Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Wednesday's Words for September 27, 2017

Autumn has arrived. We’ve attacked the fallen walnut leaves for the third time, and will likely have to do so again before the neighborhood maples drop their leaves around the end of October.

When it was me doing most of the raking, I always figured that since I had enjoyed the beauty of those neighboring trees through the spring and summer, spending a couple hours raking was a fair price to pay. I no longer do that chore.

When our grandson isn’t on the job, my beloved is. But please don’t feel too sorry for him. You see, at a company golf tournament a couple of years ago, he won a leaf blower. So, while there is some effort involved, it’s not the heavy slog of raking—at least not until he has amassed a pile. Then he puts nature’s debris into the brown paper bags, and that can take some work. The only thing he really minds about the entire process is that he can’t do physical work like he used to.

The countdown to his retirement is in serious territory now—less than two months to go. I will admit that I am at this point used to the idea (or should that be resigned to the idea?). We’ve joked some, and I’ve told him that if I ever tell him to go outside and not come in until the streetlights are on, that he should perhaps stop and examine his recent activities.

He thought that I’d made a very clever joke—but he also knew I meant it. This is going to be an adjustment for the both of us. But then, we’ve been together more than 45 years, and through that time we’ve undergone plenty of adjustments. We’re not in the U.S. army but we’ve used their motto—adapt, improvise, overcome—for most of our lives.

There’s an old saying that the only people who really like change are wet babies, and I think there’s some truth to that.

He is looking forward to not having to get up at four a.m., to not having a boss, and to not having to interact with people he doesn’t necessarily like. It’s been slightly more than fifteen years since I last worked outside the home. I spent much of my working years employed by big companies, so I do understand his feelings on the matter.

I even know, although we’ve spent some time negotiating responsibilities around the home and the upcoming division of labor, that he’s likely going to take the first few weeks and do as little as possible. I really am all for that. If retirement is supposed to be a reward, then he should be allowed to feel as if he’s being rewarded.

You know how, as a parent, you live your life a certain way and hope that your example inspires your kids? Yeah, I don’t think that works the same way with spouses. David and I are two totally different people. It’s rare for me to blow off a day. I might not get everything done I think I need to do, because I can’t do physical work the way I used to, either. But I rarely spend more than an hour or so “doing nothing”. The only codicil to that is when I am captured by a good book.

My daily routine is what I call “multi-tasking”. Every hour of every day is filled with either writing, or housework. There are always things to be done. Dishes that missed the after-supper round up the night before, a bathroom to be cleaned, a floor to be vacuumed, and a bed to be made. Supper also has to be made, unless it’s Friday or Saturday—yes, I now have not one, but two “no-cook” days. As I said, I may not get everything done on any given day, but I work on it as best I can. I’ve learned that an hour or so taken with my legs up in the early afternoon generally eases the pain of my arthritic joints so I don’t need pain meds until evening.

I keep busy so that by the time I head to bed, I’m tired, and I can sleep. Rare is the day that drags, and I guess in a way I’ve traded the right to loaf around for a lack of boredom.

I’m honestly looking forward to finding out what my husband’s after-retirement routine, once he settles in, is going to look like.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Wednesday's Words for September 20, 2017

When I was younger, “folk wisdom” was more of an element in our lives than it is today. It seemed to me, at times, that the older people had a saying for everything. Adages and common-sense approaches don’t seem to play much of a role in life these days. Instead of relying upon old saws and old folks for wisdom, we now have the Internet.

Some attitudinal habits, however, appear to hold true. For example, there used to be a saying in New York and area, back in the early years of the last century: “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.” This saying, of course, played a central role in a very famous OPED known as, “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Not to mention the inevitable holiday TV movie that appeared in 1991, inspired by it.

The concept illustrated above, with apologies to St. Nick, wasn’t about Christmas. It meant that if an item appeared in print, then it had to be the truth (think of it as an early if/then statement). And the reason folks felt a certain amount of assurance believing that, was that in those days and for the most part, newspaper reporters and editors did their level best to make sure that the stories they printed contained the true facts of a matter. The same held true for the newscasts. The Huntley/Brinkley and Walter Cronkite nightly news were programs, in the beginning, that had no “sponsors”. The major networks provided the news on their own dime. No ads meant no reason to skew the reporting. That was then.

Of course, lying really is as old as time—as is blaming someone else for your misdeeds. Just read the book of Genesis if you need proof. But I digress.

Somehow, we’ve carried on that attitude that if it appears in print—if we can read it—it must be true. People, that is not so at all today! In fact, it’s truly never been so to the extent we wanted to believe it was. Just because you see something on the Internet does not mean it’s the truth. You still have to use logic and discernment to make a judgement: Is this item that I am reading actually true?

And yes, there really is such a thing as the truth.

The use of smoke and mirrors is so prevalent these days, everyone should be issued sunglasses and gas masks free of charge. Seriously. Do you know what my daughter told me a while back? It was something that totally gobsmacked me. It happened when she was sitting beside me and I was posting something somewhere on line—I can’t remember the exact place or occasion, but it was on Face Book and I was answering a question. She asked me why I had written what I had, some sort of a confession that some might consider embarrassing. I told her that what I had written was the truth. Her observation? “When you’re on Face Book, just lie. Everyone does.”

I told her that no, not everyone does, because I don’t. I’m pretty sure there are lots of others who don’t, as well. But I would rather see others adopt my daughter’s skeptical attitude than to blindly accept whatever they read as being truth.

There have always been those who would take advantage of others. There have always been those who would push their own agendas regardless of what is real or true, and regardless of what is best for the world at large. The Internet hasn’t changed that; it has, however, facilitated it. Now John or Jane Doe who might be bitter or angry because of personal wounds, perceived or imagined, can strike out, strike back, from the safety of their armchairs. If someone pays them enough money, they are happy to say anything—anything at all! Think about that for a moment. People who have even a slight bent, who would dearly love to “pay someone back” or take their negativity out on others or earn a fast buck without caring where it came from feel free to do so within the anonymity of the world wide web.

I don’t have any answers to this challenge we face. For the moment, it seems that too many people are focused on their anger, saying whatever makes them feel good—a good feeling that evaporates as quickly as the sound of those words dissipate into the ether.

All I really have are questions. Oh, and adages. I have tons and tons of adages and old saws. My favorite is what goes around, comes around. I believe in Divine Justice, or as others refer to it, Karma.

Yes, they have indeed called for more vehicles, because the line to ride the Karma bus keeps getting longer and longer and longer.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Wednesday's Words for September 13, 2017

Now that Mother Nature has taken us to school, and reminded us once more how puny we are in comparison, the hard work of rebuilding can, in the case of Texas continue and, in the case of Florida and the Caribbean, begin.

I sat in front of my television, as I am sure many of you did, a silent, praying witness to the destruction that hurricane Irma wrought on the Caribbean and the state of Florida. I couldn’t even imagine going through such a thing. As I watched I was inevitably reminded how lucky I am to live here, where I do. Rare indeed are hurricanes in my neck of the woods. I had to look it up. I knew of one—Hurricane Hazel that hit this area in the year I was born—but I wondered if there were any others.

The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 found it’s way as an extratropical storm to this area. In researching it, I discovered it did affect my own town, and that during the storm, the town’s flour mill caught fire, causing $350,000 dollars damage to the mill and 50 other stores and offices in town. I’m not sure what the modern-day equivalent to that amount of year 1900 dollars is, but for those times, it was a massive loss. But nothing, of course, compared to the number of lives that monster storm claimed: between 6 and 12 thousand souls perished. It was and remains the deadliest natural disaster in U. S. history.

Reading about that storm, that arrived in an age when they didn’t have the advance warning systems we have now, sent a shiver down my spine. In the account I perused, it stated that storm ended Galveston’s “golden age”, that in its aftermath, investors turned their backs on that city, and focused on Houston, instead.

Looking over the video footage the last few days, of some of the Caribbean islands—St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Barbuda as well as St. Martin/St. Maarten—one wonders not only how these islands can be re-built, but if they will be. The loss to these small paradises was not just lives and buildings: a lot of the vegetation has been scrubbed away. Man can rebuild a house; but he cannot recreate the lush flora of the region. Only nature can do that, and that will definitely take time.

I try very hard not to be political in my comments. I’m not being so, now, exactly. But something happened in the days leading up to the landfall of Irma, and I really have to say something about it because, quite frankly it really got me angry. One of the more bombastic of radio personalities, one who is in West Palm beach, shot his mouth off before the arrival of the storm. While the hard-working Republican Governor of Florida was entreating his citizens to not ignore the warnings, to evacuate ahead of the event, this jerk with a microphone claimed to his audience that the hoopla over Irma was a left-wing conspiracy, perpetrated by those with a “climate change” agenda.

I am all for free speech. I may not agree with what you have to say but I will defend your right to say it. That stated, I believe making such a statement, under the circumstances, should be equated to yelling “fire!” in a packed theatre. Many people believe every word this jerk says; it is therefore my hope that if any of his listeners, heeding his words, came to serious harm or died, he should be held responsible.

And you’d think, that, having given that “opinion” from his lofty on-air platform that he would have stayed in West Palm Beach, knowing there was only a little breeze coming his way, not the monster storm cited by the Governor and everyone else. Right? Ah, no. The cowardly lyin’ evacuated. I wonder if he headed west, to, say, Marco Island or perhaps Naples?

Sorry. That was a bit barbed, but nothing angers me more than those who make money by spewing trash, regardless of the side of the political spectrum they’re on. I’m old fashioned and naïve.

I believe if you have a platform, then you should use it to uplift, not tear down.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Wednesday's Words for September 6, 2017

And just like that, the summer is over!

We spent all of this past summer right here at home—or, rather, in our home province as we did have that one long weekend at KallypsoCon, just down the road from us. It’s the first time we’ve done that in several years, as we usually go to Pennsylvania the first week in August. That trip is a combination of research of the area for a future novel, as well as touching base with friends.

My point is that our going away even for a week, I thought, affected my sense of the speed with which the summer passed. Some summers we’ve been away from home—out of the country—for at least two, and sometimes for as many as three, weeks. And at the end of those summers I always felt as if doing so made the summer seem to go faster.

Now I can say that no, summer just passes very quickly, period.

In front of our house we have a walnut tree. Now, these aren’t to my knowledge, the kind of walnuts you can eat. They’re good for squirrel food and that’s about it. Each year, this tree is the last to get its leaves, and the first to lose them. As soon as the tree has grown those green nuts, the leaves begin to turn yellow and drop off. This is a process that lasts at least a couple months—and it started a week or more ago.

Sometimes, at this point, our grass is a bit on the brown side and bristly to the touch. This year we’ve had a fair bit of rain, so the grass has remained green. It needs to be cut and for that, we’ve a grandson on tap. The days are gone when either my husband or I can manage this task. If our yard was flat, well, then we could. However, it’s anything but, and the uneven and hilly terrain is too much of a challenge for us.

Yesterday, Mr. Tuffy was once more able to growl and bark at the kids who line up for the school bus right at the corner of our property. There are actually two groups of students awaiting transport—one more or less in front of our house, and one in front of the neighbor’s. We both have a corner property on the west side of an intersection. I don’t let the dog out onto the porch until after the kids are gone, because they don’t deserve to be barked at in person. So Tuffy has to be content with barking at them from the back of our love seat or from atop my desk, until after the buses have collected the children. The last one arrives about 8:26am.

I also tend to keep him inside in the morning during spring to fall, preferably on my desk, until I “see what sort of a day we’re having”. I thank my beloved for the need for this subterfuge. You see, on the weekend and holiday mornings, when David is home, Mr. Tuffy has coffee with daddy. Just a few drops in the bottom of his cup, but it’s tradition. Have I told my husband this isn’t good for the little guy? Of course. My beloved argues a few drops a couple days a week won’t really hurt him and he might be right. However, it’s my responsibility to see to it that no cup is on the porch the first time he goes out each morning. During the good weather, my husband awaits his daughter there, and leaves his half-done coffee when she arrives.

So, Monday to Friday I have to get out to the porch and scoop my husband’s morning coffee cup and deal with it without the dog being any the wiser. And in case you think he wouldn’t know? The first thing he does the first time he gets onto the porch every day after I get up, is to run to that single table we have there, looking for daddy’s coffee cup.

Once he sees it’s not there, he forgets all about it.

Some of you may be wondering, “but Morgan, don’t you drink coffee in the morning? What about your cup?” I think my answer may be an example of canine-thought, but I’m not sure how that helps us any. Yes, I do have coffee, at least three cups a day. But since I have never put my cup down for the dog, he doesn’t expect it of me.

As I said, I think there’s a message there somewhere. I’m just not certain what it is.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury