Ugly by Whose Standards?!

I have an issue with this picture. Sure, the cat is cute, but who decided the couch was ugly? I am irked because I used to have this exact same couch and a matching love seat, and I thought the stuff was beautiful.

It looked great in the family room with the cherry-finish wood floor, the cherry accent tables, and the brick fireplace against the white painted trim. What a room that was. We only got rid of the furniture when we built an addition to the house that included a bigger family room. The "ugly" stuff was dwarfed by it and looked silly instead of cozy.

We gave it to a jerk we knew who needed furniture but couldn't afford it. He wasn't a jerk because he couldn't afford furniture. He was a jerk for every other imaginable reason. I once gave the guy a parakeet I had come to hate because it was mean. No one would spend time with it, so it was wild and unfriendly. The jerk decided the bird would enjoy a little time in the bushes outside his patio, and since I had clipped the bird's wings right before the jerk took him home, he knew the thing couldn't fly away. It wasn't until the neighbor cat lunged into the bushes and snatched the stupid bird away for lunch that The Jerk realized putting a flightless bird in a bush was probably not a good idea.

Anyway, I loved those couches, and I don't see how anyone could think they're ugly. Busy, maybe, but ugly, no.

Happy Birthday No. 1

Today is Daughter No. 1's 21st birthday. Yippie! I wanted to post some baby pictures, but I can't find the scanner. So, here are a few pictures that I happen to like that were already scanned.

First, this is the girl dressed as a unicycle for Halloween several years ago. She was too old to trick-or-treat, but the marching band members dressed in costume for the town Halloween parade. She used to be quite the unicycler.

This is my adoring and respectful daughter on the balcony of a cruise ship.
We have a special bond.

And this is the two of us before a summer band concert back when we were both involved. I love this picture because it's a sign of something we both enjoy. We are very different from each other, Daughter and I, but we find ways to connect. Band is one of them.

So, happy birthday, little girl. Enjoy it! I love you.

A Night at the Theater

Eustacia and I went to the local theater production of Beauty and the Beast, the Disney version, over the weekend. Yes, Small Town has a theater, The Little Theater, in fact. I don't know for sure, but I think the auditorium seats about 200. Just guessing. There were some ceiling tiles missing on the right side of the room, and there were enough spider webs and cobwebs hanging from up there to weave a rug.

Almost all of the performers were from either Small Town or Small Town Next Door, and they were excellent. Every one of them sang on pitch, and if they forgot any lines, you couldn't tell. The set was somewhat minimal, but I appreciate that because it lets you connect with the performers and the story without unnecessary distraction.

A horn player I know who is heavily involved in productions at this theater played Gaston. I wasn't sure what to expect because I have never heard him sing before, but he filled the role perfectly. He was just cheeky enough and just enough of a ham to pull it off. Oddly, he didn't look awkward in tights.

Belle was played by a local girl who is now in college, and she sings beautifully. As she has grown up over the years, I have heard her voice mature from something pleasant to something beautiful and skilled and sincere. I believe her talent surpasses her years.

I know I am an intolerant person when it comes to baby noises in public, but please explain to me why someone would take a one-year-old boy to a three-hour performance of a show that does not end until nearly 11:00 at night. And please explain to me why, when that person and that unhappy child are seated in an auditorium, I am seated right beside them. Every time. I couldn't be angry with the kid because it was past his bedtime, and he had every right to be pissed off. I was angry with the parents, though. I don't care how much they wanted their older kids to see the show—they were disruptive to the rest of the audience and the performers.

Overall it was a delightful experience. Our Little Theater is a treasure. They need new lights at $250 a pop, though, so if you're interested in being a patron...

Art Day

Last Saturday, Small Town had a sidewalk sale like only Small Town can do it. The candy shop, which could have made a killing, wasn't even open much less have treats outside to attract customers. There was a man sitting at a table under a tent apparently selling nothing whatsoever. He just sat there, smiled, and said "hello." The library sold used books at tables set up in front of the heating and cooling business. And in front of one of the finest salons in town was a table full of crap. The employees emptied out their junk drawers, I think, and slapped price tags on the stuff.

I said "hello" to the guy at the table. At the heating and cooling place, I bought a biography of Abigail Adams, and at the salon, I spent $5 on the ugliest necklace you ever saw. It was made of glass beads and wooden beads, and it was covered in dust.

I unstrung the beads and rinsed them off, and then I sat down to make earrings. Vintage, I call them.


The pair with black and white chipped stones is actually from another source. I scoured the local antique store that is large enough to house the Pentagon looking for cheap jewelry that I could disassemble and turn into something new. I found a pair of clip on earrings so old the wires threaded through the stones were brittle and practically rotten. The pair cost me one whole dollar, and I have made two new pair of earrings out of them. Fun. Now I just need someone to buy them from me. Any takers?

700 Words

Just recently I have begun writing commentaries for the local newspaper. Twice now they have been kind enough to give me a spot in the Wednesday edition, a spot with a limitation—a word limit of 700.

I have always been a kind of storyteller, but I haven’t always been one to edit the number of words I use or the tangents I allow myself to indulge in. During the writing of the two published pieces and those waiting in the Documents folder, I found this limit a form of discipline, one of those rules you can’t avoid so you might as well learn something while complying.

700 Words has become a game I play now. When I write a piece I am contemplating submitting to the editor, I try to make sure I hit that exact number. 701 or 699 give me agita, and I have to mull over the story to see what word to add or take away to be exact. During a review, if I decide to delete a sentence, I count the words I am erasing and give myself that many to add in another spot. I get excited when I go back and discover I have used that smushy filler word “very” because that means I get to remove it and add a real word somewhere that needs a boost.

This limit is also helpful in eliminating all those unnecessary adjectives that you might think are absolutely essential to telling the story but really aren’t. In a letter from 1880 written to D. W. Bowser, Mark Twain said, “When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

I had never thought of an over use of adjectives as a vice until I started writing with the enforced limitation. Apparently I tend to use adjectives, not just because I think they are helpful and descriptive, but because sometimes I like the sound a particular adjective has in connection with the following noun. I read my pieces out loud, so the flow of the words is important to me, almost lyrical.

For example, in my most recent piece, I wrote about corn and how I had to shuck it by the dozens as a kid. Now and then I would find a worm under the husks, but just saying “a worm” is dull and empty, like an unfinished melody. Adding a qualifying “meaty,” as in “there would occasionally be a meaty worm,” seems to flow much better to me. And the adjective really is necessary because you might think it was a scrawny one otherwise. Later on, I called the worm “squirmy” so people wouldn’t think it had been killed by pesticide and was lifeless. Because it was meaty and squirmy, it becomes more of a threat. I think Mark Twain would approve of those adjectives and not suggest I kill them, but I might be wrong.

I tend to think of rules as burdensome, but I believe the 700 Word rule is a good one. It tames the tendency I have to go on and on and on about things that seem interesting to me but probably aren’t to anyone else and certainly have nothing to do with the subject at hand. It curbs the vice.

I’m not one for vices anyway. I smoked for a brief time during college but only because it was against the rules of the strict school I attended. That was one discipline I didn’t adopt. I drink wine but only in moderation, and I enjoy chocolate in small doses.

And now I have written another 700 word story. I don’t think I’ll submit this one to the newspaper. They wouldn’t give me prime space for this drivel like they have. If they were to print it at all, they’d bury it in the want ads with the used treadmills and mutt puppies. Free to good home.

What I'm Worth

Someone commented on my story about the value of a human being, informing me there was such a thing as a cadaver calculator. How could I resist?


$4425.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth.

One Man's Garbage

After reading about the African trade beads I have been working with, my sister wrote to tell me about a necklace she has that is made from flip-flops. Sounds kind of icky on the surface, but considering these flip-flops have traveled the Pacific ocean, they have probably been washed clean of foot dirt.

Every year, thousands of flip-flops wash ashore along the coast of Kenya, coming from as far away as Japan, although I don't know how you can tell the origin of the things for sure. They junk up the beaches and kill the marine life that tries to eat them. And now they provide jobs for people who would otherwise subsist on fishing.

A group called UniquEco works with locals to gather the sandals and recycle them into things like toys, sculptures, and jewelry. The 120 people involved in the program now earn more than they normally would and can move beyond just surviving.


My sister's necklace (ab0ve) was made by a single mother who had no options or skills to support herself or her children. To avoid prostitution or worse, she began making jewelry from scavenged flip-flops and earns enough to feed and house her family. She uses heat to turn the old rubber into refined one-of-a-kind beads.

Flip-flops. Who would have guessed? I can't stand the things, but at least someone is finding a use for them.

UniquEc0's wedsite is still under construction. In the mean time, they are operating from a Flickr site here. Go buy something.

What's A Body Worth

The EPA has reevaluated the statistical value of a human being and determined we are each worth $6.9 million dollars. That's down about 11% from their last calculation. I'm not sure what caused the decrease—we aren't like a new car. You buy it at full price, and the minute you drive it off the lot, it depreciates.

Every organization has its own way of figuring out the value of a human life, and according to the others, the EPA is being generous. They use this figure to determine the cost-effectiveness of a project. If a project is more costly than the value of the total number of people effected, then it's likely to be scrapped. It sounds harsh, but it may actually be a legitimate way to encourage project managers and planners to be more efficient.

It seems gruesome to put a price tag on a person as a whole but not as ghastly as putting a price on each individual part. In a previous life, I was an insurance agent, and I was shocked to learn that actuaries had priced out things like legs, arms, and eye balls in order to figure out the potential liability of an average insurance policy. The body is expensive to maintain or repair when it breaks, which is why they don't like when their insured take up flying or motorcycle riding.

Maybe all of these organizations and insurance companies should get their actuaries to look at the body broken down into its basic elements. In that state, it's only worth about $4.50. With that price in mind, the EPA could afford to institute nearly every project on their plate, from national emissions to the stinky and apparently defective landfill up the road from Small Town. Pee-u.