The New Chief

My grandmother didn't believe the US could or would put a man on the moon. We teased her and argued that yes it would happen, and after much effort and hype, the eagle landed in front of the watching world on a dark night July 1969. My grandmother had to eat crow. Sometimes we can strongly believe something and still be wrong.

The inauguration is today and America will crown its new president. I did not vote for him. Maybe if I hadn't felt that there was so much deception and lying and evading the truth, I would feel more comfortable with this man's character. Maybe if there were fewer ambiguities and gray areas and incongruencies I would have more confidence in him. Maybe if more people whose opinions I respect had seen some practices and abilities that would serve him well as president I would think more favorably of him.

Nevertheless he will take the mantle of our country's leadership, and though I am not a follower, millions of voting Americans are. Since some of our earthly fate lies in his hands, I will be praying for him to make wise decisions and will certainly wish him well. I hope that just like my grandmother before me, I will have to eat crow in a few years.

I have met the enemy

and it's me.

Being a southern woman means I love my home. And I do, in spite of the fact that an occasional visitor may surmise otherwise. It's just that housekeeping, however hard I have tried, befuddles me. When I had a houseful of children, lots of cooking and piles of laundry, I blamed my messy house on my many duties, yet I was aware that the homes of my peers did not appear nearly as unkempt as mine. What was their secret? As my babies grew up and moved out, my home did not get miraculously cleaner and more organized as I believed it would. And now with only one other person in the house, a husband who is away a good bit of the time, it is still an uphill battle. I have faced the fact. I am the messy one.

You can tell when a person is good at something. Olympians perform their astounding athletic routines with ease. A nurse on the IV team can whip a catheter into a vein in a flash. With talent, effort, repetition and commitment most people can develop some pretty good skills. I'm thinking maybe it is the talent piece that I am lacking. I try and struggle, really I do, and am sure I spend more time cleaning than than a skilled person would. That is how I know that I am no good at housekeeping. It does not come with ease. Far from it.

Maybe it isn't too late to blame the cats. If they would just quit leaving their fluffy fur all around the place, my house would be purrfect.

Can't do it all...

Do I write or do I work? Work is coming first since thankfully I still can, even though my mind has been riddled with commentary and the flight of words.

I wanted to remark on the good news this week when everything went right, and a US Airways jetliner was landed in a frigid Hudson River by a seasoned pilot and passengers were saved due to super duper rescue teams. Excellent skills and being prepared work!

And why don't I love music like I once did and should I buy another car or fix the one I have? And what we need the most and search for. And beautiful shades of winter drab and a playoff game in the snow.

I wanted to say something about the topsy turvy world we live in where wrong is promoted as right and truth is ridiculed...and the death of America, at least what it was conceived to be. And what will happen to the middle class and what has happened to my 403B? And how I must live in a happy place in my head in spite of it all.

And all the interesting characters at work that I am not free to talk about. But I will jot some notes in another file so if down the road I ever write something longer than a blog post...well who knows?

No wonder so many Yankees have moved South

It must be unbearable to be burdened with the bitter, biting, blustery cold, blizzards and banks of snow year after year. We are blessed not to have too much cold here in the Upstate of SC, but we do get a bit. Poor Maria. Up in Wisconsin where she lives, the high was a bleak one degree. Brrr... But the good thing was...I finally got to wear my brand new fleece lined brown boots.

Squelching Genius?

My friend Judi's most recent blog post about creativity had me thinking. We adults in charge of rearing and training children certainly do stifle creativity in our attempts to teach children to conform though much of it is probably necessary to maintain a consistent society. But I also often consider the genius we may have squelched as we use harsh medications to treat people with mental illnesses. Handel wrote Messiah in twenty-four days and claimed that heaven opened while he was writing the Hallelujah Chorus. Nowadays someone would have intervened and sent his manic self to the psych ward! We know that VanGogh had some sort of mental illness whether it was mania, depression and/or heavy metal poisoning, and in his unrelenting madness gave us some of the finest art of the past few centuries. Over the years I have helped to take care of a few patients who seem to have more than the normal share of brilliance, whether in their ability to communicate or in one of the arts. While I believe there are generally not enough resources to treat the mentally ill, I also believe that the drugs that stabilize their moods and thoughts also inhibit and even eliminate their creative brains. Sometimes I wonder what the world could be missing artistically by not letting their brains roam a little freer. If Lincoln has not been as depressed as he was, I doubt he could have reached into his soul and created the sensitive document we know as the Gettysburg Address.