Too Good Not To Share

 10 Things People Did Before the Internet

Growing (and) Old

I am lying in bed with my charger on my back.  When the pain in my feet returned, I knew something was amiss. 

"Put it on the bullseye of the device," the company rep wrote.

But which incision is the battery? I ask him....then he tells me it's the other one.   "Ohhhh!" I write back.  "No wonder!  I've been putting it on the wrong place!" There's a learning curve here--the kind we keep getting. 

Growing older means adapting to what we can't change, and doing everything we can to change what we can.

Several  conversations with my mama and friends in the past few days clustered around issues related to aging. We talk about what we're doing, books we're reading, and what we're learning about growing, and growing older.  We decry the fact that we can only accomplish a fraction of what we had the energy for last decade, but we share what we're doing with that diminished energy. We ferret out good news stories and share them. 

Friendships like these are islands of peace in a troubled world.    

Like this: Jan insisted I watch The Quilters on Netflix, an intriguing documentary about a group of prisoners in a high-security prison who make intricate quilts for foster children in Missouri.  Most are in for life; some have spent decades inside.  "But when we're doing this, it's like we're outside," one said.  They want every foster child to receive a quilt for their birthday.

These men cut and press and fold fabrics, sometimes waking up in the night to create patterns on graph paper.  The walls of the quilting room are stacked floor to ceiling with donated bundles of fabric. Thank you notes from the recipients make these "hardened criminals" cry.  

Like this: I tell Carlene that I got scammed yesterday.  

Some scammer had tapped into the catalog of Natural Life.  I'd bought gifts for friends and summer blouses for myself, then got an all-cap notice from Natural Life that they'd been scammed.  This was not a moving sale at all.

Carlene's text: "You had the best part of the ordering!!

You got to think of each

Recipient and what they like!   As special as a gift!!

I called Chase to alert them to the scam and to reverse the charge on my card,  all the while thinking about how Carlene can find nuggets of good almost anywhere. 

Last week, she was reading a 30-year-old Anne Lamott book about her drug addiction and recovery.  "If I had read this back then," Carlene said, "I probably wouldn't have liked it.  I probably would have felt judgmental or something.  But it's SO good!"

Like: Nellie telling me about her 20-day art retreat in Italy with a friend.  She's trying to hold on longer to the peace and quiet of Italy. 

Like: Beverly telling me about Larry's lush garden filled with vegetables--and about their attending a protest march every Sunday. 

Like: an email from a book group several of my friends belong to.  Their next book is one I am definitely going to order:  Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. (Gregory Boyle). This book group is a marvel, a group of septuagenarians and octogenarians who have been reading together for forty years. 

Like Freda who--even with her own knee issues--volunteered to walk Luci when I was recovering from surgery. 

Like Linda who called from beautiful Cape Cod this morning and we wound up talking about our prior writing and how a manuscript she wrote when she was 35, and I read shortly after in a pop up camper on Molas Lake, was the starting point of a lifelong friendship.  

Like this text from Jan reminding me of Glue Parties--Elena being the little cutie who showed up at her door to invite her and Makken and Sebastien to join our sticky little porch party. 

So it's a dreary, rainy day and suddenly the sun shines forth and you hear a tiny knock at the door and here's this bright-eyed little cutie asking if you can come out and play at a glue party.  Her hands, festooned in a shiny white "glove," are drying in the sun, in preparation for the ultimate thrill: "peeling."  That's the secret of a great glue party.  Enshroud yourself in white school glue, let it dry (you can dance and do the hokey-pokey while on this step), then peel, gleefully, with your friends.  Pure joy.

Most of my friends are in their 70s, two in their late 60s, several just over the line into 80.  Sometimes we do wring our hands over the incompetent mostly-men who are running the country.  (At this point, let me recommend a powerful six-episode series on Max, The Plot Against America, based on a Phillip Roth novel, and eerily similar to what's happening in America right now. )

Sometimes we talk about our aches and pains and help each other with food, offers to drive, and encouragement. 

But my friends and I are watching less news and try to change the conversation if it lingers too long on the horrors of Trumpism or aches and pains.  (Freda calls the latter "organ recitals").  

 

Another thing about Pinterest-- I think it changes our brains.

I can remember long afternoons on a blanket in the yard going through books I'd read, taking notes for an essay comparing themes or characters. At some point, while my kids were at school, I might drive over to the library to get more books and further my research.  Those days were delicious, underlining and writing notes and questions in the margins.

Around that time,  I also wanted to write a book called Women and Houses.  Fifteen or twenty books were splayed open to passages I'd found, all about the ways a house shaped a girl growing up, or about the kinds of spaces women created.  I read Carl Jung and copied paragraphs about the meanings of houses in dreams.  I found a quotation by Winston Churchill, "We shape our dwellings and then our dwellings shape us."

Those were the days!  Every discovery took time and legwork.  

Today I could ask Google to find me all that and she would do so in way less than a minute. 

There's something to be said for slow thinking.  Some kind of mental exercise is required for doing a search yourself. 

I may one day look back on the days I've cut down 34 x 46" sheets of paper with the same tinge of nostalgia.  

Social media has its place.  For me, on Facebook it's primarily a place to read the posts from members of the Handmade Book Club.  It would be virtually impossible to find even five book-makers in San Antonio; through the club, I can see what people all over the world are making.

Pinterest is particularly good at picking our brains and feeding us exactly what we want.  We can consume images like candy all day long.  Is it possible (probable even) that it encourages imitation?  (After you "pin" grids, you will get pages and pages of grids; somebody's copying somebody.)

Does it condition our brains to want a lot of everything fast, rather than slowing down and taking the time to find things in their original context?   How important is it that our posts get "liked" or followed? 

Back in the day (here I go again!) a whole town might get excited about a parade, a carnival, a circus, or a rodeo.  The air was electric with anticipation of what we might see together--acrobats, tigers, beauty queens, a rodeo clown. For weeks afterwards, we'd talk about it and relive the juiciest parts. 

If it was a movie we saw with friends--say The Sound of Music or Grease--we'd buy the soundtrack album and play it endlessly, together. 

Fast forward to the days social media: it isn't all that social at all.  Browsing Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is solitary.  In years to come, I won't remember it.   I won't even remember it the next day.  

[P.S.  As for the book, Women and Houses, I made a mistake of telling a friend of mine (a writer in New York) about it.   Before the ink was dry in my notebooks, she'd published a book of essays by her writer friends (not including me) on the same subject.  It was deflating, but even more so because she had the temerity to dedicate her book to me!]

I should-a had a V8!

Today was a day of minor achievements.  Way too hot for major ones, but I did get my organization fix.

Achievement #1

Regarding Pinterest: What the heck is Pinterest for?  Ask someone half my age and I'm sure you'll get a very different answer.  Young professionals seem to be scrolling and saving images and whatnot to "build their brand" in case anyone is looking.  

For me, Pinterest is bathroom browsing.  Millions and millions of seductive images populate this very screen in a nano-second.  The algorithm tells Pinterest what I like.  With a click, I can save my stuff to several filing cabinets, called Boards.  I don't pay attention to what board it's going in, I just save it--for future reference.  Maybe a color or a vibe appeals to me and I save it, but I rarely go back and look at what I've saved.  

Pinterest is an overload of eye candy, kind of depressing really.  Everything, it seems, has already been done.  Every possible paint color combination known to man or woman is there.  Recipes I have never once made.  Smoothies and salads.  What keeps me going back are books, not the ones a person might actually read, but how to make blank ones.

Today I spent two hours deleting pins one by one until I realized it was going to take months. Then it occurred to me to check You Tube for a faster way to delete, and sure enough the Nice People over there had made videos that saved me hours. It was very satisfying to delete 10 whole filing cabinets in less than a minute, like sweeping a floor that had never been swept.  A decade of dust bunnies is gone. 

I still don't know why anyone would want to browse the boards of other people--unless those people are posting original art work or ideas.  Why would we want to poke around the boards of strangers?  Can somebody explain that to me?

Achievement #2:

To make a book, you cut or tear down very large pieces of paper.  Each of these pages is called a folio. When you have the desired number of folios, you fold them all at once, not one by one, and that chunk of folios is called a signature. 

Then you stitch those signatures together (a book block) with a cover and a spine and you have a book.

This whole process requires some basic math, a sharp-bladed Kraft knife, rulers and a self-healing cutting mat. 

After doing that for as long as I could stand over my table today, I had a little epiphany that will save me so much time that I literally pounced my hand on my forehead thinking, "I should have had a V8!" What took me so long to figure this out?

1. Since most books are around 4 x 6, all you really need to know is that one 9 x 12 sheet of drawing paper can easily be cut into four folios, then folded into signatures.  Simple math!  No need to buy a whole roll of paper and tear numerous times if you can get the same result from one 9 x 12 drawing pad.

2. If you want to reduce the size by a few inches, all you have to do is make the signatures and trim them down later.

3. If you want to add a few inches, well that's another math equation; we may get to that later, or not. 

4. A guillotine paper cutter saves weeks of hours!

Maybe the teacher started us on the long way to teach us some finer points we might have missed if she had just shown us the easy way up front?  But since I'm not inclined to do things mathematically, it took me a few months to get the obvious.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms, stepmothers, grandmas, and aunties.

To the human mamas of fur babies. 

To those who nurture and bring to life ideas, books, art, gardens, friendships and all other living things.

And all the while knowing that many mothers and grandmothers and mentors and sisters are no longer present on earth but  present in our memories and dreams.

And that some mothers and grandmothers have outlived their children.

Peace and love to you all!

Surgery Successful!

Monday Will picked me up around 1:30 and we got home around 8:00.  The spinal cord stimulator is IN--for good.  

My test drive was so surprisingly effective at reducing foot and leg pain that getting the permanent one was a no-brainer.  I see the light at the end of a long tunnel--and just hope it's not a hallucination. 

The pain from the incisions and the wearing off of anesthesia make this a less than enjoyable week, however. Tomorrow I get to take a shower and remove the bandages and do whatever I feel like doing except for driving.

I have great friends who have brought food and Freda who's walked Luci for me.  I hope by tomorrow to be able to walk Luci and move a bit less robotically! 

Pets--and Peeves of George

Next to Luci, my favorite dog is Carma, Jan's ebullient little mutt.  Since we don't know the actual birthdays of any of our pets, we decided that May 1st is birthday to all three: George the famous and infamous cat, Luci the love bug, and Carma whose enthusiasm for life is boundless.  

Wrapped in the furry body of a dog, she is life love embodied.  Her tail wags so vigorously that you have to watch out for wine glasses and flowers that might be on the coffee table.  Even after almost four years as next door neighbors, Jan and I still find it hilarious that when we walk together, Luci walks a little behind and pees on the very spots Carma pees on.  

The two dogs have an uneven relationship, shall we say.  One minute they are kissing, the next ignoring or avoiding each other.   Carma is always ready to have a play, but Luci holds a lifelong grudge against her for growling at her once (or maybe twice)  upon a time.  

Jan found George, her cat, last summer on somebody's tire.  He was about the size of a cup of sugar if memory serves, and nobody but Jan was willing to take him in.  

Since then she has made George famous with her daily "George Chronicles"--my main attraction on Facebook.   Now that I've figured out how to move posts from FB to my blog, I may give you more, but in the meanwhile, here are two teasers and you can see them all on FB. Knowing this particular cat, I'm sure his Ma and his neighbors are glad. he won't be tomcatting around and filling the hood with kitties! 

The George Chronicles 4/25/2025: 

George’s fans continue to reach out and attempt to bring comfort to his suffering. His fan Felix Meddlesome understands the travails of hunger and the lack of understanding cats must endure when their fate is in the hands of their human captors. This caring note, accompanied by coupons for treats and other necessities, brought a few moments of joy to George. Now if his human will just hustle herself off to H-E-B to purchase and distribute the goodies, all shall be well.

The George Chronicles 4/30/2025:  

George has been receiving royalty checks for a couple of months for reasons unknown to me, and today I found out why. He had posed for this advertising photo that was used to sell thousands of drink coasters. I know that neutering must put a daunting constraint on a tomcat’s natural urges, but he could have spoken with me privately about his trauma rather than making such a big production out of an act that most responsible pet owners consider to be a community service. Sheesh.

P.S.

When Jan read this post, this is what she texted me:

I love this. By expanding George’s fan base, it ups his residuals and might even lead to an interest from advertisers. 😊 George and I are honored to be included on your blog.  And I love the 5 a.m. photos of Elena leading her horses back to the corral.  That girl is something else!

In real time

In two excellent series, The Pitt and Adolescence, the stories play out in real time.  An hour-long episode represents an actual hour.  No omitting the ordinary moments usually are left on the cutting room floor.  No music bridging or anticipating action or setting the mood. 

Both very realistic and totally engaging from start to finish.  Noah Wylie, lead actor in The Pitt, described the sounds of the doctors yelling commands to each other (unintelligible to us laypeople) as taking the place of music.  Without needing to understand the technical language of trauma surgery, the realism of it is captivating. It is indeed like staccato sounds in music, alternating with quiet reflection by the doctors and nurses as they tend to people after a mass shooting. While tending to those who are dying and those who can be saved, the conversations among doctors and nurses takes the viewer into the heart and head and muscle of one hour. 

I heard on NPR a story called Slow Television, a concept started in Norway.  There is little perceptible action and no plot, yet people are drawn to it and find it relaxing.  It might be a mama cat giving birth to a litter of six kittens or a chef preparing a meal or a family talking at night on a patio.  It sounds a bit like watching paint drying.  

At first, I thought--how strange!

But then I realized I've been doing exactly that for months.  I watch videos on book binding that are more interesting to me than carefully crafted plots on pages of published books.  

Some do not have words at all; others have voice-overs explaining what they are doing; others have quiet music. Each video captures the slow and meticulous movements of a needle attached to thread going in and out and under and around, connecting section to another.  If there is a plot, it's simply the push and pull of threads. 

While I'm watching to learn the skills involved in making a book, and while these videos might only interest those who want to perfect a skill, I'm sure there are videos like this on every subject under the sun.  

I've almost entirely given up television.  When I went to a movie in a theater recently, I noticed that the volume (for the five or six of us in the audience) was distractingly intense.  Not only that--but all the previews of "coming attractions" (now called trailers) were all incredibly loud, not one of which I'd have wanted to see.

Everything seems urgent, overblown, and magnified--just as television news does.  

So if you are looking for an antidote to all that, find yourself some slow TV.  One of the plusses of technology is that it's out there, countless little islands of quiet that soothe the weariness of soul. 

Our country girl

 On Sunday, I visited the Pritchetts.  The house is beautiful (I'm waiting to take pictures until all the unpacking is done) and the barn is as large as the house, if not larger.  The former owners had used the loft as a workout gym.  The lower portion includes a large open space, an office for Will, and a guess room. This outdoorsy family could not have picked a better place!

The house is set back from the road on their ten acres. Elena is on cloud nine and can't wait to invite all her friends over.  Veronica is hoping that her friends, all of whom live in mansions compared to their farm house, may be less than impressed.  

Elena, however, is not worried about anything.

Nathan spent the afternoon assembling a dresser for his sister, and the dogs wandered freely in the yard. 

On Wednesday night, the horses had gotten out of their temporary corral. When Will woke up at 5 am on Thursday, he captured Elena (in pajamas)  riding up bareback on one horse, leading the other.  

This is our quintessential country girl, in her element, bringing in the horses to a house she wouldn't trade for anybody's mansion. 

Sleep Alternatives

As a good sleeper, I'm not plagued with insomnia as some of you may be.  I can get a hearty night's sleep and still a nap around noon.  

I do, however, wake up in the middle of the night almost every night for a couple of hours, during which I have discovered some really fun things to do:

1. I watch dachshund reels on Facebook. They are hilarious. Not only have I never had one (though I'm pretty sure I have a half-one now) but they were never the most appealing of breeds to me before.  Short legged like Luci with long sleek or long-haired bodies and soulful eyes, they are extremely attached to their owners (like you-know-who) and their faces, once you get to know them, are very expressive.  

2. While up, might as well get a snack. Here comes Luci's pitter pattering paws to see what I might share--which I do. She communicates telepathically by sitting tall and staring at me, her unblinking eyes suggesting a few options: salmon treat, sharp cheese, or meat if you have some, please.

3. I love to organize my origami papers, folded signatures, and book cloth I've made for covers.  It's immensely pleasurable to survey my riches in art supplies!  

4. I watch reels of babies laughing, particularly at sweet dogs twice their size.  Watching dogs with their big old paws draped over babies.  Watching human daddies converse with their babies.  Laughter in the night, or any time actually, is guaranteed to increase your endorphins!

5. Playing The New York Times word games.  Just got Queen Bee for the hundredth time--with a little help from the buddies after Genius. In this last lap of the game, I have learned a lot of new words so this lap turns out to be al little like a crossword puzzle.

6. Watching a You Tube video about how to dye papers with Easter Egg dye, onion skins, avocado skins and pits, and coffee and tea.  As Natasha the teacher said, "There are just so many ways to have fun!"

7. Feeling furry Luci going under the covers hoping I'll turn off the light and go back to sleep already. Is anything more pleasurable and sweet than the feel of fur on your legs for the rest of the night? Or waking up later with a tiny little set of eyes staring at you from the other side of the pillow?