Pink Slime and other random bits

Images of pink slime has been dancing in my head. If you haven't yet heard about the rage over pink slime it is made from fat and other dregs from beef (which includes spinal and rectal tissue according to Wikipedia). This former garbage is then zapped by ammonia gas and sold as "boneless lean beef trimmings" or "lean finely textured beef".

Yes, that's right, fat and other nasty bits of beef rendered and returned to market as lean finely textured beef. Only in America. Or is it happening in Europe, or down under, too? It is enough to make me gag. Apparently it made enough other people gag they started pushing back. Grocery chains heard the customers and have removed it from their ground beef products.

This, of course, means the industry has to shut down production. If you can't sell it you might as well stop manufacturing it. If you stop manufacturing it you have to start laying people off. In our economy that creates hardship. What I don't see happening are the producers asking themselves what useful product can we produce. No, instead the wealthy business owners go to their best friends--the politicians in their pockets. So our beef producing states have champions in the government. The governors and industry leaders are saying, "you don't get it," and pointing their fingers at reporters and their critics.

Rage, divisiveness and finger pointing is alive and well in America. Is it exhausting? Yes. One thing that boggles my mind are the number of my generation--the generation that protested so much in the sixties and seventies, including the establishment--are now the establishment.

Are there things happening around you that boggle your mind?

Oh, do share.

February Fail and Random Thoughts

I planned to try posting a blog at least once a month. Instead, I spent the time writing and now it is March 1st--already!

We were experiencing a winter with minimal snow, including a February with only 6/10ths of an inch of snow and then leap day arrived. With leap day came the snow. By dark we had about six inches of snow. By midnight we had at least another inch of snow and by daybreak we were up to 9 inches of the white stuff and it is still snowing.

The wild thing this winter has been the high temperatures ranging well above the norm. And Saturday will be no different. It is supposed to continue to snow throughout most of the daylight hours. Tomorrow (Friday) is supposed to be a typical 'seasonal' day--mid thirties to high thirties. By Saturday the temperature is expected to get close or top fifty degrees (F). That is quite mild for this time of year. We may get hit by another storm on Saturday, but this time it will be a rain event.

And goodby to winter--it was nice knowing you, even if you could only stay for a few days.

Nattering on about the weather was not my original plan when I started writing, but sometimes it does such unexpected things it is hard not to write about it.

What is your favorite time of year and how does weather play a role in it?

Success

At the beginning of this month I wrote about setting a goal:

• This year my goal is to write 1000 words per day. I set the goal on December 6th--okay, so that was still in the year of 2011, however, why quibble? I set the goal and so far, 33,369 words later, in less than a month, I am have reached a halfway mark on completing another manuscript.

This morning I wrote, The End, and closed the file. I will open it back up tomorrow and start the revising/rewriting process tomorrow. But 55,266 words later I met one goal--I kept at it, writing some days 1-3k words and other days struggling a bit.


Another writer I know shared a website 750words.com where a writer can write and not share his or her words. But there are built in rewards in the program. I have also been writing there every day since I found the website. I have managed to come up with three story ideas there, and copied and pasted them to a story idea file. So writing, creating the habit sometimes yields surprising results.

By no means does this mean the ideas and words will always flow because I'm doing this, but it is helping me right now. Is it Nora Roberts who has said, "You can't revise a blank page," or something like that?

So I write. Some of the words are dreck, but those are words that will never see the light of day. At least that's my hope. ;-)

Setting New Goals--Skipping Resolutions...

...Or should it be, Skipping Resolutions--Setting New Goals?

I seem to have a problem with remembering this blog. I write hit and miss here and would like to 'hit' more than 'miss' this year. However I will resist making a resolution about writing a new blog X number of times per month. For me, making a resolution is the best way to fail.

What is it about resolutions that create an automatic failure for me? I'm not sure, but years of failing to make it through January without bombing out on each resolution has taught me to look at making one goal for the year.

This year my goal is to write 1000 words per day. I set the goal on December 6th--okay, so that was still in the year of 2011, however, why quibble? I set the goal and so far, 33,369 words later, in less than a month, I am have reached a halfway mark on completing another manuscript.
So my goal for this year is to write 1K a day and try a blog a month.

Wish me luck!

Journaling

Years ago someone got me started with journaling. I kept my faithful journal in a 3-inch-3-ring binder. I still have several full binders. I was given the binder suggestion for the simple reason it was easier to add cards we received. We could add dreams, newspaper or magazine articles, anything that spoke to us could be added into this type of journal.

Since I had been keeping dream journals already for several years--I liked the idea of an expanded journal. This journaling suggestion came a few hears after I had my child with Down syndrome. I soon started writing articles about living with SC for our local Down syndrome newsletter. All of this was really an extension of my journaling.

Why am I thinking of this now? For some reason I have been reluctant to blog. But what is blogging? In some ways it is another form of journaling. Journaling might be a more private or more personal activity, however blogging for some seems pretty personal. It is a way of recording thoughts and feelings. So how about you do you express your innermost thoughts?

I'm sure I will reserve my most personal thoughts and feelings for my journal and yet, maybe, I can reframe blogging into an activity I do not resist so much.

Daddy, Tell Me A Story...

The editor’s buzzword--no phrase--is “show, don’t tell” [a story]. However, some authors tell their stories and do an excellent job of it. And little children often say to their parents, “tell me a story.”

They are not asking the parent to show them a story, although often enough a picture book comes out for cuddle time as the parent reads the story. When I was growing up we would ask our parents to “tell us a story” and that is what they would do. Some made-up, fanciful things and others based on events my dad lived through.

My dad road a bicycle over a log road through a swamp to get from his home town to a small community on the east shore of the popular Adirondack lake, Lake George, every summer from the time he was 12 to age 18. He would tell us stories from those boyhood experiences.

We came to know the stories by the fanciful titles like:

                                   

Searchlights And Swimming (a group of boys skinny dipping in the lake while the girls were left back on shore)

                                   

The Seeds Get in My Teeth (making homemade ice cream and licking the dasher)

                                   

One-Armed Bandit (illegal gambling activities)

                                   

Rum Runner At Eighteen (moving rum from Canada to communities in the US during prohibition)

                                   

Many of these stories had held a cautionary message. My dad was raised a Quaker--he never preached, he led by example.

Showing versus telling. My dad told stories and wrote them down. There are authors who are brilliant at telling along with showing a story. It creates a uniquely different voice from a story that is predominantly “shown” to the reader. Perhaps it is because of early ear training this unique blend appeals to me so much.

                                   

A story that is told can be uniquely wonderful.

                                   

Just sayin'... 

Happy 4th of July

Today was the first time in seven years I attended a parade. It was not just any old parade--the locale markets the parade as they second longest running parade in the US. It is off the beaten track in the little town of Springfield Center, NY (near famed Glimmerglass lake or Otsego Lake). There is a wide variety of participants in this parade and many people who come out to support it.

So why was I there?

Great question! Thanks for asking. I attended because my oldest daughter was marching in the only pipe band in the parade. There were other drum corps and marching bands in the parade, but Hobart's Pipe and Drums was the only bagpipe band in the parade.

There is something special about small town parades. Even if there are people from all over (even forty to fifty miles away) you feel connected to each other. Have you ever stood in a large crowd and felt anonymous--even when there are people there you know? This is nothing like that. People are greeting each other and you. They stop and chat, or lean forward in the chairs, look right at you and ask questions, make small talk. It's amazing.

When combined with July 4th (or Memorial Day) there is red, white and blue bunting--lots and lots of red, white and blue bunting. There are patriotic songs, flag waving and cheering. Children running to the front of the crowds grabbing candy that is tossed from floats. In fact the children run around with no one worrying about their child getting snatched by a stranger. It's so different from a parade in a city.

I haven't missed attending parades in the past seven years while my bagpiper attended school and dropped out of piping. But now that she's back at it, now I've missed the small town parades. It harkens back to an earlier time in our history. It allows a break from city dwelling and the worries associated with city dwelling.

And we could not have asked for a better day. Blue skies, plenty of sunshine, a nice breeze and no humidity. My wish for you is a day as glorious as this day turned out for me.