So sorry, I’ve been e-jacked

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

“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

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....

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

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

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

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”