Tag: rants

Mood: Monday, and Song Challenge: Day 18


Garbage Patch Artwork

Mixed media, sculpture on plastic, date unknown
©Simone Spicer, US

Today, March 18, is Global Recycling Day. The link gives a lot of information about the day and about recycling in general. This paragraph in particular stood out to me: Before throwing something in the trash or even in the recycling bin, first think of ways the item could be reused. Perhaps it would be a good idea to wash out a plastic carrier bag or a zipper closure bag and use it a few more times. Or maybe it would be possible to use those plastic containers from the grocery store in the kids’ lunch boxes. And also try using that piece of aluminum foil again. Anything that can be used just two times essentially cuts the waste of that product in half!

That made me feel a little bit better that all the things I reuse at Houndstooth Hall can actually be having an impact on reducing waste.

Today’s song challenge is “a song you know all the words to.” And while I sang one word of the lyrics wrong for many years, I finally allowed myself to be persuaded that Mary’s dress SWAYS instead of WAVES in Bruce Springsteen’s carpe diem song “Thunder Road.” (I still like the visual and implication of “waves” better than “sways,” and I still disagree that we can’t say fabric “waves,” since somewhere every day someone is listening to or singing our national anthem which asks the question, “…does that star spangled banner yet wave?” It does.)

Here’s an acoustic version of the song, because I have no idea which video on YouTube will eventually be pulled due to copyright. My blog has become littered with those over its twenty years–a different kind of waste.

They wanted to eat breakfast at school

On January 4, one sixth grader was killed, seven students and staff members were injured, and the 17-year-old shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at a high school in Perry, Iowa. The high school and middle schools in Perry share a building and are connected by a hallway adjacent to the cafeteria, where the shooting occurred. The cafeteria hosts a breakfast program for all middle and high school students before school.

The shooter’s weapons were a pump-action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun. Later, police found and disarmed a homemade bomb in his belongings found at the school.

ETA: It was just reported that the high school principal, Dan Marburger, who was shot in this event, died today, Sunday, January 14, as announced by his widow Elizabeth on a fundraising page created for her husband. The article I read also included this:

In a Facebook post on the night of the shooting, the principal’s daughter, Claire Marburger, called her father a “gentle giant” and said it wasn’t surprising that her father tried to protect his students.

“As I heard of a gunman, I instantly had a feeling my Dad would be a victim as he would put himself in harm’s way for the benefit of the kids and his staff,” his daughter wrote. “That’s just Dad.”

Marburger had been principal since 1995.

“That’s just Dad.” I haven’t stopped crying since reading this. I know my own father, who was both a high school teacher and an assistant principal after he retired from the Army, would have done what so many others on school administrations and staffs have done: sacrificed their own lives to try to save the lives of kids.

This is just not the way it should be, and I don’t understand how everyone in the country isn’t screaming for gun reform. Every country has criminals. Every country has psychologically and emotionally compromised individuals. But not every country has gun violence on this scale because they don’t have the number of guns in circulation, and certainly not the complete lack of regulation and oversight, that we have in the U.S.

Gun violence

In many cases on this blog, I’ve gone back through the years to post details of mass shootings in schools, places of worship, and other public locations in the U.S. I’ve tried to provide names of those involved (excluding the perpetrators), because I think it’s important that we recognize and remember those whose lives were cut short by gun violence in mass events.

It’s not only daunting to do the research, it takes an emotional toll on me. I greatly admire tireless gun reform advocates like Gabby Giffords, concerned citizens, parents, and former students who constantly push for awareness and real efforts to address this problem.

Here’s a look back at statistics from 2023 with only the barest of details and limited to schools and places of worship.

I got that information from a Wikipedia site that includes a much longer and more detailed chart you can review on that page, which details mass shootings at places along with schools and churches, including residences, public areas, and businesses. A total of 754 people were killed and 2,443 other people were injured in 604 shootings.

It’s overwhelming.

To pretend we don’t have an epidemic of gun violence in this country is the worst kind of hubris.

The way it ought to be

That’s a coloring book I picked up in September. I remember I mentioned a shopping trip that netted me some cool finds, and among those were several coloring books, though there’s a much more fun one I’ll share in the future.

Going into September, I knew that month, and October, and even a little of November, would deliver certain specific challenges. I’m a risk-averse person, so I like to assess what’s coming and its risks, then I practice risk management. This doesn’t mean I don’t take risks. I’ve taken plenty in my life. But there are thoughtless risks, and there are calculated risks. As I aged, there were far fewer thoughtless ones, and better-managed calculated risks. Maybe that’s called maturity, or maybe we just better disperse our energy on things with more appealing payoffs or things we have some degree of control over.

One thing we can never control, even if we fool ourselves otherwise, is the behavior of other people. When I manage risks, that’s always the X in any equation. However, if they are people with whom I have history, I factor in the range of their historical behaviors to include in my risk-taking/coping decisions.

Still, people can surprise me, and I mean that in both directions–good and bad. This is, to me, part of being human, and mostly the choices and behaviors of other people have almost nothing to do with me. They’re doing their own life math and risk assessment.

One of the things scheduled during these three months was Tim’s trip to Maine. Through the years, he’s chosen different seasons to visit his family and friends there, and as his parents have aged, one reason for him to go during fall is to help them prepare for winter. It’s good hard work, chopping, stacking, and storing wood and otherwise getting things in order around their home before winter, a season that’s no joke in Maine. I miss him when he’s gone, but I like these trips because he always returns with stories to tell, and he connects with friends who I’ve come to know and care about through him.

He left Tuesday. I’ve been working on sewing doll clothes for the past few weeks, and sometimes while I do that, I’ve been rewatching a TV series I enjoyed the first time I streamed it a dozen or so years ago (fun fact: people with anxiety tend to repeat experiences, whether re-reading a book, watching a favorite movie or TV show again, ordering the same thing off a menu, etc.). When people I love travel, I need distractions because travel equals risk, and it’s mostly risk beyond my control. And as people who know me well often do, Tim let me know he’d arrived safe and sound to his parents’ house. That meant when I shut down my laptop Tuesday night after finishing an episode, and put away all my sewing stuff, then went to bed, I fell asleep pretty easily.

Wednesday was a nice day with the dogs (including Tim’s and Debby’s, because she’s also traveling), sewing, light housekeeping and bill paying, doing my daily online things, and just taking it easy.

Then Jim texted me.

I’ll spare you the many texts that took place Wednesday night and all day and night today between Jim, Tim, Tom, and me. Tim and his family are okay, and by checking in on social media, I know that many of his friends who I interact with are okay, as well. While that gives me comfort, once again, the peace in cities and small towns has been shattered by gun violence.

I read recently that one in five people in the U.S. have had their lives negatively impacted in some way by guns. I paused to think about that, and within a few seconds, I was able to list these incidents: A woman who was a second mother to me took her life by shooting herself with a handgun. A boyfriend was held up at gunpoint in a store where we both worked. A friend mugged on a city sidewalk was told the mugger had a gun pointed at him. An acquaintance had an artificial leg because a gun went off at a party among high school friends and her leg was so badly shot it had to be amputated. Someone very close to me, a hunter who was always responsible with guns, once left his gun in the grass next to the car before he and his friends drove away. They went right back when he realized his mistake, but the gun was gone, and he never was able to locate its finder or know where it might end up or how it might be used. Someone I love more than words can ever adequately express called me just after dawn one morning to tell me he had a gun pointed to his head and wanted to talk to me before he pulled the trigger so I could tell him what I thought. I was able to persuade him to put the gun away by reminding him of the pain the first incident on this list caused me. I told him as long as the gun was out of my sight, I’d be in my car and with him in minutes. He promised to put the gun away and wait for me. He kept his promise; I kept mine; I didn’t lose a friend that day or any other day of his life because of suicide. I have another friend who accidentally fired her gun inside her house one day; thankfully, nothing but some property was damaged.

That’s seven bad gun stories from my life, and it took me a lot longer to record them here than to remember them. I know people who are gun enthusiasts and/or who own guns for protection. I’ve known many hunters who had shotguns and rifles, many businesses where a manager kept a gun behind the counter, many people whose lives involve a lot of driving, including at night, who travel with a gun next to them. I know people who open carry and conceal carry. I’ve known people in the military, bodyguards, and police who carried guns as part of their work.

I get it. Guns are part of the culture. But I’ll never understand why people think laws managing gun ownership violate their rights. I’ll never understand homes where children and strangers can easily find and use guns and create tragedies that could have been avoided with even basic risk management. And I’ll never understand why greed drives legislators to support private, unlimited, unregulated ownership of weapons meant for WAR, for hunting and killing HUMANS. I’ll never understand why the most specious use of words written in a different time, for different reasons, regarding very different weapons, uses as justification for owning weapons of war these words:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The National Guard fulfills the necessary WELL REGULATED militia, as it is staffed by We THE PEOPLE who want to serve in that capacity. They are citizen responders in times of crisis, and their mission is to serve and protect the public. Prohibiting citizens who are not in the National Guard, or the military, or on special teams in law enforcement, from owning weapons of war is not infringing on their rights. They still can own guns for protection, hobbies, hunting. Asking for responsible, accountable gun ownership is no different from any other thing we do to protect ourselves and one another (e.g., driving and traffic laws and requirements, swimming pool “attractive nuisance” requirements, food and drug standards and laws, maintaining adequate crowd control in parks, at events, in theaters, stadiums, and other venues). Sometimes our laws and standards are ignored or disobeyed, and the consequences can be deadly. But we don’t just give up. We impose fines and sanctions and shut down those who refuse to comply and protect the public. And if the people who have been elected or appointed to protect us choose instead to make themselves rich by exposing us to deadly risks, we vote them out or fire them. Or we should, particularly for the vulnerable.

Some facts about a population so many seem to care about from KFF: The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news

Firearms account for 20% of all child and teen deaths in the U.S., compared to an average of less than 2% of child and teen deaths in similarly large and wealthy nations.

The U.S. also has the highest rate of each type of child and teen firearm death-—suicides, assaults, and unintentional or undetermined intent—among similarly large and wealthy countries.

In 2021 in the U.S., the overall child and teen firearm assault rate was 3.9 per 100,000 children and teens. In the U.S., the overall suicide rate among children and teens was 3.8 per 100,000; and 1.8 per 100,000 child and teen suicide deaths were by firearms. In comparable countries, on average, the overall suicide rate is 2.8 per 100,000 children and teens, and 0.2 per 100,000 children and teens suicide deaths were by firearms.

These statistics point to the reality that we are failing to protect a vulnerable population among us, not only because of school shootings, but by a lack of managing the firearms we own, by allowing teens or people with mental illness easy access to firearm purchases, by not reporting lost or stolen weapons, and by failing to educate ourselves and our children about firearms. Education is not an infringement of rights, and the impact on families and society of ignorance is staggeringly tragic.

Tonight, my thoughts are on the dead and injured of the mass shooting in Lewiston and their families, and the residents of Lewiston, Bowdoin, Lisbon, and Auburn, some of those the towns where Tim’s family and friends live. Businesses and schools are closed, and residents have been asked to stay home and inside with their doors locked while law enforcement continues their search for the suspect.

I read comments from Mainers today that said, “This doesn’t happen in Maine,” and “People are nice here!” More murders occurred last night than is usual for an entire year in Maine. In 2000, our friend Steve C and I visited James in Portland–he still lives there–and drove into rural areas outside Portland, too. It’s true that Maine is a beautiful place with wonderful people. I’m so sorry the state is in the spotlight for this most terrible of reasons that connect it to other states and communities who understand all too well the trauma Mainers are suffering.

I started a coloring page in the book pictured at the top of this post, and I quickly realized that I was “comfort coloring.” I picked a beautiful place that looks like Maine. I immediately colored the dog, his bed, bowl, and bone and mentally called him “Striker,” the name of Jim’s late golden retriever who was one of the best dogs ever (it’s not only Jim who thinks so!). I made the grass as green as spring. I colored the porch floor gray, like the one at my grandfather’s house, because of so many happy memories there. I’ve already “silvered” the steam rising from the coffee cups, and the sun is bright in the sky and will rise over a place where only good things happen and people are, indeed, nice.

I can’t control all risk or fix all the problems that plague us. Sometimes the best I can do is find peace within my space and encourage others to do the same.

the attack on reading

Now that I’m back, I’d wanted to post something yesterday about banned books. Last week was Banned Books Week. Though none of my published books have been banned to my knowledge, I’m sure at least some of them would go on a list of challenged books if any of the groups determined to police and suppress books were aware of them. That’s because all of them, whether written as Timothy James Beck or Cochrane/Lambert novels with my writing partners, or my own two contemporary romances, present a diverse set of characters, among them gay, lesbian, and transgendered folk, as well as characters of different races as part of the stories.

I follow an account on Instagram created by a musician who features banned and challenged children’s books. He might show some of their pages (if picture books), read brief excerpts, and describe what the books are about. Consistently, teachers respond to share how some of those books have been the ones their students most enjoyed because they learned new things or saw themselves or their situations represented. Other commenters ask why these interesting, funny, informative, or historically accurate stories are being challenged, and the answer is invariably the same: They feature characters who are different from what’s regarded as “mainstream,” whether because they are Black, Indigenous, reflect a non-white or first generation home or situation (for example, parents or grandparents are Asian or Hispanic), or whose lives are perceived as somehow “less than,” perhaps because of a one-parent home, or two of the parents are same sex (which means not only, for example, a gay couple, but even a dad and a stepdad, or mom and a step-mom). They may also feature stories set in periods of history or accurately including events that make people uncomfortable (e.g., school desegregation, World War II internment camps for Japanese Americans).

Groups of people who intend to limit what other people can read have placed themselves on school boards and in community groups, and are determined to get these books off the shelves of schools and public libraries. I agree with those who say, “You have every right to decide what YOUR CHILD can read, but absolutely NO RIGHT to decide that for the rest of us, whether as readers or parents and grandparents of readers. These groups’ methods are fear-mongering and perpetuating outright falsehoods on social media and in town hall meetings about children being forced to read age-inappropriate books. Of course, they don’t simply target children’s books, they also go after young adult books and books read by adults from college level and well beyond.

The books on my shelves and in my eBook shelves are full of titles I’ve read throughout my life deemed inappropriate and even dangerous. I’m grateful every day for the teachers who introduced me to books, librarians who found books for me, booksellers who recommended books, a kind minister who encouraged me to read by buying me children’s classics, and for my parents whose shelves were full of all kinds of books and who, rather than censoring my reading, turned my choices into opportunities for us to talk about books.

Historically… well…

Mood: Monday

Honeymoon,, 1969
Lithograph on BFK Rives Paper
John Lennon, UK

Today is the anniversary of John Lennon’s birth in 1940.

Last week sometime, I was looking at a photo of Lennon and Yoko Ono on Instagram, and clicked on the comments to see if they were as usual. Yes, they were, falling generally into these categories: his time with the Beatles, the Beatles breakup and who was to blame, discussion of his music pro and con, the tendency to put him on or knock him off a pedestal, and judgments of his private life and behavior to encompass both wives and both sons as well as his bandmates. This must always include about ninety percent negativity toward Yoko Ono.

Around sixty years later and the narrative hasn’t changed. Nor has mine: lives are complex, art is subjective, most of us never personally knew Lennon or any Beatle or any Beatle wives, girlfriends, and children, and even accounts of their lives from people who did/do know them are offered through each person’s perspective and the motive for which and spirit in which that perspective is offered.

So nothing new there, but what did strike me for perhaps the first time is how for the past few years we’ve watched a similar story unfold with many of the same features: high profile man from a prominent group/family has a relationship with high profile woman; she comes from a different place and looks different from him; she is vilified by many and defended by some; the two seek to carve out a new life somewhere else, giving up some things but still trying to be true to the beliefs and interests that guide and motivate them; all discussed by an even more amplified cacophony of voices thanks to social media and its immediacy. And I’ll say again: WE DON’T KNOW THESE PEOPLE PERSONALLY and our opinions about their “story” have very little to do with the reality of their lives and a lot more to do with our own biases, experiences, and wishes.

This frenzy of attention and amount of misinformation and disinformation and the force that drives it sometimes has tragic consequences and makes me wish that as a species and a culture, we would dial it back and focus our energy on better managing our own lives, families, and careers while they go on with theirs. You don’t like the image or product or point of view they’re serving? Don’t buy it. No reason for the dish you’re refusing to be replaced with heaping sides of hatred toward them or the people who are interested and supportive of them.

Hump Day

I’ve got two of the manuscripts fully revised and printed! Started reading the third this evening.


Pixie would like you to know that she’s serious about her approval of the arts. She has a dad, uncles and aunts, and friends who are creatives and work in the arts. If she were a writer or an actor (and we don’t know that she’s not an actor, really), I suspect she wouldn’t cross current picket lines. Not even for a carrot, because if I recall correctly, her dad doesn’t let her eat carrots. Maybe something to do with an incident many years ago.

I’m in the creative arts, and I’m writing about people who are in the creative and performing arts. And I struggle with what I’m currently writing because when I’m down, the jerk voice in my brain says, Some critics would say these stories center privileged white people who have liberal guilt. And there’s another voice inside to defend what I’m writing: You’re attempting to create a diverse world of decent people through the stories of their lives. I’m doing it because it’s what I love with zero expectation of what an audience for it would look like or think like or even if one exists.

Creatives are easily dismissed with the assertion that what they do isn’t “important.” I think of all the people I know who are creative, some who don’t even call themselves that, and the happiness and inspiration they give others, which is immeasurable. So I really appreciated this statement from Brooke Ishibashi dropped by fellow writer Jeffrey Ricker on his socials yesterday.

Even if someone is not involved in the commerce of creativity, imagine how much money people who, for example, sew/knit/crochet/needlepoint, craft, scrapbook, jewelry make, or build and carve things contribute to the economy with their purchasing power.

That’s my middle-of-the week perspective.

Button Sunday


July 2 is National I Forgot Day. Seriously!

True story–I didn’t forget what I wanted to say, but it’s taken me some time to figure out how to phrase it.

I’m open to anyone who wants to financially back my proposition to transform a nonexistent “wrong” done to me into a lawsuit and take it through the court system all the way to our highly dysfunctional, partially corrupt and perjurious, capricious and contradictory, Supreme Court of the United States. If you’re an attorney with an outraged reaction to injustice, hit me up for details.

If you’re not an attorney, forget this post. It’s your lucky day!

ETA: This should have been read in /sarcasm/ font.

changing my mind

I wrote a long post about the Neverending Saga and then I reminded myself no one cares and I deleted it. What might you care about? A dog? One of them ate part of my leather purse. I need a new purse now. There’s no way to know which dog, so I’m not blaming this one. This is just a recent photo of Jack in which he seemed to be deep in thought. It was taken before the Incident of the Purse.

Here’s the playlist for what I’ve listened to during writing sessions on Thurs/Fri/today.

Sinéad O’Connor: “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” and “Am I Not Your Girl?”; The Paris Sisters, “I Love How You Love Me Plus 30 More Hits”; Pancho’s Lament: Self-Titled, “Leaving Town Alive,” and “3 Sides To Every Story.”

And if you look at the below meme-ish things and wonder why I’m putting them here, I’m wondering who’s benefitting from all the hate being stirred up toward certain groups of people.
Continue reading “changing my mind”

The Scottish play and other things

…from Macbeth, spoken by Macbeth…

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

This… This is what I (and my class) memorized in English class my senior year, and I can still recite, with one caveat. I’d totally forgotten “To the last syllable of recorded time,” and have never missed it from my recitation. Ironic, since recording time is a vital part of a writer’s purpose.

They call it “the Scottish play” in the theater because saying “Macbeth” brings bad luck unless you’re rehearsing lines. There are stories a’plenty surrounding this superstition, and it’s definitely worth a fun Google. One of my favorite quotes from this passage includes the lines from which William Faulkner got the title for his novel The Sound and the Fury. I’ve disclosed before that I don’t read Faulkner novels. They give me headaches. But I love the synopses and the themes and everything I read about them, so as a college English major and English graduate student, I was saved so many times by Cliff’s Notes of Faulkner’s novels.

Here’s how I first learned about Cliff’s Notes. My sister was a senior in high school when she read Macbeth. Though, like me, she’s an avid reader, and we always read books beyond our “age group,” this was not a good experience for her. So she bought this.


Barnes & Noble “Book Notes,” friends, and that shows how long B&N has been important in some way in my life, because I was twelve going on thirteen when I picked this up and read it cover to cover, utterly mesmerized by the story.

Though I have TAUGHT Shakespeare, I’m going to admit freely that just as with Faulkner, I never hesitated to buy study notes for the plays. Guides aren’t meant to replace the text, but I’d rather see Shakespeare performed than read his plays. I perfectly understood my college freshmen who bought such guides. People spend their entire lives studying Shakespeare and writing literary criticism, and these were kids trying to navigate their first year of college, probably none of them English majors, who had four or more other classes loading them down, too. I just warned them to be careful not to count on the guides’ accuracy for writing papers, because they do contain errors.

Side bar: Teachers.

Though Debby doesn’t remember the class with any fondness, because as she told me, it also included The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf, (“Were they trying to kill you?” I asked), there is a bright spot among her memories.


Mrs. Lewis, 5th Period, once did her a great kindness which it’s not my place to share. But teachers can be far more understanding than you realize as a teenager. Teaching high school was supposed to be my vocation, but it didn’t work out that way. Ultimately I found different fields for my skills. Few regrets. I did get some teaching in, even in the corporate world, and no work I’ve ever done was as necessary to my happiness and mental health as being a writer.

I was curious about what notes I might have made in my textbook when I was taught Macbeth in high school by a gifted and brilliant teacher, Mrs. Bryan. I thought I’d kept both my junior and senior textbooks from the two classes I took with her.


This is how I found out I’m wrong. I have my eighth grade text book (a subject for a later post about teachers and school), the green one, and my eleventh grade textbook, the blue one. (I didn’t steal them. I asked the assistant principal at my junior high school for the 8th grade text, and the principal at my high school for the 11th grade text. Permission was given. School administrators can also extend great kindnesses.)

I was so distressed not to have that book from my senior English class that I immediately found one on eBay and ordered it. It won’t contain my class notes, but it will give me a view of the other material I read and the illustrations that I enjoyed.


I still have plenty of Shakespeare on the shelf, including the complete works (a gift from my college roommate Debbie). Inside it are some pressed flowers, though my memory of who they came from is gone. Also notice to the left all that Chaucer. I may as well speak of Beowulf (tiny and tucked in between Chaucer and Shakespeare), since Debby brought it up as being part of her senior class misery. I didn’t study Beowulf until my sophomore year in college, in a huge survey class I was required to take. It didn’t do anything for me one way or the other.

Years later, as a graduate student about to take my Masters comps, someone told me, “Brush up on your Beowulf. There’s always a Beowulf question you can use to write an essay.” I think it was spring semester, a year after my father’s death. I was trying so hard to study and prepare, but my bottled-up grief was getting in the way. I hadn’t written, other than for classes, for years, and I finally put everything else aside to compose a poem about my father. I worked for hours to write, edit, rewrite, polish, until I was satisfied with it. Then I reread Beowulf and it was so profoundly moving, so poignant, that I still remember lines from it. I never saw that coming! Sometimes you just need to be in a certain place emotionally, or mature enough, to appreciate a work of art that might not have affected you when you first encountered it.

Study guides like Cliff’s Notes can be a gateway to literature, though I doubt they can ever have the power of the work itself. But to immerse yourself in any story, to find agency and enlightenment and connection, is a gift well understood by those who would ban books. Those are three of the things they most fear as threats to their power: individual agency, enlightenment, and connection. They will go after schools and teachers, libraries and librarians, any institutions that defy them, and any groups they can target with all manner of lies to incite fear, even panic, to protect–not “the children”–but their love of power and lust for wealth.

Be mindful who you believe.