sure glad that those stories have faded into the past. I don't like them.
I don't like a lot of things in my own personal past, either.
Liking does not equal learning, and that is what we are supposed to do as we grow.

Love gives us roots to grow and wings to fly.
So can romance.