Dancing With a Morning Breeze

This is my contribution to the April Write Stuff Creative Carnival. The prompt was luck.

Some Thursday Thirteen participants may recognize the characters from my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld which I featured in TT #13. The following was a scene extracted from Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes. a story some 16,000 words long. I can't really call it an excerpt as I completely rewrote a 2000 word section in order to bring it in under the 1000 word limit, to excise stuff that made no sense without previous or future scenes, to add clarification when excising would do violence to this story and to emphasise the theme. I hope that what is left can stand alone, even if only like a brick of Swiss Cheese.

At the very least, it was an interesting exercise.

Enjoy.

Dancing With a Morning Breeze
by Joy Renee

Faye paces under the jaundiced glow of the sodium vapor lamp. Wilma and Julia cast nervous glances her way from the bus stop bench, but neither ventures to reprove her. The three have waited in tense silence since calling the police. Faye goes to the gate to peer up the driveway that slithered into the cavernous dark, gravid with threats to small girls and from there to the road to peer into the black maw of the highway as though her anxious peering into the night might materialize Briana out of the fulvous shadows.

She clutched the foamy body of Dollbaby to her breast, breathing incoherent words that seemed to be both prayer and incantation. “Let her be alive. Let her be safe.” Her eyes groped among undulating shadows for the form of a small child agile with joy, swinging on the gate, dancing with the morning breeze.

The lights came like sudden ice freezing Faye in place to stare at the coils of light drawn on the dark, at the vaguely ambulance shaped nimbus, with time to think, Not the police, before it spawned a light bedizened apparition that came to her limbs all akimbo screeching, “My baby. My baby.”

Faye stood in feeble-fingered confusion as two arms snake out, encircle Dollbaby and pry her from her grasp.

“Dollbaby!” The voice scolded. “Where’s your sister?”

In a sudden flood of scalding light Faye witnessed a Medusa-headed pixie smothering Dollbaby in hugs and kisses. The light, held aloft by a gnarl-browed man who snugged a mini-cam between cheek and shoulder, enwombed Faye and the pixie, raising shadows like blisters on every surface.

A shadow tucked under an elbow of the tree-tall man detached itself, gliding with elfin grace into the circle of light.

“Jerrica Holms, KWMB.” The voice held the crisp musicality of wind-chimes nudged by a whimsical breeze.

“Faith Fairchild Gardner.”

“Troll and I,” she motioned toward the cameraman. “were supposed to interview Fancy and Cassie about the Rag Dolls.”

“The Rag Dolls?” Faye forced words past lips numb with bewilderment. Julia joined them in the circle of light.

“The Rag Dolls won a state high-school talent contest last week.”

“Yeah.” Fancy added. “Cassie and me, we were jamming in costume--you know, just waiting for Ms. Holms to show--when Breezy come up missing.”

“So.” Jerrica cut in. “We’ve been with Fancy all day. Troll heard over our scanner a car being dispatched here to ‘See the lady regarding missing child.’”

“I made the call.” Julia said. “But Faye may have seen, Briana is it?-- This morning, swinging on the gate as her bus pulled away.”

“Where was the doll?” Jerrica asked.

“Hanging on the gate where Briana put her.” Faye said.

Fancy returned Dollbaby to her perch atop the gate as Troll trained camera and spotlight on it.

There came a sound part chuckle, part sob. Faye turned, recognizing Mae Bea Morgan by her head full of riotous curls, who spoke through lips thin and motionless with the habit of holding a line of straight pins at the ready. “You might think that was the babe herself hanging there.”

A figure near twin to Fancy shivered and clutched her chest. Mae Bea reached an arm around the girl. “No sense borrowing trouble. Soon as Brick Travis gets here with Snoopy we’ll have Breezy back safe as pennies in a wishing well. Nothing bad can befall us Morgan girls. We lead charmed lives.”

Cassie ducked her head as Fancy too slung an arm over her friend’s shoulder. “Like the time Mae lost me in Freddy’s. She went to try on a swimsuit and when she came out, I was nowhere in sight. She ran up and down aisles in every department but grocery, still wearing that swimsuit, mind you.” A fit of giggles set her yarn pigtails aquiver.

“I was headed into grocery when I saw a clerk waving Babydoll over her head requesting a price check. I almost gave some poor ole Gramma a heart attack when I rushed over screaming, ‘My baby, my baby’ Ole Gramma took us to the toy department where she’d found Babydoll and there Fancy was curled up on the shelf, fast asleep between Orphan Annie and Mrs. Beasley. When Granny heard I’d made Babydoll myself she commissioned me to make another and that’s how Rag Doll Babies got started.”

“Yeah.” Fancy said, flipping Dollbaby off the gate and tumbling into her arms. “And where would we be without Rag Doll Babies?’

“The proverbial silver lining.” Faye smiled.

“Or plain dumb luck.” Julia scoffed. “But there’s much to be said for dumb luck. Some people do seem to have it in abundance. It’s enough to make you wonder if we‘re the game pieces of providence..”

“Must you subject us to your inane amphigories?” Wilma snapped.

“Oh, figgeries, chiggeries. You and your lame sniggeries.” Julia taunted.

“Girls!” Faye shamed them and to her amazement, they both hushed.

No one spoke and no one seemed about to. Fancy swayed, humming a mournful lullaby to Dollbaby. Faye recognized “Tears of a Clown.” and meeting her eyes saw irony and self-scorn blooming in them. These were no more the eyes of a child than were her own. Faye knew she was witnessing a cataclysmic event taking place in the soul of this girl who, having managed to conceive, bear, and raise a child to nearly five years of age while never relinquishing her own claims to childhood, was, with the threat of that child’s loss, laying claim to motherhood.

Faye was caught in a moment that seemed to stretch into infinity--a time-slip that held all possible outcomes within its grasp. Briana was out there somewhere and like Schrodinger’s cat she was both alive and dead, both harmed and unharmed. They would either find her or not. Both the grief of her loss and the joy of her recovery were caught in a dynamic dance in the hearts of those who loved her.

Read more...

Save Our Libraries

This is the picture now displayed on the home page of our library system's web site.

There is is a mixture of sadness and anger in our community this week. There is a strong consensus that loss of library access is not good for the community but there is not much consensus on what should be done about it.

The sadness needs little explanation. The anger is a complex cauldron.

Some of the anger is directed at the county officials because of a perception that funds have been mismanaged, or that they dithered too long in creating a replacement for the Federal safety net monies due to expire last year.

Some are angry with the Federal environmental laws and the 'loony tree-huggers' who filed suit after suit over the years to stop the logging on the Federal lands which was providing the income for the rural counties that then needed to be replaced with the 'safety net' money known as the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self Determination Act which expired in December when Congress failed to renew it.

Some are angry because they perceive the library closures as a blatant attempt by certain county officials to manipulate public sympathies against the logging restrictions and in favor of solutions that propose selling millions of acres of public land to create trust funds for the counties.

Besides sadness and anger there is anxiety on the part of supporters of county ballot measure 15-75 which would fund the libraries at current levels of service for another three years with a tax of 66 cents per $1000 of assessed property value. This is estimated to average about $9 per month for the average home owner in the county. Anxiety stems from several concerns, not the least of which is that tax measures are notoriously difficult to pass in Southern Oregon. Then there is the requirement of a better than 50% voter turnout with a better than 50% yes vote in order for the measure to pass and Southern Oregon is also known for low voter turnout. The fact that a similar levy garnered less than a 50% approval last November when hotly contested Federal Congressional and State Gubernatorial races provided a bigger draw than the election this May is expected to contributes to the anxiety.

Those who suspect that interest in last November's version of the levy was impacted by the hope then current that Congress would vote to renew the county safety net after the fall recess. A hope that was to be disabused. If that was the case then, a similar reluctance to pass the levy could be induced by the fact that a three year extension of the county monies has been inserted into the emergency appropriations bill for the Iraq war--the one Bush is threatening to veto because of the time lines it contains. But that D.C. imbroglio could drag out for several more weeks and it hasn't been decided yet whether, if it passes, the county monies would be forthcoming at the beginning of the fiscal year this summer or at the end of this year.


Nor does it help that county officials are murmuring to the effect that even if the levy passes it could be months, if not the beginning of next year before the libraries could be reopened because of the complexity of collecting and disbursing the money..

Thus it is that the campaign to save our libraries is going to be an uphill battle.

More information about the issues involved can be found on the website of the Association of Oregon Counties.

The Southern Oregon Library website is still hosting its infoblog which continues to post breaking news relevant to the library closure and personal testimonials. One post from January 27 is regularly updated with links to the most recent news from newspaper articles to TV broadcasts and even blogs. The newer links are added above the older links which makes this particular post a good resource for following the complexities of this story over time.

Meridith May's San Francisco Chronicle article is still one of the better overviews of the situation as it stood a month ago.

And Open Democracy, an anonymous local blog, gives some good background info as well as a taste of some of the passions and personalities involved in this local drama which is fast becoming a national spectacle.

Read more...

The Blog Against Theocracy Blogswarm

One of the fallouts from being so wrapped up in the final week of library access was missing the opportunity to participate in this Easter Weekend consciousness raising blogging event, The Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm sponsered by Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, and Talk2Action. Participants were to post on the theme at least once over the weekend and then email their link to BlueGal who would then post it on the BAT blog. There was such a huge response she is still busy getting the links posted. I discovered the project too late to participate as it was already after midnight Sunday when I surfed onto Orcinus, one of my regular haunts and encountered the meme for the first time in Sara's sunday post. I followed the link there to the BAT site and went on from there to T2A where I read several of the participating posts.

I considered knocking off a quick post and setting the timestamp back a couple of hours but my conscience wouldn't let me. Besides which I knew that knocking off quick posts is not my forte. I was exhausted from the day's family activities. And I still had over a hundred pages left to read in that novel, the last library book, which needed to be in the bookdrop by nine in the morning. So I returned my attention to the novel but my thoughts continued to return to the BAT blogswarm throughout the night and the next day. This evening I decided that the least I could do was write a post pointing to the project and do my small part to help promote it. Even though the weekend swarm is over, there are more than a few amazingly written and cogently thought out posts among the participants which will not loose their relevance in the passing of a few days, or even weeks.

I also want to make a point of saluting Talk2Action, a community site which is focused on this issue every day and features posts from a number of seasoned journalists and researchers. T2A requires a free registration in order to comment (not to just read tho) but that registration also allows the member to maintain their own diary on the site. I signed up with them last month in order to post a comment but by the time I got through the registration process I had forgotten what I wanted to say. Sigh. But I have been planning ever since to start keeping a diary there once this library thing was behind me. When I do start posting at T2A I will crosspost here at Joystory. The value of posting at T2A is the ability to participate in a dialog and get feedback from a likeminded community which is more about educating and finding solutions than it is about fear mongering or spluttering ones frustrations into the blogosphere. The threat of theocracy and the gradual erroding of the laws protecting liberty of conscience and the integrity of acedimic research are still themes that monopolize a great deal of my thought and I suppose they will for the foreseeable future. Well over half of the books I still had out last week touched on this theme in one way or another.

There is already talk of making the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm an annual event. Personaly I think once a year is far from enough.

Read more...

Ed's Easter Breadpudding

My husband just made this for our family Easter dinner. I can't tell you how it tastes yet but it smells heavenly. And if his past creations are anything to go by, this is going to be ambrosia.

He is a dump and stir cook so I can't give you a conventional recipe. But I can give you the list of ingredients and point you towards the correct ratios.

1. One large loaf of sourdough bread cubed.
2. 8 large eggs
3. about 4oz of milk per egg
4. 1/8th cup sugar per egg (or sugar to taste)
5. Cinnamon to taste
6. Salt to taste
7. Vanilla to taste
8. One can fruit cocktail drained
9. Two large handfuls of raisins (he has very large hands)

For anyone uncomfortable with the ambiguousness of the above, consult your favorite breadpudding recipe and adjust the ratios accordingly.

Following is the step by step instructions:

1. Beat eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt until smooth and creamy
2. Add milk, stir until blended
3. Fold in bread until bread is submerged and wet
4. Fold in raisins and fruit cocktail
5. Let soak for 15 to 30 minutes (until most liquid is absorbed by bread)
6. Dump into cassarole dish or baking pan (treated with butter or non-stick spray like Pam)
7. Place in oven pre-heated to 375
8. Bake for 45-50 minnutes or until golden brown
9. Remove from oven and cool
10. Serve with topping of choice

Enjoy!

Happy Easter.

Read more...

A Burdonsome Day

The library doors were locked until further notice at 5pm Friday evening. I took back the final two bags full of books and DVDs. The bags never weighed so much.

I wish I could say that the very last item had been returned. For about five minutes I could have but as I was visiting with one of the librarians and confessed I hadn't finished the novel I was reading she fished it back out of the return stack and said I could have until Monday morning before 9 to return it without incurring a fine. So Blessed Are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch went back in the bag.

In a way, I regret bringing it back home because I had made my peace with letting go of it and I was all primed to move on to all those neglected things I listed in my TT this week. There was no way I could read Friday night as the headache that had been simmering all week went to a full boil by the time I got home from the library besides which I had slept only two hours since Thursday morning so sleep had to take priority. Then today visiting the TT participants who visited me and then some and getting their links onto the front page took priority. Tomorrow is a family get-together starting in the afternoon but preparations for it begin in the morning. So essentialy I have tonight to try to finish it.

One of the librarians took that pic of me from behind before she helped me get the bag off my back. My white cane which I am carrying in my left hand is completely hidden. But the picture that shows the cane doesn't show the top of my head. That was the heaviest I have every carried that backpack on my back. My arms trembled for hours afterwards. It took me over thirty minutes to make the walk that averages about 25 minutes for me if all the traffic lights go my way.

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen #27

Thirteen Things I've neglected to an embarrasing extreme since news of the library closure four months ago. 1. sleep 2. watching what and when I eat 3. exercise 4. showers and shampoos (OK, no need to hold your nose. it wasn't never, just half as often maybe.) 5. clutter patrol in the room I share with my husband and (until two weeks ago) two cats on leashes and their crates, litter box and food dishes. 6. clutter patrol of my office which is one corner of said room and a different order of clutter altogether. 7. clutter patrol of my laptop files 8. clutter patrol of my mind and emotions and spirit 9. laundry 10. listening to music 11. prayer and meditation and daydreaming (hense #8) 12. communication and interaction with friends and family 13. writing, including journaling and bloging Starting Saturday my mission becomes regaining balance in my life and I'll be tackling more than one of these every day until I find an approximation of it. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Jamie 2. Candy Minx 3. Barbara 4. Elizabeth Bauterfly 5. Susan Helene Gottfried 6. L^2 7. Rhian / Crowwoman (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!) Since I'm down to the wire here with about forty hours left, I won't be visting other TT until Friday evening or Saturday. I promise to return every visit made to me as soon as possible.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

Obsession

You would be pardoned for thinking this is just another post about our local library closure since I've admitted to being obsessed about it and well over half of my posts in the last four months have been about it. But I've been tagged by Selena Kitt to admit to five obsessions. 5!! Now any other time in my life, I would have been hard pressed to narrow it down to five as obsession is practically my middle name. It has been suggested to me by those with expertise in the field that I have more than a touch of OCD going on with me. See my post, Hoarders R Us.

But this week, with the library closure only four days away, I can barely force myself to think about anything else and feel stressed whenever I am unable to have my eyes glued to the page of a library book or the laptop screen as it plays one of the library DVDs. The kind of stress like that experienced in a dream when being chased by the bogey man. So when I got tagged, I was tempted to just post something to the effect that I'd get back to you on Saturday when I had time to think about it. But the concept intrigued me and I decided if I could come up with four more things that I spent significant time doing or contemplating in the past month, I would go ahead and post tonight. It took me less than three minutes to make the list. In fact I came up with five besides the library. Just know that if font size indicated the ratio of attention, then the library thing would have to be 44pt font while all the rest would be in 14pt and smaller.

Following are the five things other than the library capturing a significant amount of my attention.

1. Nuzzling, cuddling, huggermuggering, teasing and playing with Merlin as we adjust to life without Gremlin. Huggermuggering is a word I use to mean mugging hugs, something I started doing a couple years ago because, unlike Gremlin who wasn't content unless she was snuggled against me, Merlin didn't care for being held or even sitting on your lap. By playing the game huggermugger I have increased his tolerance from about two seconds to almost two minutes. He comes when I sing out "huggermugger, huggermugger' and a couple of times since Gremlin's passing, he has voluntarily climbed into my lap and gone to sleep.

2. Story is the over-riding passion of my life. And my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld is one of my favorite mental playgrounds. I have discussed it in several of my Thursday Thirteen posts but especially #25 on the 22nd of last month and #13 on the 28th of last December. All three of my NaNoWriMo attempts were based in it. My two entries in the WriteStuff Creative Carnival were based in it. See: Kicking the Bucket and A Tail of a Wail.

(Oh, I totally forgot to post that I won the contest last month and received the prize Fiction Writer's Brainstormer by James V. Smith, Jr. The day I learned I won was the day Gremlin got sick and the day the book arrived was the day my 13 year old niece arrived to spend five days of her spring break with me and her grandma during which we watched about fifteen movies and walked to the library twice and chatted about stories--reading, watching and writing them.)

My niece has read several of my stories and is very irritated with me that I am not writing more. She thought I was overdoing the library thing even before the upcoming closure was announced in early December after which....oh, just scan the last four months of my blog and you'll get the picture. Anyway, it is partly because of her interest that I began to become re-enchanted with my FOS storyworld again, after a several year hiatus precipitated by the loss of my manuscripts and notes in 2001.

3. Stat watching. After I met the challenge my husband set me at the beginning of March to post five times in a single week and he followed through on his promise to start using his know-how to promote Joystory, I started refreshing my stats pages at Sitemeter several times per day. And there was a week there when it was at least once an hour. I couldn't get enough of wondering who all these people were and especially what motivated them to visit multiple pages and hang out for 5, 10, 30, 60 and more minutes.

Before I started participating in Thursday Thirteen last fall, almost no one visited multiple pages and few besides my sister and niece left comments. I'm still not getting many comments outside of TT. That didn't used to matter to me but now my curiosity is severely piqued and I dearly wish some of those who visit more than two pages or stay more than ten minutes would drop me a comment to tell me what has snagged their attention. Like, right now as I compose this paragraph someone from China has been on for over twenty minutes and visited 7 pages. Now who wouldn't be curious about that? Or when Monday morning someone from the Midwest US visited 40 pages in 31 minutes?

There is more to this obsession then just curiosity or gratification. This is part of THE obsession that will replace the library obsession beginning next week as I throw myself into content creation, design and promotion of the three sites I already have up and two more I have planned. My husband has two up with plans for a couple more too and I will probably return the favor by helping him with promotion. We think we have figured out a way to make income via the Internet by combining our two skill sets. Stay tuned for that story as it unfolds.

4. Riddles, puzzles, puns. I've always loved these but ever since I encountered Weffriddles last November, I've been obsessed in a completely new way. I gave up almost all computer gaming along with almost all prime time TV after learning of the immanent library closure. I can't wait to get back to solving the Weffriddle maze. I quit just after finishing batch 1 shortly after the New Year. I couldn't trust myself to play without getting sucked in for 3, 6, 12 hours. That probably cost me the NaNoWriMo win this year.

So I knew that I had to let it alone until after the library closure, if I wanted to get as much as possible of the essential research and movie watching done before the library closed. I quit playing but I didn't stop thinking about it. And I began to notice that everything I encountered during each day became inspiration for a riddle, puzzle or pun and I began to itch not only to play Weffriddle but to create my own levels and batches and dare I admit it? To put up my own riddle site loosely modeled on Weffriddle but imprinted with my own passions: story, wordplay, reading, writing, thinking, movies and more.

Watch for this before the end of spring. If this concept interests you, leave a comment; with contact info if you would like to be notified when it launches.

5. National and World News. I get almost all of my news online and more than eighty percent from non MSM. I used to read news and editorials and political blogs for several hours per day. I dropped it down to one the past four months. I do a lot more thinking about it than that. Many of the library items I have spent time with in the last four months were first encountered while reading news online.

~~***~~

OK that about covers it. Now I am supposed to tag five people. This is going to be harder than writing the post. There are only two that I feel comfortable tagging without checking with them first.

1. My sister
2. My Niece
3. My Husband.
4.
5.

I'll have to get back to you with three more after I check with them first. But anyone who sees this and wishes to play, consider yourself tagged. Leave a comment with your URL and I will post your link above.

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen 26

The doors of our Southern Oregon Library System are closing indefinitely in nine days. For an explanation see my post, Southern Oregon's Looming Library Closure. Several of my TT since I learned of this in early December have been on this theme. The last three were a three part series on the research projects of mine which will be impacted. The issue is still consuming my attention so once more into the breach...

These thirteen items aren't the only remaining library items vying for my attention by any means. They are just some of the most important to me. Between our two cards my husband and I still have close to sixty items out and most of what is on my husband's card was more for me than him. And as you can see with #13, I cheated a bit.

I split the list rather arbitrarily into three catagories: Non-Fiction books, Novels and DVD--four of each plus #13. Of the novels I can probably hope to complete only two. I've already started #5. Help me decide which of the remaining three I should commit to. #6 is the shortest. #7 is by the author of Three Junes which won the National Book Award--a novel I adored and for which I wrote this book review. #8 is by the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Thirteen of the Movies and Books Vying For My Attention In the Last Nine Days Before the Library Doors Are Locked Indefinitely Non-Fiction: 1. What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Information Frontier by James Gleick 2. Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth by Andrew Newberg, MD and Mark Robert Waldman 3. The Opt-out Revolt: Why People Are Leaving Companies to Create Kaleidoscope Careers by Lisa A. Mainiero & Sherry E. Sullivan 4. The Audacity of Hope: Thought on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama Novels: 5. Blessed Are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch 6. How To Be Lost by Amanda Eyre Ward 7. The Whole World Over by Julia Glass 8. Snow by Orhan Pamuk DVDs 9. Crash 10. The End of the Affair 11. Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke 12. An Inconvenient Truth 13. Four Sydney Poitier movies: A Raisin In the Sun; Lilies of the Field; Guess Who's Coming to Dinner; In the Heat of the Night (Hey, I couldn't choose just one to list here and I'm probably going to watch them in a single marathon of approximately 7 hours anyway) Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Di 2. Tink 3. impworks 4. scooper 5. Gattina 6. Candy Minx 7. L^2 8. Raggedy 9. Susan Helene Gottfried 10. Jamie 11. JennyMcB 12. Ctina 13. Sherry Sullivan 14. Laughing Muse (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen #25

This is the third of a three part series. See Part 1: General Subject Areas and Part 2: Specific Topics In Support of Essay Thesis or Tangible Goal.

For an explanation of the library closure we are facing here in Southern Oregon April 6th see my post, Southern Oregon's Looming Library Closure.

Thirteen Research Projects Which Will Be Impacted By the Impending Library Closure Part 3 Projects Related to My Fictional Works In Progress 1. Lupus. The mother of a protagonist in a YA novel suffers from this while the protagonist is obsessed with the life and writings of Flannery O'Conner who died from it in the early sixties. 2. The Life and Writings of Flannery O'Conner. See #1. 3. Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. Kirk, the young son of the protagonist of Brooding Instinct, (the novel from my second NaNoWriMo attempt and one of the Fruits of the Spirit story world novels) suffers from the latter which is possibly a high-functioning form of the former. 4. Fictional World Building. For a Sci-Fantasy Novel or possible series. 5. Physical Therapy. Julia from the Fruits of the Spirit story world worked as a physical therapist for injured soldiers when she was in the military. see #2 of my Thursday Thirteen #13 6. Visual Impairment. Marion from my short story, How Does Your Garden Grow, has popped into two of the Fruits of the Spirit novels as a major supporting character and may end up with her own novel length story. Can a Psychiatrist continue to practice after loosing her eyesight? 7. Shakespearean Theater. Estelle Star from the Fruits of the Spirit story world is a Shakespearean actress. see #9 of my Thursday Thirteen #13 8. Teaching Theory, especially as it applies to teaching special needs children. Iris from my short story, Blow Me a Candy Kiss, has popped into Brooding Instinct to work with Kirk--see #3 above. 9. Undercover Police Investigations. Brick Lawson,the father of a protagonist works as an undercover cop in the 'drug wars' and she becomes a pawn who is used almost as ruthlessly by the 'good' guys as by the 'bad'. see #11 of my Thursday Thirteen #13 10. Documentary Film Making. Troll and Jerrica Holmes travel the world making independent documentaries. see #12 & #13 of my Thursday Thirteen #13 11. Music from the perspective of a music teacher. Faye, from the Fruits of the Spirit story world, teaches both piano, voice and music appreciation. see #1 of my Thursday Thirteen #13. 12. Music from the perspective of a performing artist. Fancy is a country western vocalist. She and her daughter Breezy co-wrote the lyrics to her first major hit single: Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes. see #6 & #7 of my Thursday Thirteen #13. 13. Religious Cults. This is a major theme running through the entire Fruits of the Spirit story world where every major character and many minor ones are either affiliated with, attempting to part ways with or hoping to extricate a loved one from a Fundamentalist Christian Cult that has split into two antagonistic camps--one isolationist and the other militant. Sometimes it is just an undercurrent but often it will become the focus of the plot of a particular story or novel as in the novel to which my contribution to the Write Stuff Creative Carnival last week, A Tale of a Wail, belongs. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Selena Kitt 2. Mama Duck 3. Susan Helene Gottfried 4. Ctina 5. Jamie (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

Grief Doth Howl and Rave

January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps - but, O ye hours!
Follow with May's fairest flowers.
~~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Gremlin: July 4, 1993-March 18, 2007




Fresh grief is yet too raw for words for even the sweet memories are like heat applied to a sunburn.

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen #24

This is continued from last week. Next week will be the thirteen research projects related to my fiction works in progress.

For those of you curious about the reasons for the library closure, I finally posted an explanation last weekend. Sort of. Because it isn't the piece I intended to write based on my own research. But there is a link to the San Francisco Chronicle article for which I was one of about a dozen library patrons interviewed three weeks ago. See Southern Oregon Library Closure. Or you could just scroll down if you are on the front page and it hasn't dropped off yet.

Thirteen Research Projects Which Will Be Impacted By the Impending Library Closure Part 2: Specific Topics In Support of Essay Thesis or Tangible Goal 1. Movies. Lots and lots of movies from every era of film, including drama and documentaries. The goal is to fill in a gaping culture gap. Can you believe I never saw Casablanca until a couple months ago? And I have yet to see an uncut, in color version of The Wizard of Oz? My memories of it are of the winter I was nine and the three of us kids were all sick with chickenpox, then mumps and then German Measles and thus for months could not attend Bible Study Meetings. We watched it on a black and white TV with rabbit ear reception. 2. Filmography. The availability of commentaries and other extras on DVDs has got me interested in how movies are made. It is storytelling after all. I believe the intense viewing of movies over the past year has garnered a lot of insight into the art of storytelling. 3. A formal study of poetic forms. I haven't studied this since high-school. I write free verse. But I would like to learn the rules and rhetoric of everything from haiku to iambic pentameter so I can at least read it, with better appreciation. 4. Design. For two purposes: Designing fine needlework projects and designing the elements of web page layouts. 5. Needlecraft: needlepoint, embroidery, cross stitch. Especially the aspect of turning the stitched project into the finished product--the book cover, the pillow, the wall hanging... 6. Small Business how to. 7. Journalism and the Media. 8. Health and Fitness. 9. Let's not forget Fiction reading. Keeping caught up on all my old favs and discovering new authors is part of any aspiring author's job. It is also my joy. 10. Mind/Body studies. Including Psychoneuroimmunology. 11. Christian Fundamentalism. Because of my history obviously but I'm especially concerned about those who have gained considerable political power whose stated goals are to reform America into a theocracy. 12. Evolution vs. Creation controversy. 13. Bible. History of the cannon, translations, and textual criticism. With special attention to the history of the Scofield Reference Bible, which was the one I was raised on and whose underlying premises I no longer hold to. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. JennyMcB 2. Raggedy 3. impworks 4. L^2 5. Laughing Muse 6. Tink (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

Everybody Hurts

R.E.M. was just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If this had been the only song they ever did, they would have earned it.



Hat Tip to Nicole Belle at C & L

Read more...

A Tale of a Wail

This is my contribution to the WriteStuff Creative Carnival. The prompt: Sibling Rivalry.

A TALE OF A WAIL

by Joy Renee

Her mother would tell the tale for decades of how Abigail Ames sucked in her first breath and released it in a vibrato wail, with no impetus but surprise and how it took her seven years to break her daughter of the embarrassing habit of howling in the face of the tiniest disappointment. And her mother had broken her well. So well that she didn’t cry when at age eight, she watched her brother’s dog Griswald break the neck of her kitten Calypso while her brother, Darcy, stood by laughing. So well that she didn’t cry out at age ten when Darcy and his buddy Curtis strung a rope over a high tree branch and put a noose around her neck and slowly tightened it until crying out would have been impossible anyway as simply drawing breath burned like fire. When they lifted her into the tangle of leaves and branches and then let go of the rope so that she fell, breaking her right arm and spraining her left ankle, still she was silent.

Her self-enforced silence began the night of her seventh birthday when her mortified mother removed her from the dinner party after she let loose an endless open-mouthed howl when eleven year old Darcy blew out her candles for her and told her that meant he had just stolen her wish. Her wish had been to someday sing the part of Annie in the Broadway musical. It didn’t strike her that the transference of such a wish to her brother was a ludicrous concept. All she had registered was the irrevocable loss of hope. She was inconsolable. So her mother took her to her room and lectured her on the protocols of social engagements and the expediency of stiff upper lips for young ladies. Especially for a daughter of the Apostle of the Airwaves, Amos Ames, author of Daring To Profess.

“If you simply must cry, then go somewhere no one can hear you. And if that is impossible, then at least get off alone and put your hand over your mouth like this.” She placed Abigail’s own hand over her mouth and pressed. “There, see? You can cry as hard as you want and no one can hear. Pretty soon you will learn to do it without even using your hand. Once you learn to do it without screwing up your face into that unsightly mess, you can scream and cry and carry on in a crowd without even disturbing your make-up.”

Abigail took the lecture to heart. She never again cried out loud. But nor did she ever again sing out loud. Not, at least, until she was nearly out of her teens and too old to play Annie. Darcy had stolen her wish after all. The first of many precious things he stole from her. And now he was about to take from her the last precious thing because he refused to take her years of silence in lieu of an oath of eternal silence.

“Swear on what, Darcy?” she asked. “On my purity? On my honor? You took those from me long ago. And what point is there to swearing an oath to a man without honor? It would be nothing but babble in his ears. Easy enough to disregard on a whim.”

Nor would an oath suffice. Darcy had not gone to the trouble of tracing her after ten years just to hear her mouth a ritual phrase. She doubted he, on his own, had the means to track her to this remote mountain cabin in Southern Oregon. But he had managed to get a message to her through the one childhood friend whom she hadn’t the heart to cut loose of. Nor would Darcy have gone to that trouble on his own. It had to be on behalf of, and with the resources of, Curtis Christopher, currently campaigning for United Sates Senator in Idaho. Darcy had been Curtis’ campaign manager for every election he ran in since his run for Class President his senior year of college. Abigail had been privy to the inner-circle of that one, though still in high-school herself. She knew that Curtis kept himself willfully ignorant of the tactics Darcy used to make things go his way. She knew that their ambitions had been, from the beginning, to go all the way to the White House. With stakes that high, there was only one guarantee of silence that would satisfy Darcy.

Darcy’s mistake was in thinking that she had spent the last decade cowering in this redoubt, nurturing terror and shame, with nothing more than a salacious tale to tell that could be spun as sibling rivalry, if she ever dared to voice it, an embarrassment that could be averted by a single stroke. He could not suspect that the timid, biddable Abigail had been preparing to sing on a stage dwarfing any stage her seven-year-old imagination could have conjured, for if he had he would not have attempted to back her into the corner that abutted that stage on one side and the abyss on the other.

For, far from nurturing terror or shame, she had been cultivating a network and a name recognized for integrity and intrepid truth scrounging. Trudy Ann Daring, Investigative Journalist and founder of TruthDaring.com, had created the stage on which she would sing. And her tale was far more than an uncorroborated he said/she said family scandal. She had proof--documented facts and the living, breathing truth, that last precious thing--Truth Ann Daring, not yet ten, sleeping that peaceful sleep of innocence --just this little bit longer--in the loft over Abigail’s head.

Read more...

Southern Oregon's Looming Library Closure

The librarian asked me almost as soon as I walked in the door this afternoon if I had seen the article in the Chronicle last Sunday. I said no and she said she had left a copy of it with my stack of holds. It was a hard copy printed off the San Francisco Chronicle website. She was referring the article by Meredith May who had interviewed me for fifteen minutes in the Phoenix library two weeks ago today. I missed its appearance, having been so busy last weekend trying to finish Stephen King's Lisey's Story and Candace B. Pert's Everything You Need to Know to Feel Go(o)d, both of which had been due last Friday so I was essentially 'renting' them for twenty cents per day and every hour I spent with them past Friday was an hour I couldn't spend with the twenty-five items coming due today.

I made my self wait until I'd unpacked the two book bags of books and DVDs I was returning before I started trying to read the article. I had barely reached the paragraphs in which May quoted me before the librarian was turning out the lights. It was five o;clock and closing time. I usually make my run in the early afternoon but today I was watching DVDs right up until four. Today it was Rebel Without a Cause and the four hour BBC mini-series, Summer's Lease.

I heard a bit of the Twilight Zone theme playing in my head as I read the headline of May's article: Largest library closure in U.S. looms. It was spooky because I had been using the word 'loom' all day yesterday in the comments that I left on Thursday Thirteen posts. But only superficially because you gotta admit the word 'loom' is just a natural fit with the rest of the phrase with it's alliterative L.

I have been working on a post that would explain the cause of the impending closure since mid December. I've collected a lot of links and a lot of facts regarding the history of the funding that we're loosing. But I keep putting off getting it written up because I've been so focused on the books and movies I'm about to loose access to. I had started to work on it again this week, hoping to post it in tandem with my TT #23 below because I anticipated more questions from my commenters about why this was happening. It is too complex a story to answer in a blog post comment. I might still write it up someday but for now I am just going to direct you to May's article as she does an excellent job of summing up the situation but adds the personal touches I could not come close to by including stories of the people who will be effected by the closure.

I learned from her article that I was not the only one who had such an extreme reaction to the news, nor was mine the most extreme. Here are the grafs that quote me:

Joy Davis, who has been blogging about the impending closure
of her branch in the small town of Phoenix, said she's been getting sympathy worldwide in response to her posts.

"When I first heard the library is going to close, I almost passed out -- I had to sit down," said Davis, who checks out about 30 books a week to research her writing projects. Currently, she's interested in pinpointing the source of the conflict between creationism and evolution.

"I have a set of Britannica books, but that's not really a
replacement," she said.

Despite her Internet savvy, Davis doesn't trust online
information and depends on the library for solid data.

If you want to know what the spotted owl has to do with our closing libraries you'll just have to go read May's article. It might be awhile before I get my own explanatory post up now that I have such an excellently written and informative piece to link to.

Four weeks minus five hours and the clock ticks...

(Oh, and this is the fifth of the five posts my husband challenged me last Sunday to have published before he gets up Saturday morning. My prize is several hours worth of his time and effort and expertise used to promote Joystory for me. This is the perfect post to have sitting at the top all weekend as he applies his magic touch.)

Read more...

How Many Have You Read?

found this book meme on Thinking About

*Look at the list of books below.
*Bold the ones you’ve read.
*Italicize the ones you want to read.
*leave same the ones that you aren’t interested in.
*If you are reading this, tag you’re it.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy) started this several times, want to try again. am blessed to own a copy so it's on my to read list for after the library closure
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) read a condenced version in grade school. would like to read the uncut version.
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) i've downloaded a free e-book of this so it's on the agenda for during the library closure

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen #23

Thirteen Research Projects Which Will Be Impacted By the Impending Library Closure.Part 1: General Subject Areas 1. Philosophy. Since my entrance into this field was instigated by my becoming aware at age 35 that I had never learned to think for myself, I first set out to learn what it meant to think and what it meant to know and how to judge the reliability of knowledge. I later learned that this was called epistemology. 2. Psychology. Thinking combined with behavior combined with inter-personal dynamics. A total playground for a novelist, right? I mean, a case could be made that the first novelists were the first psychologists. 3. Writing: Craft & Lifestyle & Business 4. Comparative Religion and Spiritual Traditions. 5. Geography (which for me is about much more than locating a place on a map. It is also about the inter-relations between nations and to understand that you have to know something of each ethnic group and nation's history, culture, government and economics.) 6. Civics (my catchall term that covers: politics, government, policy, elections and activism from local to global and includes sociology and theory of government, the American Constitution and civil rights.) 7. Economics: from Micro to Macro from personal to global (which is inextricably entwined with politics as it is a subclass of sociology.) I began studying this intensely in 2001 after the prediction my husband made before the 2000 presidential elections that if Gore did not win, investors would pull their money out of the tech industry and instead of cashing in his stock options he could be cashing a final paycheck before the first anniversary of the new president's inauguration. He said this in late summer of 2000. He cashed the final check in April of 2001 and we spent two weeks homeless on the streets of the Silicon Valley in August. A hard way to learn how much economics matters. Not to mention elections. 8. History. There are a lot of subcategories here. My favorites are Ancient History, History of Christianity, History of Western Civilization, Middle Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean, American History and Russian History.. My most recent focus though has been on Middle Eastern History. And I was about to delve into India and the Orient. 9. Linguistics and Languages. The place where words come out to play in the field of the Logos. 10. Science (Physics, Geology, Biology, Chemistry, Environment, Evolution, Astronomy, Oceanography, Meteorology and Medicine are among those that I have immersed myself in for a period of weeks or months.) I read the books written for laymen. I am spooked by equations and formulas but good writers can get the concepts across without them. 11. Computer and Information technology, including Information Science, which is another Interdisciplinary study (see below). 12. Comparative Story: From ancient mythology to modern movies and TV series. 13. Several Interdisciplinary Studies,including Integral Thought and Futurology and Systems Theory. This is where my passion is as I was less than five years into my intensive autodidactism (which was instigated in 1992 by the traumatic break with the fundamentalist religion I was raised in) when I reached some kind of mental tipping point after which I could never again read in any subject without making multiple connections to other subjects. My essay expressing this experience, Emerson Whispering Sweet Somethings In Einstein's Ear, was written in 1998 to inaugurate the first debut of my Joyread web site. *************** Such dreams I had for Joyread and its sister sites Joywrite and Joystory. Next week in Part 2 I will list research projects on topics with a much narrower focus, several of which are directly related to realizing my original vision for these sites, including the intent to find a way to turn my passion into income. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Mama Duck 2. amy 3. Susan Helene Gottfried 4. Rashenbo 5. Raggedy 6. Candy Minx 7. Gattina 8. Christine 9. Tink 10 L^2 11. scooper (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

Hoarders R Us

That's the Royal Us--Me, myself and I--though I could make a case for it being a national dis-ease as well; but that's a whole other post. What I set out to muse about here is my issue with collecting and saving things. I saw myself in both of the women featured on today's Dr. Phil show. One of them had nearly 200 cats on her ten acre property. The other had stuffed a large house to the gills with stuff.

I have never accumulated nearly that much of anything but it is probably only because we have lived below the poverty line for most of the 28 years of our marriage and have twice lost the contents of our home--once for non-payment of rent on our apartment and thirteen years later for non-payment on a storage unit. Though there are many items that I still long for at times (my favorite baby doll that was my mother's before me, a crystal vase that was a heirloom from my husband's maternal grandmother, fine needlework projects, two personal libraries, manuscripts going back to my juvinilia, research notes, my wedding dress, family photos) I cringe to think of some of the stuff that some 'lucky' person got to sort through when they cleaned out that apartment and that storage unit. If there was one theme to what I collected (other than office supplies, craft supplies and books) it would be containers. Any type of container you can imagine, I probably had dozens to hundreds of them. I am speaking here of used containers from envelopes to shoe boxes; from prescription bottles to shampoo bottles; from yogurt cups to the little dose measuring cups that come with cold medicines; baby food jars to pickle jars; even the plastic or Styrofoam containers of take-out foods.

Then there are the things I saved to use for bookmarks: foil candy wrappers, business cards, junk mail, postcards, the logo tags off of new clothes. I needed a lot of bookmarks because I kept one in almost every book I possessed whether I owned it or borrowed it from a friend or a library. Many Non-fiction books would have multiple bookmarks. I continue this practice today. Bookmarks are one of the few things small enough to collect when you live in a ten by twelve foot room with a husband and two cats on leashes.

All of this is having such an impact on me today because it seems to resonate with the issue that has been stressing me out--out of my mind it sometimes feels--since December when I learned our county library system was closing its doors for lack of funding. I had already been feeling the stress of the way I managed my library usage in the years preceding this but that was almost a subliminal hum compared to the last three months. I have felt for years that I was too much a slave to library due dates. It seemed that I spent more time managing the inflow and outflow of the items than I did actually reading the books or watching the DVDs--from the hours spent searching the online catalog and managing my requests and renewals to the walks to the library to return and retrieve items; from making bibliography slips and inserting bookmarks as the books came home and then pulling the bookmarks and marking the page number on the bib slip as the books went back to managing the growing files of bib slips and notes.

After learning of the impending loss of access to these books and DVDs, the subliminal hum became a screaming jet-engine roar. Before, though there was always some angst about having to let an item go back before I was done with it, I was actually finding it a healthy exercise in letting go each week. But then I was always able to reassure myself that I could send for it again in a few weeks or months. Suddenly, I no longer had that assurance. Nobody knows how long the libraries will be closed. Barring some miracle, the doors shut April 6. The levy is on the ballot in May but most people I talk to have little hope it will pass. It would be November before another levy could be voted on.

Meanwhile, my life has been consumed by this since the first week of December. Other areas of my life are being neglected. From all forms of self-care to writing, including blogging and its attendant promotion. I even stopped taking notes while reading. So much for book reviews or citing information in my writing. And I've started speeding up the DVDs to the point that they become almost comical. Which is probably an insult to the directors and performers.

The worst of it is the risk I am taking of sabotaging two years of effort I've put into my online presence--what there is of it--by creating a reputation for lack of professionalism. I was confronted with that today as I went to check on three of my email accounts and found them flooded with weeks of unattended to correspondence and spam. Among them was a personal note from a high-school friend whom I haven't seen in twenty-some years. She sent it in early February! Which is an example of one of the potential joys of life that I miss out on because my attention is riveted on the library books and DVDs.

This past week there have been a number of times that I have been about this close to reaching for the books and DVDs willy-nilly and stuffing them in the book bags. It would probably take me three trips with three full bags each trip. There are around 105 items on my card and 25 of the 30 items on my husband's which I ordered. On March 1st they imposed the limit of 30 items for each card. I can't check out any more until I bring my card load down under thirty. I still have requests coming in. Some of which I have been in queue for for three to six months! I will lose them if I don't check them out within eleven days of their arriving. Those that arrived on March 1st and 2nd are going to time out on me next Monday and Tuesday.

Meanwhile there are more than a few items that I have right here that I waited weeks or months in queue for which are fighting for the fast dwindling share of time. There are only so many hours left.

There is yet another category of 'thing' that I could be accused of collecting in a bizarre fashion It is hard to give it a name though because it isn't physical. It was called to my attention when I set out to plan my Thursday Thirteen meme this week on the topic of my research projects that are going to be effected by this library closure. The list grew so long it could fill more than three TT. I am actually considering making it a three or four part TT, which would take some of the pressure off for that weekly task as I head into the home stretch of this race for a finish line that feels as if it is going to finish me when I reach it.

Dr. Phil said to the women featured on his show today that it was all about balance. I know I am out of balance. I knew it even before this library closure issue. Many of the books that I was checking out were of the self-help and spirituality genres. Like Dr. Phil's books. But my habit was to read voraciously giving assent to the ideas intellectually but seldom implementing them into my life. It just always seems like NOW is never the right time. Even though most of those books assert that NOW is the only time we ever have.

Read more...

The Challenge

I was bemoaning the fact over the weekend that my stats for February dropped precipitously from those for January which was record-breaking for me having been more than tripple an average month. I knew exactly what was to blame. The frequency of my posts had also precipitously dropped as my attention became more intensely focused on the library books and movies I was hoping to cram into the last two months of library service. My blog is not the only thing getting neglected. So is my health, my daily chores, my writing, my husband.... In fact almost anything you can think of that is in a normal person's daily life. But all of that is fodder for other post topics not the one I set out to write about five mintues ago.

So I was complaining to my husband about my stats and the fact that I had been learning a lot about what I needed to do to promote my site from the very books that I was racing to finish and also getting ideas from all the blogs I visit for Thursday Thirteen. But that I had no time to implement any of it until after April 6. I knew that his response would include the fact that without content there is nothing to promote. But then he surprised me by offering to take on the promoting tasks for me and then startled me by adding that he could double the 7300 odd unique visitors (which has taken me two and a half years to accumulate) in one week.

Then while my jaw was still on the porch floor he added: But only if you post at least five time in the next week.

After some minutes of discussion for clarification we set the deadline for 'before he gets up Saturday morning' and I accepted.

One down.

Read more...

Thursday Thirteen #22

Sensing that I was beginning to be overwhelmed by a sense of loss, I thought it was past time I did an exercise in gratitude. I was prompted to do it by the gratitude that almost brought me to tears Wednesday evening when #11 happened.

Thirteen Things I am grateful for: 1. The foundation of a safe and secure childhood in a loving home. 2. Stories 3. That I still have enough vision to read. 4. The computer technology that augments my life in too many ways to count and the laptop that gives me the tool to indulge several of my passions--reading, writing, research, music, movies, games that challenge my mind.... 5. The roof over my head and modern conveniences provided by electricity and plumbing (having done without one or the other or all three--from a few hours to a few weeks--on a number of occasions, I am extremely grateful for them) 6. The ability to experience wonder and joy. 7. The ability to experience empathy and compassion. 8. The freedom of conscience provided by our Constitution. 9. All of the libraries and their staffs whose services I've ever used. 10. A sense of humor. 11. That my husband met me at the entrance to the trailer park just after five Wednesday evening, as he was on his way home from work and I was on the way to the library, and took the book bag from me and sent me home where it was warm and then made the round trip in thirty-five minutes that would have taken me over sixty. 12. Extended family and everything they are to my life, including friendship, fellowship, and friction. 13. Language. 14. Oh, I meant to include the continuation of TT. Once I remembered, I couldn't bear to eliminate any of the above. So you get a bonus. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Tink 2. jenny 3. Dragonheart 4. L^2 5. Susan Helene Gottfried 6. Scooper 7. Wacky Mommy 8. Gattina 9. JennyMcB 10. Osman 11. scribbit 12. Elizabeth Bauterfly (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It's easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Read more...

More Loss on the Horizon

Our family, more specifically my husband's family, is bracing for the loss of his 92 year old Grandmother. She went back in the hospital in the wee hours of last Thursday morning during the snowstorm that dropped five inches on the valley floor and felled trees and knocked down powerlines. Her trek to emergency was not precipitated by any of that, it was just another of the more and more frequent attacks in which she can't get her breath. She was sent home from the hospital this afternoon on the hospice plan. There will be no more hospital visits. They consider her to be in endstage lung failure after years of fighting both asthma and emphysema. I thought I would post this quick announcement for those few of you who have been following her story as I've blogged occassionaly about sitting with her while my in-laws run errands or have an afternoon or a week-end rest or recreation. My father-in-law has been her primary caretaker for the past two years, moving in with her nearly eighteen months ago while I was up in Longview, WA attending my father's deathbed with my family.

Loss looms large in the picture of the last six years of my life. This is not a small one.

Prayers for our family are welcome.

Read more...