… anyone remember why we separated in 1776?

Thursday 27 October 2011 - Filed under Featured Articles

… oh, yeah, it was all of that business about not wanting to be burned as heretics or hanged in the town square for not joining the King’s church. Wonder why we minded, anyway.  It isn’t like the King’s government took our land, turned us out, put us in jail, or deported us by the boat-load.  Oh, right. Actually, they did all those things.

Now, 235 years later, looks like an American Theocracy is the Republican Right’s cure for what ails the country. I have to agree that executions are far cheaper than imprisonment.

Comments Off  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-10-27  ::  Kate

… say what? …

Saturday 10 September 2011 - Filed under News

Comments Off  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-09-10  ::  Kate

. . . stop me if you’ve heard this . . .

Monday 23 May 2011 - Filed under About Me + Older & Wiser

Calvin Who?  Trust me; I paid attention in middle school and in high school, as well. Memorized all the Presidents’ names and the order in which they served. Freely admit I heard or read nothing that set apart Calvin Cooledge aside from a notion wa-a-a-y in the back of my head that he was an extremely quiet person. In the press, he earned the sobriquet, ‘Silent Cal.’  Imagine my surprise to learn this came from no less a person than our 30th US President, Calvin Cooledge:

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Or, as Woody Allen said, more succinctly: (more…)

Comments Off  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-05-23  ::  Kate

I Like Lists

Sunday 24 April 2011 - Filed under Featured Articles

      That’s something I don’t like admitting … yes, I do like lists. Admitting it, though, makes me feel vulnerable, like telling people I save string, or collect thimbles — like I’m owning up that I’m a person with a small life, who needs to get out more.

     I do like lists, though. I like making them, often move items from high on the list to lower down – scratch (more…)

Comments Off  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-04-24  ::  Kate

THE HATING GAME by Talli Roland

Wednesday 30 March 2011 - Filed under Featured Articles

             Talli Roland is that rare writer who presents the reader with imperfect characters–good guys and bad guys, alike–then drives them into terrible situations (something like my life and, possibly, yours), adds malice, dishonesty and greed until we don’t know whom to boo or to applaud. Certainly, the action doesn’t let up until the back cover.

Warts and all, her characters weave their flaws into plots and sub-plots fraught with surprise. At times, I noticed I was holding my breath and glad I wasn’t out on that limb.

It is so easy to imagine THE HATING GAME as a film or made-for-TV movie; it would definitely be a “Girls night out” film, but guys would enjoy seeing women as they/we really can be.

Loved it and can’t wait for the next one. One day soon, we are all going to be able to say, “I knew Talli Roland when … “  She’s that good. 

Download at Amazon.com or order a print edition.

<a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/5201074-girl-fren”>View all my reviews

</a>src=”http://tinyurl.com/474p6lp” /></a><a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8246804-the-hating-game”>The Hating Game</a> by <a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4021730.Talli_Roland”>Talli Roland</a><br/>
My rating: <a href=”http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/157727129″>4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />

1 comment  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-03-30  ::  Kate

Show me yours and I’ll show you mine

Sunday 2 January 2011 - Filed under Featured Articles

 At some time during the past decade, the term “bucket list” sprang into our everyday vocabularies.  Certainly, neither of my parents nor my grandparents, any grand-uncle or, even, cousin had a bucket list.  Guess they were preoccupied with settling the territory for statehood, winning the 1st and 2nd World Wars — if winning (more…)

3 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2011-01-02  ::  Kate

Air that wants clearing….

Sunday 26 December 2010 - Filed under It's All About Me + Older & Wiser

This is something I need to do! It certainly isn’t funny, not meant to entertain. Some facts have changed in the eleven years since I wrote this. If I were Rupert Murdock, I’d print this in one of my zillions of newspapers simply to clear the air.  I’m not. This is MY blog and the post is angst-ridden and self-indulgent, but dammit, here it is. 

“Dear Mother:                                                                                     May 1999

              I can’t call you Mom any more, because the word implies an intimacy we didn’t have.  I wrote one of these to Daddy—it’s around here some place—and it brought me, to use a tired word of the day, closure.  (Cold word, that.)  It brought me to my senses.  (more…)

2 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-12-26  ::  Kate

Kitchen-table talk had it …

Sunday 12 September 2010 - Filed under Fiction

            Kitchen-table talk had it that when Uncle Junior was young and dashing, he was in love with the Maconochie girl—Sharlene. They were to marry.  She was quiet and pretty in a flowered dress sort of way, a little taller than he but her sweet way of smiling at him made them go together well. Junior was stylish—wore two-toned shoes in the summertime, pleated-front trousers and had a gold tooth to the left of center.  Then, the family lore goes on, one day he heard the voice of the Lord, or so they said.  He heard the Lord “calling” him.  He was to preach the Good News, set the captives free, live a life of holiness and service. 

             Junior said “No.”

            Without a word of explanation, several months later Sharlene married the red-haired guy who drove the Tulsa-to-Oklahoma City Greyhound bus line and moved away. Uncle Junior took a job at  Brache’s Candy Factory in the city, where his eldest sister worked in a Defense Plant and they lived in her basement apartment for the balance of World War II.

            He came home on the bus every-other weekend.  After supper those Friday nights, none of us kids went out to play.  We knew the grown-ups would talk and laugh, tell stories, and someone would have a letter with real news of the war; Junior would describe the picture shows he’d seen in the city, talk about work, then out would come the candy—bags and bags of candy—from the corner of his brown, Alligator-embossed cardboard suitcase in the front bedroom.  Like dogs slinking around a fish-fry, we fidgeted as Grandad read The Daily Oklahoman and grownups talked.  My youngest aunt and uncles, almost kids like me, might get up a game of “I Spy” or “Poison.”  Sometime later Uncle Junior would slip outside for a smoke then dodge into the bedroom on his way back in; the rustle of cellophane and soon we kids were lost in the bliss of chewey strawberry Kewpie doll-shaped candy, chocolate Scottie dogs and vanilla rabbits. Wise enough to distract us first, he would quietly slip the special candy brought just for his momma—chocolate covered peanut clusters.

            Now grown, those chocolate covered peanut clusters still carry a meaning for me firmly tied to those moments when we were all together, beneath my grandfather’s roof, in the morning of life.

Comments Off  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-09-12  ::  Kate

…now I’ve got you, my pretty.

Sunday 25 July 2010 - Filed under Featured Articles

I loathe dirt under my nails, despise bending for hours in the heat, and can no longer kneel [titanium knee hurts like Hell.] Nonetheless, I’m swept away by gardens. Lawns stretching to the treeline, banks of blooming Azalea, gently running water — Heaven on Earth.

I do garden a wee bit, though, on the patio. In pots. Twice this summer, I’ve emerged from my air-conditioned cocoon to find my pot-full of split-leaf Parsley reduced to a few hundred bare, green stems.  WTF?

  Stealth and luck solved the mystery this morning: Ah-Ha (see picture). One fat & happy cutworm wriggling around the pot’s rim, his friend heading for the exit.  A close-up through my Leica lens, however, had me firmly in a delimna: these are Childrens’ Storybook Worms, pretty and green, funny, loveable. We snuggled at bedtimes to read Eric Carle’s The Hungry Caterpillar, and, a few years later, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, illustrated with lovely, color drawings featuring these wiggley, giggley, adorable CUTWORMS!!

If an All Points Bulletin goes out to law enforcement of the dual-murder of both Hungry and Very Hungry by person or persons unknown, I’m hoping they won’t look for a cute grandmother with a flyswatter.

1 comment  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-25  ::  Kate

WAG #31: Laugh Til You Cry

Friday 23 July 2010 - Filed under WAG

             Once in a rare while, in my childhood, a bustling broke out: wiping, sorting, dusting; someone oiled a hinge; granddad tidied his workbench; Junior or Jimmie Dale mowed what lawns we had as well as the wide, grassy alley behind our fence, and coiled the long snake of green garden hose stretched to the spigot out back. Unmistakably, company was coming. It might be a great-aunt or –uncle—I’d speculate—from Missouri or Kansas, or by car all the way from California. They’d stay too short a time; tell kitchen-table stories I couldn’t grasp concerning people whose names I’d only heard. And laugh, how they did laugh. Early morning to well past the time that, under protest, we children were trundled off to our beds; I remember the laughter.

             I’d hear the murmurs rise and fall. The mixed cadence of voices around the kitchen table—our favored gathering place. A woman’s low alto would begin. A quiet baritone might interrupt; provide the year or the name. On it would go. Until I lost my way and slept.

              Soon, though, the leaving day came. Grownups hugging—that odd sight I never grasped—hugging and crying. Uncles, unnerved by tears, would quickly remind “the girls” of last night’s laugh-till-you-cry-and-begged-him-to-stop story and again laughter. Moist-eyed laughter. Long back-patting embraces. More tears.

               Today I understand. We must love until it hurts. We must laugh over shared stories until we cry, watch them on our inner movie-screens; be good brothers and sisters and, interrupting, correct the name or place or year or occasion. We must ache over the good-byes to have done our jobs well as human beings.

              I am old, now, the child I once was alive and well. At last, I understand my grandmother’s weeping for days afterward, washing dishes, laughing then crying, hands slipping deftly over each plate, rinsing beneath the scalding cascade that matched her, tear for tear. Granddad tightening the vise bolted to his workbench, blinks back tears and blows his nose. It’s the love, the laughter, the known sweet agony of hello and goodbye.

                We know we are eternal, or believe it’s so. Until we love enough to laugh until we cry, cling to one another and pat backs one-two-three—seven times—reluctant to turn loose, only then are we fit to leave life.

4 comments  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2010-07-23  ::  Kate