Fran's Ramblings

Home repairs

The things we're learning about being home owners! Okay, those of you who've owned homes will smile knowledgeably at me, those of you who rent will just chortle. But we're learning!

We've owned this house for seven years, and there's a lot about it we like -- which is why we bought it -- but there are some things we didn't know about it that we've found out since. Isn't that always the way, though?

Okay, some background first:

Part of the reason we bought this house was the addition. All the other houses in the area are much smaller, but at over 1700 feet, this was a reasonable size for our price range. And the Master bedroom is really a good size. Then too, it has a second bathroom, always a good thing, especially if Ryan was to come live with us (he wasn't at the time but he is here now, so yes, planning ahead was wise).

Also, the garage had already been converted to a woodshop, which Lillian needed. Another plus is that it's not far from a bus stop with a run that takes me directly to work, but that's not a part of this.

Now, what we didn't know is that the previous owner -- let's call him George -- did a lot of the renovation himself. Well, y'know, yay for being intrepid and we admire that kind of thing in theory. The practice, however, has been. . .intriguing. If you read that as "annoying", you could be closer to the mark.

So now seven years have gone past, and as all homeowners know, some things that need to be done can slip down on the To-Do list until they become an issue. Not you anal-retentive types, but us mere mortals. But the time has come, prompted by an incipient visit from friends (Hi, Lil and Tess!) to actually, y'know, DO some of it. And the first thing that had to be attacked was the front bathroom. Namely the ceiling exhaust fan.

Okay, a little more structural background. Originally there was a skylight in the front bathroom, just as there is in the Master bathroom now. Except the contractor (or George) decided to just put the roof over the skylight when they put on the addition. So now there's this vault in the ceiling leading up to a plastic/glass/whatever dome covered by the roof letting in nothing but dark. I know, attractive, huh? But it wasn't offensive and I suspect it was a cost-saving thing; rather than block it off or take it out, they decided to live with it. I actually get that.

But there's an unforeseen side effect which means a little more background. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, we wage an ongoing battle. With fungus. Moss, mildew, they'll take over given a chance. Never before have I had to be concerned about moss infiltrating our roof, needing to be scraped off on a regular basis. Being a desert rat, this is a new thing to me.

And the types and kinds of mildew that flourish here are also new to me. There's a pinkish one that loves our bathtub, but what's disturbing is the rapidity with which mildew and mold grows in a steamy bathroom. It's an ongoing battle fought with bleach and brushes and Killz paint. And sunlight. We don't get much sunlight here but what little we do get helps fight the mildew back, and the skylight helps. Except when it doesn't. Except when it provides a lovely dark growing place. Like, say, a skylight that's been roofed over, thank you, George. You see the problem, right? Getting a ladder into the bathroom to get all the way up to the top of the useless skylight is such fun. Not.

Oh, but it's even better than that. See, when Lillian took out the old exhaust fan, she had to climb up into our attic space to disconnect it and examine the vent to see if it needed to be replaced as well as the fan itself.

Imagine her delight to discover two "innovative" things about this fan.

1: The vent that George used to draw the moist air out of the bathroom was nothing but an accordion dryer hose, and that was kinked so the moisture really wasn't going anywhere but back into the bathroom; and

2: that it wouldn't have vented outside anyway since the dryer hose was laid across the top of the ceiling. Allowing what little moist air that did escape the kink to accumulate between the ceiling and the roof. Which is nicely insulated and is therefore a perfect place for mildew to flourish. Not a cost-cutting measure of which we approve, George. Imagine our joy.

Go ahead, we'll wait while you picture it. Yeah. That happy.

So the upshot is that, instead of just replacing a crappy exhaust fan, she -- and you know it's all Lillian, right? I'm so useless at this it's amazing -- has had to buy a new accordion sleeve, one that isn't cloth and prone to encouraging growth, get an actual vent for the outside, and she is going to have to cut a hole in the roof and hook the vent to it so the moisture will actually depart our house.

Have I mentioned that it's Fall in the Pacific Northwest? And can you guess what that means? You got it! Gold star for you! Rain.

And lots of it. It causes the moss to flourish, the mildew to flex its muscle, and the leaves to become mush. (Leaf mush! I love saying "leaf mush"!) For some weird reason, we're both loathe to have her cut a hole in the roof while it's raining. I know, no sense of adventure, but there ya go.

So we're having to wait for dry days to get this done. But what she's doing is moving the vent into the center of the ceiling, where the defunct skylight was, and she's sealing off the useless nuisance while installing the vent. So when all is said and done, it's going to be a lovely new ceiling in the bathroom with a functional fan.

Until then, however, all three of us are using the one bathroom, although Ryan can still wind his way around construction stuff to go potty in the middle of the night. But oh, the things we're saying about George and his lack of foresight are worthy of my theatre days, when cursing was an art form.

But that's part of the joy of home ownership. Right? Right?

Artist vs. Art

This has been burbling around in my head for a couple of weeks. Any feedback is gratefully appreciated.

How much does the personality of an artist influence your appreciation of his/her art?

I'll start with a specific and then go more generic, but the widespread generic question is the one that's vexing me.

Specific example. Tom Cruise has purchased the right to produce one of Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" books, One Shot. If you haven't read Lee Child's books, first of all why the hell not, and secondly, go get Killing Floor, which is the first in the series, or maybe The Enemy, which is a prequel, but go get them and read them, and then come back here and we'll talk. Seriously. Go do it. This post will be here when you get back.

And there has been outrage, vitriolic deep-seated ear-bleeding outrage about Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher. I get that. The constant refrain of "He's too short!" actually covers a whole multitude of reasons why Tom Cruise is wrong to play Jack Reacher, although Alexandra Sokoloff makes an argument about why it's a good thing, and I understand getting an icon to play an icon, but my objection to Cruise is not so much his height (if Hollywood can make John Rhys Davies into a dwarf, I'm not worried about relative physical size) but that Tom Cruise TOO big, not in a physical sense but in a perception sense.

Let me ask you this: the last time you saw a movie with Tom Cruise in it and you were talking about the plot, did you say "And then *X-character* ran around the building and climbed into his car and then. . ." or did you say, "And then Tom Cruise ran around the building and climbed into his car and then. . ."? Tom Cruise transcends his characters now. He's no longer an actor, he's a celebrity. In my mind, the person playing Jack Reacher needs to BE Jack Reacher, not someone playing Jack Reacher. That should be his life-defining role; from that point on, everyone should associate him with Reacher, not with anything else. As Daniel Radcliffe will always be Harry Potter, so should this actor always be Jack Reacher.

Tom Cruise can't do that. He is and will always be Tom Cruise. Like him or not, he's larger than life now. He would detract from the movie rather than add to it.

But here's the other problem and it leads into my original question. I don't much like what I know of Tom Cruise as a person. People in Hollywood seem to be under his spell, which I don't get, but for those of us in the hinterlands, he's polarizing on a lot of levels. I lost respect for him when he put down Brooke Shields' post-partum depression. And I wonder what he's like at home. Katie Holmes used to have a sparkle, a glow around her. Now her eyes seem kind of flat and dead. So I wonder.

Does an artist's personal life and views and behavior influence your perception of his work? It does with me. I know it shouldn't, but it does.

Another brief specific example and then I'll move on. I tried to watch The Patriot a few months ago. I'd never seen it, and I've heard good things. But it was hard on the heels of Mel Gibson's drunken rant, and I turned off the TV and I haven't gone back. I even have trouble watching older movies that I know I love, and it's because Gibson's become disturbing to me. Not fair to his work, which I'm sure is excellent, but because of who he is and what he's done, I can't bring myself to support it any more.

So then, in the book world, I'm faced with the same dilemma, and here I am deliberately not naming names because this is my livelihood and I don't want my personal squeamishness to affect anybody else's perceptions. I figure Tom and Mel can handle it, but I don't want to take a chance on seriously offending authors.

There are a few authors whose work I have previously really enjoyed. I mean, I snapped up their work as soon as it came out. Okay, with one of them I kind of lost interest in the stories because they were all the same, so when I discovered that the author herself was a jerk, I had no problems leaving her books behind.

But with other authors, it's a bigger problem. There's an author whose work I have enjoyed and, upon meeting her, discovered that we just didn't get along. That's cool, there's no way I can or should like everyone who crosses my path. In her case, I'm perfectly capable of putting aside my antipathy for her and enjoying her books. I wish it could always be like that.

It doesn't work that way, though, does it?

There are authors whose work I have never read and will never read because they as people were so annoying to me. If I've never read their work, however, I figure I'm not losing anything because I'm not invested in them to begin with.

But there are two authors whose work I have truly, deeply admired, and the more I learn about them, the less impressed I am with them as people. They've said and done things publicly that I find disturbing and somewhat offensive. I think the biggest problem with these authors is that I have liked them in the past on a personal level, and now that I'm seeing more who they really are, I don't trust my judgment, not only on them but on many other issues as well (if I can be so mistaken in my impression of them, who else and what else has clouded my judgment?), and now I certainly don't trust them.

It makes it difficult for me to want to read their books, even though I've enjoyed them in the past.

I suspect I'll eventually read their work because that's what caught me at first. But somehow, with this constant Facebook/Twitter/Google+ 24/7 info barrage, I'm learning things that I was happier not knowing. Is too much information a bad thing? I don't know.

I do know that I'm saddened by the attitudes of these two authors, and for now, that's as much as I can focus on.

Hammock camping

Sadly, I forgot the camera, but there may be photos later on anyway.

There were definite pros and cons to the trip but I think it was wildly successful, if somewhat exhausting.

Cons first.

We were in a campground with a lots of other folks and approximately a bazillion kids. I don't mind kids, we had one along with us. Lillian and Ryan and I had one campsite, and her brother, Curtis, his wife, Laura, their baby, Lilah, and Laura's sister, Karen, had the other campsite, right next to ours but separated by trees, as were all of the sites. (Which was a "pro", but there ya go.)

However, the other kids were Way Loud, even after the 10:00 Quiet Time curfew. There was much singing and frivolity, and I'm not opposed to either, but not at 11:00 at night.

Nor was I a huge fan of the loud conversation and frivolity from the campsite across the road from us, although they did have two lovely dogs, so that was nice. Still, loud and drunken conversation isn't my favorite thing late at night either, unless it's covered up by some seriously good SCA-type drumming, which this wasn't.

I was told that the shower on the men's side of our restroom complex only spat out lukewarm water and not even for the whole allotted 3 minutes that a token bought you, which had to be sucky. However, I am told that the women's side worked well. I didn't want to take a chance, so I was first in the shower when we got home.

There were firepits, but you're not allowed to lug in your own, ostensibly to avoid transporting pests, which is probably quite true, but which also gives the park license to be complete rip-offs about firewood. $5 for three short logs and some kindling is absurd.

There weren't enough off-road trails for Ryan to bike on, so that was a bit disappointing for him.

However, the Pros far outweighed the Cons!

Not only did Lillian and I enjoy sleeping in our hammocks (although I twisted my sleeping pad the second night and it took some investigating to figure out what went wrong and put things right), but Ryan enjoyed his, and our spare hammock ended up at the Other Campsite (Curtis, et al) where Karen napped in it and Curtis slept in it at night. Huge success!

It was finally summer here for this weekend, and it was a bit warm with no drizzle of any kind, blue skies and cool nights were the order of the day. It drizzled when we left, but that's cool. If anything, I wanted a slight breeze at night because it was so warm, but that's a great problem to have for us. I know that's not true in the rest of the country.

We got to wander around Silverdale and meet up with a lady whom I know as a customer from the shop. She's a local deputy sheriff, and she makes a kick-ass banana nut bread, in addition to being a fabulous and fun person to talk to. Hi, Kathy! She also clued us in where to buy firewood that was acceptable to the park and was substantially more cost effective. It's great when you've got an "in" where you're playing.

There was a beach, but everyone and their kid and dog was down there, so I mostly stayed in camp and read the ARC of the upcoming new John Connolly novel, and if you don't think that was a serious "Pro" to me, you obviously haven't been paying attention! I want to go hang out by the water sometime, but not when it's me and every other person on the peninsula.

There's a little general store nearby and while their product mark-up is as steep as you think it'll be, the people there are super nice, and there's a cafe where we had breakfast on our way out of town, and the food was reasonably priced and quite nummy.

Speaking of food, we were tickled. Curtis brought a gas stove for their side to cook on and we brought our little hibachi with hardwood charcoal. But it turned out that there was something wrong with the propane stove, so we all ended up cooking on our little hibachi, and it was more than up to the task! The only things we didn't cook on it were the s'mores, the popcorn and the biscuit/apple pies.

It's been a long time since we've been camping, and Lillian and I discovered that we really missed it. The joy of hammock camping up here in the Pacific Northwest is that there are always trees, so we have lots of options ahead of us. It was lovely to get out of town and hang out in a place where cell phone reception is spotty at best, where I could sit still enough to have a tiny bird come out and sit in the sun with me, where the squirrels chased each other around our campsite, and where the only reason we couldn't see a field of stars was because the trees were so tall and thick that they blocked out the stars.

We'll be going back, both to this campsite -- and maybe even a day trip out to have lunch at the little diner again, it's not that far away -- and to others in the area. Although we will try to find a place farther away from the playground next time!

More PAC thoughts

I'm not really, truly back to blogging.  At least not on a daily basis.  Well, I don't think I am.  We'll see.

But I may have a name for the new PAC, and I wanted to run it by you. 

The Uterine Defense League!

It makes me grin, although that may be me being about 12.  The idea of a "league" makes me think of superheroes, although we wouldn't be wearing spandex. 

Or maybe the Uterine Defense Coalition, which does sound more professional, doesn't it? 

Still, I see us all gathered around Tea Party rallies, wearing t-shirts with bright pink uteri (I was told that's the plural -- thanks, Carl!) and the letters UDL (UDC?) and shouting, "Uterus! Uterus!" at them.  Or outside any government gathering where they're voting on reproductive rights.  Or women's rights, come to that. 

And if we could have someone make big ol' pink foam uteri to wave in the air, that'd be spectacular!

I'm being a little flip, kind of glib and humorous here, but more and more I'm serious about the PAC and I'm definitely serious about women's rights.  It still pisses the hell out of me that the Equal Rights Amendment never passed Congress.  Women tell me that it's not necessary, that there are other legal protections for us out there, but the fact is, we're being systematically threatened. 

Women still get paid less than men, are promoted less, and if you've followed the discrimination case brought against WalMart by women and about women, you'll see that how the Supreme Court votes on it will determine how powerful women are allowed to be.  I am not hopeful.

There are changes in the air.  We in the GLBT crowd are accumulating more rights and we're overturning entrenched oppression.  And now all manner of legislation is coming down that wants to restrict women in one form or another.  I see a pattern, but in my defense, I have been known to create patterns to soothe my sense of order.

Nonetheless, what I see as a unifying theme is a fading power group making one last stand at legislating their superiority.  For a while I thought it was old white men, and to a certain extent it is, since repressive legislation is out there for people with somewhat more pigmentation in their skin as well, but that's not it entirely.  I'm now seeing kind of a feudal mentality taking over, using repression and fear to control the masses, keeping a servant class to tend to the rich and powerful. 

And who is, by restrictive religious dogma, supposed to serve the master?  Women. 

So they control our bodies because they can't control our minds.  Not any more.  Oh sure, they try, but there's too much access to information out there.  Although, I've got to admit the trope about going back to the "good old days" is seductive, as long as you don't look too closely at what those alleged "good old days" were actually like.

But I addressed that already.

So my stand against the tide of regression and repression is a theoretical PAC, approached with humor -- for now -- but with an underlying purpose of standing up against those who would demean not just me but the lovely young ladies who are growing up now, like Raine and Lilah.  It's my fight, yes, but it's not just for me. 

Okay then, enough with the soap box, which you've probably skipped because you've either already come to the same conclusion and I'm preaching to the choir or you've dismissed me as a nutcase conspiracy theorist.  I'm cool with both.

But the name of the PAC?  That still needs some input.  So which do YOU prefer: Uterine Defense League or Uterine Defense Coalition?  Or is there another, catchier one out there?

My new political plan

It's no secret I'm pro-choice (and you do know that one of your choices is not to abort, but at least you HAVE the choice to make), and that I'm pretty pro-active about, well, pretty much most liberal type ways of thinking.  I'm decidedly pro-woman, on lots of levels.

So I've been watching this whole abortion business with growing astonishment and amazement and more than a little trepidation and nausea.  This new crop of politicians who were nominally elected to minimize government and create jobs seem to be wholeheartedly determined to take women's rights back to the Middle Ages.  Or at least the 1950s.  Neither one is good for womankind, I'm tellin' ya.

I mean, have you heard about the proposed legislation in Indiana?  They're trying to pass a law that would require -- REQUIRE -- a doctor to read from a script that is filled with medical untruths, to tell their patients that having an abortion leads to getting breast cancer, when that has been disproved.

And a Florida representative was censured for using the word "uterus" on the House floor.  So apparently it's okay to regulate what goes on in a woman's reproductive system, but it's uncool to use its name in public.  Thank all the gods he didn't use the "V" word!  Can you imagine the palpitations if he'd actually said "vagina"?  The mind boggles.

But not long after Rep. Scott Randolph was censured, the ACLU bought a domain name -- Incorporate My Uterus (www.incorporatemyuterus.com) since that was what Randolph had said, that if a woman incorporated her uterus, the folks looking to regulate it would back right off, since they had no problems leaving corporations alone, they just wanted to mess with individuals.

So I got to thinking.  Dangerous stuff, I know, but listen anyway.

You know how I wanted to form a church so I'd be tax exempt and could rake in big money with no oversight, except, well, I'm not cynical enough to do it?  This is like that, but this might actually work.

I want to form a Political Action Committee, a PAC that lobbies on behalf of womens' uteruses. Uterii? Reproductive systems.

It would be international (since it has been ruled that PACs with overseas ties are more than welcome to lobby in D.C.) and it would be for women with and without reproductive systems (since I no longer have mine, but dammit, it's my PAC and I want to play!), and its purpose would be to lobby for better working conditions for the uterus.

Comprehensive medical care, truth from physicians, the right to choose when to work and when to be on vacation, these are the things that would be covered in my PAC. 

And here's the cool thing.  Because it would represent all uteruses/uterii, the lobbying power would be ginormous, and the financial pressure brought to bear would be unreal.  I mean think about it.  If every woman who currently has, or has had a uterus donated $5 to the cause, just five bucks, the total revenue would be in the billions.

I, as chairwoman, would of course require a small stipend, just a few hundred thousand dollars (plus clothing and travel allowances, since I'd have to travel all over to lobby, and I'd have to present an imposing and businesslike appearance while I did so -- no more comfy jeans and sloppy sweaters, but we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good, right?), and my accompanying staff would have to be paid, but hey, look, JOBS!  So we're fulfilling two goals, uterine protection and job creation!  Woo hoo!

Of course it would be staffed by all my good friends -- cronyism is a time-honored tradition, after all!  And these are people I know and can trust!  I can trust you, right?

And who could stand before the power of the Uterus?  No one!  We could make serious policy, and finally women would have the respect they deserve.  Okay, it would be our uteruses -- seriously, is it "uteruses" or "uterii"?  If I'm gonna do this, I have to at least sound like I know what I'm talking about! -- but still, the wave of estrogen that would sweep the country, hell, eventually sweep the world would be a complete game changer in politics!

Okay then, my lovely and loyal friends, whaddya think?  Would it work?  Would you want to be a part of it? 

And what are we going to call our new PAC, now that "Incorporate My Uterus" is no longer available?

 

And so. . .

I've talked in the past about taking a hiatus, and then I always think of a ton of things to say.  Perhaps this won't be any different, but folks, I'm tapped out.  Nothing in the head, no new ideas, nada.

However some of the stories that I've put on hold have been tugging at me, and I think perhaps it's time for me to pay attention to them instead.  There's a sticky point on the vampire one, and I'm thinking if I take one section out, it'll free up the blockage and let the story get back on track. 

Anyway, this isn't good-bye forever, just until I really have something I need or want to say.  You'll know when I do because I'll post it on FaceBook. 

Now, back to that sticky spot. . .

Guest blog -- Cassie's asking for your help

Re-post (with alterations for clarity) from my vaping blog, Vapor Muse. I apologize for the extended absence. I have been considering my role here. But today I have something important to say.

(ed. note: if you follow the link to Cassie's blog, you can see a video of her talking about helping out)

It is easy, when tragedy strikes far away, to simply say, "poor them" and go about your day.

It is easy to not feel for others, when they are not standing right in front of you.

So please allow me to put this in front of you.

Please look at these images from Japan, and tell me you feel nothing.

This is the state of Japan. Look. (No gore or anything - just absolute destruction.)

Tell me these pictures don't reek of death and suffering.

There is precious little any of us can do. The earth will do what it wants, and whatever man-made structures we have that try to get in its way, like nuclear power plants, are laughable in the face of what a tectonic plate is capable of.

Staring at these images, it is easy for me to feel utterly powerless, and overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the suffering that is happening on this small but ingenious island nation, which I have never even been to.

It is easy to forget I am one of many. And while I may be powerless on my own, one very small dot on this rattling blue globe, there are billions of others.

I am small, and I am not a millionaire, and I am sitting here on a Wednesday morning ready to pull my hair out at the futility of it all.

The only thing I do have, is a little bit of spare change, and a megaphone.

My megaphone is not very big - I am still very much anonymous in the grand scheme of things - but I do have one. In the alternate reality of the internet, I have my little tiny megaphone clutched to my chest like a mouse with a grain of cheese, and today I have a reason to use my megaphone.

If you have spare change, if you have a megaphone, if you have an apple pie or a door nail or anything at all you can lend to help these people who have been struck by a cascading onslaught of disaster, please, please, please, find it in your heart to give it.

This is all I can do. I feel very small, and very useless. But if you will do something small and useless with me, together we can make it mean something. Even if we just save one person stranded on their roof. Feed one child. Save one old man who misses his wife from dying of a treatable wound before he gets to see her again.

So let's get together, and do something useless.

Please post the link with pictures above, and the links below, anywhere you can. I know some of you have a bigger megaphone than me; use it.

Donate through the Red Cross; $10 minimum.

Choose your fund through Global Giving.

Or, there is one more way to help out. I normally try not to talk about my work here, but I will make an acception. Thank you David, for letting me run with my bleeding heart idea.

For those of you who don't know, I work for a company that sells electronic cigarette liquid and supplies. It's called "vaping." Yeah, really. So if you're one of the few people on my friend's list who vapes, or if you smoke and want to try an alternative to smoking, this is for you.

FreedomSmokeUSA will be running a 20% of sale on all pre-mixed juices. And a further 10% of that money will go to the Red Cross relief efforts in Japan. We will post the total raised.

The code for 20% off juice is "helpjapan" which will go until Saturday at noon. Whatever you help us raise, we will match it, penny for penny. Our goal is to raise $500, and send $1,000.

Please help us make a difference. We are all very small on our own, but we can be greater than the sum of our parts.

Ok, I'll get down off my soap box now. Have a good day, and try to help each other.

Love, Cassie .

Every picture tells a story

I know, I know, again with the pictures, but this time there's only five, and they've each got some sort of story going on.  Part of me wishes I knew the real story, and part of me is deeply pleased by the various stories I've made up even though not all the stories are happy.  But I love using my imagination.

So first we have this one:

And the story in this one isn't immediately obvious because of the quality of the print.  Your eyes focus on the horse, naturally, since the rope draws your eyes up that way.  But look at the man anchoring the rope.  Yeah.  Cool, right?  A black man working side by side with a white man in a day when they were in no way considered equals.  Except, obviously, they were. Definitely a story there.

Picture 2:

 
Two men and their kids.  A nice family shot, perhaps, and we can speculate that one of the wives is behind the camera. 

So where's the other wife? 

Or maybe, just maybe, they weren't just friends?  Hey, a girl's gotta dream.

Then in picture 3:

 

Okay, you look at the picture and it's a couple in front of their house, and I'm sure that's true.  But the story is in the subtleties.  The ground is dusty and barren, but the house is nice, as is the car (anyone have any idea what kind of car that is?), and the couple is nicely dressed.

So why don't they look happy?  And notice, he's holding her.  She's not holding him.  There's tension there. 

On to picture 4:

 

The joy of this picture is the actual joy.  These girls are having fun.  Five girls crouched down in a meadow of flowers, laughing.  Why are they there?  Who's taking the picture?  It looks like a picnic of some sort, and this seems to be one of those moments when you say "I wish I could hold onto this fragile point in time forever", and someone tried.  There's true delight here!

Incidentally, I think the second girl on the left, the one with the flyaway hair, is my step-grandmother, but I could be wrong.

And then picture 5, which to me is the most evocative:

 
Oh, I want to know the story here!  I'm seeing all kinds of darkness and danger, sadness and hurt, anger and treachery.  I could be wrong, but man, there's something powerful here.

You've got an older man, a younger man and a young woman.  Father, son, daughter?  And is Mom taking the picture?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  The possibilities are enormous.

Look at the girl.  She's wearing pants in a time when women wore dresses all the time, even to work.  But she doesn't have an air of rebellion, does she?  Of flouting convention.  No.  She's looking at the ground, not meeting the camera's "eye".  She's holding herself tightly in.  Why?  Is she sad?  Scared?  I wish I knew.

And look at the younger man.  There's someone with confidence.  He's good looking, he knows it, he gets his way.  He's wearing what appear to be riding jodhpurs and boots, pretty fancy for a working guy.  They might not be formal riding clothes, of course.  In any case, there's pride and a certain arrogance there, which makes the contrast between him and the girl even more stark.

The older man is the one working, and he looks slightly annoyed at having his picture taken.  I wonder why that is? 

There's a story here, oh my yes.

As I say, I've been having a blast with these.  I really have enjoyed looking through them simply because I don't know who they are, but I knew someone who knew all these people, which is kind of intriguing.

In any case, in my opinion these pictures stand on their own, and I love the way they've captured my imagination.  Oh, the stories I'm imagining!

Wild, wild West

I was sorting through some boxes and found a bunch of photographs.  These are from my step-grandmother's family, and I have no idea who these people are.  Not a one. 

But. . .they're fascinating anyway.  These are, quite literally, snapshots of a point in time, one that we've heard about but rarely see.  They're faded and scratchy, but. . .look at these people.  Just amazing to me.

 
 

A successful hunt, but you know that a lot of this hunting was sustenance, not sport.
 

Don't you love the kids' clothes?
 

I believe my step-grandmother's maiden name was "Dunlap", which means these are her family.  Maybe a sod house from the MidWest?
 
 

Doesn't this look like something out of Hollywood?  But no, this was real life.
 

Heh, another type of hunting!
 
 

I love the hats!
 

I have more that I'll be posting over the next couple of days.  Oh, the stories behind these pictures!

A quandary

Not too long ago, the Supreme Court ruled that it was okay for Westboro Baptist Church to picket military funerals with their lunatic and insulting protests and signs.  And much has I have disagreed with the SCOTUS on their rulings lately, this one I get.

The people of Westboro are probably certifiable; even the wackiest of the Tea Partiers and right wing extremists think Westboro people are nuts.  That's how out there they are.  And their protests are insulting to our men and women who have served this country.

But the SCOTUS said they had the First Amendment right to be out there, being offensive and rude and insulting and provocative.  And they do. 

Whatever else you want to say about Westoboro Baptist Church and their insanity, they're open and up-front about what they believe.  They're in your face about it and they don't hide behind shill tactics and sneaky rhetoric.  With these guys, you know where you stand.

Which is basically with most of the rest of the world in thinking they're cuckoo.

I'm convinced the people who thought the SCOTUS ruled in error on this one are the same folks who scream that their First Amendment rights are being violated when other point out their fallacies, inconsistancies and outright lies.  They're the folks who believe deep in their hearts that the First Amendment protects THEIR speech, not anybody else's.  These folks are neighbors to the folks at Westboro, and they're a bit more frightening because they're substantially more numerous.

Okay, this is going to seem like a non sequitur, but hang with me.

I've developed a somewhat questionable and unsavory habit, one I'm very much aware of but haven't tried to really stop.  At least not yet.

I'll read a news story online and get the basic drift of it, maybe read the whole article, maybe not, but then I'll read the comments afterward.  I'm growing addicted to what people have to say about, well, anything.  From the latest updates on Japan (Bright Blessings on them, have you noticed that there's no panicking, no looting?  They're behaving like adults in this situation.  The US would not fare nearly as well, I'm afraid) to something as mundane as "Dear Abby", I read the comments.

Not all of them, certainly.  Frequently there are thousands.  I just skip through and see what the general tenor is, get a feel for what people are thinking.

And here's the dilemma.  Not my addiction, sad as it may be, but the fact that comments are so frequently anonymous.  This is where Free Speech meets responsibility.

It's been said, and I believe it, that on sites where your name is required, where you have to say up front who you are so that at least the moderator is able to make you own your words, that the conversations are much less commented on, and the discussions are much more intelligent. 

But the flip side of that is that people have to curb their true feelings because it can come back and bite them in the butt.  People have learned that what goes out on the Web stays out there forever.  So if someone says something unpleasant or controversial, it's possible for an employer, a spouse, a church memeber, someone in authority, to find it and use it against you. 

So if you're looking for work and you've got a job interview, and on some website you support white supremacists and it turns out your boss is African American, it is entirely possible that you can not be hired and you may never know why.  Or you can be fired, if your statements are too overtly awful and it reflects on your employer. 

That's why a lot of people insist that commenting anonymously protects their First Amendment rights to free speech without threatening their livelihoods.  And I do understand that. 

However. 

I really, seriously, honestly believe that the proliferation of anonymous commenting is a huge part of the reason that we are no longer a civil society.  People don't have to be civil online because there is no punishment for being threatening or provocative.  And I believe that's what's spilling over into the way we have begun to behave in person. 

It's not like you're looking at someone when you say they should be beaten up.  You're responding to pixels on a screen.  How dangerous is that?  So people don't see the actual results of what they're promoting.

Then too, if you wanted to write a hate letter, a threatening letter to someone in the past, you had to sit down, write it out, find an envelope, address it, scrounge up postage, and trudge to the mail box.  Now you can sit in your jammies eating Cheetos and say all manner of horrible things to people you've never met, taking offense at not much because it gives you something to do.

Or picking fights that you don't mean simply because you're bored.

So that's my quandary.  At what point does freedom of speech need to be tempered with responsibility?  At what point does the First Amendment get curtailed in the name of civility and justice?  It's such a delicate thing, a case-by-case situation, and yet it seems to me that somehow we have to take control of our dialogues again. 

I moderate the comments here, mostly for spam, but there are times when I want to head off a misunderstanding before it blows up out of proportion, as it might if things were left unmoderated.  Honestly, I think that's only happened twice in all the time I've been doing this -- six years now, can you believe it? -- and that's partly because I don't get the traffic of the big sites, but also because people know that their comments are named.  I'm willing to bet many of you have considered saying something in response to something I've said, but have backed off, perhaps out of respect for me but also out of the knowledge that others will form opinions about you because of it.  Am I right?

And that goes to civility and responsibility.  But it also curbs your right to say exactly what you want.  And I'm torn between thinking that's a good thing and a bad thing.  Hence the quandary.