Tag Archives: Fuchsia

Goodbye Bookshelf Books! NO I Can’t Do It!

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bookshelfRecently a friend of mine started packing her books for a move. There seemed to be many books left on the bookshelf. She explained, “These are the books I can’t bear to pack away yet, and be without them for even a little while.”

I love to read. I have managed to manage my book obsession and get the books down to one book shelf, only because I read more Kindle books these days. I still love the smell of bookstores and have to glue my credit cards to the bottom of my purse so they can’t come unstuck when I want to make huge purchases in the bookstores. I still finger with reverence the cover of books and close my eyes in pleasure at the feel of them in my hand.

Having said that, the Kindle makes my life easier when I travel. I only have one bag now instead of two extra to carry my books and magazines. I can have a new book at the touch of my finger to my Kindle screen. I fear that my Kindle is becoming my bookshelf because I have hundreds of books on my Kindle.

After viewing my friends bookshelf and wanting to simplify my life some more I thought perhaps I could empty my bookshelves.

The top shelf is lined with books by Catherine Coulter, http://www.catherinecoulter.com/, Kristin Hannah, http://kristinhannah.com/content/index.php, and Max Lucado,  http://maxlucado.com/ . The rest of the shelves are a mixture of books my friends and my daughter  have given me that are quirky and fun and speak to the creative person inside of me. There is also a shelf of bible studies that I have never done, most are by Women of Faith, http://www.womenoffaith.com/.

I positioned my chair to climb on so I could reach the top shelf and start purging the rest of my books. As I touched each book by Catherine Coulter I could not bear to move it off the shelf. I moved on to my Kristin Hannah books. I touched the first one to move it to a box. My hand would not move. I could not take a book by Kristin Hannah down either. Nor could I move the Max Lucado books to a box for good will. I arranged them neatly by author on the shelf.

I moved down to the Bible Study books by the Women of Faith and the books I have by Patsy Clairmont, http://patsyclairmont.com/, and Barbara Johnson. I reminded myself that I should start a Bible Study books so the books stayed on the shelf too along with Patsy and Barbara.

Next were all the filled journals, empty journals, and quirky books my friends and my daughter had given me. It was a funny things but those books seemed glued to the shelf.

I now understood what my friend meant by not being able to part with her books yet for the move. I could not part with the books on my shelf. My favorite authors, my quirky sense of humor books especially those by SARK, http://planetsark.com/ had to stay. Looking at the books alone without reading them gives me hope for the future that perhaps someday my writing will be cherished by someone the same way I cherish the books on my bookshelf. I did not find one book that gave me a ho hum feeling. These books were all on this certain bookshelf because they speak to my heart.

If you are feeling guilty about those books collecting dust, ask yourself what part of your heart they move. Keep the ones that do because they are not dust catchers, they are heart catchers.

 

Who Do You Trust?

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johnny carson photo: Johnny Carson DVD Disc1Menu.pngSOMETHING ABOUT NOTHING Column published in the Albert Lea Tribune June 23.2014

Who do you trust?

“Who Do You Trust” used to be a popular show on television in the 1950s. It was originally emceed by Johnny Carson. Three couples were chosen for the show. A man and a woman were chosen because of their unusual backgrounds. Carson would tell the main contestant, who was the man, the category, and ask if he was going to answer the question or trust the woman to answer the question.

I was young, very young, when this show was on. I had to look up the rules. I found it interesting that Carson asked the man to trust the woman and not the woman to trust the man. Remember this is the ’50s before woman’s lib.

Trust is a word that is bantered about in relationships with one another. We have all heard it: We have to earn someone’s’ trust. Once trust is broken it is hard to forgive or more importantly forget. We think long and hard about the relationships we enter into, and the trust that we put into people that we had a relationship with.

However, every day we trust those we don’t know without thinking about it. For instance, we trust the bus driver on the city route will drive safely and get us to our destination. We trust the pilot of the plane knows how to fly and is alert enough to do it. We trust our friends and neighbors to give us a ride around town. We hop into the car without a thought about trust.

Take a moment to think about who you blindly trust that you do not know that impacts your life on a daily basis. Who do you trust without question that you do not know personally that performs a service for you?

I love to eat out at fast food restaurants, fine dining restaurants, unique restaurants that are not part of a local chain, and also chain restaurants. You have heard my rants before about dirty bathrooms in restaurants. My appetite wanes in an establishment where I am eating when I visit a dirty bathroom. I always wonder what the kitchen is like. I do not mean the towels-on-the-floor type of dirty, but actual dirt on walls and corners and toilets that show the bathroom has not been given a good cleaning. If I can’t trust the establishment  to clean the bathroom where I need to wash my hands, can I trust them to prepare my food?

Recently I have expanded that aversion to buffets in some restaurants. I was dining at a restaurant that offered a buffet. I ordered the buffet. As I picked up my plate at the buffet, I noticed all the grime and crumbs in the corners of the cart that housed the plates. I let that slide.

I looked at the buffet. There was food and a layer of dust on the glass that covered the buffet. I let that slide. I was hungry. I got my food and sat down to eat.

I went back to the buffet to get some soup and salad.  I picked up a bowl from the many bowls that were sitting in the corner by the food I was going to choose. Bowl after bowl had a rim of soup or some sort of dried food on it. I wondered if perhaps they were storing the dirty bowls next to the food, and I had picked it up by mistake. This time my appetite was going away.

I mentioned to my husband that we were not going to eat at this establishment again. As I thought about it, I thought perhaps I should pursue this a little more. The waitress brought our check and inquired about our meal. I explained to her my feelings about the cleanliness of the buffet. She wasn’t shocked. She agreed with me. She asked me to speak to the manager because the staff complaints fell on deaf ears.

I did speak to the manager and actually took the manager over to show what I felt needed to be cleaned up. The response was not what I hoped. I received defensiveness and excuses that things were cleaned all the time. Clearly the manager’s eyes were different from mine and the staff.

Who do you trust? We blindly trust that the rides we take from carnivals we don’t know are safe. We blindly trust the food we eat and are served from places where we chose to dine are safe. We blindly trust  the business that sets up our zip line when we chose a daring adventure will keep us from falling.

We trust without question, and when we see something we don’t trust, we do not always take action for fear of causing a problem for others or thinking we don’t need to deal with it because we don’t have to frequent that establishment again.

Think about what may happen if we see something broken in those establishments where we blindly put our trust for our safety and we stay silent. The next person may be the one to pay for our broken trust because we had been silent and left without trying to mend that trust.

“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” — Stephen King

 

Roy Rogers Rules, Out of Date or Still In Style?

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royrSomething About Nothing by Julie Seedorf – Albert Lea Tribune, June 9, 2014

“Happy trails to you, until we meet again.” Those were the words Roy Rogers and Dale Evans signed off with every week on their TV show, “The Roy Rogers Show.”

I was a young girl when Roy Rogers was on television. I was 5 or 6 when my family started watching “The Roy Rogers Show.” At that time there was one television in the house and it was black and white.

Children watched what their parents watched. Most of the time the shows were pretty mild; it wasn’t like it is today because there were television censors so kids could pretty much watch what their parents watched.

In 1961 reruns of “Roy Rogers” were broadcast on Saturday morning. I loved Roy Rogers. He was so cute as an older man to have a crush on. My cousin Rose also loved Roy Rogers, and Rose and I, along with cousins and friends, would play out in the grove and pretend we were the cowboys and Indians. It was what we did in those days; we used our imagination to have fun.

Every time I think of Roy Rogers or see Roy on television in old reruns, I think of my cousin and the fun we had.

This week I celebrated another one of those birthdays. Imagine my surprise when I received a card with a picture of Roy Rogers on the envelope. I didn’t have to look at the return address to know who had sent the card. It brought a big smile to my face.

The card also had a picture of Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans, on the front, and it was signed by my cousin, “from my boyfriend, Roy and me.” It gave me a big chuckle for my day.

On the back of the card were the Roy Rogers Rider Rules. I thought I would share them with you.

1. Be neat and clean.

2. Be courteous and polite.

3. Always obey your parents.

4. Protect the weak and help them.

5. Be brave, but never take chances.

6. Study hard and learn all you can.

7. Be kind to animals and take care of them.

8. Eat all your food and never waste any.

9. Love God, and go to Sunday School regularly.

10. Always respect our flag and our country.

These rules were part of the Roy Rogers Riders Club, started in the 1940s. Any child could join by sending in his or her name and address. A Rogersgram, which looked like an official telegram, was sent  and it arrived by Trigger Express.

Trigger, for those who don’t remember the show, was Roy’s horse. I still have my card somewhere in my memory boxes.

We took these rules seriously. Our parents liked these rules because they mimicked what they told their children. Looking at these rules some 74 years later, I believe Roy’s rules should be rules everyone abides by in 2014.

Taking care of you, treating others with respect, being kind to God’s creatures and paying attention to how we live in our world by not wasting are great standards to live by.

The ones to me that the most important are: Love God, and always respect our flag and our country.

Respect doesn’t mean blindly following. Respect doesn’t mean agreement when your heart tells you to disagree on an issue. The definition of respect in the dictionary is a deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities and achievements.

I have been thinking long and hard about respect  this the past week as I followed a conversation by a friend on Facebook on harassment of women in public places, such as convenience stores and fast food places, by roaming lotharios. The argument got heated when a couple of men joined in the conversation and said both sexes had problems with that.

As I read Roy Rogers Rider Rules I thought about this conversation. I have never liked “The Honeymooners” that used to be on television in the ’50s.

I did not like the comedy in the way Ralph treated Alice. Even as a child I did not like it. I did not see the humor in the disrespectful way he treated her although at my young age I didn’t realize what my dislike was for.

Fast forward to today’s comedies on television and you see someone getting sexually harassed or disrespected every day. Why is it that it is accepted behavior on television and not accepted behavior in real life? Is it any wonder those that are leering when my friend visits public places, get the idea that leering at women or even men is acceptable?

We don’t seem to have that deep respect anymore for each other and for our country. Maybe it all boils down to one thing and that is respect for one self. Our behavior, what we do and what we say, reflects our own self-respect.

If we don’t respect ourselves how can we expect respect from other people? Perhaps those that leer, berate public officials or the person in the car next to us shaking their fist, have less respect for themselves and their behavior, than the person they are directing their behavior at. If we don’t know how to respect ourselves, how can we show respect for others and how can we show respect for our country?

Deep thoughts for an old birthday gal, but that is what age is all about, wandering pondering.

Rogers believed in teaching respect. I believe Rogers had respect for himself and that is why he could show respect to others. I believe Rogers knew respect begins at home with ourselves and that is why he created Roy Rogers Rider Rules