Cherryl Floyd Miller

Every once in awhile, I discover a pleasant surprise online. That happened recently when I ran across the blog of Cherryl Floyd Miller.

She had linked to one of my posts and I am flattered that a writer as talented as her has read anything I've written. I mean, the woman has been on Oprah in a segment with Maya Angelou. Have I ever mentioned my love of Maya Angelou? It's substantial. Seeing her in person was one of the highlights of my life.

It's interesting that when you see your writing out of context you're sometimes struck anew by it. What a lovely experience.

I'm so thankful to Ms. Miller for this lovely perk in the day.

Natalee Holloway

WARNING: Language

OK... I'm about to piss people off... and I know it... but I'm going to say it anyway...

I am SICK of hearing about Natalee Holloway.

She went on a trip to celebrate high school graduation and choose a place where the drinking age was 18 so she and her friends could drink. She got drunk. She hooked up with some random guy - guy who you can take one look at and know he's someone to avoid, although at 18 you may not have the experience to know that. (Parents - litle tip - don't protect your kids too much - they do need to gain some life experience.) It would appear they had sex - perhaps consensual, perhaps not. Obviously, something very bad happened.

Van der Sloot seems like a real scum bag - no question about that. And who knows what really happened. We've now got these tapes where he "confesses," but in a legal sense this is very circumstantial if I remember my one law class from college. If things really happened this way - and it may well have - then one other person knows - the guy who dumped the body.

It's a sad case. It's always horrible when someone dies - particularly in what appears a violent way. And I am truly sorry for the loss to Natalee's family and friends. And she certainly didn't "deserve" to have anything bad happen to her. But can we at least agree that she needs to accept some responsibility for being drunk and hooking up? You take a chance when you do either of those things. I'm not saying it means he had a right to do whatever he did - I'm saying if different decisions were made the situation wouldn't have existed. No one abducted her. She went willingly. If we are to believe him on all counts, she approached him. If we can't believe him on all, then we can't believe him on any. You don't get it both ways - he's telling the truth or he's not.

The reporter is saying that young people don't just die from drinking too much. That's not true. Young people die all the time from drinking too much. So do old people.

OK... I'm a person who has made a lot of decisions in my life that could well have resulted in something horrible happening to me. Just ask my friend, Leah, who thinks I take far too many unnecessary risks. I don't think I do, but that's a matter of perspective. I do know I've been fortunate many times. But I've also exercised some judgement.

For example, I would not mix mind-altering conditions and randomly hooking up -  it's not a good combo for making the best decisions. If you need to get drunk before you want to hook up with a guy, he's probably not a guy you need to be with. Also, another little tip - bars are not the best places to meet the best guys. If you have to drink yourself into oblivion in order to get past your inhibitions, then honor your inhibitions. Oh, yeah, and a guy you meet while consuming large amounts of alcohol is not likely to be the man of your dreams. Not even the man of your dreams for tonight. You don't need to be shit-faced to stomach being with the man of your dreams - that's one way you'll know.

He says his semen will be in and on her body and accurately describes her underwear. People act shocked. Please, what do you think drunk 18 year olds do on the beach in Aruba? They're not there for long discussions about theoretical physics. What do you think girls who are inviting guys they don't know to take jello shots off them and then telling them they have to buy them drinks are planning? Trust me, they're not interested in the guy's intellect. They may not be planning sex, but they're not planning NO sexual contact either.

Part of my distate for the whole situation is the "Missing White Woman Syndrome." It's not Natalee's fault that she fits the profile of the type of woman the media is interested in finding out about. But it pisses me off, anyway. Thousands of people go missing and we hear about very few of them to any large degree. Chandra Levy, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson - they're all part of our lexicon. But, if they'd been non-white, poor, or "less deserving," we wouldn't know their names.

That, ultimately, is the issue. I'm sick of hearing about Natalee because it's unfair to other families in the same situation. It's very sad for her family but it's no more sad for her mother than any other mother. I don't want us to forget the others.

Blogging will be more normal... again

I know my blogging has been a bit erratic lately. Obviously, real life has been taking a lot of energy. I'm still trying to get caught up from being gone. I'm also just physically and emotionally worn out. The last 18 months have been very difficult and I think I was just holding it together and finally crumpled - being sick for five days in Kentucky, and as of yesterday I have a new crop of drugs. But I anticipate getting back on my more normal blogging schedule.

Yesterday I spent most of the day dealing with my own good health. I woke up yesterday with these very weird feelings of being unable to breathe and just not feeling normal. I went through a whole spectrum of possibilities and by 9 a.m. knew that a doctor's appointment was in my near future. Of course, Wednesday is the day my doctor is out of the office.

But, I saw one of his colleagues who was completely uninterested in all of my other symptoms and weirdness once he listened to my lungs. He said he wasn't surprised that I felt like I couldn't breathe - that I was wheezing and needed more antibiotics, as well as some other things, to clear it all up.

Of course, I could have told the doctor last week who was filling in when my doc was gone that when they gave me 7 days of amoxicillin that that wasn't going to be sufficient. In his defense, I did call from Kentucky and he didn't get to see me in person, but I'm pretty aware of my own condition and not given to wanting antibiotics just for the thrill of spending money on them and being tied to ingesting them multiple times a day.

But, who would listen to me? I'm merely the patient. I'm just the one who knows how much I'm coughing and how "productive" it is. I'm just the one who has been dealing with my own health for 46 years. I'm just the one who knows that 7 days never clears up anything that is substantial enough for me to actually seek medical attention. I'm just the one who spent most of childhood on some sort of antibiotic, trying to kill whatever was in me, which didn't happen until I was on penicillin daily for one year. Yes, one year. After that I went from being on antibiotics every few weeks to maybe once every 2-3 years. But, yeah, what would I know? I know my own doctor listens to me - it's one of the reasons I like him so much. He should do bedside training for other doctors.

Yesterday the doctor filling in took me seriously, even though he told me nothing about my weird symptoms that caused me to go in. However, he seems to have hit the nail on the head because I feel better today than I have in weeks. I left with prescriptions for an inhaler, a round of prednisone and some heavy duty antibiotics.

Last night was the first night in a long time that I went to sleep without listening to the sound of my lungs wheezing, although I didn't know what that was. And, not surprisingly, I slept really well for many hours.

I woke up this morning realizing that a grant I had been working on earlier this month, but hadn't finished when I left for Kentucky, was due tomorrow. I've got it ready to print now and fortunately, I can drop it off in town so it will arrive before tomorrow's deadline. Thank goodness that popped into my brain. And fortunately, I felt like finishing it today.

I'm optimistic I'm on the road to recovery now.

Kansas Caucus

Tonight was the Democratic Caucus in Reno County and we had 640 people show up. This may not seem like a lot to people who live in heavily populated, heavily democratic areas, but by comparison last time we had about 80 people show up.



The local party was not at all prepared for the numbers. And, this was in the midst of a huge snow storm.

Just getting us all in the door and ready to caucus was a big job.



Of course I saw a bunch of people I know.

I had barely gotten in the door and on the side for Hillary than I heard, "Patsy, you're on the wrong side." It was Sean Buchanan, who I just adore.

He was the official designated speech person for Obama and did a great job. He is a senior at Buhler High School and this will be his first election in which he can vote. He said when he saw Obama speak at the convention last time that he just knew Obama should be the next president.

I like Obama, but I am a Hillary supporter. I think she is the best choice for this time in our history. But, I'm thrilled we have two excellent candidates. I would be proud to call either of them President and I will whole-heartedly support whichever of them wins the nomination.. And I love it that people are inspired to participate in the process.

Obama won our local caucus, as well as the state, but we're not a winner take all state - so the delegates are split. For example, we had nine delegates - Hillary got three and Barack got six.

Rumor is that our governor is on Obama's short list for a running mate. She is an incredible legislator and would make a great Vice President. I think that has probably encouraged even more support for him.

It was amazing to see so many people out tonight - particularly in light of the weather.

Cookbooks for Free

I've been perusing "Clayton's Quaker Cookbook" tonight. It was published in 1883 in San Francisco and really captures a time and place. That's one of the things I adore about cookbooks - the snapshot they give us.

I do not own a copy of this, but found it online. You, too, can have a copy - for free! You can download your own pdf.

You can find tons of other cookbooks online, too. There's a whole world of cookbooks I wasn't aware of until tonight. I'm not sure I needed more to look at.

Cookbooks vary tremendously in the amount of knowledge they assume you have. Most church cookbooks are written with cooks in mind so they don't give a lot of detailed instructions. You might find, "bake at 350 degrees until done."

Well, at this time, instructions were even more basic. In fact, there really weren't instructions - there were ingredients. I've been looking for a good sponge cake recipe - maybe this is it - 5 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups flour, 1/2 teacup cold water; mix well and bake quickly. How much easier could it be?

Cairo Illinois

Cairo, Illinois is a river town, and much of its architecture reflects that. I have always loved the bowed balconies on this building, echoing the bow of a ship. You also see lots of port hole windows around town and most of the structures are built up to allow for the flooding that was once prominent before the flood gates.



On my way back this morning I took some time to take photos because it is disappearing. The town has been in ruin for years, and now there are many empty lots where houses once stood. It seems many of them have "for sale" or "public auction" signs. I fear that soon all will be left are the nondescript, 1970s box houses, and that all the interesting architecture will be gone.



I always have this urge to "do" something but I have no idea what that might be. I'm not even sure what the problem is, much less do I know the solution.



It's a beautiful ruin in so many ways, but when it's all empty lots it will just be ruin and there will be nothing to redeem it. There's something left there, now, but I don't think another decade will leave much in its wake. Very sad.

If much of the architecture looks a little familiar to you and you can't figure out why, it's probably because it reminds you of New Orleans. Like fashion, food, and everything else, architecture styles moved up the river too.

Wooden Barn in Kentucky

I mentioned the wind storm a few nights ago peeled back parts of the barn on the farm where I grew up. I snapped a photo to share. This is the same barn Greg photographed that was on yesterday's post, just from a different angle. Obv iously, the tin roof was already partially gone, but it had a full, solid wall until a couple of days ago.

My family bought the farm in 1949 and the barn was already on it, along with the one beside Jackie and Mary Ann's house and a big tobacco barn that blew down in a wind storm in the late 50s. I, of course, don't remember that since I wasn't yet around, but when I asked Jackie if both these were here when our parents bought the farm he told me about that one, too. Apparently wind storms are hard on barns for our family.

I've been photographing old barns in Ballard County for the last few trips I've made back here. One of these days I'll get around to making a big post of some of those. Old wooden barns are disappearing and being replaced by metal monsters. I understand all the reasons for such things, but I just can't think of a barn as anything other than wood. A metal building is... well... a metal building... it could be anything... and that's part of what makes them appealing. But a barn has to be wood.

I'd like a barn... out behind the Queen Anne mansion I want. I'm a woman of contrasts, what can I say?