Sunday Fun and Frolics

A 50 degree day in January!

After a wonderful church service (thank you Father Mack!) and some catching up with friends, I came home to find my goofball German Shepherd outside with John fixing bare patches in the lawn.  She actually allowed me to snap some pictures of her today.  We ended up going on a nice, long 3 miles walk together as a family, then home to homemade dog treats for Shadow.  She mugged for the camera in a rare mood of picture-taking, so at last, here are photos of my best gal and friend. We decided that Shadow's theme song is "Take a Chance on Me" by ABBA; we took a chance on this sad sack at the dog pound, and never regretted a moment.  Enjoy a few photos and Happy Sunday!

Attracting Hummingbirds to the Backyard Garden

I've loved hummingbirds ever since I spied my first hummingbird. I was in the 5th grade and sitting at the dinner table when one alighted on the geraniums blooming from the window box. Thanks to my place at the dinner table, I was the only one who could see the little hummingbird, and for years I seemed to be the only one who spotted them in our rather urban environment. They always visited the hot pink geraniums my father planted in the window boxes on the eastern side of the house. Now as an adult, I live in the south where hummingbirds are frequent visitors to Seven Oaks.

Below, please enjoy my latest article on hummingbirds - and I hope you love the pictures. They are stock photos from Morguefile :)

Click the link to read the article:

Attracting Hummingbirds to the Backyard Garden

Three Great Reasons to Attract Wild Birds to the Backyard Garden

I love bird watching. Yesterday afternoon, the Great Horned Owl that patrols the woods behind our orchard began hooting, and I could hear him moving about the forest as his cries intensified. We had slate gray juncos on the feeder, and a big downy woodpecker on the pine beyond the rhododendrons. But birds are more than just beautiful; they provide organic insect control and many other great functions in the natural world.

Read my latest article, below -

Three Great Reasons to Attract Wild Birds to the Backyard Garden

And my book -

Attracting Birds to the Garden

Seeking New Recipes

We met this week with a business associate, and during the chitchat to catch up on our personal lives since we last saw her, the conversation turned to food and home. I'm not sure how this came up, but I remember her saying, "I'm sick of cooking the same thing over and over again - got any new recipes?"

Do you ever feel that way?  I'm now the chief cook in the house after many years of my husband being the chef. When we lived in New York and I worked 10, sometimes 12 hours a day and was finishing graduate school, he held down the fort at home and prepared meals both for us and his elderly parents with whom we shared the house.  After we moved, I gratefully returned to the kitchen.

In truth I enjoy cooking, food preparation and baking. But after a while....don't you just get sick of it?

I tend to trot out the same recipes over and over again, the staples that I know the two other adults in the household will enjoy.  One has health issues and can only eat certain things; they are fussy about the pasta shapes on the plate (the shapes! all pasta is the same - curly or straight, bow tie or spaghetti!); this one has a sweet tooth, that one has no appetite, this one would eat the roof if it was edible.

So I sit with a pile of cookbooks and a stack of post it notes, and begin The Hunt.  I flip through the books and stick a pink note next to anything that I think will be remotely palatable to the crew here.  I have a pretty good memory for what's in the pantry and in the freezer, and if there's one or two ingredients missing from the stock, I jot it down to pick up at the store.

I also hit the blogs.  There are two cooking blogs which I can recommend to you with enthusiasm:

• Restless Chipotle - this is my friend Marye Audet's blog. She's a working mom of 8 - yes, count 'em, 8 kids - and writes frequently for major websites about food, cooking, and antiques.  Her Rollo cookies recipe was a huge hit at Christmas time and her recipes go over well here.  

• Mennonite Girls Can Cook - have you ever met a Mennonite woman who couldn't cook? Honestly, they're like the ultimate homemakers.  And this blog features a group loving sharing family recipes, crowd pleasing recipes and more.  No, they aren't low calorie and sometimes not very healthy, but they are often a hit here.

• Cooking Light - I used to love the magazine but lately all the recipes are kind of frou frou and fancy.  But online, they still have some great ones like the Sweet and Sour Cabbage recipe my family loves.  Worth a look.

At some point I will dig out my vegetarian, vegan and raw food recipe blog and website favorites to share with you.  Those are the ones I often turn to for sparks of inspiration. 

Below are some of the cookbooks I'll be perusing this weekend. Which ones are your favorites? Share links to favorite recipe blogs and sites in the Comments section, please.

Create a Backyard Bird Sanctuary: Attracting Wild Birds to the Garden

I lingered for a few minutes today with my mug of hot tea, watching the birds on the feeder in the garden. I've always loved wild birds. Some of my earliest memories are of me in my stroller as a small child while my mother walked through Floral Park, and she would point out different birds and teach me their names. The bright cardinal, the raucous blue jay...my mother loved wildlife, and I'm grateful that she taught me that wild things have names, too. Later on during my teens, my dad erected a pole feeder in our tiny urban backyard. He'd sit in his bedroom window with binoculars and marvel over the birds. He kept an old marble-covered notebook on the windowsill and he's write down the names of the birds who visited the feeder. Many years later, he learned that he could tame the local chickadees to eat from his hands, and he'd call me downstairs to sit in the bedroom while he'd go outside and stand like a scarecrow with arms outstretched and sunflower seeds on the palms of his hands, and the chickadees would flutter down and perch nervously for a moment before flying off.

I've got mostly slate gray juncos feeding today in this wild weather, but they are still beautiful.

Learn more about creating a backyard bird sanctuary from my latest article, which includes lists of plants to add that birds love.

Click the link below to read the article - and enjoy!

Create a Backyard Bird Sanctuary: Attracting Wild Birds to the Garden

And Now a Word from Our Patron

Feeling under the weather, grappling with all sorts of personal issues this week, and up against the usual monthly deadline for a major website I edit for, which necessitates the usual flurry of editing, last minute questions and problems from the writers, and the typical onslaught of submissions.  I want to play with model horse crafts, order seeds for the garden, and spend a week sitting in my plant room doing nothing but watch the African violets grow, but I've got a list of articles and a book proposal due this week, and my hands are actually aching from typing.  My dear husband keeps slipping novels under the office door to remind me to nurture my creative writing projects; don't give up your dreams, these little gifts tell me, to work exclusively on nonfiction.  In between sips of coffee and another aspirin to chase away the migraine that comes and goes these days, I stumble across a quote from one of my favorite saints, St. Francis de Sales, whose little icon is perched in the margin of this blog. He's the patron saint of writers and I count him among my personal group of spiritual teachers. He may have been dead for 400 years, but his spirit lives on in his writing, and his words, quotes by "The Anchoress" on Patheos yesterday in honor of his feast day, are perfect for me today.

So I leave you with these thoughts from my dear "Saint Frank" and writers lovingly nickname him -

"Do not look forward in fear
to the changes of life;
rather look to them with full hope
as they arise.
God, whose very own you are,
will lead you safely through all things;
and when you cannot stand it,
God will carry you in His arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
the same everlasting Father who cared for you today
will take care of you then and every day.
He will either shield you from suffering,
Or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace
And put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations."

Which reminds me of the words of St. Theresa of Avilla -

"Let nothing upset you
Let nothing frighten you
Everything is changing
God alone is changeless
Patience attains the goal.
He who has God lacks nothing;
God alone fills every need."

I'm off to edit.  Catch you later!

Life

I'm violating a cardinal rule of social networking, and my own business rule: don't post anything controversial to your social networks.  But sometimes, you do have to break the rules. This is one of those times.

Today my friends are descending upon Washington D.C. to exercise their right to protest. They are protesting Roe v. Wade. 

Normally I quietly say my prayers of support for them and go about my business.  But since last week when the horrific Gosnell story broke out of Philadelphia, I literally cannot sleep at night.  Many of you probably have not heard of this story. I wondered why the major television networks wasn't covering it.  Then I read somewhere that the story was so horrific that the TV stations decided to voluntarily embargo the information.  Given the graphic nature of the accused man's crimes, I can well understand their decision.

I have been reading blog stories, articles and news reports about Dr. Gosnell, the late term abortion doctor who wasn't even an OB GYN, who has been accused of many things, including letting high school students administer anesthesia, letting his wife - who has no medical degree - perform abortions, selling illegal prescription drugs, and murdering living infants who took their first breath in his filthy clinic. You can read the Grand Jury Report here.  Be warned:  it is graphic.

Whether you are pro choice or pro life, this is the most disturbing story ever.

I am infuriated by people throwing proverbial stones at the women who died at the clinic....so-called Christians saying "they deserved to die".  Remember that even Jesus refused to cast a stone at a woman caught in adultery; we are charged with compassion, and if God can forgive our many sins, he can forgive all sins if asked. 

My mind grapples with stories I have read online written by militant pro choice women - yes, women - defending this man's actions, as if the alleged deplorable lack of sanitation, violation of all common medical ethics, and deaths of adult women are unimportant, because the "freedom of choice" is the most important issue at stake.

Mary, Mother of God...pray for us all.  May this rose of life remind everyone that life is our business; cherishing and protecting life, guarding children and the elderly, loving those in our care.

I Blog Therefore I Am

My winter hobby....model horses. These are 1" tall.

You'd think that writing for 8 or 9 hours a day I would get sick of writing. Nope.  Writing is my passion, joy, avocation, vocation and gift.  I don't stop with client work completed in the 9 to 5.  Nope. I bog.  I blog and blog and blog.....I blog, therefore, I am.



Here's a round up of my blogs.  I invite you to follow them.  It's fun. It's entertaining. At least I hope so.








My Healthy Transformation - this blog began as my dieting blog, but then I got a paid gig as a dieting blogger, so I changed gears. Now it's mostly commentary on health articles I find online and my thoughts about stuff in the news.  Vitamins, exercise, diet, alternative and conventional medicine, artificial sweeteners....lots of links to good source content, too.

Model Horse Fun - I collect model horses. These are Breyer horses, probably the same toy horses you had as a kid or some kid you knew from school had in her room.  What began as an obsession with plastic toy horses morphed into an adult obsession, a business (my husband and I own a company that sells Artist Resin model horses, EquinArt Creations), a writing gig on About.com and....a continuing love for model horses, miniature equines and crafs related to them.  Learn more on my blog. 

Marketing Tips from Seven Oaks - I held marketing management positions at major publishers, an Ivy League University, and major non profits in my career.  I blog marketing tips here.  Good for you business-types.


Hope you find another blog you like...or maybe a use for those Breyer horses your kid no longer plays with!

New Life for Cheap Furniture-Easy Ways to Fix Up Old Furniture

Today I posted a new article -

New Life for Cheap Furniture-Easy Ways to Fix Up Old Furniture

Did I share with you our project this summer? We have a dining room set inherited from my husband's grandparents. It's falling apart, but I like it a lot, and we don't really want to buy new. So my husband hit on the idea of recovering the seats and backs with new fabric and refinishing the chairs. The fabric part went well. We found this great red damask with big chrysanthemums on it in Lynchburg at an upholstery fabric shop. It wasn't even that expensive. We took the seats and backs off the chairs, removed the badly stained and faded gold silk that was on them, and used the old fabric as patterns. A staple gun took care of the rest!

That finished, we set out to strip the varnish off the old chairs. That's when the trouble began. I don't know what in the world they used on these chairs but it was impossible to get it off. Plus we did not notice a whole bunch of carving on the legs and backs. Ugh. Talk about sanding! We both got sick from the paint stripping chemicals and sanding was such a pain in the neck that we gave up after one chair. We thought for a few days we'd have to buy new chairs, but how do you match 60 year old furniture to new chairs?

Then we were in Lowe's and John spied the paint aisle. He disappeared and appeared a few minutes later with a can of glossy black acrylic paint. At first I was not sold on the idea, so he said he would finish one chair and then if I liked it we would do the rest. We'd already ruined that chair with our botched refinishing job, so what the heck?

Well the chair came out great! I loved it. I am not a big fan of the English-Chinese Chippendale style, but the old Italian style set from Grandma and Grandpa suddenly looked....elegant. Like it belonged in a British drawing room somewhere. The chrysanthemum patterned fabric helped a lot by adding a bit of a Chinese flair, as did the combination of black glossy paint, which looked like lacquer, a popular furniture style.

Now before we set to work we did have an expert come and look at the set, and he agreed with our research; it wasn't worth anything at all. If it was a true antique or a rare antique, we would have left it alone. If it was even well made, we would have had the man who came to look at it do the refinishing work. But it's not. It's poorly made, inexpensive furniture my husband's grandparents bought around 1950 when they bought their home.

But I love it.

And now it has new life, thanks to my hubby's frugal chic mindset and creative problem solving.

Read more ideas by clicking the link above.

Tough Plants for Tough Spots: Echinacea

Echinacea in my garden that I grew from seed.

Today my article for Mainline Gardening sings the praises of Echinacea. I have four varieties in the garden and hope to add more Echinacea purpurea as well as one or two new types this year.  I love Echinacea. It attracts butterflies spring and summer and birds to eat the seeds fall and winter.  It's tough, drought tolerant, and grows almost anywhere I plant it.  It's a great plant and very rewarding to grow.

Read my article here - Mainline Gardening.

Upcoming Cooking for Crowds Class at Cooperative Extension

Dana at the Cumberland County, Virginia, Cooperative Extension Office sent me an update on their forthcoming programs.  Sharing with you the following information on a class called "Cooking for Crowds". 





From Dana -

"I wanted to let everyone know about an extension workshop coming up in February called “Cooking for Crowds” for quantity cooking.  The workshop will be held on February 5, 2011 from 9:00 am to 12 noon OR February 16, 2011 from 6-9 pm at the Cumberland Extension Office.  There will be a $10.00 fee per person or organization.  Participants will receive a manual, certificates of completion, posters, thermometers, and chlorine test strips.  The instructor will be Jane Henderson, FCS Agent with the Amelia Extension Office.  Please register at least 5 days before the scheduled class by calling Linda Eanes at 804-492-4390 or by email at leanes@vt.edu."

So there you have it folks.  If you cook for church potlucks,  big gatherings like barbecues and family reunions and the like, you may want to take this class. Keep everyone safe and get your certification for 'cooking for crowds'. 

Raised Bed Gardening Maintenance

Entrance to the raised bed vegetable garden.

Raised bed gardening maintenance took precedence this past weekend.  We had one glorious day of 50-degree warmth, and we took advantage of it to do some much needed raised bed gardening maintenance.  While my flower garden is planted directly into the hillside next to the driveway, the vegetable garden consists of 12 raised beds.  Ten of the beds are 4 feet x 10 feet, and two beds are 10 x 8 feet.  Each is filled with 100% compost we had trucked in; it's the by product of the local paper mills.  We fenced the whole garden area off and put an underground water line from the house spigot down to the garden area for emergency irrigation.

So what kind of chores do you do with raised bed gardening maintenance?  You refill the beds.  I'm not sure whether it's the composition of the soil itself - nearly 100% organic compost - or just the action of hungry plants breaking it down for food, but each bed was down to about half of its soil level since we build the raised bed garden in 2008.  We moved about a dozen wheelbarrows of compost from the pile where the truck driver left it on the lawn before we were too tired to move anymore. It's a surprisingly long distance, and although downhill from the compost pile - you still have to walk up hill to return to the pile and start again!

The next maintenance chore was to repair the wooden sides of the bed.  Several of the longer pieces of wood split where we had nailed or drilled screws in to hold the pieces together.  Several of the boards split, and require a few nails to hold them together.

We got about halfway done before the cold weather and rains returned.  I'm glad we could get a jump on spring, even if it was just for a few hours on a rare warm winter day!

Another Remember When Thanks to James Bond

It's funny how totally unconnected things can spiral a 'remember when' moment out of control.  We were watching the old chestnut, the 1962 James Bond adventure "Dr. No" on television last night.  It's still one of my favorites despite some of the campy-silly moments and as one reviewer on the Rotten Tomatoes website said "that damned mango tree song." 

There's one scene in the movie that had us going into a lengthy "remember when" moment.  I don't know if you have seen the film or not.  James Bond, played by the ever-sexy Sean Connery, is lying in his hotel bed in Jamaica trying to sleep.  The bad guys, in a classic Batman-style move (ie, why kill the enemy outright when you can use some sort of outrageous gimmick?) place a tarantula in his room and it is crawling up his arm.  He managed to squash the tarantula and live to fight the evil Dr. No.

Here's where the remember when moment kicked in. As we were watching the scene, I realized Bond was sweating. He was tossing and turning in a perspiration-soaked bed.  The room was HOT.

There was no air conditioning.

Now, can you imagine a hotel room, especially in a tropical climate like Jamaica, without air conditioning? Can you imagine your own home without air conditioning in the summer heat? Yet as children, no one we knew had air conditioning!

Late in May, usually around Memorial Day weekend, my mother would go up into the attic and remove three fans. There was a giant box fan that went on my sister Ann's dresser and blew air between the bunk beds where I slept with my one sister and my oldest sister's single bed. Mind you, the air never actually made it to any of us - it just sort of blew the hot air out through the window and kept us awake with its noisy clatter.

There were two ancient swivel fans for my brothers. Each of my brothers had these circa 1940 fans.  Only one of my brothers had a night table. The other brother put his fan on a chair next to his bed.

Our rooms were stiffing hot.  Our bedroom, the girls' room, was next to the walk-in attic, and the heat would build up in the attic during the day and ooze into the bedroom by night. My poor brothers had a bedroom with a huge south-facing window and a slanted roof. The sun beat down all day on the roof and in through their windows until their room was like an oven.

My parents bought an air conditioner for their bedroom in the 1970's. It was a big deal!  If we wanted to get cool, we had to drag our blankets and pillows downstairs and sleep on the floor of their room. Nope, not even a sleeping bag or an air mattress - we slept on the wooden floor!

Another option was the basement.  That was our playroom and where me and my sisters played during the hot summer days. It was always around 65 degrees down there, although clammy.  We could sleep on the couch or on blankets piled on the floor.

We had no air conditioning at school, either.   It would get so hot in June that you'd sit on the heavily varnished old fashioned desk seats and when you got up, your thighs would stick and peel away like band aids.  Sometimes a kind teacher would bring in a fan.  Most of the time, you just sweated.

The only places that had air conditioning were the public library and church.  My mother thought the AC in church was fantastic - my grandmother used to bring a sweater!


My husband and I compared notes and our childhoods were very similar.  As we watched that scene, we realized we were looking through a window back in time. That movie was made in 1962 and we bought grew up in the years soon after that.  Now can you even imagine a hotel room without AC?  A school?  Your house?

One film moment made us remember our childhoods.  So thank you, 007, for the absolutely weird connection we made between that movie scene and a 'remember when' moment!

Get 20% Off of My Gardening Books

My publisher, Lulu.com, is offering 20% off any of my books now through Monday, January 17, 2011.

I'm the author of three gardening books, two of which are on Lulu - these links will take you to my website where you can read a bit more about the books, and then click a link to buy them from the publisher's site and use your coupon.

• Get Your Hands Dirty: A Beginner's Guide to Gardening

• Seasons of Joy: Essays from the Garden

My third gardening book, Attracting Birds to the Garden, is available on Blurb Press.

I'm also the author of a book on social networking which is available on Lulu.  And yes, your coupon is good on that one, too!

To get your 20% off:  use coupon code TREASURE305 during checkout.

Best news of all: I think it's good on both paperbacks and E books, so if money is tight, you can order the E books for just a few bucks AND get your 20%.

All of my gardening books are around $12 for paperback and $7.99 for a downloadable Ebook in PDF format.  

Enjoy!

Banana Peels, Coffee Grinds and Eggshells: Organic Gardening Tips

Wow! Your response to my post about banana peels and roses really inspired me. I wrote a longer piece today on the use of common kitchen scraps for organic gardening fertilizers. From eggshells (also good to repel slugs and snails) to coffee grounds, frugal gardeners know they can use common kitchen scraps in the compost and for great results for specific plants.

Read on - click the link below - happy gardening (or thinking about gardening for the snow bound!)

Banana Peels, Coffee Grinds and Eggshells: Organic Gardening Tips

Organic Rose Care-Banana Peels

I picked up a great little book over Christmas called Tips from the Old Gardeners. I'll blog more about in the weeks to come since so many of the tips appeal to me - frugal uses for your kitchen scraps, wisdom for using the weather to guide planting, and all sorts of folklore. Some of it is really funny, like the tip to take off your pants and sit your naked butt on the ground in the spring to tell whether or not it is time to plant. No thanks. I'd probably get arrested and would certainly frighten anyone catching a glimpse of me. Yet many of the tips, including the one I explore below in my latest article for MainLine Gardening, are actually backed up by modern-day gardeners.

Here's the first tip: using banana peels as an organic fertilizer for roses. I am going to try this for sure since my family goes through more bananas than a cage of monkeys at the zoo!

Click below for the post -

Landscape, Landscaping and Gardening Advice For the Main Line

Spring Garden Dreaming-Gaillardia Flowers

I'm on deadline for multiple major projects right now which leaves very little leisure time.  Evenings are spent cleaning the house, folding laundry, or helping my spouse with his household projects. Last night I retreated with a stack of gardening catalogs and gave myself permission to dream for a while. As the last of the sleet rattled the windows, I sipped hot chamomile tea and paged every so slowly through the catalogs.  White Flower Farm, Burpee seed catalog, Spring Hill, Jung garden seeds, Dutch Garden summer bulbs....

I'd promised myself that this year, I will focus only on flower varieties that are inexpensive and tough as nails. Last year I lost a lot of the seeds I planted due to the drought.  My garden hose doesn't reach all the way into the flower garden and I'm constantly running a watering can up and down the garden, back and forth, to keep tender plants alive.  My experiment last year was with Cherry Brandy Echinacea, and four plants survived thanks to my daily watering can expeditions; but I really don't want to repeat that next year!

So with that thought in mind I began thinking about what varieties thrive in that sunny, hot space next to the driveway.  Gaillardia was the natural winner.

When I searched for seeds, I came to Swallowtail Garden Seeds.  Of course!  They attract butterflies, and Swallowtail Garden Seeds is the best source I know of for flower seeds for butterfly gardens.

My Gaillardia plants are so tough that they reseed throughout the hottest part of the summer...in the gravel of the driveway. Under the gravel are ballast stones (bigger rocks) over hard packed, dead clay soil.  Yet the gaillardia seeds itself and develops into mature plants there and even flowers.  We try to transplant them from the driveway to other parts of the garden.

The Gaillardia plants I have now are Gaillardia "Goblin", purchased as part of the sunny perennial kits from Spring Hill Gardens which form the backbone of my flower beds.   Looking over the Swallowtail site, there are many other pretty varieties I can add to fill in the gaps in the flower garden.  I'm intrigued by the deep burgundy and red-orange flowers and am already planning to purchase some seeds.

Deer resistant, heat and drought tolerant, flowers throughout the season and reseeds freely, attracts bees and butterflies....that's my kind of plant.   This is one I am going to add to my garden!

What is your favorite "no kill, tough as nails" flower?

Times Change

Have you ever watched something on television that you watched as a child, and suddenly saw it with new insight? That's how I felt last week watching something I hadn't seen in many, many years.

Last week, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) played a tribute to legendary producer Hal Roach. If the name is unfamiliar to you, I'm guessing his shows will generate some recognition. How about names of the characters? Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Worm, Petey the dog...okay, now are you getting it?  He's the genius behind the "Our Gang" series of short films that once played in movie houses throughout the United States during the Great Depression. As a child growing up in the 1970's, the black and white Our Gang or Little Rascals films were thought fine for young minds and played on television during the prime after school time slot, sometime after 2:30.  Later on, someone - I think it was Bill Cosby - bought the rights to them and took them off of television, deeming them racist and offensive.  Now they are back on video and TCM.

Watching them as an adult, I couldn't believe how silly and crazy they were.  Kids whack adults over the head with pipe wrenches. Children threaten to sock each other in the nose as they squabble over their crushes on Miss Crabtree. Boxes of mothballs (poisonous) tumble into pots of soup.  Kids glue babies by their diapers onto the floor to hold them down.

And you know what?  Watching it, you recognize it for what it is....slapstick nonsense.  We know babies shouldn't be glued to the floor, tempting as that thought may be to anyone with a crawling, creeping, getting-into-trouble infant.  We know you don't hit others with pipe wrenches or pour mothball balls into soup.  We laugh because the silly, crazy antics are fueled entirely by fantasy, and we recognize it for what it is: heirs to Punch and Judy, nonsense with an edge that will all come out right in the end.

I remember a debate raging sometime in the 1980's about cartoon violence.  There was some talk of cartoon violence creating aggressive behavior in children because youngsters cannot distinguish reality from fantasy at a certain age.

For centuries, parents read or told stories to children, including Grimm's Fairy Tales where witches get pushed into the oven and mean stepmothers dance to death in red hot shoes.  Our parents, great grandparents and great-great grandparents perhaps watched those Our Gang shows at the movie theater on a Saturday morning and didn't turn into pipe-wrench wielding maniacs pouring mothballs in soup after gluing their kid brothers to the floor.  What's different today?

Is it the constant bombardment of the sense in today's noisy, image-filled world?  It is the access to more and more dangerous things around the house? We used to warn kids not to play with matches and bleach, but now there's Draino and electricity.  So is there more to worry about?  Or something else going on?  Did we have epidemics of kids getting hurt by watching or reading those stories in the past and now we know better?  Or are we just more cautious now?

I don't know the answer to this, but I thought about it a lot.  It made a change from wondering how I can be so absent-minded I forget to mail my letters but I can still recite dialogue from episodes of Our Gang shows almost 40 years later.  What's with that, anyway? 

Rampant Narcisism

I just finished reading the book The Narcisism Epidemic by Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell. Never have I read a book which more succinctly summed up the frustrations I feel about modern life. I didn't have a name for what I saw, but now I do. A brillliant woman I once knew who was a spiritual director and counselor once said that naming is the first step to empowerment. Naming what I see today as narcisim is the first step to empowerment. The authors truly sum up the entire narcissistic generation, who view their moment of fame, their moment in the spotlight as the penultimate grace of their lives instead of the shallow and fetid monstrosity that it is.

I loathe celebrities.  I find their vapid, silly meanderings the worst sort of entertainment.  What have ANY of these so-called "celebrities" done except exhibit bad behavior? Paris Hilton? Lindsay Lohan? Snookie? (what the heck kind of name is that anyway?)

I refuse to watch narcissistic twits act rudely towards the world.

This seriously curtails my entertainment options. The only so-called "reality" shows I watch are those in which people actually DO something - Top Chef  (cooking), Ghost Hunters (paranormal exploration), Project Runway (fashion design).  And even those shows are subject to shameless manipulation.We see personalities pitted against each other instead of cooknig skills, for instance, on Top Chef, and in seasons past, the entire "Brian is a screwup" theme  on Ghost Hunters wore thin and smacked of producer manipulation and machination. Sure, Brian got into trouble, but what about Steve making Tango wear a child's tiara on an investigation?  Wasn't that juvenile too? No, Brian on Ghost Hunters got pinned as the bad guy. Every story needs its villain.

Celebrity watching has reached a vapid epidemic high in our culture. No matter which news outlet you turn to these days, all the latest celebs are featured.  What used to be a harmless fantasy world has become the all-consuming passion of our culture.

The book brings forth some uncomfortable truths.  Youngsters today are raised on the phony "everyone is special!' criteria which to the uneducated mind makes it sound as if everyone is important. Everyone is unique, to be sure, but there are still value judgments applied to people's contributions to society. Kids fed the phony message that they are all worthy of praise  grow up to be narcissistic junkies, as the book points out, believing they are ENTITLED to everything.  (watch me run around with my hands in the air, screaming). Each person is unique, to be sure; but that they have special contributions to society remains to be seen.

This book raised enormous questions for me, many without answer.

• When will we as a nation grow up? When will realize that there is no such thing as a 'free lunch?"
• When will we stop supporting 'entitlements?" What are you 'entitled to' besides air as part of your birthright, anyway? For the entire span of human history, mankind has has to work for his food, clothing and shelter.  When will people stop thinking they are 'entitled' to many things?
• When will people realize that our elders had wisdom to teach us? Thriftiness, family values, humbleness, piety...these were values that stood us in good stead for CENTURIES.  Why throw them all out now?

What makes today different from yesterday?

Nothing, in my book.

I refuse to give one second of my time to celebrities. Thriftiness, piety, family...these are virtues I support.

What do you think? Narcissism? Materialism?  What do you think is wrong today?

Small Is Powerful

It's almost 8pm at the end of a long, long day. Everything that could have gone wrong today, did. I'm actually at my computer because I was planning to put two more hours into a client project that is due Friday. It was either work late tonight or begin work tomorrow at 6 a.m. Then, just as I settled down to work, my husband popped into the office.

"I need to download something off the Internet."

"I can't access that site from the office computer," I reply.

"But I really need it." He explains why. He can't finish his work for the evening without this material.

I schlep downstairs. I have to wedge myself in the equipment closet and perch on the end of an uncomfortable kitchen chair so that the computer's cords reach all the various plugs and ports. I connect the laptop into the router. The Internet browser crashes. I can't get it to restart. The website will only work on that browser. My dearly loved husband is hovering over me and I am ready to punch him in the nose if he doesn't stop hanging over my shoulder peppering me with questions.

I struggle, I wrestle. I am impatient on a good day. I have a bad temper. I'm a hands on learner, and when faced with any kind of technology problem I just have to 'feel' my way through the problem. The clock is ticking. I have two client projects to review before I turn in tonight, two  other projects due Friday.

Finally, after wrestling with the computer and doing technological cartwheels, I get the [expletive deleted] website to load. I am able to save the material he needs to a disk. I am able to bring it upstairs, convert the file, turn more technological cartwheels, and print his materials....an hour later. I'm practically in tears.

He says with genuine gratitude, "Thank you."

It's over an hour later. My files are waiting.

I sit down to work. I turn on Facebook for a few minutes of hanging out with my friends so that I can decompress and destress before turning back to the files I must review. A post catches my eye, an article link from the St. Michael Society. Here's the link. Read it and come back:


Small Is Powerful - Marriage & Family - The Word Among Us

I had tears in my eyes after I finished this article. Yes, the little things. That is what is important. All those tiny daily moments that we can either use to increase our holiness or step aside and continue mired in our own personal weak spots. My own is impatience. I'm a Type A+++. And when I'm under stress, I snap, snarl and forget to act human.  Tonight I did a little bit to rein in my temper. I did something small that ended up being powerful. It took all my self control to do it.  I knew how important it was to my spouse to get the materials he needed.

I want to remember this article for a long time.....it's the little things in marriage and family that lead to holiness or hell, and the moments in between that connect or break relationships.

It's like droplets of water.  By themselves, they are just tiny things. Added together, they can become a nourishing downpour, a rushing cascade, or the river that carves the Grand Canyon.