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.

Monday Morning Musings

If I don't hurry up and get this posted, it will soon become Monday Afternoon Musings. I got a slow start to my morning due to some thunderstorms that blew in about four o'clock. It was a loud, violent storm with lightening that slashed the darkness. For some reason, as I lay awake for about an hour listening to the thunder and watching the sudden burst of light, I thought of the Garth Brooks song, "The Thunder Rolls." I checked out the video for the song on YouTube, and sure enough, it opens with an brief instant replay of what I heard this morning.

"Negotiating Successful Threesomes" is the title of a free seminar that was held at the University of New Mexico during their "Sex Week" activities. The seminar was billed as a way to curb sexual assault on campus and the main focus was teaching students how to have safer and better sex.

Huh? Am I the only one who finds this more than bizarre? Please don't tell me I am. While I don't want to go back to Puritan ideology that had "sins of the flesh" at the top of the list of human atrocities, I cringe when I think of how one of the most wonderful and sacred act of intimacy between two people has been misused and abused and reduced to recreational entertainment.

How about a free seminar on the college campuses that focuses on better and safer parties, debunking the myth that to have a good time one should get roaring drunk and screw everything in sight? That might curb the growing problem of sexual assault.

Shirley McGlothlin of Plano, Texas wrote a thought-provoking letter to the editor that was published in The Dallas Morning News yesterday. "At age 77, I can still recall y father's reaction when someone bragged about what a 'good, religious' person they were. Dad would tell us, 'If someone feels the need to tell you what a good religious person they are... be real happy they told you...otherwise you may never have guessed it.'"

She was commenting on how politicians wear their religion on their sleeves, and I thought she made a very good point. Religion is too important to be used as a political ploy.

Okay, enough of the rants. Now it's time for some fun.

First we have this from Crankshaft. He and his fellow school bus drivers are in the bus garage at the end of the morning run. Rocky says, "I had a kid's phone go off on my bus this morning. And the ringtone was so loud, I almost ran up on the curb."

Lena, the bus garage manager and driver says, "So many of thre kids on my bus are either listening to music or texting someone that I can never get their attention."

Another driver, Andy, says, "And not only are the ringtones loud and obnoxious, but some give off flashing lights for a phone call."

Crankshaft comments, "I've said it before...cellphones are weapons of mass disruption."

Since some of you have enjoyed the "Then the Fight Started" jokes, here are a few more:

My wife sat down on the couch next to me as I was flipping channels. She asked, "What's on TV?"
"I said, 'Dust."
And then the fight started...
----------
My wife said her mother was coming to stay for a week or so, I said I'll be at Motel 6 if you need me....
...And then the fight started.
-------
My wife asked me if meatloaf would be OK for dinner, I said fine, should we go to Denny's or IHOP.
...And then the fight started.

I hope you enjoyed the jokes, and please do let me know what you think of the topics of my rants.

Friday's Odds and Ends

Hello, my name is Maryann, and I am a parent who spanked her children. Primarily with my hand and sometimes with a hot-wheel track - my boys can attest to how that stung without injuring them - but never with a weapon that would bruise them or make them bleed. And corporal punishment was reserved for serious infractions such as lying or stealing.  What could a four-year-old child have possibly done that was so terrible it warranted the discipline that NFL player Adrian Peterson inflicted on his son, beating him with a switch until the child bled?

Since the news of what Peterson did broke last week, people are speaking up in defense of his actions, espousing the old adage, "spare the rod spoil the child." His mother was quoted as saying he did it out of love for his child. "When you whip those you love it's not about abuse, it's about love."

Sorry Ms. Jackson, but whipping a four-year-old until he bleeds is not love.

This is a father's love.

Enough about that. Have you heard about the new website for the wealthy among us, Netropolitan? To join, one must ante up $9,000, and the site is billed as "The online country club for people with more money than time." The direct link to the site didn't work when I tried it, maybe because I didn't pay my $9,000, so I linked to an article that has more information. Just in case you might want to join. (smile)

Last Sunday in the Dallas Morning News, Steve Blow's column was about the ongoing debate about the separation of church and state that gains new fuel every time someone objects to a religious symbol in a public place or the religious right petitions to allow prayers at public gatherings. Steve's column mentioned two recent issues in the Dallas area that stirred the embers of the debate. First was a plaque mounted on a school building dedicating the school to "...the education of God's children and to their faithful teachers in the name of the holy Christian Church."

I'm a Christian, but I object to the plaque since some of the students and teachers there might not be Christian. Steve suggested the religious leaders in the town go to the school board and say, "In hindsight, those plaques really do represent public monies promoting one religion over others. That is not the American way and they should be removed."

The other flap is over a request by a group of atheists to be allowed to do an invocation before a city council meeting in Rowlett on a rotation basis with the religious representatives. The hue and cry that elicited has been loud and strong, and I'll admit that when I first heard about the request I wondered why an atheist would want to do an invocation. Who would they be invoking? Then I read Steve's column, reminding us that "Our cherished freedom of religion includes the freedom to choose no religion." He urged the religious leaders in Rowlett to speak those words to the City Council members and ask them to "...allow them (atheists) to bring a secular word of inspiration periodically."

The final point in Steve's column was about why our founding fathers were so careful to keep religion and politics apart. "Just look around the Middle East at what happens when they merge into one.
It’s a mess. A bloody mess.

"Some see the problem as Islam itself. In truth, much of the problem is simply the mixture of church and state into one toxic brew."

So true.

Now to close with some fun from the funny papers. This one is from Crankshaft. Rose is visiting with a lady friend telling her, "My lungs seem to be bothering me. And there's something wrong with my bladder. But those things aren't as bad as the pain I get in my back. I don't know if it's my pancreas, my spleen or my liver. And then I get these heart palpitations that just seem to go on and on."

Her litany of ailments goes on through several panels, then Crankshaft walks into the kitchen and says to his daughter, Pam, "You're missing Rose's organ recital."

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Do you have plans for something fun? I'm going to a play Friday night and will have our monthly writers' group meeting on Sunday. 

Friday's Odds and Ends

Kudos to the 89-year-old woman who has been broadcasting for blind listeners for seven years in North Texas. Adell Campbell has a general-interest program, The Eyes of North Texas, that has about 2,000  subscribers. The show,  which is broadcast twice a week, 9 a.m. on Monday and 11 a.m. on Saturday, is on North Texas Radio for the Blind, which is part of a local nonprofit Reading & Radio Resource.

The general programming at the station focuses on reading newspapers and magazines to the subscribers, but Adell likes to add some entertainment. She starts each show by reading a cartoon, usually one that pokes fun at politics. (I knew there was a reason I liked this lady.) Then she will often have a guest. 

She enjoys doing the shows and has no plans to stop any time soon, although she admits that her age is beginning to have an impact. In an interview with  Eden Stiffman in The Dallas Morning News she said, "Getting old is a very humbling process. And I'm not inclined to be humble." 

One of my favorite cartoon characters is Crankshaft from the strip written by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers. He's a curmudgeon, like my husband and I, and we both can relate to his world view. In a recent strip he is looking out the window at the bird feeder in his front yard. "The bird feeder is full of squirrels again," he says. "Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. If I put up a squirrel feeder, I wonder if only birds will come?"

In another strip, Crankshaft is shoveling snow and his neighbor looks over the fence. "Hey there Crankshaft," he says. "Snowy enough for you?"

The last panel shows the neighbor ducking a snow shovel that is flying through the air.

Finally, this from Dilbert. He is walking along the sidewald with Dogbert and says, "Studies show it takes ten thousand hours of practice to be great at anything."

To which Dogbert replies, "I would think a willingness to practice the same thing fro ten thousand hours is a mental disorder."

Dilbert says, "That makes me feel better about my mediocrity."

"You're welcome."

Literary Lessons:  This one is from Thornton Wilder, "You see, imaginative story telling consists of telling a number of lies in order to convey a truth; it is a rearrangement of falsehoods which, if it is done honestly, results in verity."