Jackie R. Walburn, writer, communications

No blog: Blame it on Words with Friends

2012-01-27T23:19:00.001-06:00

Blame it on Words with Friends.

I haven’t blogged since late November, and I suspect it’s mostly because of Words with Friends, the Scrabble-like on-line game where I keep multiple games going with Facebook friends. It’s addicting; it’s fun. It’s challenging, and I like to win. And “Words” has helped me waste computer time, time when I could have been waxing prose-like at jackierwalburnwrites.blogspot.com. Instead, I am searching for the elusive TW (triple word) square connection that will turn my J, Q or Z into a 50, 60, 70 point word. YES!

I’m not alone. Alec Baldwin blamed it on Words with Friends when he got booted off an American Airlines flight in Los Angeles back in December when he didn’t turn off his cell phone as the plane waited in line to take off. He was just playing "a word game for smart people,” Baldwin said, as he defended himself on Saturday Night Live later that month.

A word game for smart people. I liked that. And, I really like this on-line version of my favorite board game. It’s not the same vibe, of course, as the real board game with those wooden tiles and the neat little wooden couches where you line the tiles up and move them around. Our family still gathers to play Scrabble – our game old and worn and still with score pads from sleepovers and game fests gone by. We still play the real game whenever we’re together and I can talk them into it.

I play Words with Friends with several former co-workers and with my eighth grade best friend from Fairfield who lives in Florida now. I’ve played with my husband’s cousin from Washington State, with my niece, my son, my son’s friends and with Kathy, my former co-worker and fellow downsized Weyerhaeuser corporate communications manager, who beats me every time (so far) and who taught me the secret of the S.

I don’t play other Facebook games, and I don’t have a smartphone to play other games there, only a dumb phone that just calls and texts. I don’t accept invites from Facebook friends to join them in playing Castleville or Farmville or Hidden Chronicles or Pioneer Trail. I don’t even respond to the requests. Sorry about that. I am too busy playing Words with Friends, seeking that DW or TW, hoping for a U to go with the Q. No U? U can always go with QAT or QI. I didn’t know what these words meant until I looked them up.

Qat: the leaves of a scrub that can be chewed for a stimulant effect.

Qi: A variant of chi – the force in Taoism and other Chinese thought, meaning inherent in all things. The unimpeded circulation of chi and a balance of its negative and positive forms in the body are held to be essential to good health in traditional Chinese medicine.

But it does not really matter if you know a word’s meaning in Words with Friends -- aside from a word nerd’s joy at knowing the meaning of words like qi, qat and taj (Taj: a tall conical cap worn by Muslims as a headdress of distinction). But, believe me, meanings known or not, Words with Frienders know and love their QATs and QIs and TAJs.

I like to think that Words with Friends is my only on-line computer game because I like words and I like spinning them together. I mean, I get a headache just looking at a Sudoku puzzle.

And, even though I enjoy the mind-targeting challenge of Words with Friends, I miss blogging and hope maybe some folks miss me doing it. So, I look forward to more frequent musings, and songs and pictures of the day, in 2012.

But, for right now, it’s “my turn” on three Words with Friends games over on Facebook.

So, I wish you great qi and plentiful qat.

Word out.

Picture of the Day:

My Aunt Norma Ruth Romine Young, seated, with my stepmother Emily Love Romine at family Christmas at our house. I want to send best wishes for a speedy recovery to sweet Aunt Norma, my daddy's sister, who is recovering from hip surgery.

Song of the Day:

In recognition of this week's tornadoes in Alabama, for the song of the day, I quote the first two verses of Shelter from the Storm by wordsmith genius Bob Dylan. I wonder if he plays Words with Friends?

Shelter from the Storm

By Bob Dylan

’Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I’ll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

Two graying artists make my week shine

2011-11-19T17:32:00.002-06:00

Two artists, graying and aged to their mid-60s, brightened my week.

That made me think: Is 60 the new 50? So, then is 50 the new 40? Is this just my wishful thinking? No matter. It’s heartening to see retirement-age folks Still the Same or better, and, as one of these artists sang to us, still with a Fire Down Below.

The week began with receipt of Stephen King’s 11/22/63, the newest of King’s more than 50 national bestsellers. I am an avid fan of King, who calls the ka-zillion of us his “constant readers.” We’re proud constant readers, and in this book, he follows his own advice from On Writing, his memoir of the craft, and gives us a believable, flawed character we quickly care about and then asks “what if?” What if you could travel back in time and prevent bad things from happening? Could Kennedy’s assassination be prevented if Oswald was taken out before 11/22/63?

That’s the premise of this 842-page (not counting forward) book that King wrote in slightly less than two years. He list the days he starts and finishes a novel, and where, at the end of each. You see, King is a constant writer for us constant readers. And, thank you, sir, for that.

King makes time travel believable as only he can; the portal is in the storeroom of the local diner. I’m on page 183 right now, and enjoying the journey every time I Turn the Page. Being able to take a journey to other places, thoughts and situations is why I read and try to write. That, and the language. Stephen King knows about the language and has tried to teach us. Thanks for that, too.

The second graying artist of the week is Bob Seger, who came to Birmingham for the first time in about 20 years Tuesday night, with his tight and right-on-target Silver Bullet Band. His songs, a few referenced in italics above, are rock, rhythm and blues background music for my generation and probably some generations behind ours.

Not graying, but gray, Seger let we happy fans sing along with him. We knew all the words. He fist-pumped, smiled and sang the songs he wrote over more than four decades about young love/lust (Night Moves), determination and growing older and wiser (Against the Wind), and, don’t ever forget, Rock ‘n Roll (Old Time Rock’ N Roll, which I read is the number 2 all-time juke box song behind Patsy Cline’s Crazy).

One of my favorites, Rock N’ Roll Never Forgets, was one of the encore songs of the night and is fitting for these artists and their determination to still shake ‘em down.

"So you're a little bit older and a lot less bolder
Than you used to be
So you used to shake 'em down
But now you stop and think about your dignity

So now sweet sixteens turned thirty-one
You get to feelin' weary when the work days done
Well all you got to do is get up and into your kicks
If you're in a fix

Come back baby
Rock and roll never forgets"

I don’t know, but I bet Stephen King – who plays with a sometimes band called The Rock Bottom Remainders with sometime-members including fellow writers Dave Barry, Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Tan, Ridley Pearson, Robert Fulghum -- is a Seger fan. He’s bound to be.

King uses music and lyrics as part of all his novels, either as part of the story or as quote introductions, often both. I recall Bob Dylan’s line: “The pump don’t work ’Cause the vandals took the handles” as an introduction for one of his books. Another, better King-constant-reader would remember which book.

More often, King weaves music into the thoughts of his characters, as they remember a line or have a song in their heads as they face the next challenge. One from this 11/22/63 book is a Ray Wylie Hubbard reference to that Texan’s song, Screw You, We’re from Texas -- because you know this time-traveling opus will end up in Texas, if JFK’s murder is going to be averted. Or will it?

That’s why we read and listen to songs like Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man, Seger’s first national hit, back when I was, really truly, just 12 years old. ("I ain't good lookin' but you know I ain't shy; ain't afraid to look a girl in the eye.")

The language and the music help us take a journey, and they accompany us on this fine adventure of life.

We thank you for that, our writing, rocking and graying friends.

Song of the day
Against the Wind
by Bob Seger

Well those drifter's days are past me now
I've got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out

Against the wind
I'm still runnin' against the wind
I'm older now but still runnin' against the wind
Well I'm older now and still runnin'
Against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind

Pictures of the day:
A Bob Seger then-and-now retrospective:

Great hair: I had a shag like that in the '70s too.

Performing in Louisville a few days after the B'ham concert.

Learn before you speak, Miss PETA

2011-09-25T18:59:00.001-05:00

This is an open letter to PETA and Miss PETA person, a.k.a. Debbie Downer, who wrote The Montgomery Advertiser to decry the use of eagles in Auburn University’s pre-home game Eagle flight ceremonies, an inspiring tradition that’s been called one of college football’s best.

Lindsey Pollard-Post of the PETA Foundation in Norfolk, Va., wrote: "The crash of a bald eagle named Spirit into a window during a forced pre-game flight at the Auburn Tigers' stadium on Saturday is a sad example of how animals suffer when we drag them into human celebrations.

“The screaming fans, air horns, music and booming sound systems of sports games can be stressful, terrifying and disorienting for animals. If given the choice, bald eagles make their homes near lakes, rivers, and quiet forests, far away from human disturbance.”

Pollard-Post wrote the letter the week after Spirit, AU’s bald eagle, made contact with a luxury box and slightly buzzed some excited fans before Auburn’s game against Mississippi State. Debbie Downer, I mean the PETA person, then said the school should retire the birds to sanctuaries.

First, I’ll just say leave our eagles alone and mind your own.

Secondly, know what you are talking about before you talk or write, comment, exaggerate or advise.

Some points for the letter writer and PETA:

• Spirit, the American Bald Eagle, and Nova and Tiger, golden eagles, live at Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine’s Southeastern Raptor Center, the oldest and only medical and surgical wildlife rehabilitation facility in the Southeast dedicated solely to raptors.

One of the first War Eagles, circa 1977, Photo by Gordon Bugg

• The eagles have been cared for and loved and have been flying for fans at Jordan Hare Stadium for more than 10 years.

• No Eagle has ever been hurt in the making of this War Eagle tradition.

• Spirit was not hurt by the contact with the luxury box. Spirit is not forced to fly anywhere, and could fly away if he wanted. However, Spirit could not survive in the wild.

• Spirit was found injured in Florida in 1995 and was brought to Auburn in 1998. Spirit made his first flight in Jordan-Hare in 2001. He is not releasable because of his damaged beak.

• Southeastern Raptor Center works in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to rehabilitate and release injured and orphaned raptors, educate the public about their role and importance, and to research raptor-related issues.

• At SRC, raptors are admitted with a variety of injuries and ailments. Many birds are rehabilitated and released. When release is not possible, the bird may become a permanent center resident or transfer to another educational facility.

• In addition, Miss Animal-Lover-with-No-Common-Sense, Auburn University is a vet school and agriculture and animal science research institution with strong schools and a history of innovation in agricultural, animal science, forestry, fisheries and wildlife studies. Auburn is so closely associated with the land and animals that some among our cross-state rivals call us the Cow College. (And, for the record, we don’t think that’s an insult.)

You see, Miss PETA, places like Auburn and the SRC do the work that you and PETA only talk about.

Because of land-grant, research universities like Auburn -- where researchers and students concentrate on the science of animals, wildlife, trees, plants, birds and raptors – animals and people are better off – and FALLEN EAGLES, THEY CAN FLY.

Picture of the day:

Mary Claire Walburn with AU eagle in the early 1990s.
This may be Tiger, who is now 31 and retired.

Song of the day:

When Fallen Angels Fly

by Billy Joe Shaver

There's a story in the bible about the eagle growing old

How it grows new sets of feathers, then becomes both young and strong

Then it spreads its mightly wing span out across the open sky

We will have the wings of eagles,when the fallen angels fly

Billy Joe Shaver tells stories in songs, survives

2011-08-22T09:09:00.001-05:00

Billy Joe Shaver, who Willie Nelson believes may be the best songwriter alive today, didn’t feel good Friday night when we saw him at a steamy Zydeco concert. Nevertheless, the 72-year-old sang and smiled and told some stories, and with his band of players younger-than-half-his-age, entertained the small group of loyalists who knew the words to all his songs.

But, his shoulder was hurting – he’d had surgery and probably rushed to the tour without doing much of the recommended rehab (plus he told a story about falling and being picked up by that shoulder). And, it was hot, summertime-in-Birmingham hot inside the upstairs bar-slash concert hall. Shaver’s trademark snap-up denim shirt was soaked, and he asked the crew to turn off the white-hot back lights.

Still, he sang and told his stories. A performer and songwriter for most of his seven decades, Billy Joe kept coming back from the brief breaks during drum and guitar solos to sing another one. He gave us Georgia on a Fast Train, Live Forever, Tramp on Your Street, Honky Tonk Heroes, Black Rose and That’s What She Said Last Night. He did Wacko in Waco about the altercation that landed him in court last year, charged with assault. The jury of Texans sided with Billy Joe, whose friends Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall stood by him in court.

Shaver, whose been born again a couple of times, didn’t do many of his “Christian songs,” likely because he needed that painful right arm to properly emote songs like If You Don’t Love Jesus, You can go to Hell and Get Thee Behind me Satan.

Unknown to many in the world of popular country, Billy Joe Shaver is a songwriter’s songwriter and is known by loyal fans and other songwriters, especially Texas ones. Bob Dylan name-checked Billy Joe in the song I Feel a Change Comin’ On, from Dylan’s last album, Together through Life, singing “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and reading James Joyce.” Kris Kristofferson, who helped Billy early during their Nashville songwriting years says, “He’s as real a writer as Hemingway. He’s timeless.”

I bought one of the six copies they had of Shaver’s book at the concert souvenir table, an autobiography called “Honky Tonk Hero” and on a normal concert night, he would have signed it for me, because that’s the way Billy Joe is. But, he left while the band was still closin’ it down. His people said Billy Joe just didn’t feel good. We could tell, and we thought, God bless him.

The book, with an introduction that is posted on his website http://www.billyjoeshaver.com/, proves Kristofferson’s real writer statement and tells the stories – how he survived, how he lost two and a half fingers in a saw mill accident, lost his wife to cancer (married three times, divorced twice) and lost their child, guitar-phenom Eddy Shaver, to a drug overdose, and how Jesus helped him see that his gift was telling stories through songs.

The book’s introduction begins, “I was not even born yet when my father first tried to kill me.”

From that rough beginning of his father beating his pregnant mother unconscious and then leaving her to die to today when Billy Joe reads his Bible everyday and looks forward to seeing his wife and son in Heaven, Billy Joe’s life is a testament to God-given talent and overcoming the odds, and sharing some of America’s best songs along the way.

In the book, which includes lyrics to dozens of great songs covered by everyone from Waylon to Elvis, Billy Joe says of his tough beginning and beyond, “I’ve lost parts of three fingers, broke my back, suffered a heart attack and a quadruple bypass, had a steel plate put in my neck and 136 stitches in my head, fought drugs and booze, spend the money I had and buried my wife, son and mother in the span of one year.”

No wonder he didn’t feel good.

But, as Shaver says in the book, “I’m not here to complain or to ask for pity. Life is hard for everybody, just in different ways. I’m not proud of my misfortune – I’m proud of my survival. “

We are too, Billy Joe.

Contest and writers conference: "Go home and write"

2011-07-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

We gathered in Huntsville at the annual conference of the Alabama Writers Conclave to learn more about the craft of writing and to get our awards.

The “we” are writers -- folks who like to put words on paper and tell stories, through fiction or non-fiction, poems or humor. There are a few professionals in the bunch – people who have mostly earned a living by writing and communication, like me -- but this group is generally made up of folks who love the language and are willing, even compelled, to do the work and experience the sometimes-joy that is writing. There are executives and retirees, teachers, attorneys and sales people, all who close the door and write, because they love it, are good at it and have stories to tell.

At the AWC annual conference, we pile into rooms and learn about dialogue, showing, telling and playing with time in fiction, editing poems, op-eds, and that elusive “writer’s voice.”

Members can also pay a small fee and have a formal critique of a piece of work. I had my novel, first chapter, critiqued by our featured speaker, a rabbi with 24 non-fiction books to his credit. Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Ph.D, who spoke to us on topics including “What would Jesus Tweet? The Power of Writing Short,” told me I was giving away too much too soon in the second draft of my Southern, magic-laced novel. But, he liked it and the characters he met in the first 10 pages. So, I am revising, again.

Also, the AWC has an annual writing contest, a literary competition, in which folks enter from all over the U.S. and, this year, also Canada and Brazil.

This blogger placed in the humor category for Three Generations and Kid Rock: Seeing it in Color, and I was an excited as a kid with an all-As report card when I got my certificate. Now I can and will say I am an Alabama Writers Conclave literary competition award winner.

Selected works from the winners of each year’s contest are featured in AlaLit.com, posted on the AWC website. Here is the link, where my blog post on going to see Kid Rock with Granma, daughter and niece, which is about several posts back, is featured on page 184.

http://alalit.com/
Alalit.com is good reading. I’ll point you to:

• The winner of novel, first chapter, by Hank Henley, a scholastic book sales executive. It’s a stunningly clever first chapter that makes me want to see Hank get this published. We all want to get published.

• The first chapter, novel, by my new writer friend Jo Wharton Heath, a retired mathematics professor at Auburn University (my alma mater). The piece is called The Man in the Blue Demin Shirt.

• And, check out the humor piece by Birmingham Judge Debra Goldstein, about legal matters at a long-running mah-jongg group. U.S. Administrative Judge Goldstein published her first novel this year, a mystery called Maze in Blue.
When you have the time, check out Alalit.com, and let these folks tell you some stories.

I learned a lot at the meeting, and came back with tactics and knowledge I didn’t have before, plus revisions in my head and a renewed determination to “shut the door and write one word at a time” as Stephen King advises me from the post-it note on my computer.

A final word from the out-going AWC president Greg Screws, who is a television newman in Huntsville, summed it up. He said, “Go home and write.”

Missing the BEACH and all that goes with it

2011-07-18T09:31:00.002-05:00

It’s been almost a month since THE WEEK AT THE BEACH.

I miss sound of the surf, the lazy mornings, afternoons and evenings.

I miss the shrimp. We had it steamed, fried, boiled, po-boyed, gumboed, saladed and sauted.

I miss the slowing of time but not the rushing by of days when all-of-a-sudden, it’s time to pack up and leave.

I miss the sand, the shells, the breeze, the salty smell, even the jellyfish surge that made tipping into the Gulf for relief an exercise in watching and wading, diligence and expedience.

I miss the sunsets, the days spent rotating angles with the sun as afternoon moved to evening, evening to dark.

I miss sleeping to the sound of the water moving in its continuous moon-inspired dance, sleeping the sleep of a child after a day in the sun and water, a child without worries.

I miss not having to go anywhere or do anything, but be there.

I even miss the morning appearances of the beach clean-up crews, still bankrolled (as it should be) by BP.

They cruised in early each day, stopping on the beach near our Quik-Shade beach outpost. They’d roll to a slow halt in their sand-worthy Mule-type vehicle equipped with a portable porta-potty, an unusual and glaring sight, likely a requirement of work safety standards but blending in on the beach like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine (Dylan reference).

The crew of two to five brightly-vested, wide-brim capped workers carried small nets and searched for tar balls, any remnant of the April 20, 2010 oil spill mess.

“Everyting’s fine, ma’am,” one of them told me in a Cajun accent, when I was out early with my book and a Screwdriver and asked what they were finding. Judging from their nets, they were finding water bottles, chip bags, cigarette butts and dried-up jelly fish. Once, we watched from our balcony as they dug a series of holes perpendicular to the beach, likely looking for year-old oil sludge layers.

I found the continuing presence of oil spill clean-up workers on the beaches I have loved my whole life both reassuring and unsettling. Grateful for the diligence and glad to see anyone with a job, I just wish it’d never happened.

I feared for our Paradise then and now, noting the SUVs and pick-ups in the condo parking lot and knowing without that oil and the gasoline producers we cursed in the spring and summer of 2010, how would I get to my WEEK AT THE BEACH?

But, I didn’t, couldn’t, can’t solve that problem, not during that beloved and missed vacation week, and not now.

I just miss the beach and all that goes with it.

Picture(s) of the day:

The oil-BP beach patrol on it's morning rounds.

That's our Quik Shade behind it, the best $50

ever spent for a WEEK AT THE BEACH.

Last Sunset: Rolling in the Quik-Shade

Song of the Day:

Changes in Latitudes, Jimmy Buffett

These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes,
Nothing remains quite the same.
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands,
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane

Kathryn Tucker Windham, reporting the joys of life

2011-06-13T08:38:00.003-05:00

Alabama’s storyteller and one of my writing and reporting heroes died Sunday, June 12, surrounded by friends and family. But, then, Miss Kathryn was almost always surrounded by friends. I think that’s because she made us her friend, accepted us – even this then-cub reporter who idolized her.

People who met Kathryn Windham -- or just those who read her Jeffrey ghost books or those celebrating folklore or front porches or listened to her on National Public Radio – became her friends because she brought us into her circle of care and laughter. She was 93 when she died Sunday, which is a good, long life for a journalist, storyteller, photographer, friend and mother of three who left a mark on everyone who knew her.

Through her writing, her care for others and her love for Selma, folklore and all things superstitious, Kathryn Tucker Windham’s fame had spread far beyond the Alabama Black Belt. Born in Thomasville, she lived most of her adult life in Selma, where she was a treasured hometown icon and where I was privileged to know her.

As a reporter for the Selma Times-Journal from 1979 to 1986 (and another stint as Lifestyle editor in the late 80s, early 90s), I was one of many young reporters who idolized this woman who used to work at the STJ and was the first female police reporter at the Alabama Journal in Montgomery. She told us stories about covering the police beat in the state capitol back during World War II, when most of the guys were gone, so they had to let a woman cover the police beat. Mrs. Windham, speaking to a group of journalists back in the day at a Selma meeting, provided my favorite line about being a reporter. “You get to ask people you don’t know things that are none of your business.”

Perfect. And that’s how her writing was, and her care for others.

I wrote a feature story about Mrs. Windham back in the 1980s, I think it was (I looked this morning in my yellowing clipping collection from the STJ and couldn’t find it). My Selma Times-Journal editor, Nikki Davis Maute, and one of Miss Kathryn’s many BFFs whose picture with Jeffrey helped start it all, assigned the feature to me. See, we had a list of prominent Selma folks and were doing profile stories on them, first to tell their stories, and also to have a file (these were paper files then) on our best and brightest, whenever that information was needed. “I know y’all are doing this to get ready for our obituaries,” Mrs. Windham, ever the newswoman, told me, laughing, during the interview which was more like a friendly visit.

Mrs. Windham’s house was always open to friends, especially on New Year’s Day, when she served up pots of black-eyed peas and corn bread. It was from Mrs. Windham that I learned that only Yankee cornbread has that teaspoon of sugar it in. She befriended the leagues of young reporters who came through Selma and the Selma Times-Journal, during my time being the three J’s: Jackie, Jeanette Berryman and Janet Gresham. Janet still lives and writes in Selma, using her substantial writing and photography talents to continue to tell Selma’s story, through your blogs and through freelance work publicizing Selma’s annual events, like the Selma Pilgrimage.

I’ll always think of Mrs. Windham as a reporter, a journalist, first. Because she was so good as a reporter, she was so good at telling stories of all kinds. Her writing voice was like she was talking to you, telling you a great story, but with carefully chosen, spot-on word choices and sentences that captured the recognizable truth inside her stories, even those ghost and folklore ones.

I last saw Mrs. Windham at Auburn two years ago when she was honored as a distinguished Alabama writer by the Auburn University school of journalism, my alma mater. Two of my heroes were honored that day, her and Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Mrs. Windham and I talked a little bit before the luncheon; I told her I was writing a book, set in the Black Belt, a story that is wrapped around newspaper reports, superstitions and some magic and things we don’t know are possible or not. I said I’d already used one of her books, Count the Buzzards! Stamp Those Grey Mules! as a resource for rural, southern superstitions. “Good for you,” she smiled at me, and added, “Just write it.”

Just write it. That’s what Mrs. Windham did, as an ambassador for Alabama, Selma and the Blackbelt. She wrote and spoke the stories of our lives and past lives and what’s so special about living here and loving family and friends, and, best of all, just the joy of living. What a testament and lesson to us all.

Mrs. Windham in picture from al.com Monday,

with a cutline that quotes Rick Bragg,

"She's speaking of life and life lived, not life invented. That's a big difference."

I had to include this scanned version of the picture from 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey that started it all,

my former editor Nikki Maute, caught with Jeffrey the ghost.

Happy Birthday to Dylan; favorite lines revisited

2011-05-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan, and thanks for the words and the music.

The songwriting icon, born Robert Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, has provided me and countless others with songs and verses to map our lives, the ups and downs, with words and phrases, and figures of speech in thousands of verses, hundreds of songs, scores of albums and a lifetime of coolness.

As Bob’s 70th approached, the music and entertainment world counted down to the milestone birthday of the great one, the singer-songwriter who defined several genres of American music and along the way earned his own adjective, “Dylanesque.”

Other people have paid tribute and analyzed the mystery of Dylan’s genius better than I can, in the books and studies and websites devoted to him. For me, a writer and reporter at my core, it is about the language. That’s what Stephen King, a favorite author and Dylan fan himself, said about writing well in his book, “On Writing.” It’s about the language.

In the Dylan cover issue of the Rolling Stone (with an on-line version including RS’s 15 Dylan covers), Bono wrote about Like a Rolling Stone, the number one Dylan song for many. Bono of U2, a pretty cool dude himself, described Like a Rolling Stone as a “song that changes everything.” He called Dylan “the king of spitting fire himself, the juggler of beauty and truth, our own Willy Shakespeare in a polka-dot shirt.”

It’s about the language. My love for Dylan and his songs, I have figured out, is rooted in Dylan’s use of words and phrases, rhymes and verses, to paint us eternal pictures.

Sure, his music is legendary, having created some of the loveliest, funkiest, rocking and impactful melodies in the 20th century. I dare a doubter to listen to Blind Willie McTell, Just Like a Woman, Maggie’s Farm, Gotta Serve Somebody, Tangled Up in Blue, Mr. Tambourine Man and continue doubting. But alas, I am here today not to convert those who don’t get Dylan or care, but to recognize and share the impact his words and verses have had on my life.

There is rarely a situation where I cannot apply Dylan song verses or lines. So instead of counting down my favorite Dylan songs, I offer a short list of favorite lines from Dylan songs. I welcome those who read this to offer their own favorite lines. Also, I reserve the right to add to the list at anytime during Dylan birthday week or month, so here goes.

“You don’t need a weatherman
To know which way the wind blows”

 Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bringing It All Back Home

“Well, my back has been to the wall for so long, it seems like it’s stuck
Why don’t you break my heart one more time just for good luck.”

 Summer Days, Love and Theft

“Some neon lazy slut has charmed away my brains”
“This woman so crazy, I swear I ain't gonna touch another one for years”

 Rollin’ and Tumblin, Modern Times

“I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
I’m no pig without a wig
I hope you treat me kind”

 High Water for Charley Patton, Love and Theft

“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

 Like a Rolling Stone (LARS to we Dylan people), Highway 61 Revisited

“When I was down
You just stood there grinning...
You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning”

 Positively 4th Street

“You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right”

 Don’t Think Twice, FreeWheelin’ Bob Dylan

“People are crazy and times are strange”

 Things Have Changed, The Essential Bob Dylan

“And she aches just like a woman
But she breaks just like a little girl”

 Just Like a Woman, Blonde on Blonde

“I see my light come shining from the west unto the east
Any day now, any day now I shall be released.”

 I Shall be Released, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, 2

“What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good, you’ll find out when you reach the top
You’re on the bottom..”

 Idiot Wind, Blood on The Tracks

“To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to..”

 It’s Alright Ma, Bringing it All Back Home

“May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

May you stay forever young…”

 Forever Young, Planet Waves

Images of tornado devastation include horror, hope

2011-05-16T08:31:00.003-05:00

The images of the devastation of the tornadoes of April 27, 2011 and the aftermath come to me in many ways:

• Real time video of the tornado in Tuscaloosa we watched on television that afternoon, knowing people are dying and going to die. The weather tower-cam video showed a swirling, angry storm so large and so menacing that we blinked and thought it looked like a Hollywood-manufactured tornado. But this storm was Mother Nature’s deadly creation that tossed houses, bodies, vehicles, buildings, neighborhoods and lives.

• My daddy and stepmother, aged 83 and 74, when they finally made it to our house the day after, Daddy gasping for breath and Emily exhausted but still caring for others.

• Emily and Daddy’s place in Pleasant Grove, where his almost 100-year-old home of 40 years still stands, a wounded warrior with scars on its roof, siding and ceilings, surrounded by debris piled up like fortifications in an on-going battle.

• The homes and lives that didn’t make it through the storm, some 238 people in Alabama, including my niece’s mother in law, Gayle McCrory, whom Dawn says two weeks later she still picks up the phone to call. But then she remembers. The McCrory family’s loss was multiplied across the state and south in what will now forever be known as the tornadoes of April 27, 2011.

The images of the storm also include the debris collected from Daddy’s yard in Pleasant Grove, symbols of the lives forever changed, including:

• A picture of a young black woman holding her baby, probably minutes after it was born. We posted the picture on the Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/#!/PicturesandDocumentsfoundafterAprilTornadoes. People replied, “I hope she and the baby are okay.” So do we.

• One size 12 men's yellow dress shoe.

• A W-2 for a teen-ager who worked a summer at Alabama Adventure.

• A Christmas ornament and most of a ceramic wise man.

• A torn section of Bo Jackson’s book, Bo Knows Bo, four pages of the chapter called: “Set Your Goals High – and Don’t Stop.” Bo, who we Auburn people love, grew up in McCalla, not far from some of the storm’s worst devastation in Pleasant Grove, Concord and Tuscaloosa. Bo’s advice to “don’t stop” is council everyone affected by the storm, as victims or volunteers, must have as a mantra. So much has been done to help and care for others by regular folks from all over, and there is still much work to be done.

Other images follow me, here and now more than two weeks after the storms:

• Daddy, Emily and Dreama, their adopted daughter and the little sister I always wanted, telling the story of riding out the storm in the hall of their house.

A blanket on top of Dreama and Prancer the Chihuahua, they held onto each other as the storm raged outside, the windows shattered and the bathroom door blew out and the sucking wind grabbed Emily. Daddy recalls hanging on to Em, his wife of almost 50 years, as the wind grabbed her. They heard trees falling and ceiling crumbling, but they walked out of the hall, the only injury a nasty cut to Daddy’s arm and bruises that still shine purple on his right arm. They spent a miserable night in the house that night – trapped by the fallen trees, powerlines and devastation, and watched their neighbors walk out of the chaos – “like refugees from a battle,” Em said, folks clutching a few possessions, a garbage bag of treasures saved.
(My aunt and uncle-in-laws, Jimmy and Anne Adams, were among those Pleasant Grove neighbors who walked out with just the clothes on their backs, after surviving the storm huddled together as their house disintegrated around them. Aunt Anne walked out, they now know, with a broken leg. I tried to look for their house when we returned, but blocks and blocks and blocks of Pleasant Grove are gone, so that one rubble looks like the next, unless it’s your rubble.)

• Images of volunteers, helpers, saints, who came to help:

o The young man Cody who helped Emily get panels and tarps in place on the house the day after, so that Daddy would leave it without worrying too much about looters or rain taking what the storm had not.

o The folks at their church, Pleasant Grove United Methodist, who checked on them, sent volunteers to help clear the driveway, retarped the roof and are still helping. Em and I stopped by the church after meeting the insurance adjuster last Thursday, and we had a hot meal with volunteers from all over. I was amazed at the expert-level coordination of help and services and the caring – a front-line, “faith-based” rescue and help initiative duplicated in communities across the state. Churches have been the backbone of on-the-ground help in affected communities, and we praise the Lord for them.

o A man named Kevin and two helpers, who came Saturday before last, sent by the church, armed with chain saws and a diesel-powered loader to clear the rest of the drive way. They cut and piled and toted. We had a small family work party that day -- Frank, Will, Mary Claire, Em and Dreama. We shoveled insulation and dry wall in the living room and bedroom; Frank and Will cut and dragged limbs and piled debris that used to be the tool shed and tools, and they took down the pecan tree that pierced the roof. And, because of Kevin and helpers, angels from Daphne, we left with most of the debris at the curb and another step closer to the new normal.

Daddy and Emily, Dreama and Prancer, the yipping Chihuahua (or is that redundant?) spent two weeks with us before taking the invite to live in the basement apartment of friends Jeff and Tina Lindsey, nearby in Hoover. They are settling in and nearer to that new normal state, in this one-level apartment with kitchen. We have my list of what the adjuster said insurance will cover, expect the official one next week, and next on our list is getting bids from roofers, drywallers and painters. A reliable contractor to coordinate it all would be another wished-for miracle.

Meanwhile, like others whose lives were scrambled and tossed in these storms, my folks just keep going. They’re still shaken, but thankful, sometimes sad but happy to be here, and they do the next thing. They “Don’t Stop,” just like Bo advised in the four-pages that flew into the Romine yard in the storms of April 27, 2011.

Pictures of the day:

The bathroom door that went flying.

A Pleasant Grove neighborhood, after the storm

Songs of the day:

The songs in my head that speak of the horror, fear and sadness and the hope, determination and caring that were a part of this natural disaster are many. And, most were written by Bob Dylan, of course, who in his 50 years of songwriting has addressed most emotions many times. I’ve thought of A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Shelter from The Storm, High Water Risin’ and even Blowin’ in the Wind. Since I can’t decide, and because Bob’s 70th birthday is my likely next blog, I’ll share some of them and close with a song I’ve only heard on a Bootleg album, Most of the Time, with words that ring true for those who survived the storm.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, 1962 (Free-wheelin’ Bob Dylan)

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Shelter From the Storm, 1974, (Blood on The Tracks)

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail
Poisoned in the bushes an’ blown out on the trail
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”

High Water Risin’ for Charley Patton, 2001, (Love and Theft)

(Note: The Mississippi Flooding in 1927 inspired this song, a Dylan tribute for Blues Legend Charley Patton who wrote the first High Water Risin’; let us remember those in the wake of that pending disaster)

High water risin’, the shacks are slidin’ down
Folks lose their possessions—folks are leaving town
Bertha Mason shook it—broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says, “You’re dancin’ with whom they tell you to
Or you don’t dance at all”
It’s tough out there
High water everywhere

Most of the Time, 1989, (Oh, Mercy)

He’s writing about a woman here, but I suspect many storm survivors feel this way…most of the time.

Most of the time

I’m clear focused all around
Most of the time
I can keep both feet on the ground
I can follow the path, I can read the signs
Stay right with it when the road unwinds
I can handle whatever I stumble upon
I don’t even notice she’s gone
Most of the time

Most of the time
It’s well understood
Most of the time
I wouldn’t change it if I could
I can make it all match up, I can hold my own
I can deal with the situation right down to the bone
I can survive, I can endure
And I don’t even think about her
Most of the time

Most of the time
My head is on straight
Most of the time
I’m strong enough not to hate
I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick
I can smile in the face of mankind
.............
Most of the time

So sorry, I’ve been e-jacked

2011-03-28T16:13:00.001-05:00

I was e-jacked on Friday, and I didn’t feel a thing.

The first hint that my gmail account had been hijacked came when I received a mail delivery failure notification for an e-mail to a bunch of folks I had not sent anything to.

Next, I heard from two of the 390 spammed recipients that my e-mail had apparently been hijacked, and one copied me on the original e-mail (including the very lengthy contacts list). Not coincidently both the folks who e-mailed me to let me know about the out-of-control e-mail were communications professionals, former corporate communications co-workers who would think to communicate with me about the strange e-mail they received. Thanks guys, and sorry about the spam.

And, it wasn’t enough that this worm, pickle, cookie or whatever stupid name there is for this spamming devil, sent an e-mail to almost 400 contacts -- everyone I’ve ever sent an e-mail to since I opened the gmail account in 2008 – including job prospects, other professional contacts, aunts and uncles. No, to make it just precious, the e-mail and link it sent was for: men’s performance enhancement products.

Great. Instead of just being annoying and embarrassing, this hijacked e-mail bearing my name is also “inappropriate.” Hopefully, it went to most folks’ junk mail or spam folder, and most really don’t think sweet-ole-me would zip ‘em a link about such as that.

In fact, I never opened the link that was sent to my unsuspecting e-mail contacts. I had already deleted the e-mail in “sent items” which showed it went out shortly after midnight on Friday, March 25. I deleted it and the sent e-mails. I deleted everything I could find to do with the e-jacking.

Therefore, I didn’t know what the spammers or hijackers were trying to sell or push or accomplish. Then, a communications friend, this one from Washington state, e-mailed, saying it looks liked your e-mail has been hacked and the link supposedly from me had directed him to “a Canadian health care link offering me – shall, I say – ‘performance enhancing drugs.’”

This former co-worker and I occasionally sent each other links about Bob Dylan or other music heroes. So, he clicked on the link from me, expecting Dylan or a video of roots music, but instead got an unsuitable surprise. However, he deleted all, and there was no apparent damage to his computer or e-mail.

Being a novice and newcomer to hijacked e-mails and one to try to learn lessons from embarrassments like this, I Googled and I Binged. I found out this e-mail hijacking is common, especially as a way to sell those male performance enhancing products. Sometimes, the hackers are after people’s contact information or passwords, or anything that can get them something for nothing.

Regarding e-mail hijacking and other security breaches, some remedies and precautions are recommended by the experts. If you got a strange e-mail from me, or from another innocent e-mail friend, here is some advice:

1. Don’t click on any weird-sounding-or-looking links sent in an unexpected e-mail.

2. Delete suspicious e-mails outgoing and in-going.

3. If you think your e-mail has been compromised, immediately change the password on your e-mail account.

4. Check your internal computer security system or program (mine is Trend Micro) and make sure it’s been updated and running. Ditto for your Windows security system; allow for the security updates when they come in, usually when you turn on your computer.

5. Contact a full system scan, including spam and malware with whatever antivirus and security software you have on your computer. (If you don’t have any security system, then getting your e-mail hacked is probably the least of what could happen.)

The IT experts went on to say that you can get a second opinion, and there are lots of pay sites and products to help with this. Bottom line: Keep your security up-to-date, and probably, change your e-mail password often.

And if you received an inappropriate e-mail from me, selling little blue pills or saying that you won $10K in some jackpot, please accept my apology, and DELETE.

Picture of the day:

I found this picture of hail in Alabama on TwitPic, taken March 27, 2011:

I share it because our camera was in the truck when we witnessed three hail storms in a row from our friends' Flint River camphouse front porch in Talbot County, Ga. Saturday. Some of the hail was at least this big, in each of the storms, which were followed by a gorgeous rainbow reaching to the horizon.

Song of the day:

(I couldn't find a hijacking or hacking song, so I opted for Everything is Broken by Bob Dylan, who is scheduled to take his Never Ending Tour to China and Vietnam in early April. This song was released in 1989 and is a favorite lyrical tune with great rhymes for those times when it seems like every time that you stop and turn around, something else just hits the ground......)

Everything is Broken
By Bob Dylan

Broken lines, broken strings
Broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin'
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken

Rheta memoir heralds: Keep moving forward

2011-03-22T14:43:00.002-05:00

“Keep moving forward. Three words to remember when you want to forget.”

So ended Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s memoir, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, which I devoured as soon as Barnes and Noble delivered it to my doorstep.

Nationally-syndicated columnist, Auburn journalism graduate and my first editor, Rheta Grimsley Johnson was always my hero and mentor, even though we only worked together a few months, and through the years I only talked to her maybe once every 10 years and kept up only via the times I found and read her columns.

When we worked together at the Auburn Bulletin in circa 1979 and she was the editor, me the Lifestyle editor, Rheta used to tell me I was the fastest writer ever. She, on the other hand, was and is one of the best ever. Her writing is witty, honest, thorough, detailed, lyrical and well-thought-out and structured to the point where I find myself going back and rereading favorite sentences and phrases.

The same is true with Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, in which Rheta traces her life from Colquitt, Ga., to Montgomery, Ala. to Auburn, Ala, where she was Plainsman Editor and met her cartoonist first husband Jimmy Johnson, of Arlo and Janis fame (yes, Janis looks like Rheta, but she claims she never acted like her). The memoir takes us to St. Simons Island, Ga., where she and Jimmy and friends started a short-lived weekly newspaper, then to Monroeville to work on that excellent weekly, then to Jackson, Miss., then Greenville, Miss. and the beginning of Rheta’s run as a syndicated columnist. During the last 30-plus years, she’s written about the South and southerners with carefully drawn prose that touches the mind and heart.

In this book, she writes with beauty and skill about growing up (I identified with the chapter: The Year the World Lusted for Barbie), being a journalist, then a columnist, about her relationships, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. She wrote the book, I believe in part, to help her to begin to heal from the heartbreak of losing her husband Don Grierson, a journalism professor retired from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who died at their Iuka, Miss. farm-in-the-hollow a few days after heart surgery in 2009. I wish I had known her Don, but feel like I did after reading about their adventures in Cajun Louisiana, France and on the “Fishtrap Hollow” farm in Mississippi.

I last saw Rheta at Auburn two years ago, where she came with her sister-in-law Annie (Don’s brother’s widow) for Rheta to accept an award from Auburn University, as distinguished alumna, I believe. She came to the event, probably because she said she would, barely weeks after losing her husband – whose memory she and friends had celebrated with a gathering in the Mississippi hollow where only Hank Williams music was played (all Hank, all day) and echoed across the hillsides.

Even then, even with her heart still broken and a speech to make, she was kind to me and to the others gathered for the event which also honored Selma’s Kathryn Tucker Windham (another great writer I’ve been privileged to cross paths with and learn from).

You see, another reason I remember Rheta so fondly, in addition to her talent and the abilities, is that she was extraordinarily kind to me during my worst of times. My mother got sick with cancer a few months into my first, real post-graduate journalism job as Lifestyle editor, photographer and sometimes general-assignment reporter at the Auburn Bulletin (a twice-weekly – technically a semi-weekly) newspaper originally founded by Neil and Henrietta Davis (two more reporter/journalism heroes I was privileged to know and learn from).

Eventually, I had to be in Birmingham all the time, as we watched my sweet mother die. During those days that turned into weeks, it was Rheta who did my work, edited the weddings and recipes, wrote the features and pasted up the Lifestyle pages, so that I could still get the $125 per week salary that was keeping Frank and me in our honeymoon trailer house on Wire Road. Rheta did that for me, without fanfare, without wanting credit. Instead, she’d ask how I was doing, if I was holding up alright. She’d find something positive to compliment me about as she made light of the work that was piling deeper and deeper on her.

I never forgot that about Rheta, and I wished so much that day two years ago at Auburn that I could do something to ease her pain. But, as she writes so well in her book – which also celebrates Barbies, horses and men and grandmothers, food, music and newspapers:

“Pain is personal. When you rap your thumb with a hammer, nobody feels it but you. Nobody else cusses or cries. Grief is the same. The hammer hasn’t hit anyone but you. People will bring you a cold rag to wrap your finger and say they are sorry you are hurting, but the endless throbbing doesn’t go away when the sympathetic visitors do. It lasts. And lasts. “

But the book is not about the pain, but it includes it, just like life does.

I e-mailed Rheta about a month ago, to compliment her on her column on Auburn’s Cam Newton, which had been reprinted in Auburn Magazine, the alumni publication. In the column, she compared watching Cam on the field to Dancing with the Stars. It was great.

She replied to the e-mail, and in typical Rheta fashion with me, she apologized for not being in touch. She was feeling better, she said, after a year of “ricocheting off walls” after Don died. She didn’t mention her book, just out, but did comment on my almost-finished novel, which we had discussed briefly at that luncheon in Auburn, when I was just starting it. She offered praise for finishing the first draft, saying, “I'm delighted that you're finishing it. The two most common problems most of us writers have are 1.starting and 2. finishing. You've done both, it would seem.” See, she writes well, even in e-mails. Rheta also gave me advice on publishers and offered to write a blurb or anything I might need WHEN (not if) the novel gets to the publishing point.

There you go. That’s Rheta, and that’s why she is able to capture the soul and heart of the people she writes about and why her friends are her friends forever. And that’s why this memoir spoke to me so clearly and strongly about the joys and the pains that are LIFE, and how all any of us can do amidst the painful parts is: Keep moving forward.

Picture of the day:

Book cover of Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming, by Rheta Grimsley Johnson. I'm not sure, but the old typewriter (we used typewriters then!) and block walls look like very much like the Auburn Plainsman office.

Song of the day:
In honor of Rheta's Don, let's pick a tune from Hank Williams, the songwriter's songwriter.

The Alabama Waltz
By Hank Williams (1950)

I was sad and blue, I was down hearted too
It seemed like the whole world was lost
Then I took a chance and we happened to dance
To the tune of The Alabama Waltz, waltz, waltz
The Alabama Waltz
There all my fears and cares were lost
There in your arms with all of your charms
We danced The Alabama Waltz

Three generations and Kid Rock, seeing it In Color

2011-02-22T14:21:00.001-06:00

When Granma Emily first told me she wanted to go to the concert with us, saying, “I love Kid Rock,” I had to pause and ask, “You mean Kid Rock? American Bad Ass? Bawitdaba? F-words and three-fourths- naked women? That Kid Rock?”

“Well, he seems nice on the TV,” Emily, a.k.a. Granma, said.

She repeated, yes, she likes Kid Rock and planned to get tickets, too, when she heard that Mary Claire and I were going to see Kid Rock and Jamey Johnson’s Birmingham show Feb. 19. She wanted to take Dreama, her 15-year-old niece/daughter. It’d be fun.

I suspected my 73-year-old stepmother knew the southern rocker, ballad-singing Kid Rock of CMT fame, not the expletive-rhyming, stoned-pimp, bouncing b-a-from-Detroit Kid Rock.

No matter, fast forward a couple of weeks – Dreama had a church trip, so granddaughter Elizabeth Dawn, my niece, replaced Dreama in the three-generations-of-Romine-girls-go-to-Kid-Rock contingent – and we were in da’ house (as Kid Rock would say). My only regret is that we didn’t have tickets for all the nieces to attend, especially Patsy, who with her Kid-Rock-like attitude would have given us some of the street cred we were lacking.

Regardless, our three-generations-Kid-Rock adventure – a Saturday night we’ll always remember --provided living proof that attitude doesn’t have an age limit and that music and charismatic bad-boy singers like Robert James Ritchie, a.k.a. Kid Rock, transcend generations.

“I thought he was fantastic,” Granma said, as she turned her hearing aid back on as we sat and waited for the crowd to thin out and the smoke to clear after Kid Rock’s two hour performance.

A few hours before, we had looked like an unlikely crew as we lined up to enter the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Saturday night, amid young girls wearing daisy dukes and high-heel boots. Three generations of Romine girls were lead by Granma in a sparkly red shirt, sensible black pants suit and her comfortable walking shoes.

Apologies to BJCC security, but we made it through just fine, each of us with three Smirnoff miniatures stuffed into our bras – including granma’s ample bosom. Dawn couldn’t quit laughing at the thought of Granma stashing vodka minis in her granma bra. We bought Sprites (Granma paid) and settled into our seats in the upper deck, not sitting together, but close enough for me and MC to wave to Dawn and Granma, as opener Ty Stone entertained and Alabama native Jamey Johnson performed. Johnson gave several nods to our home state, in a cover of Alabama’s My Home’s in Alabama, David Allen Coe’s The Ride about riding from Montgomery with Hank Williams’ ghost (Mister, can you make folks cry when you play and sing?), and as a final number, uplifted the crowd with Hank Williams’ I Saw the Light. I loved Johnson and vow to download several of his songs, including In Color (song of the day).

Granma’s verdict on the openers when we met to buy more Sprites: “Boring. I’m ready for Kid Rock.”

Okay, Granma. Hold on.

For Kid Rock’s set, I traded places with Dawn, so she and Mary Claire could suitably dance and rock out without worrying about tipping Granma over. I sat/stood next to Granma Em, and seeing her reactions and comments made the show even better. If she was shocked at the lyrics or stage show with laser lights, timed erupting flames, a stuffed bear wearing Mardi Gras beads, a huge Longhorn skull spewing smoke and the stripper poles with the aforementioned three-fourths naked women, she never showed it.

Are those girls naked? No m’am, they have on bikini tops and thongs. I think they have those thongs for sale at the souvenir booth.

Granma drank her beer (having given me her bosom-warm vodka mini) and ate her popcorn as Kid Rock worked his way through Cowboy and All Summer Long.

“I think he’s a poet,” she said at one point. This was a hard point to argue, as I’ve admired Kid Rock’s musicianship and song-writing, his ballads like Picture and Only God Knows Why, as well as the fast-paced rebellious songs, including Cowboy, one of his most well-known songs. Not every poet finds a way to rhyme scotch and crotch, or chaos and Amadeus, but the Kid does it. Witness the lyrics (radio edit) to Cowboy:

“Cause chaos, rock like Amadeus
Find West Coast p---- for my Detroit players
Mack like mayors, ball like Lakers
They told us to leave, but bet they can't make us
Why they wanna pick on me lock me up and stored away my key
I ain't no G, I'm just a regular failure
I ain't straight outta Compton I'm straight out the trailer
Cuss like a sailor drink like a Mick
My only words of wisdom are just, Radio Edit
I'm flickin my Bic up and down that coast and
Keep on truckin until it falls in the ocean

Cowboy
With the top let back and the sunshine shining
Cowboy
Spend all my time at Hollywood and Vine
Cowboy
Ridin at night cause I sleep all day
Cowboy
I can smell a pig from a mile away
Cowboy
With the top let back and the sunshine shining
Cowboy
With the top let back and the sunshine shining
Cowboy
Hollywood and Vine
cowboy.”

Some of the lyrics I knew were x-rated, but Granma probably didn’t pick all those out, but when Kid Rock, who turned the big 4-0 this year, sang a new song called F---ing Forty and flashed the words on the big screen, there was no doubt.

“What’s he saying?” Granma asked.
“It’s about turning 40, called F---ing Forty. He says f----ing forty; at least I’m not f---ing 41.”

We looked at each other and laughed and said, “at least it’s not f----ing 54,” or “f---ing 73.”

Granma Em brought her binoculars, and I kept them around my neck through most of the show, getting up-close looks at the stage, at the cool lady drummer he’s had forever, and at his changing outfits, from the fuzzy vest at the beginning to the Alabama Rock On ’04 sparkly t-shirt to the flashing pimp outfit to his final change, bare-chested with the microphone he loves to flip and catch stuck down in the waistband of his blue jeans.

“He’s got an interesting body,” Granma kept saying. When he came out sans shirt for the Bawitdaba finale, and I said, “look, he took his shirt off.” Granma said, “give me those binoculars,” and spent most of the finale studying the interesting body and lamenting “I hope his pants don’t fall off.” Sure Granma. And then, “is that a phoenix tattoo on his back?”

“Yes, and I think that's his son’s name tatted around his bicep.”

The Birmingham News reviewer Mary Colurso concluded that the concert was a “Kid Rock party, start to finish.” Granma and I, Dawn and Mary Claire agree. And Granma, who taught me how to bop and jitterbug years ago, held her own during our three-generation rock concert experiment. We laughed a lot, and Kid Rock has a new or perhaps renewed fan of his parents’ generation.

What’s next?

Widespread Panic is coming to town this spring; better not tell Granma.

Picture of the day:

Romine girls after Kid Rock concert: Mary Claire Walburn, Jackie Romine Walburn, Emily Love Romine and Elizabeth Dawn Romine McCrory.

Song of the day:

In Color, by Jamey Johnson

(With a great refrain and lyrics that remind us of our parents, our grandparents or ourselves, In Color won multiple awards for Alabama’s Jamey Johnson and is just one of this great singer-songwriter’s to-the-point songs.)

“I said, Grandpa what’s this picture here
It’s all black and white and ain’t real clear
Is that you there, he said, yeah I was eleven
Times were tough back in thirty-five
That’s me and Uncle Joe just tryin’ to survive
A cotton farm in the Great Depression

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

This one here was taken overseas
In the middle of hell in nineteen forty-three
In the winter time you can almost see my breath
That was my tail gunner ole’ Johnny McGee
He was a high school teacher from New Orleans
And he had my back right through the day we left

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

A picture’s worth a thousand words
But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color

This one is my favorite one
This is me and grandma in the summer sun
All dressed up the day we said our vows
You can’t tell it here but it was hot that June
That rose was red and her eyes were blue
And just look at that smile I was so proud
That’s the story of my life
Right there in black and white

And if it looks like we were scared to death
Like a couple of kids just trying to save each other
You should have seen it in color

A picture’s worth a thousand words
But you can’t see what those shades of gray keep covered
You should have seen it in color
You should have seen it in color

Some people are from evil, and some are from good....

2011-02-14T13:29:00.001-06:00

It's called a Pitch or a Summary, that jacket-cover information on a novel that you read before you decide to buy or borrow a book. Here is the first draft of my pitch for my first-ever novel, currently named: Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone.

I think it still needs some work, like the still-being polished book, but please let me know what you think and if this pitch would make you pick the book to buy, borrow, or most importantly, to read:

Pitch: Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone

Some people are from evil, and some are from good.

Those opposites collide in this Southern story of right and wrong, good and evil and the magic that comes from ancient spiritual truths. Set in Alabama’s Black Belt, Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone challenges conventional views of good and evil, magic and reality, faith and mysteries, prejudice and understanding, justice and revenge.

A magic spell so powerful it crouches-in-waiting for more than a quarter century centers the action in Mojo Jones, as does the possibility of invisible, mysterious forces that intervene in human affairs and the question, what would you do?

Hoodoo, conjure women, a young newspaper editor, a law-school-graduate nephew and his retired school teacher-fried-green-tomato-cooking grandma, a big-city lawyer, a nun, the baddest man in the county and a conflicted rural grand jury play their parts in the story in which Desert Storm veteran and second-generation medicinal plant treater Mojo Jones tests himself, his family and his community. They all must come to terms with the magic in all of us and what it means to do the right thing.

Picture of the day:

Finding shells at the beach: I'm ready to go.

Song of the day: Maggie's Farm

Bob Dylan made a rare Grammy appearance Sunday night, as special guest appearing with nominees Mumford and Sons and the Avett Brothers, folk-rock bands who reminded me of early Bob and The Band.

It was perfect that the song selection was Maggie's Farm, the tune Dylan went "electric" with more than 35 years ago at the Newport Folk Festival. Great lyrics. And, although Bob was raspy (what's my point?), it was a great moment for fans (and you could tell for these young musicians) as Dylan smiled and lead the two bands and at least a couple of his band members on a fast, rousing rendition of "ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more," closing out with characteristic coolness and a few notes on harmonica.

I'll say amen.

Maggie's Farm, Bob Dylan

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I wake in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin’ me insane
It’s a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you’re havin’ a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more

I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
No, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more
Well, she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She’s the brains behind pa
She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
No, I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more

Here's a link to a review of the Grammy's, and the Dylan, Mumford and Sons and Avett Brothers' performance and some other highlights.

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/02/grammys-2011-best-performances-from-bob-dylan-to-eminem/71192/

Things Have Changed

2011-02-07T09:59:00.004-06:00

Stardate: 2010.38
Location: Galactic Quadrant Alpha, in the Neutral Zone
Status: Polarity reversed = Things Have Changed

With a Vulcan salute that we all live long and prosper, this is my Treknobabble way of posting that my status has changed.

To clarify, the blogger jackierwalburnwrites is happily back to being a writer, editor, communicator, etc. seeking opportunities and being an everyday would-be author about to finish the first draft of her first novel. Another change that comes with change: updating this blog more than twice in 10 months.

“That’s all I have to say about that.” -- Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump.

In honor of these changes, let me quote some thoughts on change from some smart and thoughtful folks.

“There is no wrong way to change, if it is in the right direction.” – Winston Churchill

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“We change whether we like it or not.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The key to change is to let go of fear.” – Roseanne Cash

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Serenity prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr

“We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.” – Charles Swindoll

“Things do not change; we change.” – Henry David Thoreau

“We fear change.” Garth Algar, Wayne’s World

“Change is the only constant.” – Proverbs

“Change is the essential process of all existence.” -- Spock, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", stardate 5730.2

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

Now, being the music nerd I am, I will offer these music quotes regarding changesonejackie:

“Still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Turn and face the strange (Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Turn and face the strange (Ch-ch-Changes)
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me But I can't trace time”

--Changes, changesonebowie, David Bowie

“I'm Gonna Make A Change, For Once In My Life
It's Gonna Feel Real Good, Gonna Make A Difference
Gonna Make It Right . . .

I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change”
--Man in the Mirror, Michael Jackson

“Well he's tellin' us this
And he's tellin' us that
Changes it every day
Say's it doesn't matter
Bases are loaded and Casey's at bat
Playin' it play by play
Time to change the batter”

--Rocky Mountain Way, Joe Walsh

“Its these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes
Nothing remains quite the same
With all of our running and all of our cunning
If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane”

--Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes, Jimmy Buffett

Also: These Times They Are A’Changin’ by guess who? (not the Guess Who), A Change Will Do You Good by Sheryl Crow, and I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal, (but I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day) by Billy Joe Shaver (previously quoted at jackierwalburnwrites, as Shaver is all that, and we will both be a diamond one day.)

But, the song of the day I choose on this posting about change is Things Have Changed by Bob Dylan.

For fellow music nerds, this song won an Academy award as best song for a movie, Wonder Boys, and can be found on The Essential Bob Dylan two-CD set.

This song – applicable lines quoted here -- has served me well, and once again, Dylan says it best.

Things Have Changed, By Bob Dylan

“A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
……
Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand
…….

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

PS:
If interested, here is link to You Tube, Things Have Changed video, featuring the movie’s stars and a sandwich-eating, distracted-driving, guitar-toting Dylan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9EKqQWPjyo

Peace out.

Picture of the day:

Fiery sunset at our Wild Kingdom camphouse

seems to glow orange and blue. WDE

Talk about lagging behind, here are the HEADLINES

2011-01-13T19:54:00.002-06:00

Last post, I lamented lack of writing and blogging time and quoted my fav Bob Dylan's Workingman's Blues #2:

“Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind
Bring me my boots and shoes
You can hang back or fight your best on the front line
Sing a little bit of these workingman's blues”

Talk about lagging behind. It's been more than seven months since I posted a blog here. Sure, I've blogged, Facebooked, written and websited for my development director job. But, my writing, my blogging has seriously lagged behind.

I have no excuses except a work-a-day life and fighting my best on the front line. However, I will take a minute to catch you up, with some headlines, in no particular order.

AUBURN UNIVERSITY WINS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!

DAUGHTER MOVES TO NASHVILLE FOR NEW JOB IN LOGISTICS FIELD; MOM-DAUGHTER SET TO SEE KID ROCK AND JAMEY JOHNSON AT BRIDGEPORT ARENA IN FEBRUARY

AUBURN FANS FORM A CAMNATION, JOIN A CAMILY, SAY WAR CAM EAGLE!

MOSTLY-LAB LUCILLE PUPPY TURNS 1 YEAR, ENDS UP TO BE CHOW, SIBERIAN HUSKY WHO HERDS AND TURNS FANTASTIC CIRCLES

TIGER, MC'S 13-YEAR-0LD CAT, DIES; MOURNED BY ALL AND BURIED BESIDE SUZIE THE WONDER DOG

DYLAN ROCKS! JACKIE AND MARY CLAIRE SEE THE POET LAUREATE OF ROCK AND ROLL AT BJCC ARENA!

JACKIE AND KAY SEE (HE'S SO FINE) BON JOVI AT BEACH BENEFIT AND MEET AUBURN, ENSLEY FRIENDS IN LINE!

WHERE'S MOJO? NOVEL MOJO JONES AND THE BLACK CAT BONE AWAITS FINISH!

Those headlines ought to catch us up for now. Life seems to move just that fast.

Forrest Gump's momma always told him: Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.

The older I get, the more I see the truth in this simple comparison. Forrest's momma was right. Mommas usually are.

Picture of the day:

Lucille with her toy skunk

Song of the post:

Old Chunk of Coal, Billy Joe Shaver

I'm just an old chunk of coal
But I'm gonna be a diamond some day
I'm gonna glow and grow
'Til I'm so blue pure perfect
I'm gonna put a smile on everybody's face
I'm gonna kneel and pray everyday
Lest I should become vain along the way
I'm just an old chunk of coal, now Lord
But I'm gonna be a diamond some day

I'm gonna learn the best way to walk
I'm gonna search and find a better way to talk
I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough-edged self
Til I get rid of every single flaw
I'm gonna be the World's best friend
I'm gonna go around shaking everybody's hand
Hey, I'm gonna be the cotton-pickin' Rage of the Age
I'm gonna be a diamond some day.

Workingman’s Blues: Don’t lag behind

2010-06-06T23:42:00.002-05:00

While I am grateful for my new job – and the leisure pursuits that jobs help us enjoy -- I find myself singing a version of the workingman blues.

There is never enough time for have-to’s and the need-to’s, much less the want-to’s. Between learning the ropes as a development director for a land trust and mandatory-for-sanity trips to the Wild Kingdom camphouse and Alabama River, I have not written on this blog in weeks and I have written only once on my novel-in-the-making, Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone, since beginning gainful employment on March 29.

I’m not complainin’. I’m just sayin’.

So, on this Sunday afternoon, on a weekend when I didn’t go to the Wild Kingdom healing ground, I find time to blog about life resumed as a working person, about fishing and the Masters of catfish tournaments and about some milestones.

A lot of things get in the way when you try to do what’s right

During the 16 months between being downsized and getting a new job, I started this blog and a novel, that one that all writers say they are going to write. At 83,000+ words and 286 typed, double-spaced pages completed, I am almost through with the first draft of this story of good and evil, the natural and supernatural set in the Alabama Black Belt.

During my unemployed, job and soul searching time off, I tried to write at least 1,000 words each weekday on the book, but sometimes things like life got in the way. And, these days, life really gets in the way. I know real novelists don’t let distractions stop them. I know many writers have day jobs and still produce that truth inside the story they are trying to tell. But I am still just a novelist in training and trying, but a determined one.

So, I am continuing to try to find a way and the time to “Shut the door, and write….one word at a time,” like it says on the post-it note that still clings to my computer, and to do so within the confines of a full-time job, a full-time family and full-time life. People ask me, and I ask myself. No, it’s not finished, and yes, it will be done.

Then, there is this blog, begun in part as one aspect of my job-searching network and now grown into a task and a pleasure together. I’ve been pleased and touched by friends, old and new, who read the postings, like them, and tell me so. It makes me feel good that folks say they miss my postings, the pictures, the songs. I miss them, too.

There. That is enough time spent writing and whining about not having enough time. I found a slice of time today – amidst overdue home tasks – for jackierwalburnwrites revisited. Next up, more regularly shut doors and words on paper (screen) to bring Mojo back from the brink.

For now, let’s talk about fishing and some milestones.

Crappie derby shutout

One of the things I love best about having our little shack on Pine Barren Creek, off the Alabama River, is the pier and the two-seater bench from which I love to fish for crappie. Each year, the Wilcox County Chamber of Commerce sponsors a big crappie tournament and a four-week Crappie Derby, where more than 200 tagged crappie (or perch as some anglers call them) are released into the our section of the Alabama River. Tagged crappie caught by a ticket-holding, legally-licensed fisherperson can bring $100 to $10,000 or a pick-up truck.

Minnows bubbling and poles baited, I fished most weekends of the Crappie Derby, which started in mid-April and ended in mid-May. It was not for the lack of trying that I didn’t catch a tagged crappie. In fact, I didn’t catch a keeper crappie during this time frame. Instead, I caught a dozen squealers (little catfish), a few big catfish, a gar that bit my line off and some bream. And, I fed countless minnows to turtle(s) who take the bait and float down quickly and cleanly help themselves to their sushi and start all over again.

No worries, though. I still saw some stunning sunrises as I watched the water vapor march across the surface of the creek. In the evenings, even as no desired fish took my bait, I got to see the sun as it sank amid purples and orange clouds, and I lingered to see Sirius the dog star show itself in the southern sky. Great consolation prizes.

Naturally, the weekend before the crappie derby began, I caught two of the prettiest crappie ever, and that’s the picture here.

Tagged crappie caught or not, I still consider this time spent watching the river flow by as well-spent.

Big catfish, tall tales and a one-of-a-kind event

I don’t like catching catfish, mainly because of those side-fins that cut like a knife. But, I love to eat catfish fried crisp and brown and enjoyed many well-prepared filets Memorial Day weekend at the annual Pine Barren Creek Invitational Catfish Tournament.

Think of it as the Masters of catfish tournaments.

Begun in 2010 by Billy Johnson and family, our neighbors at Pine Barren Creek, the Invitational Catfish Tournament -- like the Masters -- features fierce competition, talented and renown experts (just ask them) and an enthusiastic crowd. The Masters has its green blazer; the Pine Barren Invitational has its beer-can-encrusted, duct-tape-decorated championship belts.

But, unlike the Masters, the Pine Barren Invitational Catfish Tournament has required team flags and clever team names and one-of-a-kind lie-detector vetting for the top teams enforced by Billy himself. And for the fans, the invitational offers steaming paper plates of the crispy, tasty results (plus the best hushpuppies) cooked by Camden barber Van Waren and friends, live music and spontaneous dancing and sing-alongs in the aftermath.

Husband Frank and son Will competed as the “Cat Tails”, a.k.a. the Walburnators, and did not come in last. They didn’t catch nearly the 377-pound two-day total of the winning team or come close to the 31.6 pound big catfish award winner. But, they did set a personal record of some sort when checking on one trot line (which they dubbed the Zoo line) revealed one alligator gar, one several-feet-long spoonbill catfish (not kept; these are a protected species) and the most startling catch (also cut free), a giant snapping turtle estimated at four-plus feet across and capable of earning quick respect.

Here is a picture of some of the catfish beauties caught at the Pine Barren Invitational Catfish Tournament, seeming to smile for the camera.

Check out more pictures and details about the Masters of catfish tournaments at:

http://www.wilcoxwebworks.com/hs/catfish/photos2010a.htm

Milestones

Bob Dylan, my songwriting hero, turned 69 on May 24th. My son Will, also a hero of mine, turned 28 on May 27th (after graduating with a technical degree in automated manufacturing earlier in the month).

And, last week, my Daddy, Charles Henry Romine of Pleasant Grove, another hero, retired U.S. Steel employee and fisherman extraordinaire, turned 83. On Saturday, we gathered at his house for a small celebration put together by my niece, Elizabeth Dawn Romine McCrory, who baked her Paw-Paw a great fish-themed birthday cake. Those TV cake show cakes have nothing on her creation. Here is Daddy with his cake.

My contribution for the day was to set up a Facebook profile for Daddy, using pictures I had on my computer. His profile picture is a 20-year-old Charles Henry, handsome and smiling.

Daddy, who is computer savvy and checks the news and his investments on his big screen computer, caught on quickly. When I left him Saturday, he was clicking through the finding friends option, about to seek friends among classmates at Fairfield High School and the California high school where he graduated in 1945 before joining the Navy a couple of days later. He was going to look for classmates from Birmingham Southern where he graduated in 1951 and probably searched through other Facebookers retired from U.S. Steel’s Fairfield works.

So, that’s a modern birthday and a milestone, when my 83-year-old Daddy, who doesn’t get out much anymore, can now reach out and stay in touch -- via this social media of his great-grandchildren’s world. Next thing you know, he’ll be challenging grandson Will in Mafia Wars.

Picture of the day: Sunset, from Pine Barren Creek. See what I mean.

Song of the day:
From the 2006 Modern Times album, I think this is a tribute song to Merle Haggard’s Workingman Blues. Merle toured with Dylan a few years ago. (I was there, with family, on 5th row, at the Birmingham show. Excellent!)

Workingman Blues #2, Bob Dylan

“Meet me at the bottom, don't lag behind
Bring me my boots and shoes
You can hang back or fight your best on the front line
Sing a little bit of these workingman's blues”

Gotta job, so gotta run; Lucille the Lab-57

2010-04-09T09:19:00.000-05:00

After 20 months of job searching and 120 job applications -- 16 months after leaving my job of 15 years -- and just before my emergency unemployment benefits ran out, I have a job!

Let's take time out here for the happy dance. All together now!

I began work two weeks ago as development director for the Alabama and Georgia Land Trusts, a non-profit that helps landowners preserve land through conservation easements. I like everything about working again – great boss, a good cause, reasons to learn new things and meet new people every day, plus a paycheck and benefits – except for the loss of time to write this blog and that 80,000-word-almost-finished novel.

No complaints here, however. I will blog and get Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone finished and ready to shop it around when I have a chance -- early and late and weekends. I’ll write more about the Land Trusts later (and posting on that group’s blog is part of my paid work now), but for now I wanted to officially post that I am gainfully employed. Thank you very much.

Lucille, the Lab-57

Lucille, our mostly Lab who joined the Walburn family back in late January, is growing, chewing, jumping and being a most-of-the-time smart, precious, only-sometimes-disobidient puppy. However, she’s looking less and less like a mostly Labrador and more like what I like to call a Lab-57.

Sure, she’s got two big webbed front paws and an otter-like tail like a Labrador. But, kind of like Johnny Cash’s song about the car built from years of auto parts, One Piece at a Time, (and It Didn’t Cost Me a Dime), Lucille is a lab-terrier-chow-spaniel-spitz-fluffy-smooth-black-blonde-white mix like no other.

Her head is shaped like a terrier, maybe, with curly spaniel ears. Lucille runs like a greyhound and fetches like a retriever. She smells out all aromas – cat litter, chipmunks, food, squirrels, a buried bone – like a bloodhound.

She has long fluffy hair in the front, and short smooth hair in the back, with blonde patches akin to artist brushes of light. Plus, she has white-tipped back paws, like a permanent French pedicure, and a white chin spot. She has a black spot right in the middle of her tongue – I call it a tongue tattoo – like I don’t know what mix of dog.

Lucille must be double-or-triple jointed (like whatever mix has that), because she can lie down with paws going out in every direction, or the front two one way and the back the other.

So, Lucille, who replaced a pure Lab, our special Suzie, is what I’d call exotic. She’s a dozen different dogs in one.

Like our other pet, Tiger the cat, found in a graveyard as a kitten by Mary Claire’s friend Ginny Leigh, Lucille is no purebred.

Our Lucille is like no other – quite the multi-faceted character -- which is appropriate for a pet in our household of non-cookie-cutter people. She fits right in, which is what pets are all about anyway.

Song of the week:

One Piece at a Time
 written by Wayne Kemp, recorded by Johnny Cash, 1976

I got it one piece at a time
And it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive everybody wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.

Picture(s) of the Week:

First, our growing Lucille, the Lab-57, in picture 1, about March 10, and again, today, April 9, tongue tat visible.

I found this picture of Johnny Cash (and band?) in the One Piece at a Time car on Wikipedia when researching the lyrics and had to share it.

Learning from writers every day; Live forever Billy Joe Shaver

2010-03-29T20:34:00.002-05:00

One of the many good things about being a writer, talking about writing and, well, writing, is learning something new from other writers. If you think about it, we all learn new things from writers every day, in one form or another.

One new exciting thing I’ve learned is about the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, which is the oldest writers’ organization in continuous existence in the U.S. Who would have known?

I paid the reasonable $25 per year membership fee and joined Alabama Writer’s Conclave after I heard about the long-lasting writers’ group from T. K. Thorne, a writer and published author from Birmingham. I met Ms. Thorne at a The Women’s Network event where was the guest of friend and attorney Frances Quick.

T.K. Thorne, who lives in Birmingham, told me about the writer’s conclave as we were discussing my writing a first novel. T.K. Thorne’s book, Noah’s Wife, an historical novel I’ve seen compared with Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave bear), is published and now available at Amazon.com, in a Kindle edition, no less. Ms. Thorne told me to keep writing, encouraged me even, but brought reality with the encouragement. Noah’s Wife was her sixth novel, I believe she said, and the first to find a publisher.

The Writer’s Conclave probably helps writers learn about publishing realities and more. The group of writers sponsors a writing competition annually and then makes the winning stories and poems available on line and elsewhere. The 2009 winners is available at their website, http://www.alabamawritersconclave.org

I’ve considered entering something, maybe a blog posting everyone liked (category: nonfiction or humor? Is a blog posting unpublished?). I also thought about submitting my almost-finished-with-first-draft novel’s first chapter. We’ll see.

The April 20 deadline is coming up, and I thought I’d share the rules here in case other aspiring writers want to submit something.

ALABAMA WRITERS' CONCLAVE 2010

WRITING COMPETITION GUIDELINES

Deadline: April 20, 2010 (postmark). Prizes: 1st: $100; 2nd: $75; 3rd: $50; 4th: $25 and up to 4 Honorable Mentions.

WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED at the AWC Conference Banquet at the Hilton Birmingham Perimeter Park Hotel, Birmingham, Alabama on JULY 17, 2010.

Contest Rules: Entries must be original, unpublished, and may not have won a money prize in any contest. (Sitting AWC voting Board Members are not eligible.) Multiple entries are accepted, but only one prize is awarded for each category.

Send one copy of each entry on standard white paper in standard manuscript format (double-spaced, one-inch margins, 12pt. Courier or Times Roman font). (Note: manuscripts are not returned, so applicants should retain a copy).

• On first page include: Title, Category and Word Count (DO NOT show author name on the manuscript).
• Please number the pages.
• Enclose a separate cover sheet for each piece submitted showing: Contest category; manuscript title; your name, mailing address, e-mail address and phone number; and whether you are an AWC Member or non-member.
• Please be sure to provide a separate cover sheet for each piece submitted.

Entry Fees
For all categories (EXCEPT Poem and First Chapter Novel): $5.00 per entry if AWC member, $8.00 per entry if non-member.

For First Chapter Novel: $10.00 if member, $12.00 if non-member.

For Poem: $3.00 per poem if member, $5.00 if non-member.

Make checks to: Alabama Writers' Conclave. (Note: Membership and conference fees must be submitted separately to the AWC Treasurer)

Send contest entry manuscripts and checks to: Marian Lewis, AWC Contest Chair, 250 Hartside Rd., Owens Cross Roads, AL 35763.

NOTE: Please include a #10 SASE if you would like to receive a Winners' List after the AWC conference in July. If you would like confirmation that your entry has been received, also include a self-addressed stamped postcard (SASP)

Writing Competition Categories

Fiction - maximum 2500 words.

Short Fiction - maximum 1000 words.

Juvenile Fiction (stories for ages 4-12) - maximum 2500 words. MUST LIST GENRE AND TARGETED AGE GROUP (i.e. picture book, 3 & up).
Nonfiction - maximum 2500 words (PLEASE SPECIFY IF WRITTEN FOR ADULT OR CHILDREN).
Humor (fiction, nonfiction, or poetry) - maximum 2000 words or 50 lines (for poems).
Traditional Poem (any "form" poem, i.e. villanelle, sonnet, sestina) - maximum 40 lines.

Free Verse Poem - maximum 60 lines.

First Chapter of Novel - up to 10 double-spaced pages, first chapter ONLY.

Song of the week:

Speaking of writers, there is not a better songwriter, writer, period than Billy Joe Shaver. Even my main man Bob Dylan name-checked Billy Joe on a recent song. (“I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I'm reading James Joyce, Some people they tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice.” – From I Feel a Change Comin’ On, Together Through Life CD, 2009

Anyway, I picked this Billy Joe Shaver song at random. Plus, it has most of the required parts for a perfect country song. Count ‘em up, and see what you think.

I’m going crazy in ¾ time – Billy Joe Shaver

“The hill I've been climbing just turned to a mountain

I'm caught in the backwash of cheap talk and wine

To tell you the truth, I don't think i can make it

'Cause I'm going crazy in 3/4 time

I said to myself on the day that you left me

If I see what I sound like would I be so blind

But it's all in the search of a perfect companion

And I thought I had found one till you said goodbye
Yes, I'm going crazy in 3/4 time

Picture of the week:

Yes, that’s me and my hero Billy Joe Shaver, the original honky tonk hero, when he was in Birmingham a couple years ago. I’ve been waiting for a reason to have this be the picture of the week, and writing about writers is a perfect occasion. Live forever, Billy Joe Shaver.

All things equal, Spring can't help itself

2010-03-22T09:17:00.017-05:00

On the first official day of Spring -- when the sun is directly over the equator and all things are equal – I went down to the river. And, Spring, it couldn’t help itself.

Spring made itself known along the river bank, where trees budded, turkeys talked romance and all critters great and small, flora and fauna, sighed and celebrated.

For me, on the pier, watching boats glide by – all of us apparently seeking the illusive crappie, the pretty perch, in an Alabama River and Pine Barren Creek muddied from rains and floods -- it didn’t matter that I could only catch a catfish, a little squealer that croaked at me as I freed it from the hook and kicked the whiskered creature back into the Big Muddy. Like the birds that flitted by and the occasional jumping fish – getting in practice for summer – it was enough for me just to be there with the sun shining equally on us all.

The Vernal Equinox, which happened officially about 12:32 CDT Saturday, March 20, means equal days and nights. Actually, Equinox means equal nights. The Vernal means Spring, and our brothers in the southern hemisphere had an Autumnal Equinox last Saturday.

Later in the day – that matching 12 hour day to a 12-hour night – I listened as bats rattled in drying grasses at riverside and then flitted out and gobbled mosquitoes (out and celebrating, too) with the practiced abandon of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Frogs croaked and birds twittered (sans iphones) and sang, all sounding so joyous that they seemed trying to outshout each other. Across the water, barn owls called to each other hoohoohoohoooooo.

Mankind has always celebrated Spring, as proof that winter ends, that food supplies will be restored and that days will be longer even without the extra cheating spring-forward hour modern man added. Spring is also significant in Christianity because Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (This year it's on April 4). Also, the early Egyptians built the Great Sphinx so that it points directly toward the rising Sun on the day of the Vernal Equinox.

It all makes sense in a way that, to me, defies the idea that all this just happens, that our organized and balanced world is a happy cosmic accident. While faith is central to our celebration of Easter, Spring is evidence of the intelligent, interconnected, well-planned pattern that is our life of earth and skies.

I can only watch it in wonder and celebration. I hope you do, too.

Song of the day:

Beautiful Day, U2

“See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colours came out
It was a beautiful day
A beautiful day
Don't let it get away

Touch me, take me to that other place
Reach me, I know I’m not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can feel it somehow
What you don't have you don't need it now
You don't need it now, you don't need it now
Beautiful day”

Picture of the day:

This Japanese Magnolia bloomed in front of the Delp Home on Selma's Historic Pilgrimage last weekend. Photo by Janet Gresham, a.k.a. Rambling Round, whose blog is called Selma, Ala. Daily Photo http://www.selmaala.blogspot.com/

Spring break! whoo hooo! Remembering spring frolics past

2010-03-15T14:29:00.003-05:00

March heralds student spring break frolics, the Associated Press article said.

The article went on to say that Alabama’s Gulf coast is hoping to beat last year’s $237 million in taxable lodging rentals, the best since Hurricane Ivan, in 2010.

“Spring break frolics” is a great description, and an apt one, as I remember spring breaks past.

Spring break has always been a fun time, even back when we called it AEA and before I knew that kids went to the beach or other exotic places during AEA. Spring break is this week, officially, in most of Alabama, but aside from watching and waiting, spring break is not on my radar anymore.

I am in that in-between stage, too old to accompany my grown children to any kind of spring break, even though I’d love to, and too young to have grandchildren (if we someday have some) to visit for spring break.

Gone are the days of being the “adult” on a spring break trip with a bunch of 12 to 18 year olds, and if I look back through the glass clearly, I ought to be screaming good riddance! But, hindsight is like that.

Instead, I find myself looking longingly back at spring breaks past, the good memories floating to the top like a bright pink boogie board in a perfect clear green-blue wave washing up on clean white sands.

Nevermind: finding beer funnels in the shower or past-curfew beach searching, or that heart-in-the-throat anxiety that something might have happened to yours or one of the precious ones in your charge (but nothing ever did, thank you Lord.)

For the record, usually the same kids were responsible for all of the above and never my angels…..

But no, instead, I recall the best of spring break fun.

To trace spring breaks past, I’ll group them into 1. my spring breaks. 2. my children’s pre-teen spring breaks 3. the teen spring breaks, aka, it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time-to-bring-all-these-kids-down-here-what-was-I-thinking spring breaks.

My spring breaks:

In the Grove: For the skinny grade-school me, and I recall sometimes my brother (whether we lived in Birmingham or Huntsville), our spring breaks were spent at Daddy and Emily’s in Pleasant Grove, which was then the COUNTRY, to help Nana and Grandpa with planting the garden. We’d plant the garden, have Coke floats for treats in the evening and at least one day, we’d go downtown Birmingham to shop (I told you it was a long time ago) or maybe to Five Points West and get a new outfit or pair of shoes. Whoo-hoo.

London on $300: Into my teen years, the ultimate spring break trip came in my junior year in high school when a group from Fairfield High School booked a trip to London for spring break. Chaperoned by Mr. Byrd, the school superintendent, and his wife (who may have had that good-idea-at-the-time thought before we returned), it was a trip of a lifetime for us blue collar kids. I still recall the cost, not cheap by 1973 standards, but still, it was $300 for the trip, plus spending money. A first airplane ride for many of us and most certainly the first transcontinental one, we saw London, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Stonehenge and a bunch of other cultural stuff that I was too young to fully appreciate, and we had a great time.

Children’s pre-teen spring breaks:

Chattanooga choo-choo: We packed up and went to Chattanooga, to see mountains and the aquarium there, one year when Mary Claire was maybe 5 and Will 10 or 11, Frank driving us through the mountains in an early supposed-to-be-extended-cab pick up truck, me and MC in the tiny back seat. We loved the aquarium. At the amusement park, Mary Claire ran amok in a go-cart and rear-ended another tourist before we tipped on out of there.

The Romine motor home express: Then, there was the year the kids and I piled into Daddy and Emily’s motor home and motored north with them to Guntersville for what I recall was the coldest spring break in recent history. Will and his Pawpaw cemented their mutual love for fishing, and all of us played Bingo (the real kind with paper cards and yelling BINGO!) at the “resort” lodge at night. Aside from the heating going out and using the stove eyes for warmth, it was a great, cold spring break we’ll never forget.

The teen years:

It was not until Will approached teenhood that I realized that some kids routinely go to the beach on spring break, with and without parents, and they frolic. Will went with others couple times, and I began what would be a sometimes tradition of taking Mary Claire and a friend or friends for a day or two. These trips all blur together with brief flashing scenes of:

• My pre-teen daughter and friend dressed too-old-for-your-age and looking to meet boys, and of Will and friends, not dressed too old but looking for girls who look like they are.

• Pleading young girls wanting to get 1 piercing, 2 piercings, 3 piercings, 4. No!

• Fire alarms pulled repeatedly throughout the early morning by some bored spring breakers in high-rise condos to the point where I think the security folks just turned them off. Luckily, nothing burned.

• A very drunk chaperone (not with our group) requiring multi-beach-police people to escort her (finally with someone carrying her arms and someone her feet) from the beach to the waiting police car. She had been dancing and talking to herself while walking on the beach WAY too early in the day when she attracted the attention of the law. My adult spring break partner of that year, Jane Lee, and I watched it all, as we sipped our cocktails, our charges resting (or planning) in the condo. We smugly thought we’re pretty good chaperones after all.

For the spring breakers already out there and those heading out for spring frolics, have fun and be careful. I found this advice from the Alabama State Troopers as I researched Spring break 2010. I’ll repeat this for anyone, teen, college kid, mom, dad or grandparent, thinking about hitting the road during spring break.

• Buckle up on each and every trip, whether it’s a trip to the beach, a friend’s house or a neighborhood store;
• Obey speed limits and all other traffic laws;
• Avoid drinking and driving at all costs; at best the consequences can be costly, and at worst, deadly;
• Keep focused on the roadway, other motorists, and your surroundings; don’t be distracted from the driving task. Hang up the phone and drive. (I added that one).

As Mary Claire heads out for a spring break respite with her still-in-college friends, I just help prepare, wish well and think about spring breaks past.

I no longer have to worry about or have control over outfits or funneling or piercing or curfew or any of it. For that, I am grateful. It is someone else’s turn.

To all spring breakers, obey the rules, have some sense and have a great, safe frolic.

Pictures of the week: Fairfield High School students posed in a boat at one of our stops on the Spring Break, March 1973, trip to London, England. Pictured are, from left, Colleen McArdle, Cathy Randall, Terry Palmore, Clyde Adams, and other two I know but cannot call right now. FHS alumni help please.

This second one is me at Stonehenge. Forgive me for the cool hat. It was the seventies.

Song of the week: Love Train

Written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and a number 1 hit for the O'Jays in the Spring of 1973, we sang this one, in our bell bottoms, on our Spring break trip, with a verse of “the next stop that we make will be England…”

Love Train, the O'Jays

"People all over the world (everybody)
Join hands (join)
Start a love train, love train
People all over the world (all the world, now)
Join hands (love ride)
Start a love train (love ride), love train
The next stop that we make will be soon
Tell all the folks in Russia, and China, too
Don't you know that it's time to get on board
And let this train keep on riding, riding on through...."

A-Changin': Lessons learned covering civil rights march, 30 years later

2010-03-08T11:25:00.004-06:00

It’s been thirty years.

That’s what I realized as we drove around the by-pass through Selma, Ala. Sunday, on our way back from Alabama River camphouse to Birmingham. We took the by-pass to avoid the crowds on Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were gathering for the Selma-to-Montgomery Bridge Crossing Jubilee, this year marking the 45th anniversary of the civil rights movement’s Bloody Sunday.

I counted up and realized it’s been thirty years since I covered my first civil right march commemoration. I remember the day well and still retain the life lessons learned then as a 23-year-old cub reporter and photographer.

It was March of 1980, and the staff of the Selma Times-Journal was all on duty that weekend, covering the big 15th anniversary celebration of Bloody Sunday, the halted civil rights march for voting rights – the event that resulted in the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Just over a year out of Auburn University and J-school and about six months into what would be a decade of work covering the news wellspring that was Selma, Alabama, that Bloody Sunday anniversary was my first experience in civil rights rally and march coverage.

It was also my first in-person hearing of We Shall Overcome and my first exposure to the who’s who of the civil rights movement who call Selma home or are called home to Selma every year to remember what happened.

That day, we covered a rally at Brown Chapel AME Church, a beautiful, red brick church where one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sons spoke. Then, some of us followed the marchers and some of us went back to the newsroom to start writing and developing film.

That film developing was central to one of the lessons I learned that day. We’d all shot pictures at the rally and the beginnings of the march reenactment. Nikki Maute, Janet Gresham, Jean Martin and I all had our 35-mm cameras and Tri-X (400 speed) black and white film. We got some great shots, we thought.

But, for the first and last time in my dark room experience, I somehow switched the developer and the fixer as I poured these into a rarely-used 10-roll film developing canister. I realized quickly what I’d done: no images, no pictures. I’d ruined a frighteningly large batch of 15th anniversary negatives.

I still remember the dread of marching myself into the newsroom and editor Nikki’s desk to tell her. Speechless for what seemed like several minutes, Nikki said, it’s done, now let’s fix it.

Within the next hour, I located some others who had shot pictures at the events, including Frank Sikora, reporter then for The Birmingham News and author of “Selma, Lord, Selma.” He let me develop his film. And Frank’s pictures, along with some others we gathered, told our photographic story that day. We didn’t have the variety of likely award-winning shots we were sure were on those 10 rolls I had fixed into nothingness, but we got the special edition done, and Jackie learned the first of many lessons that life’s mistakes bring.

Learned lesson No. 1: When you make a mistake, admit it, own it and try hard to fix it.

That lesson served me well through life. Since the only way to never make a mistake is to never do, try and achieve, then we all need to know how to admit, handle and learn from our mistakes. Don’t make excuses; just try to make it better.

I learned other lessons from my first professional coverage of the civil rights movement that still defines the Alabama Black Belt.

These lessons are less direct and defined but stand on the strong premise that history has a lot to teach us, if we’ll listen and learn from it. And, people who sacrifice to make things better deserve to be remembered, listened to and learned from.

This is true if those sacrificing are civil rights pioneers (Selma’s F.D. Reese, Marie Foster and J.L. Chestnut come to mind) or if they are lesser-known heroes, our parents, our grandparents, our mentors, editors and others who came before us and tried to do the right thing. We must learn from them.

Even though I knew the history book stories well, it was difficult for me, then, to imagine having to march and face state troopers on horseback, in order to register to vote in the United States of America. But that’s how it was, then. This is not a small accomplishment being remembered year after year.

The civil rights movement had to force change, in many ways, because of fears and prejudices and the driving need to preserve power and -- we still see it today on all sides of the political spectrum -- the power of power.

But things change and continue to change.

That’s the big lesson I see as I look back at that enthusiastic, naïve young white girl covering her first civil rights rally. Selma is not the same; neither is Alabama or our nation. Certainly that young reporter is not the same either.

Change is the one constant. And we’d better get good at changing with it.

Song of the day:

The Times They Are A-Changin’, Bob Dylan

“The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.”

Picture of the day: Selma Times-Journal newsroom, circa early 1980s. Some combination of this crew covered the 15th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery march 30 years ago this week. From left, Jean Martin, Nikki Maute, Maxine McDonald, Janet Gresham, Jackie Walburn and Jeannette Berryman. In this picture, which I re-discovered while looking for some early writing samples, we were waving goodbye to one of the rotating sports editors.

Superbad the cold, a try at Dylan and reading what…

2010-03-02T10:56:00.000-06:00

Week two of Superbad, the cold: I’m still coughing, but getting better after finding a doctor recommended by a friend. Armed with a diagnosis of bronchitis and four more medicines, I have my fingers crossed and feeling more like tackling that always-important to-do list. At the top today (after spending much of Monday at doctor’s office) is blog posting.

So, I’m feeling saucy enough to tackle last week’s challenge of creating clever imitation take on Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues where I use his rhyme scheme to rap poetic about aspirin, tissues, coughs and snifflies. I talked myself out of it last week, but I’ll try a few lines this week.

Tempo: upbeat, early folk rap and video of Dylan with hand-printed signs of lyrics (is this coming back to those of you old enough to remember?) Are you sick of Dylan references, already?

Sorry, it’s my blog, and I can Dylan if I want to.

Subbronchial homesick blues

Doctor’s in the exam room
Thinking about the medicine
I’m in my bedroom
Thinking ‘bout writing zoom
Book in office looms
Tissues out, laid off
Say she’s got a bad cough
Wants to get it paid off
Look out kid
It’s nothing you did
Lord knows when
You’ll feel human again
You better duck down the freeway
Looking for a well friend
Man in the panther-proof cap
And the Bic pen
Wants 100 dollar bills
You only got 10.

That may be enough of weakly ripping off Dylan. But, I couldn’t resist. I also couldn’t handle four verses.

However, I love Dylan’s last line to this 1965 song so much I’ll write it here. (Stephen King opened a book with the quote; I can’t remember which one.) But the message is universal and the rhyme superb. Think about it.

“The pump don’t work
’Cause the vandals took the handles”

Also, thanks to followers and Facebookers for well wishes.

Reading what?

With time on my hands, and still much reading/writing research to do, these are the Southern books I read in the last week, finishing the last one now. These were all from the Southern Writers Shelf at the Hoover, Ala. Public library.

Wolf Whistle, by Lewis Nordan. This Mississippi-born novelist looks at civil rights era violence and one particular event from imagined (yet ringing true) characters and viewpoints.

Wonderdog, Inman Majors. Well-written, funny and smart story of a Tuscaloosa-based not-doing-well, just divorced, screwing-up-bigtime lawyer and former child star of cheesy dog and boy TV show. Oh, and he’s the governor’s son, too.

The Watermelon King, Daniel Wallace. Written by the Birmingham-born author of Big Fish, which they made into a movie in Alabama I believe, The Watermelon King uses imagination and keen characters to tell the story of Ashland, Ala.’s watermelon festival and how it impacted the life of one man and the mother he never knew. I’m still reading this one, which is set in the same fictional town as Big Fish.

Picture of the week: Lucille catching snowflakes. Is hasn't snowed here at the house yet today, although I hear it has downtown. But, I offer this cute one of Lucille frolicking in the snow-before-last. Our Lucille is growing, chewing and learning.

And, because everybody's got to sing the blues sometime, here is the song of the day:

Downhearted Blues, Eddie James "Son" House, Jr.

"Mmmm, mmmmm
Got up this mornin', feelin' sick and bad,
I's thinkin' bout the good time, that I once have had
I said, I got up this mornin', and I said I's feelin' so sick and bad,
Yeah, I's just thinkin' bout the good times, chil'ren, that I, I once have had."

Singing the home sick blues

2010-02-24T12:37:00.000-06:00

If you don’t have a real job, and you’re too sick to work, are you still home sick? Or just sick?

That’s just one of questions I’ve pondered during what I’ll call the week of the Superbad Cold.

On day six and still feeling like a run-over dog, but with prescriptions and assurances that it’s not fatal, just a lingering, into-the-chest cold, today I took this picture of my bedside table.

I figured it could be the picture of the day for this week’s blog posting which would be a clever look at being home sick.

Then I realized being sick rarely lends itself to being clever.

So, I will just state the obvious that being home sick for me has meant that:

• Blank pages remain so.

• No Facebook friends are friended, updated, poked, tagged or status-checked.

• No job alerts are researched, and no jobs applied for.

• Little or no household engineer work accomplished.

• Three movies watched. Only one book read (I keep falling asleep)

• Family members just pat me on the back and say, you (sound and/or look) awful. You ought to take some medicine, go lie down and get some rest.

Desperate for a new blog post mid-week and still feeling unwell, I even considered writing a clever imitation take on Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues where I use his rhyme scheme to rap poetic about aspirin, tissues, coughs and snifflies. Since I’m home sick and definitely have the blues, I could write something to follow the line, “Get sick, get well, hang around the inkwell…ring bell, hard to tell, if anything is goin’ to sell….”

But, don’t worry, I am not clear-headed enough to even try that. Or maybe I am clear-headed enough to know NOT to try it.

So, instead, I will quote a Dylan understatement from the song of the day, sign off, take some medicine, go lie down and get some rest.

Song of the day:

Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan

“You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows”

112 job applications and counting

2010-02-15T13:30:00.002-06:00

It’s tough out here for job seekers. Trust me.

As part of the 15 million estimated unemployed in the U.S. -- which converts into an 11 percent official unemployment figure in Alabama – I can testify.

Most people now know multiple folks who have lost a job. In some cases, there is power in numbers. In the unemployment, job-searching case, numbers just mean more competition for the jobs that are out there. And, I can testify that the job market is crazy competitive, and I have the numbers to prove it.

During the 547-plus days of the continuing job search begun when I learned in mid-2008 that my job was one of 1,500 being eliminated by my former employer, I’ve applied for more than 110 positions.

Actually, as of today, when I applied for a media assistant position, the official tally of jobs applied for is at 112. That doesn’t count cold calls or cold e-mail pitches to companies around Birmingham that have corporate communications or public affairs departments. That doesn’t count completed, multiple tests to get on the state jobs register. That doesn’t count the job fairs or the registrations and job alerts set up on countless employer and job search websites (indeed.com is a good one). That doesn’t count attending how-to-get-hired seminars or the endless networking or pursuing contacts with friends or friends of friends or friends of my husband or friends of my aunt….friends of whoever offers a lead. Bless their hearts.

The 112 tally -- counted up on my trusty job matrix document (now 18 pages long) begun when I started this process -- counts just those jobs that I officially applied for. Sure, I made it to the interview stage for some of these and was a finalist for others. Some applications, I never heard from again (and that’s a subject of another posting). For some, I received automated regret e-mails. Some rejections came the old-fashioned way – written letters.

Regardless, there are many more mes out there, many people who look and look and look. I know and correspond with two other writers/former reporters/public relations professionals, friends, who were laid off and now looking for work in Birmingham, too. Often, we apply for the same, few jobs and wish each other luck.

Proof of the fierce competition for jobs in this tough economy comes not just in statistics but is backed by evidence. I’ve talked to human resources folks who say they receive so many applications for an advertised position that sometimes they have to cut them off before the deadline. In one case, the HR person in charge just took the best of the first 100 and went from there. The other two hundred applicants either got the automated “we regret” e-mail or no word at all.

In my previous position, I had a “big job” as a multi-state public affairs manager. And, now, as I apply for anything from entry level to “experienced manager” positions, I suspect I am sometimes painted with the overqualified brush, just based on my resume, accomplishments and years of experience. There are worse things, I suppose.

And, I won’t even talk about the challenge of an “experienced” and ”seasoned” professional like me (see older…) competing with eager, early-in-career writers and public relations graduates (see younger…). It’s a fact, Jack.

But, I also know that out there, somewhere, are employers who want the experience, knowledge and skills that come with “seasoned.”

I’m not whining here. Well, maybe I am a little bit. But, it is a whine of solidarity with my unemployed brothers and sisters. And, for me, it is a whine tempered with several “at leasts.”

At least, I have unemployment benefits still, but unless I qualify for some targeted, emergency benefits I’ve researched and will try, that small stipend (earned during my 30 years in the work force, thank you) will end soon. Congress: Want to help the unemployed? Extend benefits again, please.

At least, I am a writer and have this blog where I can do what I do and sometimes get props for it. This is thanks to my family, friends and associates (and I hope some others who have found this blog and just enjoy it). The self-imposed obligation to post something new each week helps motivate and keeps those creative writing synapses popping.

At least, being downsized (which hurts more than that euphemism implies) prompted me, as a writer, to write that novel all we writers say we want to write one day. I know writing it doesn’t mean publishing it, but the work, research and hard digging that have gone into the 75,000-words and counting that will become my first novel provide a purpose and determination invaluable to anyone struggling to deal with the changes and uncertainties that accompany losing a job.

At least, (and not least) I have a husband with a job whose patience, love and guidance have been essential and two adult children home and fighting their own job-and-economic battles while helping me in more ways than any of us can fully appreciate or articulate.

So, as I mark off job application number 112, I also have to mark off some positives about living as an unemployment statistic. I write, therefore I am….still viable and creating. I apply for jobs, therefore I am…going to keep applying and adding to my job matrix until I find a job and leave the crowded ranks of the determined and time-tested job seekers.

Song of the day:
Working on a Dream, Bruce Springsteen

“The cards I've drawn's a rough hand darlin'
I straighten my back and I'm working on a dream
I'm working on a dream
I'm working on a dream
Though sometimes it feels so far away
I'm working on a dream
And how it will be mine someday.”

Picture of the day:

Two male cardinals pose in the bare trees during last Friday's snow. Photo by me, taken off our back porch in Birmingham.

Two Camden characters depart

2010-02-09T09:45:00.003-06:00

Hollis Curl: Newsman, Era editor helped bring ferry back

The last time I read a column by Hollis Curl -- Camden, Ala.’s Wilcox Progressive Era editor and publisher who died last week -- I remember thinking, I ought to call or write Hollis to say “excellent column” and see how he’s doing. He’d been sick for a while.

But, I didn’t make the call or send the note. And, I learned, again, the lesson of doing that thing you think of doing when you think of it. That’s because now it’s too late.

Hollis, who I’ve known almost as long as I’ve been a reporter/writer, always wrote excellent columns. He named his “For What It’s Worth” and won many awards for his musings.

A straight-to-the-point newspaperman, Hollis Curl published The Wilcox Progressive Era for more than 40 years. His column and the newspaper’s editorials written by him ran side by side with the small-town news staples like club news, school honor listings, pictures of giant vegetables and, always in Wilcox County, sportsmen posing with big deer or youngsters with first-time game.

But it was through his column and the newspaper’s editorials that Hollis had his greatest impact on Wilcox County and beyond.

I had to smile when I read the story about Hollis by Tom Gordon of The Birmingham News. Quoting from an earlier interview, the story stated the editor/publisher never worried about complaints or disgruntled readers (and there were a few over the years). Rather, Hollis said it was a “mistake to confuse me with someone who gives a damn, because I really don’t.”

Classic Hollis. You could count on Hollis to say or write something controversial, sometimes because he felt so strongly about it, and sometimes just because he could. And often, what he said and wrote came with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.

The years I worked in corporate communications for Wilcox County’s largest employer, I’d be at the restaurant in Camden with some visiting business person from the West Coast and introduce them to Hollis, our local newspaper editor. He’d smile at us and get that gleam in his eye, then he’d let fly some seemingly-innocent-but-definitely-not-PC-by-West-Coast-standards comment. Then he’d chuckle and say, “Nice to meet ‘ya." Classic Hollis.

But M. Hollis Curl – who probably could care less if most people agreed with what he wrote or not or if he ticked somebody off -- did give a damn about the things he gave a damn about.

These things include his family, wife Glenda, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And, he cared a lot, too, about Wilcox County’s J. Paul Jones Hospital, one of the few rural lifelines still serving Alabama’s Blackbelt. He promoted the hospital in every way possible in his weekly newspaper and as a well-cared-for patient when he got sick.

And Hollis was passionate about the restoration of the Gee’s Bend Ferry, which he wrote and politicked about until it finally happened in 2006. The newly-built terminal for the ferry, which continues to get attention because of its link to the getting-more-famous Quilts of Gee’s Bend, is named for M. Hollis Curl. His family held visitation there before services last week at the historic Canton Bend United Methodist Church.

There was just one M. Hollis Curl, as news-folks across Alabama know. His words, his attitude and his presence will be missed.

Miss Cleo: Years of hospitality and three tough sons

The Monday before Hollis died, folks in Camden gathered to remember another local legend, Cleo Holley Gaston.

Miss Cleo and her late husband Cecil ran the famed Bassmaster Inn and restaurant in Camden for years. Their sons, David, Charlie and Larry, continue the hospitality tradition. They own restaurants in multiple counties and can cook most any kind of delicious food for as many people as needed. And the burley threesome of brothers – and their children and extended families – loved Miss Cleo with a devotion to make any mother proud.

Their mother taught her sons about hospitality and giving in the best way possible, by example. If someone needs help, if there’s something these Gastons can do for those in need, it’s done. And that’s just one of the many reasons Camden cherished Cleo Gaston.

Picture of the day:

Twilight on the pier:
My family fishes from our pier on Pine Barron Creek in this picture from 2005. With all the rain, the pier last weekend was covered almost to the top of the solar light atop the pole at center of the picture And, the light's still shining!
Here's hoping for an early non-flooding Spring.

Song of the day: Ain't Talkin, Bob Dylan

"All my loyal and much loved companions
They approve of me and share my code
I practice a faith that's been long abandoned
Ain't no altars on this long and lonesome road

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
My mule is sick, my horse is blind
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
Thinkin' ‘bout that gal I left behind

It's bright in the heavens and the wheels are flying
Fame and honor never seem to fade
The fire's gone out but the light is never dying
Who says I can't get heavenly aid?"

Organize TOO MUCH STUFF one cabinet at a time

2010-02-02T12:11:00.006-06:00

It took about an hour of sorting and throwing away – armed with my iPod on song shuffle for company – for me to “de-clutter” one set of basement cabinets last weekend. The completed task was a first tiny step on one of those hefty to-do items – CLEAN OUT GARAGE, which is part of greater goals of DE-CLUTTER and SIMPLIFY.

Now, in these cabinets where I keep my most-often-used garage-based items, we can find things because the STUFF is where it’s supposed to be. The tools sit by tools, and the light bulbs await use beside their fragile friends. The batteries are lined up, ready to bring some gadget to life. And, electrical and other assorted cords are tamed and wrapped around themselves, sealed with rubber bands. The masking, duct and shipping tapes are aligned, next to the glues and other bottles and cans, including my favorite fix-all, a can of WD-40.

One tiny section down, the rest of the mess to go.

The idea of simplifying and de-cluttering appeals to many of us, at least to those who are not naturally drawn to keeping all STUFF, like the folks on Hoarders, the television show that makes the rest of us think we don’t have that much STUFF at all, after all.

Being a stay-at-home, unemployed, job-seeking, blog-writing, in-progress author, I see my “simplified” job as household engineer is to make sure things run as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible, so that we can save money and time. Hence, the all-caps DE-CLUTTER AND SIMPLIFY and the current CLEAN OUT GARAGE task.

Most of us have clutter in need of organizing, no matter if it’s a garage jammed with need-it-someday furniture and boxes supplementing the normal STUFF like Christmas boxes, outdoors and hunting STUFF, boxes of books seeking shelves and not-used-enough exercise equipment. Also, if you know where specific STUFF is, you don’t have to go out and buy more because you couldn’t find the STUFF you already had when you need it.

The need to simplify, de-clutter and organize spawned an industry in itself. These include self-help books for the hopelessly cluttered and stores where you can buy all kinds of organizing STUFF.

No de-cluttering expert, I do know that organizing and simplifying and the de-cluttering that goes with it happens in the same way all things worthwhile do: one step at a time.

I preach the writing mantra to myself: One word at a time (and have it written on a post-it on my computer).

For the exerciser, it’s one foot in front of the other.

And for the person seeking to clean out and organize, it is one drawer, one cabinet at a time.

Take a few minutes, and start on that junk drawer in the kitchen, one cabinet in the basement or that corner, where daily STUFF piles up.

You’ll feel better (I know I did), and it beats the heck out of watching Hoarders on TV.

Update on Lucille, the new puppy:

Phrases most often said to Lucille during her second week in the household:

1. “NO! Chew on this….(chew toy, towel, stick) not (-fill-in-the blank-) my hands, my feet, my hair, the bedspread, my shoes, the furniture.

2. “Don’t go too close to the cat. She’ll show you the paw, again.”

3. “You’re such a good puppy!”

Song of the day:

–Too Much Stuff, Delbert McClinton

“Too much stuff. Woo!
Too much stuff.
It'll mess you up,
Foolin' with too much stuff.”

Picture of the day: On Groundhog Day, Birmingham Bill, the official Groundhog in these parts, came out and did see his shadow. That points to six more weeks of winter, a disappointment as I hoped to be fishin' off the pier sooner rather than later.

Lucille: She’s right where she belongs

2010-01-25T12:28:00.002-06:00

She’s so fluffy that she looks like a fuzzy football. She has blue eyes, a winning gaze and maximum hug-ability. She’s so smart that she’s housebroken herself, and she already knows how to wrap all of us around her tiny webbed paws.

She’s Lucille, the latest black Labrador to join the Walburn family.

Lucille came to us almost two months after losing beloved Suzie, the black Lab who died Nov. 28 after a left side paralysis forced us make the toughest decision pet owners ever make. Suzie’s in pet heaven, as I described here weeks ago, and I bet Suzie approves of the new girl in town. Our resident cat Tiger is not so sure.

Lucille is the name we decided on (Will made the final decision, as Suzie was technically his) from a list we started a couple of weeks ago. Suzie Q was named for the rock ‘n’ roll song by Creedence. Our name choices didn’t all come from music although the list included Queenie (Little Queenie, Chuck Berry), Lola (The Kinks) and Maybelline (Chuck Berry, again). But Lucille (Little Richard) won out, as Will and I picked up precious from Walt and David, who work with Will at Lowe’s. Lucille is “mostly” Lab, not registered, so Lucille was a gift, (no $200+purchase price that come with AKC registration). That’s fine with us, and Lucille, she’s a gift in many ways.

A sweet, chewing fuzz-ball who only occasionally whines, Lucille is lovingly and gradually filling that void left by Suzie in a household that’s always had a dog and always black Labs.

Our first Lab was Remus, a Labrador/Weimaraner mix who we got before we got married. Remus, who followed Bonzo, the Alpha dog of our Auburn mobile home community (aka the Ghetto), into the mischief and eventually onto Wire Road, got hit by a car during our first year of marriage. The Auburn vet school fixed him up, and our broke selves paid on that bill for a long, long time.

Before we had children, Remus went everywhere with us. One Christmas, while we were visiting my parents in Pleasant Grove, Remus disappeared. She had followed Fannie (stepmother’s mostly beagle) off on an adventure. Fannie came back and Remus didn’t.

We spent the rest of that short holiday (I worked at a newspaper then, so you got off for Christmas eve or Christmas, never both), and had to return to Selma without him. My written plea, Oh, where, Oh where did Remus go? was on the front page of the Selma Times-Journal that day after Christmas. (Slow news day, and we had a picture….) I heard from sympathetic dog-lovers throughout Selma and central Alabama, but in the end, Remus made his way back on his own. Remus was walking in front of the house when Emily saw him and called his name. Em said Remus sat down, like, “finally.” We rushed back and picked him up; I wrote a follow-up column, and Al Benn, then my editor, took a picture of us reunited.

Young Remus, at the beach

We have lots of pictures of Remus, and for years, other reminders: the couch he chewed the arm off of, the teeth-marked, mangled broom sticks, the shredded shoes. This is the dog that used to climb on top of my car – first my seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time beige Gremlin, then my at-least-it’s-paid-for Ford Maverick. Remus would stretch himself out on the roof of the car – like Snoopy on the dog house. I think he wanted to know when I was leaving, in case he could go, too.

Remus, gentle with children yet protective of us always, stayed with us through the birth of son Will and then daughter Mary Claire, until he was gray and scarred (from the fights that un-fixed male dogs get in). Then one time, Remus did not come back from his wanderings. We think he went off to die the way some pets do if they can, I believe, to try to spare their humans from grief.

Henry was our next black Labrador. He was still a puppy when we moved from Selma to Camden and lived for a while in the “guest” mobile home provided by MacMillan Bloedel, where Frank worked then. One day that early fall, when the air conditioning stopped working at our temporary home, we called the HR person who took care of the these things.

Whoops. It turns out Henry had sliced and diced the air ducts under the trailer. “That’s okay,” said HR person said, “we’ll fix it.” I later joined MB as a freelancer, then as public relations manager, and that HR person, Janet Carlisle, became a friend. She never forgot Henry, either.

Henry, when he was old and gray

Then, Henry made his mark, again, when we bought a house in Camden. The first week, our neighbor, the late, wonderful Helen Strother, came over holding a mangled set of wires that used to be the pump that kept her winterized swimming pool clean. We paid that off, too, and Helen loved Henry always. Henry, loved by all who knew him, grew gray and scarred and eventually went the way of Remus, disappearing and not coming back.

The next black Lab was Suzie, and her story is written in these postings.

So, welcome to our family, sweet Lucille. Who knows what you’ll chew up (I need to check on her right now; she’s being mighty quiet).

And, who knows how much love you’ll give us in return.

Picture of the day: Lucille

(Photo by Mary Claire Walburn)

Song of the day:

Lucille, by Little Richard

"Lucille, please come back where you belong

Oh, Lucille, please come back where you belong

I've been good to you baby

Please don't leave me alone."

Reading to write: Help in creating portable magic

2010-01-18T12:59:00.002-06:00

As a writer, I read.

Or, maybe it should be: as a reader, I write. But, I think it’s the first.

Or maybe it’s that pesky chicken-and-the-egg thing.

Either way, since I hit double digits and discovered my mother’s collection of Agatha Christie books and her stash of classics including Twain and Hemingway (many of which I still own), I’ve been reading. I always have a book in progress.

I’ve rarely tested the premise that I cannot go with sleep without reading at least a few pages, my book held open by my hand and cradled in my arm. I am ready to go wherever that book is going, for at least a while. Reading, preferably fiction, is the surest way I know to control a “thinking problem,” that worrisome can-get-it-off-your-mind situation or problem that keeps us up at night.

As a reader, I often begin conversations with my other reader friends (we know who each other are) with, “what are you reading?” We exchange book titles and authors. We make quick reviews to each other; sometimes we lend or borrow books before the visit is over – if my latest are not from the Hoover Library, which they often are.

I cannot imagine myself any other way than as a reader.

But, it is only since I actively began my own first effort at fiction writing, that I totally understand the connection between reading and writing.

Before starting the first draft of Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone, my first fiction effort and currently 68,855 words in a fiction story set in the Alabama Black Belt, I read for the second and third time, On Writing by Stephen King. King is one of my favorite authors and the only one I know of who took the time to write about the craft of writing, about language and the serious, hard mining work of writing fiction.

“If you want to be writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut,” King begins in the first chapter of the second half of On Writing, where he gives the would-be writers among his Constant Readers (that’s what he calls us, his loyal readers) advice about how to write fiction if they are prepared to take it seriously.

For writers, he says, “the real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page,” King writes. “The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.”

That’s what I’m talking about.

Since I’ve been in active fiction-writing mode, I look at my book choices differently. I want to read Southern fiction, always a favorite but doubly so now that I am trying to create my own. I want to read books with supernatural and magical underpinnings because I have to convince my potential constant readers of the possibility of seeing things beyond this world. I want to read character-driven books because I hope mine is such a book that makes readers care about and recognize themselves and others in the characters.

So, I will now answer my own question: What are you reading?

Right now, my bookmark is in River of Hidden Dreams by Connie May Fowler, which I found on the Southern Voices shelf at the Hoover Library. Set in Florida and following the lives of three women, River of Hidden Dreams finds me adding notes to my by-the-bed notepad and re-reading sentences because they are so well-written and say so much.

Before that, I finished King’s latest, Under the Dome, a requested Christmas gift from my husband. A 1,072-page delight that I did not want to end, Under the Dome is another of King’s character-filled tomes well built on the premise of putting ordinary people in extraordinary situations (an unexplained and unpenetrable dome seals a town in Maine) and letting the characters drive the story and figure a way out.

In no particular order, here are other books recently completed as part of my keeping Stephen King’s commandment to read a lot, write a lot:

• South of Broad, the newest by Pat Conroy, a dean of Southern, character-central authors.

• The Devil’s Punchbowl, the newest by Greg Iles, the Natchez, Miss. author who writes fast-paced thrillers, again about ordinary folks who get in legal and moral dilemmas.

• The newest by Larry McMurtry, another favorite author. Like King, I read most everything McMurtry writes. This was Rhino Ranch, the fifth in the series about Duane Moore set in Thalia, Texas. The series began with The Last Picture Show.

• The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, the bestseller set in a 1960s Jackson, Miss. which follows black maids and the white women they work for. Southern, with great characters, The Help’s dialogue and dialect appealed to the author-in-training in me.

• All the books I can find by William Cobb, a retired Montevallo professor who writes beautifully of the Alabama Black Belt, its history and mysteries.

• Any and all by Larry Brown, the late north Mississippi firefrighter-turned-author who wrote with uncensored grit about how folks really are.

I still read for pleasure, without a doubt, but reading with writing in mind, as King taught me in On Writing, adds to the immediacy, purpose and joy. Plus, I have an excuse now to curl up with a book. It’s research!

“Books are uniquely portable magic,” King writes, as he begins his simple set of directions to would-be fiction writers which starts with read a lot and write a lot. He also tells us to have a toolbox full of vocabulary and grammar, some talent and an abundance of want-to. But mostly, my mentor tells me to make writing a priority and to close the door and write. And, he says, never come lightly to the blank page.

King writes at least 2,000 words a day every day of the year. (He said he told a reporter that he writes every day but Christmas, but he was fibbing to have something to say.) He usually dates his books. Under the Dome, all 1,000-plus pages of it, was written between Nov. 22, 2007 and March 14, 2009 based on an idea he originally had back in 1976. Dang!

I may never reach that level of dedication. However, I’ve had multiple weeks when I met my writing goals every weekday. And, I believe I have not and will not come lightly to the blank page.

Life interrupts; so does the job search, the weekly blog posting, all things cyber and non-cyber and, well, more life.

But -- no worries -- I am thrilled and well-read as I sit here, at my writing place, about the close the door and continue to tell the truth inside made-up stories, and hopefully, create some portable magic.

Picture of the day:

My brother Charlie and I,
sometime in the early 1960s,
pose with our books and bookcase.

Song of the Day:
When I Paint My Masterpiece, Bob Dylan

"Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,

When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece."

New Year’s longleaf seedling planting: For posterity and more

2010-01-11T13:39:00.005-06:00

Here’s how it’s done:

Firmly place the dibble into the sandy soil; rock it back and forth, making a hole deep enough for the seedling root.

Place the seedling so that the bud from which the bushy long needles grow is above the soil line.

Place the dibble about two inches in front of the seedling hole. Pull back on the dibble, and then forward, closing the soil around the root.

Repeat about two inches in front of that, again closing the soil around the seedling root.

You have successfully planted a longleaf seedling!

In a fitting New Year’s family activity, the Walburns planted about 100 longleaf seedlings along the sandy fields and in forest openings on our land in Dallas County. Much of this land adjacent to the Alabama River and Pine Barren Creek is ideal for longleaf pine, a.k.a. Pinus Palustris.

The sun came out that afternoon, as we planted the longleaf seedlings. Everybody took a turn with the two dibbles (a small hand implement used to plant trees and other plants, see above photo), at least at first.

My first time with a dibble, and daughter Mary Claire’s, too, we caught on quickly to the specific directions (above) from Frankie the forester. But, once Mary Claire and I took turns planting a dozen or so ourselves, the experienced tree planters (Frank who’s planted thousands and Will who’s planted hundreds) took over, and completed the New Year’s Eve planting (and another on New Year’s Day).

I learned how to plant a seedling and refreshed my knowledge about this native southern pine tree, the longleaf pine, which once covering two-thirds of the South. Longleaf pine greeted early explorers, who “saw a vast forest of the most stately pine trees that can be imagined, planted by nature at a moderate distance. . . enameled with a variety of flowering shrubs."

That’s according to the Longleaf Alliance, a non-profit originating at Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. The LLA has a mission of the conservation and restoration of significant functioning longleaf pine ecosystems across the southeastern United States forest landscape. The longleaf pine ecosystem once occupied an estimated 90 million acres in the region. By the early 1990s, only about 2.8 million acres of this forest remained. Due in large part to the efforts of The Longleaf Alliance and its many partners over the past 14 years, the acreage in longleaf forest has increased to approximately 3.2 million acres, the first such increase since the time of settlement. Find out more at http://longleafalliance.org/NEWLLA/index.html

For us and our small privately-owned forestland, the longleaf seedlings planted at the New Year represented more than just planting back a species which likely covered the landscape when Native Americans canoes traveled up and down the Alabama River instead of bass boats and jet skis.

As with any tree planting, our longleaf planting was for prosperity and a lot more.

You plant trees not so much for yourself, but for your children and your children’s children. In the case of longleaf, which is the longest living tree among southern species, the lifetime can be up to 250 years. Longleaf reach maturity at about 30 years, when trees begin to produce those big cones filled with fertile seeds. The trunk of the mature tree fills out into a straight, relatively branch-free tree that resembles a living telephone pole (in fact, many longleaf pines are sold for telephone poles). On more fertile soils, the tree may continue to grow in height up to 110 feet.

So, in addition to reinstating a pine species native to the area and the expectation of some pole-length trees beginning in 30 years (when our children might be grandparents), our longleaf seedling planting activity brings other benefits.

These include:

Promoting wildlife and native species: Longleaf pine forests provide quality habitat for desirable plants and animal species. These include bobwhite quail, fox squirrels, wild turkeys and whitetail deer.

Reduced risk of loss to natural causes: Longleaf pine is highly resistant to pine beetles and fusiform rust, tolerant of wildfire and ice and generally wind-firm. Plus, one common agent of destruction in many southern forests – fire – is an essential tool in longleaf management. That’s also a plus for my forester husband, who enjoys no forest management tool more than a controlled burn.

Biodiversity: A longleaf pine stand maintained by fire is among the most biologically diverse ecotypes in North America.

Carbon Sink: Because longleaf pine lives longer than other southern pines and has the ability to sustain growth at older ages (150 year-plus), the longleaf has the ability to tie up stored carbon for long periods.

Cultural: Longleaf was literally the tree that built the South. Aside from lumber to build homes, businesses and ships, longleaf pine forests provided fare for the dinner table, medicine, a place to graze cattle and extract resin to refine turpentine. In addition to its park-like beauty, a longleaf forest provided a place to go and listen to the “whispering of the pines.”

Dollars and cents: Longleaf pine produces straight, dense, rot resistant wood. Longleaf gives landowners market flexibility, yields a variety of products (including longleaf pine straw) and continues to grow throughout their lives, responding to thinning even at greatly advanced ages. In addition, longleaf guards against natural catastrophic loss better than other southern pines.

Biodiversity or market stability aside, it may be the beauty of the longleaf pine, its aesthetics and coolness-factor, which was most appealing as we stuck those bushy, container-grown seedlings into the sandy dirt.

Wise, look-to-the-future thinking, a good start, time and Mother Nature are the requirements for tree growing, especially the longleaf. We gave them a good start. Now, it’s up to time and Mother Nature.

Pictures of the day:

Getting ready
for the New Year's
Longleaf seedling
planting: Will, Frankie
the Forester, and Mary
Claire.

Will and Mary Claire
plant longleaf seedlings.

Song of the day:
In the Pines, a traditional American folk song
-- Dating back to at least the 1870s.
-- Recorded by the Carter Family, Lead Belly, Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, the Louvin Brothers and Nirvana.

In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines
I shivered where the cold winds blow
In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines
I shivered where the cold winds blow

New year, new decade: a clean page

2010-01-05T12:41:00.002-06:00

I like to think of a new year as a clean slate, or in writer’s lingo, a clean page. Anything is possible in a new year, and, in the case of the just-days-old 2010, a new decade.

We humans get another chance to get things right, to do things better, to be healthier, to live smarter and healthier, to make better decisions and to treat others and ourselves better. At least we can try.

Historically, I avoid written personal resolutions and would not share here them if I did. Rather, I prefer general advice to self, based on ever-growing experience and borrowing from wise others.

Listening to NPR the other day (yes, I am one of those), I heard an “expert” talking about advice and New Year’s promises. She blogs, I believe, and advised in one blog to make small changes. One she recommended in the past was: make your bed every day.

Seems simple, and for some it’s automatic (as it is to me now, but probably was not when I was getting children ready for school and me ready for work years ago). The expert said she was surprised at the response from readers who said this simple bed-making daily observance helped them in other ways beyond coming home to a neat resting place. Perhaps daily bed making brought “control over something” into lives which felt out of control. Regardless, if the advice helps, then repeat it. So I am.

Consider with me these thoughts and advice, as we begin 2010:

• Make your bed every day.

• Listen twice as much as you speak.

• If you can’t say something nice, just don’t say anything.

• If you are angry at someone, the anger controls you.

• Stop doing things that are bad for you.

• Start doing things that are good for you.

• Don’t compare your life with others. You have no idea, really, what theirs is really like and what they’ve had to deal with.

• Forgive, even if the person has not asked for forgiveness. There are reasons Forgiveness is in the Bible so many times, and one is that forgiving is so difficult and important.

• You can’t change the past. Make peace with it and learn from it. Make the most of every day, because today is really all we can be sure of.

• Hope for the future, and plan for it, too.

• Never underestimate the power of music. Wanna get happy? Try Jerry Lee Lewis, who said it so well: "Rock 'n Roll is Rock 'n Roll. If there's anything better, I wanna hear it."

• Smile even if you don’t feel like it. It’s contagious; so is frowning.

• Laugh every day. Especially at yourself.

Picture of the day: Pondering the future. This iguana is one of many we saw on a trip to St. Thomas a couple of years ago. Posing at the side of the swimming pool (where he came WAY too close to my chair), this tropical American lizard appears to be pondering his future, like we are as the 2010s begin.

Song of the day:
Get Rhythm (When You Get the Blues), Johnny Cash

May her song always be sung

2009-12-21T12:06:00.003-06:00

Watching from my perch high up on the sides of Auburn University’s Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum as 1,509 graduates made their way to the stage at Friday’s graduation ceremonies, I could always tell which black-robed graduate was our Mary Claire Walburn, class of 2009.

That’s because of the yellow square and blue peace sign she had affixed to the top of her mortarboard. Plus, she was sitting then standing next to friend and fellow BA in Business in Supply Chain Management graduate James, who had written MOM in yellow electrical tape on top of his headgear, in honor of his mother’s birthday.

Now, every one of the graduates likely stood out just as much to their parents and grandparents, as we all leaned down to catch a glimpse and hear our graduates’ names called during the two-hour ceremony. Despite the “shout outs” which I found somewhat annoying and often drowned out the next graduate’s name, the ceremony was intended to give every graduate a moment in the spotlight.

But Mary Claire with a peace sign on her head was a fitting image as I watched my only daughter graduate where her parents graduated about 30 years ago.

Mary Claire, who identified herself as a rock-n-roll girl since she was 5 and who had to be talked out of naming one of our dogs Rainbow instead of Henry, enters the adult and post-college world with the same enthusiasm, uniqueness and well-rounded openness.

Her mother’s daughter, she loves music and cool things and never had to change much to dress up as a “hippie” for Halloween. Thus, the peace sign seemed a logical symbol (any politics aside) as she and James planned their top-of-mortarboard statements.

We all made homemade cards for Mary Claire to give to her at graduation, her brother Will scanning in a photo of her as a baby with her big brother, her daddy Frank posting then and now Auburn tailgate pictures, and mine being the photo of a 4-year-old Mary Claire with the Auburn Eagle, and one of us fishing together when she was a toddler.

In my note to our graduate, I used the Eagle symbolism to encourage her to fly like an Eagle. I praised my smart, beautiful, kind, caring, funny and fun daughter who has faced her challenges with smiles, faith and determination.

And, as expected, I quoted Bob Dylan’s Forever Young, a song he wrote for one of his children and a Dylan poem-song which expresses better than I can the hopes I have for our children.

“May God bless and keep you always, May your wishes all come true,

May you always do for others And let others do for you.

May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung,

May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young,

May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous, May you grow up to be true,

May you always know the truth And see the lights surrounding you.

May you always be courageous, Stand upright and be strong,

May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young,

May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy, May your feet always be swift,

May you have a strong foundation When the winds of changes shift.

May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung,

May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young,

May you stay forever young.”

We can’t keep our children forever young, I know, but we can, and I think we should, continue to ask for God’s blessings on them as they become men and women from boys and girls.

We can hope we’ve nurtured them and taught them to do for others, to be courageous, righteous, strong, upright, true and joyful – characteristics which will serve anyone well through life’s journey.

For Mary Claire, finding a job in the logistics, transportation, purchasing, or process management fields that encompass her Supply Chain Management major is the next challenge.

And, I know Mary Claire will tackle this next step in the same determined, thorough and smiling way she has shown in facing life’s next-steps since she completed our family 23 years ago.

Happy graduation Mary Claire -- our beautiful, smart, sweet and caring rock-n-roll girl.

Picture of the day: Mary Claire Walburn, Dec. 18, 2009

Song of the day: Forever Young, Bob Dylan

Family, friends, hometown miss all things “Blue”

2009-12-14T11:56:00.001-06:00

The first time I met Blue Jones, it was obvious I was meeting “the nicest smart aleck in Alabama” as I later heard him described. But I didn’t know that night – when he immediately started teasing me and my husband, who was not even there – that this smiling, red-headed banker would become such an important part of our lives in Camden.

But, by the time he died on Dec. 15, 2006 -- snatched way too soon by a rare cancer -- I knew that he was a unique no-matter-what friend. We all knew by then that there was no one like Blue Jones.

See, I met Blue right after we moved to Camden, Blue’s hometown, from Selma. I was at Gaines-Ridge Dinner Club in the fireplace room, sandwiched between Camden people who would become our best friends during our 15 years living there. Blue, who was nicknamed that because his hair was so red, and his wife Kay were sitting catty-corner from me.

“Where’s yo’ husband? Blue asked.

“Oh, he’s at a biathlon, you know, bicycling and running,” I said, explaining that husband Frank and a work buddy were in north Alabama participating in a charity biking and running event.

“BI-athlon?” Blue answered, making sure that everyone at the table could hear him. “BI-athlon? I think it’s more like a DI-athlon, you know, drinkin’ and dancin’!”

So began the friendship with Blue and his not-a-smart-aleck wife Kay, with Blue teasing and getting the laugh. I’d learn that Blue teased folks he liked. He didn’t bother with those he didn’t.

Blue died three years ago this week. I doubt Dec. 15 will ever pass without us all thinking about Blue. The hole he left in Camden and in our lives remains and probably always will.

Born and raised in Wilcox County and educated at his beloved Auburn University, Blue Jones was a leader, friend, coach, businessman, outdoorsman and cattle and timber farmer. He volunteered at Wilcox Academy and with most every cause that served his hometown of Camden and the people of Wilcox, including his church, Camden United Methodist Church.

At Camden National Bank, Blue could talk to a millionaire one minute and the next, counsel with the poorest customer, working to help them figure a workable way out. Camden and Wilcox County did not have a better champion.

Blue was also a River Rat, capital Rs. He loved the Alabama River – having been raised on it. Countless boat rides – including some when he had to jump in and tow us out of the mud, or, in one instance, swim-tow us in after a prop fell off – complete our memories of Blue. Whether it was pulling children on a tube or just tooling up and down and around the Alabama River, Blue was there and happy. And if your boat broke down, you wanted Blue around. Today, we still go on boat rides; sometimes Kay comes with us, and we always think of Blue.

We began a tradition of family vacations together at the Alabama Gulf Coast, the Jones, the Walburns, the Huggins and the Williams. Most times, Blue brought the pontoon boat, the red one with the plastic chairs for supplemental seating. You could hear our laughter, above the hum of the engine, as our rag-tag crew cruised around Ono Island, a happy contrast to the yachts and the Boston Whalers zipping by us. We truly would not have traded places.

Blue loved music and dancing and having a good time. He loved Neil Young, despite Southern Man or maybe because of it. After he died, we argued over what was his favorite rock n’roll song, but Kay was the final arbitrator. It was Gimme Three Steps by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

We had a party at Blue’s camphouse the night after his funeral. “Party,” he had mouthed and motioned to Kay, during his final days in UAB’s intensive care unit. So, we had a party at the camphouse, like we used to do. We laughed about things that were “so Blue.” His grown children, Bill and Anne, were there with their friends, and we tried to surround Kay with her friends and happy memories shared.

It was a bittersweet night. The camphouse, at the center of family land Blue tended and loved, seemed to be waiting on him to return. His wading boots hung on the end of the hammock, where he had left them to dry.

The camphouse, his family, his friends and his hometown -- they all still miss Blue. We see him in the Eagles flying above the Alabama River or in the turkeys through a field. We see him in the sunset over Pine Barren Creek, and we miss him.

But, in typical Blue fashion, he’d tell us all to ease up.

“Don’t go wishing and worrying your life away,” Blue would say.

“You better enjoy the day the Lord has given you. You don’t know what’s coming next.”

Amen to that, Blue.

Picture of the day:

Blue and Kay Jones, on a boat ride at the beach.

Song of the day:

Heart of Gold, Neil Young

Kicking the bah humbug blues, one decoration at a time

2009-12-07T18:54:00.000-06:00

I almost said bah humbug while ago and meant it.

Up until Sunday evening, when I draped the may-be-decade-old white lights with garland across the back porch railings, there had been no decked halls at our house.

Dec. 6 may be the latest I’ve ever waited to start Christmasing. The tree might wait this long to be decked, since we are a live-tree-only family, but I usually at least get out the stockings or the Santa collection or start doing cards or cookies or something by now.

Not one gift purchased. Not one list begun. Let’s hope Santa’s more prepared than I am.

I know it’s still two and one-half weeks to the big day, but despite the twinkling lights along the Hoover roads I travel daily and the been-there Christmas stuff in the stores, I am not feeling the Christmas cheer.

I don’t know exactly prompted me to begin to mutter the aforementioned “bah humbug” let’s-just-don’t-fool with-this-Christmas-stuff comment. Maybe it’s losing Suzie, the wonder dog. Or maybe it’s facing my second Christmas as an unemployment statistic.

Hey Debbie Downer, give us a break.

It may be as simple as Christmas coming so quickly this year. It was just Halloween, wasn’t it? Thanksgiving streaked by, then the Iron Bowl (War Eagle anyway!), and then, BAM! It became Christmastime when I wasn’t looking.

So, I swallowed the bah humbug mid-sentence, and hung a wreath. I put the guitar-holding, rock-around-the-clock dancin’ and singin’ doll on the table on the back porch where he usually spends the holidays.

I’m kicking the bah humbug blues, one decoration at a time.

By the time the stockings are up and the multi-colored lights in the Leland Cypress trees in the front yard, I’ll forget I ever considered bah humbugging at all. Because, you see, my normal state is annoyingly cheerful and childlike about Christmas.

Whoever does the decorating at your house knows the feeling of rediscovery when a prized and ancient decoration is pulled from the tissue-and-newspaper-packed plastic crate.

There’s Mom-Mom’s Santa, with the removable boots, who used to clutch a Coca-Cola bottle, that tiny bottle lost to packing or a curious child years ago.

There, too, are the pictures of children Christmases past, innocent and shining from Christmas picture frames.

In boxes all their own are the ornaments, the one from our first year, our first house and our children’s first Christmases. I even have the foil-covered-toilet-paper-roll ornament I made in school more than 40 years ago. I tell Mary Claire and Will the origins of all the ornaments, as we trim the tree, hoping eventually they will remember to tell their children. This, after all, is what Christmas traditions are about.

Aunt Jackie made this ornament; neighbor Mildred Mott from Selma this one. Mother knitted all these, the bells and angels which have survived my creative Momma by decades.

The only ornament losses over all these years came during the inevitable Christmas tree crashes. A live Christmas tree family, as previously stated -- in part because of husband and father, Frank the forester -- our tradition calls for a bought live tree every other year, alternated with a cedar cut fresh from the woods.

This year is a live bought tree year, after a towering cedar, grown to be a cedar, not a Christmas tree, last year. That one crashed to the floor as I was finishing the decorating last year. In a crash that really seemed to happen in slow motion, the toppling cost a few more glass ornaments and that day’s Christmas spirit. Will and Frank righted it and used fishing line to anchor it to the window sashes.

I probably murmured bah humbug word a few times that night, as I redecorated the stabilized tree. But it was a work of art when finished, a stable work of art that didn’t sway or tilt until we wanted it to after it was undecorated and carried out the front door a few days after the big day.

The previous Christmas tree crash was in our Camden home, when the tree (probably a from-the-woods one) hit the floor mid season, water spilling and mixing with broken glass. That crash took out some keepsake glass ornaments, like the three-glass-bell ornament Momma gave us her final Christmas. I cried then over broken ornaments, but rallied as I placed the remaining treasure trove of ornaments back on the righted tree.

I have too many memories tucked into Christmas boxes – and too many blessings all around -- to allow the bah humbugs to remain in our holiday home. I hope the same is true for all of us.

My brief case the bhb virus passed quickly – aided by flashing lights and the anticipated unwrapping of baby Jesus and the wise men.

If you’ve got even a slight case and feel the bah humbug fever creeping in, I highly recommend getting out those Christmas boxes and setting free for another year those happy memories, jolly Santas and other twinkling things.

Picture of the day:
Cedar Christmas Tree, 2008

Song of the day:
Happy Christmas, John Lennon

"So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear"

Suzie and Us: A wonder dog remembered

2009-11-30T15:10:00.000-06:00

Our Suzie, the wonder dog, died Saturday.

The 9-year-old, big, black Labrador with the knowing eyes, wagging tail and boundless love for us slipped away painlessly, after a week in which she rapidly lost use of her left legs.

Suzie Q. Walburn (named for the CCR song) came into our home in 2000 as a puppy, following son Will into the house and everywhere he went, a practice she continued until she could no longer get up to follow any of us around, no matter how hard she tried.

We called Suzie a wonder dog because she was just that. During her years with us, she was hit by a car, out-swam an alligator and survived a gunshot to the head. The vet thinks that gun shot -- inflicted by a crazed, heartless SOB who knows who he is -- and the remaining shrapnel on the left side of her head may have been the cause of a stroke which left Suzie paralyzed and unable to function.

So, don’t get me started about the person who shot her (and killed her daughter dog Gracie with the same shot or shots on a night we remember as a nightmare) some six years ago. I’ve written a letter (but have not mailed it yet) to the shooter, who never admitted or apologized. He even, with his wife, smirked about it to the police (who knew he did it, too). But this writing today is not about that shameless person, who will pay for what he did somehow, someway.

This is about our Suzie, the best dog ever.

Suzie was a testament to facing adversity with courage and hope, and always, love. She kept on going, loving, serving us, through all the challenges her life brought. A four-legged epitome of persistence and love, Suzie helped her family in countless ways.

Dogs love you no matter what, and Suzie had a Ph.D in this unconditional love. Whatever obstacles any of us faced, Suzie knew and comforted. She’d nuzzle, hand you her paw and look into your eyes as if to say, “It’s gonna be alright. I love you.” If that didn’t work, she’d climb her 100-plus pound self into your lap and comfort you that way.

Even at the end, during the final days when one of the four of us would pet her and cry, it was us Suzie was worried about. She’d struggle to raise her head to see what was hurting us (even though I think she knew) and to offer comfort. “It’s gonna be alright,” she told us with those brown eyes. “I Love You.”

We will never know for sure what happened to cause the paralysis which took Suzie down quickly during Thanksgiving week -- be it stroke from the gunshot wound or a tumor somewhere in her nervous system.

We just knew by Saturday that we were being selfish to want “one more day with Suzie.” Our vet in Birmingham, Dr. Roger Dieguez, who will take care of any pets I ever have as long as I live here, came to the house and helped us help Suzie out of her suffering.

If there is a pet heaven, and I think there must be in some form, then Suzie arrived shortly after 2 p.m. Saturday, with a collar full of jewels, for the love, joy and life lessons this simple dog gave to us.

There, Suzie will run and she will jump. She’ll eat as much Moist and Meaty as she wants. She’ll get to go on a ride every day, her window down all the way and her face smiling into the wind. She’ll bark as loud and long as she wants, and she’ll dig the biggest holes ever. And, in pet heaven, Suzie will chase chipmunks and win the race.

We buried her at one of her and our favorite places, at our camphouse and land in Dallas County, a pretty place under a giant stately oak, marked by a cross with Suzie’s name, and the appropriate title: The best dog.

On Sunday, four eagles soured high in the blue skies above Suzie’s resting place. I know that Suzie’s spirit soared with them.

Rest in peace, Suzie Q, our wonder dog.

Being Thankful, and Jobless

2009-11-24T11:00:00.000-06:00

It’s a big week for being thankful.

I know we are supposed to be thankful year around, not just on the holiday with Thanks in its name. And, I am, or I try to be.

Regardless, it is a particular time to be thankful. I don’t have to take much of a searching glance around to see much to be thankful for: family, home, health, pets, life itself.

To be more specific: A patient, loving husband who still has his job, a beautiful daughter about to graduate college, a working son who gets his degree in June, a old dog who has a hurt foot right now but still wags her tail when any of us come around and a regal, elderly cat who still curls up in our laps.

Does it get much better? I doubt it. And, that's not counting extended family and friends.

Still, this Thanksgiving, as last one, I am unemployed. On this Thanksgiving, I am thinking about that and the millions, I say millions, of others who are in the same boat. Like me, they have lost their jobs; they've been laid off and downsized. I hope they all have other things to still be thankful for, too.

Checking the official statistics, I am one of 15.7 million unemployed workers in the United States. These are people who are actively looking for work. That’s up 558,000 in October, when unemployment reached 10.2 nationwide. The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and more) – that’s my group -- was little changed in October, at 5.6 million. These Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers are scary enough, but when you put a face, a home, and a family with each one of them, it’s easy to get discouraged.

“They” say the economy is improving, and maybe it is in some sectors, but the jobs in my field are few and far between, and the competition is keen. I try not to get discouraged. “Managing expectations” is my mantra when I apply for any job.

Yes, I have considered going back to school to study something else, to acquire skills for field where they are plenty of jobs. I’ve considered the medical field, where there seem to be jobs. And, I may do that eventually.

But, for now, I am still a writer, editor, experienced public relations and communications manager. That’s what I’ve done for 30 years.

I am not afraid to change; I just don’t know what to change into.

So for now, I look for a job every day, and I bother friends for referrals. I write this blog, to keep my name “out there” and the mind still churning out ideas. And, I write on the novel I’ve mentioned before, now into the final stretch of writing on it every day until I finish the first draft. Then, I will begin bugging everyone I know who has ever published a book for referrals to agents or publishers, but that’s for another day.

On this Thanksgiving, I can in some ways even be thankful to be where I am, unemployed, one of the 15.7 million jobless. That's because I can be thankful having the time to write my first novel and a chance to catch my breath and spend time with my family instead of on the job and on the road.

Still, none of those benefits pays any bills.

If I have a lesson from more than a year of looking for a job -- more than a year of doubts and fears -- it would be that to deal with it, sometimes you really have to look at the other side. You have to look at the “other hand,” the positives that come from negatives, and move on.

Each Thanksgiving, we have a tradition of placing three kernels of corn (actually pop corn kernels) beside the plate of each guest at Thanksgiving dinner. Before the blessing, we go around the table and each person tells three things they are thankful for, as they place the kernels back into my grandmother’s crystal sugar bowl.

Despite it all – the uncertainty of being an economic statistic and all that goes with it -- this year, I will have still a hard time narrowing it down to three.

Picture(s) of the day: High water

How high's the water?

Both piers are under water, and only the pole
with the still-shining solar light still shows in this picture of our pier on Pine Barron Creek. This was a day or so after Tropical Storm Ida came through the South.

Below is what it the pier scene normally looks like.

Song of the day: High Water for Charley Patton, by Bob Dylan

"I just can't be happy, love

Unless you're happy too

It's bad out there

High water everywhere."

Listing lots to like about lists

2009-11-16T11:40:00.000-06:00

It’s Monday, so it’s time for a list, or lists.

My list-making habits didn’t end with my gainful employment. I still start each Monday with a to-do list for the week. Only now, instead of “finish communications plan for Project Whatever,” or “plan mill visit for Congressman Whoever,” it’s more likely to be “write on book, exercise, Go to Fred’s (dollar store), return library books. Laundry.”

I used to put on the list: “get a job.” But that’s not even funny anymore. Plus, looking for a job -- the networking, checking job sites, updating my job matrix list – has become second nature to me now. It does not have to be on the list; that giant task called job hunting now seems as everyday to me as breathing.

Today I had at the top of my to-do list: write on blog. After last week’s heart-felt essay on Danielle and her Daddy, I wanted to ruminate on something less emotional and more practical. Hence, this is a look at lists.

Aside from week-of to-do list, I keep a running list on the counter in the kitchen: garbage bags, dishwashing liquid. I also keep long-range lists, but too often, these fall into the “I’ll get right on that, Rose” category or into the “do wonders…eat rotten cucumbers” status.

See, “I’ll get right on that, Rose” is a line from a movie which my daughter and I say, referring to things we need to do but don’t want to do. The cat litter box needs changing. “I’ll get right on that, Rose.”

“I’m gonna do wonders and eat rotten cucumbers.” That’s a quote from Lona, the mother of my long-time BFF Janet, referring to ambitious plans and good intentions. Long-term lists can land in this category: lose weight, eat more vegetables, clean out the basement storage area, negotiate world peace.

List-making is a great time management tool. We all know that. But, key to making list-making work is two-fold: 1. Look at the list and do the items. Or more specifically: Refer to list often during the day or week, and do the items on it, marking them off as you go and adding tasks as needed. 2. Don’t ignore, lose or forget said lists. Or if you do, re-write them.

I know there apps for task lists on my phone, and in my computer’s e-mail and calendar functions. But, like my news and my books, I prefer paper and pen lists over digital ones, despite those cool-to-check-off-as-done symbols the computer-generated lists have.

Maybe it’s just me, but nothing is more satisfying than marking tasks off a to-do list. You can mark through the item or put a check or X mark by it. There, that’s done.

It’s a multitasker’s motivation and reward all in one.

So, today, in writing about lists I will be able to mark one task off this week’s list: write on blog. Check.

Now, I can move down that list. And, you never know, this week may be the week when I really do finally, “do wonders and eat rotten cucumbers.”

Picture of the day:

Directional signs to our camphouse, a.k.a. the Wild Kingdom or WK for short. Signs custom-designed by Mary Claire and Jackie.

Song of the day: Choctaw Bingo, James McMurtry

Remembering a Daddy and his daughter

2009-11-10T07:49:00.000-06:00

My daughter’s best friend lost her Daddy Sunday. He was too young; it was too soon, and it’s all too sad.

John Welch lost his brief battle with cancer Sunday night, surrounded by his family and friends, and he had a lot of those.

I knew John as Danielle’s Daddy, first meeting him as we sat in the uncomfortable bleachers in the Wilcox Academy gymnasium, watching our girls plays basketball. Danielle was a starter who charged up and down the court, a threat to perhaps throw an elbow and foul out early. Then, my daughter, Mary Claire, might get in the game.

John was there for Danielle’s ball games, and for the prom, where I remember him waiting with me in front of Gaines-Ridge Dinner Club, for the lost limo driver to come take our beautiful girls and their dates to the prom, also at the gymnasium.

That’s how I remember John – being there for his Danielle.

I knew John Welch as just that, Danielle’s Daddy, and I don’t have a bio or obit information to guide me as I write about him. But that’s okay, because, you see, it was Danielle that John was most proud of.

He’d tell you that his beautiful blonde daughter was what he’d done best in his life.

As far as background, I know John Welch grew up in Birmingham and went to school here. Professionally, he ran restaurants and believed in good food and hospitality. Most recently, he managed the Dream Land barbecue restaurant in downtown Birmingham. (This picture is Danielle, who we call D, and John Welch at Dream Land in Birmingham.)

I know John loved rock n’ roll (having followed the Grateful Dead around for a brief period in his young life) and I know he was a Bob Dylan fan, like me, one of those music lovers who get Dylan. John also loved serving folks good food and being a good host.

But most of all, John loved his daughter Danielle, his only child, a love child, even, and he was always, always there for her.

And when John was diagnosed with cancer just a couple of months ago, it was Danielle who was there for John.

Danielle quit school for the semester, withdrawing from Southern Union, where she was studying radiology, moved out of the Auburn trailer where she lived with Mary Claire and others from Camden.

I remember her sitting on our back porch, after she had made the decision to drop out this semester, saying “I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t spend every minute I can with Daddy, just in case he doesn’t make it,” she said, crying, and even then, bolstering herself for what she feared was coming. Danielle negotiated with her grandfather, John’s father, a retired Texas A&M educator who, by nature, disapproves of dropping out of school. Danielle made the tough, adult decisions she had to in order to be at her Daddy’s side, and she was, every step of the way.

I was 23, probably a year older than Danielle, when I lost my mother to cancer, too. So, I feared that I knew what was coming for Danielle and her Daddy, and I knew that she was right to be there for him as much as she could, and she was.

Danielle was there (and Mary Claire was an honored guest) when John was baptized by his father at the Church of Christ he went to as a child. She was there for the doctor meetings, the radiation, the discomfort, the visiting friends and family and more friends. They all moved in together, grandfather, Danielle, John and, for much of the time, and at the last, Danielle’s mother Kelley, and Kelley’s mother, a nurse who I know only as Nanny.

During his final weeks and months, Danielle and her Daddy went out to eat, watched movies, looked at old pictures. They went to an Alabama football game and to see Widespread Panic and the Allman Brothers. She rubbed her Daddy’s back, and helped figure out the meds, made sure he tried to sleep and to eat. She learned more than she ever wanted to about how quickly cancer can move in and devastate.

But, I know that John Welch was right with the Lord and with his family as he faced his final weeks, then days, then hours, with his family and friends, and his Danielle, at his side.

And, I know something else with certainty. Danielle Rose Welch was John Welch’s pride and joy, and he was her hero.

Song of the day: Pride and Joy, by Stevie Ray Vaughan

Remembering Auburn then, now, and Dylan singing "Here Comes Santa Claus"

2009-11-03T11:05:00.000-06:00

Saturday was a good day.

Auburn University won a football game -- after a three-week losing skid of twilight zone proportion -- and my copies of Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart came in the mail.

Auburn won, again.

The good Auburn University football team showed up for Saturday’s game, and we won. The confused, dispirited Auburn team of the three-game-losing streak was replaced by the prepared, determined Tigers who made the Ole Miss game as exciting as any this season.

I think of Auburn, too, after viewing a Facebook photo album by fellow Auburn Plainsman alumni and photographer Gordon Bugg, who has worked as an engineer and soldier since then. His pictures of Auburn in the late 1970s, when we were there and publishing the student newspaper each week, ignited memories and reminded us how much the campus (and we) have changed since then. One of my favorites from his “Auburn evolving” photo album, is this shot of Auburn's War Eagle, from 1977.

Must be Dylan singing Christmas carols

My two copies of Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart arrived Saturday. I’ve listen to all the selections once, and a few twice. As a Dylan fan, I know I’ll like the CD even more with subsequent listens.

But what’s so cool about this Christmas album from the coolest of the cool singer-songwriters and American legends is that he really means it.

First, all the proceeds from the sale of Christmas in the Heart go to Feeding America. Overseas sales will go to similar charities which feed the needy. This guarantees that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during this year's holiday season; plus the Feeding America and the international charities benefiting from the album receive all future royalties, in perpetuity.

Secondly, Dylan sings holiday standards with enthusiasm and, well, heart.

The whole deal is like a gift, really. Dylan's gravelly, wise and time-worn voice is wrapped in his precise arrangements of well-known Christmas songs and packaged with his always-on-the-mark band members and studio musicians and “mixed voice” back-up singers.

America’s best songwriter didn’t write any of the tunes, even though he’s written albums full of Christian songs. But, he put his masterful talent to arranging popular standards and traditional hymns like The First Noel and O Little Town of Bethlehem .

Christmas in the Heart is a treat for folks who love holiday music, Dylan fans, and, I suspect, most others who bother to listen. For needy people in our country and abroad, Christmas in the Heart is what it's name implies. And it is a concrete, WWJD act of Christmas kindness.

Early favorites from my early listening are Here Comes Santa Claus, Little Drummer Boy, and Must Be Santa (a fun sing-along and what could be the only polka-beat song from Dylan).

I say I got two copies of Christmas in the Heart. One is mine, and it is already being enjoyed, even as I pack away the electronic flying bat and rake into the trash what’s left of our shrinking carved pumpkin.

Christmas in the Heart will be the soundtrack for my Christmas 2009, and if people will take a listen, and remember the reason for the season, it will become a Christmas music standard.
As for my other copy, it will be one of our presents for the family Dirty Santa present swap at my husband’s mother’s house, where we draw numbers and gleefully fight over gifts, some good, some not so good. I hope whoever gets Christmas in the Heart doesn’t get it snatched in Dirty Santa before they can listen to it, and listen to it again, and appreciate the effort and intent of my musical hero’s holiday gift to us all.

Interested in Christmas in the Heart or ordering a copy? Go to http://www.bobdylan.com/#/news

Song of the day: Gotta Serve Somebody, Bob Dylan

Cyber connected, but let me keep newsprint-stained fingers

2009-10-26T11:29:00.000-05:00

I’m Linked In. My face is on Facebook. I can Tweet anytime I want to. And, last week, folks other than my best friends read my blog posting and commented on it.

I’m feelin’ the love of cyber connecting.

I can Google myself (try it sometime), and I find what I wanted to find: web listings for Jackie Walburn, writer, editor, communicator and JOB SEEKER. Google no longer just finds quotes and media mentions from my most recent job as a spokesperson/public affairs/region corporate communications manager for a big company.

I’m there in Google-land representing myself, and that was the goal when I set out recently to create a cyber presence to assist in the continuing adventure of life after downsizing. I listened when experts in my field -- communications, public relations, writing, editing – said, you’ve got to be out there, or rather in there, in the interconnected social media world. I got the message. I posted the profiles, asked for friends and connections, and continue to learn ways to maximize these connections.

However, even as I celebrate with a virtual happy dance, must make one non-hip disclaimer.

First and foremost: I will not start “getting all my news on-line.” Sure I can go to al.com for Alabama news or any number of sites for national and international news and comment.

Just give me a newspaper, please. I still want to read the newspaper; I want to turn the pages. I don’t even care if I can newsprint on my fingers. I love newsprint on my fingers.

The economy and this cyber world have combined to make this a tough time for newspapers everywhere. But hey, for what it’s worth, newspapers everywhere still have a loyal reader in me. Although I have not worked regularly for a newspaper in about more than a decade, I grew up in newspapers. I majored in journalism (and meant it) and worked exclusively as a newspaper reporter, editor and photographer for many years, until economic realities and opportunities combined to launch me on a career change as a communications consultant, then into public relations, then corporate communications.

But bless the reporters and editors working away at today’s newspapers. Fewer pages, fewer advertisers (those are directly linked) and an increasing emphasis on the on-line versions of newspapers make it challenging for newspapers and newspaper reporters these days. I understand that, and know that “breaking news” is indeed that when it can be posted on-line instead of waiting for the next edition of the newspaper. Writing for print and then writing and updating it for on-line is the new norm.

However, newspaper reporters and editors are nothing if not resourceful, and evidence shows they are embracing the new media, even while some of them, surely, still like the idea of newsprint on their fingers.

A recently-published study, "Life beyond Print: Newspaper journalists' digital appetite,” written in-part by a fellow Auburn University journalism grad Vickey Williams, shows that almost half of today's newspaper journalists think their newsroom's move from print to digital is happening too slowly, and they see their future selves engaged in news reporting even as the print-to-digital-and-mobile-devices changes continue and speed up.

The study, published by the Media Management Center at Northwestern University, identifies six types of journalists inhabiting the typical newspaper newsroom in 2009. These range from the "Digitals" (12% of the workforce) who spend a majority of their efforts online today, to the "Turn Back the Clock" contingent (6%), who long for the day when print was king. I’d probably find myself in the middle.

One of the reasons this blog appeals to me is how similar it is to writing a newspaper column, which I did for years in college for The Plainsman, then as a part of a small staff at a small weekly and then a small daily. Now this blog gives me a chance again to write about whatever I want to (within reason), even if it’s not printed on newsprint and my readership is limited but growing, a few friends at a time.

All that’s missing is newsprint-stained fingers, and, somewhere in cyberspace, there’s probably an app for that.

Picture of the day:

Fishing off the pier: Here's what I did Saturday afternoon and Sunday, fished for crappie off our pier. Few bites, one catfish for me and a bream for Mary Claire, but great view from pier. This photo is actually from last Spring, but you get the picture.

Song of the day:
Summer Days, Bob Dylan

"Standing by God's river, my soul is beginnin' to shake

Standing by God's river, my soul is beginnin' to shake

I'm countin' on you love, to give me a break"

Fine to be finally on Facebook, finding friends

2009-10-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

I fought Facebook and Facebook won.

See, I saw the social networking site as a place for college kids, as it started out, and frowned on it, too, because of an unfortunate, trouble-causing, illicit substitute profile a crazed acquaintance put on my daughter’s Facebook profile once upon a time.

So, I had not put up a Facebook profile. I had no Facebook friends; I couldn’t Facebook anyone or write on anyone’s wall. I was one of only two people who didn’t raise hands as Facebookers when social media was the topic at a Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) meeting earlier this year. The other person was a young lady; I wondered then what her excuse was.

But, in my continuing effort to learn social media and have a cyber communications presence (and have a place to promote this website/blog) and tired of being seen as a digital dinosaur when I can Google, e-mail, and otherwise digitally communicate as well as anyone, I took the Facebook plunge last week.

Today, I have 57 friends and counting. I found so many friends and acquaintances from my former lives – as a Fairfield High School and Auburn University student, from days as a reporter and even from my most recent career in corporate communications. The long-lost include my ex sister-in-law and my junior high school best friend. I've not seen either in 30-plus years. I’m having lunch today with another long-lost Fairfield person. And, you never know when one of these long-lost friends might know about a potential job for me, as I have learned that networking is as important as a resume, maybe moreso. Plus, my Facebook friends include my children, my nieces, my nephews and my non-ex sister-in-law.

It took maybe an hour or two to put together my profile, and that included creating photo albums (one for my immediate family, one for friends and family, and one for music and recreation, mainly so I could post my prized picture of me and Billy Joe Shaver). I loved that part, having been a newspaper photographer in one of those former lives.

I’ve learned, however, that the time consumption comes later, after the profile, when friend requests come in, along with the need/compulsion to comment, write on walls or Facebook mail them. Time spent in a mostly social-only pursuit would be the downside, if I can find one. Time spent checking Facebook is added to time spent checking e-mail and job searching and away from my writer self’s current goal of writing at least 1,000 words a day on my almost-through-with-the-first-draft novel.

The book with its working title of Mojo Jones and the Black Cat Bone is waiting on me, even as I spend time today posting a blog on my website and flipping back to e-mail and my Facebook page to see if I’ve been friended, or have messages or hearts or comments. Plus, there must be time for the on-going job search and daily job board checks and follow ups. Thank goodness I don’t actively Twitter. I might never get Mojo back where he belongs.

Still, after less than a week as a Facebook participant, I can see the advantages and wonder now why I fought Facebook so long. It was about perceptions, I suspect. Now it needs to be about time management and priority setting, tasks I have much experience in as a career-long multi-tasker.

But, isn’t most of our life’s work and play about that, finding time for what we need to do and what we want to do?

See you on Facebook.

Picture of the week: Rising moon at sunset over the Alabama River, Dallas County, Alabama.

Song of the week: Blind Willie McTell, Bob Dylan.

Under Vulcan watch, Todd Snider rhymes of optimistic chances

2009-10-12T15:53:00.001-05:00

Under the watch of Birmingham’s giant iron statue Vulcan, I spent a partly-clear Sunday afternoon on Red Mountain listening to singer-songwriter Todd Snider spin his rhythmic, rhyming, sometimes-optimistic realism at a Vulcan Aftertune’s music event, and I felt much better for it.

Snider, who plays blues guitar and harmonica and sings his clever word-play songs while barefoot and smiling, has been called “one of roots music’s slyest and smartest songwriters.” (SPIN magazine).

On this Sunday afternoon in Birmingham at an outdoor concert held at my hometown’s mountaintop statue of the Roman god of fire and metalworking, Snider retained his place on my list of favorite singer-songwriters.

Plus, with songs like Slim Chance, he soothed my unemployed, sometimes poor-me soul with an optimistic look at hard times and extenuating circumstances.

I knew of Snider for his many songs, among the most well known being Alright Guy and the clever, college-age mantra Beer Run, and for Waco Moon, a brutal, sad and honest tribute to Eddy Shaver, the late son of another of my songwriting heroes, Billy Joe Shaver. In Waco Moon, Snider laments that if you “Quit too late you're gonna die too soon,” about the talented, guitar-playing Eddy, who died of a drug overdose on New Year’s Eve 2000.

Like Billy Joe Shaver -- the original Honky Tonk Hero who wrote that hit for Waylon Jennings and suitcases full of other classics with lines like “the devil made me do it the first time/the second time I did it on my own (Black Rose) -- Snider writes songs that make you listen, think, reflect, laugh, cry and hope.

But it was Snider’s upbeat take on dealing with what life brings you which helped me on this day. His latest release, The Excitement Plan, includes a great, rocking duet Don’t Tempt Me, which he co-wrote and sang with Loretta Lynn, and the song Slim Chance, which spoke most plainly to me, as I approach the one-year anniversary of my downsizing and surpass the 15-month mark in my employment search.

There’s always hope; it just depends on how you look at it.
I think that’s what Snider was saying to me, the usual optimist, in Slim Chance.

“I found a four leaf clover/In my yard today
It had one leaf missing off it/But that was okay
Looking it over I could easily see/Four is only just one more than three
That's close enough for me/Must be my lucky day

A slim chance/Is still a chance.
A slim chance/Is still a chance
Hey hey/You don't necessarily have to pay the fiddler to dance”

Thanks Todd Snider, I needed that.

Picture of the day:

Todd Snider plays at Birmingham's Vulcan Aftertunes, October 11, 2009

Songs of the day:
Slim Chance, Todd Snider
Old Chunk of Coal, Billy Joe Shaver

If the resume fits, send it

2009-10-05T09:24:00.000-05:00

On my to-do list this morning is to help my daughter update her resume, as she graduates from Auburn University in December in Supply Chain Management, and needs to attend a career fair this week, and to help update son’s resume, to include the industrial technology courses he is completing at Jefferson State with a soon-to-be complete goal of getting certifications in several areas including automated manufacturing (the computers that control processes in manufacturing and energy production). They will add their new information (daughter’s internship and son’s current technical courses) and I will proofread and edit.

Being the family writer and editor and resident wordsmith, I am often the final stop for my family’s written submissions. Plus, I have new, first-hand experience in resume writing and editing and modifying. I currently have four versions of my resume and there may be room for more.

Targeting your resume to the job(s) you are applying for is just one of the strategies I’ve learned during the more than one year of job searching after being downsized. Having worked as a “generalist” public relations and corporate communications manager, doing everything in multiple states, then adding lobbyist and governmental relations to those responsibilities the last two years, my accomplishments and skill sets are wide-ranging and applicable to various job types.

So, I have a general public affairs and communications professional resume, plus a writer-editor resume (which highlights my experience and skills in writing, editing and publications), a corporate communications resume (which lists details of my qualifications and experiences in issue management, internal and external communications and media relations) and an event planning and marketing version, which, you guessed it, lists accomplishments in event planning and marketing.

I was a newspaper reporter and editor for years, too, but haven’t bothered to create a reporter resume, since newspapers are trimming staff, not adding to them.

Targeting resumes to specific jobs is just one of tactics I’ve learned during fifteen months of job searching in an historically-tough market. Another critical tactic is the ever-important and intangible tool of networking or KNOWING SOMEONE. More about that later.

Picture post for today:

An Auburn sunset on the Alabama River, summer 2009

Song of the day: Things Have Changed, by Bob Dylan. Check it out. Things HAVE Changed.

The first post is the deepest

2009-09-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

This is my first post in my first blog in my first official effort to develop an on-line communications presence.

Since being downsized last year, I am now writing the novel all writers intend to write, tending to the business of being a housewife, looking for the elusive great job and learning more about social media, blogging, widgets, gadgets, hyperlinks and other funny-sounding digital communication tactics and tools.

Hence, I used blogger.com, recommended by a friend, another former newspaper writer and editor, to create this blogspot. I plan to keep it updated, with the disclaimer that I really should be working on my book. More about that, inspirations and aspirations later.