Friday's Odds and Ends

Some cities, concerned about the amount of litter on their streets, have imposed a fee for using plastic bags at stores. Dallas is the latest. Granted, litter is a problem. I hate to even say how much trash I see along the county road where I walk each morning. I also hate to admit how many times I've seen someone toss a drink can out a truck window as they are driving along. When I was a kid, if I threw something out the car window, my father would stop and make me go pick it up. Believe me, I never tossed even a gum wrapper out after that.

That's a point that a Dallas resident, Barbara Whitfield Streetman made in a letter to the editor. She challenged parents to do what my father did, "Teach kids never to throw anything out of the car window or throw anything on the sidewalks or anyplace. Just carry it home and dispose of it."

What a concept.

Reactions to the latest violence - the mass shooting in Paris - incited the same kind of hateful rhetoric and behaviors as the last two in the United States. Sadly, and I may keep saying this until more than two people get it, that will not stop until people stop reacting with their emotions. Someone once said, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." I think that was Jesus, and so many of the people reacting with hate and anger call themselves Christians?

Hmmmmm.

That's it for my rants today. Aren't you glad? Just for fun I took a picture of my cats this morning. All four of them are on the edge of my desk watching the birds that are fluttering around in the flowerbed. The cats are twitching tails and ears and wishing there was no glass between them and the birds.Every now and then I hear a little chirp and it is one of the cats talking to the bird. I wonder if Harry is saying, "Come here little bird. I won't hurt you."

Harry is the black cat closest to the window

Now for some Friday Funnies. This first one is from Luann by Greg Evans. Luann's parents, Nancy and Frank are sitting at the table in the kitchen working with some papers and Nancy says, "I can't believe it's another new year already."

"No kidding," Franks says. "Time is flying by. When I was a carefree kid, a year lasted forever. Now that I don't have a spare second, the days flash by. Life is backwards."

Nancy looks at him in surprise. "You'd rather rush through joyful childhood and crawl through grumpy old age?"

"Maybe I wouldn't BE grumpy if I had more T... " He looks up. "Wait a minute. How did I become a grumpy old man all of a sudden?"

She goes back to the paper she was writing on. "Time is flying by."

Here's one from Pickles by Brian Crane. Opal is sitting in the overstuffed chair, surrounded by hangars. Nelson stands in front of the chair watching what she is doing. Earl leans on the back of the chair and asks, "What are you doing with all those hangars, Opal?"

"I'm crocheting colorful covers for them."

"Silly question... Why do they need covers?"

"Covers keep clothes from slipping off the hanger. And they're pretty."

"Ah that makes sense." Then Earl walks off with Nelson and says, "I didn't have the heart to tell her I could accomplish the same thing in a tenth of the time with a roll of friction tape."

Finally, this one from Crankshaft by Batiuk & Ayers. Crankshaft and his son-in-law, Jeff, are watching a news program on television and the weather forecast starts. The meteorologist says, "This is the big one, people. The mother of all snow storms.

"We're not going to get inches of snow...!!! But FEET of snow.

"We're going to get snow, snow, snow... and even MORE SNOW!!"

Crankshaft looks at Jeff and says, "He must get paid by the flake."

Another new feature I would like to start on the blog is "Writing Wisdom". Each week I will add some bit of inspiration or advice that I find helpful. This week I found a piece that Anna Elliot wrote,  In Praise of Quitting, for Writer Unboxed, and I found her article very helpful in thinking about projects that we start and then abandon.  I'll just post a short excerpt here, but do click over and read the whole article. It is well worth your time.

Now, maybe I’ll go back to the abandoned story someday.   At some point, I’ll at least pull it out of the drawer and give it a read-through to see if there’s something there.  Maybe there is, maybe there’s not.  But that’s the good thing about stories.  They’re very forgiving.  They’re not going to be mad at you that you walked away and left them to sit idle for a couple of months or even years.  Sometimes they actually even reward you for having walked away by suddenly revealing to you just what the fatal flaw was that made them impossible to finish before.

Fridays Odds and Ends

One couple in Fort Worth, Texas are missing the home that belonged to the husband's grandmother. It was demolished by the city when a demolition crew went to the wrong address. The house next to it was the one that was supposed to be razed after being condemned. The owners were not there at the time, but a neighbor tried to intervene and get the demolition crew on the right track, but those attempts failed. According to an editorial in the Dallas Morning News, the owner is not in the kind of snit many of us would be. He is requesting that the city pay him the fair market value for the house that was demolished, and could the city please remove the concrete slab. "It's not much good anymore."

Not the actual slab, but imagine driving up to your house and seeing this.

 In an interesting take on the whole debate about Snowden and whether he is a traitor or a hero, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said that one good thing to come from the mess is that now a public debate about NASA's domestic snooping is now unavoidable.

I agree that the discussion needs to happen. Ever since 9/11 the average citizen has been negatively impacted by anti-terrorism efforts in too many ways. More thought has to be put into how we protect against terrorism without infringing on the rights and privacy of American citizens, lest we live under the control of Big Brother as fictionalized in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
 

The original cover of the 1949 British Edition

In a real feel good story, I read about a boy of four who is raising money to replace the neighborhood park that was destroyed in the plant explosion in West, Texas. Apparently, this was the park that the boy liked to play in near his grandparents' home and he lost it, along with the home and his father who was a volunteer firefighter. The boy, Parker, is following in his father's legacy of raising money for charitable works, and he held a hot dog sale on a recent Saturday to start raising money to rebuild the park. His grandparents, while still grieving the loss of their son and Parker's father, joined in the effort, along with other residents who added a bake sale and a silent auction to the event. According to the grandmother, the amount of money raised was not enough to even get started on rebuilding the park, but she thought it was important to work with Parker and let him make this effort.

Kudos to Parker and to his grandparents.

Now for some fun from the funny papers. This one is from One Big Happy. Rose, Ruthie's grandmother, is sitting at a desk with a laptop open, her husband, Nick, stands behind her, looking over her shoulder.

Rose says, "Wasn't that cat video adorable."

Nick says, "Below it is the comment 'ROFL'"

Rose translates, "Rolling on the floor laughing."

To which Nick says, "Oh, I thought it meant 'Reaching out to fellow losers.'"

And from Pickles: Earl is sitting on the edge of the bed and Opal asks, "Why are you just sitting there staring into space, Earl?"

"I'm having one of those mornings where I can't decide whether to comb my hair or put on my socks."

"What, you can't do both?"

In the last panel, Opal has walked out and Earl calls after her. "Hey, we're not all overachievers like you you know."

The dog that is on the bed next to Earl adds an "Amen."

Did anything in the news recently strike you as particularly interesting or absurd? What is your favorite comic strip?

Monday Morning Musings

Yesterday was a grand day. Since it was Mother's Day I got to do whatever I wanted to, which included doing some gardening. For many years that was the day that I got a lot of bedding plants and put color all around my house. I don't do that much any more as I have a lot of perennials that come up every year, so in more recent years I just do some re-potting and mulching and feeding. The rest of the day yesterday was spent watching movies, eating popcorn, talking to my kids, working on a new jigsaw puzzle, and just have a relaxing day with my husband.

I did take a break now and then from all that relaxing to take care of the animals, brush the horse, walk the dog and pick a few berries. Thought I'd mention that lest you think I'm a slug.

The Sunday comics section of the paper celebrated Mother's Day in a big way on some of my favorite strips. On Baby Blues, Darryl and the kids buy Wanda a goldfish and a fish bowl for Mother's Day. Several panels show them shopping, wrapping, then presenting the present with a great flourish. When Wanda opens the present, the fish is dead. Darryl says, "Well, happy Mother's Day anyway."

Hammie says, "Can I flush the body."

To which Zoe replies, "It's Mom's special day. Let her do it."

In Pickles, Earl walks up to Opal and hands her a flower and says, "Happy Mother's Day, Opal. I don't say this very often, but you are a great mother and grandmother. And you deserve a much better husband than me."

Opal sniffs the flower and says, "You make a good point. But your trade-in value is shot, so I think I'll just have to keep you."

Then of course there was my favorite from Mallard Fillmore that I put in my blog yesterday.

Here is a picture of one of my Mother's Day gifts. The wooden horse, not the cat. Harry, the cat, thought it was great fun to try to get the horse to play. When it refused, he jumped down and attacked the kittens.

For those of you who like cozy mysteries there is a new one out, The Cat, The Mill and the Murder by Leann Sweeney.  You can meet one of the central characters and read all about the book at Dru's Book Musings.  And if you leave a comment on the blog you will be entered to win a copy of the book. I might even enter. Who can resist a story with a cat, or a dog, or a horse?

Over at The Blood Red Pencil there is a discussion about using cliches when writing. Some new writers think that they are okay because people use them all the time. I've even had some clients who were willing to take them out of narrative, but insist that they should stay in the dialogue. No, no, no. Give a reader something new and fresh to delight over.

Friday's Odds and Ends - Funnies and Flowers

Before I get into the main part of this post, I want to ask if you have ever had trouble posting a comment here? On Wednesday, my guest, Mary Deal, could not leave a comment, and I know that was very frustrating as she wanted to thank me for hosting, as well as interact with visitors. I don't know anything about the technical side of what happens with the computer and programs and websites. I just know how to put words on a screen. Mary mentioned using an "atom" thing to try to post after she could not use the regular comment function. I don't have any kind of comment moderation set up. I've realized in visiting a lot of blogs that it isn't always easy to find where to click to leave a comment. For my blog, and several others I write for the comment link is at the end of the blog piece where there is a line:   Posted by Maryann Miller at 7:03 AM 6 comments:  Sometimes it will say "no comments" and you can be the first to leave a comment. (smile)

Let me know what your experience has been commenting here or on other blogs. 

In a recent letter to the editor in The Dallas Morning News a man suggested that the U. S. Postal service consider delivering residential mail on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and business mail on the other days of the week. Interesting proposal. It would save money, but would that work in this era of instant everything? People today would never have survived waiting weeks and sometimes months for mail to arrive way back when it was delivered by horseback and stagecoach.

Maybe we would all be better off if we took a few deep breaths and just.... waited.

Today I thought I'd share some great descriptive lines I copied out of a book I read. I made this note so long ago that I don't even remember which book the lines came from, and like a doofus, I did not write the book title on the note. I thought of just throwing the note away, but these lines are too good not to share.

"His eyes were ice blue. Hard. So sharp, Val could feel them cut."

"His eyebrows resembled a backwoods thicket"

I'm not even sure if the descriptions were of the same character, but they sure are vivid, and such a refreshing alternative to some of the common descriptions of cold eyes and thick eyebrows. If the author reads this blog post and recognizes the lines, I'd love a reminder of what book they came from.

Something just for fun from the comic strip Non Sequitur: The scene is a cemetery called Last Words Cemetery. One headstone reads: "Hey, why spend all that money on an electrician?"

Not so funny? Okay, how about this one from Pickles. Earl and his grandson are talking a walk. Nelson asks, "Grampa, do you and Gramma ever argue?"

"Argue? No. I can't say that we do. We disagree sometimes, though, and then she explains to me why she's right and I'm wrong.

"You might say we have one of those marriages where one person is always right and the other person is me."

Some time ago I noticed these wildflowers growing in and around a large branch that fell during a storm that blew through. This was on the side of the highway leading to our county road, so I had to be careful of traffic when I went to snap the pictures. I couldn't resist, though. It was so pretty.

Friday's Odds and Ends

Tonight and tomorrow I will be in Tyler, TX for the East Texas Bookfest in Tyler, Texas, and, as usual, I left too many things until the last minute, so I will be busy most of today getting everything in order. There are always so many little details, like don't forget the flyers and your toothbrush and your books. Not to mention the list of things to do to get all the animals squared away and make sure my husband has some help if he needs it.

So, I have no blog post idea at all. Instead, I will just give you links to some online friends who have neat things to share.

First up is Alex J. Cavanaugh. I love his brief music and movie reviews, and he always has updates on what is new with some other author friends. He is good about sharing.

Another writer friend is LD Masterson. She frequently has humor on her blog, but also hosts authors who are on blog tours. A recent post is from a mutual friend, Marilyn Meredith who is touring with her latest book, Raging Water. 

Helen Ginger, one of the team members at The Blood Red Pencil, also has a very popular blog, Straight From Hel, where she shares tips on writing and publishing, as well as offering book reviews.

Susan Swiderski has a fun blog, I Think, Therefore I Yam. She does some great pictorial essays that I always enjoy. I admire someone who works so hard to entertain her readers.

And in closing, here is your funny for the day from one of my favorite comic strips, Pickles. Earl is lying on the sofa reading a magazine and Nelson, his grandson leans over to ask, "Where do we go when we die, Grampa?"

Earl says, "I don't know about everyone else, but I'm staying right here."

"Right here?"

"Yep. I'm going to have my ashes scattered over this sofa."

Nelson then goes to Opal who is in the kitchen and asks, "You have a really good vacuum, don't you Gramma?"

Friday's Odds and Ends

What is it with some people and their attitude toward kids? In one week's news in Dallas there was a story about a woman who killed her boyfriend's son by setting his bed on fire. The father woke up, but was unable to save the boy. 

Another story was about a mother who bit her five-week-old baby all over his body. There were also other signs of abuse, and she told doctors that she did it because she didn't want the child.

What's happened to maternal instincts?

"Ecologically it's not responsible & maybe ethically it is not a good idea either." Franklin Percival, wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survery questioning the wisdom of flushing pet alligators down the toilet when they get too big.

"What the heck?" Maryann Miller questioning the wisdom of folks who have alligators for pets.

Another oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. Do we need to take a serious look at the safety of off-shore drilling?

And ending on a lighter note. I love to read the comics in the newspapers. One of my favorite strips is Pickles and a recent strip had Opal and a friend at the beauty shop sitting under a hair dryer. Opal is reading a magazine and says, "I'm feeling more irrelevant all the time."

"Why?"

"Every time I read a People Magazine it seems like there are more celebrities I've never heard of."

I'm not so sure I want to admit to how much I can relate to that.