Why does it have to matter?

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I really cannot recall the first time I realized that one of my friends was gay. I know I was still in high school. Coming of age in the 70's was truly a different time than now. The confluence of the end of the war in Vietnam, the blooming and booming drug culture and the continuing fallout from the civil rights movement made for interesting times.

Looking back, I think that the area of human sexuality has been the slowest to change in terms of understanding and acceptance. 

I can remember the first time I spoke up for a gay friend. I overheard my mother talking about the 'issue' of homosexuality on the telephone. When her conversation was over I said something to this effect :

I cannot believe you would sit there, a professing Christian, and presume to judge a person without knowing them, trying to understand them! Can you imagine how it must feel, knowing that part of the very thing that makes you an individual is despised by society to such an extent? Being a homosexual is not something he chose. It is a part of who he is, like the color of his eyes or the way he has curly brown hair. He is a kind and talented and loving person. And being gay is just another part of all that make him who he is.

My mother, now 79, will now speak up for gays. I do not think it is because of what I said. I think it is because she came to love, as a son, one of my friends prior to knowing he was gay. 

I read this on NPR earlier today threats-and-lies-and-who-im-supposed-to-be and remembered how she was able to accept him, and later more and more people. Not in spite of their differences but because of who they are. And I wonder how could anyone .... well, you know. 

I have friends who are gay. I have friends who are bisexual. I have friends who are straight. Their sexuality is not a deciding factor in whether or not I love them. Why does it have to matter? 

That is all.

Why does it have to matter?

How I Am Me

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This is one of my favorite photos of myself. I think I look thoughtful and engaged.

I have some old family photos that my cousin Judy sent me, photos from the Cundiff branch of my family. Judy's mother and my grandmother were sisters, maiden name Cundiff. There are so many surnames floating around in the family tree of me. Smith - Ernest - Philpot - Slade - Cundiff - Shufflebarger - Carbaugh - 

I was looking at those pictures and saw this:

and this:

and this:

I saw myself, in the faces and poses of these women from my past. 

I never really felt that connected to my mother's ancestors. MawMaw's siblings had already begun to dwindle away into the fogs of memory by the time I was a adolescent, and the tales we were told were those of toil and hardship. Husbands dying, children with sickness, dreams and aspirations crushed under the weight of the Depression. 

Perhaps the perspective of age has opened an ability in me to see what was always there.

My family has the habit of saying of me, "Oh, she is all Smith." I may have a lot of mannerisms and attitudes from my father's family. I definitely have his sardonic, sarcastic ways. Yet there is more to me than that, and I have discovered the partial source in these photos. 

We are who and what we are by nature and nurture. Not either/or but both. I have a daughter I gave up for adoption at birth. I was given the gift of meeting her face to face two years ago. I was floored.

When she was just a babe in arms I had been sent a picture of her, and felt that it resembled one of me at a similar age. When we connected after she was already grown, I had to opportunity to see pictures. I felt she looked like me. Nothing prepared me for the experience of sitting across the table from a person that had my gestures, lifted her left eyebrow as I do, was wide if hip and hearty of laugh as I am.

We are unique one of a kind individuals, humans. Yet we are the result, the culmination of all those that came before us. 

I especially like the lady in the porch swing. Attitude. It can carry you over many bumps in the road of life.

Rainy and Chilly Outside, but My Home Feels Warm and Cozy

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The weather here is so drab today. Wet. Chilly. The kind of chill that settles in my fingers and says, nope, not leaving. I shall not complain too much about the weather, though, because I chose to live in the mountains again, after roaming around for 20 years.

I missed all of those things I had complained about in my youth. 

My first big venture away from the sheltering arms of these mountains that gave birth to my soul and hold captive my spirit was Ft. Pierce, FL. To explain what a culture shock this was for me would take a blog post or two, at the moment I will only say it was intense.

While in Florida, I met my first husband. Done deal. We did move after about six years, to a small town just outside Charlotte, NC. Close but no cigar. I had landscape, and seasons, again. I was away from the ocean ( I think it stinks) and all that sand. We were in North Carolina 8 years then moved a wee bit south, into South Carolina. We were living there when I said "Enough!" to the marriage and went to - are you ready for this? Upstate New York - way upstate, just outside of Rochester. Nope. Too much snow, plus lots of drama when I was there.

In April of 2001 back my fat ass came to Virginia, to my hearts home.

My beloved Appalachian Mountains.

Mountain laurel and sycamore trees. 

Ridges and hollows. 

The mighty Clinch River.

My family. 

The smell after too much rain that I always called 'earthworm'. 

Deserted downtown on Friday night during football season and any given Sunday morning. 

Mass migration to Holston Lake and Pigeon Forge every weekend from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Planting potatoes 'round about Good Friday and waiting until after Blackberry Winter to set out tomato plants.

Allotting extra time to go to Food City, Walmart, the bank, post office or the Pioneer Drive-In because you always see people you know.

Living where people bring food enough to feed an army if someone passes away and then show up to help eat it.

Where hearts are blessed and ya'll are in our prayers as a matter of course and common courtesy.

Where people care.

Home.

No, I will not complain, because tonight when I stopped by Walmart to pick up some cat food after spending a couple of hours with my mother, I was waylaid three times to have a short conversation. Being recognized, acknowledged and appreciated goes a long way to bring some warmth on a chilly January evening. 

High Emotion w/ A photo of what calms me in the end

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Tenth day of the month, 1/3 of the way through the January challenge. I got really pissed last night, at a Facebook "friend"  - I am going to copy and paste a bit here, but I will refrain from including any names. 

It all began because of this blog post which is funny-in-my-opinion but apparently not to everyone else. Oh, and the comment I used on my 'share' was : Toast-Tortillas-Potato Chips - it had to happen, people!. 

The response that just struck the wrong nerve with me was brief : Not nice disrespectful

Now I am not really sure why this pissed me off so much. Maybe the Brussels Sprouts I ate for supper gave me gas, maybe the high emotion of the wrestling match Roger was watching influenced me - who knows - I just know I was irritated.

Normally, I let those moments pass. Something I have learned to do over the decades of being as mouthy and opinionated as I am by nature. But every once in a while, my fingers type faster than my better sense can kick in and the result is something like this: 

Sorry you feel that way - xxxx. I find it absurd that people see religious iconography in objects like food and deify it, when Christians and Jews are admonished in the Old Testament to not have "graven" images. The visage of Yahweh was so beautiful, as was the glory of the divine housed in the Ark of the Covenant that no one could gaze upon it ... that is the Judeo-Christian perspective. If you go outside of the tradition, you will find millions of people who find, enjoy and revel in the Divine in Mother Earth, Gaea, and all of her beauty without making a shrine every ten feet. One of my favorite quotes is "There are no sacred places, only desecrated ones" Do not presume, ever, to take me to task for finding humor in a post from a satirical website.

Oh, but I was not finished. The person commented a second time, presumably defending their comment, and I deleted the second comment. Still perturbed, because once I get this way it takes a while for me to return to my normal self, I engaged in de-escalation via private messaging with a friend. This is part of what I said to them:

OK, thanks for listening! Maybe she will un-friend me ... I try to be nice, and respectful. I disapprove of cruelty aimed at women, the LBGT community, and other races. I abhor anything to do with open or subtle encouragement of any type of abuse ... but some things are just funny.

And some things are just funny to me. Perhaps it may be inappropriate, but shocker, I cannot think of anyone who is not inappropriate or disrespectful at one time or another. We really need to learn to get over ourselves once in a while, let some of the pressure off. Throw caution to the winds and laugh or cry or fart or whatever gut reaction we are suppressing. It is not going to be the end of the world as we know it!

In closing, I will share a fuzzy because I took it through the window picture of an egret that was wading her way up Little Beaver Creek this morning, snacking on minnows.

Janet Marie Slade Smith - Happy Birthday, Momma

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On January 9, 1933, Janet Marie was born to James Roy and Ethel Virginia Cundiff Slade. She was the third of four children and the only daughter. 

Her early years were spent in a small farming community known as Bluestone in Tazewell County in the state of Virginia. She attended Graham High School in Bluefield, Virginia, graduating in June of 1951.

Janet married Robert Ernest (Poss) Smith on July 7, 1956. He was 41 and she was 23. Each came to the marriage with 2 sons, Larry, Garry, Steve and Danny. They had one son, Ed, and two daughters, Carol and Ellen. After their marriage, Poss asked Janet if she would be a stay-at-home mother at least until the youngest child, Ed, started school. She agreed, and recalls the years from 1956 until she entered the workforce in 1969-ish as being very fulfilling. 

Her first job was at a local lunch counter, Tanner's, on a part time basis. She also worked for a brief time in the bakery at a Piggly-Wiggly grocery store. She began substitute teaching at Richlands Elementary School and then was hired as a full time instructional aide for the kindergarten program. She worked as an instructional aide until her retirement in 2001 at the age of 68. I am unsure what year she became an aide, I know she was working as one in the autumn of 1972 when I became a freshman in high school.

Over the course of  +/- 30 years, she became well known in the community to hundreds of children and their families. Everyone called her Mrs. Jan. Janet derived a great deal of satisfaction from her work, and it became even more important after the loss of the love of her life in 1986. 

My mother was always very active outside the home. She was a member of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Order of the Eastern Star, the Rebeckahs and Happy Valley Homemakers. In her leisure time, she enjoyed sewing, embroidery and reading. She was always an exceptional cook, well-known for her buttermilk biscuits, yeast bread, cookies and candies, hot dog chili and cole slaw. 

She has had a series of health setbacks over the last three years, and has been forced to curtail most of her outside activities. Though disabled and depending on others for daily assistance, she has maintained an overall positive outlook on life and derives great pleasure from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

As with most mother/daughter relationships, ours has had moments. In the end, I love my mother and would not be the woman I am today were it not for the example she was and the lessons she taught.

I love you, Momma. Happy Birthday.

On Internet and Digital Piracy

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One week down, and I have managed to post everyday. Blogging is helping my writing. Especially my level of awareness to life around me.

I spent a couple of hours last night and then another hour this morning looking for a book. The two hours last night only was that long because I kept stopping to look at books I had forgotten about having. I am going to be honest here, and admit to the most delicious addiction to the printed word.

I love books, magazines, newspapers - anything with more than three words strung together that I can read. I do think that there is something about reading that is genetic. I say this because most of the people in my family are readers, the women more consistently than the men. My father in his later years would go to the bookmobile and check-out between five and ten novels at a time. He had a friend by the name of Morris Cyphers who would do the same. They would trade bags of books after a week, thus reading ten or more books each every two weeks.

My maternal grandmother, Ethel Slade, had a collection of Zane Grey novels I read before I was 12. I read "Gone With the Wind"  the summer between the fourth and fifth grades, in less than three days. I read a two-volume 'Collected Works of William Shakespeare' the summer between the seventh and eighth grades.

I have a minimum of ninety-six feet of shelved books currently, and probably another 25 or thirty not shelved. By shelved feet, I mean just that. There are thirteen 3-foot long shelves at various locations in my house and in Roger's workshop currently full of books.

I invested a lot of time and money in my books, and have received education and entertainment from them that is immeasurable. I do not have an e-reader. I will not say I will never have one, the thought of how many books I could own if they were digital is very tempting. I have one downloaded book; a gift from the author.

All of this leads me to share the following link with you : Deep Thoughts from a Book Pirate. As much as I enjoy the written word, I would never, could never, steal a book or a magazine. Any product has cost associated with it, sometimes hidden but still costs. A library is free to the consumer but is supported by someone somewhere (often you the taxpayer). A book is written, proofread, edited and published, as are magazines,photographs, newspapers and songs. People earn a living from their work, their craft, their vocation. 

I have aspirations of being a published writer some day, and like to think that I will be fairly compensated for the work I produce. Internet and digital piracy is no different than walking up to a cashier in a store or a worker in a factory or a nurse in a hospital on payday and taking the paycheck from their hand and walking away. Think about it.

Carving A Peach Seed Monkey

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My husband is an artist who creates amazing pieces of art using items most people would toss in the trash or walk by without a second glance.






Over the past three days, he carved this:

From one of these:

Roger tells me he has been fascinated with the way you can carve a peach seed with a knife since he was a young boy, living on the edge of the Dismal Swamp in Zuni, VA. His first carving was a peach seed basket, similar to this:

After the first few cuts, you begin to see the head and arms begin to appear:

Then the legs and tail:

Gradually the definition between the legs and the tail are evident:

and the face and forehead are more defined:

The finished monkey is holding his tail :

He also carves birds, buffalo, ducks and crosses. I sell a few of the items on eBay. Search Peach Seed or ellenwhiteowl.