tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31374742334711708432024-02-06T18:21:18.478-08:00A Touch of TarragonTerri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.comBlogger380125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-30993017599853930372022-01-08T10:43:00.000-08:002022-01-08T10:43:31.183-08:00Whatever Got Me Through the Night?<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4MSZFcOwgfAge1HkGuTAk4i9JcNTYEnVqnOEqjCJeSnkCSC1x-SIP535GLbn1Me7q9Q-pn3dNjdtY_-XAnjCjg168R2-pXNDG6yLqOaoKAogKmwomPSOAXu0U2MaJbULo51AfFF2CYP4rEOUhIHnawSqyavHkonbKS9UnTe777uomTqxivPix1-yQGg=s1098" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1098" data-original-width="980" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg4MSZFcOwgfAge1HkGuTAk4i9JcNTYEnVqnOEqjCJeSnkCSC1x-SIP535GLbn1Me7q9Q-pn3dNjdtY_-XAnjCjg168R2-pXNDG6yLqOaoKAogKmwomPSOAXu0U2MaJbULo51AfFF2CYP4rEOUhIHnawSqyavHkonbKS9UnTe777uomTqxivPix1-yQGg=s320" width="286" /></a></div>What I haven't done during this everlasting pandemic is write. Instead, I've Zoomed, Skyped and read.<p></p><p>However, this past August, I saw a callout for submissions for an anthology based on the 2020 pandemic. Obviously, at the time the editor posted that, he figured, as did most of us, that soon we were going to look back on the Covid 19 pandemic as a<b> past</b> experience. Consequently, he chose the title, "Hindsight." </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgonK1Pm82axGZHpJ9aOPvr28rWGmr1oIlNKGfSHZneUXEsH3RCv-7kcdLkPAu7rG96oaQyGOH48yFMlDhTwXzBSyE3Rk10eyUChs3M98TDRNg3kXaqYtw6SLDs5rgvRLHJgHG63nd0yYbhPFUjPpy755gKR3uUAaY3lBZZhoZybWFUtbCh9sZGGUuKuA=s316" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="315" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgonK1Pm82axGZHpJ9aOPvr28rWGmr1oIlNKGfSHZneUXEsH3RCv-7kcdLkPAu7rG96oaQyGOH48yFMlDhTwXzBSyE3Rk10eyUChs3M98TDRNg3kXaqYtw6SLDs5rgvRLHJgHG63nd0yYbhPFUjPpy755gKR3uUAaY3lBZZhoZybWFUtbCh9sZGGUuKuA=w199-h200" width="199" /></a></div>The topic intrigued me, so I wrote a piece, "Taco Tuesdays, 2020" and sent it in. I'd been inspired by John Lennon's "Whatever Gets You Through the Night," from his album, <i>Walls and Bridges. </i>What I'd marked time with during the long months of 2020 and early 2021, when we were all hunkered down, was finding a way with a friend to grab a margarita and a taco on Tuesday. <br /><p></p><p>I learned earlier this week that the editor has accepted my piece, with kind words indeed: <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">"It is</span><span style="color: black;"> my pleasure to inform you that your story has been accepted for publication in Hindsight's print anthology. '</span><span style="color: black;">Taco Tuesdays 2020</span><span style="color: black;">' is a moving story of friendship and resilience during an extremely challenging year."</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">This one small success hasn't yet inspired me to spend more time at my keyboard, crafting more stories about my life. Some days I think I've written every story I want to write. I do, however, encourage others who haven't yet written about their lives. </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">When I asked if this print anthology would be published by early summer, in time for my 85th birthday, I found that it wouldn't come out until September. I plan to hold on that long to see this story in print. <br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">Here's how I introduced my piece:</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>I ignited New Year’s Day in 2020 by dropping a match while
lighting a pine-scented candle on the bookcase next to my old glider rocker. I
scooped up the match and blew out the flicker. But when my ceiling alarm
shrieked I noticed that a spark had landed on my chair’s foam cushion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quickly dragged the smoldering seat onto my
balcony and smothered the flames eating the fabric. </i></p><i>
</i><p class="MsoNormal"><i>I hoped it wasn’t an omen. I’d looked forward to a shiny new
year.</i></p><i>
</i><p class="MsoNormal"><i>An hour later, my new friend, Rob, phoned. <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’d met him a few months earlier
when we each were fresh from breakups of similarly toxic three-year
relationships. Saying goodbye to romantic attachments is not an easy transition
for two people in their early eighties. </span></i></p><i>
</i><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rob
and I shared a mutual love of theater, jazz concerts, museums, art galleries
and movies, so at the onset of our friendship, we’d visited these and began to commemorate
Taco Tuesdays. </span></i></p><i>
</i><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Are
you up to Happy Hour next Taco Tuesday?” he asked me now on New Year’s Day. “It’s
my turn to treat.”</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stay tuned until September to see how the story plays out. A hint: I no longer celebrate those Taco Tuesdays with that friend. </span><i><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEif83ef03FVS69V9BnpTDQ8haROk4k3thDcrM5OdzPkSAzHf2hN0bWoZvQDWxOdZp6O83g-KyuOMU7Gy75dOeOYyFuIemiKpl7erN7u7yltOEJhxDzBDQdBDx4CkiWstxBa4wjAM7_XJHNi1EM5HZ9Tl426xzpVw6OteMhbJ49dIGjvhp4CSqGVXTOnHQ=s342" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="228" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEif83ef03FVS69V9BnpTDQ8haROk4k3thDcrM5OdzPkSAzHf2hN0bWoZvQDWxOdZp6O83g-KyuOMU7Gy75dOeOYyFuIemiKpl7erN7u7yltOEJhxDzBDQdBDx4CkiWstxBa4wjAM7_XJHNi1EM5HZ9Tl426xzpVw6OteMhbJ49dIGjvhp4CSqGVXTOnHQ=w133-h200" width="133" /></a></div><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Last week, on the evening of New Year's Day, 2022, I didn't bother to light a candle. But I did finish reading a harrowing book about another pandemic, "Seven Days of Us," by Franesca Horniak. I recommend it!</span><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> <br /><br /></span></span></span></i><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> <br /></span></span></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-45312101716264619962021-06-14T17:13:00.000-07:002021-06-14T17:13:23.707-07:00Unsolicited Mail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image.png" class="preview" height="240" id="yiv4764991302x__x0000_i1025" src="https://apis.mail.yahoo.com/ws/v3/mailboxes/@.id==VjN-hx1734KZO5bhMVkqhil8m-1RT3ObCBiqi5gotQVdDmqT8VgCwH4k0prWXA9o-zcdpXSQPIt7834jXjyRXCwNNg/messages/@.id==AKZ5_ZRjDxGZYMd73AO9CKNuwbg/content/parts/@.id==2/refresh?appid=YMailNorrin&ymreqid=ba7734bf-c279-1ccf-1c9e-260001017600&token=zitEzqOML3j84e6ealFTT5U7-km5qEQF52lp7AcCuBalc117gevGZuIf0eA3O85xJxfnWDjYMkszLkRuO1X-4z59nlNXYU-dKmYwenaLOUH45m1mvDatQsFdD6xwgldl" width="320" /><span class="img-dl-btn" style="left: 384px; opacity: 0.0001; top: 352.167px;"></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">I received this in my email today. I've pasted the message that accompanied it below. But I wonder how I get on some of the group emails I receive. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">In a few days I'll write to
the person who sent it and ask that I not be mailed such garbage again. Especially
not with a prefatory note attached that said: "This is great! Please
share it with your friends!!!!!" So, I'm sharing it. Even though it
didn't say "Pretty please."</span></span></p><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
know I've enjoyed White Privilege since birth. I have never
been hassled walking toward my front doors in Maryland, Washington State or even
California, simply because of the color of my skin. </span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">I have never been
pulled over by the police and questioned because of the color of my
skin.<span id="😍"></span></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span id="😍"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span id="😍">I have never been </span>stopped
and searched when I lived in Arkansas, just because I was eating an ice
cream cone outside a grocery store. But a lot of the Black adults and
adolescents I worked with were. <br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">
I have never had graffiti sprayed on my house, with messages that said
for me to go back where I came from, either. But the people who opened
the first Mexican restaurant in Colville, WA, were when they moved to
that little town.<br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">After Pearl Harbor, nobody rounded up my family and sent them to Manzanar or another "relocation" camp.<br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I remember those who bought homes
on the G.I. Bill all those decades ago post-WW II, when new housing
communities built to accommodate those upwardly mobile families. And I remember those neighborhoods had
CC&Rs that prohibited selling them to Jews and people of color who were veterans. </span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">None
of my ancestors were rounded up and sold as slaves. I've never been
discriminated against as have friends of mine in South Africa who were
not admitted to medical school because they had black skin. <br /></span></span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;">White
privilege? Yep. My card has saved me from enduring many of the
indignities that others who hold these alleged valuable "Race Cards" face. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: New; font-size: 12pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> <i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: 18pt;">FOR SALE:</span></span></span></i></p><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: 18pt;">I'm
selling my white privilege card. It's over 70 years old but is in mint
condition. It has never been used, not even one time. Reason for
selling is that it hasn't done a damn thing for me! No free college, no
free food, no free housing, no free anything, I actually had to go to
work every day of my life while paying a boatload of taxes to carry
those who chose not to work! </span></span></span></i> <i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: 18pt;">If
you are interested, I prefer cash but would be willing to do and even
trade for a Race Card which seems much more widely accepted and comes
with countless benefits if you fit the profile! </span></span></span></i><br /></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: 18pt;">Interested?</span></span></span></i></p>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #26282a; font-size: 18pt;">Contact me on my Non-Obama, Non-Biden cell phone that I pay for every month..Serious buyers only. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
</span></span></span></i></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></i><br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-71337368888650192442021-04-17T16:48:00.000-07:002021-04-17T16:48:12.591-07:00Springing into Spring: Can I Go There NOW?<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBJGer57VrLv_vIPn0ncjdc5CNXcCXK3IziE6gKAdl8Z-TsM8lD25AgGZi-wULir5mS909Ea8YVMMiCLbrOqi-MkwcYe8WZIE5gOdgwETP5sAT8yTw_AoxDboIYaQYKyGjVNMFnORdlSgh/s1200/earth+from+space+002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBJGer57VrLv_vIPn0ncjdc5CNXcCXK3IziE6gKAdl8Z-TsM8lD25AgGZi-wULir5mS909Ea8YVMMiCLbrOqi-MkwcYe8WZIE5gOdgwETP5sAT8yTw_AoxDboIYaQYKyGjVNMFnORdlSgh/s320/earth+from+space+002.jpg" /></a></div><br /> Life slowly returns to semi-normality after our long hiatus. My AAUW (Anerican Association of University Women) Branch met this morning to discuss "Here, There and Everywhere," places we're looking forward to visiting. <p></p><p>The Travel Discussion Group took the lead, addressing nearby places in Orange and Los Angeles County, then up and down the coast and finally...the whole wide world.</p><p>These are the useful websites we found to share with others:</p><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Can I Go There NOW?</span></i><br /></h2><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://travel.state.go/content/travel/en/international-travel.html" target="_blank"><b><span>https://travel.state.go/content/travel/en/international-travel.html</span></b></a></span><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></b></p>
<h3 align="center" class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">International Air Transport Association</span></b></h3>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Passport, Visa and Health Info</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/world.php"><b><span>https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/world.php</span></b></a></span></p><h3 align="center" class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> Centers for Disease Control</span></b></h3>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">International and Domestic Info </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/map-and-travel-notices.html"><b><span>https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/map-and-travel-notices.html</span></b></a></span><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html"><b><span>https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html</span></b></a></span><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></b></p>
<h3 align="center" class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Cruise Planning</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.cruiseplanners.com/about-us/coronavirus-travel-information"><b><span>https://www.cruiseplanners.com/about-us/coronavirus-travel-information</span></b></a></span><b><span style="font-size: 24.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"></span></b></p>
<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Me? I'd like to drive down the coast to Sherman Gardens in nearby Corona Del Mar before trying anything more adventurous. <br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOeGIWiYPEtbfIae_dWpRfN9FoP-TP2-K5IpDNJNbL3F_T7CTX6HCuGGC1BWpBFlipky-gnn9c323Q1whCvlFd7IyvnhbK1stwWDe2YcQOViwpsF7-Pi4PP1KSgR0e65gjVnYQD-7SenxT/s768/Sherman+Gardens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="768" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOeGIWiYPEtbfIae_dWpRfN9FoP-TP2-K5IpDNJNbL3F_T7CTX6HCuGGC1BWpBFlipky-gnn9c323Q1whCvlFd7IyvnhbK1stwWDe2YcQOViwpsF7-Pi4PP1KSgR0e65gjVnYQD-7SenxT/s320/Sherman+Gardens.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /> <a href="https://thesherman.org/cafe-jardin/">https://thesherman.org/cafe-jardin/</a></span></span><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-87888318034437046642021-04-05T15:24:00.000-07:002021-04-05T15:24:08.844-07:00I Must Admit It's Getting Better<p> <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsbi5us8bFHY-mnx-5c783fqFmH9erf9paWrBZcXnSm6QCbclmQhXOhtWbsvLh6D9cp7x8Ssl-DkWTPsEmsbr6py4zEis2z47VMZcxJPPvCx86IjmyTGE1O2pCnJYwlJWHdNcyAzrRZVJt/s254/sergeant+pepper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsbi5us8bFHY-mnx-5c783fqFmH9erf9paWrBZcXnSm6QCbclmQhXOhtWbsvLh6D9cp7x8Ssl-DkWTPsEmsbr6py4zEis2z47VMZcxJPPvCx86IjmyTGE1O2pCnJYwlJWHdNcyAzrRZVJt/s0/sergeant+pepper.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>I'm not sure what got you through this pandemic, but for me it's been Skype, Zoom, and Emails from friends all over the world. Though I hunkered inside most of the past year, I've been able to keep in contact with so many old friends. I didn't have to give up my book discussion groups or my Orange County Peace Corps connections. I even was able to reconnect with friends in my Colville, WA, branch of American Association of University Women and Colville library group and see their faces again, if only on my laptop screen.</p><p></p><p>But my heart still tells me I want to be in the real world, not the virtual world of this computer. It rang true again last night with I watched the Screen Actors Guild awards show, Facebook messaging with my actor friend in Miami, FL. We've been enjoying our ritual for years, during all the movie and television awards shows together. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MhK6cslIQ7oLp7G1wIkzeHbzr_Z4c9oT2a-NBvrskRku2tQM1IROJUdd1HAwZkQ1LTxfGKIpjMEYD-2noC303Y1bpQMKHMlgqnjt_9VdItqw_6lxmCU0q6xFCOKWACkcDwqlWI8cRRIG/s800/poppies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="531" data-original-width="800" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2MhK6cslIQ7oLp7G1wIkzeHbzr_Z4c9oT2a-NBvrskRku2tQM1IROJUdd1HAwZkQ1LTxfGKIpjMEYD-2noC303Y1bpQMKHMlgqnjt_9VdItqw_6lxmCU0q6xFCOKWACkcDwqlWI8cRRIG/w200-h133/poppies.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>To see all our favorite actors sitting in their homes alone, no matter how elegantly some of them dressed, especially the women in their Easter-egg-colored gowns and of course, Dan Levy, changing his gorgeous outfits for every snippet, wasn't the same as seeing them all together at the Kodak Theater or other venue where awards ordinarily are distributed. It's not the same. Just as this field of wildflowers that I have on my Skype background isn't the same as being in the California desert and seeing them in person. <p></p><p>One of my closest companions confided to me this morning that the venerable Dr. Fauci predicts that by next year we'll actually be able to go unmasked to movie theater again. Some museums have actually reopened to limited masked patrons. </p><p>Though I've been dining with that companion and others at outdoor restaurants for months now, this coming weekend I'm even going to sit inside a steakhouse with my son and daughter-in=law. <br /></p><p>I'm beginning to appreciate more and more the convenience of where I live, close to friends, to supermarkets, to the post office to mail packages, without having to drive on icy winter roads. Had I not been here in my tiny shoebox senior living apartment, the isolation and my increasing unsteadiness because of balance issues connected with spinal stenosis would have made life unbearable.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLmUPYE3t9P2nlK8ODFiLFeI66NPjWM4eUjN_dc2rZ_H4y3V0avs1zmL6XBjG8tw_O7Lrr0QqTpxjH_u5T05o6etxp6_FDrzIYCjSivwG_JM68yyT6T0_3o46P_LA-Nz6dx1Iz9qPAhci/s3891/window+at+orangerie+.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3891" data-original-width="2637" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLmUPYE3t9P2nlK8ODFiLFeI66NPjWM4eUjN_dc2rZ_H4y3V0avs1zmL6XBjG8tw_O7Lrr0QqTpxjH_u5T05o6etxp6_FDrzIYCjSivwG_JM68yyT6T0_3o46P_LA-Nz6dx1Iz9qPAhci/s320/window+at+orangerie+.JPG" /></a></div><p></p><p>I've been managing, instead. Maybe not thriving, but managing. I've learned how to change the background on my Skype and Zoom, which showcases me in settings more exotic than my bedroom. It's been a diversion to find ones that represent places I wish I were or places I once loved. The photo on the left I took from a window at the Orangerie in Paris in November, 2019, the last overseas trip I took.</p><p>I haven't written anything new for a while, but I've been involved as a reviewer on several Federal grant funding opportunities for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other Health and Human Services brances, getting paid to sit in front of my computer and update my LCSW knowledge about best practices. <br /></p><p>The Rose Center Theater outdoor concerts, Uncle Pete's patio dining just a mile from me, my library system that's supplied me with DVDs and books via curbside or "grab and go" have made it better. Looking ahead to brighter days makes it better. Sitting in my old glider rocker in the evening, reading or streaming another episode of whatever old series I missed the first time around, makes it better.</p><p>Being fully vaccinataed now and able to hug a few friends who also have been, gives me hope. As has escaping coming down ill with the Covid-19 virus. At my advanced age, I may have had a very low possibility of surviving that. </p><p>The increasing availability of vaccines, no constant election campaigning, not planning my day around how to find toilet paper or hand sanitizer? Yep. It's getting better!<br /></p><p>Here's how the Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band first told us all those years ago that it's getting better:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGlo9LzmOME"><br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGlo9LzmOME</a><br /></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-85438079015543912262020-12-21T09:27:00.003-08:002020-12-21T09:31:24.173-08:00What are You Watching New Year's?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl-aSkpzCPrtOsd5rDavYnwsoBlY09aSU7tVM-D-8cIz78IErQGebDYflUCHhW7TIalF4qmneG9e7dJYW5p4I0fY3Nly1JJRH0RmQ6nqN5p5WhLV7pab2bDewRA86NV-uBkBuFgKppnRtW/s400/Never_Let_Me_Go.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="248" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl-aSkpzCPrtOsd5rDavYnwsoBlY09aSU7tVM-D-8cIz78IErQGebDYflUCHhW7TIalF4qmneG9e7dJYW5p4I0fY3Nly1JJRH0RmQ6nqN5p5WhLV7pab2bDewRA86NV-uBkBuFgKppnRtW/s320/Never_Let_Me_Go.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>This is probably not the year to be crowding into public places to ring in the New Year. It was a bad year for meeting under the mistletoe. But not a bad year for reading and watching a lot of well-made movies, if even in my rocker instead of a theater.</p><p>So New Year's Eve? I am betting I'll be curled up on my rocker with a book. I may set aside a few hours to binge watch the final season of "Scott and Bailey." </p><p>Thanks to Skype and Zoom, I'm not totally out of touch with friends. But I don't recall ever spending so much time inside alone during the holidays. At least I have the luxury of electricity, even though the three-way reading lamp I bought online last March finally defaulted on its first two settings last night. I also have my local library system which still allows curbside pickup for books. And I finally added Netflix Streaming so I can watch a lot of movies and TV series, such as past Masterpiece series on my computers. (I don't have a smart TV nor the expertise to figure out how to transfer to my "dumb" TV.) </p><p>So here's what I've binged watched this year, having made a pact with my Emmy/SAG/Oscars watching partner, actress, playright, writer Joyce Ann Newman Scott. I've finished "The Crown," am on the final season of "Schitt's Creek," and just started season 4 of "Scott and Bailey." I'm going to begin the Ken Burns "Jazz" series this new year, thanks to moving it up in my old-fashioned Netflix DVD queue. </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7by6V4wWFVcWJmtDsG90oLyb3QbNLSPl43ZxLS2Lwhi3rvyp7L9k3FCguj-KGsrQIyOCwRq_A9CeWgBt2Bm8OdmIk364Wz8aIU7XgDHtSGeSb6AzcfCVAqucTXmvngtVnuHP7Bz9WnWNX/s432/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="288" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7by6V4wWFVcWJmtDsG90oLyb3QbNLSPl43ZxLS2Lwhi3rvyp7L9k3FCguj-KGsrQIyOCwRq_A9CeWgBt2Bm8OdmIk364Wz8aIU7XgDHtSGeSb6AzcfCVAqucTXmvngtVnuHP7Bz9WnWNX/w133-h200/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" width="133" /></a>Christmas night I plan to tune in to see the 2020 Christsmas special of "Call the Midwife," a series I've watched from the start. And I may want to be reminded of what's good in life, so will read another chapter of Universal Table's new essay collection, <i>Goodness</i>. My story, "Grandma Fang's Clowder of Kittens," is in this anthology.</p><p></p><p>My
library book group is reading <i>Never Let Me Go</i>, by Nobel Prize winner,
Kazuo Ishigiro and my AAUW book group is reading Marla Jo Fisher's <i>Frumpy Mid-Life Mom</i>. She's a local humor columnist for the Orange
County Register.</p><p>On my bedside stand:<i> </i></p><p><i>Sisters</i>, Daisy Johnso<i>n</i><i> </i></p><p><i>This Time Next Year</i>, Jacqueline Winspear</p><div style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><i>The Great Pretender</i>, Susana Cahalan</div><div style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </div><div style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I wish you the happiest of New Year's! I think most everybody I know is eager to see Baby New Year kick out Year 2020. <br /></div><br /><div style="color: black; font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNltOdZERAM2BxBqm7FXEkmmcnk52vG-Oek2AFNrLwXMFA4u3WiOBhRYWriHPjZM9u0Hfs5MM5qsnRSCeFnpFPgF63G_34AKPVeTH6bxKOJoRncawHhn04y8iLoye_wn3G6FOHWJMlSy6q/s840/baby-new-year-2020-card-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="578" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNltOdZERAM2BxBqm7FXEkmmcnk52vG-Oek2AFNrLwXMFA4u3WiOBhRYWriHPjZM9u0Hfs5MM5qsnRSCeFnpFPgF63G_34AKPVeTH6bxKOJoRncawHhn04y8iLoye_wn3G6FOHWJMlSy6q/s320/baby-new-year-2020-card-1.jpg" /></a></div> <br /></div><p>Here's Kacey Musgraves to ask you the question, "What Are You Doing New Year's?"<br /></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXpkH-gl3Q" target="_blank"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvXpkH-gl3Q</a></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-84808616690216094302020-12-06T11:51:00.001-08:002020-12-06T11:51:22.534-08:00Three's a Charm<p> <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhokaNxBxRikknX0rXhVbJEDWWRYokmq6f2wgel4CZIpikaR0VpNNGlWpIgdVKXj3Wu41VgRv1Fkjkc1zwejy-N8QxaJbKWCfOohahkZ2zrcq86RC1CewO8LXmOLjZqcCCG41XJUzJW_ijU/s499/Friends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">a<img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhokaNxBxRikknX0rXhVbJEDWWRYokmq6f2wgel4CZIpikaR0VpNNGlWpIgdVKXj3Wu41VgRv1Fkjkc1zwejy-N8QxaJbKWCfOohahkZ2zrcq86RC1CewO8LXmOLjZqcCCG41XJUzJW_ijU/s320/Friends.jpg" /></a></div><p>Three's a charm...and three anthologies that include my stories all showed up in my mail this past month. Though <i>Friends </i>had appeared on Kindle earlier, it now is out in paperback. It includes "Gail and the Special Sears Sale," which recounts my brush with the law when I had just started 10th grade.</p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Friends-Companionship-Amy-Lou-Jenkins-ebook/dp/B08DHDVYVC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friends+amy+lou+jenkins&qid=1607283714&s=books&sr=1-1">https://www.amazon.com/Friends-Companionship-Amy-Lou-Jenkins-ebook/dp/B08DHDVYVC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=friends+amy+lou+jenkins&qid=1607283714&s=books&sr=1-1 </a><br /></p><p></p><p></p><p>A little earlier I'd received my copies of <i>Impact</i>, with the story of why I joined the US Peace Corps at the age of 50, followed by <i>Goodness, </i>with a remembrance of Fang, the kindest cat I've ever known.<br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQCm3Y0SkvBrZ7BNSLw5p3QzQPpjSV-V6eADundm5GWu-3GKDV9AIQPE9gsBoFHVj-qsu1qngMhM5DiFx-XFO-GppBhx19xBWyqJ_Bl3elEjgI7hZk-8yNVjeyFZtk0NUkAvPp3gxaXGO3/s432/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="288" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQCm3Y0SkvBrZ7BNSLw5p3QzQPpjSV-V6eADundm5GWu-3GKDV9AIQPE9gsBoFHVj-qsu1qngMhM5DiFx-XFO-GppBhx19xBWyqJ_Bl3elEjgI7hZk-8yNVjeyFZtk0NUkAvPp3gxaXGO3/w133-h200/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1oIgP-bmpl4BjLzgc4wMfKTdzBwiMb40LCuXSaEe9LV4RWjTsviKs1AezmLWLb85tbz_WwkhPgOEcdzqbka8JAw5I9umnF7SDGIFGtxVarNvOVJKZZbnCRLkimC7LzynajjAYCwuuC3Ce/s753/impact.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1oIgP-bmpl4BjLzgc4wMfKTdzBwiMb40LCuXSaEe9LV4RWjTsviKs1AezmLWLb85tbz_WwkhPgOEcdzqbka8JAw5I9umnF7SDGIFGtxVarNvOVJKZZbnCRLkimC7LzynajjAYCwuuC3Ce/w159-h200/impact.webp" width="159" /></a></div><p>Curiosity drove me to research where the expression "three's a charm" originated. <span class="ILfuVd NA6bn"><span class="hgKElc">I learned that the idiom is rooted in the ancient belief that the number three is magical, but the phrase dates back only to the early 1800s. A companion phrase is third time lucky, generally considered a British term. I'd heard before of lucky seven, but hadn't been certain of the magic of the three. Apparently, that doesn't hold up for clovers, where the 4-leaf ones are what you sesek.</span></span><br /> </p><p>Nonetheless, I'm delighted to have three new books to add to my anthology bookcase. Also, do you wanna guess what my friends will be getting this year for Christmas? If you guessed it's a book, you'd be right...in fact, you can book on it!</p><p></p><p>What they won't get, and I won't either, is the charm bracelet you see below. I'd longed for one when I was in junior high, just about the time I met Gail, who went with me a couple of years later to that fateful Sears sale. I remember I finally bought an inexpenive dime store bracelet and collected two or three charms...but it wasn't ever what I'd envisisoned. Apparently, not worth keeping, either. I still have the jewelry from those days that was, my Quill and Scroll pin from junior high journalism and my Scian sorority medallion from high school.</p><p>But thinking about charms and bracelets to dangle them on, I led me to explore to see if they are still popular. I'm not certain I've seen anybody wearing one in a long while. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJIBJnFY0e_mTkjEu6hJXKRVcqQOE3SjimioLuFAGdwTb7v-p0F_AnJH2rdR4KEhgYqYUTC3F-U7U7088CuLPQ0v9QlKywajlabM8Qf4j29-OjWNJUy8iAsSwCVefW412jY4SEMwymX9ID/s1000/charm+bracelet+for+blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJIBJnFY0e_mTkjEu6hJXKRVcqQOE3SjimioLuFAGdwTb7v-p0F_AnJH2rdR4KEhgYqYUTC3F-U7U7088CuLPQ0v9QlKywajlabM8Qf4j29-OjWNJUy8iAsSwCVefW412jY4SEMwymX9ID/s320/charm+bracelet+for+blog.jpg" /></a></div>Oh, yes. This bracelet certainly resembles the one I'd imagined owning all those decades ago when I was a tweener. Do you like it? Really love it the way my 12-year-old heart did? Well, you're in luck because now it's on cybersale. Somebody who put a lot of effort into collecting those charms half a century ago no longer is so charmed...or her heirs aren't. I still am.<br /><p></p><p>As much as I admire this bracelet though, these days I rarely wander out of my senior living apartment to go much of anyplace other than the grocery store. So I doubt I'd ever have much opportunity to wear it. Besides, I still love wearing the gold tennis bracelet that my late husband gave me. I wear only one bracelet at a time...I've never felt the need to be entirely covered in baubles, bangles and beads.<br /></p><p>But if <b>you're</b> charmed, <b>you</b> could snap it up. The seller lists it as "a vintage circa 1970s 14kt yellow gold bracelet, originally priced at $4,995.00." During this cybersale, it's offered for $3,496.50, including free, that's right, <b>free</b> shipping.</p><p>Or, alternatively, you could buy a book. Maybe one with a story by me! They're all available now on Amazon.<br /></p><p>Let me know what you decide. And I hope it makes you happy.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH15YGPHcylIAmS8cbfyYQC4INfxpXw1WDNl4GWe2-R-XhNEK70k_-8xRWlgQNTC1ky5eNClaftdfNnpcJFFI-FXeXO_a9GQ1x9moccBVglfDH2u0Omq8u-MZO-mlc5IDV5MN5EDAQrKQO/s300/happiness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH15YGPHcylIAmS8cbfyYQC4INfxpXw1WDNl4GWe2-R-XhNEK70k_-8xRWlgQNTC1ky5eNClaftdfNnpcJFFI-FXeXO_a9GQ1x9moccBVglfDH2u0Omq8u-MZO-mlc5IDV5MN5EDAQrKQO/s0/happiness.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><br /><p><br /></p><br /><p><br /></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-27158057989415427022020-11-12T13:47:00.006-08:002020-11-12T13:52:39.976-08:00Here Kitty, Kitty, Good Kitty!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSdRni3KrscXR4I9sN2JE3hhMktZoABCT3KcKLUnFrmX6XdgXcMWF4Iwh4zGAalg379UIQ_5iPlivmbkyv6voH0vh-Tdi1lMLAIMjyMJZQBFLekEr3QwolxvwoXr0JNN9Uen0y_plWLbm/s432/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSdRni3KrscXR4I9sN2JE3hhMktZoABCT3KcKLUnFrmX6XdgXcMWF4Iwh4zGAalg379UIQ_5iPlivmbkyv6voH0vh-Tdi1lMLAIMjyMJZQBFLekEr3QwolxvwoXr0JNN9Uen0y_plWLbm/s320/288_GOODNESS_front_cover_4x6_web.jpg" /></a></div><!--[if !mso]>
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<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">"Grandma Fang's Clowder of Kittens" has just been published in a new Wising Up Press
anthology, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Goodness</i>. The anthology is
edited by Charles D. Brockett and Heather Tosteson. It will be available for purchase on December 1 from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and from the publisher, <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><a href="http://www.universaltable.org/bookstore.html" target="_blank">http://www.universaltable.org/bookstore.html</a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;">Per Wising Up Press: G</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oodness
is hard to define, but we know it when we see it. In action or inaction, that
pause that isn't uncertain, that is more like a deep, steady breath, an
existential embrace. It is easier to see goodness in others than in ourselves.
But do we experience it as a choice or part of their essential nature? If a
choice, what is the nature of the choice?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What other adjectives constellate around it? Strong? Independent?
Loving? Astute? Generous? Sui generis? Trusting? Confident? Firm? Unequivocal?
Kind?</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Where
have you seen goodness in play? How has it changed your own life, the actual
choices you make or how you evaluate your choices? Is there a cascade effect?
Or is it, in its specificity, always a one-off? What happens to us when we
think about it, try to describe it, share our experiences of it with others? </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We hope you will find personal
inspiration and resonance in this thoughtful and moving collection that
discovers goodness in such difficult social realities as homelessness,
imprisonment, and more intimate ones like illness, families, marriage, aging.
We also hope these meditations on the often unexpected good in us and those
around us can help us develop larger, much needed social conversations about
our common good.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">This year, 2020, has been filled with much misfortune, but goodness is still around, if you know where to look I found goodness in an aging cat! </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigZXngm-pP9gzIev7HGZUasENxNBxXFGEwUpgH3F__bOiZ2TrykYJX2VgZxUSaMopKt1C1T0lDfh0SRllr9VJeXE_6A95qd_JJDps5BfmKcP1ehAzXTBXsklICKp_uOCM1zYTDDflQWinn/s248/cat.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="248" data-original-width="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigZXngm-pP9gzIev7HGZUasENxNBxXFGEwUpgH3F__bOiZ2TrykYJX2VgZxUSaMopKt1C1T0lDfh0SRllr9VJeXE_6A95qd_JJDps5BfmKcP1ehAzXTBXsklICKp_uOCM1zYTDDflQWinn/s0/cat.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Here are the opening paragraphs from my story:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"> <b><i>Fang appeared shortly after Thanksgiving in l965. My eight-year-old
son, Steve, found her curled up in the patio, blanketed with purple
jacaranda blossoms. He’d gone out with his telescope to look for Pisces,
his favorite autumn constellation. </i></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><i> “Look, Mom. I nearly stepped
on this cat on my way to the gate,” Steve said, cradling the calico
tabby. “I saw its little white paw sticking out of the flowers. Then I
heard it meow. It looks so tired.” </i></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><i> Our last feline guest
disappeared several months earlier, so I agreed we could keep this
latest stray. That’s how it was back then. Except for one neighbor with a
purebred Siamese, people didn’t actually <br /></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 24.0pt;">More from the publishers: <i>"Universal Table/Wising Up Press<span style="text-transform: uppercase;"> </span>is<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </span></b>an
organization dedicated to exploring </i></span><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">the complex challenges and lasting rewards of living up close and
personal with pluralism in social, family, religious, and civic life, or, more
simply, Finding the "We" in "Them," the "Us"
in "You." Wising Up anthologies use </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">literature by contemporary writers </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: ArialMT; mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">to approach various dimensions of pluralism</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><i> because of the power of narrative to help us
identify safely with others who may at first seem, by appearance or
circumstances or culture, very different from us. The anthologies serve as an
invitation to stand in that richer relation—empathic, musing, open to new
meaning—with ourselves and with our neighbors."</i><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiomYWLfITv87NvGWrZigE9QdUJRXSZorQ4TvN1hD_huWPYz5ZQHJt3km4R3cxNIJH5swnShImNUCy7yThMjltlbNsUcc15E-lzpgdDSai7QngUvdS4Rv6tmanz6wPBQ4phPch4f3jsWrJM/s284/images.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="178" data-original-width="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiomYWLfITv87NvGWrZigE9QdUJRXSZorQ4TvN1hD_huWPYz5ZQHJt3km4R3cxNIJH5swnShImNUCy7yThMjltlbNsUcc15E-lzpgdDSai7QngUvdS4Rv6tmanz6wPBQ4phPch4f3jsWrJM/s0/images.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><br /></span><p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"> </p><br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-12191862060243643582020-11-04T13:17:00.003-08:002020-11-04T23:40:25.233-08:00Coming Up Roses<p> </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLdzZ19XkxxsvBUAJO4AtLS-AW32a3sVgZUuT1nETdEDzdf6154ItEI-Z3LKqdfYOUScpKOex1mcD0uFK_UsgJ5sB_2Xv3mkr_eP0KZX6ilc_QgG9R87bxbInrKoNmwiyYBo2TH1Tx10Rl/s1257/IMG_2756+%25282%2529.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="999" data-original-width="1257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLdzZ19XkxxsvBUAJO4AtLS-AW32a3sVgZUuT1nETdEDzdf6154ItEI-Z3LKqdfYOUScpKOex1mcD0uFK_UsgJ5sB_2Xv3mkr_eP0KZX6ilc_QgG9R87bxbInrKoNmwiyYBo2TH1Tx10Rl/s320/IMG_2756+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>I won't go so far as to say that <b><u>everything's</u></b> coming up roses. It's been a harrowing year from day one. What happened on January 1? I singed my finger while lighting some holiday candles near my rocker, the ancient rocker where I read, watch TV and eat my meals from a TV tray. Yes, that very rocker. The match dropped on my chair and set the foam cushion afire. That set off my apartment's fire alarm. <p></p><p>Fortunately, I was able to drag the smouldering cushion out on my balcony and smother the melting foam. The smoke didn't get into my building's hallway, so my own alarm quickly subsided. I have an old Air France blanket acting as a seat cover...making do.</p><p>I'd no sooner returned from a trip to Napa and Healdsburg, when the pandemic set in. Weeks elapsed when I could barely focus on watching a DVD or reading a book. Fortunately, again, I was saved by connecting with groups and friends via Zoom and Skype. So I hadn't completely isolated.</p><p> By October the Rose Center Theater in my community began to state outdoor concerts in its patio garden, with audiences social distanced and masked. So I began to enjoy live music once more.</p><p>A number of area restaurants put up tents and awnings, so I could dine outside with a friend or my son and daughter-in-law. </p><p>"I must admit it's getting better," I hummed to myself. But, wait! I went to the supermarket on one of my usual $5 Fridays. Reaching for a packet of seasoning mix, I accidentally knocked over the container. I grabbed it as it fell, catching it right below my waist on my right side. Just as the guy down the aisle shouted "good catch," I felt a searing pain tear through my upper arm. I could hardly manage to load the groceries on to the cashier's counter and stuff them into my trunk. </p><p>By the time I got home, my entire right bicep was beginning to ache. By evening it had started to bruise. The next morning I realized I might have ruptured a tendon. I waited a day to see if the bruising would subside, but it increased, despite the ice packs I'd applied.</p><p> I messaged my primary care physician and she advised I go to the nearest urgent care. So I drove myself over, parked and walked toward the hospital entrance. Just before the crosswalk, I tripped on a piece of concrete that had been raised by a tree root, fell face first, broke my glasses, scraped my face, sprained my left ring finger, skinned my knees and traumatized my entire body.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWECaIvAY2GsH3LlN2CsGLDdjJyVYu4M5efvoMBqSzj4Sfr7g-Wn4xxExbc6YkhYmG9Xb8PGkV3id6-NP0dokTf5UlQ3-xdQaQewrTWEPI05PXzkoKXSMtrjGB-fuFSBnwzOijYfx-ihBg/s600/red+rose.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="600" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWECaIvAY2GsH3LlN2CsGLDdjJyVYu4M5efvoMBqSzj4Sfr7g-Wn4xxExbc6YkhYmG9Xb8PGkV3id6-NP0dokTf5UlQ3-xdQaQewrTWEPI05PXzkoKXSMtrjGB-fuFSBnwzOijYfx-ihBg/w200-h158/red+rose.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Fortunately, I didn't suffer a cerebral hemmorhage or break a hip. The damage to my bicep might be permanent, but the fall didn't kill me.<p></p>The pandemic isn't going away anytime soon here in Southern California. Nonetheless, I'm focusing on counting my blessings. Though not everything is coming up roses, there's reason for me to celebrate. My Lakers won the NBA. My Dodgers won the World Series. Three books coming out containing my stories appear in the next several weeks. Sasee published a story about the days when I was a majorette. I'm enjoying Taco Tuesdays at a number of different outoor restaurants, while the weather still allows. <br /><p></p><p>Yes, it's autumn, but some things are coming up roses! </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8M57b-tnmbt4gupgKvbsrcxiRbJbnoUo5ZXDx-MyA0uXhC7p4k5Bve2dppaaZXcbmDINikVYRuRtGpzkFX-1VJYscmvE6Ri-joOeWiL3jtyivZNiEX5ZKE104t6BB-9vRE4-F1GHDvn9b/s2936/IMG_2755+%25282%2529.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2887" data-original-width="2936" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8M57b-tnmbt4gupgKvbsrcxiRbJbnoUo5ZXDx-MyA0uXhC7p4k5Bve2dppaaZXcbmDINikVYRuRtGpzkFX-1VJYscmvE6Ri-joOeWiL3jtyivZNiEX5ZKE104t6BB-9vRE4-F1GHDvn9b/s320/IMG_2755+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>And here's my November story:<br /></p><p><a href="https://sasee.com/essay/razzle-dazzle-and-hope/">https://sasee.com/essay/razzle-dazzle-and-hope/</a><br /></p>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-55147109252571961192020-09-26T14:23:00.003-07:002020-09-26T17:40:06.237-07:00I Dreamed the Impossible Dream<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHvwmACZmsIR9gDDdca_wzcEOo-GM9lUvMSPVWWLpL_lpU3w_HoS2rf-LsX9JJUNZ1QIXHy-5gHZHPSb_Ug26I7zG4vsADkfJCLzSP559DG1Jny846npwLNGzx6jzKCluZ6qE_aglDlCJ/s1080/courtyard.jpeg" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHvwmACZmsIR9gDDdca_wzcEOo-GM9lUvMSPVWWLpL_lpU3w_HoS2rf-LsX9JJUNZ1QIXHy-5gHZHPSb_Ug26I7zG4vsADkfJCLzSP559DG1Jny846npwLNGzx6jzKCluZ6qE_aglDlCJ/s320/courtyard.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rose Center Theater Courtyard<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>
The last time I saw or heard live music was March 13 at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton. I'd gone to see "The Great Gatsby" right before the pandemic quarantines set in here in Southern California. Though I've had plenty of opportunity to see Broadway play DVDs and listen to jazz, Broadway and classical musical online and through CDs, I hunger for the real thing...seeing and hearing the performers in a theater.</p><p> Rose Center Theater here in Westminster has been a dream come true. After no productions since last winter, a week ago they debuted a live presentation of "The Wiz" in their courtyard, normally reserved for weddings, receptions and other celebratory events. This, indeed, was a celebratory event.
Seats were set six feet apart, patrons kept their masks on for the entire hour performance and the performers sang their hearts out. Hand sanitizer was provided and ushers showed us to our seats, depending on where we wanted to sit. We lined up in advance, groups six feet apart. </p><p> Last night, I went again for "Man of La Mancha." Beautifully and hilariously staged with an appreciative audience giving performers a standing ovation. </p><p>Weekend after next, Rose will be innovative again, with an outdoor movie, "Waiting in the Wings." I intend to go. It's been the answer to my prayers, just a mile from me here, safe from Covid-19 infection possibilities. So I can't chop on popcorn while I watch? It's worth a few sacrifices and I could lose a few pandemic pounds. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7juZiu10q_nVas4ed7mrXQCHvyDP2_yk_drihHDLF1Ui6jx1oIK15rirE8NKrwxYIoo1M-oSVMUzk2HKFD8SupmRwWaPLFq-AS-oCc0K9GWBa0XGSOdWgFXNE5VrqMG1McQN2pDcptKQb/s288/still+waiting.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7juZiu10q_nVas4ed7mrXQCHvyDP2_yk_drihHDLF1Ui6jx1oIK15rirE8NKrwxYIoo1M-oSVMUzk2HKFD8SupmRwWaPLFq-AS-oCc0K9GWBa0XGSOdWgFXNE5VrqMG1McQN2pDcptKQb/s320/still+waiting.jpg" /></a></div>
Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-64052331060285841352020-09-14T13:31:00.000-07:002020-09-14T13:31:37.522-07:00Are Angels Still Singing in Scotts Mills?<p> </p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7CX8zgNB-5JyUGkydkmOCwh7rBRHybt1nErb5cyzZK_7kf7d3r3WTZlmxe_ukRXDlYcgXl_KxfChVUiJcuW_eW1s7ifSwYs9rxamQEowkwTsMZj7jIZ2qqs-Bkqz4qWmv60Od5PuZ7hkp/s700/fire.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7CX8zgNB-5JyUGkydkmOCwh7rBRHybt1nErb5cyzZK_7kf7d3r3WTZlmxe_ukRXDlYcgXl_KxfChVUiJcuW_eW1s7ifSwYs9rxamQEowkwTsMZj7jIZ2qqs-Bkqz4qWmv60Od5PuZ7hkp/s320/fire.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scotts Mills, September 12, 2019<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />One of my former journalism students sent me a piece a day ago about those fighting fighting to save Scotts Mills, OR, from the encroaching Beechie Creek fire that had destroyed nearly 200,000 acres in the foothills of Mount Hood. Wildfires surrounded the region, forcing evacuations of the entire town. Wildfires surrounded the region, forcing evacuations of the entire town. </p><p> I lived in Scotts Mills as a girl. Here's what I wrote about that town that after I finally went back in 2007. I visited a second time two and a half years ago when I went to Oregon for the total solar eclipse.<br /></p><h3 align="center" class="MsoNormal"> And the Angels Sing</h3>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For decades I’d planned to return to Scotts Mills. I’d
learned something there once, but couldn’t quite recall what it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At troubled times, I’d muse and mull, but
that will-o’-the-wisp memory flickered just beyond my perception. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the close of WWII, my family, like many others, fled Los Angeles in the paranoia
over potential nuclear submarine attacks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They headed for Oregon’s Willamette Valley, miles from the Pacific. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For three years we lived in this hamlet of fewer than 200
people, in our two-story Victorian house with a wooden staircase, a root cellar
and a barn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In l948 we scurried back to Los Angeles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My family bitterly regretted their hiatus
from city life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hadn’t wanted to
leave. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Grandma had grumbled about the dark clouds, fog, and drizzle
that cloaked the area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tracking the
weather on her kitchen calendar, she claimed the sun peeped through the mist only
nine days one entire summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Daddy, who
played cornet in the sweet swing of style of Bunny Berrigan, rounded up a trio
to play at local dances, privately grousing about having to include a schmaltzy
accordion for keyboards, which didn’t seem quite right on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And the Angels</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sing</i>, his
signature song. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Mama lamented her suburban coffee klatches, and on weekends
would bribe my big sister and me into playing Chinese checkers with
heavily-sugared cups of her favorite beverage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Grandpa reveled in growing parsnips and endive and teasing my little
brother with garden snakes, but even he muttered about having to drive seven
dang miles to Silverton to purchase his Old Crow from the state liquor store. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For me, a curious 8-year-old, Scotts Mills was Wonderland,
Oz and NeverNeverLand all rolled into one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I picked wild iris, blackberries, and crab apples. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could earn a dime for a comic book by taking
Grandma’s shopping list and wicker basket to the general store for items she’d
forgotten to buy at the Silverton Safeway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I could spot what Daddy said was the Andromeda cluster at night, and he
promised when winter came we might see the aurora borealis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I could even earn money at the town store's pharmacy by stripping cascara bark from trees along Grandview Street.</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCLS68YDdTb7Xr0pv3vbcqjGvN7mjnh6U82YpWvSYShDhIKU5XDkIbwlpYKbracFPvbya1Z6pHJCyjrP3Pxxgy6jRHKJH2alhgS2z9oivxuyFVsvNCkNz3pfKl8ye_hLfQMHjFM35eZ1S/s400/cascara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="250" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWCLS68YDdTb7Xr0pv3vbcqjGvN7mjnh6U82YpWvSYShDhIKU5XDkIbwlpYKbracFPvbya1Z6pHJCyjrP3Pxxgy6jRHKJH2alhgS2z9oivxuyFVsvNCkNz3pfKl8ye_hLfQMHjFM35eZ1S/w125-h200/cascara.jpg" width="125" /></a></p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I learned something new every day that first summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grandma taught me how to dogpaddle in the dam
and to ignore my classmates’ claims of spotting cousins of the Loch Ness
monster in its murky waters. Daddy taught me always to wear a long-sleeved
flannel shirt on the mornings when it was my turn to carry wood to the box next
to the kitchen stove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mama taught me to
watch for broken glass when I waded in Silver Creek, and some sneaky opening
Chinese checker ploys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Grandpa taught me
how to identify poison oak and make vinegar compresses, but only after I came
home blistered and weeping. <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When school started, I skipped third grade, since my reading
scores indicated that I could do fourth grade work. I had missed multiplication
and long division, so my teacher, Miss Magee, spent endless after-school hours
helping me understand times tables and what to do with remainders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The three-room schoolhouse lumped grades three through five together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Younger and smaller than my classmates, I was
shy and nervous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat with grade four
in the middle row, where classmates on each side could jeer I sucked my thumb,
chewed on the ends of my pigtails, and gnawed my pencils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They called me Terri Termite until Miss Magee
held a pointed discussion on The Golden Rule. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I worshiped Miss Magee, and studied hard so
she would be proud of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I learned outside of school, as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The town had been founded by Quakers, and
just a few blocks downhill from our home on Grandview
stood a Friends Church, built in l892.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every Sunday I would trudge off to Sunday school,
intent on earning my first New Testament, offered as a prize for four months of
perfect attendance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I craved the
pocket-sized book with the red leatherette covers, so I would set out even on
rainy mornings, ignoring Grandma’s predictions that I’d catch a cold or the dreaded
flu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> In the basement, we would listen to missionaries tell exotic
tales of their work in East Africa. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’m going to be just like them,” I’d tell my
family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I’ll see jungles and monkeys
and teach children how to read.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From
the missionaries too I had learned how to pray for others, and not just
myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I prayed that my classmates
would grow in grace enough to stop teasing me and other vulnerable children,
such as the boy with the hare lip.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> After we returned to Los Angeles, I got caught up with
junior high and high school, boyfriends, youth groups at a variety of churches,
and not too much later, even marriage and a child of my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the values I learned from Miss McGee and
the Friends Church remained with me, perseverance
and discipline, compassion and social justice.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, in spring 2007 I was asked to be the keynote
speaker at the Oregon School Counselors Association annual conference in Bend, Oregon
in October.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slated theme was “Global
Vision, Local Action.” I’d been invited to talk about my adventures all over
the world with the Peace Corps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had
not returned to Oregon
since l948. When I looked on the map I saw that Scotts Mills was just a few
hours drive from the conference center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I began making plans.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> Idiscovered that the Scotts Mills
Friends Church
had a website, so I wrote, mentioning how the church and Miss Magee had
influenced me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The webmaster knew the
Magee family and put me in touch with the children of Barbara McGee Hays, who
had died of cancer in l972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon I had
letters from them, saying they would be at the church when I came in
October.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I drove over early from the motel in Silverton and sat
quietly in the rear pew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pianist
played a few quick practice notes, and I recognized the song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reached for the songbook before me, and
flipped through to find the old hymn, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Be
Still My Soul.</i> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I opened the Bible, and found the verse that had eluded me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Be still, and know that I am God.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psalm 46:10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></i>I smiled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was so
simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I relaxed and the words “center
down” popped into my head, the long forgotten but basic premise of the Friends Church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I had learned as a child was to clear my mind of chatter so that I
could be receptive to a spiritual message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> After the minister arrived, he approached me and asked if I
were the woman who had contacted the webmaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He invited me to say a few words when the time arrived for
offerings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We don’t always have much
money to offer,” he explained, “but we always ask if somebody has something
personal to offer.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> When it came time, I raised my hand and stood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Who is this strange lady?” he asked,
smiling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Not so strange,” I answered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I got to the lectern I looked out at the
congregation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The last time I stood on
this stage was Easter, l948,” I began, “nearly sixty years ago.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> After the service Miss Magee’s grown children chatted with me.
Amazingly, my fourth grade teacher’s son had done some international missionary
work in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and knew the Peace Corps director who had been
there when I had conducted an international workshop on HIV/AIDS prevention
there in 2003.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We agreed to remain in
touch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> I toured the town’s museum later that day, and chatted with
one of my former classmates who lived across from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He remembered how the children teased.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I learned to center down, I found I no
longer needed to chew my pencils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope
the boy with the hare lip learned to ignore the taunts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> As I drove back to Silverton I found myself humming my
father’s favorite, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And the Angels Sing.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNQOFASHDxJYYTpsqjiAUvFmsYxibe42s5CPHJAodl9emdRMNJ1Bv3lL59pFRHcsSZvZEYzbJltmANLLSjanwdSfHo3rInyCjcV1H6ncM1MIikDfV_lBOIzj5YE_-gKyiPjBEMH9Plf2Ts/s983/bunny-berigan-portrait-rowland-bernard-bunny-berigan-american-jazz-KH90KM+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="983" data-original-width="887" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNQOFASHDxJYYTpsqjiAUvFmsYxibe42s5CPHJAodl9emdRMNJ1Bv3lL59pFRHcsSZvZEYzbJltmANLLSjanwdSfHo3rInyCjcV1H6ncM1MIikDfV_lBOIzj5YE_-gKyiPjBEMH9Plf2Ts/s320/bunny-berigan-portrait-rowland-bernard-bunny-berigan-american-jazz-KH90KM+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bunny Berrigan<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-43872050037790134762020-08-06T11:54:00.002-07:002020-08-07T22:17:24.409-07:00Please, Mr. Postman<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLjeGnqa9oPT8rzhtrt30TYRIYgVA36LihXuzSapOEAgJSJbi-5jViYJFSrSaT7dmp9LNXNAuv1VdmG0xHYRt0enFJ0xiY96x8eieTwzs2-i0XnP3TmsWHfEwFE3XNAmY50QX53z9Dzt7/s850/neil+postman.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="850" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQLjeGnqa9oPT8rzhtrt30TYRIYgVA36LihXuzSapOEAgJSJbi-5jViYJFSrSaT7dmp9LNXNAuv1VdmG0xHYRt0enFJ0xiY96x8eieTwzs2-i0XnP3TmsWHfEwFE3XNAmY50QX53z9Dzt7/w410-h193/neil+postman.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>When I picked up Neil Postman's 1985 landmark book, <i>Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, </i>the librarian who brought it out to me at my Westminster CA local library commented that it was classic Sociology 101. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I'd taken Sociology 101 in 1957, decades earlier, when we were still astonished to be learning about white collar crime. I'd read Postman, his books on semantics and childhood, but not this particular book. Now I'm glad I have.</div><div><br /></div><div>From Wikipedia, here's a brief synopsis of the origins of this work:</div><div> "The book's origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Book_Fair" title="Frankfurt Book Fair">Frankfurt Book Fair</a> in 1984. He was participating in a panel on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell" title="George Orwell">George Orwell</a>'s <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four" title="Nineteen Eighty-Four">Nineteen Eighty-Four</a></i> and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley" title="Aldous Huxley">Aldous Huxley</a>'s <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World" title="Brave New World">Brave New World</a></i>, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's work, where they were oppressed by state control."</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGeDruivatsAS-mBCGRNx0LDl4VaggAyGixdpFbmDXOzvEt7OMP2DUolshxnAOZ6Wy9b_MvUvcKV9jywbINZy_S7IiSmovjferVQJDji8j5R5Uz-7297GUxs8Uo524tM-uJhzjJjGjf9qK/s499/amusing.jpg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="326" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGeDruivatsAS-mBCGRNx0LDl4VaggAyGixdpFbmDXOzvEt7OMP2DUolshxnAOZ6Wy9b_MvUvcKV9jywbINZy_S7IiSmovjferVQJDji8j5R5Uz-7297GUxs8Uo524tM-uJhzjJjGjf9qK/w209-h319/amusing.jpg" width="209" /></a></div></div><div>I thought reading Postman's book would help me to better understand how a failed casino builder and reality television host could ascend to the presidency of the United States. It certainly has.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the preface, Postman's son, Andrew, asks us to recall 1985 when MTV was in its infanccy. And then think about how fast we have become bombarded with technological diversion that there's little time left for reflection. Rarely do you see a group of young people sitting around and chatting. Instead they hunch over their cell phones texting, swiping or playing games, ignoring those on either side of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because I spent a decade in developing countries, 1987 through 1997, without TV, telephone, or nearby movie complexes, with few available newspapers or current magazines, I continued to rely on books and handwritten letters for information and diversion. It was only when I returned to the States and moved to Arkansas in 1998 that it struck me how much our culture had changed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Though computers now sat on every desk, we went to each other's offices for discussions. It wasn't long before we began to email one another, though our doorways might be thirty steps apart. Then, by 2005 I learned my stepgrandchildren rarely checked emails...they communicated through their cell phones. A year later Twitter had been created. All this in a twenty-year span since Postman's book first came to public notice.</div><div><br /></div><div>Chapter 9 of <i>Amusing Ourselves to Death</i>, tellingly is titled, "Reach Out and Elect Someone." In it he discusses how TV commercials have devastated public discourse. "By bringing together in compact form all of the arts of show business...music, drama, imagery, humor, celebrity...the television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of <i>Das Kapital." </i>Postman argues that Americans, even in 1985, had begun to accept political commericals as "a normal and plausible form of discourse."</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUXOfIA4KC8SOmfMx3GSYmc-YQI0FXekvvLlzL4f5RK7uTBJKYO6f3HoPGKDRbB4m3QZQUcw16g9kUuxFOtcfV_MXAFFOMC8HdPEJKIptghXTWqfSlD60Uo0XUwo96IHXrNEU7bPcr1dnY/s260/brave.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="163" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUXOfIA4KC8SOmfMx3GSYmc-YQI0FXekvvLlzL4f5RK7uTBJKYO6f3HoPGKDRbB4m3QZQUcw16g9kUuxFOtcfV_MXAFFOMC8HdPEJKIptghXTWqfSlD60Uo0XUwo96IHXrNEU7bPcr1dnY/w104-h166/brave.jpg" width="104" /></a></div></div><div>Even those who aren't crazy about combat sports, such as American football, watch the Super Bowl to see the new commercials.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now our national elections might hinge on which candidates spend the most dollars on commercials. Huxley had predicted this. Postman had nailed it. And our current White House incumbent is more preoccupied with "ratings" than with rising numbers of deaths in the USA related to Covid-19.</div><div><br /></div><div>Postman posits that TV "presents information in a form that is simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual: that is to say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I often see posted on Facebook, Twitter or commentary on news articles, in relation to politics, this message: "Time to grab the popcorn and sit back and watch the show."</div><div><br /></div><div>"The show." The circus has come to town.</div><div><br /></div><div>We may well finally have succeeded in amusing ourselves to death.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death</a><br /></div>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-86030278165252768052020-07-19T15:25:00.000-07:002020-07-19T15:25:22.466-07:00Fevers: Thank You For Being a Friend<br />
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<br />
I spent yesterday evening social distancing and drinking wine with a friend I've had since the early '80s. We reminisced about some of the places we've visited together and adventures we've shared. When I came back to my apartment I began to remember other friends from the past.<br />
<br />
I remembered Arthur Gold's song from the '70s that later became the theme song for "Golden Girls," and even listened to its rollicking rhythms on You Tube. Remember this? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voNEgCKzves">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voNEgCKzves</a><br />
<br />
Then I recalled a story, "Fevers," I wrote about a decade ago for a book about unsent letters...and how it involved a boy from junior high. Though I usually write nonfiction, this one really is creative nonfiction, since I've fictionalized the name of the friend...but not the incident. I called this story "Fevers." I don't think it ever was published...and I'd forgotten about it until now.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Dear Stephen: </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
wonder if you even remember me, let alone the time we both got into a lot of
trouble because of something you did when we were in the seventh grade. Even
though it was decades ago, I still remember all the details of that day, and
want to thank you for those memories.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
were going to have a test, and I woke up early and pressed a palm to my forehead,
wondering if I could convince my mother that I should skip school. I wanted to
stay home and sip chicken soup and listen with her to her daytime soaps. That sounded
like a lot more fun than taking Miss Warren’s geography quiz. </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Does
this ring a bell with you now? Do you recall how we’d been studying bodies of
water? I’d told you that I was all right so long as we stayed on land. I knew that
Montpelier, Vermont,
was the nation’s smallest capital, and Pierre,
South Dakota, was the second, and
that the two cities names didn’t rhyme, even though they looked like they
should.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
both knew all the countries and their capitals in South and Central America,
and most of those of Africa, so long as they
stayed put and didn’t change their names. But there was something about the
world’s bodies of water that stymied us both.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
remember how we’d rattle off the names of the oceans and point to them on the
classroom globe. But The North Atlantic Drift, the Antarctic Circumpolar
Current, the Indian Ocean Gyre…I’d told you
that these seemed more like chants to me. You laughed and said you thought that
they didn’t even stay in one place. We agreed that the words had a nice poetic
rhythm, but since we couldn’t find them on the map we joked that we weren’t even
sure they really existed.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">When
Miss Warren claimed we all had to become sea savvy to pass seventh grade geography,
I whispered to you that I could hardly wait until we moved on to history. You’d
nodded and grinned. Is it coming back to you,yet?</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d told you that I didn’t understand sea
fever. I never longed to go down to the sea because I found it all confusing.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
studied together after school, but it didn’t seem to help. What was the difference
between the Gulf Stream and the Gulf of Mexico?
I told you that so far as I could tell, one flowed out of the other, but which
was which baffled me. And why they were both in the Atlantic
Ocean simply didn’t make sense. When my family visited the Baja California coast of Mexico we camped at the Pacific. When
I squinted out across the waves, I’d pretend to try to spy the coast of China, not Spain!</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
still remember, Stephen, how my mother came into the bedroom and peered down my
throat the morning of that quiz. Even as I write the word “peer” I smile, recalling
how funny we thought it was that South Dakota capital was pronounced “peer,” not
like that Pierre who got eaten by a lion in that Maurice Sendak book. It was
our little joke.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Miss Warren had reassured the class that Pierre was just one
syllable as we exchanged puzzled glances. Not a one of us really believed that,
but she seemed so sincere that we nodded solemnly and repeated it after her.
Peer, South Dakota.
“It’s not pee-air,” you had whispered, and we both giggled.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">That
morning y mom claimed I just had hay fever, and pulled some clothes out of my
closet and told me to get dressed. She blamed my sniffles and sneezes on spring
pollen. So I went to school.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Right
before class you and I met in the hallway and talked about the previous night’s
game. We both had Dodger fever and agreed how this might finally be the year we
won the pennant. </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Then
we sat down at our desks, and you winked at me when Miss Warren told us there
would be ten questions on the quiz. She said she’d read the clues one at a
time, and give us a minute or two to write our answers. She warned us to
remember to keep our answers covered and added that though this was the honor
system, she wanted to help us all stay honorable.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">At
first I thought I would be doing all right, scribbling my answers quickly.
Polar ice caps, English Channel, Angel
Falls, Lake
Superior. Finally, there was just one more clue.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrZZwAXFwZ-iGnpI-illZG3TPj7Ohct3IIhXNz1yxh7By44DcgXMbPDuwOKuotS31Aw6vE0cpYu-yUebZYL0fPEEyiJ6dAU5H66e6BMNDfrkY53I6P3RyqoW6W3DHsvjffPGtr8xvZz-7o/s1600/Juan_Ponce_de_Le%25C3%25B3n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="657" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrZZwAXFwZ-iGnpI-illZG3TPj7Ohct3IIhXNz1yxh7By44DcgXMbPDuwOKuotS31Aw6vE0cpYu-yUebZYL0fPEEyiJ6dAU5H66e6BMNDfrkY53I6P3RyqoW6W3DHsvjffPGtr8xvZz-7o/s200/Juan_Ponce_de_Le%25C3%25B3n.jpg" width="153" /></a></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Miss
Warren said it was about Ponce de Leon discovering something in 1513, and the Spanish
ships using it when they sailed between Spain
and the coast of Florida.</span></i><i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
decided it had to be one of those gulfs…but couldn’t remember which one, the
Gulf Stream or the Gulf of Mexico. I finally
wrote down the latter. Then I looked up. You were staring at my paper. I was certain
you had copied my answer before I could slap my hand over it. And my answer
might be wrong.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
started our reading assignment while Miss Warren corrected the tests. I began
to forget about you as I lost myself in the fascinating new chapter about atolls
and archipelagoes. They might be in water, but they didn’t move around.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Then
Miss Warren called out our names and told us to come out to the hallway with
her. She asked us which of us copied the other, and said we were the only two
in the room who wrote Gulf of Mexico when it should have been Gulf
Stream. She said she didn’t think it was a coincidence that we sat
next to one another.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
were dead in the water. I began to consider the possibilities. If I told the
truth, that I saw you copying me, our budding friendship would be at an end. And
you were the only boy in seventh grade who shared my loyalty to the Dodgers,
the only boy I could talk to without stuttering and stammering. Plus you had
such a cute smile.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">If
I lied, and said I had copied you, I’d get an unsatisfactory in conduct and my
parents would ground me forever. I made a silent vow that if you told the truth
I would name my firstborn child after you. Or if the baby were a girl I’d call
it Stephanie.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Just
as I started to open my mouth, you jumped in and confessed that you’d copied
me. Miss Warren acted really mad that I hadn’t covered my answers and gave us
both a stern reminder about how she did not tolerate cheating. You promised
never to copy my work or anybody else’s again. I forgave you on the spot for
getting us both into trouble.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We
both passed geography in the spring of l949. And that fall the Dodgers won the
pennant. I want you to know that I’m a woman of my word, and about a decade
later I named my firstborn Stephen.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kFgfIk7IdfP-38jx7gylRb8Ta1wu8r8iM4cStPcqpM47_D5LTd8kyncA7UNlhrISQn7QcqqoLU7MS4-HGxTLfTFxEDyopfHK_DRSA1wMtmdtVCygmDU2NCEop8_VR6Z9bkrxQoWZm1T_/s1600/1949+dodgers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="792" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kFgfIk7IdfP-38jx7gylRb8Ta1wu8r8iM4cStPcqpM47_D5LTd8kyncA7UNlhrISQn7QcqqoLU7MS4-HGxTLfTFxEDyopfHK_DRSA1wMtmdtVCygmDU2NCEop8_VR6Z9bkrxQoWZm1T_/s200/1949+dodgers.jpg" width="156" /></a><i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">A
few years ago I went to our high school’s 50<sup>th</sup> reunion. You weren’t
there, but your ex-wife was. I wanted to ask about you and how your life turned
out, but I could tell she wasn’t pleased to hear me mention your name. </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I
still like the sound of your name, though, and think of you more than you’d
guess. After all, I named my son after you. Just thought you’d like to know. It
was my way of thanking you for telling the truth rather than letting me stay in
trouble. And thanking you for being a friend to a shy little girl.</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Did
you ever suspect back then that I had a crush on you? Or did you think it
really was all about the Dodgers? Love always, Terri</span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></i></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2BXNUzDrNuebYV2V2BMlJQPpBlqnoBKZyh_BwDRx8w3OWkqzMwQaAs68yZcjf6BHLKsDaFtE0e_SPoYkZuucb5UkMDYiC92N3ij5lNas5uGgSrzNUWZ4cC1kkKTc_0LK8IdAuS3K0jOXC/s1600/sea+fever.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="564" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2BXNUzDrNuebYV2V2BMlJQPpBlqnoBKZyh_BwDRx8w3OWkqzMwQaAs68yZcjf6BHLKsDaFtE0e_SPoYkZuucb5UkMDYiC92N3ij5lNas5uGgSrzNUWZ4cC1kkKTc_0LK8IdAuS3K0jOXC/s320/sea+fever.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voNEgCKzves" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voNEgCKzves</a>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-86402839741071782332020-06-27T12:02:00.000-07:002020-06-27T12:02:24.755-07:00Food for Thought, But Nibbles Only<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLb6Uy-184yvSSfZwk3hBXWSy89fwAl0pnXLzhGAzCkpfHDdGnL9d0RGo7OYTAPWs9_2BGjm17qW0yw3dGUJ2esBaMcZA4aXIruoBK1qBgGXcxizgjVB_n27pvp_PXrMTcbm0h8V2l_Lt/s1600/food.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheLb6Uy-184yvSSfZwk3hBXWSy89fwAl0pnXLzhGAzCkpfHDdGnL9d0RGo7OYTAPWs9_2BGjm17qW0yw3dGUJ2esBaMcZA4aXIruoBK1qBgGXcxizgjVB_n27pvp_PXrMTcbm0h8V2l_Lt/s320/food.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
When you're writing flash nonfiction, you don't spend any time on appetizers. My story, "Proof of the Pudding," which appears in this new book, cuts directly to dessert, specifically<br />
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Grandma Gertie's famous recipe for apple bread pudding. Enjoy!<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Proof of the Pudding </h4>
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By Terri Elders</div>
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<i>My spouse, Ken, spotted the package of banana pudding mix
I’d set on the kitchen counter. “No pudding in any guise,” he warned me.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>“Oh, I thought I’d mash up these soft bananas and stir them
into that mix. You like banana cream pie.”</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>“Make banana bread instead. I don’t do pudding.”</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>I added pudding to a list that already included cabbage, sweet
potatoes, and deviled eggs. But I regretted Ken’s refusal to taste the down-home
dishes Grandma had taught me to cook, the nostalgic nibbles I dearly loved. He
even declined fried zucchini. </i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>This was the same man who bragged he’d savored snails in garlic
sauce, purchased from a street vendor next to the Eiffel Tower. He’d lamented
that he couldn’t find quark, a kind of yogurt cheese he favored when he’d lived
in Germany. And Ken never pushed away any kind of fried meat. </i></div>
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<i>A devotee of Miguel de Cervantes, Ken collected Don Quixote
paintings and images. He’d complained about his hero’s diet, described in the
opening pages of Cervantes’ 17<sup>th</sup> century Spanish novel as sparse,
monotonous and unpalatable.</i></div>
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<i>“If Quixote and I hung out, I’d insist he try a
chicken-fried steak,” Ken said. “That would help fatten him up.”</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>I disliked having to toss out a dish that didn’t please his
palate. Ken knew I hated to throw any food away. My years in the Peace Corps
had taught me it’s unethical to waste food.</i></div>
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<i>One spring as we weeded the front yard, I’d held aloft a
dandelion, lamenting that I couldn’t remember how Grandma had prepared her “mess
o’ greens.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“She wilted the dandelion leaves in bacon grease, and added
onion and garlic,” I began, dreamily recalling the delicious aroma. “I think
she added a dash of vinegar. Or maybe it was pepper sauce.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“It would be a mess, all right,” Ken had retorted, yanking
the weeds from my hand and tossing them into the wheelbarrow.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBvMRu-vQ5lcmvU3WVKC010N5iQs-CkUEujYVlafbWv1mIvXbmpDLm19IeJKe2nBDrpTwzCHgW_dpy0aoBZPxS1uxffyTeGoWP8-dR4X1SiEP2dzhcM4OXvAYqrnZp2Yi04UJdhzWRzPy/s1600/french+bread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="408" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFBvMRu-vQ5lcmvU3WVKC010N5iQs-CkUEujYVlafbWv1mIvXbmpDLm19IeJKe2nBDrpTwzCHgW_dpy0aoBZPxS1uxffyTeGoWP8-dR4X1SiEP2dzhcM4OXvAYqrnZp2Yi04UJdhzWRzPy/s200/french+bread.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>
<i>I usually went along, but when it came to bread, I balked. I
believed that letting bread grow moldy amounted to blasphemy. Bread, Grandma
had taught me, was the staff of life. Every crumb had value. Stale loaves could
transform them into croutons to sprinkle on French onion soup, or crumbs to pad
out meat loaf, or cubes to stir into stewed tomatoes.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>One morning I noticed that some of the apples I’d stored in
our pantry when they’d ripened on our trees the past autumn had begun to look dehydrated.
I also saw we had half a loaf of more-than-a-day-old French bread.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I thumbed through my recipes and found Grandma’s
instructions for apple bread pudding. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aha! Maybe I’d claim it was Brown Betty.
Grandma had made that, too, but it didn’t contain milk and eggs. Ken wouldn’t
know the difference. After all, in Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes had
immortalized the adage, (in one translation, anyway) “The proof of the pudding
is in the eating.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Sometimes Grandma served her bread pudding with a sauce,
either vanilla or caramel, but since Ken scrunched up his face at syrupy
toppings, I’d garnish it with whipped cream, which he loved.</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhckfgWx1h_qiDjW1zMicb5ZA1DQaHBVOduZtEI5qS2fSr4WJcaMx-NKCTan6Pym9zW0Bz9zZIWiXAT0SOcMLd7G10EPmrok8O-7Y4NfF06milQpOUx5zdiEQ30pPXgrCLgF_Flsex8oo-s/s1600/Apple-Bread-Pudding-5-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhckfgWx1h_qiDjW1zMicb5ZA1DQaHBVOduZtEI5qS2fSr4WJcaMx-NKCTan6Pym9zW0Bz9zZIWiXAT0SOcMLd7G10EPmrok8O-7Y4NfF06milQpOUx5zdiEQ30pPXgrCLgF_Flsex8oo-s/s200/Apple-Bread-Pudding-5-1.jpg" width="133" /></a></i></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“Ready for dessert, honey?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I baked something this afternoon.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Ken favored me with his lopsided smile. “What’s it called?”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I scooped out a couple of servings into custard cups. I had difficulty
telling even a little white lie without turning crimson, so I averted my face.
I squirted whipped cream, cooking up an evasion. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“Oh, it’s something Grandma used to bake. It’s an old-fashioned
dish, like a Brown Betty with apples.” </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Ken ate every bite. “It’s paradisaical,” he said. “I’ll take
seconds. What’s it called again? How do you make it??”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>I bit my lip and handed him Grandma’s recipe card. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“Bread pudding?” Ken sputtered. “I thought you said it was
Brown Betty.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“Hmmm. I must have pulled out the wrong recipe. Still want
seconds? It’s a pudding. That you don’t do in any guise.” </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Ken grinned and handed me his bowl. “Guess I can’t say that
anymore.” </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>There’s more than one way to skin a cat, I’ve heard.
Wait…did Miguel de Cervantes say </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>that? No…I think it was Grandma.</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<i> </i>This is book will be available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Woodhall Press. (Temporary delay in publishing because of pandemic.)</div>
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<![endif]-->Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-70099020186308398672020-06-06T14:34:00.002-07:002020-06-06T14:34:54.825-07:00Taps: Reflections on D-Day and Normandy<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwP99_ArAUt4rVZh2m8aC6DQvisvQGiLpouTxExlBH8BJFcSBgiIiF9n7BH9cHZNuXUBQd7HoSeR0VsScygmtgFSOAFMiYlodlj885CQj0sT0Hx_DxTbPsZijcSDj84MnkPR_wgk7A-sn/s1600/taps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwwP99_ArAUt4rVZh2m8aC6DQvisvQGiLpouTxExlBH8BJFcSBgiIiF9n7BH9cHZNuXUBQd7HoSeR0VsScygmtgFSOAFMiYlodlj885CQj0sT0Hx_DxTbPsZijcSDj84MnkPR_wgk7A-sn/s320/taps.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American Cemetery, Normandy, France</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I didn't know much about military protocol until I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1935 short story collection, <i>Taps at Reveille</i> about fifty years ago. I found myself forced to look up the meaning of "Taps" and "Reveille". To my surprise, I learned that there's an additional third military bugle ceremony, "Retreat."<br />
<br />
Reveille, played at sunrise, derives from the French <em>réveille,</em> meaning "wake up." Sometimes these days I have to remind myself that it's probably not to my benefit to roll over and sleep until noon.<br />
<br /><em></em>
Retreat, played at the end of the work day, has signaled the military end of duty since the Revolutionary War, with the bugle call harking back, astonishingly enough, to the Crusades.I'm no longer much of a crusader, so now this for me signals Happy Hour!<br />
<br />
Lastly, Taps, can signal lights out, but also is played at military funerals and ceremonies.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8QJbu0tZ-Dd2tr8JlxHXLBnpLLJlutynY4J5r-yfbtHpHoRIM06OPLQg81uwdeFzm6bfkJuwJEVvvzvScvYwQDxkQGdrl8yhuAY4jiDYezooTW2Pos2svhIfK_hzkNp7jBPAvI8Qf8wNS/s1600/chet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="564" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8QJbu0tZ-Dd2tr8JlxHXLBnpLLJlutynY4J5r-yfbtHpHoRIM06OPLQg81uwdeFzm6bfkJuwJEVvvzvScvYwQDxkQGdrl8yhuAY4jiDYezooTW2Pos2svhIfK_hzkNp7jBPAvI8Qf8wNS/s200/chet.jpg" width="140" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chet Baker</td></tr>
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My favorite jazz musician, Chet Baker, left school at the age of 16 in 1946 to join the US Army, assigned to Berlin, where he joined the 298th Army Band. He also played Taps each evening. I wish he'd recorded that...I'd certainly listen to it today. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5QtMjWD9tIeWY7OUA-w8l68s6bDFQHMq55I5NP5T5oW4WAaWlTriOXA8it2B8Tb9jlGHP4jinK9Be5TGRf85TbZUWEK-xsxAFWEENt0D4N4r-Co0kncSP_WF0rEsWSjPfinoLxjIa22l_/s1600/taps+at+reveille.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="204" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5QtMjWD9tIeWY7OUA-w8l68s6bDFQHMq55I5NP5T5oW4WAaWlTriOXA8it2B8Tb9jlGHP4jinK9Be5TGRf85TbZUWEK-xsxAFWEENt0D4N4r-Co0kncSP_WF0rEsWSjPfinoLxjIa22l_/s200/taps+at+reveille.jpg" width="127" /></a>F. Scott Fitzgerald's choice of that title for his book seems so significant for me. He understood the irony, the nuance, that reflections at the end of the day should also begin at the beginning.<br />
<br />
I intend to commemorate these signals so that at least three times each day I will pause and reflect and focus on one thing. Right now, because it's June 6, I'm recalling my visit last November to Normandy and to Omaha Beach. My friend, Linda, and I went in a limo with six other people, to see the German bunkers at Gold's Beach. Then we stood on Omaha Beach where we gathered shells, and heard our guide describe the events that lead to this invasion where 3000 Americans were killed.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Linda at Omaha Beach</td></tr>
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We continued on to the American Cemetery, in time for Taps. Strange to be standing on American soil in France, but we were. Twice each day the American flag is lowered, because there are two flagpoles. The tradition is to have a veteran, hopefully a WWII veteran, and sometimes with a lot of luck, a veteran of the Normandy campaign, assist in the ceremony while the actual flag lowering and folding are handled by active military personnel. The day we were there, four WWII veterans were present, two in wheelchairs, one a Normandy veteran.<br />
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When I came home from this visit to France I gave shells I had picked up at Omaha Beach to a few friends and kept a couple for myself. I have rubbed and polished them again today, remembering to reflect.<br />
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For more about the significance to these events and the places in Normandy that commemorate them, here's some resources:<br />
<a href="http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery">http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery</a><a href="http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery" target="_blank">http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery</a><br />
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If you get to Omaha Beach, do not miss the war museum there: <a href="http://www.musee-memorial-omaha.com/en/">http://www.musee-memorial-omaha.com/en/</a><br />
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Or this: <a href="https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-europe/operation-overlord/invasion-normandy/pointe-du-hoc.html" target="_blank">https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-europe/operation-overlord/invasion-normandy/pointe-du-hoc.html</a><br />
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More on Omaha Beach: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach</a> <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Operation Overlord</td></tr>
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<br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-3784914347469745062020-06-02T10:54:00.000-07:002020-06-02T10:54:22.742-07:00Vice and Virtue and Vice Versa<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Seven Deadly Sins, Hieronymus Bosch </td></tr>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve read about the seven deadly sins. Remember these? Maybe you heard about them, as a kid in Sunday school. This is what I recall from my childhood: <span class="ILfuVd NA6bn"><span class="e24Kjd">Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Sloth, and Wrath. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve also read Pope Gregory’s values
that oppose those sins, that counterbalance them. These include: Faith, Hope, Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, Justice and Temperance.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I'm bothered by the catch phrase, "virtue signaling," I'm hearing parroted by those who oppose mask wearing to protect others from possible infection of COVID-19. I'm bewildered by those who use the term to show their disdain about those who claim solidarity with peaceful protests of racial injustice. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Oh, it's only rhetoric, I hear. Oh, it's just political posturing. Oh, it's just huffing and puffing, with no real meaning.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I don't think so. To me words count. I don't just toss them on a page when I write. I mull them over. I ask myself it they're accurate, if they're nuanced, if they're precise.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So I cringe at today's catch phrases, such as the supposedly compassionate, but actually dismissive, term "All Lives Matter." Of course they do, but the current racial injustice protests aren't about all lives, they're specifically about black lives endangered across the globe. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I don't like the phrase, "OK, Boomer," which express disgust with an older generation...and I'm not even a Boomer. I'm from the so-called Silent Generation, or as Tom Brokaw wrote, "the Greatest Generation." </span></div>
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I don't like the phrase, "OK, Karen," which disparages middle-class white women in general, by using a name that one of my favorite writers, Karen Blixen, bore. It's a Danish derivation of Katherine that became one of the most popular names for girls in the US in the fifties and sixties.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I don't like the bromide, "The cure is worse than the disease," alluding to the quarantines and lock-downs designed to keep the COVID-19 virus spreading to the extent that it would overwhelm our hospitals and medical workers. No, the cure is NOT worse than the disease.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I had the infamous 1980-1981 influenza that killed over 32,000 in the US. I was only 40 and in otherwise good health. But I never have been more acutely ill in my life. I came close to being hospitalized, but suffered from pleurisy for weeks afterwards, as I continued to go to work, feeling as if I'd been kicked in the ribs by a mule. Yes, I know that's a trite phrase...but it describes exactly what I felt. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">I love words. I also value virtue over vice, though I know full well, I suffer from many. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDBV4ipD_EEgshYYNYwf3Lc4zlK2KfKdTRIIGCpnBKDISoxFoshz7I6i83i9RoiSkzZ1D_JeX8RrorFtSRqUKNai7tgi60BPeBpYuOiYrILmhyCInLN2_jH6Ye_nsZY096TDFRog0v74Q/s1600/scarlet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="231" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDBV4ipD_EEgshYYNYwf3Lc4zlK2KfKdTRIIGCpnBKDISoxFoshz7I6i83i9RoiSkzZ1D_JeX8RrorFtSRqUKNai7tgi60BPeBpYuOiYrILmhyCInLN2_jH6Ye_nsZY096TDFRog0v74Q/s200/scarlet.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This is a good time to reread Nathaniel Hawthorne's <i>Scarlet Letter </i>and ponder the meaning of the central symbol of that book. </span><span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span class="e24Kjd">Some scholars argue that while the "A" initially symbolizes "adultery," as the Puritan community changes its views of the central character, Hester, it can take on other meanings. Maybe"Angel" or "Able," or "Aristocratic" or "Authoritarian." I could make an argument that it stands for "America." </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span class="e24Kjd">Words count. Virtue counts. And so does kindness in horrific times. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,<br />Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces<br />That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."</i><br />—George Gordon, Lord Byron </span></div>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footer"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="index heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of figures"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="envelope return"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="footnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="line number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="page number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Continue 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Salutation"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Date"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Note Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Block Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Hyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Document Map"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Plain Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="E-mail Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Top of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Bottom of Form"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal (Web)"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Acronym"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Cite"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Code"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Definition"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Keyboard"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Sample"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Variable"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Normal Table"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="annotation subject"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="No List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Outline List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Simple 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Classic 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Colorful 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Grid 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table List 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table 3D effects 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Contemporary"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Elegant"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Professional"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Subtle 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Web 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Balloon Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<![endif]-->Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-25395313478143453022020-05-26T08:30:00.000-07:002020-05-26T08:30:46.316-07:00Another Night, Another Dream.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnCBn4Zf2VFvD_KfRUg9NJIIL6XVlYkuc0z7joweipmeYRmAQI5r44XIdldjzHATAV1jem8jqJjlJdnyXPMWTfaZTy6v2wBvePDm9JNoHhRqoMNpSNegrWg8WjRA3hkDgRLs3-gNwap8ZV/s1600/thumbnail_ken+and+terri+08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="859" data-original-width="1280" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnCBn4Zf2VFvD_KfRUg9NJIIL6XVlYkuc0z7joweipmeYRmAQI5r44XIdldjzHATAV1jem8jqJjlJdnyXPMWTfaZTy6v2wBvePDm9JNoHhRqoMNpSNegrWg8WjRA3hkDgRLs3-gNwap8ZV/s320/thumbnail_ken+and+terri+08.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Ken Wilson and Me, 2008</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
Since the onset of the pandemic, I may have been quarantined but my dreams certainly haven't. In fact, last night I dreamed I was camping at Yosemite, which I've never actually done. Who knows where I'll dream myself tonight?<br />
<br />
A couple of weeks ago I dreamed Ken and I were sitting in Andechs Abbey...which we actually did in 2001 on our belated honeymoon. Here's the story about that dream: <b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<h4 align="center" class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Relish the Present</span></b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look
into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.”</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--Jim Bishop</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It had been over a year since I’d dreamed of my late husband,
Ken. Then early this morning there he was.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d awakened, not startled, but pleasantly suffused with peace.
I breathed quietly for a few minutes before reluctantly crawling out of bed to
face yet another day alone in my tiny shoebox of an apartment. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For weeks I’ve been quarantined and isolated from family and
friends because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has swept Southern California. I’ve
been gripped with icy fear. In my eighties and living with an immune disorder,
only once or twice have I dared to leave to visit a grocery store.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why had Ken appeared now? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remembered how he’d stroked my hand as we sat
side by side, in my dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow, I knew
where we were. Once again, we were in the Chapel of Sorrow at Andechs Abbey, Bavaria.
I longed this morning to tell Ken how comforting he was, but we didn’t exchange
a word. We never do when we meet in my dreams.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve wrestled with a lifelong anxiety disorder. During the
nine years of our late-in-life marriage, Ken always tried to reassure me that
worry was worthless. He’d spent his entire career in the gaming industry, so
had a sound understanding of statistics and odds. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlxkR9Dsau-MIWN5XtfiWZiKwNGYT3ktvLvuafp0xB-HzCI-zFQ9DyWhSaWP93YOmPygpiWDbGBbCOcSDbwA1VMml0_gvzY-DIdD2rvD8suiKEkzAqsvIkr_oilDYe5kjO__H3m_G7x85/s1600/valentine%2527s+day+ken+and+me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1195" data-original-width="1248" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFlxkR9Dsau-MIWN5XtfiWZiKwNGYT3ktvLvuafp0xB-HzCI-zFQ9DyWhSaWP93YOmPygpiWDbGBbCOcSDbwA1VMml0_gvzY-DIdD2rvD8suiKEkzAqsvIkr_oilDYe5kjO__H3m_G7x85/s320/valentine%2527s+day+ken+and+me.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Eighty-five percent of people’s worries are wasted,” he’d
say. “Save your energy for what’s more important. You’re wasting precious moments
of your life.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’d postponed our honeymoon when we married in 2000, since
I’d begun working at Peace Corps Headquarters in the Capital a month after our
wedding. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We can go next year,” I’d promised. “I’ll have vacation
accrued by then and you can choose where we’ll go.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He didn’t hesitate. Ken never wasted time when it came to
potential adventures.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I want to see one more Oktoberfest,” he’d said. “It will be
my fourth, but it’ll be the best since you’ll be along. You’ll learn to love
German beer.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By nature, I preferred a glass of chilled white wine to a
mug of tepid beer, but I’d agreed. I knew Germany was famous for its Liebfraumilch
and Riesling, as well as all that celebrated beer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’d made reservations early to leave October 1, 2001. Then on
September 11, hijacked planes had toppled the World Trade Center. Another had
crashed into The Pentagon, just miles from our home, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This morning I recalled how I’d fretted about whether we should
take the trip. I’d bombarded Ken with my uncertainty: Would we be safe? Would
it be foolhardy to travel at such an uncertain time? Could we deal with the new
airport security hassles?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What do you think?” I’d concluded. “The news commentators
are speculating about more possible hijackings. Should we cancel the trip?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken had met my rhetoric with reason.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We’ve already arranged for a rental car at Franz Joseph
airport in Munich and I remember enough German to ask for directions as we head
for the Black Forest. Let’s do it. We’ll might be safer in Germany now than
here in the outskirts of the capital. You’ve worked hard. You deserve a
vacation.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we went. Just as we’d envisioned over a year earlier, we settled
in at Oktoberfest’s Hofbrau Haus, surrounded by crowds of young people, nearly
all from New Zealand and Australia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We were able to find lodgings here after so many Americans
cancelled their travel plans,” one young couple told us. “Let’s toast America!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’d all raised our litre mugs, singing along with a brass
band that pounded out tune after tune. We gnawed on salted radishes and
pretzels, both as big as our heads. We toasted every English-speaking nation on
Earth that we could remember, including Belize, Guyana and Seychelles,
countries that may have gone unmentioned if I hadn’t a personal Peace Corps
knowledge of them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken and I listened appreciatively as our new friends poured
out sympathy for the States, and accepted their gracious good wishes for a safe
return home. We left Oktoberfest carefree, flushed with lager and love. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then the United States
initiated a bombing mission over Afghanistan. We heard that American
citizens abroad should register at American embassies. Rumors swirled that tourists
may be threatened by terrorists. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Should we try to return home early?” I’d asked.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t want to leave Germany until we’ve seen Andechs,”
Ken replied. “We’ll be all right.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken described Andechs Abbey, an hour south of Munich, as a
Benedictine monastery housed in a castle dating from the twelfth century. Its
brewery produces lagers with an alcohol percentage nearly as strong as
fortified sherries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We’ll sit in the beer garden, share a basket of rye bread
and monastery cheese, sip a beer and contemplate the frescoes and stuccoes.
We’ll really relax at Andechs,” he insisted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ken drove along the eastern shore of Lake Ammersee,
eventually pointing out a castle looming on a hill, “There’s Andechs!” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It had been a destination for pilgrims for over five hundred
years. Now, as we headed up the hill that frosty morning, I felt as if we, too,
were on a pilgrimage.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a0lmRu9o8Nyog2Z86gki_LaGRWENqg4rHblQykD4wJP-H7IEUQz_CBMcnnqizs6Wpc9j6f4uonS5dkRkFd8nMb9scydpe1qB8Ay3dclGmMkC_MvaC431IvTMrd8dGjxvF340NoBlw2ld/s1600/Ken%252C+Nami%252C+and+Nat.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_a0lmRu9o8Nyog2Z86gki_LaGRWENqg4rHblQykD4wJP-H7IEUQz_CBMcnnqizs6Wpc9j6f4uonS5dkRkFd8nMb9scydpe1qB8Ay3dclGmMkC_MvaC431IvTMrd8dGjxvF340NoBlw2ld/s320/Ken%252C+Nami%252C+and+Nat.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The beer proved as delicious and heady as Ken had promised. After
lunch, we’d toured the ground floor of the church. We sat in the Chapel of
Sorrow, praying for the United States, for Washington DC, and for peace. I
especially prayed for a sense of serenity. The fear seeped away, leaving me
calmer than I’d been since the morning of September 11.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As we left, I’d picked up a brochure that quoted the Andechs’
Abbot, Dr. Johannes Eckert, on the purpose of the monastery.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One phrase hit a chord, and I’d read it aloud to Ken back
then. This morning I looked up on the Internet. Eckert hoped pilgrims would “relish
the present and the moments which go by so quickly, yet indeed not forget that
which went on before.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Never forget that,” Ken had said nearly two decades earlier.
“I’ve been telling you that since I met you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, he had. And last night, without a word, he’d
reminded me again not to squander my energy on worry. Savoring the last sip of my
coffee, I resolved to go about the next few weeks, or even months, if need be, without
panic over COVID-19.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If my husband could ride across the universe to reassure me
in my dreams that just as I’d weathered other disasters, I’d survive this one
as well, the least I can do is avoid wearing an old and worried face.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have a bottle of German beer in the back of my
fridge. I plan to toast Ken’s memory with it tonight. I’ll even nibble a
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
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<![endif]-->Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-73684600178561212362020-05-21T09:46:00.000-07:002020-05-21T09:46:12.986-07:00Party on Your Feet<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<i> I just got word that my story about last Christmas, "Sock It To Me," was a finalist in the Ageless Authors' short/short contest. Here's my story about that day just five months ago that now feels like five years.</i><br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Sock It To Me!</h4>
I’d felt uneasy about spending last Christmas day alone. I’d had company
the past three holidays, seeing movies with a gentleman friend who
didn’t celebrate Christmas. But the relationship recently had unraveled.
My friends all had made other plans with their
own families.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
For years after my husband had died, I’d spent Christmas watching
videos, but I hadn’t felt alone. My three cats and two dogs made sure
I’d had something nearby, warm and breathing, for comfort. But this year
I’d be home alone. My son and daughter-in-law, both
who had <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> work the holiday, would not be coming by for <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span> until evening. Then we’d enjoy a late supper at a nearby <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">It</span>alian restaurant, one of the few places that stayed open on Christmas.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
This past Christmas morning had such a relaxed feel <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">it</span>, though, that the uneasiness slipped away. I’d already taken care of all the holiday preparations. No more need <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>
address greeting cards or wrap gifts. Even my shoe box-sized apartment,
for once, didn’t
need any tidying. I’d already dusted, vacuumed, mopped the minuscule
kitchen and bathroom. I had closets that could use cleaning, but I sure
didn’t feel like taking that on as a Christmas chore.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
Switching on my electric tea kettle, I’d realized I’d not left my customary “<span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> do” list adjacent <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">it</span> on the kitchen counter. I grinned, as I steeped my cinnamon teabag. <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">It</span> sure looked as if I were really taking a day off.<br />
</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJnPsuF9ScEdO_1fnmWgMqxUxdfGL8WxxrHsdpSAPjVBFhXM7Fo88kJu6sw_qODjF5c9hARxd-QAVCKtw4PI671bFPEKonk7EREIyPbPm_DVpAOD_-GG_2rlxDVVCtWGl7Jw99rbKFOxi/s1600/rainbow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="228" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioJnPsuF9ScEdO_1fnmWgMqxUxdfGL8WxxrHsdpSAPjVBFhXM7Fo88kJu6sw_qODjF5c9hARxd-QAVCKtw4PI671bFPEKonk7EREIyPbPm_DVpAOD_-GG_2rlxDVVCtWGl7Jw99rbKFOxi/s200/rainbow.jpg" width="200" /></a>So now the day spread out before <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>
like a true tabula rasa, a complete blank slate. How could I use the
time? I considered my options as I inhaled the sweet scent of my tea.
Reading? My eyes fell on the stand next <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> my rocking chair, where I’d stacked three
books, each with a bookmark dangling from somewhere in the middle. Binge watching a TV series I’d longed <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>
see? I glanced at my TV and at a stack of DVDs neatly piled in the side
cabinet. Still undecided, I set the teacup in my sink and wandered into
my bedroom.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
After I made my bed I started back <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>wards my rocker. I stopped in the doorway, staring at the three-drawer plastic storage bin where I stowed my undies and <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s. Of course! <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">It</span>’s the absolute perfect day <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> organize my <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span> drawer.<br />
“When I was growing up, all I ever got for my birthday was underwear or <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s. Same for Chanukah. Just <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s.” </div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
My former gentleman friend had gazed at <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>, expecting sympathy. Instead, I shook my head. “Just <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s? And you’re complaining?”<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
He’d looked bewildered.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
“You’re whining <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> the wrong woman,” I’d said. “I’d have been delighted, enchanted, entranced with <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s for Christmas.”<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6DYY4N7eOuGo29a7viO1zHmrY_E2bxPKFlYVf9_O0u3i2YqoXCBsfEsiOTRR4imI1tlIHHXDfY7OeXZiF9VlwWl-9Y6nV1yq7UswF3J-FRhyq-A9O69zdMz40-fwvnmuiHrEgvDtSKMHn/s1600/socks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6DYY4N7eOuGo29a7viO1zHmrY_E2bxPKFlYVf9_O0u3i2YqoXCBsfEsiOTRR4imI1tlIHHXDfY7OeXZiF9VlwWl-9Y6nV1yq7UswF3J-FRhyq-A9O69zdMz40-fwvnmuiHrEgvDtSKMHn/s1600/socks.jpg" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
He looked doubtful. What’s more, he didn’t show any interest in
continuing the conversation. Gradually, we had drifted apart. But I
remembered that exchange this past Christmas, when I had a day <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> myself, home alone.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
As a girl, I had exactly three pair of bobby <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> pair with my saddle oxfords. <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">To</span> my parent’s dismay I always seemed <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> have a couple of <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s soaking in soapy water in the bathroom sink. Even though I’d sneak some of Mama’s bleach, I couldn’t any longer
pretend my <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s were truly white. They’d become dingy with age. In those penny-pinching days, I still needed <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> wear them even though they’d become threadbare.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
When I was about twelve, as I’d sat listening <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> the minister’s Christmas sermon, I remember concluding that the only thing holier than this holiday probably were the <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s on my feet. I’d set off for church that morning wearing the least seedy of the ratty
<span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s. I’d tried not <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>
show disappointment when we’d unwrapped our gifts at daybreak. Though I
was grateful that I got a badly needed jacket, I’d hoped that the
smaller box contained <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s. <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">It</span> didn’t. Mama had crocheted <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span> a new cap.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
Now, all these years later, in my retirement years I can treat myself <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> new <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s whenever I feel the whim. I can afford <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> indulge my fancy. A longtime collector of crystal unicorns, now I collect unicorn <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s. I’ve accumulated striped <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s, checkered <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s,
and <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s that commemorate nearly every holiday except Labor Day.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAS0CHnPdqtU_H71Pju7U2Tm_J_beer5PBShHduZvyPrIjM7_fnxEolZPi0r7aNvF7gtKBACUqCsXIeDPY80Ii4R-pPPusY_Zti2QwRnhngkcx6NaDyc-KNuKiuHTQ3v1QU38b5qCHDVwD/s1600/wasting+time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="654" data-original-width="650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAS0CHnPdqtU_H71Pju7U2Tm_J_beer5PBShHduZvyPrIjM7_fnxEolZPi0r7aNvF7gtKBACUqCsXIeDPY80Ii4R-pPPusY_Zti2QwRnhngkcx6NaDyc-KNuKiuHTQ3v1QU38b5qCHDVwD/s200/wasting+time.jpg" width="198" /></a></div>
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
“Make sure you’ve got a party on your feet,” my yoga teacher once had said, encouraging the class <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> shed our shoes when we exercised, but not <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> go barefoot. “So long as you’ve got something cheerful covering your <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>es,” she insisted, “karma will take care
of ensuring that the cheer spreads upwards <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>ward your brain. You’ll be party animals.” We’d giggled but we obeyed. I <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>ok her literally, so I party hearty. I’ve got owl, frog, pig and kitten <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
So, I dumped the contents of my <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span> drawer on my bed. I winnowed out several singletons, <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span>ssing them in a pile of other clothing <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">it</span>ems I’d been readying for a trip <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> a charity shop.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
“We can use single <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s for craft projects,” one of the volunteers there had assured <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
I sorted the <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s
into categories. I had two pair for St. Patrick’s Day and two for
Valentine’s, but for December I had an even dozen, including ice-skating
cats, Santa, snowflakes, twinkling stars, angels. And one pair for
Chanukah, blue with <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>norahs. Finally,
I repacked the drawer and slid <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">it</span> back into <span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">it</span>s frame.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<span class="mark5716zemnt" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">It</span>
hasn’t been so bad spending this Christmas home alone, I concluded. I’d
taken care of a task that I’d been putting off and still had time <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> read for a couple of hours. Plus, I’d realized that I now had enough <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> last <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span> the rest of my life.<br />
</div>
<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
Coincidentally, last year Chanukah had overlapped with Christmas.
Accordingly, when I dressed for my holiday supper that evening, I chose
the blue <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>norah pair <span class="mark5l8nvweaj" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">to</span> put on. I’ve got a party on my feet, I thought, in <span class="markyzitqlbbs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">me</span>mory of my former gentleman friend who had
wailed, “Just <span class="markpq1k662xs" data-markjs="true" data-ogab="" data-ogac="" data-ogsb="" data-ogsc="">sock</span>s.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
XXX</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Ageless Authors continues to solicit submissions for an upcoming anthology on coping with crisis. Its website can be found here:</i> <a href="https://www.agelessauthors.com/" target="_blank">https://www.agelessauthors.com/</a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-63751212096901754972020-05-19T10:00:00.001-07:002020-05-19T10:00:50.683-07:00Dream a Little Dream<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
During this pandemic, I'm not alone in experiencing vivid dreams. I've been reading several research studies on how dreams have altered because of the quarantines. I've included a link at the bottom of this post if you'd like to follow up on dreams. In the meantime, here's one I had just in the nick of time...right before the quarantine.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Mount Baldy</span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
By Terri Elders</div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="st">“</span><em>Vision
is the art of seeing what is invisible to others</em><span class="st">.” --Jonathan
Swift</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In hindsight I should have guessed right away why Grandpa
Louie popped up in my dream. Decades had passed since I’d thought much about him.
Then, this past Thanksgiving, my younger brother began to reminisce about our
years as tots and teens, back in the ‘40s and ‘50s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Dad never had any time for me, but Grandpa Louie always
did,” he said. “He let me follow him around from the time I could toddle. He
taught me a lot of things in those days. He always seemed protective.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d never thought of Grandpa as protective…generous, maybe.
He always handed a shiny quarter to each of us kids when we’d visit him. But
protective? Not to my knowledge. What I remembered most about him was how I
envied his claim to be eagle-eyed. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdDJSbmFAvtDhHLJoX7BbWrvwE3juHx3jvX4fj7uTI9uoolZXJ8bztaa2RBTYreRmI4DbadQLGJu8Aq1snJT3q-CYzvuLAZb7DaHJUkBuJW5EVb8Vj5U5fWUx6ETfBHrzpubn6jtlGOOoE/s1600/fly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdDJSbmFAvtDhHLJoX7BbWrvwE3juHx3jvX4fj7uTI9uoolZXJ8bztaa2RBTYreRmI4DbadQLGJu8Aq1snJT3q-CYzvuLAZb7DaHJUkBuJW5EVb8Vj5U5fWUx6ETfBHrzpubn6jtlGOOoE/s200/fly.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I can see a fly light on Mount Baldy,” he’d brag, every
time I helped him pick walnuts in his grove outside Ontario, CA. He’d shade his
eyes with his calloused palm and peer twenty miles northward at the San Gabriel
Mountain’s snow-covered caps. At 11, I’d hover by his side, aquiver with envy. Because
of severe astigmatism and myopia, I could barely even make out Mount Baldy. I’d
doubted that I even could spot a fly if one landed on my foot. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You get the lower
branches,” he’d say, handing me a basket, “and I’ll climb the ladder to knock
down nuts from the higher ones.” Then we’d spend the rest of the morning
harvesting the walnuts that Grandma Gertie would later candy or stir into her dreamily
ambrosial banana bread. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now here he suddenly was, again in his walnut grove, me by
his side. I’d awakened, puzzled. I had no need to be picking walnuts these
days. I doubted they even grew near Ontario anymore. I live in a senior-living
complex close to the ocean and far from the San Gabriel Mountains. In fact,
despite the more smog free air of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, I realized, it
had been ages since I’d seen Mount Baldy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I recalled that just recently I’d heard the San Gabriel
mountains sported snow down to the 2000-foot level. As I’d recently driven
eastward on the freeway on a clear late winter afternoon, I should have been
able to spy them in the distance. Maybe even single out Mount Baldy. But I hadn’t.
I wondered why. Just a year ago I’d seen them clearly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could Grandpa be sending me a message related to this? I
made an appointment with my optometrist. I hadn’t visited him for over three
years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“When did you have your cataract surgery?” he asked.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJpIh7vEwr-hQkXGbuR5r3Dbt8tl89MNoSHCrRGjwcyLBHr0TDJiiZDjzsL0WUEZEl-JLB0Ye4yR4HtCKHZ_ixJ_r6k3p9Zof5Kmnc5qeM42VFWED7S3n2GaDZiCyZa5ukRg4SAogFvHYL/s1600/lutein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="191" data-original-width="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJpIh7vEwr-hQkXGbuR5r3Dbt8tl89MNoSHCrRGjwcyLBHr0TDJiiZDjzsL0WUEZEl-JLB0Ye4yR4HtCKHZ_ixJ_r6k3p9Zof5Kmnc5qeM42VFWED7S3n2GaDZiCyZa5ukRg4SAogFvHYL/s1600/lutein.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Thirteen years ago,” I answered.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, cataract lenses don’t wear out, but they can become
clouded. I’m scheduling you to see an ophthalmologist to determine if you need your
lenses cleared. I’ll also write you a new glasses prescription. You’re also are
showing some signs of age-related macular degeneration.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He peered down at his notes from my previous visit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Are you still taking the lutein supplement I recommended to
slow down the progression of age-related damage to your eyes?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I nodded. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, keep on taking those. And eat plenty of dark green veggies,
carrots and walnuts. They’re all rich in the antioxidants you need to help your
vision. So is green tea.” </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remembered how Grandpa Louie carefully tended his
vegetable garden and how Grandma Gertie was always cooking up what she called
“a mess of greens” and grating carrots for salad after he’d bring in a basket
of fresh produce. And all the walnuts. No wonder he had such great eyesight. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGsBTuQnhbnvxFf6EI_sbwhAIx-FixaoOWuhyphenhyphenB0EcQBDpsGxsJIlR8qSOjIy4wjnm-UPF08U1ruxctHEY2frW0vY0tYtTe8kD_mYpq-3OxO8Vl50uMpeQuw9ByDGxpBlouRFJI-mK1Bat3/s1600/green+tea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="132" data-original-width="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGsBTuQnhbnvxFf6EI_sbwhAIx-FixaoOWuhyphenhyphenB0EcQBDpsGxsJIlR8qSOjIy4wjnm-UPF08U1ruxctHEY2frW0vY0tYtTe8kD_mYpq-3OxO8Vl50uMpeQuw9ByDGxpBlouRFJI-mK1Bat3/s1600/green+tea.jpg" /></a>I visited the ophthalmologist who confirmed that my left eye
lens cover had become cloudy. She cleared it up in fewer than five minutes with
painless laser treatment. I soon got new prescription glasses as well. Once
again, I can distinguish aqua from turquoise. I now can spot those tiny cracks
in the pavement that I’d tripped over this past year. </div>
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A few weeks later, Grandpa Louie showed up in my dreams once
again. This time we were yanking carrots from his vegetable patch. Grandpa
didn’t brag one bit, but he turned toward me , handed me a gnarled carrot and
winked. I’d winked back. Across the decades and dimensions, we ratified a
mission accomplished.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How had Grandpa Louie had the foresight seventy years ago to
be growing and ingesting all the essential ingredients that lead to great
vision health? Now I finally had an insight. Unlike me, who’d been born with
astigmatism and myopia, he’d likely been blessed with great vision from the
start. But additionally, he’d also been a visionary. </div>
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What’s more, just as my little brother had claimed at
Thanksgiving, protective. Now, as I sip a cup green tea, I realize that unlike
Grandpa Louie, I likely never will glimpse that elusive fly circling Mount
Baldy. But at least now I can enjoy the panorama of the San Gabriel Mountains,
still draped in snow.</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-dreams-may-come-why-youre-having-more-vivid-dreams-during-the-pandemic-137387">https://theconversation.com/what-dreams-may-come-why-youre-having-more-vivid-dreams-during-the-pandemic-137387</a>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-69375499650742346712020-03-23T10:39:00.000-07:002020-03-23T10:39:38.621-07:00What the Dickens Should We Do?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4X0rSQ03hD2byhgGPGEh1AVw0h4g3Xat47d51Uw0MzZsY7B48tB4AKl01EbtNH4mmM5qtADN66Gm8DlycpXn2ejkzNQvUsWafF3305TF-67Ca9KZEXg2KFqg8rV_W2LJztSAJKIMqE9D/s1600/dickens.jpg" /></div>
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I could have used the first week of quarantine in these days of the coronavirus pandemic to finish writing several pieces I've wanted to write for weeks, months, years. I even have titles for some of them: "Mt. Baldy," "Pillow Talks," and "Fun Zone." But I didn't. Instead, I turned my entire daily routine topsy-turvy, taking long naps and then staying up to read in the wee small hours.<br />
<br />
I could have read the books my book groups will tackle when our distancing precaution is over, <i>Following Atticus</i> and <i>The Pioneers. </i>But I didn't. Instead I sat entranced with Malcolm Gladwell's <i>Talking to Strangers </i>and the most current issues of <i>The New Yorker.</i><br />
<br />
I could have, would have, should have...but I've given up recriminations. Instead I'm reflecting on the things I did do in this new year, which somebody has mentioned seemed to have been scripted by Stephen King. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGmEAScVQU_CmrfXNp6EDl03yVA8O-LK2ajjuhyNaI249FPrFhUQst7gSUaHsheP1WCy3oFw5VZ8BXt9c48jUH24UhXTk9oFRGOWf7KCRf6gE1fiRmt6ix4DsnBMI9wgkFA37D5yWn8TEr/s1600/gratitude+list.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="422" data-original-width="288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGmEAScVQU_CmrfXNp6EDl03yVA8O-LK2ajjuhyNaI249FPrFhUQst7gSUaHsheP1WCy3oFw5VZ8BXt9c48jUH24UhXTk9oFRGOWf7KCRf6gE1fiRmt6ix4DsnBMI9wgkFA37D5yWn8TEr/s320/gratitude+list.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
<i> </i><br />
I saw my physician in January for my annual checkup and an optometrist and ophthalmologist in February, got a laser treatment to clear the lens cap on my left eye and a new prescription for glasses. All before health care professionals weren't conscripted for attending to the urgently ill and vision centers weren't shuttered.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhaqpKBv_HpET2spX9k5Ze62mDqnpi1Aq-LkpY2HdyL7ZFWjIVpP7kmMKGkwpodx9V365IWX8Pfj-ABdzKINOOqTtIDUYMV7N0ivc-_ykgzDP_ozfKzEe7nm5Orw49wfYXH5KYkFrZ_Lm3/s1600/inhale+love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhaqpKBv_HpET2spX9k5Ze62mDqnpi1Aq-LkpY2HdyL7ZFWjIVpP7kmMKGkwpodx9V365IWX8Pfj-ABdzKINOOqTtIDUYMV7N0ivc-_ykgzDP_ozfKzEe7nm5Orw49wfYXH5KYkFrZ_Lm3/s1600/inhale+love.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />I shopped for essential toiletries before the mad toilet paper stampede made going to any open stores a bona fide health hazard.<br />
<br />
I got to promote an anthology with one of my pieces, "An Arrested Development," at the fabled West Hollywood "Book Soup" which I'd always longed to explore.<br />
<br />
I took in another stellar play, "Fun Home," at the Chance Theater with my son and daughter-in-law, followed by "Murder Runs in the Family" at my local Westminster Community Theater and a final performance of "The Great Gatsby" at the minuscule Maverick Theater, before entertainment venues were all closed.<br />
<br />
I got to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, sipping excellent Bushmill's Irish whiskey safely alone with a close friend, when we made the wise decision to forego any crowds.<br />
<br />
<i><b>It was the <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Best" title="Best">best</a>
of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was
the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct
to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the
period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest
authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only. --Charles Dickens</b></i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqyKvynu0Fgvp1U1dly7zBRFg6fa9WG2zbaExnH2YSqpxNq0u7Sf0AFj9LzJqh181D6e7KJp7IyfT8IwKDRMB5A55YLaLAPYXOGUTM3eR1iggK0lQc0hT0PrRBwPa69QUmeQtLBv8Ug0-/s1600/834px-Charles_Dickens-_A_Tale_of_Two_Cities-With_Illustrations_by_H_K_Browne%252C_1859.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="834" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUqyKvynu0Fgvp1U1dly7zBRFg6fa9WG2zbaExnH2YSqpxNq0u7Sf0AFj9LzJqh181D6e7KJp7IyfT8IwKDRMB5A55YLaLAPYXOGUTM3eR1iggK0lQc0hT0PrRBwPa69QUmeQtLBv8Ug0-/s320/834px-Charles_Dickens-_A_Tale_of_Two_Cities-With_Illustrations_by_H_K_Browne%252C_1859.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><b> </b></i> <br />
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<br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-62311904430827017452020-03-17T13:47:00.001-07:002020-03-17T13:47:50.200-07:00Sometimes We've Earned the Right to be Trite<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAv54a1MdUbPPWGfEJhq2NRAcMfIlwMIFTblQ2movsxjQHxQAimE5djBzohIp7dOQGWA0njaocqT1wfrr6X1bbswTtppIYAVgvz05qvjmrVGulN8KJENK3ssDKxKcKlW8PSKNatcpSnCxl/s1600/depression.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="862" data-original-width="845" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAv54a1MdUbPPWGfEJhq2NRAcMfIlwMIFTblQ2movsxjQHxQAimE5djBzohIp7dOQGWA0njaocqT1wfrr6X1bbswTtppIYAVgvz05qvjmrVGulN8KJENK3ssDKxKcKlW8PSKNatcpSnCxl/s320/depression.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>
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A few weeks ago I got a message from a Facebook friend, a gentleman who grieved the loss of his wife, who had died a couple of years earlier. They'd been married for 51 years. In addition he now felt doubly heartbroken because a new love of just a couple of months had yet to make a decision to become fully committed to him. He alluded to "Magnificent Obsession," a 1929 novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, later made into a blockbuster film.<br />
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Unfortunately, all the wishing in the world will not bring our deceased loved ones back into our lives <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqPh6VNKX8ci988-_-EqyvtTd5cJ_1jaipJnfJF98H2f3LeVftPslYtGNApCiGAkztqJWGMGa3RuNaUymSNLZwOqSsjIz8HqirTkbU4HBChwqkHULSNiaPjtkc_Xd9VKBQqvI5Nux5UmL/s1600/index.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqPh6VNKX8ci988-_-EqyvtTd5cJ_1jaipJnfJF98H2f3LeVftPslYtGNApCiGAkztqJWGMGa3RuNaUymSNLZwOqSsjIz8HqirTkbU4HBChwqkHULSNiaPjtkc_Xd9VKBQqvI5Nux5UmL/s1600/index.jpg" /></a></div>
Expecting new ones to replicate the devotion of lifelong loves might be overoptimistic. I felt so sorry for this man. In an effort to offer compassion, I replied that sometimes when we're grieving it often pays to take the focus off ourselves and our needs. I mentioned that I used to share with my patients who felt overwhelmed that they might begin their days by thinking of three things that they can do to help them keep putting one foot ahead of the other. First, find a way to help somebody else. Second, create something: draw, write, cook, make a list of future travel plans.<br />
<br />
I didn't share that this past Christmas, when I felt betrayed and sad, I cleaned a sock drawer. Just creating order out of chaos cheered me up. Third, I'd written, seek something that's personally comforting. For me, that might be reading one of the books I've yet to get around to and discovering why it was considered a classic. <br />
<br />
In return I received an emotional note saying he wasn't asking for a professional consultation and that the advice I'd given him was trite. He interpreted my last suggestion to mean that I'd treat myself to a piece of chocolate. He said his whole life was constructed on the "paying it forward" concept introduced in "Magnificent Obsession." So my mild nudge that he make a mindful plan now daily was "ultra trite."<br />
<br />
OK. But right now we're undergoing a worldwide pandemic and the elderly have been increasingly isolated. We are not going back soon to the Good Old Days. Young people don't want to visit grandparents for fear of infecting them. Those of us in my apartment complex have been forbidden to congregate anywhere together, so all of our common areas, our pool, spa, recreation room, computer room and gym have been locked. Even our front gate is locked, making it difficult for potential visitors since we'd have to stand outside in the rain and click them in.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6CE17h9dm_4Ofu8NFtIJhIWZXuXHGGl1lgWq4enDJ_7XyJLbOLmsjPpAqt9OKo8CTIgKe0NAG0nMPxqNS2lVY0ynNxYyUss72T2s8j5SG85h9BjZZa_Wx6fc3zZUN617sdtXD3bVuBCi/s1600/shenanigans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio6CE17h9dm_4Ofu8NFtIJhIWZXuXHGGl1lgWq4enDJ_7XyJLbOLmsjPpAqt9OKo8CTIgKe0NAG0nMPxqNS2lVY0ynNxYyUss72T2s8j5SG85h9BjZZa_Wx6fc3zZUN617sdtXD3bVuBCi/s1600/shenanigans.jpg" /></a></div>
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Now it's St. Patrick's Day. I won't be going to an Irish pub today, after all. All my plans for the next few weeks have, as yours, been put on hold. I'm reminding myself that even if we don't have access to movies, libraries, museums or coffee shops, we still may find some comforts. I'd like to share these with those who are feeling like it's hard to find any brightness in their day. Lavender candles and camomile tea still sound good to me. So does watching a couple of good movies.<br />
<br />
But before I succumb to a chorus of "Poor me, poor us," I remind myself to count my blessings. After all my years overseas in developing countries, it's clear to me what they are right now. I have groceries in my cupboards. Some people I've lived with could only afford to buy a cup of rice at a time. I have a warm bed with blankets. Yesterday, right here in California, the world's fifth largest economy, I drove by homeless people trying to snuggle in their sodden blankets under an eave. I've received some St. Patrick Day cards in the mail and some by email, including an Irish jig in a Jacquie Lawson card. When I lived in Seychelles I was still receiving Christmas cards on Valentine's Day.<br />
<br />
So, no, the jig isn't quite up yet. I'm holding on to hope.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCF93yiuxZ_lW7PMLDUXaKEimqgR-_11HhZZx-sfOx_mR2Y3xPApJ5uZyz2G6hoOF6GiVsVPKKPXoaeXA60tcKhk8qJ9LNfJI2PxSsl0NbC1qCndGqF4oNjD7sT2Xs-wcDJUyC3qgWkx9D/s1600/hope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCF93yiuxZ_lW7PMLDUXaKEimqgR-_11HhZZx-sfOx_mR2Y3xPApJ5uZyz2G6hoOF6GiVsVPKKPXoaeXA60tcKhk8qJ9LNfJI2PxSsl0NbC1qCndGqF4oNjD7sT2Xs-wcDJUyC3qgWkx9D/s1600/hope.jpg" /></a></div>
<h4>
Spirit Brighteners: <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-loneliness-during-coronavirus-4799661">https://www.verywellmind.com/how-to-cope-with-loneliness-during-coronavirus-4799661</a><b> </b></h4>
<h4>
<b>Why Elderly Feel Marginalized:</b><a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation" target="_blank">https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-corner-isolation </a></h4>
<b>How Other Countries Cope with Lockdown: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51904789" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/51904789</a></b><br />
Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-48507689385583294142020-03-07T09:07:00.001-08:002020-03-07T09:07:41.622-08:00A Leap, a Spring and a Shamrock<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrydkdExbA2p2h8vGdQMwCH5Q1E1keWq8WSEWUmGka50ErPMWdu8j82QitErZlZPYILgjFkpKXQVkQXes_5KXQAU_ii6IoZMHrv4q5dYECHEGGr_-_BziQf5cLNH3RsklrW3BV7cQd0DoP/s1600/lunch+in+healdsburg.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrydkdExbA2p2h8vGdQMwCH5Q1E1keWq8WSEWUmGka50ErPMWdu8j82QitErZlZPYILgjFkpKXQVkQXes_5KXQAU_ii6IoZMHrv4q5dYECHEGGr_-_BziQf5cLNH3RsklrW3BV7cQd0DoP/s320/lunch+in+healdsburg.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leap Year Weekend in Healdsburg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A week ago I realized two months had already passed since I sat mesmerized watching a sunny Rose Parade. I'd been sitting in an outdoor patio cafe in Healdsburg Leap Year Day, marveling at how the year was speeding by.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45YIZihVzwjgjwBBijioTEQ9GthxPrklxYEuDQ5OuXhQ-PiM1n9kr0dpU-WxQqZ3mboVw6ETvfsuDC9l0NGOa2h23HJg_qvMXwM5j3__6h6nm7iqH0-uneXnRm81uEBorKxqwN3JjttaW/s1600/logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="234" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh45YIZihVzwjgjwBBijioTEQ9GthxPrklxYEuDQ5OuXhQ-PiM1n9kr0dpU-WxQqZ3mboVw6ETvfsuDC9l0NGOa2h23HJg_qvMXwM5j3__6h6nm7iqH0-uneXnRm81uEBorKxqwN3JjttaW/s200/logo.png" width="200" /></a>Somebody at the table mentioned that maybe it just seemed to go by faster as we grow older because time seems so endless when we're young. Now I'm wondering if that's true. I know that the summers of my teens seemed to drift on slowly, catching the bus to Hermosa Beach, standing in a wet bathing suit in the parking lot behind The Lighthouse, falling in love with cool jazz. And waiting for school to begin again in September.</div>
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Another friend tried to provide an explanation of this phenomenon, claiming that when we're young we have so much more to look forward to, getting through each grade toward graduation, choosing college or the military or a job that might lead to a career. Looking forward to marriage, raising a family.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW1hTdQ91_FHAhyphenhyphenPCOy_aXFVMhy9ULK_OsN52kdZEM4FoMhYvHU6raqhKrY9rcLChqNrseKfzFsO5FFwEzCuYc4TTleRPAiT9GZ0c0OZ_1wcZiddQ7QzP-H815Tqgx7YONXpHkerFm7UCp/s1600/spring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW1hTdQ91_FHAhyphenhyphenPCOy_aXFVMhy9ULK_OsN52kdZEM4FoMhYvHU6raqhKrY9rcLChqNrseKfzFsO5FFwEzCuYc4TTleRPAiT9GZ0c0OZ_1wcZiddQ7QzP-H815Tqgx7YONXpHkerFm7UCp/s1600/spring.jpg" /></a></div>
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So here it is, the eve of Spring Forward morning, when we return to another eight months of Daylight Savings Time, with longer afternoons and early evenings. What do I have to look forward to now? Well, after all it's March. So there's March Madness, the first day of spring, and my favorite, St. Patrick's Day, with limericks and the wearing of the green.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukaBRMxZLvGG8gQpKjkQlHjGD9l5UPEq-q-MLWmAPFdh5xv0TkM2WASPaNoNL83fPK5hC17W6ZTNR0-LEPy2MY4dwzfxcM0B9Ebb4tLKYS_TIda_RKY5ThfE8GLh897kq7iu8myBQSt4q/s1600/Gatsby-Web-Artwork-w72ce.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1043" data-original-width="924" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukaBRMxZLvGG8gQpKjkQlHjGD9l5UPEq-q-MLWmAPFdh5xv0TkM2WASPaNoNL83fPK5hC17W6ZTNR0-LEPy2MY4dwzfxcM0B9Ebb4tLKYS_TIda_RKY5ThfE8GLh897kq7iu8myBQSt4q/s200/Gatsby-Web-Artwork-w72ce.jpg" width="176" /></a>But wait...first I've got Friday the 13th. I'm celebrating that this year with a real turn back of the clock, back to the Roaring 20s.The storefront Maverick Theater in Fullerton brought my favorite F. Scott Fitzgerald novel its stage and I'm itching to see it. Maybe I can't do the Charleston any more, but I can still don some beads and swill a bit of gin.<br />
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So who says older folks have nothing to look forward to?<br />
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<br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-6903213317919031052020-02-14T15:58:00.000-08:002020-02-14T16:04:35.249-08:00Dang! We Did It Anyway!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How do you get to Book Soup? Practice!</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Since I first heard of its existence back in 1975, I've wanted to get to Book Soup. Located on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, it's been the hip home of the literati for nearly half a century. So when I got a message from Larry Upshaw, the founder of Ageless Authors, that he planned a reading and signing of <i>Dang! I Wish I Hadn't Done That! </i>for four Southern California contributors and one of the Ageless Authors judges, I agreed to show up. For me it felt like making it to Carnegie Hall.</div>
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I've done dozens of readings in the past fifteen years since I've been writing about my life's adventures, but never one at a venue quite so chic with a group of authors quite so enthusiastic.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9QbHMJjBA0_73TFTDyL3BW9NLH5d1aNhmoBJIPyMUpqrH5C_nkxRijCl9KyQX0NNIyDojcok4aTIV1nPAmug3kaN4sgXuq_1Krsqt5jtR0yo7Hc2mTHmJvq5SzbgJVIEsnWjhCEbdArVk/s1600/book+soup+area.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9QbHMJjBA0_73TFTDyL3BW9NLH5d1aNhmoBJIPyMUpqrH5C_nkxRijCl9KyQX0NNIyDojcok4aTIV1nPAmug3kaN4sgXuq_1Krsqt5jtR0yo7Hc2mTHmJvq5SzbgJVIEsnWjhCEbdArVk/s320/book+soup+area.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The area where we read our stories.</td></tr>
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Larry Upshaw, from Dallas, introduced us as enormously talented writers. Not a single one of us raised a hand to object to this lofty praise. Larry already had staged readings in Dallas and Albuquerque, so by now he knew how to get the authors to look cheerful.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Larry begins the intros...Geoffrey at right.</td></tr>
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My fellow contributors at this reading included Geoffrey Graves of Laguna, Brenda Mutchnick of Beverly Hills, and Gered Beeby of Encinitas. Candice Kelsey of Los Angeles, a literature teacher at a private girls high school in the vicinity and an Ageless Authors judge, also read several poems from a collection she's about to publish. </div>
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Book Soup, with its floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with some of the most memorable books ever written, proved distracting. I'd have loved to have bought more books there...saw so many I want to read. But I already have stacks piled up in the corners of my tiny apartment, so steeled myself to resist. But I know I'll return to Book Soup.</div>
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The next afternoon the same group assembled at Barnes & Noble, Irvine Spectrum. Again, we enjoyed chatting with the audience members who came up for autographs...but it wasn't quite like Carnegie Hall, er....Book Soup! Dang! I'm glad we did this.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkirr9I8HhIdAi584UT5OcAVjZigEmCugvVpAAmK1T2yOLh2un2boOVfONhhcNMj4abMdFg4Y3OfQnNrdaD4feSR7kvAFJkNVjYzjlK64xcvhy9CHvTtdIrYD1r2HE-P1t7df8WPiuN8bU/s1600/group.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkirr9I8HhIdAi584UT5OcAVjZigEmCugvVpAAmK1T2yOLh2un2boOVfONhhcNMj4abMdFg4Y3OfQnNrdaD4feSR7kvAFJkNVjYzjlK64xcvhy9CHvTtdIrYD1r2HE-P1t7df8WPiuN8bU/s320/group.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">L-R, Gered, Terri, Candice, Brenda, Larry</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Thanks to Myrna Beeby, Gered's wife, for taking the photos of the authors.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioTUeyO0PywSY0honhmVztpQYyMlrsoapruElUzFkr_iK0OiWSAUBuUC-wWhbPWw5CAjSWlGY_wtHWdiCSnUFwEpgO2e44A4j42cZWQ9gXnP3JohVibcCx0E9dFjTWFrtPLfurk0TtQXXJ/s1600/Dang.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioTUeyO0PywSY0honhmVztpQYyMlrsoapruElUzFkr_iK0OiWSAUBuUC-wWhbPWw5CAjSWlGY_wtHWdiCSnUFwEpgO2e44A4j42cZWQ9gXnP3JohVibcCx0E9dFjTWFrtPLfurk0TtQXXJ/s320/Dang.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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You can buy this book here: </div>
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<a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dang%2C+i+wish+i+hadn%27t+done+that&crid=1XOOCETNSHC5N&sprefix=Dang%21+I+Wish+I+%2Caps%2C222&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dang%2C+i+wish+i+hadn%27t+done+that&crid=1XOOCETNSHC5N&sprefix=Dang%21+I+Wish+I+%2Caps%2C222&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_14 </a></div>
Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-69422693486702225712020-02-08T18:11:00.000-08:002020-02-08T18:11:54.793-08:0050 Years of Nichols Togetherness<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjBunKPNDaPgXXEEqFUfFEZsukCSnuOnZjeFm2OJzbved74CiMuV06QNLR1cTRnBFefxHHeyi7YEzrjSNLk3bJRXa0j7EUPLXWOHFfbPA6l-BDY38n8SVOqsUTf9LBvUaH0Xv6H_2ONho/s1600/IMG_2711+%25283%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1266" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEjBunKPNDaPgXXEEqFUfFEZsukCSnuOnZjeFm2OJzbved74CiMuV06QNLR1cTRnBFefxHHeyi7YEzrjSNLk3bJRXa0j7EUPLXWOHFfbPA6l-BDY38n8SVOqsUTf9LBvUaH0Xv6H_2ONho/s400/IMG_2711+%25283%2529.JPG" width="316" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Don & Mary, Still Swinging After All These Years</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Once in a while, things last. They may frazzle a bit and fade around the edges, but they last. Such has been the marriage of my friends here at FountainGlen Goldenwest, Mary and Don Nichols. Today they shared their 50th anniversary with family, friends and neighbors here in our apartment senior living complex.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYa5B7TuZ6IZleTjapd7rlLhZ1L8oFWT142xFWeBKDSIbqZDTZJNvq6xfj_IMSUmV6JEHY6s4n_aeq7oMNs6_T0m0NeLTU1jmGwc-4TnzNvK3y_L_Hc62nMe69AGh7Tcjukaepwyg0sn_F/s1600/IMG_2701+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1125" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYa5B7TuZ6IZleTjapd7rlLhZ1L8oFWT142xFWeBKDSIbqZDTZJNvq6xfj_IMSUmV6JEHY6s4n_aeq7oMNs6_T0m0NeLTU1jmGwc-4TnzNvK3y_L_Hc62nMe69AGh7Tcjukaepwyg0sn_F/s320/IMG_2701+%25282%2529.JPG" width="224" /></a></div>
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What a wonderful occasion...complete with an Italian buffet, featuring lasagna, pizza, salads and a variety of soft drinks. Their family decorated the entire clubhouse with 1970s posters, golden, silver and black balloons, gold cutlery, fold-edged plates and enough candy, cookies and cake to cause us to gasp with delight. The music of the seventies kept us all tapping our toes. </div>
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Most memorable moments? When Don & Mary revealed the "Escape" signs on the back of their respective walkers...and when Mary smeared Don's face with the first bite of anniversary cake. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXZvuCgc88m4TFBR_-VkxBMI90oTp7UDnJBGQwIAJKNvlGL97MG_VRrd7dLvF0UPvalozHEzPmwOBeqQkRJJGtPQ4-8admGykeNzzl9xaFv3fuw2LMy7OKUmkzE6jIEmpalakDkzf83mRL/s1600/IMG_2708+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1600" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXZvuCgc88m4TFBR_-VkxBMI90oTp7UDnJBGQwIAJKNvlGL97MG_VRrd7dLvF0UPvalozHEzPmwOBeqQkRJJGtPQ4-8admGykeNzzl9xaFv3fuw2LMy7OKUmkzE6jIEmpalakDkzf83mRL/s320/IMG_2708+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Thanks to son Don, Jr. and all the other family members and friends for contributing to this fantastic celebration. Don, Jr. says we all have to wait now for another 25 for the diamond jubilee!</div>
Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-35211814404017564912020-02-07T19:38:00.003-08:002020-02-07T19:38:56.667-08:00An Evening With Roz Chast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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No matter where I've lived, and I've lived in some of the far corners of the earth, I've lived a literary life. Back in Southern California, though, it's less of a stretch to do so. Nearly every month there's an author I admire speaking someplace near.<br />
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Last night, it was graphic novelist, Liz Chast, at the Bowers Museum in nearby Santa Ana. My Westminster library book group will later this month be discussing her National Endowment for the Arts book, "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?". I'd finished reading it a couple of nights ago. It brought back a lot of memories about my own mother's last days.<br />
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Chast has been a featured cartoonist for "The New Yorker" since the late '70s...I always turn to her cartoons first each Friday or Saturday when my issue arrives. Last night a number of women in the audience stood during the concluding Q&A session to relate how they feel that Chast has chronicled their own lives. I'm not Jewish...my mother wasn't similar to Roz Chast's. Nonetheless, I've known that sometimes stereotypes become such because of prevalent examples. So when these Jewish women began to talk of their <span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">moms, I still could chuckle. I've known a few.</span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">So has Roz Chast. When one woman mentioned that her mother had the audacity to die on Mother's Day, Roz said, "Oh, yes. Maximum effect." The audience howled.</span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">Chast's talk began with the photo above. "Me, Age 9." The gentleman seated next to me helped me decipher the titles of the books surrounding her. We managed to squint enough to make out, "A Child's Garden of Maladies," "The Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases," "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scurvy," "Lockjaw Monthly," and "Merck's Manual."</span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">Chast explained that she's sometimes been called "The Poet Laureate of Neurosis." This began in her early childhood. Her aunt, a nurse, gave each year's outdated "Merck's Manual" to the family when a new edition appeared. When Roz thumbed through it, she found much of it way over her head. But she knew what signs and symptoms were. So she always was seeking these. </span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">She explained that she realized that leprosy was rare in upper Brooklyn. But rare did not mean impossible. So when she found a symptom that she thought she'd experienced herself, she knew right away that she'd contracted this disease. </span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">Lockjaw? The playgrounds surrounding her home had lots of old rusty swings and slides. Consequently, her playmates all obsessed about contracting this disease. They'd scratch themselves on a rusty nail and figure that in fifteen minutes their jaws would clamp down, so consequently they'd starve to death. Such was preadolescence in Brooklyn in the 1960s.</span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd">After showing the sketches she made of her mother on her deathbed, Chast closed her talk with displaying what recently has been my favorite cartoon of hers. When I look at this, I think how appropriate it would be for some of my health food-obsessed California friends. I mean, fair is fair. There should be payoffs!</span></span><br />
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<span class="ILfuVd"><span class="e24Kjd"><br /></span></span>Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3137474233471170843.post-23195334715930057492020-01-19T11:53:00.000-08:002020-01-19T11:53:17.292-08:00Happy as a Clam!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of my favorite stories about the early days of my first marriage is "A Pair of Merry Mollusks." In
that story about Valentine's Day, 1956, I explain to my husband that the full phrase that begins with "happy as a
clam" actually is "happy as a clam at high tide." <span class="ILfuVd NA6bn"><span class="e24Kjd">Hide tide, of course, is when clams are free from the attentions of predators, so, of course, the happiest of times in the bivalve mollusc world.</span></span><br />
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I felt I deserved some happiness. I'd been trying to see all the movies likely to be Oscar winners. Many of these didn't leave me in a happy mood. Mobs. Corruption. Same thing as I'd been seeing on the nightly news. The other evening my friend and I went to my local Regency movie house to see "1917," another somber and intense film.<br />
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I thought we needed a little cheer afterwards. I'd bought a Groupon deal earlier for a seafood feast and a bottle of wine at The Cajun Islands. I hadn't heard of this restaurant before, though it's just four miles from where I live.<br />
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When I suggested it to my friend, Bob agreed that it sounded like an adventure. Four pounds of seafood, choice of shrimp, mussels, clams or crawfish plus a bottle of the house wine.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4YLX_ggqoZzFUUJfFgVoh2rAejAZp29qDD6h28u6RjJVji7LRqDxFesQO-K0zJsYcNDbi30hmfoLeqcQp2efsCVyNJZbTBqj4kQx77yyvhbY_x8Ec9o4ZIg9hEOMW9QawD0VyGZSaTyL/s1600/IMG_2686+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1362" data-original-width="1600" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4YLX_ggqoZzFUUJfFgVoh2rAejAZp29qDD6h28u6RjJVji7LRqDxFesQO-K0zJsYcNDbi30hmfoLeqcQp2efsCVyNJZbTBqj4kQx77yyvhbY_x8Ec9o4ZIg9hEOMW9QawD0VyGZSaTyL/s320/IMG_2686+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The amenities include bibs and a bowl to dump your seafood. </td></tr>
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"Four pounds? That's a huge amount," Bob said. <br />
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"Remember that includes a lot of shells, so maybe it won't be so overwhelming in size as we suspect. Besides I can take the leftovers home to nibble on the next day."<br />
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Wrong. Even with the shells, it <i>was</i> a heap of food. We chose half and half, unpeeled shrimp and clams with basil, with medium seasonings. The chef uses fresh chilies; guests can choose Mild, Medium, Spicy, Extra Spicy, or 2xSpicy. Since our medium was pretty piquant, the 2xSpicey might burn your tongue right out of your head. But, I well know from marveling over how much hot sauce my son can consume, that it's true that some like it hot.<br />
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The house Cabernet Sauvignon proved decently drinkable and we managed to finish the bottle. It held up nicely to the spicy feast. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anthony and Thu, our hosts</td></tr>
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I don't often devote a whole blog to a local restaurant...this, after all, is a strip mall in Westminster, not the Rue du Bac on the Left Bank. But the ambiance, service, food and my companion were all so delightful that for the first time in months I felt optimistic about the future once again. If nothing else, I can always look forward to coming back to The Cajun Islands. Maybe for Taco Tuesday...won't be so messy to consume a seafood taco or two. Or maybe the crawfish. Clawing through the claws would be an adventure, indeed.<br />
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Take a peek at the menu: <br />
<a href="https://cajunislandsrestaurant.com/Westminster-Cajun-Islands-food-menu?&domain=cajunislandsrestaurant.com" target="_blank">https://cajunislandsrestaurant.com/Westminster-Cajun-Islands-food-menu?&domain=cajunislandsrestaurant.com</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crawfish Platter</td></tr>
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<br />Terri Eldershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05017494730749670247noreply@blogger.com0