Back Home on the Water

I grew up around salt water.  Fishing, crabbing, throwing a cast net, and feeling the salty spray in the bow of a boat were all part of my upbringing.  My family has been without a boat that we could all enjoy for nearly twenty years.  During these decades, life has interfered with its mandates and diversions, some joyful and some onerous.  While visions, smells, and sensations of brackish rivers were distant, they could be encouraged in my memory during quiet times of solitude and longing.  But now there is a new boat in the family, and I will no longer be reliant on that quiet longing.

This weekend, I returned to a home deep within myself.  This home is a hidden place that is only revealed when I am in the element of salt water, afloat and aware of God’s creation around me.  I was reminded of a teenage girl who was comfortable with adventure, who was cautious but unafraid.  Yeah.  I’m that girl.  I’m that girl who came face-to-face with a small shark attacking the bait on the end of my crab line.  I shook him off of the white piece of string and roared at him to find his chicken somewhere else.  I’m that girl who knew how to find schools of bait fish and fan a cast net out over them like nobody’s business.  I knew how to clean a crab, what the dead man’s fingers were, and what was good to eat.  I had a fierce step dancing contest with a feisty live crab on the kitchen floor once, too.  He did not want to go in that pot!  But he did, and we ate him.  I also navigated deep waters offshore with lines trolling behind, dodging sharks that competed for our dinner.  That girl was me.  I had lost touch with that girl over the years, like a childhood friend who moved away and never wrote.

My son got so excited when we saw porpoises in the water on Saturday.  This is only the beginning, I thought.  There are so many more amazing things to see.  This is my home, and now it is his.  When I pointed to the marsh to describe something in the pluff mud, he asked, “Mommy, what’s pluff mud?”  How could any child of mine not know what pluff mud is?  I used to jump out of the boat and squish into this stuff so I could catch fiddler crabs with my bare hands.  At least he’s learning now.

I re-enter an experience long forgotten but so much a part of who I am.  Heart wide open, face turned to the sky, and arms outstretched to praise God from whom all blessings flow, I thank Him for the beauty of His salt marshes and the profound solemnity teeming with life that is the ocean.  And I thank my dad, for bringing me up to love and respect this part of creation.  Now, I only pray that I can instill the same or greater appreciation in my son.

He told me that going on the boat was the “best thing that ever happened” to him, so we are off to a good start.

"Cool Change" by Little River Band

Don't Be Silent

Ever get fired up about something?  You know what I'm talking about.  A news story or a subject just grips you.  It seizes your thoughts or emotions, or both even.  You are passionate about it, and you want to grab the arm of every person you meet and say, "Let me tell you about this."

That's exactly how this story has affected me.  I pray all the time for Pastor Saeed Abedini.  

I don't usually "get all political" in this venue, but I feel this topic is above politics.  The facts are the facts.  And the facts are that our government has, up to now, failed one of its citizens miserably. They can still turn it around, though.

Pastor Saeed Abedini is an American citizen.  He was wrongfully arrested and convicted in his native Ir@n because of his Christian faith.  He is currently serving an 8 year term in one of Ir@n's most infamous, most brutal prisons.  Our government has not asked for his release.  They have done nothing to fight for him.  What message does this send?

He is tortured and beaten, while hundreds of thousands have signed a petition on his behalf.  His basic human rights are violated every day.

I cannot tell this story any better than it has already been told.  All I ask is that you go to this website:  http://savesaeed.org/ to read his story and sign the petition, then pass it on.

Don't be silent.  Tell everyone you know about this.  We will be heard.  Keep on speaking.  Keep on knocking.  And like the neighbor knocking in the night in Luke 11:5-10, we will receive what we ask.  I believe this.  I believe this man will be restored to his beautiful wife and his two young children who need their daddy.

Allendale is the New Radiator Springs

Quaint Buildings...
Walker  Evans
Buy This at Allposters.com


(Preface:  This post was inspired by a special section in this past Sunday's Post & Courier newspaper.  Click HERE to see it.)

My grandmother grew up in a wonderful, thriving South Carolina town called Allendale.  I used to love the stories she would tell me from her childhood.  She drove herself to school in her mother’s car at age 12, because she could.  She enjoyed walking along the main street in town, having a cold Co-Cola at the drug store, and visiting friends.  She also got into all kinds of mischief, but that's for a different post.  Everyone knew each other, and it was a safe, happy place to live.

Then Interstate 95 was built.  Cutting through the middle of the state, it swept up all the travelers and traffic from surrounding counties (including Allendale) and redirected them in a straight, fast line that went up and down the east coast.  The streets of Allendale went quiet.  Slowly, but surely, most of the population got up and left for greener pastures.  Now, boarded storefronts, unemployment, and poverty are the trademarks of this once-lively town.  It’s heartbreaking.

If you have a child the right age, you have probably seen the Disney movie Cars.  If so, you know what Radiator Springs is.  It’s the town where most of the movie takes place, and it is situated on the old, abandoned Route 66.  It suffers the same fate as Allendale.  A new highway was built, and no one ever comes anymore.

By the end of the movie, famous race car Lightning McQueen decides to call Radiator Springs home.  Bringing his team there infuses the town with new life.  By the start of the sequel, Cars 2, we see that Radiator Springs is a thriving, bustling town again.

So, what will it take to turn things around for Allendale?  Who will be Allendale’s Lightning McQueen?  I submit that some brave souls ought to go in there and establish some type of manufacturing facility that will create jobs/income for the community.  

Simultaneously and more importantly, one must educate people on how to open and operate their own small businesses.  This will create more jobs, more commerce, more community pride, more life.  People will stay.  People will work their way out of poverty.  Allendale can come back.  There are hard-working people there; this fact is established.  Lots of them rise at four in the morning and take a chartered bus to Hilton Head, where the jobs are.  They endure 14 hour days to bring home a check.  They want to work.

Dr. Benjamin Carson knows that education will liberate a person, and I agree.  Statistics show that poverty and crime tend to go hand-in-hand with functional illiteracy.  Going a step beyond illiteracy, though, education can also mean you are teaching people a skill or trade.  It all must be ignited and maintained, however, by giving hope and encouragement.  If each person begins to believe and strive, saying, “I can do this.  Let it begin with me,” then it will happen.

I wish Allendale were unique, but it isn’t.  There are towns very similar across my state, and across the nation.  Each one of them needs a Lightning McQueen.  Would you go and be a dying town’s Lightning McQueen?  What do you think it would take to revive a town like Allendale?

And in review . . .

"Here it is—my...
David  Sipress
Buy This at Allposters.com

I write articles on a little website called Squidoo.  Okay, it's not little.  It's fairly huge.  I really enjoy it, and I can write on a variety of topics.  I'm not locked in to one or two things.  I write as much as I like, or as little.  I'm my own boss, which I enjoy.  Along the way, I have written a few "book reviews."

I use this term loosely (hence the quotation marks), because I don't necessarily use all of the conventional,  professional guidelines for writing book reviews.  No one is hanging over my desk, demanding that I produce such-and-so article by 5pm.  Sometimes I skip some of the technical publishing info, because I know most of my Squidoo readers will read right across it without stopping, or not care about it.  Oh, I give them the title and the author, of course.  Genre makes it in there, usually.  If I pique their interest in the book, they are welcome to click in through one of the ads and buy it.  When there is a link to the actual book, it seems a waste of time to give people the Library of Congress control number.

I think back to some of my former English teachers, professors in college, and other intelligent literary types I have known.  I picture them shaking their heads at my sloppy work.  "Well, she didn't say a word about the book's organizational structure," I can hear one of them saying.  "She didn't even attempt to properly cite this.  Year, publisher, edition?" another one asks.  "This book's title isn't in italics!!" (Well, that last one is because I am still learning about html and struggling with being an "internet writer," not because I don't know any better.)

However, the internet is a strange, new animal.  When you have a link to the actual book on Amazon, I think that eliminates the need for the literary chemistry equation.  Don't you?

Squidoo pushes for good, quality content.  I try to oblige, as do other squids- er, writers.  I think we succeed, for the most part.  But it's very informal and folksy and conversational over there.  I like it, personally.  I've learned a good bit about a variety of topics including cooking, gardening, sewing, home decor, and more.

So without further ado, here are a few links to some of my recent "book reviews:"
Judge me, if you will.

Lunch at the Piccadilly by Clyde Edgerton

The Blessed Woman by Debbie Morris

The Fireman's Wife by Susan Farren

Truth: Memories of my breakfast with John Updike

Tortoise sees ...
Mort  Gerberg
Buy This at Allposters.com


It was about this time of year, twenty-two years ago, when I had breakfast with John Updike.  I was a freshman at Agnes Scott College, and he was visiting the campus.

There were a couple of public opportunities over a two day period to hear him read from his works and speak, and I enjoyed at least one of them.  But a Junior who was a fellow English Lit major encouraged me to show up for the early morning breakfast in the dining hall.  She said it might be a small group.  Any student could have joined, but few had expressed interest in getting up so early.

So I rolled out of bed, threw on a matching skirt and blouse (but no makeup) and headed over to the dining hall.  It was a bad hair day, but I felt sure John Updike wouldn't care.  I got my tray, looked around and sat down at a table in the middle.  I was a tad early.  Then he came, along with the Junior who had invited me, and maybe two or three other students.  Small, intimate group.  He sat down next to me, on my left.  I'm sitting next to John Updike and having breakfast, I thought.  He's talking to me.  I was a little starstruck.  In fact, I still have a hard time believing it.

John Updike was a very pleasant and affable gentleman, though.  His presence was not daunting or haughty, despite his enormous career and accolades.  He had a magnetic smile and wild, white, unruly eyebrows.  I mostly listened as he chatted with the other three or four students and entertained their questions.  But I did ask him one question.

In my 18-year-old exuberance and foolishness, I had begun writing a few stories which were more snapshots or scenes than stories, as I had no idea where they would go.  I had been told by more than one advisor that I needed to know how it was going to end before I started.  Phooey, I had said.  Let the story take a life of its own, I thought, and bend with the wind, or else it's all a mathematical equation.  This was the 18-year-old's know-it-all theory.

So I asked the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner himself.  "Do you always know how the novel is going to end before you begin?"

"Oh, yes," he answered me.  Then he told me that there were bound to be surprises and twists along the way.  He said he was open to things that would pop up and change here and there.  But he confirmed that he always had the end in sight before he even wrote the first word.

Then, and only then, did I believe that that is how it must be done.  This concept is so simple, so basic.  And yet, with my hard head, it took a world-renowned master to tell me before I believed it.  I could have asked him anything, and there are so many more complex things I would ask him, if I had that same opportunity today.  My question was so elementary, that it embarrasses me now.

An artist doesn't put the brush to his canvas without knowing what he will paint.  He doesn't just start dotting and swiping, hoping that it becomes something.  Nor can a writer craft a story without projecting what it will be at the end.

So I do bend with the wind, and sometimes my characters surprise me.  But I make sure my roots are firmly planted before I bend.  Posthumous gratitude to John Updike for sharing breakfast and wisdom with a whippersnapper like me.

The Day AFTER National Pie Day

Woman taking...

Buy This at Allposters.com

I became aware that it was National Pie Day yesterday, and had intended to write a post about pie.  Why pie?  Pie rocks, that’s why.  Who doesn’t like pie?  I can’t think of a single person.

So my heartfelt ode to pie was all ready to go inside my head until life happened.  When you’re a mom and you work from home, work tends to get edged out by things like remembering to take the garbage out as you hear the truck coming down the street, an overflowing toilet, picking someone up early from school because they aren’t feeling well, etc.  So I’m a day late and a pie short.  Key lime, by the way, in case you were wondering.  That’s my favorite.

But today is apparently National Compliment Day!  So a message to my readers:  I appreciate your intelligence, good taste, excellent sense of humor, and great wisdom.  You obviously possess these qualities because you are here, reading my blog!  You’re a good-looking bunch, too, I might add.  Please enjoy the attached fun pictures.  Related to pie, of course.

Key West, Florida...
Lantern  Press
Buy This at Allposters.com





Lemon Meringue
Catherine  Jones
Buy This at Allposters.com






Pie a la Mode
Louise  Max
Buy This at Allposters.com







"Milkman Meets...
Stevan  Dohanos
Buy This at Allposters.com






Portrait of...
George  Marks
Buy This at Allposters.com





Pie Eating...
H.  Armstrong...
Buy This at Allposters.com





Sigh . . . I really do love pie.

Could it be Marge?

I saw this picture and immediately thought of the character Marge from my story, "Eat at Joe's."  What do you think?  I picture Marge as being older, heavier, and less attractive than the lady in this picture.  And Marge already has all prerequisites to be a country song.  But the gentleman getting out of the truck looks like he's hankering for a piece of pie.
One Relationship...

Buy This at Allposters.com