Cooking back to reality

Search This Blog

Snow woman

February 10, 2011

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Protesting

I was walking my dog while talking on the phone with my older daughter two nights ago, and I asked her if she was protesting. She is a young woman in Austin, TX. and women were marching on the capitol to protest the legislature's determination to end legal abortions in Texas. "I did go down there," she said, "and I'll bike back down there again tonight, but I'm feeling cynical." She told me that they were trying to recapture the spirit of the night of the filibuster, but that had been spontaneous. But that wasn't the only problem. "It's kind of like a pep rally, isn't it?" I said. She agreed. She did go into the legislature building and face off with anti-abortion activists. She said it was the only time it felt useful. Otherwise, the speakers are preaching to the choir. I remember feeling the same way the first time I marched on Washington, back in 1980, an anti-nuclear rally. We were a huge crowd of people who agreed with ...

Requiem for the landline

We finally dropped the landline. It’s not like we use it. We roll our eyes when it rings. It’s always pollsters or people asking for money. The phone isn’t conveniently located in the house. I’m always dodging junk trying to answer it. And people can use it to case our house, like back in the bad old days before caller ID. Maybe I should be more touched than I am. The first time I had a phone in my room, I was 13. We moved to a house that had a jack in every bedroom. Somebody had left a phone in mine. This was in the days when phones came with your phone service. You didn’t own them, and you got charged for them. I guess Ma Bell lost track of this one. The summer we moved to Raleigh, we didn’t bother getting a phone. The only people I knew there lived on my block, and I could use the phones at work. I occasionally called my parents from the neighbor’s house, and made sure I paid them when the bill came in. After sharing houses in college, it was second nature for all of u...

Country Love Song

I'm going to submit my favorite short story to Glimmertrain. I know it's a really long shot. I need to build a list of published stories to put on an author bio. I should submit it to something less prestigious where I have a good shot at acceptance, but I can't let this one go. The story works for me because it's so real. I rarely write about me and this isn't autobiographical, but in a way, it is mine. I am often around country songwriters, both successful and attempting. I have been in many, many song circles. There are overriding themes: strong family, love, values and religion, all reinforced by the notion one has to live in the sticks and have roots going back generations to understand the meaning of family. Bullshit. My mother and her family immigrated in 1948. I was truly blessed to be born into a strong, close extended family. My mother has forty some-odd cousins, scattered throughout the world. My dad has about a hundred, all in the ...

Powered by Blogger

Snow woman

Comments

Post a Comment