Titanic is a verb

I just read the most heinous book. Just really, really bad.

I had chosen it because it was about the Titanic. It ended up being nearly as disastrous as the ill-fated boat itself. It sank so bad it “Titanic-ed”. Boom. I just turned one of the worst maritime disasters into a verb. Too soon?
I should have been tipped off in the beginning, when there was a startling lack of contractions and an overabundance of manners from the main character; A young girl in the 3rd or 4th grade.

The main plot was something along the lines of the girl’s distant relative who died on the titanic and was now haunting the girl in an effort to solve some mystery. I stopped paying attention to the story itself about ¼ of the way through and started counting the number of snacks the characters indulged in. Seriously, every chapter at least one character would say “Hey! That big plot point you’re in the middle of? Let’s stick a pin in that and have a small but highly nutritious, low calorie snack.” I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how the line was written. This book was obsessed with reinforcing the importance of a solid meal schedule.

And speaking of reinforcing, anytime something happened and a new character came in, the whole scene would be recounted in full detail. THE. WHOLE. THING. A full 20% of the book was just a copy and paste of the opening scene being retold to different characters.

Ashamed as I am to admit it, I read the whole thing. Every boring sentence of it. It was apparent that the book was intended for a much younger audience, but I read through doggedly out of spite. Or masochism, I’m not sure which.
The fact that it was intended for a younger audience didn’t make me feel better though. 70 years ago kids were reading Little Women and Freckles in 4th grade! Not this watered down, meaningless dreck! Maybe the reason people get all the way through school without learning how to think for themselves is because they don’t have to anymore. Books have been diluted to a politically-correct, curriculum – approved, formulaic imposters of what literature used to be.

Needless to say, the best part of the book was clicking “Delete From my Device”.

B and V

A few days ago I got an awesome package from my sister in Germany. Inside was a Betty and Veronica comic.

Oh yes.

I read those.

Really they’re a throwback to childhood. My sisters and I had hundreds of Archie books that we literally read to pieces.
Probably a great deal of my naiveté comes from those comics. In Riverdale there aren’t drugs, alcohol or sex. The sauciest thing that happens is some heavy kissing between Archie and whichever girl he’s with at any given moment. Every episode Archie bounces between his two main squeezes Betty and Veronica, and every episode there’s a huge blowout about it. But then, in the next episode everyone’s cool.

There’s either a steady stream of weed coming in or a rampant lobotomist running around Riverdale, despite its squeaky clean rep.

If you’ve never read a Betty & Veronica or Archie comic, let me fill you in on the characters:

Betty – Volunteering, honor roll, goody two shoes who is so head over heels for Archie it borders on neurotic obsession.

Veronica – Insufferable rich snob with no grip on reality who, for some reason, attends a public high school despite her father’s apparent quad-tri-double google-nair status. (Imagine Kim Kardashian if she was into Gingers.)

Archie – Red haired bumbler who somehow has snagged 2 insanely hot chicks despite his proclivity for the words “gosh” and “swell”.

Jughead – A gluttonous woman disdainer whose binge eating habits are interrupted only when he is giving Archie advice. Given his penchant for handing out philosophic advice and feverishly eating everything in sight, there’s a good chance he’s the one handing out dimebags at the end of every episode.

Reggie – A self-centered, self-obsessed chauvinist who chases Veronica but never really catches her, unless she’s using him to make Archie jealous.

I realize I’ve made them sound like the worst examples of humankind, but stuff like that sells. Just watch an episode of Seinfeld.

Anyway, my sisters and I ate those things up. When we were assigned to cleaning the bathroom we would fan out a series of comics on the tank of the toilet for any guests. We considered it just an extension of our hospitality, not realizing it advertised us as unabashed bathroom readers to our friends and family.

I’m not sure what the draw was either. The artwork was subpar at best and the jokes were Clorox clean. But every road trip was accompanied by a stack of them. I think it’s because the comics became nostalgia the moment were read them. The characters and responses were so predictable it became funny. Think Mel Brooks humor, but in cheaper paper form.

All in all, those characters had really great lives. Incredible weather, awesome teachers, an old time soda shop, even the odd adventure or two. I wouldn’t mind dropping by for a while and living there. I’d just have to visit Jughead a few times to appreciate a lot of Riverdale humor….

Nicole's Promise

“I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

This is the oath that my little sister took just over a year ago. It is also the oath that she will be fulfilling in 5 days when she ships out on deployment. When I first heard this oath it was at her basic training graduation and I was so proud I could hardly stand it. These were the most eloquent, powerful words I had ever heard because she was saying them.

Now they are the most difficult, damning words I’ve ever seen for the same reason: she has said them and now she will honor them.

I’ve discovered a different kind of pride in her. At first it was a nebulous sort of pride; sure I was proud of her for enlisting, but it didn’t extend to all the unknowns that come along with military life. I was just proud that she made it through basic.

Now my pride is extending to the fact that her strength runs deeper than just surviving pushups and sleep deprivation. She’s approaching this deployment with much more coolness than anyone else in our family. She’s so nonchalant about it that it’s had a sort of numbing effect on the rest of us. Sort of like “Yeah I’m deploying, and…?”  She talks about it like it’s a brief business trip she’ll be taking instead of active duty in a rather hostile country. It’s made the rest of us stop freaking out before we even get to start. (If you had met my mom you’d realize how big of a deal that is.) Instead of reaching out to everyone else for strength she seems to have an excess of her own. She’s even lending it to the rest of us.

She isn’t facing her deployment with brash over confidence, just courage. The kind of courage that doesn’t know what’s coming, but knows that it will be faced head on according to duty. She is doing this because she must, it’s as simple as that.

So I will endure knowing that my sister is very far away in possible danger for the same reason: because I must. I take too much pride in my sister’s strength to tarnish it with my fears. The original giddy pride I had for my sister is changing into something much more substantial and intense: Respect.

Read through the Airman’s Oath again and realize the meaning behind the words and promises in it and realize the kind of person it takes to agree to this oath and then uphold it. More people than just my sister have taken that oath and more than just she deserve the respect that should go hand in hand with it.

Reader's Wrist

I have trouble falling asleep. It's not uncommon for me to stay awake long enough to count down my alarm clock's set time like I'm ringing in the new year.

When I was younger, I'm sure my mom thought I had massive digestive issues, but really all those long late night bathroom sessions we me sitting on the floor reading until  I got tired enough to drop right off to sleep. Otherwise I would lay in the dark of my room with a thousand thoughts trying to be heard all at once. Growing up hasn't changed it either. If anything it's compounded the issue because now I have a job, bills, a dog ( a blog....) and a husband to think about.

Many's the time when my husband will wake up to me reading a book very, very late at night. I probably look normal, but I feel like my eyes are bulging from my skull, dry and irritated with Einstein like white hair sticking up all over my head. I usually imagine a tick involved somehow, but it manifests itself differently each time. But always I am clutching a book like I think he's going to snatch it away from me. He hasn't yet. He's probably afraid I'll bite.

I'm rapidly developing Reader's Wrist. My term for the mind boggling-ly painful condition that comes from laying on my side while holding my book upright with only the strength in my wrist. This demands that I hold my wrist at a nearly 90 degree angle away from the bed so as not to bend the pages, but also make it amenable to page turning. It should be an Olympic sport. Or at least demand its own branch of medicinal study.

Reading myself to sleep has become my version of drinking until I pass out. I can feel the relaxation creep up my spine as the dialogues in the book replace the one in my head. My head gets droopy, my movements are sloppy and my speech is slurred. My eyes burn and it becomes a physical chore to keep them raised. Finally, finally, I can slip off into empty, think-free, reading induced sleep.

Gene Stratton Porter - An author you need to acquaint yourself with

In the last week I have finished 3 Gene Stratton Porter books and started a 4th. I can't stop reading stuff from this author.
For a woman who started her professional writing career in secret (she didn't even show her husband her writings until they were published in a magazine) her books have been published in 7 languages and distributed all over the world.
Her book are primarily about the beauty and secrets of nature. She tempers that with love stories, sometimes unorthodox ones, that magnify the absolute best in humankind. The characters she's created are so pure and so tremendous that they're almost impossible. Despite the character's luminosity, they don't display an unattainable sort of sainthood. They are just regular people who choose to be respectable, kind human beings.
The only blot I found was her book "Her Father's Daughter". The story itself was wonderful, but there were so many intense and clearly racially prejudiced sermons it was almost out of touch with anything in the current world. But the determination and tenacity of the main character was so strong it creates a blueprint to reaching one's goals, making it worth the read.
I think what draws me most to these books is the fact that even though the characters seem snow white and unattainable, they are still struggling and real and they stay positive through their problems. With so many books that insist that life is terrible and always will be, it's refreshing and inspiring to find an author who recognizes that there is good in the world and shows us that it is possible to be decent too.
If you want to read a book written by a strong woman who stuck to her guns and wrote what she believed in, you want to read Gene Stratton Porter.

"To deny that wrong and pitiful things exist in life is folly, but to believe that these things are made better by promiscuous discussion at the hands of writers who fail to prove by their books that their viewpoint is either right, clean, or helpful, is close to insanity. If there is to be any error on either side in a book, then God knows it is far better that it should be upon the side of pure sentiment and high ideals than upon that of a too loose discussion of subjects which often open to a large part of the world their first knowledge of such forms of sin, profligate expenditure, and waste of life's best opportunities. There is one great beauty in idealized romance: reading it can make no one worse than he is, while it may help thousands to a cleaner life and higher inspiration than they ever before have known." - Gene Stratton Porter

The Big Flush

This may be a sensitive question given that you and I have just started this relationship and all, but I feel like this is something that everyone can relate to, in one way or another.
So;
Do you read on the toilet?
Given that the toilet is a place of relief and the deepest kind of satisfaction, it makes sense that it be used as a place of concentration. Plus, lets face it, it gets a little boring when things are, ahem, backed up.

To set your curiosity at rest I'll answer my own question. Yes; I read in the bathroom. Books, magazines, my kindle, sometimes I'm reduced to reading the backs of shampoo bottles (you've done it.). I don't know why this seems to be a taboo thing to admit, but we potty-readers are a shunned party.

My dad was totally a toilet reader. I don't think he knew that we were aware of it either. But every night before dinner he would disappear. By the closed door and absolute silence emitting from the bathroom we knew exactly what was going on in there.He always sounded completely surprised when we called him too. Like he was sitting there minding (and doing) his business and he had somehow time traveled to an hour in the future without his knowledge. We all knew to steer clear of that side of the house for a while after one of those sessions.
I don't see what the big deal is. My husband says it's gross, but I told him it isn't any grosser that what he's already doing in there. I get some of my best reading done there. I'm relaxed, it's quiet and interruption free. People might say you get the same qualities from a library, but just try and relieve yourself at a library and see how that goes.

So I say read on potty-readers! Read until your legs are asleep and people forget that you're even home. Wear the red ring around your butt as a badge of honor! Install a cushiony seat and never leave the bathroom again!

Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a dream"

This is an important thing for your to read on today of all days. My guess is that most people have never heard or read the whole thing, just the last 16 stanzas. Change that.


I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men -- would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end but a beginning. Those who hoped that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. ****

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back toGeorgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today my friends -- so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi -- from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring -- when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children -- black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics -- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"