WHO REALLY WON AND WHO LOST

The Republicans won the election but in actuality students from pre-school to college age lost.

Since Jeb Bush, likely the next Republican candidate for president decided he was Florida’s education Governor, every student in this state has lost a chance to excel.

From the second grade on, our state school system has failed to allow creativity or arts in our schools because teachers are expected to teach to the test. Students memorize answers and promptly forget what they supposedly learned.

Governor Scott actually bragged about giving the teachers raises. What he didn’t say, was he required teachers to contribute a like amount into their state retirement accounts, which they hadn’t been required to do in previous years, and this meant their take home income became even less after so many years of no raises. So his answer to the educators who spoke out was to give them a raise. Guess how much! It’s the same amount that they’re required to pay into their retirement fund, so their income is virtually the same as it was before. He calls it a raise, brags about it and receives applause from those parents, who are still being shortchanged in the education of their children.

What’s amazing to me is that educators in Pasco County are now trying to do away with much of this standardizing testing because so many students are failing in our local schools.

We residents do have lots of bragging rights about our colleges though, don’t we? We love to see a winning team on national television. Unfortunately many of our football and basketball players can barely read or write, but somehow make passing grades in college. (That’s the norm for colleges all over the USA, not just in Florida)

Speaking of colleges, we now have a new president of Florida State University that has no background in education, but a great resume in politics. He now has an even bigger bank account.

 

 

 

 

I’M A STORY TELLER

I tell stories. That’s what I am. I tell them when I write and I tell them when I’m acting. Being able to understand a playwright’s words and interpret them is what I’m good at, actually what I’m excellent at. I refuse to be labeled as an egotist; I’m honest about how I feel about my portrayal of a character, whether acting or writing.

One director said I totally became the person I was playing. A young woman, who went on to become a stage and television actor, told me of her mother, grandmother and sister with whom I spent time talking to in the green room. One or two of them would come to rehearsals or performances and sit back stage, but when it became time for me to go on stage they would go out into the theater to watch me. She said that they always asked her if that was me, because they can't believe it when I became someone else.

If someone says to me, you were wonderful in the role, I thank them, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Some people think that’s what an actor wants to hear. I’d rather hear it from other actors or directors who understand just what I accomplished.

So I wrote a book in the first person, telling a story directly to the reader. Then other characters tell their own stories directly to the reader. My book is one person to another telling a story of what is happening in their lives and my story telling evolves in that way.

I refuse to try to be what someone else says I should do or how I should write. This is my story and some people will be enthralled by it or not, but I will not change it to another person’s view as to what it should be. 

I love my story, I tell it only to you who are willing to listen to what I have to say.

VISIT FROM A FRIEND

Last week the young man who had done a lot of odd jobs for us stopped by just to say hello. He explained he’s been working nearby and felt guilty for not contacting us for a while.

We were surprised to see that he had lost a great deal of weight. He explained he’d broken his collarbone and had other issues as well. However, his worst news was that his wife was in the hospital and she had been there for three weeks, because of a blood disorder which the doctors couldn’t diagnose. Leukemia was not seen as the problem.

Then he gave us another surprise, being self-employed he’d had no health insurance, so he had signed up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. (Obamacare, as Republicans like to call it) And luckily for him, it went into effect right before his accident and his wife’s hospitalization. He was totally thankful.

I really don’t have to tell you, do I, that when he worked for us, I asked and he said yes, he was a Republican.

HOW WE SPENT MEMORIAL DAY

As usual, we spent little over an hour in tribute to the Veteran’s in our small community, the ones who are still alive, as well as the ones we remember from past celebrations. There were veterans from each service, Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard each carrying their division flags and wearing hats to be placed in the solemn empty chair ceremony.

We arrived early and I was sitting on the couch in the lobby with a good friend, when another friend stopped to chat. He was wearing his flight suit, which fit snuggly. I asked about any medals he might have, he said he had some, but could only wear them on his dress uniform which no longer fit. Next year, he vows to have lost weight. I should mention that he is a retired USAF Lt. Colonel and was the pilot for Vice-President Al Gore on Air Force 2.

And I’ll also tell of the only veteran of WW ll to attend. He was a private during that war and tomorrow is flying to Washington DC to be part of a tribute there.

One of the other flag carriers has three purple hearts from Viet Nam.

Each of the flag carriers has his own story.

Our emcee is a retired Naval Commander.

The gentleman singing a capella is a retired Fire Department Captain and one the First Responders in New York City.

You will also be interested in a young man we met. My friend’s granddaughter also sang and her boyfriend came along and he looked rather young.  Well, looks aren’t everything, that young man is a thirty-five year old psychiatrist and based at our Veteran’s Hospital.

As part of the tribute, we remembered the wheel chaired vet who died several years ago. He was a former POW and headed a local group of POW’s from our county.

After we all were given a flower to drop in an army Helmut placed on a chair, with army boots on the blanket under it, we proceeded past about twenty or so of the lined up veterans who attended, shook their hands, and thanked them for their service.

IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING

I’d not been writing on my blog recently, because I’d been busy elsewhere.

I really thought I’d informed my readers that I had decided to write a book. But when I went onto my blog, I discovered that I haven’t told you about my plans. Except for my family, I have not told any of the people I associate with either. Now I’m ready.

Last week, I finished it. This was a tremendous experience for me, I’d never thought about doing a book of fiction or any other book at all.

In writing a book, you must decide what type of book it’s to be. Then you need a plot and a main character.

That’s not what I did, I saw a somewhat unusual person on a sidewalk as I was driving   by on my way to the Dollar Store. I thought that would be a great title for a book. I was laughing as I continued on my way, but the title kept nagging me.

I could not stop thinking about her and decided I was going to write a comedy/mystery about her. I first told my plan to my husband of almost sixty-three years, and empathized that the woman I was writing about was not me and any man in it would not be him.

I know you should only write about what you know, so I planned that the lady would be in her eighties. I quickly changed that, thinking who wants to read about an old lady? So she’s in her late fifties.

I read the first two pages to my husband and we both thought them funny. However, what I had plotted in my head, did not translate to my keyboard. I started to realize that the story became very dark and in spite of the light beginning, it turned into something tragic. The story was writing itself, nothing of what I’d planned took hold.

My evil character, who would die and get his just reward, suddenly gave me a new prospective of himself. I have no idea why.

  

Then more characters popped up, and suddenly they all meshed in. Now I was writing every day and gained more insight into these people I had created and began to understand things about them, I’d not thought possible to explain.

Then my people started speaking in the first person about themselves and also carried the plot along. My own kids upon reading some of the book said not to create any more characters. They felt it would be difficult to keep them straight. I felt a little different, but I tried to keep it simple.

I became very excited about my first love scene, I cried when I finished it.  When I asked my daughter how she felt about it, she said “what love scene? It’s so subtle, she’d missed the point. I still kept it in.

In a later chapter, I started writing very brazenly about an affair.  Of all who have read it, no one has said “tone it down” so I got away with it. But will my young grandchildren be allowed to read it?

At this point, I discovered I was writing about very romantic people, whom I loved. I knew I’d have to kill someone and picked out that person and how his death would create more drama. When I wrote that scene, none of what I planned happened. It took a twist somehow, and the scene itself became very dramatic for every one of my cast.

Most of what I’d done could actually be a play reading, the thing I’m totally familiar with. 

When I was trying to get back to the prequel of the first section, everything I had planned went totally out the window and once again the novel became a comedy. That part became my favorite and the ending came with tears in my eyes again.

I feel that way because the people I created are my children and I love them all.

My book is about 70,000 words in case you wondered, just enough for a novel.

Does anyone know of an agent for me to contact, or know someone in publishing?

A WALGREEN INCIDENT

I’d just entered Walgreen’s when a man started to berate the cashier for not giving him an instant refund on some little things in his hands. To me it looked like some candy bars. She was trying to explain to him that the manager would have to handle it for some reason.

He started by calling her stupid for not being able to give him the refund and he had his wife waiting for him in the car and wanted his money this minute because he had no time for such nonsense from such an inept person. Just then a male employee approached him and asked him to please calm down. He started yelling at him, too, so the employee said either he was quiet or he would call the police, as he escorted him to a door near the rear of the store where a woman came out to talk to him. She must have been the store manager.

I was getting things from the cooler in the area right next to where the woman was still listening to him shouting. The male employee said he would get him the money as I headed for the checkout counter.

As I got there, I looked back and heard the man talking loudly to a woman standing in front of the photo department. Then he started to scream at her, too when she told him to pipe down and he walked quickly away from her and told her to go f---- herself. As he stomped out of the store, he yelled at the cashier whose line I was in, saying he was reporting her to headquarters for her stupidity and he would remember what she looked like. One of the other clerks went out and said he had left with the woman by the photo department, who was his wife.

The people standing in line all said that he was a terrible person to act like did. When it was my turn to pay, the clerk told me she was still shaking because she had never been so scared. That’s when it dawned on me that this is Florida where all kinds of crazy people are able to buy guns and have concealed weapon permits and for the first time I felt vulnerable and realized what might have happened if he came back into the store and I was standing by that clerk.

That’s when I really got scared.

THE ART OF USING TEA AS AN AGING PROCESS OR HOW I ALMOST BURNED DOWN THE HOUSE

Using brewed tea to age fabric is a very old process similar to using onion skins to dye eggs brown for Easter, in case you didn’t know about such things? It’s a very practical way to use common household ingredients.

First you boil a pot of water, then add tea bags depending on the amount of cloth you're aging. I put six in about two quarts of water and left it with the lid on until it cooled. If you have too much material, you may need to do it a second time with more tea bags, which is what I was doing the second time. I was really trying to change a white table cloth into an antique white one. (I did this in the bathroom sink)

But it was time to pick up a friend we had invited to lunch at a cafe nearby, so I put the second batch of bags in water and left it on the stove and intending to turn on the burner when we returned.

We had a delightful lunch. The waiters and waitresses, who are unpaid volunteers, were friends of all three of us. We chatted with them, some whom we haven’t seen for a while. Our guest, who is moving, was glad for the chance to say goodbye to old friends.

We finally returned home to a horrific smell in the kitchen. I did not intentionally turn on the burner, but it was truly my own fault. Black sooty stuff from the pan was all over the top of the stove and the pan itself was ashen colored and stuck to the glass top.  I thought I wouldn’t be able to pry the pan off the glass without breaking something, but I tugged, it come off and I was able to take it outside to cool. I went out later to put it in the trash and I saw there were big balls of charcoal inside which used to be teabags.

We had opened the windows and patio doors, turned on the fans and the smell went away. We cleaned the glass stove top and it’s working just fine. It wasn't possible get out some of the burnt on stain, but it works fine.

I think God was looking over us.