Millay's Candle

Promises, Promises!

2011-03-25T17:25:00.000-04:00

No matter how hard I try, posting to this blog is not frequent enough. I am still committed to making it work, however. Thank goodness for the arrival of spring with its budding trees and bushes and daffodils. The dwarf peach in my yard is showing off, especially when viewed against a forsythia bush.

Coincidentally, I am taking another course in online instruction and being reminded of how much effort has to go into a really good online presence.

Technology is wonderful, even in the worst of circumstances. On March 12, while my family and pets were vacationing in an oceanfront hotel in Virginia Beach, MacDuff, my 11-year-old Scottie dog, died suddenly of a heart attack.

I was able to go take care of arrangements for MacDuff by finding a pet crematory on the internet. I then used e-mail to alert family members to his death. That news traveled to my daughter’s family in Los Angeles, my daughter-in-law who was oceanfront in Hawaii (where she and my grandson had to ride out the tsunami alert), and it made its way to my son’s I-phone while he was stranded in an airport in Tokyo because of the earthquake.
This sharing eased the pain of the experience.

On another subject, I am saddened by the passing of Elizabeth Taylor and inspired to watch some of her movies again. Camille Paglia said it well today in a newspaper column when she talking about Taylor showing how women could be strong in "Butterfield 8." Paglia also noted how bad movies are these days,and many of them really are. Thank goodness for treats such as "The King's Speech" and "The Fighter."

Holiday letters

2010-12-31T15:25:00.000-05:00

I did it! I wrote a holiday letter, mainly to family members I have not seen in a while. I vowed I would never do a letter, but it was fun, and I don't know why I waited so long to try this approach.
Of course, I have no idea what the recipients will say when they get them. I did try to keep the downside info to a minimum......
There's a clever column about holiday letters on The Buzz Media, http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/the-annual-holiday-letter/. Check it out.

Trip to Smith Mountain Lake

2010-12-30T15:45:00.000-05:00

Went to Smith Mountain Lake today working on stories for Discover SML magazine, and, as always, the outing turned into a bit of shopping trip when we stopped at the Homestead Creamery store and Boone's Country Store...Ice cream, apple butter (both Ann's, made in Botetourt County, and Jamison's made in Roanoke County), and canned beef and pork from Homestead; coconut pie, bread, other goodies from Boone's.
Boone's is one of the oldest businesses in the area, opened 36 years ago. Wow! What a neat place with its foodstuffs and sewing materials.
Both of these are a worthwhile trip for anyone. So is visiting Upper End Again, the consignment shop near Halesford Bridge run by Evelena Mullens.
Real treat also to visit Pacabella folks (www.pacabella.com) and see the alpacas as well as the friendly owners.

Lessons learned from being snowbound

2010-12-26T19:56:00.000-05:00

Sometimes all it takes to refocus us is to force us into inactivity. The snow (and a bit of illness) that have kept me indoors these last few days had a real effect on my decluttering plans.
Instead of dreading culling from the wall of bookcases, I just do a couple of items at a time and put what is to go into its proper "to go" bag--for the AAUW book sale, or for the Rescue Mission Store, or to mail to family member or trash.
Amazing what we don't get rid of, isn't it? Why do I need the manual for out-of-date software? Or, an anthology with type so small I cannot read it with a magnifying glass?
Let's see how it goes, but I'm betting the progress will be impressive and the procrastination diminished!

A 'Best' Christmas

2010-12-25T20:48:00.000-05:00

What a beautiful day this has been. By 10 a.m., I had Skyped with my daughter and son-in-law in Switzerland and my grandson and son and daughter-in-law in California and spoken by phone with my mother and sister in Florida. We weren't together, but we were.
Christmas music played and snow drifted down, and I felt blessed although it has been one of the hardest periods of my life. My rheumatoid arthritis has been teaching me humility big time.
I was not able to do complete Christmas shopping, and I still have not sent out cards, but it has been a beautiful time.
Life is learning....I'm learning! As long as I can be with people and nature, such as the beautiful birds at the feeder outside the window, I am having a good day. I am blessed by the wonderful students I see each semester at college and maybe even influence a few.
Merry Christmas!

Daylilies--beauty and short life

2010-07-19T09:34:00.001-04:00

Why do daylilies have the ability to both aggravate and captivate? These flowers grow like weeds, pushing their way into every bit of space possible.
But, then they bloom. And, what beauty! Insects love these strange flowers that blossom so boldly during the day and curl in to sleep at night.

This year, I clipped some lilies in various stages of bloom and brought them inside. They stayed beautiful, opening one a day as they dropped the finished bloom.

Post 1 for a library project

2010-04-06T17:46:00.000-04:00

Have you used EasyBib? No, it isn't what you stick under a baby's drool. EasyBib is a bit of software that helps a writer create parenthetical and Works Cited citations. But, hey, it is not easy because the premise is "garbage in, garbage out." According to Wikipedia, this saying, "Garbage in, Garbage out'," was the product of "George Fuechsel, an IBM 305 RAMAC technician/instructor in New York, [and was], soon contracted to the acronym "GIGO" (Wikipedia).

Word 7 also has a bibliography function that works similarly. Over the next few weeks, I will master this like my English 111 students needs to so that we can speak the same language.

The Works Cited entry for the "garbage" entry would look something like:
"Garbage In, Garbage Out." Wikipedia. 24 Mar 2010: n. pg. www.wikipedia.org. Web. 6 Apr 2010.

I'll check my Little, Brown Handbook and update on this in the next post.

Getting up to speed again

2010-04-06T17:26:00.000-04:00

I've promised I will get active with this blog again, especially we have survived the most challenging winter in a long time and now have stormed into hot weather with no spring respite.

In a couple of days, I will tell you about an author I have discovered some 20+ years since he wrote the books.

Books. Wonderful things.

More soonest.

Where have I been?

2009-11-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

I have not posted for more than a year, which means I don't need a blog, right? However, I want a blog, so I will try to get better at this now that my world is spinning a bit more slowly.

Where did the time go? Well, part of it was concentrated on my mother recuperating, first in the hospital and then in rehab, an adventure of several months. All's well, thank goodness.

After she recovered, we had a wonderful two-week trip from East Coast to West Coast to see my son Capt. Michael Kelly move from one Navy command to another and to visit my daughter-in-law, Barb, and whirlwind grandson, Josh, in San Diego, as well as daughter Shannon and husband Lee in Los Angeles.

My mother travels easier than her two daughters, my sister and I decided. Heck, she might even be in better shape! Accompanying this post is a photo of her touring the Midway Carrier Museum in San Diego with her grandson as tour guide.

After travel came school and lots of English essay papers and a few stories from the journalism class I am doing online. The online class was an experiment, and I'm not certain how it went although I know the students who really participated got much out of it.

Online teaching, which I also did in the dark days using just e-mail, is still not for everyone.

Other good news, however, was the purchase of a new comfort bike --only a few gears easily changed with a twist of the mechinism on the handlebar...Roanoke's Roanoke River greenways are wonderful for riding.

We're in the holidays, and the house is rearranged to accommodate. Off to get a massage at Body Sense, a first-class massage spot in Roanoke.

Will try to do better this year on the blogs.

Living in a Tennessee Williams play

2008-07-31T17:30:00.000-04:00

It has been hotter than a southern hell recently, and as a result I feel as though I've been living a Tennessee Williams play. You know the scenes....frustrated people milling about sweating...

But there is a good side to these high humidity dayseverytime. When I can't stand the heat any longer, I envision Elizabeth Taylor with that miserable husband and his family in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" or Marlon Brando and the women in "Streetcar Named Desire," and I am so much happier than them, I immediately feel cooler.

'Mama Mia' and musicals we love

2008-07-24T17:18:00.000-04:00

Who cares if Pierce Brosnan is not a great singer? Certainly not me! What a fun movie "Mama Mia" is and how great to go to a flick and come away feeling like dancing. Films such as this inspire all ages. Just the other evening on "So You Think You Can Dance," one of the young contestants said he got started dancing after watching Patrick Swayze in "Dirty Dancing," and this young man was born long after "Dirty Dancing" came out.

So, let's do some brainstorming? What are some of the great dance film everyone should see?
"Paint Your Wagon"
"Chorus Line"
"Oklahoma" "Singing in the Rain" (featuring Debbie Reynolds who lived in my home area for several years while married to developer Richard Hamlett).
"Damn Yankees" with wonder Gwen Verdon. You can see a clip of this at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTq8kVX0m5o
"West Side Story" "Caberet" "All That Jazz"
What do you think?

Names and salt can be trouble

2008-07-24T17:05:00.000-04:00

Titling this blog Millay's Candle was supposed to inspire me to talk about life and experiences almost philosophically. I would rather think as a consumer right how, however, so expect more nuts and bolts information and less poetry.

For example, I am trying to stick to a low-salt...no added salt...diet, and this has made shopping a more enlightening experience. Frankly, there isn't much you can buy in processed and/or canned food that doesn't have unnecessary salt. Cereal is even a culprit, so read the box carefully. Example: Rice Krispies, 320 mg in one and a quarter cup; Raisin Bran, 350 mg. in 1 cup. Thanks to Kashi's Cinnamon Harvest, I can enjoy cereal without salt.

And don't even think of low-fat choices; these usually have the salt revved up to make up for the lost taste of fat.
It has been especially disheartening, however, to read how much salt is in foods aimed at children or in foods popular with children.
Read your way through the grocery next time.
It's not that salt is bad, but if you are aiming for no added salt then you need to play your purchases. Good purchases: pink salmon -- 250 mg. of salt in one-fourth cup but 782 mg. of Omega 3 fatty acids per serving. California Prunes -- 15 mg. sodium in two-thirds cup.
Don't even think about most of the soups, however.

A whole year later

2007-12-22T12:28:00.000-05:00

Blogging is a wonderful idea ...if you have time. When I set up a blog last January, I planned to contribute at least every couple of weeks. It didn't happen. It is now December, and I have two or three postings.
Next year, 2008, I'll do better. I'd like to make the blog a destination for 50-plus persons who are dealing with the usuals of life, but especially with caring for older parents.
Even when everything is going well, simple things like getting a prescription filled can be a problem especially if a person has accepted some services from an assisted living center.
More on this later.
But, happy holiday.

Blogging's hard

2007-01-13T20:58:00.000-05:00

Blogging is writing so it's darn hard, especially during the first week of school when I an getting to know the students in my two classes, Specialized Journalism at Radford U. and English Composition at Virginia Western Community College.
I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to teach these classes because I meet such interesting students.
But, I have to confess to them that the creative part of writing never gets easy. You can learn where to use a comma or a semicolon, but the real guts of information--tough! Now, I know why Harper Lee never wrote but one book, although many say she didn't really write "To Kill a Mockingbird," but Truman Capote did.
Gee, I don't know which did, but it was a hellava effort.

James Brown remembrance

2006-12-28T18:00:00.000-05:00

In my years of covering music in the 1960s and 1970s for The Roanoke Times, James Brown was one of the more interesting and exuberant artists I met. He was a pleasant man who gave so much to a performance that no one could go away unsatisfied.
On one of the times I covered a concert featuring Brown, I had dinner with him at the nearby Hotel Roanoke and then rode in his limo to the civic center. The excitement of just arriving with Brown was enough to make anyone feel like the star.
He met with kids that night, stressed that he wanted them to stay in school, and then gave his usual performance--a wow always.
That night, we all danced in the aisles and on the seats, but no one moved as energetically as Brown.

Getting started

2006-12-27T06:31:00.000-05:00

I always said I wanted Edna St. Vincent Millay's "My candle burns at both ends" poem engraved on my tombstone. Now that the prospect of having a tombstone appears more real with each passing day -- and that I'm no longer certain I even want a tombstone -- I'd like to concentrate on extending the poet's "lovely light" into a blog experience.

This is not meant to trivialize Millay's beautiful work, which I have admired since childhood, but to use it as an inspiration to connect.

So, join me. I edit a publication for people 50 and older -- lively people 50 and older who know someday they might not be lively -- which means the magazine highlights the good things of life while taking into account the preparations we all need to make for the future.

I hope to make this spot an exchange for those discussions. Let's go. And, if you've forgotten Millay's words, here they are:

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!

Here's to a long-lasting light.