The Crab Chronicles

Messages of Hope

Every once in a while I will be having a really bad day and something will happen that will give me hope. Sometimes it's a big thing, sometimes a small one.

My son was telling me he feels like he is getting sick and yet he had to go to work this morning. I worry about him driving when he doesn't feel well -- especially since his car isn't running at the moment and he is in my car. While he was telling me that I noticed a dot of red in my peripheral vision and turned to look at the French doors in the family room. A plump cardinal was sitting on the ground looking at me. He stayed there a long time, not moving, just looking at me. I fully embrace the idea that cardinals are messengers [LINK]. I feel hopeful when I see them. I know that no matter what is happening, I will be okay.

I saw a lot of cardinals last summer when my mother died. It was as if heaven had imbued the entire cardinal population in the area with the directive "go and comfort Dee!"

Also yesterday a friend of mine posted about my newest book [Heart of My Own Heart] on Facebook: Reading my friend Dee Thompson's new book https://www.amazon.com/Heart-My-Own.../dp/B08NTMTKZW...  I am on page 409 already, savoring every paragraph, really sad that soon it will come to an end and I will have to say goodbye to the enchanted world that Dee created in her story! The book is written in such a way that you can't help but feel yourself part of the story! You are never alone if you have a good book to read!

 

That did my heart good, reading that.

 

Books are such a great escape, to me. They keep me going on days when distracting myself from stress is super important. Right now I am reading The Sweetness of Forgetting, by Kristin Harmel. It's a terrific book. Really enjoying it.

 

Sometimes the "message of hope" is a friend calling for a phone visit. Sometimes it's finding money I didn't know I had in my purse or couch cushions. Sometimes it's simply hearing a song I love on the radio.

 

Right now my stress level is 10/10. I am trying to get my house ready to sell, and find a condo or town home in this area that I can afford. I am almost afraid to type that because real estate agents are coming out of the woodwork to bother me. I cannot afford to renovate my home to be super appealing to buyers, even though the real estate market is very hot right now. So I will be offering it for less than comparable homes, in hopes someone will see past the cosmetic defects. Everyone always wants walls and flooring to reflect their own taste.

 

I have accumulated so much stuff over the years that downsizing is a huge challenge. I had my own Estate Sale last weekend but I didn't attract too many buyers. I made enough money to cover the costs of a new phone because my old Samsung phone decided to die right before the sale. So I am interviewing estate sale companies, trying to find one that will come in and do one asap. Trying to decide what to keep -- only a few things -- and what to sell is daunting. I will be reducing my living space by probably half. Below are some images I used on the announcement on Next Door and Facebook.

 

Some decisions are easy. I used to collect teapots and some of them remind me of old boyfriends who turned out to be jerks. The silver is easy to part with because I've grown really tired of polishing it over the years.

 

I dread the culling of things from my home but I also embrace a healthy degree of de-materialism. They are just THINGS and should never be cherished except as mementoes of people, is my philosophy.

 

Anyway, I keep looking for cardinals and other messengers of hope and healing, and they always show up..

 

 

One Day Soon

My mom passed away almost exactly five months ago, on June 28, 2020. I miss her every day, but as I bustled around the kitchen this morning making pecan pie and trying to get everything straight and the table set, I was fine. My son and his friend came over and helped me with cleanup. We have friends coming by to eat with us later today.

I took a quick break to watch a few minutes of the dog show.

As I was watching the dog show it occurred to me that Mom loved to watch those type shows and took great delight in knowing the names of most dog breeds and learning about them. She loved dogs. When she talked to my father about getting married she said "I plan to have at least two or three children and we will have a dog, or I won't marry you." Kids and dogs were part of the deal. Dad was smart enough to agree to all of it.

Mom treated her dogs like family, and she made no bones about how important dogs were to her life. I thought about that as I watched the dog show, then --

I just burst into tears.

That's the way I grieve, slowly this time. With my father, in 1996, I cried a lot but mostly right afterwards. Then I just felt sad for months, wishing I could pick up the phone and call him. The passing of my mom, who I had in my life for 58 years, has been a different kind of grief. The grief is bigger, and it hurts much more, so I have to process it more slowly. About once a day I want to tell her something, and I remember she is gone and I just stop what I'm doing and cry for a few minutes. I have boxes of kleenex stashed all over the house.

I know many of us are mourning loved ones lost to Covid-19. There will be empty places at the table for years to come, as we grapple with the terrible losses of 2020. Loved ones gone, jobs gone, many in the country hungry. It's a long national nightmare.

A little while ago, I was looking at a quilt made by my grandmother and my great grandmother in 1933, when Memaw was pregnant with my mom. [See photo at left]

Memaw was big pregnant in 1933, during the worst part of the Great Depression, and her husband was out of work and there was no money. Granny Butler and Grandaddy couldn't help because they had lost all their money in the Depression. Papa's parents were struggling. Everyone was struggling. Yet Memaw and Granny Butler made a pink and blue double wedding ring quilt for the new baby, not knowing if it was a boy or a girl.

They pieced together the top, but then somehow it never got finished. A few years ago I told Mom I wanted to see it finished. Neither one of us are quilters. Luckily, one of my Thompson cousins is a very skilled quilter, and she finished the quilt for us, which was really kind.

I have decided to keep the beautiful quilt in the living room, a reminder of three incredible ladies. They got through hard times, and the hard times didn't defeat them.

I can too.

One day the tears will be done, and I will smile when I think of Mom.

One day we will all be vaccinated against this terrible plague, and there will be some positives to come of this, I know -- people will be more aware of germ transmission, will wash hands more often, and I think will be aware of the importance of sticking together as a family, and as a nation.

Despite the pandemic, I have friends and family members who have gotten married, who have had babies, who have homeschooled their children, and kept right on going.

One day soon, we will look back on this year and feel pride because we survived, and we still love each other, and America is still strong.

One day.

In the meantime, we will be strong, and we will keep the faith. We will get through this.

Amen.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving, everyone!!

 

Things I Wish I Didn't Know

I was telling a fellow paralegal recently about a bizarre episode that happened to me many years ago in Knoxville, and it occurred to me that if you’ve lived more than half of your life as a card-carrying grownup, you will encounter some really unpleasant things. My list is pretty benign.
I should try to just laugh about these things. Some do make me laugh… but not all.

As sort of an antidote to the first list, I decided to throw in a second list, because even though 2020 has been pretty much a Shit Show [pardon the profanity, just quoting Ryan Reynolds there] I have survived it, and I know I will be okay even without my mom.

 

I wish I didn’t know…

• What it feels like to test positive for Covid-19
• The queasiness that comes from being propositioned by an 80 year old man [client at one of the firms where I worked in Knoxville]
• The horrifying BANG of two cars colliding at high speeds
• How it looks when my dog poops out an undigested paper towel
• How it looks [and sounds] when Lola barfs up a paper towel, on the new carpet…
• The complete and utter emotional and physical exhaustion known as “moving day”
• The smell of burning brussels sprouts or burning onions
• The terrible anxiety of walking down the aisle of the grocery store with a calculator
• The sadness of missing both of your dead parents
• The humiliation of serving something to a guest knowing it tastes far from delicious [I take some pride in being a good cook, but I’ve had my share of disasters]
• The fear of watching my backyard turn into a pond every time we get heavy rains
• The terrible sadness of watching a grown child make terrible life choices

 

However, I am really glad I know the following things…

• The feeling of happiness that comes from eating a delicious meal I’ve prepared for my family
• What my backyard smells like after a summer shower
• The peace of knowing I did my best to make my mom’s final years on earth as happy and pain-free as possible
• The new-mama feeling of birthing a new book that I’ve spent months writing [and hoping/praying readers will enjoy the story]
• The smell of baking pound cake wafting through the house
• Delight at the yearly showing of autumn leaves
• How to enjoy singing even when it’s just me, alone in my house [let’s just say if Mel Torme and Julie Andrews had had a baby…]
• The love of my children, who remember how it feels to be an orphan
• The serenity of faith that a loving God always has my back
• How blessed I am to have cousins who are also dear friends, and friends who feel like family
• The maturity that allows me to not get freaked out all the time over little things

Turning the Corner

My life has turned a major corner this summer, and it happened so fast that it has left me reeling. Mom went into the hospital June 24 and died the 28th, quite unexpectedly, so I have had a lot to adjust to in a short amount of time, it feels like.

I just realized the other day that I have not blogged in a while and I thought I should at least check in, let readers know what is going on. Covid has turned me (as well as so many others) into a bit of a hermit, and there are few happenings to write about.

I have only had to put gas in my car twice in the last six months.

I have not been to a restaurant and eaten there in many months. I don't even remember the last time. I have only been to the store [Walgreens] once in several months. Most everything can be gotten in the drive-thru. I get groceries delivered.

I have two masks in my purse. One is utilitarian. I was given it last time Mom was in the hospital when I could go see her, which was March. The other one is a University of Georgia mask my sweet cousin made for me.

My daughter came to visit last weekend. It was so good to have her home. She is almost thirty years old, which is mind-boggling to me. We went through a lot of my mother's things and Alesia took some of her jewelry and clothing home. Mom would have liked that.

My son was here for the weekend, too. Felt like old times, with both my kids home.

I have been contemplating selling my house. I don't want to sell it. If I can rent out Mom's room, I should be able to keep it. I am slowly getting it cleaned out and ready to rent. I was sick for about two weeks in July, and it has taken me some time to feel 100% again. For the past couple of weeks Michael has been sick. He is much better now, after seeing the doctor. He has to help me with Mom's room. We need to move out all the furniture so it can be re-carpeted.

We have been blessed not to have too hot a summer. Few days have seen temps over 95. Many days the highs have been in the 80's, which is cool for Atlanta in the summer.

I am working on my third novel, trying to finish the first draft. It's a big, sprawling story, taking place over hundreds of years and two continents, so much research is needed.

That's about all the news.

I pray daily for God to help me see the direction my life should take now. I pray for our country to get past this pandemic. I pray for all the folks who have covid. I pray for a vaccine. I pray for the November election to go well.

I know miracles happen every day. My two are below.

 

 

Judging the Past

There is a new piece over at The Bitter Southerner, On Flannery O'Connor and Race: A Response to Paul Elie, and it sparked these thoughts in me when I read it.

Flannery O'Connor was a product of her time and place, as are we all. It's a fair piece about a complicated writer who certainly doesn't deserve to be simply vilified and dismissed because she had some racist ideas. Every writer of fiction [including myself] risks being criticized for our prejudices. (Every human has prejudices, and to pretend otherwise is naive.) It's impossible to write fiction without exposing our soft underbellies, opening ourselves up to criticism or even ridicule. Our prejudices always come through. What we (I am speaking about all literate humans) must not do is to silence voices we simply don't like or agree with, because then we will have struck a deal with the devil. 

I wanted to expand on that a bit.

I understand why protestors want to take down statues that glorify the Lost Cause which includes a south where slavery flourishes. However, I was dismayed to see a news article recently about statue topplers in Missouri going after Thomas Jefferson. I applaud the University of Missouri for not taking down Jefferson's statue. [LINK]

Jefferson was a product of his time and place. He wrote "all men are created equal." Not "all people" -- which would have included women. He owned slaves. He was also a critic of slavery and freed some of his slaves. This page on the Monticello website explains his positions carefully. Most historians accept that he fathered children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. Did he rape Sally Hemmings or was it a love story? Nobody knows. She was the half sister of his deceased wife. Did he love his children by her? Nobody knows, but the fact they were freed after his death says something. He was neither all good or all bad. He was complex.

My comparison of O'Connor and Jefferson is deliberate. We can write millions of words about great writers, artists and politicians who had prejudices we find abhorrent. That doesn't mean it's fair to dismiss or villify them.

However, I totally understand the removal of statues of Andrew Jackson, a man who put some of my Cherokee ancestors on the Trail of Tears. I am puzzled as to why historians debate whether or not it was genocide.

However, if we start looking at every president and judging them we will have to take down almost every single statue and memorial. FDR refused to allow Jews who were fleeing the Nazi regime to enter the United States. He also cheated on his wife with several mistresses. However, if he had not been elected we might not have won World War II, and we might all be living under a Nazi regime, even now.

President Lyndon Johnson championed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement."

Yet LBJ was no saint. He also cheated on his wife and it could be argued he was a serial womanizer. He also was a racist. Johnson escalated the Vietnam War and a lot of Americans died as a result.

 

We have raised the current generation in a world where Hollywood heavily influenced them, and Hollywood makes zillions of dollars on a simple idea: there are heroes and villains. You are either for us or against us.

The Good Guys vs. The Bad Guys.

Many millennials do not read. They cannot think critically and debate fairly. Everything is either black or white. It's much easier to live that way, to hold views like that, to go out and topple statues or hurl stones.

The problem is that if we allow their immaturity and judgement to win, we will lose so much that is valuable. We will lose writers like Flannery O'Connor. We will ignore all the extraordinary accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson, FDR, and LBJ. We will, as a society, drive underground people who express opinions or prejudices we don't like, as they did during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

America was founded on the idea of freedom. Freedom can be ugly and messy. It's still worth fighting for. Heroes are never perfect. They can hold ideas that are, to our eyes, vile, but we must refuse to allow a simplistic Good Guy/Bad Guy mindset to prevail.

A Statue is Not Just A Hunk of Metal or Stone

I am tempted to stop watching the nightly network news because so much of it makes me really upset. This country has never been more divided than it is right now. Everyone I know is angry and upset about what we see every time we turn on the news or get on social media.

I understand why there are riots going on. George Floyd was treated brutally by the police. Nobody can really argue that there aren't racists among the police officers -- although I firmly believe that the vast majority of police officers are NOT racist and should be honored for what they do. I can even understand why the protests are happening. If they bring about real change, awesome. I am not seeing that right now, though. Rioting and vandalism solve nothing, heal nothing. On the other side, I am seeing a lot of angry folks, horrified by the destruction and afraid to express their feelings for fear of being called racists.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed the world because he looked to the example of Mahatma Gandhi in India and went about protesting peacefully, to bring about real change. When Dr. King was assassinated his work went on. Peaceful protestors inspire change. Violent rioters inspire fear and disgust.

Do the vandals and rioters in the streets really understand why Dr. King was so successful? Obviously not.

I'm particularly disturbed by the fact that so much vandalism of statuary proves that the vandals have no idea about their history. A Revolutionary War statue was vandalized in North Carolina [LINK]. Many other monuments, including one honoring three black men who were wrongly lynched, prove the vandals are simply being destructive and they have no real concern for the truth [LINK].

The defacement that makes me the most sad happened in Boston a couple of weeks ago. Robert Gould Shaw was a Union officer who led the Union army's first all-black regiment, and the Shaw Memorial honors him and the 270 black soldiers he led. This article, Rioters deface monument honoring all black regiment of Union Civil War soldiers, talks about this desecration. I remember watching the 1989 movie Glory and being fascinated and saddened by it because it depicts what those ex-slaves went through to become soldiers, the racism they suffered at the hands of the Union army, and the terrible risks they took. Had they been captured they likely would have been re-enslaved.

"I run off and left all my kinfolk in bondage. We want them to know, heavenly father, that we died for freedom!" [Morgan Freeman's character in Glory]

This scene [link] is one of the many powerful scenes in Glory. Movie like Glory are so important, because studying history should not be dry and cold and boring. It should be thrilling. Movies are important teaching tools. I was happy when my son told me his middle school Social Studies teacher showed them the entire movie.

I didn't know until I started doing research for this blog that the man who wrote Glory was inspired to write it after he saw the monument pictured at left.

"Kevin Jarre's inspiration for writing the film came from viewing the monument to Colonel Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in Boston Common.^[3] The 54th was the first formal unit of the Union Army to be made up entirely of African-American enlisted men; all of the officers were white men. His screenplay was based on two books, Lincoln Kirstein's Lay This Laurel (1973) and Peter Burchard's One Gallant Rush (1965), and the personal letters of Robert Gould Shaw.^[4][5]" -- Wikipedia

My research turned up more fascinating information about this monument, from this article: 16 Statues and Memorial Were Damaged During Sunday's Protests, Including One Dedicated to African American Soldiers.

"When it came time to memorialize Shaw, his family wanted him to be shown not alone, but with his men, Vizza said. The renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens won the commission to create a large-scale bronze relief. With the help of African American models, Vizza explained how he executed a work that showed the Black soldiers as human beings, not caricatures. Saint-Gaudens worked for 14 years to finish the piece before it debuted in 1897."

“This monument is considered one of the nation's greatest pieces of public art and the greatest piece to come out of the Civil War,” said Liz Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden, “It was, amazingly enough, dedicated 123 years ago on May 31st – the day it was defaced.”

I want to end this blog with a powerful quote from Dr. King:

“If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, 'brethren!' Be careful, teachers!”  

—“The Purpose of Education” from Morehouse College student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger, 1947

The Changing World

About 10 or 15 years ago I was working for a young attorney and he had me writing blogs for him. It was interesting. I had to do a lot of research to find what I thought were interesting topics to write about. In the course of researching those blogs I came across an online publication that basically was a roundup of stories from around the country. 

The reason I am mentioning this is because a lot of the stories were about police mistreating people of color.

I remember finding those stories and reading them all, at first. Then I got to where I skipped over them because I was not writing about criminal law, my area was civil law. The stories were inevitably about people who were arrested who shouldn't have been arrested, or they were arrested and beaten up for seeming to resist the police. The stories were everywhere, from every corner of America. There were So.Many.Stories.

I'd say 95% of those stories were under-reported.

You see, the police used to be able to pretty much do what they wanted without fear of scrutiny by anyone. That is changing. Not fast enough, but it IS changing.

One of the rare bonuses to so many of us walking around with smartphones that can be used to take quick videos is that there are few corners of the world not subject to being filmed. Police officers know this.

The Floyd case has shocked and horrified me to the point where it's almost unbearable to see the video of it. The officer who had his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck has now been arrested -- story.

If not for the videos made of what happened I guarantee you this story would not have made national news. As long as there have been police officers there have been officers who abused their power and mistreated people. I'm not defending that. It's reprehensible. However, we now live in a world where accountability is more likely.

I've never been arrested.

However, I had a scary encounter once with a police officer years ago. I was in graduate school and I had broken up with a boyfriend and was very upset. I was crying, loudly, for a while. My neighbors called the campus police and reported me for crying too loud, saying I was screaming. When the police officer knocked on my door I was shocked, utterly bewildered. He said my neighbors thought I was being abused or beaten. The sight of the officer calmed me down immediately. I was also frightened and confused. Instead of coming over to see what was wrong, my neighbors called the police. It wasn't a police matter. I had done nothing wrong. The officer wasn't very nice, and he didn't act like he cared. He just wanted me to be quiet.

I grew up in a family where, when I was crying, someone always came and comforted me. Always. Even as a baby, my parents never made me "cry it out." Being grown up and living alone meant there was no source of comfort and I'm sure that contributed to my sadness and crying spell.

After the officer left I just sat and shook for a few minutes.

After that, I could better imagine how someone of color feels when they are wrongly accused of something. Multiply my feelings a million times, of course. What I went through was nothing, in comparison. But it gave me a very tiny taste of what a really unpleasant account with a police officer can be like.

 

We had protests here in Atlanta yesterday. In a story reported yesterday our mayor [who is black] admonished the protestors.

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' voice rose in a televised press conference, with a stern message for violent protesters: "You are disgracing our city; you are disgracing the life of George Floyd ... We are better than this."

She is right, and she is wrong.

I have a friend who is the mother of a black son. She is white. She has to live in a daily fear most white people will never understand: fear of her son being arrested just for being black but actually doing nothing wrong. I have another white friend whose adopted sons are Asians and her family has faced overt, ugly racism many times -- oh, and they live in Colorado, not the south. She also worries about her sons.

We may not see a perfectly racially harmonious world in my lifetime. I am resigned to that. Maybe in my son's lifetime, though.

My son has faced discrimination. I understand a little of what mothers of black sons face.

He has some Kazakh ancestry. When I went to Kazakhstan in 2007 to adopt my son the orphanage workers kept saying "He is classified Russian!" I was told that repeatedly. I didn't understand why it mattered until a while later when it was explained to me that to be classified as native Kazakh meant discrimination, and mixed-race kids fared worst of all in a segregated society. That, despite the fact the president of Kazakhstan was Kazakh, not Russian.

Had he stayed in Kazakhstan my son would have faced three kinds of discrimination: for being an orphan, for being handicapped, and for being mixed race. His chances of ever having a good job were practically nil, at that time. [Things may have changed. I hope so.]

Race should have no bearing on how anyone is treated, in any walk of life, anywhere, any time. But the world is how it is, despite that, and we must work to change it. If protests change it, good. There is malicious anger and there is righteous anger and we need to remember that.

I am praying that the Floyd cases and Arbury cases will remind us, sadly, to continue to actively pray for a better world and to insist on a better world, for our children and all the generations to come.

We have come a long way, and we have a long way to go.

Condemning all police officers isn't the answer.

Condemning the protestors isn't the answer.

We have to find ways to move forward without blanket condemnation of any group. We have to keep the conversation going. We have to keep filming injustices. We have to keep working for change.

 

 

The Case for Corona Civility

I walk my dog almost every day around my quiet suburban neighborhood and sometimes I see things that make me wonder what the hell is wrong with people.

I saw a masked lady walk up to one of my neighbors the other day and proceed to lecture him about wearing a mask, I think. I could not hear what she was saying, but from the expression on my neighbor's face he clearly was not happy about her words. Now, he was in his own yard, playing with his own children, and there was nobody else within 20 feet of them. Should he have been wearing a mask? In my opinion, no. There were no seniors or ill people anywhere nearby. I happen to know this neighbor has been a model citizen at staying home and social distancing and keeping his family home. Yet the masked lady felt like she should lecture him.

What on earth is wrong with people these days?!

There is huge controversy now between the "stay at home no matter what" folks and the "let's get back to normal life" folks. There are protests in the streets. People not wearing masks are lectured or yelled at in public. People refusing to un-quarantine are being accused of ruining our economy.

What everyone seems to lose sight of is this: we live in America.

We have the right to social distance or not. We have the right to stay home or not.

Unless or until martial law is declared, how are you going to force people to comply?

Now, in New York city or Boston or Chicago -- all places where the people are densely packed in together -- I think it's very important for people to wear masks and gloves and stay off public transit and really take quarantines seriously. Those places have a ton of Corona-virus cases happening and many people are dying.

Here in my home state of Georgia, just over a thousand people have died from Covid-19. According to the Atlanta Journal:

"Nearly 5,390 COVID-19 patients have been hospitalized in Georgia so far and at least 1,249 of those people were admitted into a hospital’s intensive care unit. 1,174 people have died."

There are 3,990,702 people living here according to Google. So, almost 4 million people. So only a tiny percentage of people living here have died from Covid-19. I don't know anyone who has had the disease or who has died.

I do know that many of the folks who have died were senior citizens. According to the AP, people over 80 have 5 times the death rate from Covid-19 than younger folks.

I live with my mother who is 86, so I am hyper-vigilant about who gets near her, washing hands, etc. She has not left the house since she came home from rehab about 3 weeks ago. There were 3 cases of Covid-19 at her rehab, though, so I feel like she is actually safer here at home, only coming in contact with me -- a third generation germaphobe who obsessively washes hands.

So far, she is fine. [knock wood]

Our governor has gotten severely criticized for letting restaurants and other businesses open back up. We are slowly transitioning back to normal. I was in a favorite restaurant last week picking up a takeout order.  Everyone wore masks and gloves. There was heavy plastic sheeting dividing customers from people doing food orders. This place does mostly takeout orders on a normal day, so I wasn't surprised to not see anyone eating in. I left with a prayer that they would be able to remain open, though. They are a small place, independently owned and operated, and the food is excellent. I do not fear the food from there. We aren't sick. 

I feel like non-Georgians who are criticizing us should keep quiet, though.

An article in The Atlantic about our state's efforts to get back to normal [Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice] ticked me off in the first paragraph but then somewhat redeemed itself in the rest of the story. Among a lot of other things, it notes:

"Public-health officials broadly agree that reopening businesses—especially those that require close physical contact—in places where the virus has already spread will kill people. Even so, many other states are quietly considering similar moves to Georgia’s."  Amanda Mull, unless you have a crystal ball or you're a bona fide psychic, you have no idea what you're talking about. [She wrote the article.]

Governor Kemp isn't saying businesses HAVE to reopen. He's giving them the option of reopening.

Let's take a step back here, for a moment.

Let's reflect on how random rules are, because the government is a vast entity and nobody knows how it works. Who decided that law firms and liquor stores are "essential"? I am glad I work for a law firm and can continue working, but why are we "essential"? We don't do criminal law. I can see why criminal lawyers would still be needed. And why would liquor stores be exempt? [Politicians need access to lawyers and that access might make them drink, is my guess.]

My point is simply this: everyone should be free to choose to do what they feel is best to keep their family and/or their businesses safe. Period.

If I am not wearing a mask, stay the heck away from me if you like, but don't lecture me.

If you want to stay home, STAY. Don't criticize me for leaving, though.

I know some will disagree with me. If I had seen dead bodies stacked up in wagons along my street, like what was seen during the plagues hundreds of years ago, I wouldn't have written this blog. But this is 2020.

America is about FREEDOM. Choose to go out. Choose to stay home. Choose to not re-elect Kemp if you don't like how he governs.

It's all about choice.

I hope we will ALL choose to be polite and kind to one another, even if we disagree, though.

What's for Dinner, Mom? (My new cookbook)

When I became a first-time mom at age 41, to a 13 year old, it was a huge challenge to go from 20 years as a singleton to being a mom to a child who spoke no English. I tried making Russian foods [borscht, black bread, seerniki] but of course they didn't taste as good as what she was used to. I was accustomed to eating something like a can of soup for dinner, or cheese and crackers. I wanted to feed my child better, so I learned how to really cook, for a family. Six months after bringing her home I bought a house and Mom moved in with us, so I had my teacher right there, which helped.

I was blessed to be raised by a mother who loved to cook and who encouraged me and my brother to get in the kitchen and experiment. My dad loved to cook, too, but his repertoire was limited to mostly breakfast foods and putting meat on the grill. That's okay -- he had two brothers whose wives were such terrific cooks their husbands had no idea how to do anything in the kitchen. My mom's attitude was not "stay out of my way" but "go for it!"

I think every recipe in What's for Dinner, Mom? has a little anecdote or story. That's what makes a cookbook interesting, to me. I want to know how you discovered the recipe, or did you make it up yourself? Did your great aunt refuse to give out the cookie recipe and your aunt finally figure it out? Will your child eat this and no other veggie?!

Years ago [long before Amazon made it easy] I helped Mom write a cookbook, and we just got copies made at Kinko's. Family and friends liked it a lot. You can still sometimes find copies floating around out there of Elva's Blue Scallop Cookbook. My aunt sold it for a while at her store in Myrtle Beach.

 

  If you've been reading my blog for a while you know I write about food, a lot. When I care about someone I love to cook for them. Making someone happy with food is my "love language."

In these weird and difficult days, we are staying home more, cooking more, and hopefully loving on our families more!

Check out my book today.

It's only $8 so buy copies for friends!

 

Writing About The Current Crisis

I was blessed to have two parents that liked talking to me and my brother when we were kids, and who told us vivid stories about their childhoods and the years before my brother and I joined the family.

Mom and Dad made topics that were dry and boring in school [World War II, The Cold War, The Cuban Missile Crisis] far more interesting because we got to hear how their lives were impacted by those things.

Mom told me the Cuban Missile Crisis was particularly stressful for the family because I was an infant and on formula, and they were scared to leave town because they didn't know if they could get formula for me. SO they decided to just stay put and take their chances. [During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores.]

Dad watched his two older brothers go off to war during World War II and then recalled his joy when his brothers came home alive. Lewis came home and showed the family how to grill steaks outside, which none of them had ever done -- putting an old metal shelf from the fridge over a hole in the ground filled with charcoal, a crude grill. Lewis had been on an island in the Pacific for months, watching for Japanese soldiers and airmen to invade, a nerve-wracking experience he never really talked about afterwards. [Lewis' photo is on the right]

Dad also told us when America got into the war his father, who had been in World War I, told Dad and his friends to dig a trench so they could play trench warfare. Grandaddy marked off the exact place to dig the trench and encouraged the digging. A few months later a new septic tank was placed in the "trench" -- and he didn't have to pay somebody to dig it. [Grandaddy was nobody's fool...]

Mom told me just recently that as soon as the polio crisis got really bad, her parents both worked one day, all day long, emptying out the kitchen cabinets and scrubbing every surface with a mixture of Clorox and water, and wiping down all the foodstuff in the house. They were already major germaphobes, both of them, but when polio was rampant in America they got really serious. Which is GOOD -- nobody in the family got polio.

 

As I mentioned in my prior blog, we are living in a fascinating [and yes, scary] time in history. Imagine if someone who had lived through the Great Fire of London or the Black Plague or the Revolutionary War had written a clear and personal account of how their daily life was affected by that? I would LOVE to read such an account.

Historians concentrate on facts -- dates, places, battles, etc. -- dry and boring, usually. Real people writing real accounts of daily life? Fascinating.

I think my love of history comes from my parents' willingness to make it come alive for us.

 

I was thinking today, what will future generations find interesting about living through the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020?

While most of us have some extra time on our hands I want to urge you, readers, to write up an account of what it's like to live through this pandemic. Maybe you don't have grandchildren yet but someday you might -- or not -- but maybe you will have great nieces and nephews. I know most of you aren't professional writers, so I thought it might be helpful if I posted what are called Writing Prompts. You can use these as inspiration to write up your own account. Then save it printed out or on a thumb drive, for future generations.

If you really don't like to write but you are tech savvy, make a video of yourself talking about the crisis, and save it somewhere.

 

above -- my Hasty grandparents in 1951

 

Writing Prompts

I first heard about the Coronavirus and my thoughts were...

I decided it was important to take steps to safeguard my family during this time so I...

There are shortages of things in my town and these are some of the hard-to-get items...

I was working up until _____ and then I started working from home on ______ and it has been.....

In the midst of all the scary news stories and sadness I have found some really positive things and they are...

Social media has actually been a blessing because I have been able to safely keep up with what friends and family members are doing, and this is my favorite post/meme...

These are the things I notice when I drive down the street in my town nowadays...

I do/do not know someone who has had the Coronavirus and here's more about that...

These are the ways my life has changed in the past few weeks....

In the future, I think life will be different because of this pandemic and here's what I think will change...

This is the saddest thing I have heard since this crisis started...

This is the funniest thing I have seen/heard...

This is my opinion of what the government has done in response to this crisis [remember local, state, and Federal]