Recycling

Today, Gary and I went to the Muehl Public Library's book sale.  He bought a bagful of books which he will store in the camper for next summer's reading. This saves him the problem of returning library books on time when he is deep in the forest. As he finishes each one off, he will donate it to another library in one of the towns in the north woods, where it will be sold in yet another book sale.

As for me, I am taking a different tack. I only got one book,  a better copy of Thoreau's Walden than the one I've had for decades.  That one was a paper back, falling apart along the spine.  It is now replaced with a new hardcover edition.

For years I've collected books.  With the advent of computers, I got rid of a quarter of them, mostly reference books.  If it's all on the internet, why worry about dusting useless books?

When Gary decided to move in with me, I thinned out the shelves even more to make room for his books.  But now I want to clear even more.  The only way to do this is to stop using my library card for the winter, because when I have books that are due, I read those, not the books I own.

This year, I will read the books stored on shelves all over the house. Some I've owned for three or more decades. Then I'll turn them over to the library for their next  book sale. Recycling at it's best.

After that, I'll buy a Kindle or a Nook.

Right Heat, Wrong Event

When Wade and I started Black Coffee Fiction, our short story blog, we had a backlog of stories to fall back on.  Because I am much older and have been at this longer, I had more fiction laying around than he did.

This week, Wade finally used up his stash and had to write a new story from scratch in one week. He rose to the challenge brilliantly in his story "Right Heat, Wrong Event". (See http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com )    I think he feels more secure as a writer because now he knows he is capable of getting a story out there under pressure.

Next week, it's my turn to get something out, but it's no problem because I have a few Christmas stories in folders.

Some years ago, returning from church late on Christmas Eve, I paused to look up and down the street.  Some houses were brightly lit with cars parked on the street. Other windows were dark.  Perhaps the children had been sent to bed to have an early morning after Santa came.  Some of the parties were getting raucous and I knew the beer was flowing.

I began to wonder how each of my neighbors were celebrating Christmas. That led to other questions.  How does a battered woman spend the night. A pedophile?  A family with a child in the military?

I love Christmas, the music, the lights, the food, the family, the snow, all of it.  But I know that the majority of people get depressed at least once during the holiday season.  It is more difficult because they know they are expected to have that perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas.

I began scribbling.  In time, I had a series of what I call extremely depressing Christmas stories.  These stories are for those people, to let them know they are not alone.  

I've already posted "The Rapture," and "A Candle in the Window" in the blog.  Now three more of those stories will show up starting the day after Thanksgiving, followed by two more on December 9 and December 23.  In time, I intend to have a very unhappy yule collection, under the title "Christmas on Lincoln Street".

Come the New Year, I will be in Wade's shoes, writing frantically, searching for ideas.  It's not easy writing 26 stories a year!

Groceries

Seymour is not all that big (population around 3,750 depending on which way you come into town, the signs vary).  It does have what many towns our size don't have:  a good grocery store.

Gary tends to think the prices are better in bigger cities like Appleton or Green Bay, and he may be right overall, but when it comes to sales, Don's Quality Market can't be beat.

I always begin my shopping by looking at Don's ad in the local shopper on Monday afternoon, though I can also look at the on line ad on Monday morning.  I have a good idea of what I am willing to pay for anything.  I clip coupons, make out my list and I'm ready to go.

Yesterday, I bought a package of fresh spinach, 2.7 lbs of oranges, 1.24 lb of broccoli, 2 lbs. of baby carrots, a pint of milk, four bags of frozen vegetables (1 lb. each), and dessert topping.  Because I had bought these groceries, I could use two coupons on a nine lb. turkey.  The cost for everything was $21.18.  According to the store receipt, I had saved 49% on my groceries, or a total savings of 20.85.

I showed the receipt to Gary, who said I had done so well that I should go back and buy more.  In other words, to save another 50 percent, I should spend twice as much.

I'm not sure about that logic.

10,000

On October 19, 2011, I began this blog.  I've posted every day but three, once because the computer system went down here in Seymour, and the other two when I was traveling in the West and couldn't find wi fi anywhere.

I've been followed by readers from around the world from China to Australia, from Russia to South Africa. I know geography rather well so I was only stumped once, when I got a reader from Moldova. I had to use the Atlas to find that country next to the Ukraine.

I thought I would run out of things to write about but day after day, something new happens and it goes into this blog.

Today, I received my 10,000th "hit", almost thirteen months since I began.

Nothing changed, but it feels good to have gotten this far.

Maybe I will have something more profound to write when I reach 20,000.  

Volunteering

When I moved back to Seymour over thirty years ago, I began to volunteer for a myriad of projects. I chaired the ecumenical Christmas concert committee. I started and ran an arts council. I helped revive a community theatre, acted, directed and did publicity. Then there were the cartoons I drew for the “ghosts of Seymour past” at Halloween, the trees I helped plant as part of the Seymour Greenway, and on and on and on. At each new project, I was told "you are so talented."  I fell for it every time.  

Now looking back, I think, what an idiot I was.

From the earliest days of my childhood, I wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first book in the second grade. In my senior yearbook, I said my goal was to be a writer.

But somehow, other things always came up. Marriage, a child, being the breadwinner, and volunteer work, and here I am, in my 60s, without having completed the novels I wanted to write. True, I was a writer, but it was not fiction. I was a journalist and essayist. It wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. I should have used those hours, days, weeks, months and years differently.

So now I am trying to catch up. Over the past two years, I've quit every club or organization I volunteered for, with the exception of directing the choir for the Methodist Church.

I have been very firm on this. Slip once, and I would be sucked back into volunteering. One thing always leads to another so I ended it all. I no longer go to meetings for any group because I have too many good ideas that slip out of my mouth and suddenly I am heading yet another committee. Even a simple thing like putting up a poster leads to putting up posters for everyone.

My thought was that everyone would say thank you for your work and that would be the end of it. Instead, I was met with anger. Who will do it if you don't? You can't do that. 

Well, yes, I can. And it makes me wonder why I did it in the first place. Would Stephen King be expected to make cupcakes for a PTA meeting? Would Dr. Seuss be expected to sit on the city council?  

If I had been one of the hundreds of citizens who never volunteer for anything, no one would be angry at me now.  

I am a writer and a writer should write. It is as simple as that.  That is how I intend to end my life.   

Walking Atom

I've been walking Atom for over two weeks now.  

Atom is an interesting mix of two breeds:  boxer and Australian cattle dog.  The ears certainly look like a boxer's, but the face and the brindled fur are pure cattle dog.  That beautiful fur ripples as he runs, catching the eye of others out walking.  

There are some problems in walking Atom.  He loves people and wants to visit with anyone he sees.  At some point, he must have lived with a family with a pickup truck because he wants to investigate each one he sees.  Then there are white doors.  Why does he have to go up to each one?  A dog has secrets and we mere humans have no way to let them out.

Atom has taken me places in Seymour I haven't visited recently.   He took me down the Newton Blackmour Trail and there I found this bench:

 It certainly wasn't there in the spring when I was hunting asparagus.  When I worked on the Seymour Greenway Committee on improving the section of the trail that runs through our town, we talked about installing some benches.  We found out a boy scout wanted to do something to earn an Eagle Scout badge and referred him to the Outagamie County director of parks and trails.  I assume that he worked out the design of the benches.  In time, there should be benches every mile from just east of Seymour to New London.

What a fine place to sit and rest with Atom.

Planning

This morning I had the children's sermon during services at the Methodist Church. I didn't remember until late last night that I had to do it.

I approached it as I do any story I am about to write.  I wander around the house looking at photos, at objects and sometimes journals.  Sooner or later, something hits.  Yesterday, it was a calendar that set me off.  I could talk about making plans. I started collecting calendars upstairs and down.  There was one with photos of my grandson, another with photos from our camping trips, and another, from my penpal in France, with photos from Europe.  I threw in the November calendars from the aquatic center and the church newsletter.

Then I looked at my day planner.  This is what a page looks like at the beginning of the week.  I mark down everything I intend to accomplish during the week.  That includes writing projects, choir, meetings with friends, swimming, exercise, walking a dog and just the usual things like meditating, practicing, journaling and so on. Then when I finish something, I cross it off the list.  If I am lucky, a page will look like this at the end of the week:

But it almost never does.  Most of the time, I don't finish much of what I wanted to do.

That gave me the theme for the sermon:  planning.  When  I got to church, I got my choir planner out plus the bulletin for the church service.  I circled everything I would do during the service:  direct the choir in the introit, the anthem and the benediction, play duets with the organist for hymns and the offertory, and of course, do the children's sermon.  I updated the list of anthems the choir would do for the next few weeks.

Now I had my stack of calendars and planners to show the children. I started the sermon and sure enough, surprise! the microphone didn't work. I have a loud voice I use in nursing homes so I plowed ahead.

I asked them if they ever had to plan anything. They told me their parents put things on the calendar.  I showed them all my planning tools. Some recognized the aquatic center calendar. I showed them the choir planner with all its changes. My choir almost never sings what we had figured on doing because surprise! someone didn't show up, we had to work with a new theme, or just had a better idea.

Then I asked them if they knew God's plan for them.  No one did.  And I said, "Surprise!  Me, neither. Whatever happens, it's always a complete surprise to me. But it's almost always something really neat."

Then I had the choir sing the chorus to "God Will Take Care of Me," and that was the sermon.

This week, yet another GOP candidate said that God told him to run for President. That makes three or four of them God has been talking to. God is either fibbing to all but one or maybe, surprise! God wants the worst bunch of fools to run so President Obama will be re-elected.

When it comes to politics, nothing much surprises me any more.