Do You Remember?

Today is September 11, 2009. It's amazing the things that you remember and the things that you forget. Sometimes I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, but there are some things that happen that I will never forget. I remember what I was doing when John Kennedy was assinated. I remember what I was doing when Martin Luther King was assinated. I remember what I was doing when Bobby Kennedy was assinated. And I remember what I was doing on September 11, 2001 when 2,993 people were killed as we were attacked on our own soil. I remember it like it was yesterday.

When I left my house for my morning run, it was dark. By the time I got back, the sky was several shades lighter than dark. As I walked around the cul de sac to cool off, I could see some of my neighbors TVs on in their kitchens. I opened the door, stepped into my kitchen and immediately into what seemed like a horror movie.

Ted was standing staring at the little TV that we kept on the kitchen counter. "What's wrong?", I asked as I moved past him to look at the tv. He didn't answer and I looked at the screen. There, right in front of me, was an image of the World Trade Center towers. One of them was on fire, somewhere midway up. "A plane flew into one of the World Trade Center towers", Ted told me. Numbly I watched as another plane entered the screen from the right and plowed right into the other tower. "What is this?", I moaned. "What's happening?" "What's going on?". As the morning unfolded, it became apparent that we were under the worst attack in history.
As details became known, I realized that the mayhem did not affect New York alone, but included attempts in Washington and Pennsylvannia.

On that day, 8 years ago, life changed forever. No matter how safe we felt before that day, we would never feel that safe again. Life changed for me, yes, but I can only imagine how much more life changed for the familes of those mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, and friends that went to work one day and never came home.
I did not know anyone who perished that day but I think of them often and this morning I said a special prayer for their families who, I'm sure, are missing them even more on this day.

May God keep us all safe.

Watcha' Reading?

From the time I was a young girl I loved to read. I was not the most popular girl--neither was I the prettiest and I was overweight so books really became my friends.

I remember going to the local library after school. I spent so much time there the librarian took me under her wing. She started recommending books for me to read. I started out with Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys and others by Louisa Mae Alcott. Everytime I finished one book, the librarian (wish I could remember her name) would give me another. By the time I was in junior high school I realized that I loved big, thick books so eventually I made it to The Arms of Krup (650+ pages). After that I moved on to Les Miserables. In high school I was reading Ayn Rand's books like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

What I loved about books was that you could go places--places where a little, poor African American girl could not go and what reading these books did for me (besides building my vocabulary) was expose me to these places and to the itch to want to rise above my current circumstances.

My mother used to think that I spent too much solitary time so she'd force me to go out and play. I'd find a way to stuff a book under my shirt or sweater and would hide under the stairway of our 6-story walkup and read until I'd hear her call me to come in. At night I'd read with my head under the covers using a flashlight to give me enough light to see. I'd read anywhere I could.

What got me thinking about this? We're having a project done in the house to build bookshelves up and downstairs. I estimate that these book shelves will help me empty at least 10 boxes. We already have a large bookshelf full of my books but we're a book-loving family so a good deal of the boxes we moved are filled with, that's right--books. I mentioned my project to one of our neighbors. She said "We don't read books". I was surprised. My favorite way to spend time is in Barnes & Nobles or the library so I guess it always stuns me when I'm reminded that not everyone likes books. I haven't read all of my books but when I'm ready for another one, I just go shopping in my library. Sometimes when I hear the title of a good book I add it to my Wish List on Amazon.com.

For me, a day without a book is a day without sunshine and you can tell a lot about a person from their books. Here's my Wish List:

The Last Lecture - by Randy Pausch

The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary - by Merriam-Webster

Now, Discover Your Strengths - by Marcus Buckingham

The End of Overeating:Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite - by David Kessler

Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating - by Mark Bittman

The Essential Raps! - Ron Clark

Excellent 11, The Qualities Teachers and Parents Use to Motivate, Inspire, and Educate Children - Ron Clark

Fashionista: The Ultimate Guide to Looking Fabulous for Less - by Kathryn Finney

Yoga for Women at Midlife and Beyond - by Pat Shapiro

Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste and Style

How to Have Style - Issac Mizrahi

The Best Day of Someone Else's Life - by Kerry Reichs

Listening Is An Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from StoryCorps Project - by Dave Isay

What is Tao: - by Alan W. Watts

Does It Matter?: Essays on Man's Relation to Materiality - by Alan W. Watts

It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff - by Peter Walsh

Keepin' It Real: The Rise of Bullshit in the Black Community - Sabrina Lamb

Homemade Biography: How to Collect, Record, and Tell the Life Story of Someone You Love - by Tom Zoellner

A Creative Writer's Kit: A Spirited Companion and Lively Muse for the Writing Life - by Judy Reeves

Five Wishes: How Answering One Simple Question Can Make Your Dreams Come True - by Gay Hendricks

Welcome Autumn

It's been a while since I've written, I know. I had to prepare for our out-of-town guests, then enjoy their company, then recover from all of the fun.

Well, now I'm back to life, back to reality. I am editing a book for my brother-in-law. That is work that I really enjoy. I've always loved reading, writing and editing and have been helping my brother-in-law with his books since the early 1960's.

I've been keeping up with the gym and my transformer water fitness class. Before this Labor Day weekend I had lost a couple of pounds but I'm sure I fixed that. I will not complain, though. It was a weekend of great food and fellowship.

As I sat on the back porch this morning sipping a delicious cup of Hazelnut Cinnamon coffee and listening to the birds, I took note that there was a chill in the air and the special purple-like tint to the sky that trumpets my favorite time of the year. Autumn is right around the corner and I'm happy. With it comes cooler temperatures, warm sweaters and socks, Starbuck's gingerbread loaf and gingerbread lattes and the return of Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters and, I hope, some word about whether we'll see any more episodes of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on HBO.

I am blessed.

Do I Really Need To Be Right?

I have this thing about being right. When I was younger I used to be able to disguise it as a need to do "research" so that I could know the truth. Now that I'm a "woman of a certain age" as Tina Turner would say, I no longer find it necessary to camoflague my purpose. I need to be right! It's not cute, it's not funny, and it's certainly not gracious. I used to say that I was from the "show me" state. You'd need to prove something to me before I'd believe it--Not everything, just anything I didn't agree with you about. I used to think this was a virtue--now I know better. How do I know that? By the way I feel when I'm proven right. It doesn't really make me feel good. I just feel weird. Like a petulant kid or something. It is definitely a moral failing. Whenever I disagree with someone I have to prove a point by researching on the computer. I don't know what I ever did without Google.

There's something sad about proving myself right--that makes someone else wrong. In an earlier post, I listed some things that Andy Rooney of 60 minutes has learned. One of them was: I've learned that it's better to be kind than to be right.

I need to work on that and yes, you guessed it: There's always tomorrow.

I Love Mondays

Monday--When I was working, I hated Mondays. In fact the hating started on Sunday. Sunday morning wasn't too bad but by the time Sunday afternoon rolled around that feeling of dread was starting to invade my house, my head, my body. Well all of that's over now. Now I get to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Since I expect to have a long one (good Lord willing), I'd better get started.

This Monday morning started out in an unusual way for Huntersville, North Carolina in August. Pouring down rain. I love the rain, so I was happy. I'm so sick and tired of the sun and humidity I could throw up (I know, a bit harsh, huh?). Anyhow, I logged onto my computer and started looking through my email.

There in my email was a message from someone I'd known from work. She and her family were leaving Angola and moving back to California. I believe she had been living in Angola for 3 years. She was announcing her repatriation to all of her friends and did so with a musical slideshow from Smilebox.com. She had some pictures of her children and a beautiful Angolan sunset and the music was ColdPlay's Viva La Vida. Just beautiful...

So, you guessed it. I logged onto Smilebox and put together my own musical scrapbook of our weekend trip to Asheville. I sent the scrapbook to my son and daughter-in-law so that they could show it to our grandchildren.

The heck with the gym...I love Mondays and there's always tomorrow.

Not What I Was Expecting

We were up at the crack of dark this morning to drive to Asheville, North Carolina to attend the Goombay Festival. The Goombay Festival is a celebration of African & Caribbean Heritage and Asheville is a very artsy community of 78,000 people about 1.5 hours north of us.

I found out about the festival on the internet. We've wanted to visit Asheville since we moved to North Carolina and so decided to invite a couple of our friends and spend the day up north. Asheville was described to us as the Berkeley of North Carolina. Those of you who know Berkeley, California know that it is a very liberal city devoted to the arts, education and protests of all kinds! I love Berkeley so I thought I'd probabaly love Asheville. It was voted the #1 place to live on relocate.com's 2007 list of the top 100 places to live in 2007.

The festival was much smaller than I'd expected and after attending festivals in New York and San Francisco perhaps my expectations were too high. I was expecting some awesome crafts but didn't see anything I don't already have too much of in my house already. I was not impressed, but I absolutely loved Asheville.

There were loads of art galleries and great boutiques. Fancy restaurants and plain ones and an old F.W. Woolworth that had been converted to a who's who of art vendors except for the soda fountain, which had been kept intact. I got a Vanilla Egg Cream in the memory of the many I had imbibed during my youth in New York. Ted tried to get a hot dog for 15 cents (as a sign advertised) but when that didn't work, he went ahead and paid $1.50 for it. There were beautiful art deco buildings and old buildings with gargoyles standing at the ready. There was, of course, the Biltmore estate that resembled the Hearst Castle in Southern California and as far as the eye could see, were the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. What a beautiful place.

The best part of the day, though took place in this little park in the middle of downtown. When we arrived in the early morning, there was a pro-healthcare meeting going on. Nothing like the crazy yelling matches that have been going on in various places around the US. We hung around for that and took some pictures. When that meeting finished, the marching band for the Goombay Festival started assembling in the park. The parade consisted of one man and woman on stilts, 4 drummers, a marching band from a Winston Salem high school and 3 cars. That was it. We watched that progression until it was gone. Next, a group of people set up chess games in the park and we watched as some serious games of chess got started. Next, a band started setting up for live music. When I looked, I noticed that all of the band members were children (except for the drummer who was an adult). There were 5 boys and 1 girl and I was thinking to myself ("guess it's about time to go home"). When they started playing, I could not believe it. The young boy who was singing vocals was a little shy and quiet on the mike but his voice was beautiful. When they started playing the opening chords for Santana's Black Magic Woman, the crowd roared. They did a fabulous job. They couldn't have been more than 12-13 years old, if that. Santana could be their grandfather!People were clapping and swaying. It was a joy to watch.

We would have stayed for a few more numbers, but the cigarette smoke was getting to be too much for us, so we decided to head out. What a wonderful day. We spent a great day in a new place with friends we enjoy being with. We came for one thing and found so much more. Isn't that what serendipity is?

Helping The Little Guy

I spent all of yesterday running around trying to match the granite in my kitchen for a couple of projects I'm planning.

I want a desk built into the kitchen and some cubbie holes built into this ridiculous hunk of wall that separates my kitchen from my family room. This wall is so annoying. It's a low wall so that you can see into each room from the other, but the counter is a catch all for all of Ted's electronics and the actual wall is just a huge piece of plaster in the middle of the room--no purpose whatsever. So I came up with an idea of building cubbie holes into the side of the wall that faces the kitchen to hold cook books, pottery, etc. I want to add granite to the top of the counter to match what's already in the kitchen. Maybe if it looks pretty, I can keep it clear of Ted's "stuff".

I hired a carpenter who could do the work and he proceeded to order the desk that would match my cabinets from the cabinet maker. When he came back with the price for the desk I almost fainted. $1700!!! Plus $400 if we wanted the cabinet makers to install the desk. I was flabbergasted. I had looked the cabinets up on the internet and this cabinet store (a small mom and pop store in a neighboring town) was the only distributor that I found. I asked the carpenter if he had any other ideas. He thought of building the desk himself and getting the cabinet fronts from the cabinet store so that from the outside all would match. This should cost me less money. When he took this idea back to the cabinet store, the owner was not too enthused.

In desperation, I went back to the internet and lo and behold, I must have missed it the first time but I found that Loew's carried my cabinets. I went to Loew's, told them what I needed and the cabinet specialist entered a few bits of information into the computer and out came a drawing of the desk and a price. The price was $890. Again, I was flabbergasted. Of course, I ordered the desk from Loews.

I've talked to a few cabinet store owners since and from what I can understand, this particular store is way out of line. A 20% markup is understandable but 50%?

I'm always torn between doing business with the small stores versus the big box stores. For a time I would not do business with WalMart because I thought they put small stores out of business. Living on a fixed income and a deep recession has changed my ways as I need the best price I can get, but I still feel badly when I see small enterprises go out of business. Had this cabinet store owner's price been under $1000, he would have had my business but an exorbitant price made me go looking for other options.

Is it greed or is he just compensating for slow sales by marking up what he does sell? No matter, at the end of the day, I felt good that I'd done my homework and saved some money for another project.