Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
October 21, 2008
As I type this, it’s less than 2 weeks till Election Day. Or perhaps its Judgement day. Who knows which way we are headed. Being a moderate conservative, I can only hope and pray that these United States of America will truly be united and not headed blindly toward what smacks of socialism, pure and simple.
I am reminded of a movie that I saw back in 1976. Do you remember 1976? I sure do. Gerald Ford was president. He has the distinction of being the only president that was never elected as either Vice President or President. Gerald Ford was a good man but the Watergate scandal and the Viet Nam War tainted him. He was saddled with a slow and shaky economy so when the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter came onto the political scene with his folksy down home Carter Peanuts, people thought they had seen the light and the messiah. Carter was a new comer to the Washington scene and seen as a reformer. He won by a narrow margin that year. Sound eerily familiar yet?
So, back to the movie I saw in 1976. It was Network; A rather bizarre movie at the time, starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Ned Beatty. Peter Finch played a character named Howard Beale and he is the main event in this movie which shows how low TV news will go for ratings and how they exploited the poor guys’ madness. There is one memorable piece of rhetoric that has always stuck in my mind.
I now give you ‘Howard Beales’ speech from the 1976 movie Network. You can change a few of the words and this speech or rant is just as relevant today as it was in 1976.
“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression (recession). Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!
We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster (microwave) and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."
Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.
I want you to get mad!
I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression (recession) and the inflation and the Russians (Iranains) and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.
You've gotta say, "I'm a human being! My life has value!"
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,
"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"
See what I mean? It works doesn’t it? Are you mad yet? Are you ready to get up off your couch and get out and vote? Are you ready to finally take a stand and vote for what is you know is right? Are you ready to stand up for the freedoms that men and women have given their lives to protect for those of us that have never fought in a war? Are you ready to fight for the Pledge of Allegiance and that flag pin on your lapel and Old Glory flying on that pole in your front yard? Are you ready to put your money where your mouth is and reclaim America from the liberals? Well are you? Go vote on November 4th or you won’t have any right to complain if things don’t go your way. Voting is a privilege. It is our right to vote. I have never missed voting in an election since I was 18. Like old Howard Beale, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!! Go vote. It’s your duty to yourself and your country.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Mirror Mirror on the Wall
Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
October 13, 2008
Mirror, Mirror on the wall?
Who’s playing with our money in the hall?
I feel the need to get up on my political soapbox. So whether you agree with me or not, in the interest of our country and our collective futures just bear with me ok? I’m not telling you who to vote for. I’m not even asking you to vote for ‘this one or that one’. I’m just going to throw out some information so that YOU can make an informed decision. This will make you sick
It’s been what……two weeks since the bailout went into effect. Has anyone looked up the definition of bailout?
The new name of it is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Another term to go down into the history books.
There has been a whole lot of finger pointing going on in the world of politics the last couple of weeks. For those of you, who would rather stay in the dark, stop reading. I would never want to upset your political party's talking points and ruin your day. But for those who just enjoy history or want to understand how or why we got to this point in financial chaos read on. 1970 Freddie Mac was created by Democrats in Congress 57-43 Senate and 234-192 House.1977 the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by the Democratic Congress (61-39 Senate and 292-143 House) and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. It encouraged banks and mortgage lenders to loan money for housing to people who would not otherwise qualify (with Freddie and Fannie backing same by taking the paper).1995 President Clinton signed the executive order mandating lenders expand their lending for mortgages to sub-prime borrowers (that means people who would not qualify under any criteria in a sane world). Failure to do so would result in the lending institution not having access to federal funds or the quasi governmental Fannie and Freddie.1999 Republican Senator Phil Gramm pushed through congress deregulation laws (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) removing Depression era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities... (a really stupid move...in my humble, yet financially under educated opinion) The vote in the Senate was 98-1-1. McCain was the one who did not vote, another republican was the lone no vote. Biden and Harry Reid, who are now saying it's all Bush's fault, voted for the bill. Even Obama this week places the blamed on Gramm, but fails to mention that his running mate voted for it, and Clinton signed it into law.2003 President Bush tried to get congress to amend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rules to disallow loans to people who would not qualify under normal lending institution rules for making loans. In other words, rescind the Clinton Executive order which had by now become the rules of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Democrats in the Senate (48) used the threat of filibuster to kill the bill (got to have that magic 60 in the Senate to stop a filibuster). George should have jumped up and down and yelled a little louder. Better yet he should have used stronger tactics and told the American people over and over and over again that we needed to watch these folks. Why weren’t we listening?2006 Greenspan testified before congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both a house of cards and needed a lot more oversight and controls in case this country found itself in a recession in the future. That duty falls to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Democrat Chris Dodd is Chairman. He wasn't thrilled with Greenspan's advice, because he was the number one campaign money receiver from Fannie and Freddie over the years. Obama was number 2, and he raked his in two years.Now Dodd has gotten the 700 billion to bailout the house of cards, but he wants more oversight, which he had in the first place, but doesn't want to point his finger at himself for not doing his job, even when the whole mess is exposed.Every single piece of legislation the Republicans have put up to regulate the financial industry since 2000 has been killed in the Senate by Democrats. These folks have been living large with OUR hard earned tax dollars people! Its not their assets they are playing games with. Its Ours…yours….mine!95% of the homeowners are paying their monthly mortgage payments. It's those 5% that are facing foreclosure that are costing you and me, the sweet little hardworking middle class taxpayers, a trillion or so. Have you checked your 401K lately? Well don’t! You will fall on your knees in front of the great white throne and throw up! Your 401K is probably gone or greatly diminished. I hope your health is good because Boomers like me will be working as long as they can get to work and still do the job! But when the politicians start pointing fingers, watch closely. Notice they will not be near a mirror. Either they don’t want to see themselves or they have no reflection at all.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall?
Who’s the dumbest ones of all?
We, the middle class, are if we don’t get up off our assets and go vote on November 4!
Vonda Keon
October 13, 2008
Mirror, Mirror on the wall?
Who’s playing with our money in the hall?
I feel the need to get up on my political soapbox. So whether you agree with me or not, in the interest of our country and our collective futures just bear with me ok? I’m not telling you who to vote for. I’m not even asking you to vote for ‘this one or that one’. I’m just going to throw out some information so that YOU can make an informed decision. This will make you sick
It’s been what……two weeks since the bailout went into effect. Has anyone looked up the definition of bailout?
The new name of it is the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Another term to go down into the history books.
There has been a whole lot of finger pointing going on in the world of politics the last couple of weeks. For those of you, who would rather stay in the dark, stop reading. I would never want to upset your political party's talking points and ruin your day. But for those who just enjoy history or want to understand how or why we got to this point in financial chaos read on. 1970 Freddie Mac was created by Democrats in Congress 57-43 Senate and 234-192 House.1977 the Community Reinvestment Act was passed by the Democratic Congress (61-39 Senate and 292-143 House) and signed into law by Jimmy Carter. It encouraged banks and mortgage lenders to loan money for housing to people who would not otherwise qualify (with Freddie and Fannie backing same by taking the paper).1995 President Clinton signed the executive order mandating lenders expand their lending for mortgages to sub-prime borrowers (that means people who would not qualify under any criteria in a sane world). Failure to do so would result in the lending institution not having access to federal funds or the quasi governmental Fannie and Freddie.1999 Republican Senator Phil Gramm pushed through congress deregulation laws (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) removing Depression era laws separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities... (a really stupid move...in my humble, yet financially under educated opinion) The vote in the Senate was 98-1-1. McCain was the one who did not vote, another republican was the lone no vote. Biden and Harry Reid, who are now saying it's all Bush's fault, voted for the bill. Even Obama this week places the blamed on Gramm, but fails to mention that his running mate voted for it, and Clinton signed it into law.2003 President Bush tried to get congress to amend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rules to disallow loans to people who would not qualify under normal lending institution rules for making loans. In other words, rescind the Clinton Executive order which had by now become the rules of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Democrats in the Senate (48) used the threat of filibuster to kill the bill (got to have that magic 60 in the Senate to stop a filibuster). George should have jumped up and down and yelled a little louder. Better yet he should have used stronger tactics and told the American people over and over and over again that we needed to watch these folks. Why weren’t we listening?2006 Greenspan testified before congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were both a house of cards and needed a lot more oversight and controls in case this country found itself in a recession in the future. That duty falls to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Democrat Chris Dodd is Chairman. He wasn't thrilled with Greenspan's advice, because he was the number one campaign money receiver from Fannie and Freddie over the years. Obama was number 2, and he raked his in two years.Now Dodd has gotten the 700 billion to bailout the house of cards, but he wants more oversight, which he had in the first place, but doesn't want to point his finger at himself for not doing his job, even when the whole mess is exposed.Every single piece of legislation the Republicans have put up to regulate the financial industry since 2000 has been killed in the Senate by Democrats. These folks have been living large with OUR hard earned tax dollars people! Its not their assets they are playing games with. Its Ours…yours….mine!95% of the homeowners are paying their monthly mortgage payments. It's those 5% that are facing foreclosure that are costing you and me, the sweet little hardworking middle class taxpayers, a trillion or so. Have you checked your 401K lately? Well don’t! You will fall on your knees in front of the great white throne and throw up! Your 401K is probably gone or greatly diminished. I hope your health is good because Boomers like me will be working as long as they can get to work and still do the job! But when the politicians start pointing fingers, watch closely. Notice they will not be near a mirror. Either they don’t want to see themselves or they have no reflection at all.
Mirror, Mirror on the wall?
Who’s the dumbest ones of all?
We, the middle class, are if we don’t get up off our assets and go vote on November 4!
Monday, October 06, 2008
Where's the Beef?
Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
October 7, 2008
I was walking across the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly in Bruce last week when I heard someone call my name. I looked around to see who was hollering at me and a man drove up to me and said he wanted me to do some investigative reporting. I just laughed at that thought. Me? Investigative reporting? Nahhh. I write more on the side of thought provoking entertainment…..I hope.
At any rate, my curiosity was piqued so I asked him just what did I need to be doing an expose’ on. He said just two words. “Angus Beef”. I knew the second he said it that I would have to do it because I have long wondered about it myself. Just what the heck is the deal with Angus Beef and what have we been eating all these years. Chopped liver? Or perhaps I should say beef jerky?
What is Angus beef, and why is it suddenly such a big deal? Who was Angus and why did he highjack my steaks and burgers? Can I Lojack my trusty sirloins and New York strip steaks or am I doomed to have to purchase this high priced beef when the craving for red meat flings itself upon me? Certified "Angus beef" seems to be all the rage these days. Is it just a buzzword, or is it as something distinguished as the commercials would have me believe?
Why is it that we are inundated with commercials and posters and bill boards touting the wonders of Angus Beef? I walk into Burger King and thank goodness I don’t see that creepy big headed Burger King guy but there are all the signs that say Angus Beef Burgers are better. Go to McDonalds and Ronald has his dollar menu up there and then the premium Angus Burgers. And they sure aren’t priced at a dollar. So what the heck kind of meat is in that one Dollar burger? Tastes like beef to me!
Wendy’s, Subway for heavens sake! Hardees! They all have your whimpy little, low on the totem pole, beef burgers and then they have the high priced Angus Beef Burgers. And of course the Angus burger comes on the specialty bun. Now that last bastion of Americana has succumbed to the dreaded trend. Sonic has an Angus Bacon Cheeseburger! Oh the humanity of it all!
As I walk through the grocery stores, the food section of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, the Kroger supermarkets, SAMS Club, all I notice are the sections of meat. There is the assortment of steaks and roasts and ground beefs and then there is the section of the same except it proudly proclaims ANGUS BEEF is better. It is going to cost more that is for certain.
So this is what I found out after doing some digging around and snooping on the internet and asking the butchers.
Angus beef is the meat from a specific breed of cattle, generally referred to as Angus cattle. (There are different types of Angus cattle though, not just one specific breed.) The beef producers of this country are marketing Angus cattle as a superior beef source, just as different car manufacturers promote different brands as superior. Certified Angus Beef (C.A.B.) must be prime or choice grades only. Since many grocery stores sell lesser grades of beef, this establishes the Certified Angus Beef as a premium line, giving both the beef producer and the grocery store a chance for additional profits.
According to the National Cattleman's Beef Association, only about 8% of U.S. beef is entitled to the label "Certified Angus." Just because something is labeled "Angus" or "Black Angus" doesn't mean it's the same quality as "Certified Angus Beef." Angus beef is further differentiated by USDA grades such as "prime," "choice," and "select," giving us such labels as "Certified Angus Prime," indicating the best Certified Angus Beef.
There are Black Angus and Brown Angus but apparently it’s the Black Angus beef that has it origins in Scotland, that is far more superior. How now Brown Cow? How do you feel about that?
I am not a steak aficionado but I could actually care less about whether or not I am eating a superior ground up Certified Black Angus or a lowly store brand Hereford. When I want a burger I want a burger and I am not checking its pedigree. Just give me a big old patty of charbroiled beef well done. Slap it on a toasted bun along with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes. A big kosher pickle and and a cold glass of 7UP. 7UP! That is another thing that is hard to find now adays. Where the heck did that soft drink? Sprite is ok and I do the Dew at times. But there is nothing like a 7UP to wash done my plain ole beefy burger.
So people I challenge you to stand up and let your voice be heard. Ask what the deal is with the Angus beef. Where’s the BEEF? (and the 7Up?)
Vonda Keon
October 7, 2008
I was walking across the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly in Bruce last week when I heard someone call my name. I looked around to see who was hollering at me and a man drove up to me and said he wanted me to do some investigative reporting. I just laughed at that thought. Me? Investigative reporting? Nahhh. I write more on the side of thought provoking entertainment…..I hope.
At any rate, my curiosity was piqued so I asked him just what did I need to be doing an expose’ on. He said just two words. “Angus Beef”. I knew the second he said it that I would have to do it because I have long wondered about it myself. Just what the heck is the deal with Angus Beef and what have we been eating all these years. Chopped liver? Or perhaps I should say beef jerky?
What is Angus beef, and why is it suddenly such a big deal? Who was Angus and why did he highjack my steaks and burgers? Can I Lojack my trusty sirloins and New York strip steaks or am I doomed to have to purchase this high priced beef when the craving for red meat flings itself upon me? Certified "Angus beef" seems to be all the rage these days. Is it just a buzzword, or is it as something distinguished as the commercials would have me believe?
Why is it that we are inundated with commercials and posters and bill boards touting the wonders of Angus Beef? I walk into Burger King and thank goodness I don’t see that creepy big headed Burger King guy but there are all the signs that say Angus Beef Burgers are better. Go to McDonalds and Ronald has his dollar menu up there and then the premium Angus Burgers. And they sure aren’t priced at a dollar. So what the heck kind of meat is in that one Dollar burger? Tastes like beef to me!
Wendy’s, Subway for heavens sake! Hardees! They all have your whimpy little, low on the totem pole, beef burgers and then they have the high priced Angus Beef Burgers. And of course the Angus burger comes on the specialty bun. Now that last bastion of Americana has succumbed to the dreaded trend. Sonic has an Angus Bacon Cheeseburger! Oh the humanity of it all!
As I walk through the grocery stores, the food section of a Wal-Mart Supercenter, the Kroger supermarkets, SAMS Club, all I notice are the sections of meat. There is the assortment of steaks and roasts and ground beefs and then there is the section of the same except it proudly proclaims ANGUS BEEF is better. It is going to cost more that is for certain.
So this is what I found out after doing some digging around and snooping on the internet and asking the butchers.
Angus beef is the meat from a specific breed of cattle, generally referred to as Angus cattle. (There are different types of Angus cattle though, not just one specific breed.) The beef producers of this country are marketing Angus cattle as a superior beef source, just as different car manufacturers promote different brands as superior. Certified Angus Beef (C.A.B.) must be prime or choice grades only. Since many grocery stores sell lesser grades of beef, this establishes the Certified Angus Beef as a premium line, giving both the beef producer and the grocery store a chance for additional profits.
According to the National Cattleman's Beef Association, only about 8% of U.S. beef is entitled to the label "Certified Angus." Just because something is labeled "Angus" or "Black Angus" doesn't mean it's the same quality as "Certified Angus Beef." Angus beef is further differentiated by USDA grades such as "prime," "choice," and "select," giving us such labels as "Certified Angus Prime," indicating the best Certified Angus Beef.
There are Black Angus and Brown Angus but apparently it’s the Black Angus beef that has it origins in Scotland, that is far more superior. How now Brown Cow? How do you feel about that?
I am not a steak aficionado but I could actually care less about whether or not I am eating a superior ground up Certified Black Angus or a lowly store brand Hereford. When I want a burger I want a burger and I am not checking its pedigree. Just give me a big old patty of charbroiled beef well done. Slap it on a toasted bun along with lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and French fried potatoes. A big kosher pickle and and a cold glass of 7UP. 7UP! That is another thing that is hard to find now adays. Where the heck did that soft drink? Sprite is ok and I do the Dew at times. But there is nothing like a 7UP to wash done my plain ole beefy burger.
So people I challenge you to stand up and let your voice be heard. Ask what the deal is with the Angus beef. Where’s the BEEF? (and the 7Up?)
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
The evil mutant attack squirrel of death
Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
September 22, 2008
I ran across a story of a motorcyclist in South Mississippi that had a really bad encounter with an angry squirrel. It made me laugh so hard because I started remembering my own encounter with a Mutant Attack Squirrel.
I opened a pre-school on North McSweyn in 1997. Four days a week, I taught ABC’s and 123’s and computer skills and read stories and sang songs with 3 and 4 year olds for a couple of hours each day. We had so much fun finger painting and doing puzzles and playing dress up and of course going outside and playing games.
I always taught things about nature, how to identify trees and flowers and good bugs and bad bugs. We looked for snakes, mainly to avoid them, and watched for turtles in the creek. Then there were the many squirrels that roamed freely in the yard between Mom’s pecan orchard and the little house that was my preschool.
At that time I drove a Chevy van that held maybe 9 kids max. I didn’t drive them around so space wasn’t an issue. Until the day that the Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death appeared.
I had the little ones outside and we were marching and singing at the top of our lungs trying to shake the sillies out when Matthew noticed a baby squirrel just sitting on the ground by the redbud tree in the front yard. We all got very quiet and slowly approached the little gray furry creature and it just looked at us with its little beady eyes. It didn’t hardly have any fluff on its tail it was so young. I told the children to stand back as I searched all over for its mama. The kids looked below the trees and bushes and I looked high into the trees. Nope, no mama, but the neighbor’s cat had spied the baby and had that lean and hungry look in its eyes. I knew that little squirrel was about to become lunch for that cat and I sure didn’t want the kids to witness that carnage.
I went over to the little squirrel and talked to it in soothing tones and gently picked it up and put it up into the tree. It still looked at me with those little beady eyes. Then it threw its head back, stood up on its little teeny hind legs, opened its little mouth and screamed what I am pretty sure was squirrel for “ BANZAI! You pecan loving, heathen!” The sound that escaped from that tiny little creature was amazing. But then I heard the same scream and a crashing noise that sounded like a miniature herd of elephants coming out of the giant oak across the street.
We all turned around and observed what was apparently the mama squirrel, coming toward us. Except this was no ordinary squirrel. This was the Crazed Evil Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death. The leap that squirrel executed was something that an Olympian would be proud of. It would have pulled 10’s straight across the board. Snarling, hissing and chattering loudly, the little furry tornado came running across the busy street only to run under a car. I just knew that squirrel was a Frisbee at that point. But noooo.
When that car drove on, there she was, hunkered down on the street. She was now the
Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death and she was on a mission. She ran toward my legs and proceeded to run in circles up my legs. I yelled at the kids to run and get into the van. All 15 kids obeyed! They ran as fast as their little 3 and 4 year old legs would carry them and packed into the van while I was doing the Mexican hat dance in the yard trying to get that screaming banshee of a squirrel off my body. She was like a Tasmanian Devil. I was screaming, the crazy squirrel was screaming, the baby squirrel was still screaming and the kids were in the can screaming!
I grabbed the squirrel by it’s fluffy tail and did a couple of swings round my head and turned loose and she went sailing across the yard only to land on her feet and she was REALLY mad at me then. By this time, I realized that I needed to get into the van with the kids or they were going to witness me being eaten alive by that Wicked, Vile Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death. I sprinted for the van only to find the children had locked the doors. So there I was, locked out of the van that was packed full of screaming preschoolers, with a dangerous squirrel running at me intent on shredding me.
I finally convinced the children to open the door and let me in. That squirrel jumped on the windshield of the van and shook its little fists at me. Then she jumped off the van, climbed the redbud tree, grabbed her baby by the nape of its neck and dragged it back across the street and up into the large oak tree. I tried to get out of the van after a while and she ran back down the tree and chattered at me. So there the kids and I sat for a while. Matthew finally said from somewhere in the back of the van, that next time we should just let the cat eat the squirrel.
I totally agreed.
Vonda Keon
September 22, 2008
I ran across a story of a motorcyclist in South Mississippi that had a really bad encounter with an angry squirrel. It made me laugh so hard because I started remembering my own encounter with a Mutant Attack Squirrel.
I opened a pre-school on North McSweyn in 1997. Four days a week, I taught ABC’s and 123’s and computer skills and read stories and sang songs with 3 and 4 year olds for a couple of hours each day. We had so much fun finger painting and doing puzzles and playing dress up and of course going outside and playing games.
I always taught things about nature, how to identify trees and flowers and good bugs and bad bugs. We looked for snakes, mainly to avoid them, and watched for turtles in the creek. Then there were the many squirrels that roamed freely in the yard between Mom’s pecan orchard and the little house that was my preschool.
At that time I drove a Chevy van that held maybe 9 kids max. I didn’t drive them around so space wasn’t an issue. Until the day that the Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death appeared.
I had the little ones outside and we were marching and singing at the top of our lungs trying to shake the sillies out when Matthew noticed a baby squirrel just sitting on the ground by the redbud tree in the front yard. We all got very quiet and slowly approached the little gray furry creature and it just looked at us with its little beady eyes. It didn’t hardly have any fluff on its tail it was so young. I told the children to stand back as I searched all over for its mama. The kids looked below the trees and bushes and I looked high into the trees. Nope, no mama, but the neighbor’s cat had spied the baby and had that lean and hungry look in its eyes. I knew that little squirrel was about to become lunch for that cat and I sure didn’t want the kids to witness that carnage.
I went over to the little squirrel and talked to it in soothing tones and gently picked it up and put it up into the tree. It still looked at me with those little beady eyes. Then it threw its head back, stood up on its little teeny hind legs, opened its little mouth and screamed what I am pretty sure was squirrel for “ BANZAI! You pecan loving, heathen!” The sound that escaped from that tiny little creature was amazing. But then I heard the same scream and a crashing noise that sounded like a miniature herd of elephants coming out of the giant oak across the street.
We all turned around and observed what was apparently the mama squirrel, coming toward us. Except this was no ordinary squirrel. This was the Crazed Evil Mutant Attack Squirrel of Death. The leap that squirrel executed was something that an Olympian would be proud of. It would have pulled 10’s straight across the board. Snarling, hissing and chattering loudly, the little furry tornado came running across the busy street only to run under a car. I just knew that squirrel was a Frisbee at that point. But noooo.
When that car drove on, there she was, hunkered down on the street. She was now the
Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death and she was on a mission. She ran toward my legs and proceeded to run in circles up my legs. I yelled at the kids to run and get into the van. All 15 kids obeyed! They ran as fast as their little 3 and 4 year old legs would carry them and packed into the van while I was doing the Mexican hat dance in the yard trying to get that screaming banshee of a squirrel off my body. She was like a Tasmanian Devil. I was screaming, the crazy squirrel was screaming, the baby squirrel was still screaming and the kids were in the can screaming!
I grabbed the squirrel by it’s fluffy tail and did a couple of swings round my head and turned loose and she went sailing across the yard only to land on her feet and she was REALLY mad at me then. By this time, I realized that I needed to get into the van with the kids or they were going to witness me being eaten alive by that Wicked, Vile Crazed Evil Mutant Nazi Attack Squirrel of Death. I sprinted for the van only to find the children had locked the doors. So there I was, locked out of the van that was packed full of screaming preschoolers, with a dangerous squirrel running at me intent on shredding me.
I finally convinced the children to open the door and let me in. That squirrel jumped on the windshield of the van and shook its little fists at me. Then she jumped off the van, climbed the redbud tree, grabbed her baby by the nape of its neck and dragged it back across the street and up into the large oak tree. I tried to get out of the van after a while and she ran back down the tree and chattered at me. So there the kids and I sat for a while. Matthew finally said from somewhere in the back of the van, that next time we should just let the cat eat the squirrel.
I totally agreed.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Burma Shave signs and showing my age!
Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
September 7, 2008
This is going to show my age!
Remember the Burma Shave signs that used to be on spaced on along the road sides? They sort of went by the wayside as cars got to where they could travel faster and they were replaced with big ugly bill boards. During my morning drive to work in Oxford each day, I have time to think and ponder about other people that are driving on along the highways and several of those old Burma Shave slogans come to mind..
Proper DistanceTo him was bunk They pulled him outOf some guy's trunk
That one goes to the people that ride my bumper. I drive a huge white whale of a van. It does NOT stop on a dime. I have to plan pretty far down the road when I am going to stop that heavy vehicle. And I am sorry but I drive 55 MPH. I set my cruise on that big ole V-10 and I don’t care how much you think you are going to intimidate me into going faster, it ain’t happening. I cannot tell you how many times I have to hold my breath some days when people are riding my bumper on Highway 9W. The rule of thumb on that road is if you can see a car waiting to pull out on the highway, chances are they will do it and just about cause you to have to hit them or the nearest ditch. So to all you folks out there, if you see a big white van in front of you, don’t ride my bumper. I’m not going any faster than the speed limit, I can’t stop it on a dime, and I really don’t want to peel you off of the back door of that thing!
Passing cars When you can't seeMay get you A glimpse Of eternity
Oh yeah. I am constantly amazed at how many people pass on curves and going up a hill. Doesn’t anyone remember what those yellow lines on painted on the highway mean? Don’t pass Stupid. What really eats my lunch is the jerk that rides my bumper and then passes me on a hill only to travel about a half mile up the road until they turn! And what is the deal with swerving into the wrong lane and traveling in it for a while until you finally get to the road you are turning on? This is America not Europe. We drive in the right hand lane not the left. I have many special thoughts about those drivers; none of which can be printed in a public paper!
Dim your lightsBehind a carLet folks seeHow bright you are
Saturday evening, I was called back into work because it was my week as Team Leader and the weekend nightshift person called in sick. So I had to cover the 11pm to 7am shift. I quickly got ready for work, stopped at Sonic for a large Caramel Java Chiller and I headed out to work. It was 10 pm so I had plenty of time to get to Oxford and punch the clock at 11pm. It should have been a quiet drive. I was keeping my eyes peeled for the green glint of light from the deer that were munching the grass in the roadside ditches. My deer whistles really work. They hear me, look up and stand still. It’s like they are thinking, “If I don’t move she won’t notice me!” I just pray they keep standing still and not suddenly jump in front of me. I’ve hit one deer in my driving lifetime. That was one time enough for me.
What I really hate are the new halogen head lights. Coming toward me, they are very intense but coming up behind is murder on the retina. I have automatic mirror controls and I have gotten pretty good at redirecting the head lights back into the bumper hugger’s car. I can always tell when they finally get that reflection back in their face. They will dim their lights. But then they pass on the hills and curves too. Go figure.
Yep, those little signs are a thing of the past but they could still be quite timely today.
Farewell O verse, Along the road. How sad to see, You're out of mode.Burma Shave
Vonda Keon
September 7, 2008
This is going to show my age!
Remember the Burma Shave signs that used to be on spaced on along the road sides? They sort of went by the wayside as cars got to where they could travel faster and they were replaced with big ugly bill boards. During my morning drive to work in Oxford each day, I have time to think and ponder about other people that are driving on along the highways and several of those old Burma Shave slogans come to mind..
Proper DistanceTo him was bunk They pulled him outOf some guy's trunk
That one goes to the people that ride my bumper. I drive a huge white whale of a van. It does NOT stop on a dime. I have to plan pretty far down the road when I am going to stop that heavy vehicle. And I am sorry but I drive 55 MPH. I set my cruise on that big ole V-10 and I don’t care how much you think you are going to intimidate me into going faster, it ain’t happening. I cannot tell you how many times I have to hold my breath some days when people are riding my bumper on Highway 9W. The rule of thumb on that road is if you can see a car waiting to pull out on the highway, chances are they will do it and just about cause you to have to hit them or the nearest ditch. So to all you folks out there, if you see a big white van in front of you, don’t ride my bumper. I’m not going any faster than the speed limit, I can’t stop it on a dime, and I really don’t want to peel you off of the back door of that thing!
Passing cars When you can't seeMay get you A glimpse Of eternity
Oh yeah. I am constantly amazed at how many people pass on curves and going up a hill. Doesn’t anyone remember what those yellow lines on painted on the highway mean? Don’t pass Stupid. What really eats my lunch is the jerk that rides my bumper and then passes me on a hill only to travel about a half mile up the road until they turn! And what is the deal with swerving into the wrong lane and traveling in it for a while until you finally get to the road you are turning on? This is America not Europe. We drive in the right hand lane not the left. I have many special thoughts about those drivers; none of which can be printed in a public paper!
Dim your lightsBehind a carLet folks seeHow bright you are
Saturday evening, I was called back into work because it was my week as Team Leader and the weekend nightshift person called in sick. So I had to cover the 11pm to 7am shift. I quickly got ready for work, stopped at Sonic for a large Caramel Java Chiller and I headed out to work. It was 10 pm so I had plenty of time to get to Oxford and punch the clock at 11pm. It should have been a quiet drive. I was keeping my eyes peeled for the green glint of light from the deer that were munching the grass in the roadside ditches. My deer whistles really work. They hear me, look up and stand still. It’s like they are thinking, “If I don’t move she won’t notice me!” I just pray they keep standing still and not suddenly jump in front of me. I’ve hit one deer in my driving lifetime. That was one time enough for me.
What I really hate are the new halogen head lights. Coming toward me, they are very intense but coming up behind is murder on the retina. I have automatic mirror controls and I have gotten pretty good at redirecting the head lights back into the bumper hugger’s car. I can always tell when they finally get that reflection back in their face. They will dim their lights. But then they pass on the hills and curves too. Go figure.
Yep, those little signs are a thing of the past but they could still be quite timely today.
Farewell O verse, Along the road. How sad to see, You're out of mode.Burma Shave
Monday, September 01, 2008
This and That about This and That
Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon
August 31, 2008
To gently borrow an opening phrase from a dear friend, This and That about This and That.
There comes a time in your life when you sit down and ponder on the many people that have come and gone through your life. Some encounters are brief like a shooting star and others are recurring like a comet that keeps on coming back into your orbit. In my life I can truthfully say that there have been two iconic characters that have had a profound lasting effect on me. One was my father, David Tedford and the other was Gale Denley.
My daddy was a prankster, a self made man, who would tell you that he was the boss because my Mama told him he could be, and he was a dreamer. He could come up with some of the most hair-brained ideas, most of which was going to involve some sweat equity on my sisters’ or my part.
The other character in my life that has been an influence on me was ‘Buddy’. I went to the funeral of S.Gale Denley on Sunday and it was an event that was a truly fitting send off. It hurts that he will no longer be with us in person, but his spirit will live on in the many lives that he touched in one way or another.
When I moved back to Bruce in the summer of 1996 after my Dad died, I ran into Gale Denley at Jeffery’s eating lunch. We sat and drank tea, mine as sweet as they could make it and his was unsweetened, and got reacquainted. I had not lived in Calhoun County for over 25 years and he wanted to know just what I had been up to. I learned very quickly NOT to tell Buddy very much or it would end up in his weekly column. I kept calling him Mr. Denley because Gale was just a bit too informal for me. But he said that Mr. Denley was his dad so I called him what his kids called him. Calling him Buddy fit like a glove.
Buddy knew that I liked to write and there were many times when he would visit me at work and ask to read what I had written lately. He would critique it and tell me how to make it better. Or he would make some smart comment about what I had written with a twinkle in his eyes and a sly little smirk playing around the edges of his mouth.
Politics was something I would not argue Buddy. He was a self proclaimed Yellow Dog Democrat and I was not. Oh don’t you think that we didn’t talk about politics. I would ask him questions about politicians I wanted to know about. He knew that I didn’t like being pigeon-holed into any one political party but that didn’t stop him from trying. He just called me hard headed and I thanked him.
Over the last 12 years I watched him as he went up and down in weight and as he battled his many health issues. It broke my heart to see him changing so profoundly. Sometimes he was in high spirits and other times he was quite melancholy. But underneath it all he was still Buddy; the man with the strong opinions and the big heart. He might complain, sometimes just a little. But often he did not. He just went on the best that he could.
The last time I got to really sit down and talk with him was in the late spring when Ariel was selected as the Rotary student of the month. He offered me a little of his ever present oxygen. I declined and commented his hair was long enough to pull back into a pony tail. He looked at me and said “it’s not that long. Is it?” When I offered to pull it back with one of Ariel’s pony tail bands, he quickly stopped me and then told Joann that she needed to make him an appointment that day to have his hair cut. I saw him a few days later, nicely coiffured and when I told him how nice and gentlemanly he looked, he just sort of grunted at me and kept on sipping his tea.
My lasting memory of Buddy will always be one of a Southern Gentleman. I told him he needed to wear a big ole white Panama hat. I tried once to get him to sit for a portrait for me wearing a white suit and wearing just such a hat holding one of his canes and leaning back in a porch rocker. He just gave me that sly little grin.
To his daughters, I will cherish my times with your father. He was a fine man and a
true character. Will time ease your pain of missing him? I will tell you no. It has been 12 years since my Dad died and I still miss him every day. When I hear an ag-plane flying or even pass by a freshly sprayed field and smell the chemicals, memories of Daddy come flooding in. I can only offer you this; somewhere along the way, things will happen. You will hear something that sounds like he is walking up behind you. Or you will be questioning doing something and his voice will sound within your head giving you the answer. Buddy is still with you. He is in your heart. And THAT is all I can tell you about this and that.
Vonda Keon
August 31, 2008
To gently borrow an opening phrase from a dear friend, This and That about This and That.
There comes a time in your life when you sit down and ponder on the many people that have come and gone through your life. Some encounters are brief like a shooting star and others are recurring like a comet that keeps on coming back into your orbit. In my life I can truthfully say that there have been two iconic characters that have had a profound lasting effect on me. One was my father, David Tedford and the other was Gale Denley.
My daddy was a prankster, a self made man, who would tell you that he was the boss because my Mama told him he could be, and he was a dreamer. He could come up with some of the most hair-brained ideas, most of which was going to involve some sweat equity on my sisters’ or my part.
The other character in my life that has been an influence on me was ‘Buddy’. I went to the funeral of S.Gale Denley on Sunday and it was an event that was a truly fitting send off. It hurts that he will no longer be with us in person, but his spirit will live on in the many lives that he touched in one way or another.
When I moved back to Bruce in the summer of 1996 after my Dad died, I ran into Gale Denley at Jeffery’s eating lunch. We sat and drank tea, mine as sweet as they could make it and his was unsweetened, and got reacquainted. I had not lived in Calhoun County for over 25 years and he wanted to know just what I had been up to. I learned very quickly NOT to tell Buddy very much or it would end up in his weekly column. I kept calling him Mr. Denley because Gale was just a bit too informal for me. But he said that Mr. Denley was his dad so I called him what his kids called him. Calling him Buddy fit like a glove.
Buddy knew that I liked to write and there were many times when he would visit me at work and ask to read what I had written lately. He would critique it and tell me how to make it better. Or he would make some smart comment about what I had written with a twinkle in his eyes and a sly little smirk playing around the edges of his mouth.
Politics was something I would not argue Buddy. He was a self proclaimed Yellow Dog Democrat and I was not. Oh don’t you think that we didn’t talk about politics. I would ask him questions about politicians I wanted to know about. He knew that I didn’t like being pigeon-holed into any one political party but that didn’t stop him from trying. He just called me hard headed and I thanked him.
Over the last 12 years I watched him as he went up and down in weight and as he battled his many health issues. It broke my heart to see him changing so profoundly. Sometimes he was in high spirits and other times he was quite melancholy. But underneath it all he was still Buddy; the man with the strong opinions and the big heart. He might complain, sometimes just a little. But often he did not. He just went on the best that he could.
The last time I got to really sit down and talk with him was in the late spring when Ariel was selected as the Rotary student of the month. He offered me a little of his ever present oxygen. I declined and commented his hair was long enough to pull back into a pony tail. He looked at me and said “it’s not that long. Is it?” When I offered to pull it back with one of Ariel’s pony tail bands, he quickly stopped me and then told Joann that she needed to make him an appointment that day to have his hair cut. I saw him a few days later, nicely coiffured and when I told him how nice and gentlemanly he looked, he just sort of grunted at me and kept on sipping his tea.
My lasting memory of Buddy will always be one of a Southern Gentleman. I told him he needed to wear a big ole white Panama hat. I tried once to get him to sit for a portrait for me wearing a white suit and wearing just such a hat holding one of his canes and leaning back in a porch rocker. He just gave me that sly little grin.
To his daughters, I will cherish my times with your father. He was a fine man and a
true character. Will time ease your pain of missing him? I will tell you no. It has been 12 years since my Dad died and I still miss him every day. When I hear an ag-plane flying or even pass by a freshly sprayed field and smell the chemicals, memories of Daddy come flooding in. I can only offer you this; somewhere along the way, things will happen. You will hear something that sounds like he is walking up behind you. Or you will be questioning doing something and his voice will sound within your head giving you the answer. Buddy is still with you. He is in your heart. And THAT is all I can tell you about this and that.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Life is like a game, or is it a box of chocolate?
Blogging from Bruce
August 25, 2008
Vonda Keon
I’m going to fling a little ‘Forest Gump’ you. Instead of chocolate, I think life is like a game of baseball. Sometimes you are running the bases, sometimes you are sliding in home, and other times it throws you curve balls. I have no clue what position I am playing in my ball game. Or maybe I am in the army and I am the drill sergeant.
I feel like the umpire at times during homework and then later on when its shower time. The 3 girls all seem to want to take their showers at the same time and that’s not happening in a house with 2 showers and one hot water heater. So after being late for a couple of things over the weekend due to everyone messing around and not getting ready on time, the drill sergeant has resorted to making out a schedule and hanging it in the hall by the bathroom door.
This isn’t just any old schedule. This is a 2 foot by 4 foot dry erase board on which I have written with a permanent sharpie the schedule I have chosen for my daughter and the two exchange students. They will be ready for dorm life in college by the time this school year is over. It has all sorts of things on. Dance schedule, voice schedule, homework time, shower time, bed time, computer/TV time, miscellaneous chores and the all important ‘clean up your room and do your laundry’ time.
Laundry baskets have been issued and lessons have been given on how to use the washer and dryer. That lesson came after they all decided their jeans needed washing at 11pm on Sunday night and they forgot to tell me. So I didn’t get the wet jeans into the dryer until Monday morning at 6:30. They all had to wear slightly damp jeans to school that day. I have noticed that they are all better about doing their laundry well in advance this week.
The bed time is the biggest hurdle. I have to get up at 5 AM most mornings and be on my way to work before they are dressed for school. I start banging on bedroom doors at 6. They are all usually eating breakfast or getting dressed for school when I leave. But after I get to work I call because I still worry that someone just laid back down for a quick snooze and then missed going to school.
In talking with Ji Eun and Ping, they tell me that in their countries, they go to school for 10 hours a day. And it’s pretty much a year round thing. Staying up late is not a big deal to them while in the conservative south we tend to try and get our kids in the bed by 10 so they can get the required hours of sleep a growing healthy teenager needs. Oh who am I kidding! I want the kids asleep because I personally need the peace and quiet and sleep.
Lack of sleep is my curve ball in this new game I am in. So whether I am the umpire or the drill sergeant, life is still a game, I still don’t know my position is and like ole Forrest Gump, I’m going to go and get me a box of chocolate and see what turns up.
August 25, 2008
Vonda Keon
I’m going to fling a little ‘Forest Gump’ you. Instead of chocolate, I think life is like a game of baseball. Sometimes you are running the bases, sometimes you are sliding in home, and other times it throws you curve balls. I have no clue what position I am playing in my ball game. Or maybe I am in the army and I am the drill sergeant.
I feel like the umpire at times during homework and then later on when its shower time. The 3 girls all seem to want to take their showers at the same time and that’s not happening in a house with 2 showers and one hot water heater. So after being late for a couple of things over the weekend due to everyone messing around and not getting ready on time, the drill sergeant has resorted to making out a schedule and hanging it in the hall by the bathroom door.
This isn’t just any old schedule. This is a 2 foot by 4 foot dry erase board on which I have written with a permanent sharpie the schedule I have chosen for my daughter and the two exchange students. They will be ready for dorm life in college by the time this school year is over. It has all sorts of things on. Dance schedule, voice schedule, homework time, shower time, bed time, computer/TV time, miscellaneous chores and the all important ‘clean up your room and do your laundry’ time.
Laundry baskets have been issued and lessons have been given on how to use the washer and dryer. That lesson came after they all decided their jeans needed washing at 11pm on Sunday night and they forgot to tell me. So I didn’t get the wet jeans into the dryer until Monday morning at 6:30. They all had to wear slightly damp jeans to school that day. I have noticed that they are all better about doing their laundry well in advance this week.
The bed time is the biggest hurdle. I have to get up at 5 AM most mornings and be on my way to work before they are dressed for school. I start banging on bedroom doors at 6. They are all usually eating breakfast or getting dressed for school when I leave. But after I get to work I call because I still worry that someone just laid back down for a quick snooze and then missed going to school.
In talking with Ji Eun and Ping, they tell me that in their countries, they go to school for 10 hours a day. And it’s pretty much a year round thing. Staying up late is not a big deal to them while in the conservative south we tend to try and get our kids in the bed by 10 so they can get the required hours of sleep a growing healthy teenager needs. Oh who am I kidding! I want the kids asleep because I personally need the peace and quiet and sleep.
Lack of sleep is my curve ball in this new game I am in. So whether I am the umpire or the drill sergeant, life is still a game, I still don’t know my position is and like ole Forrest Gump, I’m going to go and get me a box of chocolate and see what turns up.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Life with exchange students!
Blogging from Bruce
August 17, 2008
Vonda Keon
Nothing is broken, no one is ill; everything is ticking right along just like a clock. There are no songs rewinding in my brain this week.
It has been over 2 weeks now since our adventure as host parents of two international students began. I am so happy to report that life is starting to fall into a routine. Both Ji Eun and Ping come from a time zone that is 12 hours ahead of us. So when you and I are awake and kicking, their internal clock is telling them it is time to sleep and vice versa. Slowly but surely they are starting to get used to the Central time zone.
Doing homework is a new thing for me. I home schooled my daughters for years. Ariel went to finish high school at BHS her junior and senior years. Erin entered BHS this year as a ‘Freshomore’. (You figure it out. With the block system it will all work out in the end.) With Erin and Ji Eun and Ping, I now have homework times 3. I sure hope the teachers all understand why the speeches and reports are going to be similar with these three girls living under one roof and studying at the same table.
Saturday, Scott and I took the girls to a Schwans Company picnic. They learned to play some new games and ate some barbeque and other Southern foods like hot dogs and watermelon and potato salad and cheesecake. After the picnic we went on a little shopping spree. Teenage girls are the same round the world. Say shop and they are already in the car! We had a list of the things we needed; Backpacks, Chuck Taylors or Nikes, shirts, Bath and Body works and then go eat at the Kyoto Japanese Grill.
The shoes proved to the pretty hard to find. I think we hit 6 stores before we finally found the sizes we needed. Don’t let anyone tell you Asian women have small feet. These two girls have good foundations to stand on. They, long with my daughter, finally found what they were looking for. The back packs were a different matter. The backpacks now need to have decent padding on the shoulder straps and plenty of room for the 24 pounds of text books and binders the kids have to lug around all day. Yes, we weighed the books and binders and it came to 24 pounds. That is a lot of weight to carry around on a kid’s back on a daily basis.
Poor Scott said he would never go shopping with us again. I am inclined to agree with him. I don’t want to go shopping with us again either. Wal-Mart runs don’t bother me but Mall shopping is not my cup of tea. Even if its green tea, its not my cup of tea!
Eating at the Japanese Grill was a treat. The girls had their money and after looking at the menu knew exactly how much they would spend and what they would eat. Our cook was from Indonesia and he could converse with them a little in their native languages. The food was good and it was nice to just sit back and watch them as they watched us. Having visited Japan, I hope most people understand that what we are eating here in America is not totally the same as it is in traditional Japanese restaurant. The same goes for eating in any Asian restaurant. The recipes are adjusted to fit our tastes and the meal would be quite different if we were in the native setting. Just think about it. Can you really get Southern Cooking anywhere else in the United States and it be done right? You just try and find sweet iced tea anywhere else but the South. It ain’t happening. Trust me on that one! And yes I know I just used poor grammar but ain’t just fit that spot!
The girls did ask me to cook a southern style meal for them one night so I cooked, blacked peas, corn bread, green beans, corn on the cob, sweet tea and banana pudding. They ate and ate. Ji Eun comes from a very health conscious family and she says Americans use too much salt. Ping is very health conscious also and says we eat too much sweet stuff. They are both right. But I serve small portions and watch what I give them. So we are all eating healthier around here now. I’m not giving up my salt totally; or my sugar.
This coming weekend they will get to experience helping with the Food Pantry. They have to do some type of community service work so the Pantry is going to be their project this week. After the pantry we will go to meet the other exchange students and their host families in Grenada for a little get together. It will be interesting to meet other host families and see and hear how they are adapting to life with a foreign exchange student.
August 17, 2008
Vonda Keon
Nothing is broken, no one is ill; everything is ticking right along just like a clock. There are no songs rewinding in my brain this week.
It has been over 2 weeks now since our adventure as host parents of two international students began. I am so happy to report that life is starting to fall into a routine. Both Ji Eun and Ping come from a time zone that is 12 hours ahead of us. So when you and I are awake and kicking, their internal clock is telling them it is time to sleep and vice versa. Slowly but surely they are starting to get used to the Central time zone.
Doing homework is a new thing for me. I home schooled my daughters for years. Ariel went to finish high school at BHS her junior and senior years. Erin entered BHS this year as a ‘Freshomore’. (You figure it out. With the block system it will all work out in the end.) With Erin and Ji Eun and Ping, I now have homework times 3. I sure hope the teachers all understand why the speeches and reports are going to be similar with these three girls living under one roof and studying at the same table.
Saturday, Scott and I took the girls to a Schwans Company picnic. They learned to play some new games and ate some barbeque and other Southern foods like hot dogs and watermelon and potato salad and cheesecake. After the picnic we went on a little shopping spree. Teenage girls are the same round the world. Say shop and they are already in the car! We had a list of the things we needed; Backpacks, Chuck Taylors or Nikes, shirts, Bath and Body works and then go eat at the Kyoto Japanese Grill.
The shoes proved to the pretty hard to find. I think we hit 6 stores before we finally found the sizes we needed. Don’t let anyone tell you Asian women have small feet. These two girls have good foundations to stand on. They, long with my daughter, finally found what they were looking for. The back packs were a different matter. The backpacks now need to have decent padding on the shoulder straps and plenty of room for the 24 pounds of text books and binders the kids have to lug around all day. Yes, we weighed the books and binders and it came to 24 pounds. That is a lot of weight to carry around on a kid’s back on a daily basis.
Poor Scott said he would never go shopping with us again. I am inclined to agree with him. I don’t want to go shopping with us again either. Wal-Mart runs don’t bother me but Mall shopping is not my cup of tea. Even if its green tea, its not my cup of tea!
Eating at the Japanese Grill was a treat. The girls had their money and after looking at the menu knew exactly how much they would spend and what they would eat. Our cook was from Indonesia and he could converse with them a little in their native languages. The food was good and it was nice to just sit back and watch them as they watched us. Having visited Japan, I hope most people understand that what we are eating here in America is not totally the same as it is in traditional Japanese restaurant. The same goes for eating in any Asian restaurant. The recipes are adjusted to fit our tastes and the meal would be quite different if we were in the native setting. Just think about it. Can you really get Southern Cooking anywhere else in the United States and it be done right? You just try and find sweet iced tea anywhere else but the South. It ain’t happening. Trust me on that one! And yes I know I just used poor grammar but ain’t just fit that spot!
The girls did ask me to cook a southern style meal for them one night so I cooked, blacked peas, corn bread, green beans, corn on the cob, sweet tea and banana pudding. They ate and ate. Ji Eun comes from a very health conscious family and she says Americans use too much salt. Ping is very health conscious also and says we eat too much sweet stuff. They are both right. But I serve small portions and watch what I give them. So we are all eating healthier around here now. I’m not giving up my salt totally; or my sugar.
This coming weekend they will get to experience helping with the Food Pantry. They have to do some type of community service work so the Pantry is going to be their project this week. After the pantry we will go to meet the other exchange students and their host families in Grenada for a little get together. It will be interesting to meet other host families and see and hear how they are adapting to life with a foreign exchange student.
Friday, August 15, 2008
I get by with a little help from my friends.
“Oh I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mm. I get by with a little help from my friendsMm, Gonna try with a little help from my friends”
That classic Beatles tune has rolled around my head all week and I do believe that jet-lag is contagious. I am just as tired as the two newest members of my family.
The Chaos and Insanity looked like it was just going to keep on hanging around. The A/C unit was fixed on the inside and then the outside component went up in smoke. There is nothing like the smell of burning wires in the hot evening to make you feel nice and cozy. Lynn the A/C magician did everything he could but that old outside unit just gave up the ghost. And you know what that means; a new unit had to installed. After a series of SNAFU’s and several phone calls to friends for help, Lynn did get the new unit up and cooling before we left for Columbus Saturday morning to move Ariel down to the W. Thank you Barbara Winter! The weather is fine in my house now!
Move-In Day at MUW was something else. There were people swarming every where. Ariel and her roomie Noelle arrived at the same time and that little room was just packed with parents and siblings and stuff. We were all moving around and putting the beds up on the highest level they could be so that the dressers could be put under the beds. The girls ended up making them into bunk beds that night. By the time we left the shower curtain was up and most of the stuff was stowed away.
We made a mad dash to the airport to wait for the arrival of Ping. Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 4:35 but my gut told me to get there early. We got there at 3:45 and were sitting in the observation area when at 5 minutes till 4 her flight swooped on in. Ping was not the only Asian on the flight but she was the one that was grinning from ear to ear as she bounced down the ramp.
We got her luggage loaded into the white whale and made a side trip to the Wal-Mart in Starkville to see if there were any familiar foods that we might find for them then we turned the van toward the north and headed to Bruce. Ping was full of questions the whole trip. She is very out going.
Sunday was a true day of rest for us all. After church, we just came home and got to know each other better. Monday morning, I took all three of my girls to school and we waited for Mrs. Brower to work on Ping’s schedule and made some changes in Ji Eun’s. I think this year with these two girls learning English and our customs and observing their customs, will be a learning experience for all. I am living in my own reality show here.
I did get a surprise when I found out that I have been called to jury duty this week. Of all the weeks to be called, this is not the one I needed. We are getting ready to upgrade the electronic medical record system at work and I am on the team responsible for training the staff. I want to do my civic duty but not this week.
As we are settling into a school routine and I try to create an evening meal that is appealing to all that sit at my table, this week should be interesting to say the least. I now have homework times 3 and it’s ESL around the dinner table. I have to get used to the Asian way of no one eats until Mama sits. I have a tendency to keep cleaning the kitchen and then I notice that no one is eating. So I have to go sit and pick up my fork and take a bite or the girls won’t eat.
Ariel and I talk on the computer and she tells me about her day, freshman traditions, get to know you mixers, oh and I twisted my ankle today but it’s no big deal, sort of conversations. I am just holding my breath and praying! I have already called my friends in Columbus and given them her phone number and she has theirs ‘in case of emergency’!
I can only hope that I really can “Get by with a little help from my friends!”
Mm. I get by with a little help from my friendsMm, Gonna try with a little help from my friends”
That classic Beatles tune has rolled around my head all week and I do believe that jet-lag is contagious. I am just as tired as the two newest members of my family.
The Chaos and Insanity looked like it was just going to keep on hanging around. The A/C unit was fixed on the inside and then the outside component went up in smoke. There is nothing like the smell of burning wires in the hot evening to make you feel nice and cozy. Lynn the A/C magician did everything he could but that old outside unit just gave up the ghost. And you know what that means; a new unit had to installed. After a series of SNAFU’s and several phone calls to friends for help, Lynn did get the new unit up and cooling before we left for Columbus Saturday morning to move Ariel down to the W. Thank you Barbara Winter! The weather is fine in my house now!
Move-In Day at MUW was something else. There were people swarming every where. Ariel and her roomie Noelle arrived at the same time and that little room was just packed with parents and siblings and stuff. We were all moving around and putting the beds up on the highest level they could be so that the dressers could be put under the beds. The girls ended up making them into bunk beds that night. By the time we left the shower curtain was up and most of the stuff was stowed away.
We made a mad dash to the airport to wait for the arrival of Ping. Her flight was scheduled to arrive at 4:35 but my gut told me to get there early. We got there at 3:45 and were sitting in the observation area when at 5 minutes till 4 her flight swooped on in. Ping was not the only Asian on the flight but she was the one that was grinning from ear to ear as she bounced down the ramp.
We got her luggage loaded into the white whale and made a side trip to the Wal-Mart in Starkville to see if there were any familiar foods that we might find for them then we turned the van toward the north and headed to Bruce. Ping was full of questions the whole trip. She is very out going.
Sunday was a true day of rest for us all. After church, we just came home and got to know each other better. Monday morning, I took all three of my girls to school and we waited for Mrs. Brower to work on Ping’s schedule and made some changes in Ji Eun’s. I think this year with these two girls learning English and our customs and observing their customs, will be a learning experience for all. I am living in my own reality show here.
I did get a surprise when I found out that I have been called to jury duty this week. Of all the weeks to be called, this is not the one I needed. We are getting ready to upgrade the electronic medical record system at work and I am on the team responsible for training the staff. I want to do my civic duty but not this week.
As we are settling into a school routine and I try to create an evening meal that is appealing to all that sit at my table, this week should be interesting to say the least. I now have homework times 3 and it’s ESL around the dinner table. I have to get used to the Asian way of no one eats until Mama sits. I have a tendency to keep cleaning the kitchen and then I notice that no one is eating. So I have to go sit and pick up my fork and take a bite or the girls won’t eat.
Ariel and I talk on the computer and she tells me about her day, freshman traditions, get to know you mixers, oh and I twisted my ankle today but it’s no big deal, sort of conversations. I am just holding my breath and praying! I have already called my friends in Columbus and given them her phone number and she has theirs ‘in case of emergency’!
I can only hope that I really can “Get by with a little help from my friends!”
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Ji Eun has arrived!
Blogging from Bruce
August 5, 2008
Vonda Keon
Well it is still a little bit dicey over here at the corner of Chaos and Insanity Road. Last Friday I arrived home from work to discover that it was a less than cozy, 95 degrees plus inside the house. Our central A/C had gone caput. A quick call to the air conditioner doctor brought some relief as cool air started to blow again. The girls and I decided to make a fast run up to Oxford to pick up groceries and some specialty foods that we needed to make our newest family member Ji Eun feel more at home when she arrived on Saturday afternoon.
While we were in Wal Mart, the power went out. Have you ever been inside a Wal Mart and the lights go out? Well it’s not something I want to do again. You could have heard a pin drop. Finally the generators kicked on and the managers made the announcement that the registers would work for 40 minutes so everyone gingerly made their way slowly to the front of the store to check out with what they had. It was pretty dark in there too! When we made it outside we realized that all of Jackson Avenue was without power. That power outage was just the tip of the iceberg that was out there lurking to try and sink me!
We arrived home to discover that the A/C was not cooling again and the 1960’s, ugly harvest gold refrigerator had hiccupped also due to the power surges of Thursday night’s storms. So I lost what was in the refrigerator. Thankfully, being the pack rat that I am, we do have a much newer model in the downstairs that works just fine. So as the girls loaded all of our perishables in the downstairs fridge, I was upstairs sweating with the oldie and cleaning it out.
After about 5 minutes of sweating dripping off the end of my nose and running down my back, and dealing with melting ice and tossing out questionable food stuffs, I knew the girls could not sleep upstairs, so I did what any red blooded American woman would do. I called my Mama! Now Mom’s A/C is cooling so well, my glasses fog up when I leave her house, so the girls gladly grabbed their little ditty bags and headed down the hill to Grandmommie’s for a much cooler place to sleep while I stayed at home in the basement with many fans blowing on me.
I had to work the weekend shift at my office so I left home at 6AM. I was praying most of the early morning that the A/C would be a fairly simple fix because I didn’t want Ji Eun to come to the USA and to our home and it be like an oven! My phone started ringing at 8:30. First it was Scott calling to tell me that the part on the A/C that needed replacing was in warranty and he was driving back to Tupelo to pick it up. Then I got the call that Ji Eun had missed her flight so she would not arrive until Monday evening at 8:15. Ok. So that was how the Lord answered my prayesr. We still had time to finish her room, get the A/C working and the house cooled back down, and do something about that refrigerator. Plus she got to stay in LA two more days and go to Universal Studios.
We worked the rest of the weekend on the little finishing touches upstairs. The downstairs still has a ways to go but I must brag on the Asian Style bed my industrious husband built me. I actually slept all night long without waking and didn’t have a single ache or pain. The little refrigerator experienced a resurrection and started cooling again. So its primary function will be to keep bottled drinks and snack cold. I still don’t trust it even thought it did chill me a great bowl of peach jello.
Monday afternoon we headed on to Golden Triangle Regional Airport to meet Ji Eun. We stopped over at Coleman’s to fill up the car. They are still helping out the pocket book by selling their gas less than most folks. I visited with Kegan and discussed his school future as Scott was pumping gas. Then we were on our way to the GTR to meet our exchange student.
It’s a good thing we arrived early at GTR. Ji Eun’s flight arrived 30 minutes early. She is so sweet. And TALL. She stands 5 ft 8 in her Chuck Taylors! American flights being what they are now, half of her luggage did not arrive. So we had to fill out a report on that and told them to deliver it to our house. I will have to call them back tomorrow and keep on them about that. She was starving because she had not eaten on the flight so we introduced her to Zaxby’s chicken before hitting the road back to Bruce. She fell asleep on the drive back and woke up about the time we got to the Square.
Ji Eun comes from Seoul Korea which has nearly 23 million people. Can you imagine what Bruce looks like to her with its 2000 plus citizens? This is going to be an adventure for all of us in many ways. As I am writing this, she has fallen asleep exhausted. Ariel is taking her and Erin shopping for school supplies on Tuesday in preparation for school starting on Wednesday. Ariel will leave on Saturday for her college experience at the W and when we leave her we will stop at GTR and pick up the second exchange student, Ping.
Hopefully the Chaos and Insanity will leave here and a little Feng Shui can bring balance back to our lives. I know I can pray about that and God will answer me!
August 5, 2008
Vonda Keon
Well it is still a little bit dicey over here at the corner of Chaos and Insanity Road. Last Friday I arrived home from work to discover that it was a less than cozy, 95 degrees plus inside the house. Our central A/C had gone caput. A quick call to the air conditioner doctor brought some relief as cool air started to blow again. The girls and I decided to make a fast run up to Oxford to pick up groceries and some specialty foods that we needed to make our newest family member Ji Eun feel more at home when she arrived on Saturday afternoon.
While we were in Wal Mart, the power went out. Have you ever been inside a Wal Mart and the lights go out? Well it’s not something I want to do again. You could have heard a pin drop. Finally the generators kicked on and the managers made the announcement that the registers would work for 40 minutes so everyone gingerly made their way slowly to the front of the store to check out with what they had. It was pretty dark in there too! When we made it outside we realized that all of Jackson Avenue was without power. That power outage was just the tip of the iceberg that was out there lurking to try and sink me!
We arrived home to discover that the A/C was not cooling again and the 1960’s, ugly harvest gold refrigerator had hiccupped also due to the power surges of Thursday night’s storms. So I lost what was in the refrigerator. Thankfully, being the pack rat that I am, we do have a much newer model in the downstairs that works just fine. So as the girls loaded all of our perishables in the downstairs fridge, I was upstairs sweating with the oldie and cleaning it out.
After about 5 minutes of sweating dripping off the end of my nose and running down my back, and dealing with melting ice and tossing out questionable food stuffs, I knew the girls could not sleep upstairs, so I did what any red blooded American woman would do. I called my Mama! Now Mom’s A/C is cooling so well, my glasses fog up when I leave her house, so the girls gladly grabbed their little ditty bags and headed down the hill to Grandmommie’s for a much cooler place to sleep while I stayed at home in the basement with many fans blowing on me.
I had to work the weekend shift at my office so I left home at 6AM. I was praying most of the early morning that the A/C would be a fairly simple fix because I didn’t want Ji Eun to come to the USA and to our home and it be like an oven! My phone started ringing at 8:30. First it was Scott calling to tell me that the part on the A/C that needed replacing was in warranty and he was driving back to Tupelo to pick it up. Then I got the call that Ji Eun had missed her flight so she would not arrive until Monday evening at 8:15. Ok. So that was how the Lord answered my prayesr. We still had time to finish her room, get the A/C working and the house cooled back down, and do something about that refrigerator. Plus she got to stay in LA two more days and go to Universal Studios.
We worked the rest of the weekend on the little finishing touches upstairs. The downstairs still has a ways to go but I must brag on the Asian Style bed my industrious husband built me. I actually slept all night long without waking and didn’t have a single ache or pain. The little refrigerator experienced a resurrection and started cooling again. So its primary function will be to keep bottled drinks and snack cold. I still don’t trust it even thought it did chill me a great bowl of peach jello.
Monday afternoon we headed on to Golden Triangle Regional Airport to meet Ji Eun. We stopped over at Coleman’s to fill up the car. They are still helping out the pocket book by selling their gas less than most folks. I visited with Kegan and discussed his school future as Scott was pumping gas. Then we were on our way to the GTR to meet our exchange student.
It’s a good thing we arrived early at GTR. Ji Eun’s flight arrived 30 minutes early. She is so sweet. And TALL. She stands 5 ft 8 in her Chuck Taylors! American flights being what they are now, half of her luggage did not arrive. So we had to fill out a report on that and told them to deliver it to our house. I will have to call them back tomorrow and keep on them about that. She was starving because she had not eaten on the flight so we introduced her to Zaxby’s chicken before hitting the road back to Bruce. She fell asleep on the drive back and woke up about the time we got to the Square.
Ji Eun comes from Seoul Korea which has nearly 23 million people. Can you imagine what Bruce looks like to her with its 2000 plus citizens? This is going to be an adventure for all of us in many ways. As I am writing this, she has fallen asleep exhausted. Ariel is taking her and Erin shopping for school supplies on Tuesday in preparation for school starting on Wednesday. Ariel will leave on Saturday for her college experience at the W and when we leave her we will stop at GTR and pick up the second exchange student, Ping.
Hopefully the Chaos and Insanity will leave here and a little Feng Shui can bring balance back to our lives. I know I can pray about that and God will answer me!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Ch-ch-ch-Changes at the corner of Chaos and Insanity Road!
Ch-ch-ch-changes!
Everyday is bringing something new into our lives here at the Keon household on the corner of Chaos Ave. and Insanity Road.
Oh, we are getting down to the wire. Working full time and trying to get things rearranged and ready for the arrival of the exchange students is both exhausting and exciting and maybe bordering on insanity as we rush to get everything ready this week!.
There are dental appointments and eye check ups for Scott and the girls before school starts, and medical check ups for me and all of the fun little tests that I still have to go through to make sure I am cancer free for another year. Chaos!
We also have been taking out time for some other things. It was milestone birthday celebrations this past week. The darling daughters were 16 and 18 so we took them out to see Mama Mia and to eat at a new Japanese Hibachi Grill in Tupelo. Mama Mia was more than entertaining but it was a bit disconcerting at seeing the Japanese cuisine stir fried by a non-Asian. That was change I didn’t want to see.
We noticed at a recently foray into an Oxford Chinese eatery that the cooks weren’t Chinese. They were Hispanic! I’m sorry but I really want my Chinese food prepared by real Chinese cooks and my Japanese food prepared by Japanese cooks. That also means that I want my Mexican food prepared by a Hispanic. I can make authentic tamales but you won’t see me trying to pass myself off as a Mexican chef! Changes!
I am keeping busy answering the queries from other homeschooling parents about the books I have up for sale on e-bay. That sure has proven to be a good tool. Now if I can just convince the new post mistress that I know exactly what I am talking about when I go in and ask for the media postage rate. I’ve got a lot of textbooks to pass on to the next homeschool family and I would love to mail them out at the best possible rate. I also need to make room for all of the books I want to read just for fun. Chaos!
I finally reached the end of my journey toward my Theology degree in May. My class had its ‘Last Supper’ Sunday evening. It was pot luck and I must say there was quite the diversity in our dishes that we brought to the table just as our class was quite diverse. Over the past 4 years that we have studied together, our class became like family. We shared each others’ ups and downs. One of our members was diagnosed with metastatic
brain cancer and has been going through treatments and surgeries for most of our time together and it has been a blessing to us to see his strong faith and will to live. He was with us for our Last Supper although he could not actually eat the meal. We will continue to pray for a miracle. Changes!
I’m still drinking my bottled water and still recycling those plastic bottles and I wish I could say I have a gas conserving vehicle sitting in the drive way, but alas, the Great White Whale is still part of the family. It will be moving Ariel to the W in just a few short days. It will also be picking up Ji Eun and Ping at the airport and bringing them to a new life in Bruce. I am thankful for Marshall and Bernadette Coleman creating a little chaos at their gas store. I don’t mind that Marshall is a Democrat and he doesn’t mind that I’m not. When you drive a vehicle with a slight drinking problem, it is not insanity to drive to Derma for the lowest gas price is a good change.
Thanks to the good folks at Brasher’s in Bruce, I now have a working dishwasher. Doing without a dishwasher was not a change I wanted to make. Thankfully they had just the right dishwasher for my tiny little budget. So it won’t be chaotic around here trying to get those dishes clean.
Yep. Ch-ch-ch-Changes are happening every day here in our house at the corner of Chaos Ave. and Insanity Road.
Everyday is bringing something new into our lives here at the Keon household on the corner of Chaos Ave. and Insanity Road.
Oh, we are getting down to the wire. Working full time and trying to get things rearranged and ready for the arrival of the exchange students is both exhausting and exciting and maybe bordering on insanity as we rush to get everything ready this week!.
There are dental appointments and eye check ups for Scott and the girls before school starts, and medical check ups for me and all of the fun little tests that I still have to go through to make sure I am cancer free for another year. Chaos!
We also have been taking out time for some other things. It was milestone birthday celebrations this past week. The darling daughters were 16 and 18 so we took them out to see Mama Mia and to eat at a new Japanese Hibachi Grill in Tupelo. Mama Mia was more than entertaining but it was a bit disconcerting at seeing the Japanese cuisine stir fried by a non-Asian. That was change I didn’t want to see.
We noticed at a recently foray into an Oxford Chinese eatery that the cooks weren’t Chinese. They were Hispanic! I’m sorry but I really want my Chinese food prepared by real Chinese cooks and my Japanese food prepared by Japanese cooks. That also means that I want my Mexican food prepared by a Hispanic. I can make authentic tamales but you won’t see me trying to pass myself off as a Mexican chef! Changes!
I am keeping busy answering the queries from other homeschooling parents about the books I have up for sale on e-bay. That sure has proven to be a good tool. Now if I can just convince the new post mistress that I know exactly what I am talking about when I go in and ask for the media postage rate. I’ve got a lot of textbooks to pass on to the next homeschool family and I would love to mail them out at the best possible rate. I also need to make room for all of the books I want to read just for fun. Chaos!
I finally reached the end of my journey toward my Theology degree in May. My class had its ‘Last Supper’ Sunday evening. It was pot luck and I must say there was quite the diversity in our dishes that we brought to the table just as our class was quite diverse. Over the past 4 years that we have studied together, our class became like family. We shared each others’ ups and downs. One of our members was diagnosed with metastatic
brain cancer and has been going through treatments and surgeries for most of our time together and it has been a blessing to us to see his strong faith and will to live. He was with us for our Last Supper although he could not actually eat the meal. We will continue to pray for a miracle. Changes!
I’m still drinking my bottled water and still recycling those plastic bottles and I wish I could say I have a gas conserving vehicle sitting in the drive way, but alas, the Great White Whale is still part of the family. It will be moving Ariel to the W in just a few short days. It will also be picking up Ji Eun and Ping at the airport and bringing them to a new life in Bruce. I am thankful for Marshall and Bernadette Coleman creating a little chaos at their gas store. I don’t mind that Marshall is a Democrat and he doesn’t mind that I’m not. When you drive a vehicle with a slight drinking problem, it is not insanity to drive to Derma for the lowest gas price is a good change.
Thanks to the good folks at Brasher’s in Bruce, I now have a working dishwasher. Doing without a dishwasher was not a change I wanted to make. Thankfully they had just the right dishwasher for my tiny little budget. So it won’t be chaotic around here trying to get those dishes clean.
Yep. Ch-ch-ch-Changes are happening every day here in our house at the corner of Chaos Ave. and Insanity Road.
Monday, July 21, 2008
I/ve seen the Light! Crazy!!
Blogging from Bruce
July 21, 2008
Vonda Tedford Keon
My sister's ring tone is Patsy Cline singing ' Crazy'. It may prove to my personal theme song before long. Alright! I know you are out there giggling and nodding your head yes. There is a rumor that I long ago reached the crazy stage. But let me tell you why I need a theme song. I am truly searching for the light at the end of the tunnel!
We have been knee deep in preparations to welcome a foreign exchange student into our home for the coming school year as well as preparing to take daughter number one off to MUW for her first year of quasi-independence. Then I got an e-mail from our AYUSA contact and she was frantic. Another host family had backed out and that left a student from Taiwan without a host family. I made some calls to people that I thought might be interested and thought we had a couple of good leads but they didn't work out. Not everyone is as crazy as my husband and I. We tend to be a bit spontaneous about things. So we thought, what the hay? Let's take them both.
Lo Ping, or Margaret (the Americanized name she has chosen) was so excited to hear from us that in her letter to me she said "AWESOME". Teenagers are teenagers around the world I guess. She wrote she was really ready to eat 'Fry chicken' and loved light food and vegetables but no spicy. She is going to embrace Southern Food I think.
Ji-Eun wrote that she was leaving for Los Angeles Saturday morning for her "learning to live in America" classes and would be arriving in Mississippi on August 2nd. I panicked on reading that. We thought it was the 10th. Donna, our AYUSA contact is checking on that for us. So in the event that the arrival date has been moved up we have shifted into high gear getting ready.
Our home is like a house sitting on top of another house. It has a walk out basement that was at one point many years ago, used as an apartment. I have been using it for my 'woman cave' and each time I have fallen down those 15 stairs I have made the statement that I thought we should make the downstairs into a master bedroom suite. It now looks like a work in
progress. How can one family accumulate so much stuff. Instead of just throwing out things when they break they seem to have migrated to the back of the inner most corner of the downstairs. Suddenly an empty room became the dreaded 'Junk' room.
Piles of old puzzles, text books from our 10 years of home schooling, the large scrap basket from our sewing projects, every little Happy Meal figurine from the years 1993 till 1996, the boxes that contain a lifetime of photographs and other small mementos that we inherited when Scott's dad died last summer, and pieces and parts from every computer we have owned since we moved to Bruce in 1996. Each day we are making headway and with each old useless thing that I toss, I feel like a weight has been lifted. The whole family has joined in tossing out things that should have been discarded a long time ago.
Now all of this work is not without some snags. Sunday, the dishwasher has decided to bite the dust. Those things just never give warning. You just open the door and reach in to find that your machine went through the motions and made all the sounds and really baked the grease and food particles on your plates. Thankfully, I still have Playtex gloves and scrubbers
and dish soap and washing the dishes was rather therapeutic after all of the purging I have been doing. I'm pretty sure it's the water pump and now I will be knocking on Brasher's door this week looking for a no frills dishwasher.
We had the pleasant surprise of discovering that Home Depot had some basic little compact fluorescents on sale so Scott has been replacing the outdated light fixtures downstairs with newer eco-friendly ones. What a difference that has made. Now I can really see the stuff I need to throw out. Does anyone need a 6-game-in -1 table? It's in mint condition and has all of its parts. I really don't need a foosh ball table in the house any longer. I've got eBay buzzing with selling the textbooks to other homeschoolers and the family photographs and other mementos will just have to wait. Its still too soon to look at those.
Welcome to America Ping and Ji-Eun. I have seen the light!
July 21, 2008
Vonda Tedford Keon
My sister's ring tone is Patsy Cline singing ' Crazy'. It may prove to my personal theme song before long. Alright! I know you are out there giggling and nodding your head yes. There is a rumor that I long ago reached the crazy stage. But let me tell you why I need a theme song. I am truly searching for the light at the end of the tunnel!
We have been knee deep in preparations to welcome a foreign exchange student into our home for the coming school year as well as preparing to take daughter number one off to MUW for her first year of quasi-independence. Then I got an e-mail from our AYUSA contact and she was frantic. Another host family had backed out and that left a student from Taiwan without a host family. I made some calls to people that I thought might be interested and thought we had a couple of good leads but they didn't work out. Not everyone is as crazy as my husband and I. We tend to be a bit spontaneous about things. So we thought, what the hay? Let's take them both.
Lo Ping, or Margaret (the Americanized name she has chosen) was so excited to hear from us that in her letter to me she said "AWESOME". Teenagers are teenagers around the world I guess. She wrote she was really ready to eat 'Fry chicken' and loved light food and vegetables but no spicy. She is going to embrace Southern Food I think.
Ji-Eun wrote that she was leaving for Los Angeles Saturday morning for her "learning to live in America" classes and would be arriving in Mississippi on August 2nd. I panicked on reading that. We thought it was the 10th. Donna, our AYUSA contact is checking on that for us. So in the event that the arrival date has been moved up we have shifted into high gear getting ready.
Our home is like a house sitting on top of another house. It has a walk out basement that was at one point many years ago, used as an apartment. I have been using it for my 'woman cave' and each time I have fallen down those 15 stairs I have made the statement that I thought we should make the downstairs into a master bedroom suite. It now looks like a work in
progress. How can one family accumulate so much stuff. Instead of just throwing out things when they break they seem to have migrated to the back of the inner most corner of the downstairs. Suddenly an empty room became the dreaded 'Junk' room.
Piles of old puzzles, text books from our 10 years of home schooling, the large scrap basket from our sewing projects, every little Happy Meal figurine from the years 1993 till 1996, the boxes that contain a lifetime of photographs and other small mementos that we inherited when Scott's dad died last summer, and pieces and parts from every computer we have owned since we moved to Bruce in 1996. Each day we are making headway and with each old useless thing that I toss, I feel like a weight has been lifted. The whole family has joined in tossing out things that should have been discarded a long time ago.
Now all of this work is not without some snags. Sunday, the dishwasher has decided to bite the dust. Those things just never give warning. You just open the door and reach in to find that your machine went through the motions and made all the sounds and really baked the grease and food particles on your plates. Thankfully, I still have Playtex gloves and scrubbers
and dish soap and washing the dishes was rather therapeutic after all of the purging I have been doing. I'm pretty sure it's the water pump and now I will be knocking on Brasher's door this week looking for a no frills dishwasher.
We had the pleasant surprise of discovering that Home Depot had some basic little compact fluorescents on sale so Scott has been replacing the outdated light fixtures downstairs with newer eco-friendly ones. What a difference that has made. Now I can really see the stuff I need to throw out. Does anyone need a 6-game-in -1 table? It's in mint condition and has all of its parts. I really don't need a foosh ball table in the house any longer. I've got eBay buzzing with selling the textbooks to other homeschoolers and the family photographs and other mementos will just have to wait. Its still too soon to look at those.
Welcome to America Ping and Ji-Eun. I have seen the light!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
90% of the Wildlife in Mississippi is out to bite YOU!
Well now that we are officially in the AYUSA program and an exchange student from Korea will be coming to live with us for a year, we have gone into study mode so that we won’t be totally ignorant. We may be a so called global economy but by and large we Americans are still dumb as a stump when it comes to knowing what makes other country’s ‘tick’.
That said, I’ve been thinking about how to ease Ji-Eun into our Mississippi culture of hot muggy summer days and tall glasses of iced sweet tea. She says she is very excited to learn about our foods and customs.
There is something else that I am going to have to teach her about and that is that 90% of the ‘wildlife’ in Mississippi is out to get you. I’m talking about the all those bugs that love to ‘bug’ us so well. This is by no stretch of the imagination a complete list but it’s the ones that stand out to me personally.
Chiggers: You never see them but they can find you. The chigger causes more misery than any other pest in Mississippi. I can only say one word here. OFF!
Horse flies: These are very large flies that apparently have the teeth of a piranha and can take out a divot of flesh when they bite. They sound like a small aircraft as they buzz their intended victim like a great white shark homing in on bare skin. If you don’t believe that they hurt, just watch a horse when they get bit.
Mosquitoes: There are too many species to name and the females all want a piece of you. Use DEET, OFF, or CUTTERS. Some people recommend Skin So Soft but my experience has been that all that did was make me even more enticing to those blood sucking vampires.
Ground Hornet: Better know to me as yellow jackets. They can dig out soccer ball sized nests in the ground and all it takes the vibration of the lawn mower to stir them up. They come boiling out of an unseen hole in the ground and you can’t run fast enough to get away from them. Abandon the lawnmower and run because if one stings you, you now have a flashing sign that says enemy hanging over your luckless head! They don’t lose their stingers and can zap you multiple times. A word of caution, don’t sit back and toss down a few cold ‘coolers’ and think you can sneak back in after dark, pour gas or oil down in that hole and pop them with a fire cracker and it will be bye bye ground hornets. Nope! I have seen that stupid human trick and all that happened was the explosion blew up a corner of the goof balls yard, it showered really angry insects over a wide area of the neighborhood and there was no amount of beer available to make those guys feel better from strafing they got from those wasps. Call the professionals and ‘Budman’ is not his name.
Fire Ants: Ants in Mississippi come in several types; tiny, sugar, carpenter, big red and my personal favorite “Sweet Jeeeeeesus! Get ‘em off meeeee! The fire Ant! The Imported Fire Ant or as they are know locally ‘Them !@# $%^&* $@#^*&^ Fire Ants” is a 1/4 in long ant that hitched a ride from South America in tropical plants. These hurtful little immigrants have been waging a successful invasion ever since they arrived. They are a smallish, red, virulent blight on the south. You learn to identify their mounds by trial and error…very quickly in my case. If you see a mound of fine dirt, taller than your grass, turn over a rock, or just stand in soft soil, chances are you have just disturbed a nest of these aggressive little buggers.
I made that mistake once while working around my gold fish pond. I was moving rocks and planting hostas and bulbs and before I knew what was happening I was covered to my waist before the first one stung me. As soon as the first one stung it signaled the other 2 million ants that were on me to commence the attack.
The resulting mass sting led to a wild flailing of the arms, clog dancing and a rather spontaneous desire for public nudity because I shucked my overalls and shirt right out there in the yard. There I was, for the Good Lord and any body else that drove by to see, running through my yard in my under wear, slapping at the ants and trying to get to the epi-pen that was in the house because I knew what was going to happen next. I spent the next few days going to see Dr. Longest for a daily shot. I had over 76 pus filled, very hard, itchy knots from the waist line down to my toes. I learned very quickly not to scratch them or it would just make it worse.
The armadillo, another pest in my book, is the ONLY know predator of the fire ant. That is why they tear up your yard. It’s not just for fun; they actually like to eat those little fiery creatures. No wonder it’s so hard to kill an armadillo. Anything that feasts on a fire ant is pretty darn tough.
Ticks: what can you say about a tick except it’s a sneaky blood sucking pest that you don’t want to find on you or your pet. Again I say OFF!
So as my family learns about another culture and how it ‘ticks’, I can only hope that Ji-Eun won’t be finding out about our ‘ticks’. I’ve got to go get a case of OFF!
That said, I’ve been thinking about how to ease Ji-Eun into our Mississippi culture of hot muggy summer days and tall glasses of iced sweet tea. She says she is very excited to learn about our foods and customs.
There is something else that I am going to have to teach her about and that is that 90% of the ‘wildlife’ in Mississippi is out to get you. I’m talking about the all those bugs that love to ‘bug’ us so well. This is by no stretch of the imagination a complete list but it’s the ones that stand out to me personally.
Chiggers: You never see them but they can find you. The chigger causes more misery than any other pest in Mississippi. I can only say one word here. OFF!
Horse flies: These are very large flies that apparently have the teeth of a piranha and can take out a divot of flesh when they bite. They sound like a small aircraft as they buzz their intended victim like a great white shark homing in on bare skin. If you don’t believe that they hurt, just watch a horse when they get bit.
Mosquitoes: There are too many species to name and the females all want a piece of you. Use DEET, OFF, or CUTTERS. Some people recommend Skin So Soft but my experience has been that all that did was make me even more enticing to those blood sucking vampires.
Ground Hornet: Better know to me as yellow jackets. They can dig out soccer ball sized nests in the ground and all it takes the vibration of the lawn mower to stir them up. They come boiling out of an unseen hole in the ground and you can’t run fast enough to get away from them. Abandon the lawnmower and run because if one stings you, you now have a flashing sign that says enemy hanging over your luckless head! They don’t lose their stingers and can zap you multiple times. A word of caution, don’t sit back and toss down a few cold ‘coolers’ and think you can sneak back in after dark, pour gas or oil down in that hole and pop them with a fire cracker and it will be bye bye ground hornets. Nope! I have seen that stupid human trick and all that happened was the explosion blew up a corner of the goof balls yard, it showered really angry insects over a wide area of the neighborhood and there was no amount of beer available to make those guys feel better from strafing they got from those wasps. Call the professionals and ‘Budman’ is not his name.
Fire Ants: Ants in Mississippi come in several types; tiny, sugar, carpenter, big red and my personal favorite “Sweet Jeeeeeesus! Get ‘em off meeeee! The fire Ant! The Imported Fire Ant or as they are know locally ‘Them !@# $%^&* $@#^*&^ Fire Ants” is a 1/4 in long ant that hitched a ride from South America in tropical plants. These hurtful little immigrants have been waging a successful invasion ever since they arrived. They are a smallish, red, virulent blight on the south. You learn to identify their mounds by trial and error…very quickly in my case. If you see a mound of fine dirt, taller than your grass, turn over a rock, or just stand in soft soil, chances are you have just disturbed a nest of these aggressive little buggers.
I made that mistake once while working around my gold fish pond. I was moving rocks and planting hostas and bulbs and before I knew what was happening I was covered to my waist before the first one stung me. As soon as the first one stung it signaled the other 2 million ants that were on me to commence the attack.
The resulting mass sting led to a wild flailing of the arms, clog dancing and a rather spontaneous desire for public nudity because I shucked my overalls and shirt right out there in the yard. There I was, for the Good Lord and any body else that drove by to see, running through my yard in my under wear, slapping at the ants and trying to get to the epi-pen that was in the house because I knew what was going to happen next. I spent the next few days going to see Dr. Longest for a daily shot. I had over 76 pus filled, very hard, itchy knots from the waist line down to my toes. I learned very quickly not to scratch them or it would just make it worse.
The armadillo, another pest in my book, is the ONLY know predator of the fire ant. That is why they tear up your yard. It’s not just for fun; they actually like to eat those little fiery creatures. No wonder it’s so hard to kill an armadillo. Anything that feasts on a fire ant is pretty darn tough.
Ticks: what can you say about a tick except it’s a sneaky blood sucking pest that you don’t want to find on you or your pet. Again I say OFF!
So as my family learns about another culture and how it ‘ticks’, I can only hope that Ji-Eun won’t be finding out about our ‘ticks’. I’ve got to go get a case of OFF!
Monday, July 07, 2008
Just call me Indy
Blogging from Bruce
July 7, 2008
Vonda Tedford Keon
I wear a lot of hats in my life. Mom, wife, artist, teacher, lay minister, medical clerk, chief cook and bottle washer, dilettante. You remember that one don't you? Jack of all trades. Well I am adding adventurer to my hat collection.
As my college bound daughter is set to go off on her next great life adventure, she kind of decided for me that I should also have another great adventure. She must be thinking I will suffer from semi-empty nest or something of the sort. Ha Ha. Little does she know. With her tenth grade bound sister left at home I am thinking that will be enough of an adventure. But no. She and the Good Lord have other plans for us.
We have talked about being a host family for a foreign exchange student before but never really acted on it because we have only have 3 bedrooms and they are small bedrooms at that, so it wasn't a feasible idea. It has just been a passing thought and that's about it. Until the phone call last Thursday.
Ariel had seen a notice hanging on a bulletin board when she worked at vacation bible school last week about needing a host family for a Korean girl ASAP. Her brain kicked in and she started talking to us about it. Her reasoning was she was going off to college so her room would be empty and the girl would be the same age as my other daughter Erin and in the same grade so they could study together yada yada. When I asked the question about where she would sleep when she came home for the weekend, which apparently won't be too often with the price of gas like it is, she had already figured that one out and said she could sleep on the sofa or spend the night at Grandmommies. Hmmm. I wonder how my mom is going to react to that proposal?
Scott and I talked it over and agreed that we could do this. So we set up a meeting with the area contact person and got the ball rolling. We made several frantic phone calls to get recommendations in and sent in a family portrait and got the paper work sent in for the background checks and wrote the introductory essay. We are in!
I look forward to this because when I was in high school, my Mom and Dad also hosted two foreign students in our home. For 2 or more years, we were host family to Lee from South Korea and Hideaki from Japan. Those two college students were in Mississippi in the turbulent 60's and were looked upon with suspicion. It was culture shock for both of them but they
learned to speak English with a southern accent, and loved my Mom's cooking. They cooked their favorites for us also. My family was multi-cultural before it even had a name. Daddy was stationed in Japan in the 50's when he was in the Army and always had a love for Japanese culture and food. Mom grew up in Memphis and was exposed to many different cultures so she also was very open to new things. Now, years later, we still keep in contact with the two men. Lee settled in Illinois, retired from his medical practice. If you take medication for Parkinson's you can thank him for it because he worked on developing that in the research labs of Ole Miss.
Hideaki was the only son in his Japanese family therefore he had to carry on the family business. He is quite the globe trotting businessman. If you have ever done karaoke, chances are you have sang using one of his brands of electronics. He has brought some of his employees to Mississippi for a visit. They are always amazed at how much space we have and
they leave loving black eyed peas and fried chicken and trying to say ya'll in the proper context.
So this is how the new adventure is going to unfold: I will turn 55 on August the 7th, I will take my daughter to the W and she will start her new educational life adventure on August the 9th and on August the 10th we will drive to the Golden Triangle Regional Airport and pick up Ji Eun as she begins her new adventure in a foreign land. Erin looks forward to a 'new sister' that is her age and grade level. We have already started learning about the South Korean culture and language so we can help to make Ji Eun's transition here easier.
Oh yeah, I am feeling like Indiana Jones. I am off on yet another of life's great adventures. Oh and Mom thinks it's a wonderful idea so the good Lord has his hand in this or we never would have gotten that phone call.
Now just where did I put my fedora?
July 7, 2008
Vonda Tedford Keon
I wear a lot of hats in my life. Mom, wife, artist, teacher, lay minister, medical clerk, chief cook and bottle washer, dilettante. You remember that one don't you? Jack of all trades. Well I am adding adventurer to my hat collection.
As my college bound daughter is set to go off on her next great life adventure, she kind of decided for me that I should also have another great adventure. She must be thinking I will suffer from semi-empty nest or something of the sort. Ha Ha. Little does she know. With her tenth grade bound sister left at home I am thinking that will be enough of an adventure. But no. She and the Good Lord have other plans for us.
We have talked about being a host family for a foreign exchange student before but never really acted on it because we have only have 3 bedrooms and they are small bedrooms at that, so it wasn't a feasible idea. It has just been a passing thought and that's about it. Until the phone call last Thursday.
Ariel had seen a notice hanging on a bulletin board when she worked at vacation bible school last week about needing a host family for a Korean girl ASAP. Her brain kicked in and she started talking to us about it. Her reasoning was she was going off to college so her room would be empty and the girl would be the same age as my other daughter Erin and in the same grade so they could study together yada yada. When I asked the question about where she would sleep when she came home for the weekend, which apparently won't be too often with the price of gas like it is, she had already figured that one out and said she could sleep on the sofa or spend the night at Grandmommies. Hmmm. I wonder how my mom is going to react to that proposal?
Scott and I talked it over and agreed that we could do this. So we set up a meeting with the area contact person and got the ball rolling. We made several frantic phone calls to get recommendations in and sent in a family portrait and got the paper work sent in for the background checks and wrote the introductory essay. We are in!
I look forward to this because when I was in high school, my Mom and Dad also hosted two foreign students in our home. For 2 or more years, we were host family to Lee from South Korea and Hideaki from Japan. Those two college students were in Mississippi in the turbulent 60's and were looked upon with suspicion. It was culture shock for both of them but they
learned to speak English with a southern accent, and loved my Mom's cooking. They cooked their favorites for us also. My family was multi-cultural before it even had a name. Daddy was stationed in Japan in the 50's when he was in the Army and always had a love for Japanese culture and food. Mom grew up in Memphis and was exposed to many different cultures so she also was very open to new things. Now, years later, we still keep in contact with the two men. Lee settled in Illinois, retired from his medical practice. If you take medication for Parkinson's you can thank him for it because he worked on developing that in the research labs of Ole Miss.
Hideaki was the only son in his Japanese family therefore he had to carry on the family business. He is quite the globe trotting businessman. If you have ever done karaoke, chances are you have sang using one of his brands of electronics. He has brought some of his employees to Mississippi for a visit. They are always amazed at how much space we have and
they leave loving black eyed peas and fried chicken and trying to say ya'll in the proper context.
So this is how the new adventure is going to unfold: I will turn 55 on August the 7th, I will take my daughter to the W and she will start her new educational life adventure on August the 9th and on August the 10th we will drive to the Golden Triangle Regional Airport and pick up Ji Eun as she begins her new adventure in a foreign land. Erin looks forward to a 'new sister' that is her age and grade level. We have already started learning about the South Korean culture and language so we can help to make Ji Eun's transition here easier.
Oh yeah, I am feeling like Indiana Jones. I am off on yet another of life's great adventures. Oh and Mom thinks it's a wonderful idea so the good Lord has his hand in this or we never would have gotten that phone call.
Now just where did I put my fedora?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Independence day is upon us!
Blogging from Bruce
June 30, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon
Independence Day is fast approaching. I'm not necessarily talking the Fourth of July here. I'm talking about the day you go off to live on your own in a dorm room for your first taste of life away from from the old parental units.
Oh how things have changed since I went off to college in 1971. Momma and Daddy loaded up their car with my stuff and I followed them down to Columbus in my car which was also stuffed full of the necessities of college dorm life. That was the first time any of us saw the dorm I was to call my home for that year and about the only time Momma and Daddy came to campus until graduation day four years later. Back then the things that were necessary were a popcorn popper, a stereo and all of my favorite albums, a trunk for my sheets and towels and other none clothing items and clothes and shoes and books.
Fast forward to 2008 and universities now have Family Orientation days. For one night and one day Moms and Dads get to experience the dorm room and some activities and most importantly the food plan. Ariel and Scott and I were signed up for our Orientation day the 19th and 20th of June. I was excited to be staying in my old dorm Kincannon. I have such good memories of that dorm. And there are some not so stellar moments but by and large it was a great dorm that year.
I don't remember the beds being that high off the floor. They are adjustable so you can put the 3 drawer chest under your bed to create more space. The mattresses are plastic so every time I rolled over it sounded like I was laying on a pile of wal-mart bags. And how could I have forgotten that train! I suddenly flashed back to 1973 and now many times that engineer was
going to hang on that whistle and just how many streets there were for him to cross. The next day after we left campus, I promptly found the nearest Bed Bath and Beyond and we got a memory foam egg crate pad, a pillow top mattress cover AND a 2 inch thick feather bed. My back was killing me after one night of attempting to sleep on that excuse for a mattress. I
don't want Ariel to start out life with a bad back!
The rooms come with a really nice sized microwave and refrigerator/freezer combo so that is different and record players are obsolete so all she needs is her MP3 player and her laptop. We are sending a printer scanner along so she won't have to stand in line to print her papers.
The key to living in a dorm is economization. With such a small living space today's college kids have to really look at what is important and absolutely necessary. Living in a dorm is like living in a fish bowl. What the heck is privacy? She is going to be sharing a bath room with 3 other girls instead of just one here at home. She is going to have to pick up her own clothes and wash them in the dorm laundry. She is going to have to make sure she has enough toilet paper and keep the
floor cleaned because the campus does not provide a housekeeper.
I will miss my oldest daughter as she makes this transition to dormitory life and college. She is so ready to get out of the house and try on independence. She is ready to make new friends, and have new experiences, study new subjects, learn some new skills. I can't help but worry but I know she has to do it all on her own just like my Mom and Dad had to let me.
I had to learn to get up in the morning and to study on my own. If I didn't make it to the cafeteria to eat, oh well. I was the one responsible for my clean clothes and sleep habits and getting the class work in on time. Which is not to say that I didn't hear my Mom's voice in my brain telling me that it was time to do such things. Maybe Ariel will be hearing me prodding her along too.
Oh Yeah, Independence Day is upon us.
June 30, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon
Independence Day is fast approaching. I'm not necessarily talking the Fourth of July here. I'm talking about the day you go off to live on your own in a dorm room for your first taste of life away from from the old parental units.
Oh how things have changed since I went off to college in 1971. Momma and Daddy loaded up their car with my stuff and I followed them down to Columbus in my car which was also stuffed full of the necessities of college dorm life. That was the first time any of us saw the dorm I was to call my home for that year and about the only time Momma and Daddy came to campus until graduation day four years later. Back then the things that were necessary were a popcorn popper, a stereo and all of my favorite albums, a trunk for my sheets and towels and other none clothing items and clothes and shoes and books.
Fast forward to 2008 and universities now have Family Orientation days. For one night and one day Moms and Dads get to experience the dorm room and some activities and most importantly the food plan. Ariel and Scott and I were signed up for our Orientation day the 19th and 20th of June. I was excited to be staying in my old dorm Kincannon. I have such good memories of that dorm. And there are some not so stellar moments but by and large it was a great dorm that year.
I don't remember the beds being that high off the floor. They are adjustable so you can put the 3 drawer chest under your bed to create more space. The mattresses are plastic so every time I rolled over it sounded like I was laying on a pile of wal-mart bags. And how could I have forgotten that train! I suddenly flashed back to 1973 and now many times that engineer was
going to hang on that whistle and just how many streets there were for him to cross. The next day after we left campus, I promptly found the nearest Bed Bath and Beyond and we got a memory foam egg crate pad, a pillow top mattress cover AND a 2 inch thick feather bed. My back was killing me after one night of attempting to sleep on that excuse for a mattress. I
don't want Ariel to start out life with a bad back!
The rooms come with a really nice sized microwave and refrigerator/freezer combo so that is different and record players are obsolete so all she needs is her MP3 player and her laptop. We are sending a printer scanner along so she won't have to stand in line to print her papers.
The key to living in a dorm is economization. With such a small living space today's college kids have to really look at what is important and absolutely necessary. Living in a dorm is like living in a fish bowl. What the heck is privacy? She is going to be sharing a bath room with 3 other girls instead of just one here at home. She is going to have to pick up her own clothes and wash them in the dorm laundry. She is going to have to make sure she has enough toilet paper and keep the
floor cleaned because the campus does not provide a housekeeper.
I will miss my oldest daughter as she makes this transition to dormitory life and college. She is so ready to get out of the house and try on independence. She is ready to make new friends, and have new experiences, study new subjects, learn some new skills. I can't help but worry but I know she has to do it all on her own just like my Mom and Dad had to let me.
I had to learn to get up in the morning and to study on my own. If I didn't make it to the cafeteria to eat, oh well. I was the one responsible for my clean clothes and sleep habits and getting the class work in on time. Which is not to say that I didn't hear my Mom's voice in my brain telling me that it was time to do such things. Maybe Ariel will be hearing me prodding her along too.
Oh Yeah, Independence Day is upon us.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Audacity of Hype in this year's Presidential Campaign.
This is my personal opinion about the Presidential race so if you are a fan of Senator Barak Obama I suggest you read this with an open mind and then do your homework. Or stop reading now!
(the photo was lifted from the Drudge Report)
Well well well. The Presidential race is certainly getting interesting isn’t it? I can’t wait each day to find out what sort of things the press is reporting or speculating about the candidates that are running for office. I remember when you used to have to wait until the actual Democratic or Republican National Conventions to find out who would be on the ballot. Now, after all of the caucus’s and preliminaries, it’s pretty much a given who is going to be running. And as usual, we the voters are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Over the weekend I was appalled to see that Senator Obama had the audacity to stand behind a podium decorated with a ‘Quasi’ Presidential Seal. While I agree that the United States needs a change, that seal design was a bit more than I could stomach. I wasted no time at all in doing a cut and paste of the photo and sending it to all of my friends.
While the Obama seal does include the American bald eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, the resemblance ends there.
The Latin phrase "E Pluribus Unum," which translates to "Out of many, one," now says "Vero Possumus." Press reports translate the Latin words as "Truly, we are able" - a rough translation of the Obama campaign slogan, "Yes we can." Other changes to the seal include the removal of the shield over the eagle's breast, representing the president's oath to defend the Constitution. The shield has been replaced with the letter "O" - presumably for Obama - and the image of a rising sun.
This my friends, whether you are hard lined Democratic, Hard nosed Republican, bleeding heart liberal or Conservative Independent, is too serious a contest about too many serious issues for a candidate to be playing make-believe on the campaign trail. Mr. Obama is showing arrogance now. What is he going to do next, rewrite “Hail To the Chief”? His Audacity of Hope is taking a turn to the Audacity of Hype.
Mr. Obama must realize that he made a major mistake because he only used the seal over the weekend. It was looking like he has decided not to wait for any of the formalities like a presidential election, an inauguration or even a nomination, which he still hasn't actually officially won yet.
Each election, the candidates get branded. Daddy Bush was a nice guy but out of touch. Bill Clinton was “randy” to say the very least! Ross Perot had big ears. Bob Dole was heroic but too old, Al Gore was a fibber and a bore. Dubya is pleasant but sometimes comes across as not too bright. Hillary was HillBilly. John McCain is a Firebrand and Hawkish. Obama is rapidly becoming charismatic and arrogant.
Since everyone seems to be bandying about the Latin phrases now, let me throw one out at you. “Politic” “Poli” from the Latin meaning “Many” and “Tic” meaning “Blood Sucking Parasites.” Politicians can be just such creatures.
Read and be informed about the candidates. Ladies and gentlemen, old voters and new voters, get off your lazy tushies and vote. If you don’t you won’t have any right to fuss. And for those of you that don’t vote, don’t let me hear you complaining about some ‘change’ that you don’t like. If Mr. Obama thought it was ok to play around with the Presidential Seal during the campaign, just what will he play around with in our Constitution and our Rights as citizens?
And for the record, I vote for the man and not for the party and my leaning is Conservative and there are those in either party. This year I am supporting the Hawk. Everybody has an opinion, right?
Monday, June 09, 2008
Bottled water
June 9, 2008
I like water. I like cold water. I like it over ice. I like in a glass. I like it in a bottle. I CANNOT stand it out of the tap!
There is a major controversy going on now about bottled water. Here ‘we’ are, moaning and groaning about the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon and we are chugging down bottles of water that at the least is priced at .89 cents and at the most $1.89 for a 20 ounce bottle of the clear liquid. ‘Tap’ water costs us about .0001 cent to drink. So what is the big deal? Why don’t we drink tap water and forego the bottled water that used to only be a thing the rich and infamous was known for?
From the West Coast to the East Coast to across the pond to Europe, city governments, high-class restaurants, schools, and religious groups are ditching bottled water in favor of what comes out of the faucet. With people no longer content to pay 1,000 times as much for bottled water, a product no better than water from the tap, a backlash against bottled water is growing.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents some 1,100 American cities, discussed at its June 2007 meeting the irony of purchasing bottled water for city employees and for city functions while at the same time plugging their quality municipal water. The group passed a resolution sponsored by Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, and R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis that called for the examination of bottled water’s environmental impact. The resolution noted that with $43 billion a year going to provide clean drinking water in cities across the country, “the United States’ municipal water systems are among the finest in the world.”
Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed a bit over the top back when water in bottles was a rarity. Now cities are trying to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. When Pepsi announced in July that it would clearly label its Aquafina water as from a “public water source,” it no doubt shocked everyone who believed that bottles with labels depicting pristine mountains or glaciers delivered a superior product. I didn’t like Aquafina because it tasted funny. Now we know why. Tap water!
Americans on average each now drink about 30 gallons of bottled water a year with sales growing by 10 percent each year, far faster than any other beverage. Bottled water now appears to be the drink of choice for many Americans—they swallow more of it than milk, juice, beer, coffee, or tea. Yep that’s right, Americans drink more water than beer or tea.
Now I don’t know about ya’ll but I drink bottled water and I read the labels and check it out to see if it’s from a municipal water supply. I also recycle my bottles about 75 percent of the time. There are large recycling bins on highway 7 going into Oxford and every so often I load up the plastic garbage bags filled with plastic bottles and I drop them in the recycling bin that is labeled for plastic.
I would drink tap water except for one reason. It tastes nasty. When I was a kid, Bruce water tasted so good. That old water tank on North Newberger across from my grandparent’s house held some of the best tasting artesian water. Then somewhere along the line, chemicals started to be added to the water. A little Fluoride and a lot of Chlorine started being added to it. There is nothing worse than drinking chlorinated water and what ever else is put into it. I go into a restaurant and ask for tea and all I can taste is the chlorine. If I wanted to drink chlorine I would go jump in a swimming pool and take a few gulps. We have old water pipes in houses and coming off of the streets into our homes and those old pipes are lead. Now think about it. Chlorinated water going through old lead pipes into your homes. Yum. I have let my ice cubes melt before and then noticed flotsam in the bottom of my glass of ‘pure’ tap water. Nothing like getting a little extra fiber in your diet, is there?
I can’t count the number of times that I have ruined a load of white clothes in the wash because of something wrong with the water. I am certainly not going to drink something that comes out of the tap that is already the color of weak tea.
When I first moved into my house in 2001 we had a whole house water filter. It was in the ground on the house side of the water meter. Until 2004 we had some very good charcoal filtered water, until the day when city workers replaced my meter and completely destroyed the filter. Oops! My pipes are still spitting out charcoal after all these years of replacing faucets and other things that were ruined and I haven’t replaced the filter because it is too cost prohibitive now. The city didn’t offer to replace it for me either.
I will continue to drink bottled water and I’ll recycle the plastic bottles. It won’t matter where I live or go to eat or work, if the water doesn’t smell like water should and smells like an overly chlorinated swimming pool, I will go and purchase a bottle of water. That U.S. Conference of Mayors doesn’t represent me and I doubt any of our mayors ever attended one. I will say this, if you think your water is clean, come borrow one of my microscopes and look at a drop of your tap water. I’ll be standing right beside you and offer you a swig from a bottle of Brand X triple reverse osmosis filtered water. Bon Appetite!
I like water. I like cold water. I like it over ice. I like in a glass. I like it in a bottle. I CANNOT stand it out of the tap!
There is a major controversy going on now about bottled water. Here ‘we’ are, moaning and groaning about the price of gas hovering around $4 a gallon and we are chugging down bottles of water that at the least is priced at .89 cents and at the most $1.89 for a 20 ounce bottle of the clear liquid. ‘Tap’ water costs us about .0001 cent to drink. So what is the big deal? Why don’t we drink tap water and forego the bottled water that used to only be a thing the rich and infamous was known for?
From the West Coast to the East Coast to across the pond to Europe, city governments, high-class restaurants, schools, and religious groups are ditching bottled water in favor of what comes out of the faucet. With people no longer content to pay 1,000 times as much for bottled water, a product no better than water from the tap, a backlash against bottled water is growing.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which represents some 1,100 American cities, discussed at its June 2007 meeting the irony of purchasing bottled water for city employees and for city functions while at the same time plugging their quality municipal water. The group passed a resolution sponsored by Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City, and R. T. Rybak of Minneapolis that called for the examination of bottled water’s environmental impact. The resolution noted that with $43 billion a year going to provide clean drinking water in cities across the country, “the United States’ municipal water systems are among the finest in the world.”
Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed a bit over the top back when water in bottles was a rarity. Now cities are trying to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani. When Pepsi announced in July that it would clearly label its Aquafina water as from a “public water source,” it no doubt shocked everyone who believed that bottles with labels depicting pristine mountains or glaciers delivered a superior product. I didn’t like Aquafina because it tasted funny. Now we know why. Tap water!
Americans on average each now drink about 30 gallons of bottled water a year with sales growing by 10 percent each year, far faster than any other beverage. Bottled water now appears to be the drink of choice for many Americans—they swallow more of it than milk, juice, beer, coffee, or tea. Yep that’s right, Americans drink more water than beer or tea.
Now I don’t know about ya’ll but I drink bottled water and I read the labels and check it out to see if it’s from a municipal water supply. I also recycle my bottles about 75 percent of the time. There are large recycling bins on highway 7 going into Oxford and every so often I load up the plastic garbage bags filled with plastic bottles and I drop them in the recycling bin that is labeled for plastic.
I would drink tap water except for one reason. It tastes nasty. When I was a kid, Bruce water tasted so good. That old water tank on North Newberger across from my grandparent’s house held some of the best tasting artesian water. Then somewhere along the line, chemicals started to be added to the water. A little Fluoride and a lot of Chlorine started being added to it. There is nothing worse than drinking chlorinated water and what ever else is put into it. I go into a restaurant and ask for tea and all I can taste is the chlorine. If I wanted to drink chlorine I would go jump in a swimming pool and take a few gulps. We have old water pipes in houses and coming off of the streets into our homes and those old pipes are lead. Now think about it. Chlorinated water going through old lead pipes into your homes. Yum. I have let my ice cubes melt before and then noticed flotsam in the bottom of my glass of ‘pure’ tap water. Nothing like getting a little extra fiber in your diet, is there?
I can’t count the number of times that I have ruined a load of white clothes in the wash because of something wrong with the water. I am certainly not going to drink something that comes out of the tap that is already the color of weak tea.
When I first moved into my house in 2001 we had a whole house water filter. It was in the ground on the house side of the water meter. Until 2004 we had some very good charcoal filtered water, until the day when city workers replaced my meter and completely destroyed the filter. Oops! My pipes are still spitting out charcoal after all these years of replacing faucets and other things that were ruined and I haven’t replaced the filter because it is too cost prohibitive now. The city didn’t offer to replace it for me either.
I will continue to drink bottled water and I’ll recycle the plastic bottles. It won’t matter where I live or go to eat or work, if the water doesn’t smell like water should and smells like an overly chlorinated swimming pool, I will go and purchase a bottle of water. That U.S. Conference of Mayors doesn’t represent me and I doubt any of our mayors ever attended one. I will say this, if you think your water is clean, come borrow one of my microscopes and look at a drop of your tap water. I’ll be standing right beside you and offer you a swig from a bottle of Brand X triple reverse osmosis filtered water. Bon Appetite!
Monday, June 02, 2008
Is Anyone Home?
Blogging from Bruce
June 2, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon
‘Hey, is anyone home?’
Here I sit staring at the screen of my computer and the little cursor is just flashing at me. I am listening to a wonderful thoughtful song written and sung by a long lost friend that I stumbled across while surfing the internet over the weekend. Jamie was at that awkward age when I knew her best. Her dad, Charles Ambrose, was my advisor and mentor at MUW. There were many times that I was asked to ‘watch’ Jamie Elizabeth’ as her mom fondly called her. You know how Southern moms are. They have to double up on those names. If I ever heard my whole name I knew that I was in some kind of trouble. Come to think of it as I am rapidly approaching the ole double nickel birthday, my mom still doubles up on my name, sometimes with great emphasis on each syllable.
Ahh, I have gone off on the rabbit trail again, let me get back to my little friend Jamie. She isn’t so little any longer and closer in age now than we were back in the earlier 70’s. She was a uber talented child that could play the piano in a way that put most people to shame and she did it by ear all the while fooling people into thinking she could read those little notes. Play it once and her mind must have been a steel trap that snapped and held in every note. Yet I often suspected that she silently beat herself up over it. I was in awe of her intelligence. She went to do her graduate work in Germany in Celtic Studies for heavens sake; on a Fulbright Scholarship no less. Genius comes in small packages.
Jamie was mortified that she had to have a ‘sitter’ at her age. I don’t know that she ever figured out that I was probably more house sitting than babysitting. Well, yeah, she knows it now, but being the only daughter and the youngest of the family, she was the one that her parents wanted protected whether she liked it or not.
When her name popped up on my search screen the other night while I was searching for a book, I noticed it was highlighted so I moved my little flashing cursor and clicked on it. Then a page appeared with a photograph. Yep, it was the same Jamie I had ‘babysat’ over 30 years ago. When I clicked on her music I was blown away. One of them is called ‘Is Anybody Home?’ It brings to mind the welcoming sight and sound of that creaking screen door on the front porch and coming back home after being gone for a while. It envisions wrapping yourself up in hugs and kisses from family you haven’t seen in a while and wonderful dinners at family reunions during the holidays. As we all get older things change and we can’t go home any more. But the memories live forever in our hearts and minds. Thanks to talented songwriters and authors, people and simpler times live on.
Are you wondering if we have reconnected? Well, yes we have and since she now lives in England, the internet is the only way to communicate these days. We have traded in the creaking screen door for the computer screen and the blinking cursor. But as I listen to her music, I know that she is still the same gifted genius she was when she was just an awkward preteen that didn’t need a keeper.
It’s the sound of a heart that is falling, hey
It’s the sound of a memory calling, hey
It’s the sound of a lost voice aching, hey
It’s the sound of silence breaking. Hey!
Is anyone home?
Jamie Ambrose, composer
www.myspace.com/jamieambrose
June 2, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon
‘Hey, is anyone home?’
Here I sit staring at the screen of my computer and the little cursor is just flashing at me. I am listening to a wonderful thoughtful song written and sung by a long lost friend that I stumbled across while surfing the internet over the weekend. Jamie was at that awkward age when I knew her best. Her dad, Charles Ambrose, was my advisor and mentor at MUW. There were many times that I was asked to ‘watch’ Jamie Elizabeth’ as her mom fondly called her. You know how Southern moms are. They have to double up on those names. If I ever heard my whole name I knew that I was in some kind of trouble. Come to think of it as I am rapidly approaching the ole double nickel birthday, my mom still doubles up on my name, sometimes with great emphasis on each syllable.
Ahh, I have gone off on the rabbit trail again, let me get back to my little friend Jamie. She isn’t so little any longer and closer in age now than we were back in the earlier 70’s. She was a uber talented child that could play the piano in a way that put most people to shame and she did it by ear all the while fooling people into thinking she could read those little notes. Play it once and her mind must have been a steel trap that snapped and held in every note. Yet I often suspected that she silently beat herself up over it. I was in awe of her intelligence. She went to do her graduate work in Germany in Celtic Studies for heavens sake; on a Fulbright Scholarship no less. Genius comes in small packages.
Jamie was mortified that she had to have a ‘sitter’ at her age. I don’t know that she ever figured out that I was probably more house sitting than babysitting. Well, yeah, she knows it now, but being the only daughter and the youngest of the family, she was the one that her parents wanted protected whether she liked it or not.
When her name popped up on my search screen the other night while I was searching for a book, I noticed it was highlighted so I moved my little flashing cursor and clicked on it. Then a page appeared with a photograph. Yep, it was the same Jamie I had ‘babysat’ over 30 years ago. When I clicked on her music I was blown away. One of them is called ‘Is Anybody Home?’ It brings to mind the welcoming sight and sound of that creaking screen door on the front porch and coming back home after being gone for a while. It envisions wrapping yourself up in hugs and kisses from family you haven’t seen in a while and wonderful dinners at family reunions during the holidays. As we all get older things change and we can’t go home any more. But the memories live forever in our hearts and minds. Thanks to talented songwriters and authors, people and simpler times live on.
Are you wondering if we have reconnected? Well, yes we have and since she now lives in England, the internet is the only way to communicate these days. We have traded in the creaking screen door for the computer screen and the blinking cursor. But as I listen to her music, I know that she is still the same gifted genius she was when she was just an awkward preteen that didn’t need a keeper.
It’s the sound of a heart that is falling, hey
It’s the sound of a memory calling, hey
It’s the sound of a lost voice aching, hey
It’s the sound of silence breaking. Hey!
Is anyone home?
Jamie Ambrose, composer
www.myspace.com/jamieambrose
Sunday, June 01, 2008
I lost an old friend
As I was surfing for something obscure last evening I stumbled upon an obituary that made me stop and take a deep breath. A dear friend was found murdered in Mobile, Alabama. It was all so senseless to me. William Joseph "Bill" Lumalcuri was one of the finest men I have ever know. I met Bill when I had just graduated from university and had moved into my first apartment. I lived upstairs and he moved into the one below me. He was a little Italian guy from New York City but he like the South because that was where his mom was from. He was an Ole Miss graduate and settled in Tupelo to be a middle school counselor. Bill was a great person. He was the kind of person that would give you the shirt off his back and the food off his table and never think about how he was going to eat. He was one of the first people I ever met that bought things in bulk because it was cheaper in the long run.
My birthday is August 7 and his was December 7, 1947. I would call him on Pearl Harbor day and he would call me on what he referred to as the day after the bomb dropped. We had a strange and wonderful friendship. He was Ole Miss to the bone and I wasn't. I was taller than he was by a mile. He worried about me a lot because I had a tendency to be a loose cannon. He was my knight in shining armor with no strings attached and the wisest person I probably will ever know.
If I didn't get up and go to church Bill would be knocking on my door inviting me to go with him to St. James. I was already looking for a church home and little did Bill know that I was interested in the Catholic faith. Years later after all of my journeys and trying on different churches, when I finally was in full membership in the Catholic Church, Bill laughingly said he was at fault for bringing me those times. I remember asking him if he would be god-parent to my daughters when they were born. He declined saying he hadn't really been a faithful Catholic but he acted like he did take on the role nevertheless. He would come to see them on their birthdays and send them little happies from their 'uncle' Bill. I'm sorry he didn't get to come to their confirmation last year or to know that the oldest has graduated and is on her way to university in the fall. I can only hope that there will be a 'Bill' in her life to steer her along the right path.
Because of his goodness he is now dead. I am sure it's all going to be something really stupid and the guy that shot him will probably get off by reason of insanity. Bill tried to help everyone he met. It was a character flaw I guess. He tried to see only the good in everyone. He was the kind of person that would lift you up when you were low. He was a great help to a lot of students with problems in his over 30 years of teaching. He was a great help to all of the people that passed through his life.
Bill never married, it was his penance, he told me once, for something in his wilder younger college years. It never seemed right to pursue that any farther and I never pressed the issue. It was his decision to make and he made it and if he had wanted to share any more I am sure he would have.
Bill Lumalcuri was a great guy. The world should mourn the passing of the likes of him. He truly tried to live as if yesterday was history and tomorrow is a mystery. He lived as Christ wanted him to live, in the today without trying to second guess what tomorrow was going to bring.
One scripture I always connected with Bill is this:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).
That is what William Joseph Lumalcuri lived by. Goodbye my old friend. You will live on in my memory and with Jesus.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
 | My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Her Grace Lady Vonda the Infinite of Longer Interval Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |