We’re coming to the end of another election season and, like almost everyone on the planet, I’m glad this miserable contest is almost over. The mud-slinging, innuendo, and overall nastiness of political rhetoric have made this a loathsome campaign year and the parade of contradictory polls is exhausting me. But I will vote on Tuesday, as I have in every election. I can’t help it. I was politicized long before I could read and my parents deserve the credit/blame. That’s what happens when you’re kissed at a young age by presidents. My mom had a button like this in herjewelry box for decades See, my mom was a big fan of John F. Kennedy in 1960. YUGE fan, another candidate might say. Well, what wasn’t there to like? He was young, attractive, and charismatic, enough to charm any woman in her early twenties. And my mother was never tepid about politics. She paid fierce attention to the news and loved or hated most people in public service. So when she heard JFK and his running mate were arriving at the Wichita Falls, Texas airport, she had to be there to greet him, along with me and Dad. Now my Dad…
Self-esteem is a tough nut to crack for most people. Very few people think they are perfect and those that do can’t see what the rest of us know. So we all have weak spots in our self-confidence. But, if you are overweight, as about two-thirds of American are, or even obese (which is a third of the American population right now), being self-confident borders on the impossible. Despite these numbers, anyone carrying extra pounds is continually subjected to the suggestion that skinny people are the only ones who really count. Size is always a factor in the entertainment industry; marketing and fashion campaigns use skinny models and the rest of us chase endless ideas on how to modify the bodies we have right now. With all of this subliminal propaganda, do you wonder why folks get depressed? Enter Jennifer Dome King, the blogger behind Stellar Fashion and Fitness and the author of Fat Girl Power: How I Built Confidence through Body Positivity, Fashion and Fitness. After chasing the Holy Grail of everyone else’s approval, Jennifer went after a more difficult but rewarding goal. She learned to love and believe in herself, just as she is, and debunk society’s myths about…
Great Uncles and Nephews(The only record of my family on the porch)The bare edge of the rocker is at the left My dad’s family lived in a house with a front porch they never used. I mean they never used it during my lifetime. When we visited, we always parked in the side yard and used the kitchen door for our exits and entrances. (Some farm families do that; the kitchen is the heart of the house and everyone’s go-to spot before and after the fields.) All the indoor rooms were lived in but the front porch, with its wrought iron supports and cement floor was just not a comfortable place. The only decorations I remember seeing on the porch were some Elephant Ears growing out of coffee cans and the only seats were some wooden rocking chairs that could put splinters in your thighs if you sat in them. These chairs were hard and unfinished and the antithesis of comfort. Alone, they were enough to turn me into someone who hated porches. Luckily that didn’t work because my adult home came equipped with a porch that I wouldn’t change for the world. Running the length of the house it…
Now that Halloween and it’s cornucopia of scary stories is past, it’s time to look at the final part of the year, when the shadows lengthen early and the evenings run cold. These are the evenings when it’s good to snuggle up with a few, warm comforts as we step into the long nights of the year. So, pick up a warm drink, a good companion and a nice, old-fashioned kid’s book, like The Railway Children. It makes sense that the Industrial Age created “the Cult of the Child” and Children’s Literature. Before then time, working and middle-class kids went with their parents to the fields and shops and started helping as soon as they could stand. Children weren’t read aloud to at night because many of their Georgian-era parents lacked the energy, or ability to read at the end of the day and they had no money for books. Then came the era of machines and their descendants started working indoors. The money was better but these Victorian parents were often absent from their children’s lives and they missed the little ones they labored for. It’s no surprise Victorian children were read aloud to in the evenings and that…