VIRGINIA'S

The Lord granted me a delightful seven years of life in Raybun County, GA. Clayton, the town that I lived in is at the beginning of the Apalachian Trail. Unfortunately I was already too old to attempt the climb, but never too old to enjoy the incredible beauty of the town.
Born and raised in the city, I found no difficulty in turncoating myself into a mountain person. I lived, for two of those seven years, alone on a mountain that was just being developed into homesites. I loved my job as speech therapist in the local skilled nursing facility, all of the ingenuous residents that I was privileged to meet there, my mountain, and the town.
The Clayton Police Station gave me my biggest WOW! It was on the main street in the business district. The building was fronted by a large old-timey porch complete with rocking chairs and hanging geranium plants. To the right of the building, planted on the lawn, were two porta-potties available to pedestrian traffic.
On a corner, opposite the Police Station, was the local drugstore, maintained in pristine nineteen-forties condition. A large soda fountain dispensed soup and sandwiches and the usual fountain treats of banana splits and sundaes. But my favorite place was Virginia's.
My previous mode of opperendum was in center and south Philadelphia, where dining spots of incredible food and ambiance dotted the landscape like the streetlamps that lit up the city at night. Locals jammed these cullinary tables and the local media touted them to tourists.
My children, Floridians all, came to visit for a spell. The first place I took them was Virginia's. "Dimdom," exclaimed my daughter in-law, Sandy, "You eat in a place like this?"
Virginia's took the place of a former fastfood restuarant that went bust in this country folk town. How Virginia came upon the where-with-all to get a lease on the place is unknown to me, but there she was, the proprietress of a three-meal a day operation. All of the left in fixtures of the earlier eatery were kept in place. There was a salad bar which displayed an assortment of vegetables that were questionably fresh; they were by no means crisp. Two of the walls that lined the huge room were filled with large booths that could accomodate six. In the center were as many tables as could occupy that space and still leave room for customers to walk around them. The restrooms were cramped and painted in battleship blue. The brown pleather upholstery that covered the booths showed there lack of relsilience by exhibiting holes, caused by heavy traffic, and the stuffing was easing out. Some holes were diligently secured with masking tape. But nowhere, then or since, have I found a biscuit and redeye gravy to match.
Virginia's southern breakfasts were gustatory treats that reflected the beauty of the mountains and the gentle souls of the denizens. All of the locals ate there. I think I was the only northerner that frquented the place. I couldn't help feeling sorry for all of the many tourists, that meandered through the town, who would never know of Virginia's bountiful breakfasts.
It's many years since I left this paradise on earth. I still miss it and yearn to go back, but I hear that many of those tourists did find the territory to be just what they wanted to build their second homes on, so maybe it's best that I don't try to go home again. God Bless you, Virginia, whereever you are.   

STATE OF THE UNION

Last night, President Obama gave his third State of the Union Address. It was definitely a call for unification. The precepts of governing laid down were all encompassing. they touched on every ill facing our nation today. But I was surprised by his forthright comments about the division of congress that is impedeing any chance for change and inspiration to a country that is really down in the doldrums.
He blurted out the issue of "free-trading" that has infiltrated congress. As I understand it this is the wealthiest group of congressmen ever, and it's not from high salaries and low taxes.
I can't imagine those self-righteous evangelicals in South Carolina voting for a man with such a flawed character as Gengrich, obviously not a follower of Christ. Are they that much against a black president that they would vote against their moral principles?
Why anyone would vote republican in the next election is beyond my ken. This is a severely paranoid organization, faced with all of the difficulties many Americans are coping with this day, thier focus remains steadfast on limiting Obama's presidential term to one.
While the Inaugaral Festivities were going on in the town of D.C., a sizeable group of republicans met for a dinner at which they pledged that the newly elected president would have only one term in the White House.
And they are blinsided by this mission, enough so that no matter what the president proposes, they say Nay. 

TEST DRAFT

When you're retired and have no pressing obligations or destination for the day, it's pretty easy to fall into a complacent routine. I prepared my usual steel-cut oatmeal with craisins, a recent addition to my menu which formerly consisted of bacon and egg with coffee, now tea. I would decide on my agenda of tasks for the day as I drank my second cup of tea. The phone rang and I rushed to answer it, not many callers these days. It was one of the women from the Sodality at church. "Regina", she said, "Mary Anderson is unable to call on her list of homebound communicants. Can you take her place?" "Oh, my," I gasped, "I've never touched the host before, except to receive it myself. I don't know if I can do this!" She went on to persuade me that there was no one else that she could call on and these were daily communicants who would be very upset if they were to miss this spiritual offering that meant so much in their uneventful lives. I said a rosary while I dressed and put the whole mission on the Holy Spirit. Oh, well, so much for a lack-luster style of living.
Regina A. McIntyre

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tara Roberts challenged me with "You never know what's going to happen when you wake up in the morning." and I challenged Crosshavenharpist with "You open your door one morning and find three little kittens have been deposited there."

MOUNTAIN DINING

The scene was incredibly pastoral. Mozart played in the background, but it was definitly a Beethoven ambiance. On the hill that faced the window where Jennifer Lansing sat waiting for her order, two cows were doing a funny motion with their heads, a sort of nodding from side to side, left to right, almost touching the ground in this pendulum-like action. There were five homes built into the mountain side view and the cows filled in the foreground of this picture.
The dry cabernet soothingly reduced the stress level brought on by a particularly annoying day at work. A day puntuated by missed appointments, unavailability of patients for therapy and a general lack of cooperation among the staff. Jennifer ordered the catfish for the second time this week, too agravated to have an original idea about the menu.
There was only one other party in the dining room at this early hour, a well-dressed elderly couple, small in stature, perhaps in their eighties. They exuded a joy for living and gave the appearance of having the where-with-all to live well; not having to scratch to maintain their needs.
She couldn't help comparing them to the residents of the skilled nursing facility where she was employed as a speech pathologist. There, the elderly were totally dependent for their care with very few choices available to them.
Jennifer wondered, as she watched the elderly lady serve her husband from her salad plate, if her life with Mark would bring a satisfying life-style like this to their old age. Of course, their life together had barely begun. Their careers and family responsibilities distanced them from having any real life together at this point in time. But this was lucky number three for both of them, and maybe, just maybe, if they could get all of their ducks in a row...


For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Tara Roberts challenged me with "You never know what's going to happen when you wake up in the morning." and I challenged Crosshavenharpist with "You open your door one morning and find three little kittens have been deposited there."

ON THE INSIDE

It was late March of 2011. I ran out of bird food and decided it was too late in the season to buy more, so I threw out some dry cat food. The birds seemed to enjoy it, but a gray kitten had discovered this freebe and was scratching away for a meal. Of course I started feeding this adorable little crature and for some reason, wishful thinking, I assumed it was a male. Until I noticed the growing girth. A few weeks later, Gray went on hiatus and when she returned she was neat and trim. I have no idea where she deposited her kittens or even if she was caring for them. Four times a day, on schedule, Gray returned for her meals, which were now greatly enhanced by more nutritious offerings. She was now feeding her young. We maintained our four meals a day routine for a time and then I noticed she again was with litter. Once again her meals were enhanced while I tried to find a way to trap her and get her to an agency that takes care of cats in distress. This was not an easy proposition. They are engulfed with calls for rescue. One day I went to the door to give her lunch and almost tripped over three beautiful kittens. I don't know how she got them there. I know her hang-out was quite a distance from my home. My daughter has "Cat" connections and after two weeks under my care, we carted them off to a town some eighty miles distant where we knew they had a great chance to find homes, via a great gal who owned an organic pet food store and took in strays until she could find homes for them. During this interim, Gray was hanging around the house, perhaps trying to catch a glimpse of her kittens. One of her new habits was to jump onto the window sill outside and do some cat to cat interaction with my eight year old male cat, Bianco. I was still in earnest to capture her and get her veterinary service. I couldn't bring her in the house, not knowing if she had a communicable disease that my two cats might contract. Arrangements were made. Gray was trapped, taken to the clinic, received shots and was spayed and returned to me so that I could take her in and give her a home. She had had only negative experiences. I vowed to make her life better. Today, she sits on that same windowsill, on the inside.

AUTHENTICITY

Authenticity is another one of those hard to define concepts. We come into this world with our own DNA coding, incredibly individualistic, and I believe we come equipped with hard-wiring of the characteristics we need to employ to see us through this earthly voyage. That compact bit of business doesn't last long. The age-old question of nature/nurture impinges on us and in less time than it takes to demonstrate how we feel about sharing our toys, we're on the road to compromise via greed and fear, two agents of ego. Now, how do we return to our original-authentic self? How many of us are annoyed by this factor? How do we strip away years of experiences that have caused us to swerve from our ethos? I'm interested in knowing because I get the feeling that I might really enjoy meeting this authentic me.

GOALS

Entering the second week of January, it ocurred to me that I hadn't made my list of resolutions as yet.
This year I'm going to type them out in some really attractive font, one that won't intimidate me by looking too dogmatic and yet with enough of a look of urgency to spur me on. Motivation is what I need, and unfortunately it all hangs on me.
It's tough being a writer, critic, publisher, and motivator, but that's living in the present moment for me.
I've decided to group my goals in chunks. You know, the way we were trained: short-term/immediate goals; intermediate/not so immediate; and long-term/ will they ever happen goals. Well clunky as it sounds, this works for me.
Short-term: Reading/Study program. Give up writing and simply enjoy reading again. Not for writing purposes, just for pure pleasure. So many books, so little time. Spend some time in my favorite subject, History.
Intermediate: Now, it's time to revise that book I'm so energetically avoiding.
Long-term: Research how and why, what and where of publishing tasks.
Final-goal: Submissions of completed work.
By the end of the year, I hope to look back on this list of resolutions and discover that the list is complete AND I'm having a book published.

CONNECTIONS

Lay down with dogs and you'll wake up with fleas. It's time to look closely at connections made in the past, that continue in the present. We change daily. Hopefully, we are learning and growing in wisdom and maturity. But, sometimes our friends and associates can provide barriers to our creativity and growth.
Some people are extremely impassive when it comes to change. They are stuck in the ruts they have cleaved and in which they feel comfortable.
It's time to look at associations that stifle creativity and progress. It's time to address the issues that are important to you, and not reflected in the others around you.
It's time to recognize that not all your friends have a posotive attitude about life and therefore can be quite a downer to your creative urges.
It's time to wake up and shake off the fleas.

REFLECTION

TMI AND TMTS (too much technical stuff). I can't help feeling sorry for anyone who did not grow up in the forties.
Saddle shoes and bobby-socks. Superman and movie matinees. Radio! Ah, radio:The Shadow, Inner Sanctum, Lux Presents Hollywood, and the yearly Christmas Carol starring Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge.
There was Pearlman's Deli on the corner, where you could buy fresh lox, the greatest Jewish pickles and the best bagles and bialies. And Mr. Pearlman, short, chubby gray haired man with a blissful nature and a way of making each and every one of his customers feel so very important.
On the other corner was Sweeney's Candy Store. Come on; what more does any kid need to complete his idea of the best home in the world? Sweeney was a tall, thin Irishman, with a dour nature. I don't think I ever saw him smile. It was like making a purchase from an automatron. But, Milky Way, Clark bar,and Baby Ruth, products of chocolate delight were there, You didn't need a Red Skelton to take your money and give you your moment of gustatory pleasure, it was all in the product. Plus you could purchase a chocolate covered banana there. I didn't know of any other place where you could get such a sweet nutritional treat.
The kids on the block were always out until sundown. We played Buck-Buck, Box-ball, and Russian, a ballgame that required a totally different movement for each toss of the ball. I think there were ten movements in all. For number seven,you had to bounce the ball and turn your leg around it before the bounce, while you spelled out R-U-S-S-I-A-N. How cool is that?
Every Saturday, the ritualistic gathering of the neighborhood kids took place outside the ticket-window of the local movie houses for the Saturday Matinee, which offered a double feature, a serial, the news, and a cartoon. This weekly social enterprise offered a beneficial respite for parents.
In elementary school, you made fun of all the teachers and dared them to try to teach you something useful or academic. We knew that the real world belonged to the kids.
Incredible though it may seem, major public transportation was necessary to get you to the few supermarkets in the city. Nobody had a car.
No one in our neighborhood was rich and no one was poor. We were served breakfast in the morning, took a brown bag for lunch, had milk and cookies waiting for us after school, and we all ate dinner at the table with our family. Our parents were hard working blue and white collar workers, most of whom took the bus or the trolley to work and allowed us to be "kids". We didn't have to excel at anything, we weren't involved in sports and karate and piano and dancing lessons. They didn't hover over us. They just expected us to respect our elders and behave civilly to everyone else in the neighborhood.
Thank God, I'm a product of the forties.

TACT

"He who is not well-bred, cannot tolerate ill-breeding." Or something like that. I read this on one of those wall-posts in a chiropractor's office many years ago. I meant to have one printed up for me, but I never got around to it.
During the holidays, I heard several tales by different people berating others for not having social grace, or of behaving stupidly. I never did know how to offset these kind of comments. Maybe I should have that saying (although I'm not sure that it is verbatim) printed on little cards that I could hand out in such a situation, but wouldn't that infer that I too was ill-bred.
Actually, it goes beyond tact. Tact is not an innate characteristic. It has to be acquired. Maybe the word should be empathy. Having enough compassion and understanding to allow someone to behave in a manner that we find unsuitable.
My favorite story involving empathy goes like this: At a formal dinner in Hollywood, Ethel Merman was seated opposite Tony Curtis, a newcomer to the town. I may not have this exactly right, but according to my recollection, Tony Curtis clumsily broke a glass or spilled his wine and was horrifickly embarassed by his action. Whereupon, Ethel Merman proceeded to perform the very same action. She not only took the focus away from Mr. Curtis, but perhaps there were some astute people at that gathering who might have learned a valuable lesson from this faux-pas.
We are none of us unblemished by foolish remarks or moments of bad behavior in our own daily dealings. It's incumbent upon us to appreciate the person and overlook the behavior.

INTROSPECTION

The litter boxes are cleaned, the cats are fed; I've put out food for the birds and the squirrels. Now it's time for me to have a bit of breakfast and a cup of tea while I check the media news and listen to the classical music station.
The sun is shining and the weather is finally turning cold. It's good to be indoors and not have to worry about getting ready to go out and face the work-a-day world. I've been retired for two years, and up until now, I've never considered if this is a good place in my life.
Lately, my daughter has been treating me as if I were handicapped, just because stairs give me a problem and I can't open a plastic bag at the produce counter to put my vegetables in. Old age separates us from the vital exchanges of the day.
Is this my life; catering to cats and wildlife? Enui is settling in and I'm not even aware of it! I must sharpen my wit, expose myself to mildly stressful events, and consider myself more importand than the three cats and the wildlife outside the door I seem to be closing.

MEMORY

It's just now caught up with me. There are many levels involved in memory. When I was a child, my memory was almost photographic and I enjoyed instant recall of vast bits of information, catechism, history, geography. This may have done me a dis-service, because as the years wanned, and experiences multiplied, the instant recall became prolonged recall. To combat this traumatic disintegration of a once cherished faculty, I proceeded to try to memorize everything I set out to learn. I have copious notebooks of information that I wrote down (so I could aid my memory at later date, when I neede the information). Fortunately, I had a habit of writing down the reference book and page. My arduous scribblings meant nothing to me. Unfortunately, it takes eons for me to have an "aha" moment. But, "aha", I now write in a key-word and the reference site and date for all the material that I feel is vitally important to me as a writer.
The Epiphany: There's a difference between memory and recall. Synapses do occur and associations are made. And I have to learn to trust the miraculous fact that If I read/view something of importance, some simile of the details will remain somewhere in the cortex AND when I'm writing the great American novel, by some mystical, ethereal manner, events, character, and time specifics will issue forth as prompts that I have heretofore been attributing to muses.
I just have to read/view and absorb, like osmosis, and when I'm scratching for a detail or a phrase it will come to me.
Another New Year's resolution: less time memorizing-- more time writing.