Pemaquid Point

Perched atop Pemaquid Point

while angry waves pummel splintering rocks,

I am the heroine in a gothic

Jane Eyre-like tale.

I stand balanced on a cliff,

enveloped in semi-permanent fog,

listening to the rushing crash of the water.

I imagine myself as a governess

in a drab brown dress

spurned by a cruel lover;

wistfully contemplating suicide.

Or an almost-widow

peering out into the black-shrouded sea,

wondering whether her missing sailor

will spy her in the momentary spotlight

of the towering lighthouse.

Pemaquid Point calls into the darkness

jutting into the Atlantic at her own peril,

flashing her white light every six seconds

to seamen who speak her language.

But at night, the Point is mine alone

as I creep in shadow past the unwelcoming gate

and stand on the edge of a bittersweet love story

bound to end in ruins

on jagged rocks

piercing hollering waves

that prompt gothic heroines to jump.

Larry the NASA Guy



Rockets and Sputnik on display at
Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum
Dayton, Ohio


Have you ever watched the NASA Channel on TV? No? We did. We turned to that channel and happened to catch a woman walking into a formal reception. It was like home movies on TV. We watched her sign in. There were several military officers standing around. People were milling and mingling. It was as though a video camera were candidly recording an event. Then they all walked outside into the bitter cold. A few of the men wore Russian hats. The dignitaries stood in a line and dozens of camera flashes went off as they stood still, their breath steaming in the chilly nighttime air. After the picture-taking they boarded a bus with what looked like Russian letters on the side.

Then the cameras took us to a NASA control room. Again, nothing but still shots, really, though this was video footage. After that, the programming switched to a woman telling us about carbon-based organisms and a discovery they'd made in a California lake that arsenic was turning to phosphorous, or something like that. It was an exciting discovery about arsenic and how it relates to determining life on a planet. Then they showed the DNA double-helix. And then...

A Larry the Cable Guy commercial came on. Larry stepped out of a NASA mobile RV and said that he learned everything he knew by watching the NASA Channel. "Git 'er done! Watch the NASA Channel."

Then the broadcast turned to another professorial-looking woman talking about arsenic and phosphorous again. My husband and I, now afraid that we'd just been lumped in with Larry the Cable Guy, turned the channel.

Harping On A List

Cinnamon Peppo plays the harp
First United Methodist Church, Middletown, Ohio

As I listened to Cinnamon Peppo perform a Christmas concert on the harp, I debated whether I should add learning to play the harp to my Bucket List. I have always loved the harp. It sounds absolutely beautiful; like music from heaven. I've always thought it would be neat to play one. As I listened to Cinnamon play, I thought: this is it. This is my one lifetime, so if I'm going to learn to play, then I need to learn to play.

I watched her fingers pluck and strum the strings. I'd never noticed how many strings there were before. Or how her two hands were playing two entirely different sets of music. I sat and watched her and wondered whether she also plays piano, because it made me think of piano music and learning to play one line of music with your right hand and chords and other music with your left. Not just play them but look at two sets of music on the page at the same time. This would be difficult.

Then Cinnamon said she was going to play something particularly difficult from "The Nutcracker" because it involved a lot of footwork on the seven pedals. Seven pedals plus two lines of music and two hands doing two entirely different things. Hhhm. Should I or shouldn't I put this on my Bucket List?

When she finished playing she answered a few questions from the audience. We learned that her fingers used to get calloused and blistered, but not so much anymore. And we learned that harps cost between $13,000-$30,000. Whoa. This wouldn't just be tinkering around with a guitar. This would be a major commitment. But I do love the sound of a harp.

Maybe my Bucket List could be earning enough money to hire a harpist to play background music in my mansion all the time. Possibly, possibly. Or maybe I'd move "learning to play the harp" from my Bucket List to "getting a CD of harp music" to my Christmas List. That's probably the only way I'll get to hear one.

The Middle Finger

Sarah Palin was in the greater Cincinnati area today doing a book signing at a local Kroger grocery store. I saw the full-page ad in the newspaper earlier this week along with all the stipulations for attending the event. Here are a few of the rules:

·         Autograph seekers could not line up before 10pm the night before.

·         Tents were not allowed.

·         Fans had to have purchased her book from Kroger’s and needed to bring the book and receipt to line up.

·         Wrist bands would be handed out at 6am for the first 500 people in line.

I am not a Sarah Palin fan, but thought I might get up a little early and see what the scene was like. I live in a very Republican county and saw enough of the madness at the last Presidential primaries to know that Palin fans could be ruthless. So I set my alarm and went to sleep.

But when the alarm went off, I hit snooze. It just wasn’t worth it to get up early and go out into the 20-degree cold to see a bunch of crazy fans. I had no doubt that people camped out there all night long for a chance to see Palin. I imagined  traffic jams and a mobbed line stretching throughout the entire parking lot. I doubted I could even get that close to Kroger’s to see what the scene was like. This could be Sarah’s middle finger to all the “Haters”.

Except that it wasn’t. All the local news channels were covering the story on the morning news. They showed the line of people bundled up in coats, hats and blankets in the cold. As they were interviewed, you could see their breath in the chilly air. One woman brought her 3-year-old because it “meant so much to her (the 3-year-old).”  If you say so, Lady.

As promised, they started handing out wrist bands at 6am. The first 100 people got to go inside at this point to wait for the 11am signing. Others sat in their cars. Maybe some went home. But the big surprise was that all 500 wrist bands hand not yet been given out. At 6am, there were still spots left if you hurried to Kroger’s.

I went about my morning routine and turned the news on again at 9am. There were still a hundred wrist bands left. Yikes! How embarrassing. Sarah Palin was coming to Cincinnati to sit inside a Kroger grocery store and sign her books, but not even 500 people were interested. At this point the news stations were urging people to go.  Maybe she should have joined forces with the Old Spice Guy yesterday. His line was REALLY long.

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like



As you can see, everyone had their cameras out.

Hello, ladies. I just saw the Old Spice guy. Look at him. Now look back at this blog. He was on stage during a Marketing awards ceremony where Old Spice won for Best Digital Brand. Look at him. Now look back down here. Where are you? You’re in a crowd of women with their iPhones and cameras out, snapping his picture. They’re all admiring his pecs and debating whether he looks better in his white-pants horse-riding outfit, or just a towel. Bottom line, he looks even better in person than in the ads. He’s on the stage.

As you can imagine, we were all thrilled when Isaiah Mustafa walked out on stage. He spoke his now-famous lines and then the Old Spice commercial played along with a few spoofs like the Elmo / Sesame Street spoof. Then Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble asked him a few questions. Mustafa stood in character, with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed up and he answered with the same sultry manly man nonsense that he uses in commercials.

I have no idea what he said. Something about the Amazon River, or rafting, or fighting. I don’t know. His answers were totally off-question. Just “manly man” answers. We were all laughing and scrambling to get pictures of him as he posed on stage. Little did we know that after the awards ceremony he would be available for autographs and, if you were patient, you could have your picture taken with the “man your man could smell like.”  Sadly, I had too much of a cold to smell him.  (But I know he doesn’t smell as good as my man, anyway.)

The line was incredibly long. Hundreds of women were waiting to have their pictures taken with him. I imagine there were a lot of jealous husbands looking at autographed pictures that night, vowing that they’d never wear Old Spice on principle. Fools.

The Moral Dilemma of Wrapping Paper

Almost without exception, my daughter's school or day care asks the students to sell wrapping paper as a fundraiser. Ugh, this fundraising program is the worst, in my opinion. I'm okay with selling magazines. I'm okay with selling candy. I definitely buy books at the Book Fair. But wrapping paper? I'm just not for it.

I use wrapping paper very sparingly. I try to reserve it for little kids who are newly experiencing the thrill of ripping paper off a present. But a few birthdays/holidays is enough of that. Then I move on to gift bags that I hope and hope the recipient will re-use. I know I do, and it's not just because I'm cheap. It's mainly because I can't stand waste! Look at these statistics:

·    More than 8,000 tons of wrapping paper will be used on presents - the equivalent of 50,000 trees. If every family in the U.S. wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

• Around 744 million holiday cards are sent each holiday season. If all of these cards were made of recycled paper, approximately 248,000 trees would be saved.
• Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year's holiday season versus the rest of the year? That amounts to 25 million tons of garbage!

After learning this, I may do away with gift bags, too!

Sources: http://earth911.com/news/2008/11/11/20-tips-for-a-sustainable-holiday/

Texas Trivia

Mission San Antonio de Valero

Don't ask me how, but somehow I lucked into a job writing trivia questions. Over the course of my trivia stint I wrote questions on all sorts of topics including musical groups, TV shows, celebrities, cooking, NFL and Arena football, NBA teams, math, and more. I was given a topic, a number of questions to write, and a deadline. I did research online and at the library. At the time, I commuted to work, taking the bus a half hour each way every day. I’d read and jot down questions during the commute, then type them up when I got home.

A year passed and I didn’t write any trivia questions. Then suddenly, I got another assignment. This time I was to write 200 questions on Texas history. The San Antonio mission immediately sprang to mind since I’d recently travelled there. So I started re-reading my pamphlets and tour information, then got online and did some more research. Writing 200 questions wasn’t easy, and neither were the questions I wrote. But I enjoyed reliving my trip to San Antonio and some of the things I learned while I was there.

Here are a few sample questions. If you’re a history buff, you’ll know them. If not, good luck guessing!

1.   In the Battle of the Alamo, 189 defenders held the Alamo against 4,000 Mexican troops for how many days?

a.    99

b.    13

c.     3

d.     6

2.     Who established Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1718?

a.      Father  Antonio Oliveras

b.      Father Joseph San Pedro

c.      General Santa Anna

d.      William B. Travis

3.     The San Antonio River was named so by Spanish explorers for what holiday?

a.      Feast Day Of Saint Anthony

b.      All Saints Day

c.      Cinqo de Mayo

d.      Summer Solstice

4.       Texas outlaw Clyde Barrow and his brother were arrested for possession of what stolen items?

a.      Lanterns

b.      Horses

c.      Diamonds

d.      Turkeys

Answers:  1b, 2a, 3a, 4d